Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
Epilogue
Coming Soon...
Also by
About the author
Prologue
Ifirst saw Edison Keane and Rhodes McCreary when I was eighteen years old.
I wish I could say that it was at a nightclub or some other meet cute that all of the girls my age would usually gush about.
But no.
When I met them for the first time they were covered in blood and I had one foot in the grave. Chronic myeloid leukemia was what the doctors called it after they caught it a year ago after I passed out at a swim meet. I figured it was anemia or something—not out of the usual for me seeing how hard my father pushed me on a regular basis. Nope. Cancer.
What came after that was long months of treatment, the loss of my hair, and sympathetic looks from every adult I came into contact with.
My lovely parents had taken what they needed from me, just the way they always had. I’d learned very quickly that my younger brother and I were props to them. Pretty children to make them look better to their investors and to help bolster my father’s political career. My cancer was the perfect fodder to help my father out in his last mayoral election… because who votes against the guy with a sick daughter?
You would think that their only daughter having a life threatening disease would terrify them, but instead they’d made sure to trot me out whenever my doctor signed off on it. Which, thankfully, wasn’t a lot.
Turns out dying was a great excuse to get out of dinner parties and charity galas.
Not that Dr. Stedmeyer would ever admit that I was dying. He was my ever optimistic oncologist, and as sad as it sounds, my best friend. Ever since the test results came back he was the person in my corner when even my parents weren’t.
Dr. Stedmeyer was the sort of doctor that gave all of himself to his patients which meant that he lived and breathed nearly every moment at St. Stephens General Hospital.
It was also why I knew that if I wandered the halls long enough that I would find him.
The main building of St. Stephens had been constructed in the mid-eighteen hundreds and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. I was already regretting leaving the comfort of my room as I wandered through the dark halls, ducking out of sight when the occasional night shift nurse passed me on their rounds.
The pediatrics floor where I was still being treated despite turning eighteen a few months ago was in the furthest corner of the building, so the trek to where the doctor’s offices were was long and I was out of breath by the time I made it. Yet another lovely side effect of chemo. I used to be able to swim miles and miles every day and now a short walk was nearly doing me in. Gripping onto my IV pole for support, I took a quick break, shivering from my chilly surroundings.
Even with my thick, grippy hospital socks the floor underneath my feet was ice cold. I should have put on my slippers before leaving my room, but I also sort of liked it when Dr. Stedmeyer fussed over me for not taking care of myself. It was proof that at least someone cared.
My parents clearly did not. As the leukemia progressed and my chances started dwindling from the optimistic seventy five percent to only forty five percent, their visits had likewise become much rarer.
Our nanny, Mrs. Rosetti, still came every day and still brought Romey, my fifteen year old brother, every chance she could even if he spent most of their visits with his head buried in his phone. Romey still wasn’t used to me being sick—even if he would never admit it out loud. I had always been the one to take care of him, so me being sick had flipped our dynamic on its head.
Meanwhile, Ethan and Miranda Chandler had better things to do than to visit their daughter in the hospital. The press would have a field day if they knew the true extent of my parent’s negligence, and if I cared any less about them I probably would have spilled the beans.
But I couldn’t find it in myself to expend the effort it would take to stick it to them, and every time I brought it up to Dr. Stedmeyer he just told me that some people weren’t built to be parents and that they didn’t know how to cope with my sickness.
I didn’t mention that my sickness and the chemo had wrecked one of the things that made me the most valuable in my parent’s eyes. My designation.
One thing they don’t tell you about being treated for leukemia is that all the radiation will completely obliterate an omega’s nervous system. I’d only been awakened as one for a year before my diagnosis, but the difference in my body was staggering.
I couldn’t smell whether someone was an alpha, beta, or omega anymore. The world around me had turned into a mixed blur of the anesthetic scent of the hospital and the dull, faraway scents that should have made my instincts go haywire.
Instead, there was almost nothing.
