Page 47 of It's You
“Youlikethat.”
Darcy leaned back, opening her eyes.
“I guess so.” She sighed.
He chuckled again and let go of her, taking her hand.
“What exactly did you and Phillipdo? Play tiddlywinks?” His tone when he said Phillip’s name wasn’t lost on her. Darcy understood. The thought of Jack with another woman was enough to make her sick.
“Yes, Jack. You guessed it. We played lots of tiddlywinks. That was our favorite.”
“Okay, Sass Mouth.”
“Sass Mouth?” she asked, grinning up at him.
He stopped walking, and his grip on her hand got suddenly tighter.
“Jack?”
“Shhh.”
She looked up at his face. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose as he had done before their encounter with the bear. He dropped her hand and put his arm around her waist, hauling her up against his side.
“What is it?” she whispered. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Quiet,” he murmured.
“Awena kéya?” he growled low and slow. “Tándekéya?Shipawaytay.”
Darcy could feel her pulse in her ears as she scanned the forest before them, feeling a measure of safety with her back up against Jack’s side. She could feel how wide her eyes were, burning from staying open, but clearly, Jack felt there was a threat to them.
“AWENA KÉYA?” he repeated, and his arm tightened around her like a vise.
It would take Darcy a while to put together what exactly happened next, but she heard the roaring growl of the wolf at almost the same time her body hit the ground. One minute, she was safely pressed against Jack’s body. The next, she tasted the dirt on her lips, felt the pine needles beneath her hands and under her knees.
When she looked up, she saw Jack hunched over, locked in a face-to-face standoff with a gray wolf, and the only thing between her and the bared teeth of the angry, snarling beast. She watched in horror as the wolf charged Jack, but with an almost unbelievable strength and grace, he caught the wolf by its neck, hauling it up and over his head like a puppy and turning once before throwing the entire one-hundred-pound animal into the trunk of a nearby tree. Darcy heard the vague whimper of the injured wolf before she felt Jack’s hands under her arms, raising her to a standing position.
“Quick. I think it’s a cast-off beta, but I don’t know for sure. We have to go.”
“Wolves don’t come this f-far south,” she murmured, taking his hand and being pulled behind him. She could barely catch her breath. “D-did you th-throw that wolf into a tr-tree?”
“I did what I had to do.”
“You picked it up and th-threw it.”
“Darcy, come on. We have to move faster.”
He kept up a fast pace, just short of a run, and didn’t ease up until they’d been walking fast for at least twenty minutes. Finally, Darcy yanked her hand back. “Gimme a…b-break!”
He turned to look at her, fishing the water bottle back out of his pack and handing it to her, then looking behind her, into the woods.
“We’re not having very good luck with big game.”
“I’m in the w-woods all the time, and I n-never see bears or wolves!” She took another long sip and a deep breath, then handed back the bottle and rested her hands on her knees, panting. “What did you say to it? Before it lunged?”
“I asked where it was. I asked who it was. I told it to leave.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
