Chosen by Fate Read Online Free PDF Page B

then—truth.
    That had changed in the last few months. The longer she’d spent on the Para-Ops team and with her team members, something had changed inside her.
    She’d weakened. Begun to hope. Begun to think maybe the rumors had been wrong . . .
    They weren’t, she told herself brutally.
    Over the next year, she would gradually lose her immortality. Before the year was up, she would die.
    She laughed harshly at her image in the mirror.
    It was perfect. Just perfect.
    The latest cosmic joke added to the crappy luck that amounted to her doomed existence.
    Ten years ago, she awoke with no memory. Then she’d discovered she was a freak. And not just a freak by human standards, but by the whole damn world’s, Otherborn included. Vamps, weres, and mages looked more normal than she did. Unlike her, they ate. Slept. They had heartbeats and observable brain waves and blood.
    They were alive. She, on the other hand . . .
    She was the walking dead, her outer shell visibly announcing it even as she felt the same emotions everyone else did. The difference was, she couldn’t do anything about them. Not the softer ones anyway. Not when everyone around her either feared her or wanted to use her to increase their bank account, feed their sick, sexual fetishes, or learn the secret to immortality. Who knew being dead could be so handy—for the living, anyway?
    When she’d figured that out, she’d wanted to die. She’d tried to kill herself several times only to learn that, while she couldn’t die, she could feel pain. Even worse, when her body had regenerated after a particularly vicious suicide attempt, it had upped the stakes. From then on, a simple touch from someone else was painful. The infliction of a deliberate wound was excruciating agony.
    Her body’s way of saying, “Go ahead, try to kill me, I’ll make you pay.”
    Apparently, suicidal tendencies were another thing wraiths had in common, because every wraith she’d ever met suffered the same curse. Either that, or pain from touch was a generic punishment for a variety of one’s crimes against the Gods and nature.
    She’d sought comfort in the beginning. Companionship. She’d gotten both to some degree, only to be betrayed. It had taken two years of captivity and the threat of Otherborn eradication before she’d learned to put her immortality to good use during the War. After peace had been declared and she’d confirmed that living among other wraiths wasn’t for her, she’d learned to exist alone. To survive. With no place to call home. No one to call family or friend.
    And now, just when she’d become part of a team and had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, she had some purpose for being here, the Goddess Essenia was fucking her over again.
    She could actually envision the bitch, an impossibly beautiful creature, dangling Wraith’s immortality in front of her while taunting, “I’m going to take it away, only you won’t know when. Could be today. Could be next month. But before this year is up, it’ll all be over.
    “ You’ll be over.”
    A harsh thump tore Wraith from her thoughts. With a gasp, she pulled her fist back from the mirror, which now sported a long, jagged crack down its center. Pain radiated from her fist, down her arm, and up into her temple. As she watched, several cuts on her hand began fusing together, then disappeared completely.
    She’d been pounding on the mirror, she realized, and hadn’t even known it.
    Just like the crazy creature she was.
    A low moan slipped out of her before she could stifle the sound. Her knees grew rubbery, causing her to grip the sides of the sink to keep upright. She flinched when someone knocked on the door of the adjacent bedroom. Automatically, she turned toward the sound.
    “Wraith? Are you okay?”
    Caleb. She pressed her lips together, tamping down her foolish urge to run to the door and throw herself into his arms. Ever since she’d helped him get Mahone out of that warehouse, he’d kept