The Fortunates (Unfortunates #2) (27 page)
Read The Fortunates (Unfortunates #2) Online
Authors: Skyla Madi
I storm from the tower and hit the stairs, clenching my teeth against the muscle pain as I descend the spiral staircase.
“Anna, wait,” Kade calls after me, his tone thick with frustration. I don’t stop and he snags me by the wrist again, forcing me back. I try to pull away, but he doesn’t let me go. “You’re being irrational.”
“Irrational?” I snap, ripping my arm from his grip. Gasping, I stumble and catch myself on the cool metal railing. “Your mother went into the city and never returned, they put chips in people to stop them from talking about what goes on behind those walls, and now your brother ends up with some crazy advanced force field that absorbs bullets?” Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? “We don’t have the technology to make that. It sounds like an ambush to me.”
“What do we do, Anna? We can’t sit here for the rest of our lives. In a few short months we won’t have enough food. The nights are getting colder and there aren’t enough blankets. Eventually, we’ll run out of ammo.” He swallows loudly. “I hate to say it, but we didn’t think this out well enough. We’ll rot here. We need to win this war and quick, or starve to death waiting for a miracle to happen.”
I slump. I hate that he makes sense. Out here it’s do or die. I think about the city and its huge landmass, hidden by a tall concrete fence. I’ve dreamed about being inside one of those skyscrapers my whole life and every time I’ve thought about it, it has left me uneasy. This time is no different.
“You’d come with me to the city?”
“Try and stop me.” His beautiful full lips pull into a smile. “You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.”
I nod slowly. Okay. I don’t trust the letter, but if Kade thinks it’s a good idea then I’ll go along with it. He’s been around longer than I have and he’s a Fortunate whose father regularly visited the city. What else do I have to go off?
We wish to speak with you.
You’re at war…
And we can help.
They say they can help…and I don’t know much about the world, but I’m starting to think you can’t trust anyone that hides behind a wall.
BEFORE YOU GO…
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Note from the Author
Hello! I hope
The Fortunates
was everything you have waited for and more. I’m sorry it took so long to get this book to you, but the plot was just so difficult for me to navigate. I wrote
The Fortunates
twice in the long, long months you have waited for it. All together, I’ve scrapped almost 200,000 words.
In the first version (that I completed early-mid 2015) Nine and Kade face minor trials and tribulations and get the HEA that most of you so desperately want to see. The only problem with that was that although Kade was happy—beyond happy—Nine was incredibly unhappy. She had to conform to the ways of The Fortunates and watched as her children morphed into the very people she despised.
In the end, I had her take her own life. A few people objected to that ending because “Nine is so strong. She would never.” And they’re absolutely correct. She’d never sit idly by while her children are taught hatred and prejudice. But she did. And she hated her life, hated Kade, and hated their children.
I was going to send that to my publisher and be done with it, but in my head Nine and Kade kept talking, kept begging me to reconsider.
So I brought Nine back from the dead, erased the last fifteen years of their life together and started where The Unfortunates ended.
In the second version, Civil War breaks out and it’s Unfortunates vs Fortunates, which put Kade and Nine on opposite sides of the map. That made Kade incredibly unhappy and The Fortunates lost its “romance” element because I was at a loss on how to bring them back together.
Again, I rewrote it.
And now…finally…I feel I’ve balanced the story out. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but both parties are happy and that’s all that matters. The reason why I stretched this story into a trilogy is because I can’t wrap it up sooner. There are too many questions that need answering and can’t be answered until the time is right.
The Misfortunates
, book three in the Unfortunate trilogy, will be completed in a timely manner after
Crushed
(Slammed #2),
Ink and Bone
(New York Crime Kings #5), and
Deliver Us
(Into Temptation #2).
About the Author
Skyla Madi was born in the small town of Port Maquarie, New South Wales in 1993. She spent half her life growing up in Wauchope, a thriving rural town at the heart of the Hastings River Valley before making the leap to the busy city of Brisbane.
Whenever this young Australian writer isn’t changing diapers, watching cartoons, cooking for her husband or doing other motherly-wife things she is actively working on her writing and improving her writing skills.
