Page 35 of It’s You

J ack crossed the room and stood at the window, willing Darcy not to leave. His fists were clenched tightly by his sides, and his fingers, whose nails had been clipped down to nubs an hour before while she was passed out, ached. Look for me, Darcy. Look up and see me.

He watched as she bent down beside her car, then stood up, holding wet, muddy keys, which she dragged across the thigh of her jeans.

He could see that her face was wet from tears.

She put one hand on the hood of her car, and the other grasped the keys with white knuckles as she stood motionless.

He watched the play of emotion on her face: sadness, revulsion, anger.

She pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her free hand, took a deep, sobbing breath that racked her shoulders, and opened her car door.

His eyes burned as he stood motionless at the window, light-headed and unfathomably grieved, as he watched her drive away.

He watched until he couldn’t see her taillights anymore, and then he watched for a while more, staring in a daze at the muddy road that led back to town. He may have stood for an hour or more. He didn’t know. He didn’t care.

She didn’t come back.

He felt his claws protracting from the pain in his heart and clenched his eyes shut, concentrating on anything but Darcy. Anything but her face as she stared at him. Anything but her words. You are a monster. He swallowed painfully and flexed his jaw as he tightened his fists.

I will not shift. I will not shift. I will not shift.

You knew things would come to this at some point.

I will not shift. I will regroup. I will not shift. I will regroup.

You’re bound to her. Lean into that. Trust it.

I will regroup. I will regroup. I will regroup.

He felt his body start to relax, and his claws retracted painfully. He looked down at his swollen fingertips, at the neat line of four bloody claw marks on each palm. His phone may have been buzzing for a long time, but he was only aware of it now as he came out of the immediate danger of shifting.

Jack looked down and sighed. Lela.

Disappointment washed over him, and he realized that somewhere inside of him, he had hoped it was Darcy. He definitely didn’t feel like talking to his little sister right now.

His phone quieted, and he held it loosely in his hand, away from the shallow puncture wounds that still bled. They’d heal in a few minutes, and he could wash the blood away.

Buzz. Buzz. His phone started buzzing again.

“Damn it, Lela,” he growled, staring at her smiling face flashing on the screen.

He touched talk.

“What?”

“ What ? How about… Hello ? Bad mood much?”

Jack took a deep breath and sighed. What had happened with Darcy wasn’t Lela’s fault. Her life was tough enough without him taking it out on her.

“Not my best day. What’s up?”

“Are you coming up? This weekend?”

“What are you talking about?”

“ Le Rassemblement, Jacques ?” The Gathering of the Northern Bloodlands. Shit.

He took the phone away from his ear, grimacing as he shook his head and cursed again softly.

“Is that this weekend?”

“Does a whore fuck in a whorehouse?”

“ Charmante, Lela. You have a mouth like a sailor.”

“I had a sailor in my mouth on Tuesday night…”

“Enough. I don’t want to know.”

“Still a sucker for the humans, huh? They’d kill us all if they had the?—”

“I have to go.”

“Wait. I’ll stop. Don’t hang up.”

He kept the phone up to his ear, but didn’t say anything. She knew better than to heckle him about hunting. Although none of his siblings knew the actual reason for his decision not to engage in hunting humans, they’d mostly come to accept it as eccentric.

“It’s been years since you’ve been up here for a Gathering. Tallis hates my ass, the girls barely talk to me, and Julien’s as growly as ever. I need someone who can stand me.”

“What about Dad?”

“He’s worse.”

“How often is he shifting?”

“Almost never.” Lela was tough, but Jack could hear the worry in her voice.

Once Jack’s mother had decided she couldn’t forgive his father, it was like something inside of him died.

The binding was for life, but Tallis had abjured her mate in the most painful possible way for a Roug.

They didn’t sleep together, she blocked Dansmatête , they didn’t eyespeak, and they definitely didn’t hunt together.

They still lived together, technically, but in a tense, furious silence that made the shared space claustrophobic and ate away at both of them.

It made Tallis brittle, but strong. It made Dubois stupid and weak.

Over the years, he’d become more and more problematic and a liability, shifting and hunting haphazardly without following the rules.

Making messes someone else had to clean up.

And when he wasn’t hunting, he was drinking.

Liquor and Dubois were not a good combination. Never had been.

“ Merde ,” Jack growled.

“Just come for the Gathering? Please?”

Maybe it would be for the best. He felt uncomfortable leaving Carlisle at odds with Darcy, but mostly he trusted the binding—in theory, at least—and knew that eventually they would find each other again.

Jack was committed to figuring out a way to be together, but she clearly needed a little bit of time to process things.

Maybe he should get out of town for a few days and go to the goddamned Gathering.

He could check on his family, and besides, he needed to talk to Tombeur about Darcy and see if he had any insight or advice.

“Yeah. I’ll be there.”

He heard her exhale in a rush of relieved breath.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“You bound yet, Lela?”

Silence. At twenty-one years old, Lela was three years overdue to find her mate, but she refused to be bound, and as long as she could fend them off, she could stay unbound.

According to pack law, a man who couldn’t subdue his woman didn’t deserve her.

At least twice, Jack had heard of young Rougs making a move on Lela.

Both times, they had at least one tooth knocked out of their heads by the unwilling object of their affection.

She was young, but fierce, and other Rougs had thought twice before trying to kiss her.

“No,” she snarled.

“It’s going to happen, petite soeur , whether you want it to or not. It has to happen eventually.”

“Never happened for you.”

“You know it did.”

“ Alors, qui est-elle, Jacques ? Who the fuck is she, anyway? Why haven’t we ever met her? What pack is she from, and how come she’s never come to the Gathering in all these years?”

“Never understood your stake in it, Lela.”

“No,” she muttered. “You never did.”

He sighed. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with his high-strung, over-emotional half sister today. His quota of high emotion from women he cared about had already been met for today.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Fuck you, Jacques. See you tomorrow.” And she hung up.

Well, that was pleasant.

Then again, phone calls with Lela were rarely peaches and cream. He didn’t blame her. Being raised by the woman who murdered your mother couldn’t help but make you a little mean.

Jack vividly remembered the night that his father had returned with baby Lela.

It felt like he’d been gone for ten years, even though it had only been one, because it had been such a terrible time.

A year of watching his mother leave early for work and come home late.

A year of hearing her weep and howl in her room, in agony to be parted from Dubois, humiliated by his cheating.

Not that Jack’s father had ever been a model husband.

He was lazy and lacked imagination and initiative, but he was sweet and handsome, and whoever he was to anyone else, he belonged to Tallis.

Jack’s mother was always the stronger one, and as she had risen in the pack, Dubois had become resentful of her, feeling emasculated even as she insisted that something good in her life meant something good for both of them.

Finally, the night that Tallis was elected to the council, Dubois got drunk and slipped away with a young outcast, a half-Roug, half-Métis loner named Lynette.

At twenty-two, Lynette still hadn’t been bound, and she was known for offering her favors willingly to anyone who caught her eye, bound or unbound.

Dubois was humiliated by Tallis’s popularity and success, and although he couldn’t have found much actual physical pleasure in his dalliance with Lynette, he had been able to father her only child, Lela.

Upon discovering that Lynette was pregnant, Dubois and Lynette ran north with the intent to start over.

But without the benefit of the pack around them, with its strength and protection, it was hard to find work, and with a few sloppy kills, it was easy for rogue Rougs to become the hunted rather than the hunter.

They eked out a miserable life before finally deciding to return to Portes de l’Enfer and throw themselves on Tallis’s mercy.

Since Dubois broke the binding, it would be up to Tallis to accept him back into her home and bed…

or not. The fate of Lynette and the baby would be decided by the council on which Tallis sat.

It wasn’t a good plan. They should have just stayed away.

Little Julien had nudged his older brother, Jacques, awake.

“I’m scared. Réveille-toi!” Wake up!

Jacques pushed his brother away, but the sound of loud voices in the small, adjacent living room made him sit up, rubbing his eyes.

The bathroom door between the bedrooms opened, and Jemma and Jeanette entered their brothers’ bedroom, looking to Jacques for comfort, awakened, like Julien, by the sound of fighting.

“I think Papa’s back.” Jemma sighed, biting her lower lip. “I swear I heard his voice.”

“I think I heard a baby cry,” whispered Jeanette, brown eyes big and frightened, bunching the sides of her nightgown in fists.