The Separation Trilogy Box Set: Books 1 -3

by Felisha Antonette

  Fein adjusts to sitting on her left leg tucked beneath her. A contemplative glance steals her eyes as her gaze slices over me and travels to Sean. “I have noticed that.” When her gaze carries back over to me, I’ve already looked away from her.

  “It’s not what you think,” I tell her. “It’s because she was just all over my brother, and now she’s trying to make out with Marc in front of Luke.” I groan and shrug not to draw emphasis to my anger, and while I may have Fein convinced, Sean isn’t.

  “You’re right. Collins sure does get around,” Fein sings, standing. “I’m going to shower before we get too relaxed.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” I say as the front door whips open and closes, followed by rushing footsteps that plod across the hardwood floor.

  “Kylie,” Marc calls loudly. The rasp in his voice makes the call echo through the low furnished home.

  Nope. No. No way. We’re not having this conversation.

  I pass Marc to head for the stairs, and he grabs my arm. Without looking at him, I pull my arm through his hand, then grab it, pulling him to come with me. We make it to my room, and I push my door closed. “You kissed her. I’m not mad anymore, and you aren’t mine to be jealous over. You can do that to whoever you want.”

  Splaying his arms out at his sides, he defends, “She was just using me to get back at Luke. I didn’t know she was going to take it there.”

  “It’s fine.” I snatch up my in-house lounge wear and avoid his eyes. “I’m tired, we’re about to lie around the den. Go back to who you were doing.”

  “Kylie,” he says in an impatient tone. “Cut that shit.”

  I lean my shoulder against the door. The scene replays in my mind every time I look at him. “Did you slap her? Push her away like you did me?”

  “She is not a traitor. There was no need for me to push her away like I did you.”

  He grabs my arms to keep me from pushing him. “I am not a traitor,” I snarl.

  “Don’t be jealous.” He takes my hands in his and raises them over my head, pinning them against the door as he steps closer. Placing a kiss to my cheek, he says, “I only want your lips kissing me.” His beard is rougher than his kiss.

  I try to move my arms, but he keeps me pinned. “Why do you insist on holding me down?”

  “Because I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “I won’t touch you. Let me go. I’m getting in the shower.”

  “You’re going to stay down there with them or come up here with me when you finish?”

  I bite my cheeks to fight my smile. When I have the grin under control, I say, “Stay with them. We’re nothing, remember. You hate me, and I’m working on leaving you alone.” I’m happy I have him back, but we’re still in this place where we go back and forth. One day, we’re forcing distance. Another day, I’m sleeping in his room, cuddled next to him on his bed. I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way.

  “You can’t.”

  “I can’t,” I admit defeat. “But they’ll know I’m up here with you.” We try to keep everyone out of it, but as Sean said, our efforts are pointless.

  “Okay,” he says, releasing me and taking multiple steps back.

  I rub my wrists. “Why are you so strong?”

  He smiles. “To make you weak.” He approaches and nudges me from the door. It opens and closes after he leaves.

  One-minute Marc is all Kylie kiss me, Kylie lie with me, Kylie don’t like Cory because I like you. Kylie, Kylie, Kylie. Then the next minute, he’s asking to be left alone and accusing me of being a traitor. He’s a walking contradiction that gives me a headache I like to have, an irritation I love to feel, and annoyance I can’t avoid. I hate it, and I admit going back and forth with him drives me crazy, but when he does give in…it’s worth it.

  Chapter Six

  Fein beats me out of the showers. She, Sean, and I crowd on the sofa in the den, watching a movie about a giant reptile. Fein falls asleep shortly after the movie starts.

  I nudge her leg with my knee, and she is out cold. “Wasn’t this her idea?”

  “Yeah, it was. I’m probably right behind her.” Sean slouches and lays his head back. His voice drawls as he asks, “You and my brother are back at it?”

  Though Sean is cordial and oddly nice, he’s not that big a fan of mine. He may secretly hate me because of what happened and preferred it when his brother still resented me. “I don’t know. No…” I answer.

  Sean doesn’t tear his gaze from the lizard squashing a motor vehicle as he says, “He can’t turn on you. Regardless of the circumstances.” He won’t say it in front of Fein, but what he’s saying is even under these circumstances of me being connected to the Vojin, Marc won’t turn on me. And while I don’t even know why Marc is even the least bit interested in me, I push that side of him to give in to me, to want me like I want him. Maybe this is because I’m selfish, and I want the things I’ve heard others talk about. Maybe it’s the parts of me clashing, the Vojin, the Creation, and the trickling humanity still coursing through my veins.

  “I’m sorry.” I feel the urge to say.

  “For what?”

  “I try to leave him alone. It’s just really hard.”

  “It’s not that hard,” he condescends.

  “It is when you feel the way I do about him.”

  He leans over on his knees and cranes his neck to look back at me. The grave expression he wears causes a heavy shadow to fall over his always light eyes, the seemingly permanent rise of his cheekbones to fall, and his brows to pull taut, which I’ve never seen them do. His gaze flicks over to Fein then back to me and whispers, “You’re saying you have prohibited feelings for my brother? Like an affection for him?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  He shakes his head, turning back around. “Would you pick him?”

  I lean back on the couch. I don’t know the answer to that question. I could say no and say I’ll pick Luke one hundred percent. I just don’t know just how truthful that is anymore. But it’s what I was born to say. “I’ll pick Luke.”

  He nods slowly. “How can you confirm that feeling? Attraction, yes, that is acceptable. We don’t love.”

  “I’m not confirming that feeling, I can’t. It’s nothing more than anything anyone else has going on around here. What I said was, it’s hard to pretend like I don’t have this attraction, that I can’t have it one day and leave it be the next.” Confirming restricted feelings would be a mistake, and what’s saying Fein’s definitely asleep?

  “What I’ve heard from the Normals is if you have those feelings for someone, you don’t have to think about it.”

  I couldn’t write this off as just attraction. It’s deeper than that. It’s empty and full. It’s heavy and weightless. I float, and I sink around him. I breathe as I suffocate with him. And the same without him. It’s an odd feeling that I can’t explain, and one I’ve never experienced. But I can’t say yes, that’s what this is. “I think, though there are restricted feelings and emotions, I don’t think it’s because we can’t feel them. I believe we have open access to these feelings, that our brains can manifest them, and our bodies can and will react to them. But they’ve been working us for so long, training us, and making us believe there’s only one path. And while there is…what if there was an opportunity for Creations to be Creations and something more?” I follow up the questions with a half-hearted chuckle, hoping to give off a sense that I’m joking.

  Sean shrugs once. “Who knows?” He goes silent and shoves his hands through his hair, stretching his back as he does so. “Look, Ky. I know I haven’t said this yet, and it’s not because I’m resentful or ungrateful. I’ve just been caught up in my thoughts about this whole thing. But…” He bumps the side of my thigh with his fists. “Thanks for what you did for me. I know what you risked.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Luke was right in saying we shouldn’t have saved him and killed him instead, and we are putting a lot of trust in the two of them, hopi
ng they don’t rat us out. It may be appropriate for me to thank him. “Thank you.” I give him a shy smile. “For what you’re continuing to do for us.”

  “We’re even. What you did was greater than what we are doing.”

  I appreciate that.

  Luke comes in and leans against the door panel. “What’s that?” He points to the screen. “Whatever it is, it looks boring, and Fein sleeping proves it.”

  I yawn. “I’m right behind her.” I leave them for Marc’s room.

  “Not with me, Ky?” Luke asks.

  “Nope,” I answer, running up the stairs. I knock on Marc’s door and wait for him to answer. I wait for a while.

  Eventually, Marc tugs the door open and leans against the door frame, blocking the entry. “When did you start knocking and waiting for an answer?”

  “You can close the door, and I’ll try that again.”

  He works me over with a lazy gaze. “You aren’t working very hard on leaving me alone.”

  “I’ll try harder tomorrow.”

  He pushes the door open further, and I duck under his arm, entering his dark room. He doesn’t get a sliver of moonlight in here. “You aren’t sleeping in here, Kylie,” he says after closing the door, eliminating the slice of light that split his bedroom in two.

  I stretch and sit on his bed. “But I’m so tired and already here.” I pat my mouth to forgo my fake yawn.

  He moves from the door. “You make it easy and hard to be upset with you.”

  “Then don’t be upset with me and let me be mad at you for kissing Collins.”

  Standing in front of me, he takes a haughty stance, frame broadening as he crosses his arms. “I thought I could do whatever I wanted with whoever I wanted.”

  “You can, but I want to be your only whoever.”

  “We are nothing more than hugs and kisses, Ky.”

  That is a lie. “We are so much more than a hug or a kiss. You, me, and everyone else knows it. We just can’t go anywhere with it.”

  He lies down behind me and reels me to him, saying, “You can stay in here until Luke goes to sleep, and you will sleep with him.”

  I lie across him. “Can we talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does Sean hate me?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe, but he hasn’t said anything. Why do you ask?”

  “If I had known about Luke’s girlfriend before he killed her, I think I would have hated her.”

  “Why did he kill her?”

  I play with a loose string at the hem of his shirt. “I don’t want to say.”

  Marc combs his fingers through my hair, massaging my head with every stroke. “Say,” he encourages.

  I can’t. I don’t want to give him any ideas and tomorrow end up dead. “Because,” is all I’ll say.

  “He probably started caring more about her than you.” He pauses, then sighs before saying, “I thought about killing you, when we were standing on the side of the training room that one day. It would have been easy, just beyond the cameras’ view…”

  I jolt up. “You wanted to kill me?”

  “I didn’t kill you, I thought about it. It is clear I didn’t want to, or you would be dead.”

  I look away from his eyes to a scar on his chin, where his beard doesn’t grow. Though I feel small, in a firm tone, I ask, “Was it because you were mad at me for what you saw, or to remove me as a distraction?”

  He presses his lips together and shrugs. “To remove you as a distraction.”

  My stomach turns uneasily. I’d feel better if he said he wants to kill me because he thinks I’m a traitor, because he thinks I’ve led him on, and I can’t be trusted. But to kill me because he might care about me more than he cares about his brother, that makes this worse. It also makes me hate Separation and Creations, and I finally understand what he once said… To be born as an only child and not of Separation so I can have my own wants.

  I clear my throat. “I’m going. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He pulls me to him, hugs me tight, and then kisses my cheek before saying, “Okay. Goodnight.”

  I leave his room and head into Luke’s, where I lay on his bed. He comes in shortly behind me. “I thought you weren’t sleeping in here?”

  “Marc made me uncomfortable.”

  He sits on the bed, expression reflecting concern. “How?”

  “He wants to kill me but won’t.”

  He gets up, worry washing away with a blink. “I can relate. But you’re right, he won’t kill you.” He hangs his vest and stuffs his other clothes in a drawer.

  I pull the blanket up to my neck and close my eyes. “I know.”

  Luke lies down on his stomach, and I press my head to his shoulder. “Why when I lie with Marc, it doesn’t matter how I lie, he can take away my nightmares. But when I sleep next to you, I have to be like this for you to take them away?”

  His shoulder shrugs. “Beats me, Ky. We’ve tried everything to help you out, and I don’t know why he’s the only answer.”

  Me neither…

  I wait a while before I ask, “How did you know you loved that girl?”

  Luke clears his throat. “Because.”

  “A little bit more,” I probe.

  “I can’t explain.” He brushes me off like I’m irritating him, but says, “She seemed to make me feel…euphoric. My heart swelled when I was around her. The world was peaceful. It felt good to live. What I was didn’t matter. What I stood for wasn’t so important. The fact that my body was property of the America wasn’t an issue. It’s a weird feeling, one that feels wrong, so wrong it hurts…but on the other hand, she settled the discomfort and replaced it with the one thing we’d never have as Creations, humans, Vojin, a rebellious host…peace. I didn’t need anything else in the world. As long as I had her…” he breathes deep, grumbling. “I don’t know, Ky.”

  “But you can confirm it. You can confirm that feeling, love. You can say that’s what it was.”

  “She loved me first, and my feelings somehow copied hers, accommodated hers. We mirrored each other. It had to be.”

  “How do you feel now?” He takes so long to respond that I have to say again, “Luke?”

  “I. I feel…broken,” he says slowly, and then clears his throat. “Empty.”

  I shift uneasily. “Do you, um, regret?”

  “No. You are more important than she was. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Go to sleep.”

  I relax onto the mattress and withhold my sigh. We never mention our rebellion, the one thing about us that separates us from other Creations, or even Normals, who are Vojin hosts.

  We’re subject to death by the hands of the government should they discover we’re associated with the Vojin. But should the Vojin find out we’ve reestablished control over our bodies, that we’re no longer hosts and under their control, they’ll use us to set an example where we’d prefer death instead of their torture.

  It won’t matter that the Vojin entities are still part of our DNA, altering our molecular structure. The fact that we’ve had our implant slain is all that will matter. Our mother took care of it not long before she was murdered. This is what makes us so different, and why we’re in the most dangerous situation should someone gain suspicions of us. An ounce of our blood could give us away, but thankfully, they haven’t needed that. I think the Vojin and maybe whoever put that note on my bed may be on to us. Someone around here knows our secrets.

  “Ky?” Luke brings me back to wakefulness.

  “Hmm?”

  “Don’t pick Marc over me,” he states, wrapping my head in his arm.

  “Are you worried I will?”

  “Do you love him?”

  I clear my throat. “I can’t say for sure. I can’t confirm a feeling I am unfamiliar with.”

  “Then yes, I’m worried you will.”

  I couldn’t pick Marc over Luke. If Luke goes, I’ll be in even bigger jeopardy of getting hurt or killed when we do fight in the wars or against the Voji
n. “I couldn’t pick him over you. I’ve been convinced for so long that we weren’t supposed to have these types of feelings. Specifically, us, beyond the Vojin im―”

  “Don’t talk about that, Ky,” he says, though he just mentioned the worst of it all minutes ago.

  “Fine.”

  The silence soon fills with Luke’s snores, and I doze off with death heavy on my mind.

  Chapter Seven

  I get up before Luke and before the loud horns sound. For Marc and Sean and Luke and me, I’ll try harder to make this not work. Remembering the tone of Sean’s voice and the look on his face last night, I accept he’s not happy about Marc and me. I can’t blame him. What twin would want to be in competition with a girl or boy who has feelings for their sibling? I wouldn’t. Had I known about Luke’s girlfriend, and known he was more accepting of her than me, I would have tried to kill her myself. It’s likely something Luke has been contemplating about Marc, though he won’t admit it. That type of affection lives with you even after one of the people dies. Is death even the best answer?

  Love: an intense feeling of deep affection.

  Love is dangerous. It makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do, feel ways you aren’t familiar with, and turn on people who would save your life.

  Luke is strong. He had a battle with love and won. He conquered love.

  Or did he…?

  He was hurting last night. I heard it in his voice. Maybe he lost the war to love because he’s broken.

  There must not be a winner in love and war. If you give in to love, you forfeit, you lose. If you defeat love, by offing the person you fell in love with…you still lose.

  I don’t lose. I’m not a failure.

  Leaving Luke’s room, I try to reprogram myself. Marc and I need to end, and I need to revert my attention to the threat, Separation, the bettering of my team, the Vojin, my mixed identity, finding out the others who are mixed, and that letter. I need to find out how my parents played a part in this and are somehow continuing to play a part. I need to be the Kylie I was before I met Marc. Strong, assertive, unable to be weakened or to shed a tear. I must be undistracted by the softness in his eyes when he only looks at me, the smile that wrinkles his cheeks, and the way his touch lightens when he caresses me. He can’t deter me from my mission.