The Fortunates (Unfortunate #2) - Skyla Madi Page 0,24

hands slid on the remnants of the woman’s afterbirth. His stomach churned, making his tongue quake in his mouth. Kade clenched his jaw shut, fighting the urge to vomit. In front of him, the black haired woman cowered, clenching her suckling baby to her chest.

“Please…” she whispered, a plea just for Kade. “Not my baby. Please.”

Her blood seeped through the soft, tan slacks Kade wore and soaked his skin. He wanted to be a Fortunate, but he didn’t want this. He didn’t want to see this.

Kade snapped his head over his shoulder, shooting a glare in Michael’s direction. “This isn’t my job! I’m not a moderator.”

“But you sympathise with these lesser humans.” Michael stepped closer. “This exercise is to desensitise you. We will come here every day until you can do it without feeling, without your misplaced compassion. They do not deserve our sympathy.”

Dropping his head, Kade pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth until his throat started cramping. The woman in front of him was innocent—born at the wrong time. He could’ve been born an Unfortunate just as easy as she could a Fortunate. It doesn’t make sense. The same species, living on the same planet, with the same features and functions. Why? Why were we not living side by side? As equals. The things we could accomplish if we lived in unity, not disarray.

Kade glanced at his hands. Her blood was red. He shifted, exposing the graze on his knee from the tear in his pants. Her blood wasn’t darker or lighter than his. In fact, he was certain his father wouldn’t be able to tell whose blood was whose if he showed him.

“They bleed the same,” Kade muttered, angling his hands so the morning sun above him hit it at the right angle.

“What did you say?”

Kade heard the silent rage in his father’s quiet tone, but he was numb to it. If Michael wanted to steal this woman’s baby then that was his problem. Kade refused to have it on his conscience.

Pushing himself off the rocky floor, Kade straightened his posture and turned around to face his father. Inhaling through his nose, Kade extended his bloody hands.

“Their blood. It matches ours,” he stated, his eyebrows furrowing.

Anger and disgust brewed in the dark, oily depths of Michael’s eyes, but it failed to terrify Kade like it once did. Kade knew what was coming. He’d be dragged home and thrown in the hot tin shed. For days he’d burn and go without food or water and be forced to listen to the Fortunates’ rules and regulations.

Over and over.

Until he hated them for making him feel empathetic.

It was a vicious cycle.

Michael pulled his black coat around his belly and stepped around Kade. “You ought to be more like your brother,” he sneered, pulling out his hand and wiping his top lip.

Kade’s chest clenched, forcing air out of his lungs. He lowered his head as the woman screamed. Terrified, the baby screamed too. The shadows Kade saw on the wall as his father tore the baby boy from his mother’s arms and held it against his body as he extended his arm.

Bang.

The baby wailed.

Kade closed his eyes.

Just like that, the little baby boy had no mother…destined to be an Unfortunate for the rest of his short life.

Kade ran his fingers through his hair and dropped back against his desk. He thought he’d supressed the memory, but there it was. As vivid and as real as the day it happened.

Despite himself, he smirked. How cruel was the universe? Kade finally got a handle on being a Fortunate and then he was given an Unfortunate he couldn’t control, no matter how hard he tried. Now she was a Fortunate…and she hated him for being too cruel. Somewhere during his long, hard battle, he became confused. Torn in half by two extremes beyond his control.

“Get out.” Kade sighed, grabbing his bottle of whiskey.

“You’d really turn me away without offering me a drink?”

Kade laughed and took a mouthful of his room temperature whiskey, clenching his teeth as it bubbled and burned along his tongue.

“A drink?” Kade laughed again. “I wouldn’t offer you a life raft if you were drowning.”

Elizabeth’s eyes thinned into slits. “That’s how you’re going to be? Our history…it doesn’t mean anything to you anymore?”

Was she really that naïve? Kade thought. There was once a time he would have considered her a friend. Now that was a different story. Elizabeth went out of her way to make his life difficult when