The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) by Alicia Kat Vancil Page A

wanted nothing more than to deck her—had said that he would bring up the matter with the Chancellarius because we had more important things to worry about than labels at the moment.
    “You’re home way late,” Patrick pointed out as he paused whatever show was on. Some anime with a girl in a white and red outfit and a boy in a black outfit running around with swords.
    “ Ugh , don’t remind me,” I groaned as I flung my arm over my eyes. “Just please tell me we can do something constructive tonight, like punching pixilated sheep?”
    “I think you mean destructive, ” Patrick said with a smirk to his voice.
    “Whatever, I’m tired of being an adult for today.”
    “Why, what happened?” Patrick asked, concern tinting his voice.
    I pulled my arm from my eyes, and looked at him.
    Where did I even start in answering that question? I didn’t want to bring up the stuff with Chan-rin and his apparent secret memory stealing ability. Or that I was beginning to suspect that Nualla’s memories of the night we had shared together had been stolen, maybe even by him. And I sure as hell didn’t want to bring up the stuff about KARA and the fact that I didn’t even know what fucking species we were anymore. So I settled for the only thing left in my craptastic day: Parker.
    “I have the social graces of a horny teenage boy,” I said as I dropped my arm back over my eyes.

Come as You Are
    Tuesday, November 6th

    TRAVIS

    I t had been eating at me all day, and by three o’clock I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I quickly marched down to Parker’s office, and pushed the door open.
    “Hey, Parker, about what happened between us yester—” I stopped, the person standing in Parker’s office wasn’t Parker. “—day.” My assistant Akiko was standing in front of Parker’s desk, her black-blue eyes looking out at me from her pair of special thick-framed cat-eyed glasses.
    “What are you doing here?” I blurted out as I just stood there frozen.
    Akiko looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows. “I came to get today’s set of genetic profiles to add to KARA’s database. You know, like you asked me too.”
    “Right…” I agreed as I shifted my weight uneasily. It would have been more than easy to just transfer the profiles wirelessly. However, since that would leave KARA potentially vulnerable to infiltration by the Kakodemoss, I had insisted that the data be placed on flash drives and secured in a safe until Akiko or myself personally carted them back to the tech labs. It might have been a little extreme and paranoid, but this time I wasn’t about to take any chances. Not with how easily KARA had been hacked before.
    “Um…where’s Parker?” I asked nervously.
    “You just missed her, she just headed off to her lab,” Akiko replied as she pulled a collection of flash drives out of a safe next to Parker’s desk. As she straightened back up she asked with a smirk, “So what happened yesterday?”
    I just gaped at her, unable to stop the blush spreading across my cheeks. “That’s— cough —personal.”
    “I’m sure it was,” she said with a crooked smile as she pushed the safe door closed. “I’d be careful with that one, she’ll eat you alive,” Akiko advised as she walked past me, still grinning like she found the whole thing unbelievably amusing.
    I turned to follow after her. “I’ll have you know, I’m well practiced with that kind of gir—” I stopped mid-step. “Why am I even telling you this?”
    “Because you babble when you’re nervous,” she answered with a snort as she walked out of the room.
    “I do not!” I called after her indignantly. But she was right and I knew it.
    I slumped into the chair that was against the wall, and ran my hands over my face. Maybe I just should have stayed in bed today.

    Eventually, I got my nerve up enough again to go talk to Parker and tried to walk through the labs as casually as I could. But I was fairly certain I was sweating