Chapter 1
The dream was always the same.
She was running in the woods. So fast, it was like gliding.
So fast, she couldn’t even feel her feet as they beat a path through the darkness.
Branches and undergrowth brushed at her body but didn’t hurt or slow her down.
And she couldn’t stop. Something deep inside of her insisted that she couldn’t stop.
Looking up, she saw the moon, a waxing crescent, a perfect slice of white light in the midnight sky.
Her lungs burned, but she ran like her life depended on it.
She leaped over a fallen tree and slashed at a bramble.
Slashed. Slashed. Suddenly she stopped, looking at her hands, at the long, white claws that extended outward, at the thick thatch of hair covering the backs of her hands so that they were unrecognizable.
Back to the moon. The crescent. The beguiling, teasing bitch that owned what was left of her soul.
As panic besieged her mind, a wretched, guttural howl gathered in the depths of her being—
Darcy’s arms flailed, and she bolted upright in her chair, awakened by a loud thunk. She looked down to see her once half-filled coffee cup in two pieces on the floor, lying in a small puddle of brown liquid.
Sweat covered her face, and her heart raced in real life as it had in the dream. She took a deep breath, then another, resting her hands on the desk, pushing away the book where she’d rested her tired head and fallen asleep. It happened all the time lately. She was perpetually exhausted.
As her heart slowed down, she stood up, stretching her arms over her head and looking at the warm and bright windows of Jack’s house.
The light cut through the darkness, making her feel less alone.
She sighed, glancing at the clock on her laptop.
7:35. If she didn’t go in soon, he’d come out for her.
She swiveled in her chair and glanced at the love seat against the wall, feeling her insides swirl hot as her lips tilted up in a smile.
She turned back to her desk and took off her glasses, laying them gently on one of the six or seven books spread out on the desk before her, then rubbed her tired eyes. She needed to get a towel from the bathroom and clean up her mess.
It had been three weeks since Julien and Lela’s binding, three weeks since accepting Jack’s marriage proposal, three weeks since finding out that her binding to Jack had been challenged by Lela.
“Equinox,” she said aloud softly, the hairs on her arm standing up straight as though someone had just walked over her grave. “Four more weeks until the equinox.”
Kneeling down, she moved the two pieces of the ceramic cup to the side so she could wipe away the coffee with a hand towel.
Then she sat on the floor against the desk leg, looking at the pieces.
Almost two perfect halves and no chips. She took one in each hand and gently pressed them together, watching as something broken transformed into something whole before her eyes.
It looked whole. It looked strong. And yet, if she withdrew the pressure of her hands, the two pieces would quickly fall apart again.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, depositing the pieces in the garbage and holding her bent knees against her chest. With only two days before Pleine Lune, she and Willow were running out of time.
There was no more time for research and planning.
They needed to synthesize the formula tomorrow so it could be tested on Jack.
They had worked tirelessly on the antidote to Jack’s monthly shift, and Darcy felt, with increasing confidence, that they’d nailed it.
They’d taken the wolfsbane, with its shift-suppressing qualities, added synthesized olivetol from Parmeliaceae lichen as a stabilizer for its calming effects and to suppress vomiting, and finally Lycopodium clavatum to protect Jack’s stomach lining from the poisons in the wolfsbane.
Poor Jack had been stuck with more needles than a pincushion over the past three weeks, but never once had he objected or stood in the way of their progress.
All day, every day, she poured over Métis shaman books, worked on the formula, and foraged for samples, doggedly working toward a way to suppress Jack’s Pleine Lune shift, and maybe—someday—her own.
All day, every day, he left her alone to work.
Ah, but the nights.
Darcy’s face softened, and she closed her eyes, exhaling in surrender.
The nights belonged to Jack.
The nights were about hearing his heartbeat under her ear and tolerating the heat of his body against her skin.
The nights were about his eyes as they held hers, burning and direct, awestruck and disbelieving sometimes, like it should be impossible that it was her body clinging to his after a lifetime of dreaming about her.
The nights were about Darcy and Jack, bound together until it was impossible to tell where his flesh ended and hers began.
The nights were about having him, belonging to him, owning his heart, giving herself over to the ecstasy, the panting, roaring rapture of his body joined with hers. Fast. Slow. Rough. Gentle. Everything.
The nights were about slipping from dreams into a relaxed consciousness, eyes only half-opened in the darkness as she felt his hardness slip into her waiting softness.
Moving slowly, filling her, rotating his hips so that the pressure of his sex pressed against the swollen, slick walls deep inside of her.
He swept every nerve ending, driving her to the brink of what she could bear, keeping her in a dreamlike, pre-orgasmic state of longing.
She whimpered his name, arching her back against his chest as he squeezed her nipples gently, forcing her to stay with him stroke for stroke until her body finally convulsed and shattered around him.
The nights were about him growling her name like thunder, arms like steel clasping her against him, then trembling and shuddering as his seed poured hot and vital into her depths, and he declared his undying love.
But always, always, hovering like a shadow in the corner, was the equinox. The longest and lightest day would invariably end in night. In darkness. At the Gathering. It was coming.
Darcy opened her eyes, trading softness for determination, and pushed up off the floor, taking the hand towel back into the bathroom.
She resumed her seat at her desk, rearranging her notes and opening another book.
If the nights were about tricking herself into believing that what she had with Jack was strong enough to last forever, the days were about figuring out a solution to the looming matter of the re-binding.
Losing Jack was unthinkable, would be unbearable, and was not an option.
As far as Darcy could tell, there was only one solution.
She and Willow needed to create a potion that would control Pleine Lune shifting.
Once Jack was convinced the full moon no longer controlled him, he could turn Darcy into a Roux-ga-roux, assured that her life wouldn’t be at the mercy of the monthly depravity and blood lust brought on by Pleine Lune.
However, even with the promise of a potion that could permanently suppress shifting in any Roux-ga-roux, convincing Jack to turn her in time for the re-binding was proving to be a much bigger challenge.
She stared out the window for a moment, resting her chin on her hand, remembering their conversation last night.
“I don’t want to do it, baby.” He’d sighed for the hundredth time, brushing her hair from her forehead in soft, monotonous strokes as she lay across his hard, naked chest.
“The re-binding’s a month from today, Jack,” she’d whispered, unable to keep the heaviness from her voice. “We have to talk about you turning me. At least talk about it.”
“I don’t want to. I just want this.”
“I want this too. I want this forever. I don’t want it to end at the equinox. I don’t want you beaten and tortured and—” Her voice broke, as it always did when she imagined what they might do to him when he arrived at the re-binding Gathering without his bound mate by his side.
“I’m strong, Darce. I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” She leaned up and away from him, bracing her weight on her elbow, looking for his eyes in the darkness. He blinked once, and when he reopened them, they glowed a dim copper-gold.
“I’ll survive. I’ll come back to you.”
She shook her head, tears pooling in her green eyes as she gazed at him, at his beautiful face that she loved more than any face on earth. That face that was her waking and her sleeping, her morning and her night, her light and her darkness, the beating heart of her soul.
“No. Lela and Julien said—”
“Lela and Julien have never even been to a re-binding. And neither of them ever served on the Council Enforcement. They certainly haven’t attended an Inquisition. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“But you do. You have. And I can see it in your eyes. They’ll hurt you. They’ll punish you, and I can’t…”
He pulled her against him, lining her up on top of his body, her breasts against his chest, his erection pressed insistently against her soft curls. He held her face between his hands, searching her eyes with longing, with certainty.
I’ll come back to you.
You don’t know that.
I know that nothing could keep me away.
Except death.
He ground his jaw, dropping her eyes.
“The potion’s almost ready, Jack, and it’s going to work. I know it. And when it does, you can turn me. You can, and I won’t ever have to shift. I’ll have control over it.”