Page 46 of It’s You

I t took less than fifteen minutes on foot to make it the rest of the way to Tombeur’s cabin. Jack approached the small cabin, trying to control the impulse to turn and hunt with every step he took. Hunt a human, hunt a human, hunt a ? —

“ Assez proché, Peaumarcheur !” Close enough, Skinwalker.

Jack whipped his head to the right and found the butt of Tombeur’s rifle pressed up against his cheek.

“Downshift. Maintenant .” It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.

Jack took a deep breath and closed his eyes, concentrating.

His claws and fangs began to retract. The prickly fur receded back under his skin.

His blood rushed, hot and unfulfilled, fighting the downshift, but losing.

A moment later, he stood dirty and naked next to Tombeur in the woods behind his cabin.

“Jacques?”

“ Oui. C’est moi ,” he replied through clenched teeth.

“Well, damn. Why’d you come shifted?” Tombeur asked in English, his familiar twang welcome in Jack’s ears. He lowered the gun and turned to face Jack. “That ain’t friendly, son.”

“I…” Jack took a deep, steadying breath, then looked down, feeling ashamed. “I lost fucking control.”

“Whew! Guess so.” Tombeur raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Wait here. I’ll get you some pants. Don’t want you scaring my girls.”

Tombeur headed back to the cabin, and Jack put his hands on his knees, finally catching his breath for the first time since he went inside.

She left me to die.

She’s just angry.

She left me to die!

Yes, she did.

The voice stepped back into the shadows. It didn’t have a move. There was nothing left to say.

He didn’t want to talk to Tombeur about Darcy. He didn’t want to think about her right now. He was angry and hurt. He was scared that the binding wasn’t holding, after all.

“Here you go.” A pair of jeans fell at Jack’s feet, and he picked them up and pulled them on, buttoning the top button. They were a little big and slipped down his waist to rest on his hips.

“Where’d you leave your car?” asked Tombeur.

“Halfway down the road from Portes de l’Enfer.”

Tombeur nodded. “I’ll drive you back down in a bit.”

“Thanks. Sorry about that, before.”

“You came all the way up here tonight? You know I’ll be down for the Gathering tomorrow. Got something under your skin, Skinwalker?” Tombeur grinned, tilting his head to the side. “You want to come in and have a beer?”

Jack nodded and followed his friend through the rest of the woods toward his cabin.

At forty-nine, Tombeur had more gray than Jack remembered him having, but he was still as big as ever.

Easily six feet, five inches tall, broad-chested and covered in sinew of muscle, Tombeur was one of the fiercest, most respected, most forward-thinking Rougs in the Northern Bloodlands.

He was also Jack’s mentor and more of a father figure than Jack’s own father had ever been, despite a relatively small twelve-year age difference.

Tombeur had insisted that anything he asked Jack to do, he’d do himself too, and together they’d learned the limits and boundaries of control.

Jack followed his friend into the dimly lit cabin that smelled of cinnamon and cloves.

“Chantal made some sort of bread. Pumpkin, I think. You want?”

Jack’s mouth watered, and he nodded, taking a seat by the fire as Tombeur opened two beers and brought them over.

“Chantal, honey, you remember Jacques?”

Tombeur’s sixteen-year-old daughter gave Jack a shy smile from the kitchen as she cut two large slices of the bread and brought the plates over to the men, then retired into her bedroom.

“She’s pretty, huh?”

“Very,” answered Jack, tearing off a slice of the warm bread. “She have a mate in mind?”

“Between you and me, I wish she’d spark with Julien.”

Jack looked into Tombeur’s eyes and noticed, for the first time, the flecks of moss green lodged in and among the fiery brown. Unusual. Jack realized he’d seen that unique eye coloring somewhere before . Recently. Where?

“Julien, huh?”

“He’s good stock. Your mama’s one of the best hunters I ever known.”

“Yeah. But my dad?—”

“Can’t win ’em all. He’s got a good heart. Used to have, anyway.”

Jack nodded, thinking of his mother’s smile in the snowy parka.

“He’s available, right?” Tombeur continued. “Julien?”

Sort of , thought Jack, averting his eyes.

“You got something to say, son?”

“I think he’s still confused. Grieving.”

Tombeur sat back, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “That was some nasty business with Natalia. Shocked all of us that she’d be so reckless.”

He remembered Julien’s words, You have no idea what you’re talking about

“Reckless? What do you mean?”

“Oh! You don’t know? You gotta come home more often.

Natalia was all lit up on something that night.

That truck didn’t hit her. She rushed it.

Maybe she thought those big ’ole headlights were eyes and was charging for a kill?

I don’t know. She got in with one of the packs north of here.

Stopped showing up for work, left Julien with the little ’un for days on end.

Only came back at Pleine Lune . Finally did her in, whatever that stuff was.

Awful shame about the little ’un, though.

Motherless little thing, like my girls.”

The little ’un. Delphine. Suddenly, Jack remembered where he’d seen the unusual, moss-colored flecks. In the eyes of his niece, Julien’s daughter.

“Thank God for your mother. First Lela, then Julien’s girl. She’s quite a woman.”

Jack swallowed uncomfortably, looking down, running through dates and places in his mind. Jacques, Jeanette, and Jemma had been born within two years of each other. Then ten years later, along came Julien, about a year after Tallis first started working for the council.

Jack thought of Julien’s frustrated sigh. She doesn’t feel like a sister to me.

No wonder.

As impossible as it seemed to imagine, those eyes were like a red flag, and Jack’s heart processed the truth in vivid clarity.

Julien was Tombeur’s son, and Delphine was his granddaughter.

Jack fought the bile that rose in his throat at the realization that his mother had broken the binding four years before his father had.

She had been unfaithful first. He wondered if his father even knew.

But Tombeur hoped that Chantal would spark with Julien. Did that mean he supported half brother-half sister binding? No. Tombeur was modern. He’d be against that. In all likelihood, Tombeur didn’t know Julien was his.

Jack sat back in his chair, leveling his eyes at Tombeur, deciding whether or not he should say anything.

“Quite a woman, huh?”

“Sure is.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “You see her much?”

Tombeur’s eyes looked down, and he sighed. “Just council meetings.”

“How about Julien? Ever see him?”

“Once a year, about. Never got to know him as well as you. Awful sorry how things worked out with Natalia.”

Jack nodded quietly. For how long had his mother and Tombeur carried on?

It couldn’t have been long. They’d been discreet.

And what was still between them? The questions swam around in his head, but with Darcy rejecting him and his father missing, Jack had enough on his plate. He decided to leave it alone for now.

“I had no idea about Natalia.”

“Some sad shit. They’re a bad pack, Jacques.”

“You heard about my father?”

“Aw, shit. Did he go back up there again? I already dragged his ass back to Tallis once. Goddamn that man.”

“Wait. What?” Jack’s plate clattered to the floor as he sat up on the edge of his seat, holding Tombeur’s eyes.

“How do you think Natalia got into that shit?”

“My father?”

Tombeur nodded.

“Does Julien know?”

“I have no idea. I assumed so.”

Jack stood up. “You’re saying my father got Natalia into that shit?”

“I’m pretty sure. They worked at the store together. Drove in and out of work together.”

“Fuck,” Jack snarled, running his hands through his hair. “What a goddamned mess.”

Tombeur furrowed his brows, looking up at Jack. “This what you came to talk about?”

“No. But that…that’ll have to wait. My dad’s been missing for days. My mom can’t find him.”

Tombeur nodded solemnly. “You think he’s up there?”

“I do now. Where’s that pack? The bad one?”

“They’re up by Lac du Coeur. Twenty-five miles or so, as the crow flies. No good roads for driving, though, Jacques. We’re better running.”

“We?”

“Now, you didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”

Jack huffed once and nodded, relieved to have Tombeur’s company and glad he hadn’t shared his suspicions about Julien’s parentage. He knew how unhappy his parents had been, and anyway, Jack loved Tombeur like a father. Their secret would keep for another day.

Roug running with Tombeur was, next to being with Darcy, Jack’s favorite thing in the whole world.

The rush of wind through his fur, the intense smells of the forest, animals, plants, even humans far away.

He could hear every creeping sound, every footfall, every howl and growl.

Huge, heavily padded feet rushed over the ground bipedally, and his eyes kept him safe from obstructions.

He followed behind Tombeur as he had a million times before.

But unlike other runs, when he was totally focused on the forest, the ground, the smells, and the sounds, tonight his head was a jumble of human thoughts that couldn’t be quelled by the shift.

His mother had broken the binding.

His father had broken the binding.

Tombeur had broken his binding too.

Jack thought of Darcy rowing away from him, faster and faster, and his heart hardened.