Page 36 of It’s You

Jacques put his hands up to silence his younger siblings, pressing his ear against the bedroom door to listen to what the adults were saying.

“Tu…tu viens ici avec ta pute et ton batard et tu penses que je vais te souhaiter la bienvenue? Es-tu fou? Es-tu fou, Dubois ?” Tallis spoke in a shrill, high-pitched voice.

You come here with your whore and your bastard and expect me to welcome you? Are you crazy? Are you crazy, Dubois?

Jacques looked at Jeanette’s face, at her eyes closed and clenched shut against the shame of the words. Jemma began to cry softly, and little Julien put his chubby toddler arms around her.

“Sors avant que je te tue!”

Get out before I kill you.

“écoute-moi, Tallis …” His father began in a soft, cajoling voice, and Jacques’s heart clutched to hear his father say his mother’s name, Tah-lee , so tenderly, beseeching her to listen.

Jacques gestured again to his siblings to stay quiet and slowly cracked open the door.

The light was dim in the simple, rustic living room.

The desk lamp where his mother had been paying bills was on, but the fire was petering out.

His mother stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips, her black hair falling down her back in curls and tangles, her chin held high.

Jacques’s fifteen-year-old heart swelled with pride. She looked like a warrior.

He turned his glance to the door. A young woman in a simple dress and shawl stood against the door, holding a bundle in her arms, her eyes down.

He recognized her as Lynette Reynard. Reynard.

The fox. The surname the Roux-ga-roux gave to half-breed skinwalkers.

To be a Reynard was a mark of shame. It would be especially embarrassing to his mother that his father had cheated on her with a Reynard.

Jacques looked more closely at Lynette, even feeling a little sorry for her, until he looked closer and perceived a smile on her lips. His brows furrowed. She was smirking with her little beady fox eyes narrowed. Why was she smirking?

His father stood in front of the girl, looking much older and bigger than she, his once jet-black hair peppered with gray, wild and long.

His face was a mixture of emotions, from angry to remorseful to…

Jacques sucked in a surprised breath. Oh my god.

Love. He saw love on his father’s face as Dubois gazed at Tallis, and it softened the anger and the remorse.

Despite everything, his father still loved his mother.

Jacques looked back to his mother’s face to search it more carefully.

Fury, check. Disgust, check. But there. There, on her mouth, he saw it in the way her lips didn’t tighten into a thin, white line.

They stayed soft and open, in spite of her words, and Jacques thought to himself, his heart skipping hopefully, She still loves him too .

A snarky giggle distracted Jacques from their intercourse. He looked at the girl. She placed the bundle gently on the chair beside the door and pushed Dubois out of her way, stepping forward, toe-to-toe with Jacques’s mother with her hands on her hips.

“The great Tallis, who couldn’t hold on to her man! So busy with your council meetings, he came to me. And he liked what he found between my legs.” Lynette cupped the part of her body she was talking about, and Jacques felt his cheeks flush hot as he watched her.

His mother’s eyes brightened to a burn, then narrowed, and Jacques swallowed nervously, recognizing her expression. This girl was making Tallis very angry.

“I don’t blame him. You think he wants your smelly old dried-up prune cunt? What man would want that, when he can have this?”

Jacques’s mother looked up and down the girl’s body slowly, her nostrils flaring with fury, her lips a thin, white slash. Suddenly, her eyes flicked to Dubois, and Jacques knew that they were eyespeaking. He could see it between them, heavy and serious.

Finally, Dubois stepped forward and put his hand on Lynette’s arm, holding Tallis’s eyes with his. “That’s enough, Lynn. We’re leaving. Maintenant . Now.”

Lynette yanked her arm away, turning to him. “Are you scared of her? Of this old lady? Fuck you, Dubois, you half-man weakling. I’m not scared of her.”

Tallis dropped Dubois’s eyes and focused them with razor-sharp precision on Lynnette.

They burned bright yellow, but Lynette didn’t seem afraid.

Jacques felt a bead of sweat start behind his ear and make its way down his neck.

Flicking his gaze lower, he noticed his mother’s claws, sharp and yellow, protracting quietly from her fingertips.

He wanted to yell to Lynette to run, but his throat was so dry, he couldn’t make a sound. He was stricken, frozen.

Lynette put her hands back on her hips and smirked at Tallis with confidence and swagger.

She took one finger and poked Jacques’s mother in the chest, above her breasts.

“He’s done with you. We’re done with you.

Your binding is broken, Tallis Beauloup.

It’s dead. I belong to Dubois Beauloup, and he belongs to?—”

Jacques gasped in horror. He watched as his mother swiped a single claw with deadly precision across Lynette’s neck, severing her jugular with one fatal, well-positioned blow.

Blood, red and bright, sprayed onto Tallis’s face, but she stood unmoving as the younger woman lurched forward, falling into his mother’s chest, then slowly slipping down the front of her body to the floor.

Dubois screamed, falling to the ground beside Lynette, keening, holding her slippery head in his blood-saturated lap.

Tallis’s arms fell softly to her sides, and Jacques heard the whispered word, “ Moi .”

Tallis appeared dazed for a moment before glancing down at her rash handiwork. She stood still, her tired, broken eyes turning brown as she stared down at her husband, clutching the body of his dead lover. “Il m’appartient.”

Me. He belongs to me.

Jack took a deep breath and shook his head, trying to scatter his painful memories.

He checked the time and put his phone in his back pocket.

It was before noon. If he left this afternoon, he’d make it to Portes de l’Enfer by evening, but the Gathering really wouldn’t start until tomorrow.

Besides, he had to figure out what to do about Darcy.

Darcy.

He sat down, pushing back on his hands until he rested against the headboard of his enormous bed where she’d sat a little while ago, her horror-stricken, grave eyes fixed on his.

Jack bent his knees against his chest, closed his eyes, and inhaled.

Her scent surrounded him, sharp and sweet from so much recent lovemaking on these sheets that it made his heart twist and ache.

To come so close to having her in his life, only to have her walk away—run away—made his eyes burn with frustration and the unfairness of it.

She had no idea the years of discipline and planning that had gone into controlling his impulses to the extent that he could live comfortably and safely among her kind.

All for her. All so that he could be with her. And she had turned her back on him.

It didn’t matter to his heart. His poor, stupid heart loved her more than ever.

After having sex with her, feeling her naked body pressed up against his, clenched tightly around his in pleasure, he was more firmly bound to her on a conscious level than he’d ever been.

He’d always known it was likely that sex with Darcy would prove addictive and essential once he’d experienced it, but he was unprepared for the strength and absoluteness of his need for her now.

It wasn’t only unbelievably painful, but almost impossible to imagine his life without her.

He thought of her green eyes rolling back in her head, the softness of her perfect breasts, her light hair spread out like a halo behind her head as his body entered hers, her nails raking across his back, her voice whispering, “ Stay,” so that they fell asleep intimately joined together.

The way his own body had recognized hers, trembling and shuddering its pleasure, the words I love you falling from his lips over and over again like a vow, an oath, the only truth he’d ever known.

His memories switched to this morning, and the fear and disgust as she realized what he was. The way she fainted when he confirmed it. Watching her bolt off his bed to vomit when he admitted he fed on fresh dead. Her eyes, so betrayed and disbelieving and hurt.

You’re a monster.

I can let it die inside of me.

Leave Carlisle.

Her words tortured him with a pain so specific and overwhelming, his heart clutched, and his breathing became ragged as a vise squeezed his chest. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.

What if he couldn’t win her back? How could he bear the pain of it? Better to die than live without her.

He clenched his eyes shut.

He pulled her inside.

He didn’t have a lot of time. He felt the cool ground under his pads as he searched for her in the dim light of dusk.

He was up high, on a hillside or mountain peak.

He stopped and turned his nose up, inhaling deeply to find her.

When he did, her scent was wispy and thin. She didn’t want to be here.

She was on lower ground. He took off at a full-speed run toward her.

Darcy. Darcy. Darcy.

He heard her name echo off the tall pines as he repeated it in his mind over and over and over again, as he rushed over fallen logs, through brambles, his only mission to find her before she slipped away.

He ran down through the towering trees until he finally found himself in a meadow with high grasses and saw her standing in the middle with her back to him, the white fabric of her dress moving softly in a half-breeze, her fingers touching the prickly tips of the grass as she had when they walked through Dooley Meadow.

He made his way carefully, quietly, closer and closer until he was almost beside her.

One more step and he felt her fingers lightly fan the bristly fur of his back with the same distracted rhythm she’d touched the grasses.

He closed his eyes at the gentle contact and took a deep, relieving breath of cool air, which soothed his aching lungs.

She didn’t pull away. Once, twice, he felt her fingers graze the ruff of fur at his neck.

He raised his eyes to hers, and she turned her graceful neck to look down at the wolf at her feet as diamond tears fell from her eyes, landing with soft plops in the downy fur that surrounded his face.

My heart is broken. Her lips didn’t move, but he heard her voice, the dazed, heavy lament in her tone that mirrored the grief on her face.

I belong to you, Darcy, and you ? —

He jolted back, his palms by his sides, flat on the sheets of his bed. They curled in frustration as he realized it was over.

“Damn it!” he bellowed, grabbing the pillow beside him and chucking it across the room as hard as he could.

It hit the rocking chair by the windows and exploded, a shower of feathers rising up into the air before falling softly on the chair, the bed, the bureau, the floor.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough, damn it.

He wanted her here . He wanted her here in his bed, writhing under him, arching her back to meet his thrusts, touching his scarred chest with her delicate fingers, screaming his name as her body exploded against his.

He wanted her musical voice, her inquisitive green eyes, her strawberry-blonde hair, her freckled face.

He wanted her working on her book in the study over the garage that he’d built for her.

He wanted her coming and going, making coffee in his kitchen, eating Coq au Vin in front of the fire, taking hikes, and collecting samples.

He wanted her to wear his bathrobe when they got caught in the rain and fall asleep in his bed every night and wake up there every morning.

He wanted her in his life. He wanted her in his life the way he’d imagined it a million times as he mastered control over his body and planned a way to be with her.

He had worked for her, planned for her. He loved her, worshipped her.

He would die for her, but he wanted to live for her. And damn it, he had waited long enough.

And now…now…all she could see was a monster. She didn’t want him. And even if she did, she wouldn’t give in to her longing.

He sobbed at the unfairness of it, in frustration and with deep grief, bowing his head and resting it on his knees in despair.

She didn’t call you a monster.

It was a small voice that rose from the fragile depths of his battered heart.

What?

When you were inside, she didn’t call you a monster again.

She said her heart was broken!

It isn’t. If it was, yours would be too.

She told me to leave Carlisle!

She’s upset.

She said she’d let it die inside!

It can’t die. You’re bound. For what is bound cannot be broken.

He ran his hands through his hair in despair.

She didn’t call you a monster again , the small voice insisted.

So what?

So there’s hope.

He got out of bed and stalked to the windows, considering this, seeing the possibility in it.

She had looked so sad, so deeply grieved standing alone in the tall grasses.

But she had touched him gently, not recoiled.

She had met his eyes, not drawn away. She hadn’t looked disgusted or frightened.

He recognized her expression, in fact. He’d seen it somewhere, once upon a time. Where? Where had he seen it?

And then he knew.

Darcy’s lips had been open and soft, in spite of her sorrow. Just like his mother’s had been the fateful night his father returned.

She still loves me.

His eyes burned, and he closed them, taking a deep, cleansing breath. The first he’d managed since Darcy left him this morning.

So there’s hope.

He took yet another deep breath and felt himself surrender to the binding. It was strong. It would hold. He would give her space. And eventually they would find their way back to each other.