Teasing My 7 Hot Alpha Stepbrothers at the Royal Academy novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: Moon Circle

"Not here," I said.

Nero laughed out loud, right there on the Great Hall floor.

"She's got a protocol," he said.

"I've always had a protocol."

Titus looked over my head at the screaming Hall, the stamping cadets, the twins on their chairs.

"Back door," he said. "Now. Before Roxy gets here."

We went out through the kitchens of the Great Hall, past cooks holding trays of champagne, and nobody stopped us.

The parade ground was silver.

The Hunter's Moon had climbed clear of the river and gone white.

Our shadows walked in front of us.

Nobody spoke.

Nero held my left hand. Titus walked on my right with his hands in his pockets. Hadrian walked a step behind.

At the Commander's House, Hadrian went in alone.

He came back out with the gray wool blanket off his own bed over his arm.

"It's October," he said, when Nero looked at him.

"We're wolves."

"She isn't. Yet."

We went around the back porch, past the boards where I'd held the Commander up, and into the woods.

Two hundred yards in there's a clearing, flat and mossy, ringed with old pines.

The moon fell straight down into it.

Hadrian spread the blanket in the middle.

Then the three of them stood in front of me, side by side, and waited.

I'd rehearsed twelve minutes for the King.

I hadn't rehearsed this.

"Eight weeks ago," I said, "I wrote at the top of a page, 'Hypothesis: one of them.'"

"I was wrong."

Nero's grin started.

"Don't," I said. "I'm doing this properly."

He bit it back.

"Nero," I said.

"Doc."

"You broke it first, and you told him to his face, and you carried me up a laundry chute with cracked ribs."

"You were light."

"I wasn't."

"You weren't," he admitted.

"I choose you."

His eyes went gold all at once.

"Titus."

He took his hands out of his pockets.

"You called me the wolfless wonder for two years."

"Then you said you were wrong, out loud, in front of everyone. And you came down to the cells at midnight with the proof."

"I'd do the cells again," he said roughly. "I wouldn't do the two years."

"I choose you."

He nodded once, and his eyes went gold too.

"Hadrian."

He didn't say anything.

He never says anything when it matters most. He just looks.

"You heard every word through my door on the first day," I said.

"You walked out of my room with your hand still warm. Then you told the King the truth and let it cost you."

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