Exiled: Kenly's Story (A Talented Novel) by Sophie Davis Read Free Book Online

from Northampton, Birmingham, and
Manchester for long nights of drinking and debauchery at the
nightclubs and live sex shows. They thought themselves daring for
braving the dangerous streets littered with pickpockets,
prostitutes, and drug pushers. And the Talented. Tonight, I was
tempting fate by walking among them, as well.
    Sporting a pair of ripped jeans that were
five wears past needing washing, a black sweatshirt with the hood
obscuring my dirty brown hair, and an overwhelming urge to take out
my anger with UNITED and Talia on the first person who glanced in
my direction, I fit right in. The outsiders barely glanced at me as
I entered the flow of foot traffic on Fleet Street.
    Picturing Alana standing behind the
Councilwoman, flanked by guards eager to take her to her death, the
hollow feeling in my gut turned to a knot of rage. It burned my
insides, driving away the hunger and exhaustion and breathing life
into my senses. I increased my pace as I wove between groups of
teenagers and twenty-somethings. Their drunken laughter was grating
on my nerves. Someone bumped into me, a pointy elbow poking my
ribs.
    “ Watch it,” a girl’s voice
snapped in my ear.
    The old me, the girl who’d been known as the
“awkward one” amongst my group of friends at the McDonough
School—Alana was the pretty one, Francie the smart one—would have
been quick to apologize. The new me, the chemically enhanced,
genetically altered girl who’d fought in a battle for the history
books and was currently filled with rage, thought it was the pointy
elbower who should do the apologizing.
    “ You watch it,” I hissed back.
    At 5’7”, I am taller than most of my girl
friends back home. Even before my involuntary diet, I’d been thin.
But the training regimen Donavon had designed for me in preparation
for my Hunters’ tryout, had given me a fair amount of muscle. Not
to mention all the cool moves he’d taught me and the weapons I’d
learned to use. I wasn’t someone to mess with.
    The girl who’d run into me was my height
with impossibly large, patterned blue-green eyes that looked like
stained glass. Her golden hair was in barrel curls that rested
perfectly on slim shoulders and somehow managed to appear sleek,
despite the light drizzle. She wore a slip of a dress in lilac that
hugged her slim frame in all the right places, giving the illusion
of curves.
    She glared at me, wrinkling her button of a
nose as her gaze traveled from where my big toe was poking through
the top of my right sneaker to the fist-sized holes in both knees
of my jeans to the grimy sweatshirt I’d been living in for weeks.
Disgust might as well have been tattooed on her forehead. The old
me would’ve shrunk under her appraisal, self-consciously stared at
the ground and tried to blend into my surroundings. But I didn’t
feel self-conscious at all. In fact, I felt the urge to punch her
right in her flared nostrils.
    “ What are you, homeless or
something?” she asked. “You sure smell like you are.” Her cackling
laughter was echoed by her friends. When she blew a mouthful of
wine breath in my face, it had the same effect as throwing
high-proof alcohol on a fire. My temper flared up, high and
hot.
    Walk
away .
    That same voice that had
urged me to be calm at the pub was back. And just like before, the advice was
sound. Getting in a fight over something so stupid was just…stupid.
If we did get into a fight, I’d beat the crap out of her, and then
someone might call the cops. And I couldn’t have that. Even if I
got away, the story of my abilities would be enough. As soon as the
authorities realized I was Created, UNITED would come scoop me up
and take me away, never to be heard from or seen again.
    The gaggle of five girls standing around the
drunk blonde still laughed right along with their queen, all of
them reeking of expensive alcohol and sweet tobacco smoke. I balled
my fists at my sides and turned away, counting to ten very slowly
to calm myself,