Page 47 of It’s You

For two decades, Jack had thought of no one but her, his whole life driven by his belief in the sanctity of the binding.

He had stayed away for her. He had learned control for her.

He had devised a plan and amassed the funds to make it work.

Every moment of his adult life had been spent in pursuit of realizing his connection to her, being with her, figuring out how to live in her world.

Every moment spent nurturing and encouraging the love he felt for her. Every moment living for her.

For what?

He was surrounded by others who had been unhappy, who had abandoned their mates, broken their sacred bond. What was he holding on for?

For the first time in his life, he thought to himself, Maybe you should let her go.

His feet hit the ground in a rhythmic rush, wet branches caressing his body or swiped away with his powerful claws.

You’re a monster.

Leave Carlisle.

Belong to no one.

I can’t do this.

It started to rain, a bitter, angry, sideways rain that pelted him from every angle, making it harder to see. Tombeur stopped ahead of him, raising his nose upward and inhaling. He lifted one massive, hairy arm and pointed straight ahead, and Jack nodded, downshifting.

In a moment they stood naked, in human form, in the rain. Unless they wanted a battle, they couldn’t arrive in shifted form.

Tombeur stood next to Jack and whispered, “We’re less than a mile away. It’s late, and it’s dark, and the Gathering is tomorrow. Shouldn’t be a rowdy night. They’ll be saving that for tomorrow’s celebration.”

“What’s the plan?”

“Let’s case the village. The junkies aren’t native pack members. They’ll be together somewhere. Find them, we’ll find Dubois. We’ll carry him out together, then shift once we’re a little ways away. Better we avoid the pack, if possible. They’re not the friendliest.”

Jack nodded and fell into step behind Tombeur. His human-form feet were calloused and tough, but the forest floor was rugged and rough on his bare skin.

“Do you know what the stuff is? That they’re selling?”

“It’s called Dub, short for W. Not totally sure what it is, but I’ve heard it’s some sort of synthesized wolfsbane.”

“Wolfsbane!”

Every Roux-ga-roux knew about the dangers of wolfsbane.

It smelled and tasted delicious, but it was poisonous to the Roug digestive tract.

In very, very tiny, stabilized doses, it acted as a depressant, diminishing impulses, causing a Roug’s heart to slow down and breathing to deepen.

It was only occasionally used as a relaxant when the regenerative powers of their bodies weren’t working and medical intervention was necessary.

But in anything but a minuscule, controlled dose, it was a dangerous drug that would lead to certain death.

The thing about wolfsbane, however, was that it generally caused violent, painful vomiting if consumed. Jack’s eyes looked up at Tombeur in question.

“It’s wolfsbane mixed with something that stabilizes it and keeps it down.”

Well, that answered that.

“But it’s a depressant. Why would it make Natalia rush that truck?”

“It starts off making you mellow. You forget your worries. It’s all trippy and sweet, like candy that makes you all high and relaxed.

So you keep going back for more. You don’t want to run.

You don’t want to mate. You just want to chill out.

Then Pleine Lune comes around, and your body wants a kill.

So they have to go off it to get up the energy to hunt, and I guess the withdrawal makes them crazy.

Shakes, hallucinations, fangs and claws, and no restraint. No rules. Crazy stuff.”

“Natalia went off it to hunt?”

“That’s my guess. She was acting crazy enough with that truck.”

“And then?”

Tombeur shrugged. “And then they’re all jacked up after the hunt. They want to come down, so they go right back on the Dub. And here’s the thing…If you’re on it long enough, you can’t go off. Even for Pleine Lune .”

Jack stared at Tombeur, shocked, incredulous. “Are you saying they eventually miss the hunt?”

Tombeur nodded. “They do. And a Roug can’t miss the blood for more than a cycle. Two at the most. Can’t survive.”

It all came together in Jack’s head with blunt precision. The reason his mother couldn’t feel his father was that he’d missed the hunt. Maybe more than once. Dubois was either dead or very close to it.

The soft glow of the village lights came into focus as they rounded a bend.

“You go that way. I’ll go this way. We’ll meet at the back.”

Jack walked stealthily along the tree line, looking at the dilapidated cabins surrounded by mud and garbage, nothing like the orderly village at Portes de l’Enfer where his mother had gardens and flowering trees on her property.

Jack had grown up close enough to a town to attend school with Métis kids, unlike this remote village where the kids were likely homeschooled, if at all.

Jack wrinkled his nose at the smell. Unconsumed, rotting human parts.

This was a messy, sloppy pack, which also made them dangerous.

Toward the back of the village, about twenty feet from the forest where he lurked, Jack spied a lean-to next to a dirty, muddy playground.

Several Rougs were scattered around it in various states of undress, lying across a beat-up picnic table, on the bottom of a slide, and there, propped against a rusted jungle gym, sat Dubois with glazed eyes open, staring up at the sky.

Jack winced, clenching his jaw. His father was wasted to nothing, with sunken cheeks and hands shaking in front of him, held at an awkward angle, as though they had been broken at some point, and reset badly.

Jack stood at the edge of the woods and waited until Tombeur joined him.

“Found him?”

Jack nodded and gestured to the jungle gym. None of the Rougs had yellow eyes. All had that vacant, dazed stare. You’d barely know they were alive, but for the occasional ragged breaths they took.

“You see any pack?”

“I don’t think so. I think this is where the visitors hang out.”

“He might fight us.”

“He’ll lose. He’s smaller than Delphine.”

Tombeur looked at Jack, holding his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jacques.”

“Let’s just take him home.”

They approached the cluster of wasted, softly groaning Rougs. Jack kneeled down beside his father and twisted his head to face him.

“ Papa, c’est moi. Jacques. Me reconnais-tu?” It’s me. Jacques. Do you know me?

Dubois’s head wobbled uncertainly on his neck, and he tried to focus his runny brown eyes.

“ Jacques ?”

“ C’est moi, Papa. Je vais te ramener à la maison.” It’s me. I’m going to take you home. “ Pour Maman. Pour Tallis .”

“ Tallis…Tallis, mon Tallis…” he murmured, tears trailing down his sunken cheeks.

“ Oui, Papa. Tallis .” He looked up at Tombeur. “Take his legs. I’ll take his shoulders. We’ll get him into the woods, then shift and take him home.”

As they hefted Dubois’s body and started for the woods, they heard a noise coming from the closest cabin to the playground. A Roug came out of the cabin with a shotgun in hand.

“Où allez-vous tous les deux?” the voice demanded. Where are you two going?

Tombeur hurried his pace, catching Jack’s eyes and shaking his head briefly. Jack read his message. Don’t shift yet. Try to make it to the woods.

“Où amenez-vous ce vieil homme?” Where are you taking that old man?

Jack heard the hammer pull back, and the explosive sound of gunfire ripped through the air as a bullet sailed by Jack’s ear. They still had about five more feet until the woods, where they could safely shift and run.

Another hammer pull and another shot, but this time, the bullet ripped clean through the muscled flesh of Jack’s upper arm.

He bellowed in pain, feeling his fangs dropping, his claws unsheathing under his father’s shoulders.

Pain and fear were making him unstable. His blood was heating up. His claws weren’t retracting.

He didn’t want to think about Darcy, and yet hers was the face his mind seized upon to distract him from the pain ripping through his body.

Her pale skin, her blonde hair, the freckles across her nose, the lips that he loved to kiss.

He concentrated on her face. He had to make it through tonight, no matter what. He had to see her again.

“Don’t shift,” snarled Tombeur. “We’re almost there. Control, Jacques! ”

Jack heard the hammer pull back one last time, just as they reached the tree cover of the forest, but the roaring of the gun and whizzing bullet wasn’t forthcoming.

Surely the loss of one old junkie wasn’t worth a chase?

Jack kept moving, but didn’t look back over his shoulder.

He caught Tombeur’s face in the moon, and it had relaxed.

Jack took a deep breath then, panting in relief. They’d made a successful escape.

About a quarter of a mile into the woods, they propped Dubois up against a tree, and Tombeur took a look at Jack’s arm. He grimaced.

“It’s not pretty. Going to leave a hell of a scar, Jacques.”

Jack looked at his bloody arm, black and shiny in the darkness.

It throbbed like crazy, even though it would heal quickly once he shifted.

But Tombeur was right. Without sewing it up in human form, it would heal jagged and angry.

He thought of Darcy’s reaction to the misshapen flesh, how her eyes would soften as she surveyed the ugliness.

She doesn’t want you, stupid. You’ve got no one to look pretty for.

He clenched his eyes shut, remembering her loving gentleness as she kissed the scars on his chest. The memory made his heart hurt worse than his arm.

“I’m ready to shift when you are,” he said bitterly, and Tombeur nodded.

Once in shifted form, Jack carried the body of his barely conscious father over his shoulder for the entirety of the run, past Tombeur’s cabin, back to his abandoned car.