We’ve been at war with each other for as long as we existed.
There had never been peace and never would be.
We were two halves of the same coin, darkness and light, and could not exist peacefully in the same galaxy.
“Location detected,” Computer said. “The humans often seek help from a place known as a ‘police station.’ She appears to be heading toward one now.”
“Find me a shortcut. I need to reach her faster than my Shadow.”
“Calculating.”
Please let me reach Emma before my Shadow, I prayed.
I was the only chance she had.
Both me and my Shadow were driven to mate.
Unfortunately for Emma, she was both our fated mate.
He would stop at nothing to take her.
We born in the light could never take without permission.
She had to give herself freely.
And if my Shadow succeeded, it would be over for me.
I would never mate again.
I would never love again.
And the fate that would befall her…
It was a thousand times worse than the one that would befall me.
Emma
Oh my god. Oh my God.
Oh my god. Oh my God.
I tried to force a coherent thought into my consciousness but it wouldn’t materialize.
All I was capable of was those three words stuck on auto-repeat.
Oh my god. Oh my God.
I didn’t understand what’d taken place in my bedroom.
I mean, I was there.
I saw everything.
I was even part of it.
But none of it made sense.
I kept on running.
I didn’t know where I was heading or what I would do next.
My feet slipped and slid inside the oversized sneakers I’d snatched from the shoe rack.
They belonged to Olivia.
Her large duck feet made running in the sneakers difficult.
But it didn’t matter what I wore at that point.
I could have run in clogs and I could set a new world record.
I ran because it was what my instincts told me to do, because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do.
Nothing like this had ever happened in my boring life before.
This was why you should never pick someone up from a club, I thought.
But even I couldn’t have predicted something as crazy as this happening.
Iav was a nice guy.
He turned me on more than anyone ever had before.
The effect he had on me when we kissed…
It had to mean something.
But he was dead now.
Someone had kicked down the door to my room and filled him with bullets.
No, not bullets.
With shards of light.
White-hot light that left purple cigarette burns in my eyes.
How did I explain that?
What sort of weapon was it?
I shook my head.
I must have imagined it.
The moonlight, I decided.
Moonlight must have bounced off the bullet and made it look like it was a bolt of light.
That made sense.
Didn’t it?
My breaths grew horse and heavy in my throat, rasping like I’d been smoking ten a day.
I couldn’t keep running all night.
I needed to stop somewhere.
Help.
I needed help.
But from who?
My friends.
They would probably still be at the club.
I changed direction and trotted down the street and came to a slow stop.
Did I really want to go running into a crowded place?
I might cause a panic.
And the loud music and flashing lights weren’t going to help.
And let’s not forget that was where I’d met Iav in the first place.
No.
I needed to go somewhere else.
The police.
I would go there.
I had only ever gone to the police station to pick up our dog, Scruffy, after he ran away from home on one of his adventures.
Only now I was the one on the adventure.
I shifted direction again and turned another corner.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and for a while I had thought someone was on my tail.
I checked over my shoulder and was pleased to find Iav’s twin wasn’t following me.
Twin?
Was that right?
I’d only seen the figure with the pistol once, and that was only with the aid of a thin shard of moonlight, but what else did you call someone that looked identical to the guy I was about to fuck?
He had the same smoky eyes, the same square jaw, the same broad shoulders, and muscular frame.
I gulped.
Did they want to share me?
Was this whole thing part of some horrific game?
If it was, it’d ended in tragedy when one blew the other away.
Why?
Why would he shoot his twin in the chest?
None of this made any sense.
It made going to the police station an even better idea.
I needed to explain my side of the story.
I didn’t want to go to prison for murder when it had nothing to do with me.
There was some freaky shit going down and I wanted no part of it.
Except they had already made me a part of it.
When the stranger had turned up, I was both horrified he had shot Iav and relieved at the same time.
How messed up was that?
It was beyond comprehension.
He had touched a part of me so deep, so primitive, that it had laid dormant all these years.
I would extricate myself from this twisted story as soon as possible.
I didn’t want to know what was going on.
Tears spilled unbidden down my cheeks as I sprinted for the warm beacon of light that stretched across the sidewalk toward me as if reaching out to welcome me into its warm enfolds.
Safe and secure.
A nightmare had come and I couldn’t wait for it to pass.
I leaned back in my chair and the relief hit me all at once like a sledgehammer.
It was cathartic to tell the police officers everything that’d happened to me over the past few hours.
They were trained listeners and felt the weight of each word as I unloaded them.
I considered holding back some of the more… unusual aspects of my story but decided not to.
I told them everything.
After all, when they got to my room and noticed the scorch marks on Iav’s body, they would assume I must have left something out, so why not tell them everything upfront?
The recording machine whirred quietly between me and the female cop, Officer Rodriquez, on the other side of the
