Read Online The Change (Unbounded) by Teyla Branton - Free Book Online Page A

easily.
    “Harder!”
    I swung at his stomach, his chest, his feet. His groin. Anywhere I could think of, but each time my staff rebounded off his, the shock reverberating throughout my body until I wondered if my teeth would fall out.
    “Now you try to block me.”
    I could tell he wasn’t trying hard, because several times he had a clear shot and didn’t take it. “Faster,” he urged. “No, bring your staff up like this.”
    Sweat slicked all my exposed skin as I tried to comply with his demands. I understood the basic moves easily enough, but I didn’t have the muscles or the speed to even begin competing with him. At one point when I blocked, I tripped over my own feet, slamming backwards onto the mat, my lungs screaming as my body struggled for breath.
    Ritter stood over me. “You okay?”
    “As soon as . . . I figure . . . out where . . . they put all the air,” I gasped. “Are you sure I have a talent for this? Because it really doesn’t feel like it.” Nothing was clicking. I received no inner warning as to where he might strike, felt no intuitiveness about where to place my staff. Next to Ritter, I was slow and clumsy.
    “Better not depend on anything they say about genetics. All Unbounded must learn to defend themselves. It will come easier in a few weeks.” He offered me his hand. “Let’s take a rest. Get a drink.”
    I let him help me up, still wheezing. Regardless of what he said, my talent had better kick in soon, or I might not live much longer.
    Except maybe I couldn’t die from something as mundane as exhaustion or lack of air. Or maybe suffocation was one of the ways the Unbounded could be killed. As soon as I could breathe properly again, I’d ask. I’d run out on Stella and Cort before we’d covered that vital tidbit.
    I followed Ritter to a large alcove in the gym that housed a kitchenette. Peeling off his shirt, he took a can from the mini fridge and sat at the table, stretching out his legs. Now I could see the gold chain I’d only glimpsed before; on this hung two small gold bands and an even smaller ring that might have fit a child. I wondered who the rings had belonged to.
    “Curequick?” I asked. He looked even better without a shirt, and I knew Tom would hate that I noticed. He’d become a bit possessive of late.
    “Beer.”
    I frowned in disappointment. I really wanted the kick Cort’s mixture gave me. Instead, I drank water, though it had the strange taste of rose petals and beer anyway. I knew I was absorbing some of Ritter’s drink, but I didn’t know where the roses came from. Probably outside. Strange that I didn’t feel the least bit hungry, though I hadn’t eaten anything solid in days. Not that I wouldn’t mind a big steak about now. There was comfort in the familiar.
    “So,” I said, leaning my back against the counter, “how exactly is it that Unbounded can die?”
    His dark eyes studied me for a few seconds before replying. “By completely severing all three focus points.”
    “Focus points?”
    “Yes, focus points store everything we are—our thoughts, feeling, memories, intelligence. We have a triple system backup in case we’re wounded. These are located in the heart, the brain, and the reproductive organs. Even if you sever one of these completely from the others, the body will heal and become exactly as it was before. But separating all three from each other is fatal.”
    I stared at him. “You’re saying if I cut off your head, it’d grow back exactly like it is now?”
    “Or if you drown me, cut me in half, or stick a stake in my heart. As long as any two focus points are connected, an Unbounded will survive.”
    “You expect me to believe that?”
    He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. It’s true.” There was bleakness in the words, and I wondered exactly how damaged he’d been when he’d been taken home for dead all those years ago. Or what had happened to him in the centuries since.
    “That would mean if you