My Alpha Parents Gave My Tuition Away, So the Royal Command Took Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Pack Law

I didn't sleep that night, and by morning my shoulder had knitted whole.

Hollis found me in the armory at dawn, cleaning a rack of training blades that didn't need cleaning.

"You should be resting," he said.

"I'm done resting."

"The video is all over the capital."

"I saw."

"Your sister's name is on every feed. People are saying the Brask prodigy is a fraud."

"She mouthed my name," I said. "On a stage, in front of five hundred people. Why would she do that?"

"I don't know." He took a blade off the rack and checked its edge. "But I mean to find out."

He turned the blade in the light and then held it out to me, hilt first.

"Your grip's wrong."

"I'm a mechanic."

"That's not a reason." He stepped in behind me. "Show me."

I took the hilt.

He didn't touch me.

He stood so close that I felt the warmth of his chest along my back, and his breath moved my hair.

"Lower the wrist," he said, very quietly.

I lowered it.

"Lower."

His hand came up and stopped an inch from my wrist and stayed there, not touching.

I could hear the rain on the armory roof, and my own heart.

I turned my head.

His face was right there, with the scar through his eyebrow and his eyes on my mouth.

He wasn't breathing.

Neither was I.

The blade shook in my hand.

I thought: if I turn the rest of the way around, he won't stop me.

"Recruit," Hollis said.

His voice was perfectly flat.

"You're staring."

I jerked back and almost dropped the blade.

"I wasn't."

"You were. Thirty seconds, at least. It's a distraction." He stepped around me and put the rack in order with quick, careful hands. "Try to keep your eyes on the target."

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