Chapter 9
Jack had considered killing himself more than once over the last three weeks.
His life was an obscene, unique, custom-made torture, a stark and desperate hell with no light, no love, no hope, nothing to live for, except for the small possibility that Darcy might submit to a binding kiss that wouldn’t even guarantee their re-binding.
His mother kept him well apprised of her progress—how she hunted with ease and skill, how she had embraced her Roug self, and how closely she and Tombeur had bonded.
Though Jack was still angry about Tombeur’s decision to turn Darcy, he was grateful that Tombeur was proving to be a devoted mentor.
If Jack separated Tombeur’s betrayal from the equation, he knew that Darcy’s training was in the best possible hands, learning from a master, just as Jack had so long ago.
But the bottom line was this: he missed her desperately.
For twenty years, her light had been his constant companion, infusing his body in every possible way. She was so much a part of him that even now, he couldn’t help trying to pull her inside, every day, several times a day.
It had become an obsession, a compulsion.
He would find the piece of her that still lived inside of him and focus on it with every drop of strength he possessed.
He would torment himself with memories, feeling her hair run through his fingers, gazing at the green of her eyes, touching the cool softness of her skin beneath his palms. Closing his eyes, alone in the joyless sanctuary of the deep woods, he would try to pull her inside.
It was like trying to turn over a dead engine.
He could lay his foot on the gas and turn the key in the ignition over and over again, but the engine wouldn’t catch, wouldn’t start, wouldn’t engage.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t reach her.
He poured all of his energy out, but it wasn’t enough to pull her in, to touch the part of her that used to belong to him.
Every time he tried, hundreds of times over the past three long weeks, he would fail.
Until today.
This morning, with the Gathering bearing down on him tomorrow, his hopes and fears caught in a desperate struggle for dominion, he had leaned against a tree in the deep forest, closed his eyes, and concentrated on their binding kiss.
He remembered the eager welcome of her eyes, the touch of her lips beneath his, the way his heart had stopped beating and then started again.
His emotions had hit a fever pitch as he reached for her with his mind, his claws dropping, his eyes burning, the hair under his skin prickling, his body expanding.
The strangled, desperate growling sound of the words, It’s you, clawed its way up from the depths of his being, filling his head so loudly that it ached and throbbed, reverberating with the first words he’d ever said to his mate.
For just a millisecond, for the amount of time that the very tip of the sun breaches the horizon, he felt her.
Not the memory of her inside of him, but her.
For that moment, it was like they were bound once again.
But as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
The swirling, the growling sound, the intense, visceral connection. Gone.
Jack had trembled against the tree, tears coursing down his rough face as his claws slowly retracted and his body shifted back to human form. When he opened his eyes, the forest was quiet and still, oblivious to what had just happened inside of him, in his consciousness, in his heart.
Of one thing he was certain: he had reached her. Only for a second, but he had connected with her. With the Gathering tomorrow looming like a curse, teasing him with hope, his heart had managed to connect with hers for a second, and it was enough to renew his strength.
Reaching for the omnipresent flask in his torn jeans, he had snapped open the top and poured the fiery liquid out onto the ground. He couldn’t deny what he’d felt, and he knew that wherever she was, she had felt it too. But what did it mean?
Was it some remnant channel leftover from their binding? Was it a fluke? Or, his desperate heart wheezed with hope, was it possible that some small part of the binding was still intact?
Clutching his tattered clothes, he headed back to his mother’s cabin, surprised to see his mother pulling into the driveway.
She’d been living with Tombeur since Darcy had been turned, only coming home for short periods of time to pick up clothes or check on Delphine.
Family harmony was better maintained when Tallis and Lela had a good deal of space between them, and Tallis had seemed anxious to assist Tombeur with Darcy’s training.
“Maman,” he greeted her. “Tres bien?”
“Oui,” she answered. “But with tomorrow’s Gathering, I must be here for Council business.”
“And Tombeur?” he asked, his voice tight.
“Excepted from reporting since he is mentoring a turned Roug.”
“So they’ll be alone. All night,” he answered grimly.
Jack strode into the cabin, heading for the room he used to share with Julien, and pulled on some fresh jeans. He grabbed his keys from on top of a dresser as he pulled a T-shirt off the floor.
“Jacques,” said Tallis. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not leaving her completely alone with him.”
Tallis shook her head, her eyes pained. “She—”
“What?” he demanded, looking up at his mother.
“She still doesn’t know you.”
Jack swallowed painfully, his brief connection with Darcy from earlier suddenly feeling more tenuous. “She does. It’s just buried deep inside of her.”
Tallis shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“I connected with her today. It was only for a moment, but I—”
“What do you mean?”
“Dansmatête. I reached her.”
The flood of compassion in his mother’s eyes made him feel small and young. “Oh, Jacques. I don’t think so. I think it’s like the body twitching after it dies. An electrical impulse, but nothing substantial. Nothing meaningful.”
“It was Dansmatête.” Jack drew a deep breath, desperately holding on to hope. “I felt her.”
Tallis’s eyes lingered in sympathy for just a moment before they hardened. “You’re going to need to force her.”
“I won’t,” he answered softly. “I can’t.”
“You must, Jacques. She thinks…” Tallis winced before steeling her jaw. “She thinks she’s in love with Tombeur.”
“No,” he gasped, the pain to his heart almost leveling him to the ground. “Have they?”
“Non, mon fils. Non. But I can see it in her eyes. She wants him.” Tallis sighed. “It’s not uncommon between a turned Roug and her mentor. It’s happened before.”
“I’m going to her. I need to talk to her. She has to know—”
“I wouldn’t,” Tallis said softly. “She doesn’t know you. Tombeur said he would tell her your story today, and Willow arrives tomorrow with a memory potion. But, son, you will have to force her tomorrow night. She will not come to you willingly. Not as she is now.”
Jack, who was halfway across the room, standing by the door, turned on his mother.
“Force her? Force her when I have made her life a nightmare? She was an innocent young girl when I kissed her. I stole twenty years of possible happiness with that kiss. She could never find fulfillment with another man. For her, Dansmatête was a mystery that made her wonder if she was insane for two decades. I reenter her life, and she discovers she’s bound to a monster.
And now? Her destruction is complete. She is a monster…
who craves blood, who hunts in the woods like an animal, who will have to battle the horror of her deepest, darkest desire at Pleine Lune every month for the rest of her life.
I stole her light. I orphaned her. I destroyed her.
Me. I did this to her. And now you would demand that I force her to submit to me when I have taken everything from her?
Her family, her home, her memories, her very being… her soul!”
“Jacques—”
“Force her? You must be mad,” he spat, his eyes burning with fierce defiance of her words. “No! She will come to me willingly, or I will let her go.”
“And live the rest of your life in this agony? This anguish?”
His eyes fixed on hers.
“Yes,” he gasped, leaving his mother to the furious silence of the empty cabin.
Darcy didn’t know how long Tombeur had been gone, but it was dark when she finally stood up from her chair, made herself a plate of dinner, and built a fire.
No matter what time he came home, she needed to talk to him again.
She needed to get through to him. He had to understand that while Jack may have been an important part of her past, she wasn’t interested in a future with him.
Falling asleep by the fire an hour later, Darcy’s dreams were vivid and troubling as she slept.
Fragments from her life with Jack entwined with the last three weeks she’d spent with Tombeur played in her mind.
Jack’s dark eyes effortlessly shifting to Tombeur’s mossy-flecked brown, Jack’s lips touching down on hers, Tombeur’s palm heavy and comforting on her shoulder.
When the door opened and shut behind her softly, she woke up with a jerk, immediately aware that it wasn’t Tombeur’s scent in the room with her, but Jack Beauloup’s.
She turned to find him standing against the door, his face dimly lit by firelight, staring at her.
“Darcy,” he whispered, making no move toward her. His voice was reverent and gentle, and pinged in her head. Familiar, and yet not.
“Where’s Tom?” she asked.
Jack took a deep breath through his nose, then looked back at her. “Not close.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said softly, turning away from him, dismissing him.
He took a tentative step into the room, and when she didn’t stop him, he took another, then another, until he was standing behind Tombeur’s chair by the fire, across from her. He placed his hands on the back of the wooden rocker and tilted his head to the side.
“Can I ask you something?”