Kin Read Online Free Page A

looking
directly
, but he was keeping very careful track of her in his peripheral. Again, just as usual. He’d always been the watchful one.
    Like Cami, he watched. Of all the clan, he was probably the one who suspected the most about her—so she kept her distance.
    It wasn’t easy, when you’d grown up with a pair of boys, to keep them at the right orbit—not too close, not too jealous, not too far. A balancing act, just like the rest of them, speeding up in increments year by year until she looked around and realized the blur was making it harder to keep up.
    It didn’t help that Thorne was . . . well, difficult.
    â€œBunch of posers. I hear their Clanmother lets her enemies live.” Hunter’s laugh was a sharp spear in the gathering dark.
    â€œShe’s modern. Not like
you
.” Thorne got the idea Ruby wasn’t going to take the bait, so he tossed out another piece. “Do you remember him, Rube?”
    She let it go, touching the closest tree trunk—an old black elm, like the ones near St. Juno’s. Leaves rustled, sounding like the tapestry in the living room.
    Hunter, of course, couldn’t leave it alone. “What was his name? Started with a
K
, right?”
    â€œConrad. The older twin, by a couple minutes, at least. He’s a Tiercey, I think, that’s their rootfamily.” Thorne’s dark eyes gleamed, and he jostled Ruby. It wasn’t accidental. She elbowed him back, catching him off balance and slipping away from between them and the tree, their unwitting helper in trying to surround her.
    Kinboys liked to fence a girl in. You needed to be quick as a minnow to slide through. Sharp as a shark when they pushed it, too, like they
all
did.
    It wasn’t their fault girls were so few. Before the Reeve, they’d been born more often than boys. But when the Great War knocked whatever metaphysical cork loose and Potential spilled out to drown the Age of Iron, something happened, and now girls were increasingly rare among the kin.
    In the old days, the problem had been mere-humans fearing what they didn’t understand and killing what they could. A frightened mere-human was a deadly one, just like the Elders said. Now it was looking like evolution, or Potential itself, was going to do what the Age of Iron couldn’t—erase the moon’s children.
    Behind her, Hunter shoved Thorne, who rabbit-punched him—light taps, one-two, on the arm. They were excited, full of healthy high spirits, just like before every full moon.
    â€œMaybe he’ll fight for her.” Hunt sounded a little breathless.
    â€œWho cares?” Thorne, bitterly, but Ruby didn’t want to deal with his temper tonight. Well, she never did, she hated the constant back and forth, as if she was a bone.
    Just one more thing about kin and clan. She lengthened her stride, leaping a bracken-fall, and they hurried to catch up.
    The last fingernail-paring of the sun slipped below the horizon, and Ruby took a deep breath. The Park inhaled too, little creaks and crackles in its depths as more cousins arrived. There were a few catcalls from other parts of the Park, the deeper growl of males and six or seven lighter, higher girl-voices. One sounded like Cherry Highgier, who dyed her hair with feyberry red, as if that would make her root instead of just a branch. She went to Hollow Hills instead of Juno.
    All the other kingirls did. She’d never had the courage to ask Gran where
she’d
graduated from, or why Ruby wasn’t sent to Hills. It wasn’t a bad school, but Juno was
the
school for New Haven aristocracy, at least the charm and mere-human ones. If Cami had been born into Family instead of adopted, she would have gone to Martinfield like all the other Family girls. Ruby had once or twice wanted to ask her if she’d ever longed to belong with the kind that raised her.
    That wasn’t a kind question, though, and she was glad she’d