The Violet Awakening (The Elementum Trinity Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

brother’s name. “This is his bond, Reagan, and her brother, Nixon.”
    “Like the presidents?” Lakin asked, shaking their hands one at a time.
    “Never heard that one before,” Nixon mumbled, words completely saturated with sarcasm.
    As he reached in to shake my hand, my mind was blinded by muscle. He looked kind of like someone had sculpted a stocky, super-ripped statue, and then suddenly remembered there was supposed to be a face in there somewhere, so they slapped on some eyes about halfway up his beefy neck, and then tried to make it all blend together by plopping a mane of long black hair on top his head. I couldn’t help but compare myself to a scarecrow made of spaghetti noodles.
    I was a bit taken aback when Lakin protectively wrapped his arm around my shoulder, but I realized it must have been because I was staring inappropriately. I wasn’t attracted to Nixon, of course. I was simply mesmerized by the massive blob of muscle that was standing before us.
    Reagan, on the other hand, was the exact opposite of her brother. She was as tall and wispy as a willow. If she felt like popping off to France for a weekend, she probably could have hitched a ride on a gentle breeze across the Atlantic. Short, green hair with black roots stuck out from her head in all directions, and her eyes seemed almost too big for her face. In shaking her hand, I quickly understood that not everyone in the Eden was as old-fashioned as the game of horseshoes in the field suggested; a vivid sleeve of tattoos decorated the girl’s arm, from her wrist all the way up to her neck. Oddly enough, Lakin didn’t seem as threatened by my new stares of amazement.
    “And this is Cora,” Al said, wrapping his arm around a different girl’s neck and tousling her dark, wavy hair with his knuckle. “My sister.”
    It wouldn’t have taken an introduction to conclude that they were related. If Al had put on a wig and a bra, he would have looked exactly like her. As Cora wriggled free from his grasp, her icy-blue eyes glared daggers at her brother, and she seemed less than enthused about meeting us. I had no idea what the bitterness was based on, but she made it more than obvious.
    “It’s nice to meet you all,” Lakin said courteously. I nodded and smiled in agreement.
    “Even me?” Gabe piped up with a smirk.
    “I don’t know. Are you less of an ass now than you were a couple of hours ago?” I asked. At that point, I wished I’d been born with that filter other people seemed to have, which kept your mouth from saying all the stupid things that ran through your brain.
    Reagan’s breathy laugh was accompanied by chuckles from Al and Nixon, but Lily and Cora seemed a bit put off by my comment. Less than two full days in the Eden, and I was already upsetting people? Yeah, that sounded about right.
    “I told you,” Gabe said to his bond, before looking back to me, “she’s all right for having grown up in a test-tube.”
    “Gabe!” Lily said in a harsh, hushed tone, thwacking him on the arm with the back of her hand.
    “Chill, sis. She’s not offended. Are you offended?” he asked, raising his eyebrows at me.
    I shook my head, still a bit uncomfortable around the people with whom we were so unfamiliar. I couldn’t make any more stupid remarks if I just kept my mouth closed.
    “See?” Gabe said, smiling at his frustrated sister. “We’re good.”
    “There’s something wrong with you,” I heard Lily whisper as she shoved past her brother.
    “I’m just being friendly!” Gabe called after us. I wondered if anything that came out of his mouth ever sounded sincere.
    Lakin and I followed closely behind Lily and Al, as we joined the rest of the community in the field. I hadn’t really gotten a chance to observe the faces while we were in the house, but the amount of diversity that filled the Eden was as clear as the water above us. Close-up, it didn’t look like a hippie-farmer-commune at all. There were people with tattoos,