Chapter 2
Afew hours later, Jack watched Darcy sleeping peacefully beside him.
Requiring far less sleep than she did meant that he spent a good share of every night watching her.
He’d waited his whole life to have her beside him, and after almost losing her, he knew the bitterness of a moment spent without her.
She was curled up on her side, facing him, her rosy lips parted in sleep, light lashes fanning the flushed skin of her cheeks.
Thankfully, Willow had devised an oil that, combined with daily oatmeal baths, managed to control most of the burns.
Jack touched her cheek lightly, watching the pink color deepen slightly, then sighed, withdrawing his hand.
He bent his elbow, putting his hand against his cheek, using his other hand to pull the covers down just a little. He watched her beautiful breasts rise and fall evenly with her breathing, and his blood headed south in a rush. He wanted her. He always wanted her.
Leave her alone. She needs to sleep. Between their endless nights of passion and her endless days of research, she looked exhausted all the time lately.
And he knew she was worried. He tried to keep it from her, but he was too.
Bodily harm or pain didn’t concern him, though Jack knew that arriving at the re-binding without Darcy might subject him to torture.
That didn’t bother him half as much as the thought of being locked up somewhere in Portes de l’Enfer, far away from Darcy, unable to protect her, unable to be with her.
She’d tried to get him to talk about turning her again tonight, but he’d managed to put her off yet again.
Jack never intended to bind himself to Darcy Turner, and yet, with one moment of uncontrolled passion as a teenager, he’d bound their fates, changed her life forever in the space of a single, perfect kiss.
However, being bound to him was one thing.
She was still human. She hadn’t lost her light, hadn’t lost her soul.
She was still his bright, beautiful Darcy, his creature of sunshine and goodness.
But turning her? Forcing her to adopt his nature?
She’d become a creature of the night, like Jack, at the mercy of an all-consuming bloodlust at every full moon.
No. No, he wouldn’t do it. It was unthinkable.
Turning her into a monster wasn’t the plan.
Binding her to him was bad enough, but he’d scraped out a plan to make it work, a plan that his conscience and heart had been able to accept.
He’d returned to her, a model of strength and control, prepared to love and protect her for the rest of her life.
If it weren’t for Lela, his plan would have worked.
But thanks to Lela and the goddamn re-binding, the thought he hated the most—turning his beloved Darcy into a monster like him—seemed to be the only option she would consider for their future.
If her potion worked and was able to suppress his Pleine Lune shift in two days, her insistence was only going to get stronger.
I won’t do it, he thought. No matter what. I won’t turn her.
He took a deep breath and swung his legs over the side of the bed, walking quietly around it to stand at the French doors, which flooded the room with light from the waxing gibbous moon.
Even in its not-quite Pleine Lune state, it affected him.
He felt the pressure of his claws wanting to drop, the itch of his coarse hair wanting to grow, the gnawing in his stomach for the warm, metallic taste of blood.
He clenched his eyes shut, turning away from the window and sitting restlessly in the wooden rocking chair.
He looked across the room at Darcy, at her skin, so white in the moonlight, as white as his white sheets.
His breathing quickened as he stared at her, his love for her making his heart swell and eyes burn.
But I can’t lose her either. I’d rather die.
He cringed at the direction of his thoughts, at the uncomfortable reality he tried to hide from himself, but which asserted its strength and made him hate himself for being a selfish bastard.
He allowed Darcy to believe his primary objection to turning her was changing her nature, changing her from human to monster.
But in his heart, he knew there was another, more powerful reason for his hesitancy.
Turning Darcy into a Roux-ga-roux, distasteful though it was, would be a viable solution for Jack if he could be guaranteed one thing: that their binding wouldn’t be compromised.
But while he would remain bound to Darcy for the rest of his life, there was no guarantee their binding would transfer with her once turned.
This was Jack’s primary and most crippling fear.
That she would open her eyes, blazing silver as a turned Roug, and he wouldn’t be able to hear her.
She wouldn’t recognize him as her mate. She’d walk away from him. She wouldn’t love him anymore.
The idea of losing her in such a way, being hopelessly bound to her for life in a state of unrequited longing, alone with the memories of their short, perfect time together?
Knowing that she lived and breathed on the earth, but didn’t love him anymore?
The possibility that she could be bound to another Roug who would bring her body to the peaks of ecstasy that they had known together while he stood by, alone, deeply in love with her?
The very thought was so agonizing, so unbearable to even fathom that he’d rather submit to the Council than chance it.
He winced, standing up to stretch and looking up at the shadows of branches on his ceiling, clicking and clacking like bones, like claws.
He clenched his hands into fists and moved quietly back to the bed, sitting on the edge with his back to Darcy.
The Council wouldn’t go easy. His mother had assured him of that on the phone today.
“Jacques, on doit parler,” Tallis had said, without pleasantries or preamble, as soon as he picked up the phone. Jack, we need to talk.
He’d checked through the living room windows to be sure Darcy was engrossed in her work in the little studio over the garage. He saw her head bent over books, omnipresent pencil stuck between her teeth.
“Oui, Maman,” he replied. “Continue.”
She continued in French. “There’s talk of an Inquisition, mon fils. This is serious.”
Jack swallowed, then took a deep breath, muscles throughout his body flexing in response to the news. “An Inquisition? That seems extreme.”
“Saint Germain is blowing everything out of proportion. He wants to make an example of you to remind the packs that binding laws are our most sacred and unique traditions. He’s insisting that if you can’t produce your mate, you’ve disrespected the binding laws and must pay for your crimes.”
Jack had never liked Saint Germain, the Senior Council Elder.
Saint Germain loved a show. He loved a fight to the death between two Alpha Rougs or a disappointed sparking that led to violence.
He loved playing with humans before feeding, terrifying them before shedding their blood.
He was a mean, arrogant, self-centered leader who ruled with fear and cunning, and Jack had always tried to stay under his radar.
“He’s quite the showman,” Jack growled softly, moving out of Darcy’s view, into the dining room that looked out over Darcy’s well-tended garden.
“I don’t know if it’s all for show, Jacques.
Not this time. He seems genuinely angry with you.
He believes you’ve tricked the system. They’ve checked the sacred text and compared it against birth records.
They cannot find a female within ten years of your birth with the initials DT, and Saint Germain is planting the seeds of doubt.
I hear the use of the word fraude more and more. ”
“But an Inquisition?”
“Oui, Jacques,” his mother whispered, and he heard the brokenness in her tone. “Une enquête judiciaire.”
A judicial inquiry. With Saint Germain sitting in as the judge.
Jack shuddered, remembering the only Inquisition he’d ever attended.
The screams, the moans, the smell of charred flesh, barely time to regenerate under the influence of wolfsbane so the interrogated couldn’t shift to protect himself.
Jack clenched his eyes shut, trying to focus and not let fear take over.
“I still have friends on the Council, don’t I? In the CE?”
“You’re not here, mon fils. You haven’t lived here in years. It’s well-known you don’t hunt. They say you’ve become more human than Roug. They say you’ve turned your back on your pack, and you think you’re above Roug rules. They say you’ve dishonored the laws of binding.”
Jack shook his head, working his jaw until it ached. “That’s not true.”
“But, Jacques—”
“Non, Maman! Non! My whole life, I have had only one goal, one ambition, one cause. To protect my binding. To honor it.” He ran his free hand through his hair, unable to control his anger against such outright lies.
“You cheated. Papa cheated. Tombeur cheated. Moi? Non! Jamais! Dishonor my binding? All I have done, my whole life, is work to honor it.”
His mother was silent, and Jack wondered if he had offended her.
“Je sais,” she finally replied softly. I know. “What will you do?”
“There’s still a month,” Jack replied, taking a deep breath. “I will try to think of something.”
“Oui. I will do the same. Tombeur too. Even Julien and that bitc—and Lela. We are all willing to help.”
Jack’s lips quirked in a slight smile. So Julien’s binding hadn’t patched things up between the two Beauloup women. He decided not to touch it.
“Are they harassing you, Maman?”
“Non, Jacques. I have lived here all my life. They would not disrespect me. They have come to see me, and I have told them the birth records aren’t accurate. Those packs up north are barely civilized. They are not interested in causing trouble for me unless you fail to appear. Then I know they’ll—”