Chapter 0282

“I hate that,” I murmur, working to press myself closer to him, even though that’s not really possible.

“I hate the idea of you scared, and alone, and talking to girls when I was just like…half a city away.”

“But you were engaged,” he says, his voice strange – I think a little amused? I don’t know. I can’t

quite parse it.

“You knew about that?” I ask, looking up at him wide-eyed.

“How could I not?” he asks, grinning at me. “You were all over the media – and it’s all anyone would

talk about, especially as it got close.”

“Well,” I say, smiling myself a little too and reaching up to stroke my fingers through his hair. “What

did you think about it?”

“You’ll be disappointed in me, Ari,” he murmurs, lowering his face and taking a sniff of my hair. “I

didn’t really think about it. It was all very far from what I had been instructed to think was important,

what I could understand – a royal wedding…” he shakes his head. “I didn’t have a way to

understand it, why it was important.”

“Oh, come on,” I say, shoving his shoulder a little, my smile deepening. “You must have thought

something.”

Jackson grins at me for a long moment before he breaks, looking away from me like he can’t hold

my eyes while he admits it. “Fine,” he says, heaving a little sigh. “I thought you were…very pretty.”

“Pretty!?” I say, grinning and sitting up straighter with a happy squeak. “You thought I was pretty!?”

“Just in passing,” he mutters, still not looking at me, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I saw a few

pictures on the covers of magazines –“

“So then how did you not recognize me when we met!?” I shout, laughing and tugging on his shirt,

wanting him to look at me again. My mate, ever obliging, turns his head to smile at me.

“Because you were a boy, Ariel – and you smelled like a boy, and I had no reason to equate the

lowest-ranked Candidate at the academy with the pretty girl I’d seen on a magazine cover –“

“You thought I was prettttty,” I sing, a little delighted, wiggling victoriously in his lap.

“And I was right,” he growls, snatching me closer and bending me back a bit in a way that makes

heat coil in my core. “You are pretty. Much prettier in person, and not dressed up in all that bride-y

gauze.”

“Yes, all that bride stuff really was crap,” I say with a sigh, staring up at him, starry-eyed and swept

away by how wonderful he is – at once handsome, and powerful, and cute. God, how does he

manage it?

But there’s still so much more I want to know, and I’m being selfish, turning this conversation away

from him.

“So,” I ask, quieting down, sitting up straighter and resolving to be good. “How’d you spend your

time off? Did you hang out with the guys that you lived with?”

All I want in the world right now is to sit right here in my mate’s lap, listening to him talk for hours,

spinning out the story of his life. I’d listen for days, if time and circumstance would let me, even

though I know they won’t.

“In my time off,” Jackson murmurs, thinking back on it and raising his hand to my hair, petting me

again, “at first, I just sat alone in my room. But then the guys I lived with – they were kind, but…a

little rough, you know? They told me I’m a sad sack and that I was being a creep, just sitting in there

in the dark. They made me come out into the communal living room, which is where I discovered…

television.”

“What!?” I gasp, unable to keep from laughing a little. Jackson laughs along with me, though, giving

a self-deprecating little shrug. “You didn’t know what television was!?”