Miles away, a young man woke up suddenly. Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and his bare chest from the heat of the morning sun, and his heart was racing as if he’d been running. Centering himself, he realized that it wasn’t his anxiety that had woken him up, but it was more urgent than it had been in a while. What’s the matter? Are you alright? I need you. What if they find out, she asked frantically. Take a deep breath. They won’t find out. The prince is doing a paper on it! Okay, Cece... just calm down. It’s going to be alright, he told her. I’m coming as soon as I can. Feeling her panic settle to mild worry helped Reyan focus on his present situation. Shutting her out of his mind, he looked around the room where Maxwell and Andrea Cosby had kept him for the last few weeks. Andrea would be coming in very soon. She came to him every morning after her brother-in-law Ma

King Msia stopped talking as Keion’s head hit the ground and his breath rushed out of his lungs in a violent whoosh. Zach and Tommy laughed in surprise, but also immediately reached out to pick up their best friend. Keion sat down quickly and put his head in his hands. Heads turned to look at the handsome young prince. The contact with the floor had hurt, but Msia knew that a headache was the least of his son’s worries. “We’re going to take a break, boys. You can go outside.” No one stopped to think about the king’s instruction. Everyone in the room, except for his son, stood up and filed out of the hall respectfully. Msia waited until most of the boys left before rising to his feet and walking across the room to where his eldest son was sitting. The man could feel the young man’s heart pounding, and he knew it had something to do with his mate. Taking the chair nearest his son, he placed it right beside him and he sat down, putting his hand on the boy’s back. Keion breathed a sig

Ceanna hadn’t always felt like an outsider in her adoptive family. She was grateful for their love and care, and she knew she was different from them, but they had made her feel welcome, despite the obvious. She was a little taller than the average teenage girl, but luckily the men in her family were giants, too. It made her feel like that was a superficial thing they had in common when everything else was far from similar. Ceanna’s golden-brown skin and ethnicity were the first obvious deviations from Daley genetics. She had curly hair and almost yellow eyes, while they had straight black hair and normal colored eyes. Their bloodline was rich with love and academic achievement, hers was… The turmoil she felt whenever she thought of her heritage made her sigh out loud and turn away from the mirror. She wanted to believe what Queen Hamadi had said at school the other day, but she did feel alone, especially when comparing herself to the other kids at Alcombey High. Ceanna was as differe