The Hidden Princess At All-Boys Alpha Academy

Chapter 0824 "Sorry," I murmur, untying my robe and letting it slip from my shoulders. "I got...distracted." Pippa turns slightly to give me some privacy I don't need - Moon Valley wolves don't tend to be shy about nakeness, even if Atalaxian ones do - as I slip into the bath.

When I slip under the water, opaque with bath salts and oils and bubbles and soap, Pippa turns back to me and sits on a stool at my side, handing me shampoos and conditioners and more soaps as I go through the process of bathing, keeping me company as much as she's helping me.

"Did you know," Pippa says, her voice a bit distracted and dreamy as she leans against the side of my tub, "what Gabriel meant, when he said he wants you to be the perfect picture of an Atalaxian Luna tonight?"

I shrug a little, looking at her with interest as I rinse shampoo from my hair. "I mean, I think I know. But... I'm not sure I do. Not really."

"I'm not sure he knows either," she says, turning to look at me, her face more serious than I've seen it before. "I'm not sure any of them do.

I stop moving my hands, letting them fall into the water. "What do you mean?"

"We spent a lot of time on a country estate when we were children," Pippa says, looking away again, surprising me with this turn in the story. "It belonged to my uncle - my mother's favorite brother. He never took a Luna." She shrugs. "Some don't. Perhaps there aren't enough perfect Luna's for all the Alphas who are left wanting."

little cup off of the back of the tub and filling it. I tilt my

a very

spent a great deal of time wandering through the meadows, and making up stories in the mountains, and building forts up in trees or beneath them. There was a great deal of freedom to that life which think we all lost when we came back to the Castle for the winters. And when we

as Pippa puts the cup back onto

quietly beginning to massage it into my

he never came

a very special friend there, you see - his gamekeeper. He raised my uncle's hounds, and tended his horses. He was a very nice man - always with a ready smile. I haven't seen him

—

faster that way."

the water. As I float beneath the water, running my fingers through my hair, I wonder

Pippa telling me the story I think she's telling

want of information and, indeed, air, I resurface. She's