BONUS NOVELETTE
Shadow
The day Rocco dies.
I know only one thing: I have to make it in time. My fingers tremble against the back of the airplane seat carrying me toward my destination, a place on the other side of the world from Florida, all the way up in Alaska.
I took a plane from Anchorage, a small local one that rattles through the turbulence, and I stare down into the abyss below me as my time runs out.
What Renato told me keeps echoing in my head: exactly when Rocco dies, I die with him unless… unless HE makes me whole.
He.
My True Mate.
Only he can save me.
From the moment I came into existence, I knew I was only Rocco’s pale shadow, something temporary, something impossible, existing solely because Nature had spoken through Renato and Silvio…
a strange second chance for someone who should never have been given one because he had done nothing to deserve it.
I spent those three months half-hidden by him while he tried to shape me, tried to turn me into his replacement, his second self, but of course he could never accomplish that because I lacked the scars Tito had left on him. Renato and Silvio had made sure of that.
That was why I was free, and why I had been able to tell him no that day when he sent me to capture Jared.
It was supposed to be my test, but I had no intention of carrying it out.
I had gone there to beg Silvio and Renato to tell me how I could free myself from Rocco because, as the main personality, as the one who had actually lived in this world, he held a certain kind of psychological power over me.
He knew what I was doing, he could see what I was seeing…
I begged them to help me break free, but they told me that I was bound to him forever, like two sides of the same coin.
At this point, I know a bit more about what I am.
Some psychologists would describe me as a shadow.
But unlike the shadow that ordinary people have, the one where they hide their darkness, repressed desires, anger, resentment, and suppressed instincts, Rocco had an opposite kind of shadow, one that hid everything good that remained in him.
His buried guilt, regret, grief, sorrow, remorse, along with all the other softer, gentler, more tender feelings that had ever passed through him.
I’m a strange manifestation of his personality, temporarily given form by my relatives’ magic, by the Silvari…
As long as Rocco exists, I can live a parallel life of my own, making different choices, living a different life…
But only as long as he lives.
They also told me that Fate had already chosen the day Rocco would die, and that I would die at the exact same moment unless… someone gave me a reality of my own.
It was Mauro who took pity on me and gave me the address of the only man who could save me.
Roberto Donatelli.
Rocco’s True Mate.
And mine too…
I know what I need to know about him. Mauro gave me everything he managed to find out about this man.
As a teenager, he lived on the streets as a member of a large gang in Florida, took drugs, and went down a dark path. He killed several people while high and then spent twelve years in prison.
But after he got out, he changed his life.
He left Florida and headed in the opposite direction, toward a completely different climate, all the way up to Alaska, near the Arctic Circle.
Now, he owns a small transportation company there, has snow-removal equipment and rents out snowmobiles. He lives in a small town of a few thousand people called Kotzebue, just a few degrees from the Arctic Circle.
It’s interesting that he ran away from his old ways, his friends, cut himself off from everything, and left his dark life behind… It gives me hope. It makes a tentative belief flicker inside me that he and I… might have a chance.
Soon, I’m in for a brutal shock.
The rickety little plane shudders, landing so roughly that I wonder how the wind doesn’t simply tip the tiny thing over. Everything inside it rattles and creaks.
When I step out of the plane onto the cold tarmac of the small airport, the icy wind hits me like shards of glass.
It’s December. I’ve gone from Florida’s climate to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, and even the short walk from the plane to the airport building is enough to freeze me to the bone.
The thick jacket that was almost too much in Florida is practically transparent here.
Chattering my teeth, I make my way toward the entrance to the airport terminal, following a small group of people dressed appropriately for the occasion. They must surely be looking at me with pity as I tremble like a loose rope whipping in the wind.
The tiny information booth that I find inside is plastered with postcards and flyers advertising a geothermal pool, snowmobile excursions, wildlife-viewing tours, and a beach where visitors can photograph seals.
The employee watches me with mild amusement as I struggle to keep my shivering under control, then I give him the name of Donatelli’s company. Well, I guess everyone knows everyone around here, because the man nods and politely suggests that a taxi can take me there. It’s only one mile away.
With sympathy in his eyes, he calls a taxi for me himself and kindly points me toward where I can catch it.
Soon I am on my way, thankfully riding inside the heated cabin of a taxi van, and I arrive very quickly.
The driver, a friendly beta of Inupiaq descent, drops me off at the steps leading to a building beside a sizable hangar, with a row of snowmobiles parked in front of it.
There must be rental equipment inside, along with snowplows and other snow-removal machinery.
But of course, as soon as I get out of the taxi, the shivering comes back, with the wind showing no mercy, as I walk up to the door, above which hangs a small hand-painted sign: Donatelli Snow Rentals & Services.
There is a strip of glass set into the door, and a pale yellow beam of light falls through it, coloring the snow on the steps.
Feeling hesitant, I stop and tentatively peek inside. I can see a small office, a single desk, a couple of armchairs, a little table with an electric kettle, and three people sitting in the chairs, talking.
I stare at them.
One of them immediately catches my attention because he is… a freak, a mutant? The alpha’s skin is pale blue, and he looks massive. The second is a beta, around forty, with Inupiaq heritage, who is explaining something while pointing at a paper map. The third one is…
I swallow because I already know.
So this is him.
Roberto.
My True Mate.
The only man who can save me.
According to what Mauro told me, Roberto is thirty-three, so officially two years older than me, although that is relative, considering I have only existed for three months.
He has short, black hair, and his face… wow.
I freeze. There is a scar on his cheek, in exactly the same place where my ‘evil’ version has his.
Wow, speaking of Fate’s choice…
I stare and stare.
His face, tanned by the polar sun, is decorated with a tattoo whose shape I cannot make out, something like a dark streak running across his temple and along the edge of his cheek.
His beauty is somewhat… austere, his features regular, with nothing ostentatious about them, yet possessing something that immediately catches my attention.
I can’t seem to take my eyes off him, feeling a wave of fascination spreading through me like a warm surge down my spine.
I know he got out of prison three years ago and has lived here ever since.
Shivering in the gusts of the icy wind, with tiny flakes of snow dusting me, I can’t seem to take my eyes off this man, analyzing every detail.
He has strong black eyebrows, a slightly aquiline nose, and a triangular face with high cheekbones.
Dear Fate, to me, he is… perfection. Maybe not everyone’s type, perhaps a little too severe, but my eyes linger on him because I feel an immediate, inexplicable attraction, as though something inside me is already clinging to him, yearning to know him, to learn every story his life has written into him, every pain he has endured, every little smile that has ever touched his lips.
There is also a note of melancholy in that face, some kind of sad… resignation. Acceptance of the isolated life he has here?
It is as if I can feel it, as if I know that he is living his life on the edge of the human world because he is… ashamed of his past.
Oh, how well I understand him!
I am ashamed of what my ‘evil’ version did. It terrifies me, closing in around me like claustrophobic walls, and there is nothing I want more than to forget those horrors, erase them from my mind, from my energy.
My eyes trace the lines of his face and body, filled with a hunger born of hope and longing.
But do I deserve this perfect man?
Standing there, I know the only thing that can make me worthy of him, that can set me free.
I need to break my bond with Rocco. It scares me, but I need to create myself anew, far away from him, and discover… who I could have been if Rocco had never ended up with Tito.
I am a washed-out shadow of what might have been, but I want to pull myself out of this nothingness, to tear myself away from the world of ghosts and half-existence, of indistinct forms and barely formed shapes, and finally become something whole.
A powerful blast of icy wind makes me lean slightly against the door.
All three men look up and see me through the glass.
The pale-blue one immediately gets to his feet. He is an alpha, so his instincts are working flawlessly, but I am no threat to anyone. Truthfully, I am barely steady on my feet, but I ignore him because my eyes lock onto Roberto’s chocolate-colored eyes.
"Don’t, Thorn. Let him in," he says to the mutant guy.
He gets up himself and walks toward the door, slides the bolt open, and lets me into the office.
I step inside, trembling with anticipation, anxiety, and excitement. Partly because I know that I have very little time left, that my other dark half is nearing the end of his destined path, and the other reason is… I need to know.