Page 76 of It's You
Lynette yanked her arm away, turning to him. “Are you scared of her? Of this old lady? Fuck you, Dubois, you half-man weakling. I’m not scared of her.”
Tallis dropped Dubois’s eyes and focused them with razor-sharp precision on Lynnette. They burned bright yellow, but Lynette didn’t seem afraid. Jacques felt a bead of sweat start behind his ear and make its way down his neck. Flicking his gaze lower, he noticed his mother’s claws, sharp and yellow, protracting quietly from her fingertips. He wanted to yell to Lynette to run, but his throat was so dry, he couldn’t make a sound. He was stricken, frozen.
Lynette put her hands back on her hips and smirked at Tallis with confidence and swagger. She took one finger and poked Jacques’s mother in the chest, above her breasts. “He’s done with you.We’redone with you. Your binding is broken,Tallis Beauloup. It’s dead. I belong to Dubois Beauloup, and he belongs to?—”
Jacques gasped in horror. He watched as his mother swiped a single claw with deadly precision across Lynette’s neck, severing her jugular with one fatal, well-positioned blow. Blood, red and bright, sprayed onto Tallis’s face, but she stood unmoving as the younger woman lurched forward, falling into his mother’s chest, then slowly slipping down the front of her body to the floor.
Dubois screamed, falling to the ground beside Lynette, keening, holding her slippery head in his blood-saturated lap.
Tallis’s arms fell softly to her sides, and Jacques heard the whispered word, “Moi.”
Tallis appeared dazed for a moment before glancing down at her rash handiwork. She stood still, her tired, broken eyes turning brown as she stared down at her husband, clutching the body of his dead lover.“Il m’appartient.”
Me. He belongs to me.
Jack tooka deep breath and shook his head, trying to scatter his painful memories. He checked the time and put his phone in his back pocket. It was before noon. If he left this afternoon, he’d make it to Portes de l’Enfer by evening, but the Gathering really wouldn’t start until tomorrow. Besides, he had to figure out what to do about Darcy.
Darcy.
He sat down, pushing back on his hands until he rested against the headboard of his enormous bed where she’d sat alittle while ago, her horror-stricken, grave eyes fixed on his. Jack bent his knees against his chest, closed his eyes, and inhaled. Her scent surrounded him, sharp and sweet from so much recent lovemaking on these sheets that it made his heart twist and ache.
To come so close to having her in his life, only to have her walk away—runaway—made his eyes burn with frustration and the unfairness of it. She had no idea the years of discipline and planning that had gone into controlling his impulses to the extent that he could live comfortably and safely among her kind. All for her. All so that he could be with her. And she had turned her back on him.
It didn’t matter to his heart. His poor, stupid heart loved her more than ever.
After having sex with her, feeling her naked body pressed up against his, clenched tightly around his in pleasure, he was more firmly bound to her on a conscious level than he’d ever been. He’d always known it was likely that sex with Darcy would prove addictive and essential once he’d experienced it, but he was unprepared for the strength and absoluteness of his need for her now. It wasn’t only unbelievably painful, but almost impossible to imagine his life without her.
He thought of her green eyes rolling back in her head, the softness of her perfect breasts, her light hair spread out like a halo behind her head as his body entered hers, her nails raking across his back, her voice whispering,“Stay,” so that they fell asleep intimately joined together. The way his own body had recognized hers, trembling and shuddering its pleasure, the words I love you falling from his lips over and over again like a vow, an oath, the only truth he’d ever known.
His memories switched to this morning, and the fear and disgust as she realized what he was. The way she fainted when he confirmed it. Watching her bolt off his bed to vomit whenhe admitted he fed on fresh dead. Her eyes, so betrayed and disbelieving and hurt.
You’re a monster.
I can let it die inside of me.
Leave Carlisle.
Her words tortured him with a pain so specific and overwhelming, his heart clutched, and his breathing became ragged as a vise squeezed his chest. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. What if he couldn’t win her back? How could he bear the pain of it?Better to die than live without her.
He clenched his eyes shut.
He pulled her inside.
He didn’t havea lot of time. He felt the cool ground under his pads as he searched for her in the dim light of dusk. He was up high, on a hillside or mountain peak. He stopped and turned his nose up, inhaling deeply to find her. When he did, her scent was wispy and thin. She didn’t want to be here.
She was on lower ground. He took off at a full-speed run toward her.
Darcy. Darcy. Darcy.
He heard her name echo off the tall pines as he repeated it in his mind over and over and over again, as he rushed over fallen logs, through brambles, his only mission to find her before she slipped away.
He ran down through the towering trees until he finally found himself in a meadow with high grasses and saw herstanding in the middle with her back to him, the white fabric of her dress moving softly in a half-breeze, her fingers touching the prickly tips of the grass as she had when they walked through Dooley Meadow. He made his way carefully, quietly, closer and closer until he was almost beside her.
One more step and he felt her fingers lightly fan the bristly fur of his back with the same distracted rhythm she’d touched the grasses. He closed his eyes at the gentle contact and took a deep, relieving breath of cool air, which soothed his aching lungs. She didn’t pull away. Once, twice, he felt her fingers graze the ruff of fur at his neck. He raised his eyes to hers, and she turned her graceful neck to look down at the wolf at her feet as diamond tears fell from her eyes, landing with soft plops in the downy fur that surrounded his face.
My heart is broken.Her lips didn’t move, but he heard her voice, the dazed, heavy lament in her tone that mirrored the grief on her face.
I belong to you, Darcy, and you?—
