Read Resistance (The Variant Series #2) for Free Online Page B

half-speed—hurt like a bitch, regardless.
    It was his own fault. He hadn’t been paying close enough attention to her movements, otherwise he would have seen the attack coming.
    Instead, he’d been musing about Alex and the way she’d reacted to seeing the field.
    Was she really that nervous about beginning her training?
    Or was it something else?
    “Point!” Kenzie chirped happily, still frozen in place. “Now let me loose, jackass, before I strain something.”
    Behind them, Declan was chuckling.
    Their brother had arrived late and then proceeded to take a seat in the middle of the field, idly watching Nathaniel and Kenzie while they sparred. He claimed he was practicing with the spheres Alex had recently shown him how to create, trying to teach himself to control them.
    Which was bullshit, because Nate knew for a fact that Declan had gotten a handle on the spheres less than a week after discovering them.
    He was just slacking off because Alex wasn’t here.
    Had she been here, he likely would have been showing off instead.
    “Nice follow-through, Red. But you’ve got to stop locking up your leg before you kick.” Nate tapped her lightly on the kneecap. “Start from a forty-five degree chamber. Not a full extension. Otherwise you’re going to screw with your accuracy. Or, knowing you, you’ll end up hurting yourself instead of your opponent.”
    “Says the guy still rubbing his nose,” said Kenzie with an eye roll. “Now let me down.”
    He released her and she switched gracefully back into a ready position, bouncing lightly on the balls of her bare feet.
    “So are you two going to tell me what’s going on with Alex? Or do I have to drag it out of you?” asked Nate.
    “She’s still freaked about her abilities,” said Declan. He was toying with a sphere, the crackling ball of violet light expanding and contracting above his palm. Alex had been able to grow a sphere to roughly the size of a large beach ball. Declan had yet to create one larger than a grapefruit.
    Nate had been tempted on more than one occasion to console his brother with the old saying “size doesn’t matter.”
    Kenzie and Nate continued to circle each other, looking for openings.
    “It’s more than that,” she said.
    “Oh?” said Nate, throwing a cross that Kenzie easily dodged.
    “Something happened today with Jessica Huffman,” said Kenzie, still circling. “I didn’t get all the details, but the gist of it was that Jessica is blaming Alex for what happened to Veronica.”
    Declan cursed. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
    “Why would she have told you ?” asked Kenzie.
    Nathaniel pounced on her distraction by punching her lightly in the ribs. “Point.”
    Declan grumbled behind them. “Well obviously she didn’t tell you , either, seeing as how you had to dig that bit of information out of her head.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Kenzie rubbed her side. “Whatever.”
    “Who the hell is Veronica?” asked Nate.
    Declan dissolved the sphere with a flick of his wrist. “She was the one with Jessica that day at the dock.”
    “Wait… the dark haired girl?” he asked, trying to keep his guard up and search his memory at the same time. “The one Masterson killed?”
    “Yeah,” said Kenzie.
    Jessica blamed Alex for that? She’d done everything she could to protect those girls. They were only there in the first place because they’d been hiding in the bushes, spying on Alex and Connor.
    It had been a terrible case of wrong place, wrong time, but that wasn’t Alex’s fault.
    And it certainly wasn’t Alex’s fault that Masterson was a psychotic bastard with a taste for blood.
    Kenzie dropped to the ground and swiveled around, delivering a low spinning sweep kick to his ankle.
    Or, at least, she would have, had he not stopped her an inch away from his shin.
    “No point,” he said.
    She muttered a few not-so-nice-words in his general direction. “That was so totally a point!” she argued, stuck in mid-sweep.
    “Look at