Page 102 of It's You
“I remember from when Natalia…” Jack heard his brother sniff lightly. “Ah, it was painful. The unbinding. But then suddenly? It’s just…gone. After feeling the connection so sharply, so strongly, so absolutely, it’s just gone. Not like it was never there, because you know it was, but like a very old, sweet memory from a long, long time ago.”
Jack clenched his jaw together until it hurt.
“I’m just trying to say thatMamanwon’t be in pain by tomorrow. She won’t be in agony anymore.”
“You think it’s agony to love someone?”
“To be bound to someone who you’re losing? Who you’ve lost? Who you want, even though you can’t have them? Yeah.” His brother breathed into the darkness of their childhood room. “I think it’s agony.”
Jack knew that Julien was speaking of Natalia. Or of their parents. But Jack could only think of Darcy. He saw her eyes, bright and green. Her hair, so shiny and silky in his hands. The single whispered word.Stay.
Agony.Jack knew a little bit about agony too. He turned away from his brother, squeezing his eyes shut as his feelings assaulted him from every angle.
His father was dead, his mother was unbound, and he felt lost.
He knew it was too soon and weak as hell, but he couldn’t help himself.
He pulled her inside.
It wasn’t raining anymore.
It was dark, though. It was night, and Jack knew there was a good chance that she was asleep. He hoped so. He counted on it.
He padded softly, orienting himself. Sniffing the air lightly, he caught her scent, but he didn’t race to her.
He walked stealthily over pine needles, cushiony and flat like a mattress or blanket, gingerly making his way closer to her. Her scent was stronger and stronger as he crossed a meadow into a pine haven, tall trees creaking softly like a lullaby.
She lay on her side, curled up on a pillow of bright green moss, her body covered in a simple white sheath, her feet bare. Moonlight shone down on her hair, making it glow like a halo around her head, and her light skin seemed even whiter in contrast to the darkness that surrounded her. Her chest rose and fell with deep breaths, and her mouth was lightly open in sleep.
Jack swallowed. He had never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in his entire life.
He watched her shiver lightly in her sleep, and his breath caught.
You’re cold.
She took a deep breath through her nose, and though her eyes remained closed, he was surprised to hear her voice, sleep-muffled and slight, as if escaping from a dream.
I didn’t think that.
He couldn’t help the way his breath came out in a sob at the welcome sound of her gentle voice. He padded over to her body and lay down at her feet, careful not to touch her, but unable torefuse what small comfort she didn’t withhold. Listening to the sound of her breathing, with his terrible longing for her soothed by her presence, his eyes finally drifted closed.
The last thought he had before he fell asleep was,I belong to you and you…
6
Council members and representatives from all eight packs of the Northern Bloodlands started arriving at dawn. From a distinct triangular territory in the central, forested part of Quebec, as far east as Fremont, as far west as Wemindji, and as far south as the woods just north of the great city, the packs descended on Portes de l’Enfer in the Faunique des Laurentides for the annual Gathering.
Each of the other seven packs was allowed to send up to twenty-five pack members, including their five council members, to the Gathering. The Portes de l’Enfer pack, as hosts, encouraged all pack members to attend the meeting.
Some of the packs, like the one from Lac de Coeur, came on motorcycles, loud and gregarious, despite the early morning. Others, like the pack just south of Jack’s in the Cap Tormente National, arrived civilly in cars, dressed like natty humans. Some of the packs who were spread out over the far northwest had come shifted in the night and were still naked and dirty in the morning, and Jack was pretty sure some of them might even stay like that all weekend.
The ancient log Gathering Hall, built two hundred years ago when the Natio Luporem established itself in the Northern Bloodlands, was a massive, oval-shaped longhouse that held three hundred Rougs in bleacher-style seating with the forty council members seated at a large horseshoe-shaped table in the middle of the open, sawdust covered floor.
Tallis had left early to arrange for Dubois’s tribute on the day’s agenda. He would be buried at sundown.
From what Jack could tell over breakfast, Julien had been right.
The sunken, pallid mask gone now, his mother’s face had filled out in the night, and her skin tone was healthier, with a glow in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled like a woman ten years younger, and there was a bounce in her step as she moved around the kitchen making breakfast. She even had a kind word for Lela, complimenting her on the pot of morning coffee, and winking at Tombeur as he took a sip, focused, with a searing intensity, on Tallis. Jack watched his friend and mentor. He didn’t even need to be subtle in his observation, for Tombeur didn’t seem to realize that anyone but Tallis was alive, following his mother with his eyes, churning and hungry. Jack wondered how soon it would be before Tallis and Tombeur were bound. Not long, he guessed.
