Chosen by Fate Read Online Free PDF Page A

recorded in the mage’s texts, and you sought me out, not the other way around. Now you want to change the rules?”
    The heat emanating from her grew more intense. His hospital gown and the sheets twisted around him began to smolder. His already-chapped lips split, and he could suddenly taste his own blood. Maybe he’d been wrong after all. Maybe the Goddess really wasn’t feigning her bad intentions. He forced back an agonized, terror-filled scream, refusing to give her the satisfaction of hearing it.
    But then the heat waned as she backed away.
    He could see his words had swayed her, so he kept talking, his voice harsh in his parched throat. “You gave me one year to prove that my team can make an impact. We can help your children once again live in peace, despite the darkness that will always be among them and within them. Perfection wasn’t our deal, nor is it demanded by the prophecy. We need only show a tipping of the scales in favor of the goodness of humanity.”
    Essenia’s renewed anger flashed through the room once again, and he involuntarily closed his eyes against the horror of it.
    He heard her voice reverberate around him. Inside him. “Why do you continue to rally for them? I’ve taken everything away from you, Mahone. Any chance of the life you hoped to spend with Bianca. Yet you fight for your survival. For that of your kindred.”
    At the thought of Bianca, another kind of pain shot through him. Why did he fight for the survival of humanity when there were times he himself believed they were lost? Maybe for the very reason Bianca, the vampire Queen and Knox Devereaux’s mother, had been reunited with her husband and why he could accept it.
    Hope.
    “You question my persistence? Even though you chose me and won’t tell me why? I don’t know what answer you want. All I know is you created us.” Or had some hand in that creation, he thought. “You imbued us with both strengths and weaknesses, but with one strength above all. The ability to learn. To change. To grow. We might not be doing it with the speed you wish, we might have fucked up again and again, but we deserve another chance. Please.”
    For several long minutes, she said nothing. Then she waved her hand, silencing the beeping machines abruptly. She nodded, causing him to shudder in relief.
    “Very well. Continue with this game, but the outcome won’t change. Humanity is lost, Mahone. You cling to visions of what could have been, just as I once did.”
    “Just hold to our bargain. Let my team show you what they’re capable of.”
    “The bargain stands. For now. You have until the end of one year. Then humanity will fall in order to be reborn.”

THREE
    PARA-OPS TEAM HEADQUARTERS
QUANTICO, VIRGINIA
    I t was finally happening.
    Wraith’s appearance was changing. In less than a year’s time, she’d be dead.
    Almost a month had passed since the Para-Ops team had recovered the vamp antidote, rescued a dozen Otherborn, and returned from Korea to rescue Mahone. Then, of course, she’d survived Caleb’s toxic gas—Essenia wouldn’t want her to miss what came next.
    As Wraith stared in the bathroom mirror, she could hear the sounds of the others moving down the hall, packing up their things, getting ready for some well-earned R & R at Knox’s big estate in the Vamp Dome. Felicia and Knox had left the week before to oversee the wedding preparations. Although the rest of the Para-Ops team had stayed behind, they’d barely seen each other. For the past few mornings, she’d heard the roar of Dex’s Harley as he tore out of the compound before dawn, not returning until dark. When the were did return, he glowered at his team members as he grabbed a beer and whatever else he could find in the kitchen, then slammed into his room. Lucy and Caleb had spent the week visiting Mahone in the hospital or seeing family. Wraith had noticed, however, that although they didn’t bother her, one of her team members had always stayed behind when the