Chapter 121

Andy POV

“Andy!” Dad yelled up the stairs. “Come on, we’re going to be late!”

Sitting on my bed, fully dressed and ready to go, I put a hand to my stomach.

The cramps were back, making me feel sick and in pain at the same time.

But I wasn’t ill. I didn’t have a stomach bug.

It was school.

I was starting to hate it.

And I used to love it so much!

It was where I got to see my friends and play with them and do art and stuff.

I even liked learning how to read and write and do math.

And it didn’t even matter that I was the Alpha’s son, not once everybody got used to it. After a while, I was just another student.

But then I got kidnapped by Sabrina.

And everything changed.

Now every single day was filled with people wanting to know what happened, what it was like, how scared I was.

“Can we see the scar on your chest??”

“How did it feel to be healed by the Princess? What’s she like?”

“You stayed at the palace! Tell me all about it.”

Spending the whole weekend at the palace and being with Mom had been amazing.

Until I got back to school, and was immediately surrounded by people and questions.

And not from just students, either.

My teachers and the staff also wanted to know what had happened, and what I knew about the Princess.

One day a teacher’s aide sat next to me at lunch time and helped me open my milk container.

“There you go!” she said, handing me the milk. “Now, tell me, how are you settling in at school? You’ve had so much excitement lately!”

I stuck my straw in my milk and took a drink. “I have. But I’m happy to be at school again. I like school.”

She smiled at me, and her eyes twinkled. “Good for you. And your wound, is that all better? Or do you still have pain?”

I thought that was a nice question to ask, but it also felt kind of weird. Her eyes were still twinkling, but the look on her face didn’t feel as friendly anymore.

“Um…no, it doesn’t hurt.”

“Amazing. The Princess truly can work miracles with her healing abilities.

“Can I see it? Can I see your scar??”

She reached forward, like she was going to pull the collar of my shirt down.

Feeling scared, I jumped up and ran to one of the teachers. I told them what happened, and they looked alarmed.

They immediately ran back to the lunch room.

But by the time we got back to where I had been sitting, the teacher’s aide was gone.

Because she wasn’t an aide at all. She was a reporter who snuck into the school just to try to talk to me.

And as soon as everyone found out, they had even more questions.

Questions it was getting harder to know how to answer.

Because it was getting harder and harder not to tell people that Princess Claire was actually my mother.

I still knew that this was a very big and very important secret to keep. I understood that.

But when I promised not to tell, I couldn’t imagine just how hard it would be to keep that secret safe.

Especially when it seemed like every other question I got asked was about who my mother was.

It started with the newspapers and TV reporters talking about who my mother could be, why she wasn’t a part of our family, why Dad never talked about her.

There were rumors that Dad was courting Mom, or going to, and now everyone was wondering what my true mother might have to say about that.

I remember hearing about how much Dad was questioned about my mother when I was a baby.

It was a very odd situation, for an Alpha to just one day have a child and not want to talk about where the baby came from.

For a while some people didn’t even believe that I was his son, until he did a paternity test to prove it.

After that, people just began to accept that I didn’t have a mother.

By the time I started school, no one ever even asked about it.

But they did now. A lot.

I told myself I could handle it. My dad was an Alpha, so I had to be strong and tough and deal with it all on my own.

So I didn’t tell Dad about the reporter that snuck into the school, or the way teachers asked me to stay after class just to hear more about the palace.

And I didn’t tell Mom that I missed her so much that I cried in the bathroom at school sometimes. Or that being questioned constantly about who my mother was only made it worse.

And I didn’t tell either one of them about Jeremy.

My bully.

Going to school was hard. It made my stomach hurt every morning, just like it was now.

And even though being cornered and questioned everywhere I went was rough, it wasn’t the worst part.

The very worst part of it all was Jeremy.

“Andy!”

Knowing I couldn’t put it off any longer, I stood up slowly, rubbing my belly.

“Coming!” I called back.

Wishing I could just take off my shoes and crawl back into bed, I left my room and went downstairs so Dad could drive me to school.

But when we got there, the first kid I saw standing outside was the last one I wanted to see.

Jeremy.

“Hey look, your friends are already here and waiting for you,” Dad said as he got in the drop-off line in front of the school.

“Yeah, great,” I said, staring out the window.

Jeremy stared back.

I could tell just by the look on his face that he’d been waiting for me.

As soon as Dad drove away he was going to start on me.

Already wanting to cry, my stomach hurting twice as bad now, I didn’t know if I could handle it. Not today.

I glanced up at Dad in the rearview mirror as we moved forward slowly in line.

Just tell him, I thought. Just say you don’t feel good and you want to go home.

Tell him you never want to go to school ever, ever again.

Tell him you want to go live in the palace with Mom, where reporters and nosy teachers and big ugly bullies could never go.

Dad glanced up into the mirror and smiled at me when he saw me looking.

And I knew I couldn’t say any of that.

No matter how bad I wanted to.

This was just something I was going to have to deal with on my own.

Dad was an Alpha in charge of an entire pack, and Mom was a Princess who protected the entire realm.

I had to be as strong as they were.

So when Dad got to the drop-off, I said goodbye and hopped out of the car, trying to act like everything was fine. I waved to him as he drove away.

Then I started walking with a group of other kids, hoping I could slip into the school without Jeremy realizing I’d gone by.

But then a heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and I knew I wasn’t going to be that lucky.

“Hey, loser, where do you think you’re going?” Jeremy said, jerking me around to face him.

His friends stood around behind him, laughing and watching.

“Leave me alone, Jeremy,” I said. “I just want to go inside.”

“Why, so you can go cry in the bathroom?”

He and his friends laughed, and I felt my face start to burn.

How did he know??

“Poor little baby, he’s so sad because he doesn’t have a mommy.”

He always teased me about that. Telling me how great his mother was, how she made cookies for the whole class on his birthday, and always picked him up after school.

“You don’t have a mommy, do you, Andy? Yours never wanted you. She just wanted to get away from you.

“I bet she left you and your stupid dad on the day you were born!”

Jeremy howled with laughter, his friends joining in, until I was surrounded by a circle of bigger kids all laughing and pointing in my face.

And I finally lost my temper.

I charged at Jeremy, pushing him down, falling to my knees and punching him.

“I do have a mother! I do, I do, I do!”

Teachers came running, pulling me off of Jeremy, my knuckles red with his blood.

“I have a mother!” I screamed. “And she’s ten times better than yours!

“My mother is a princess!!”