Page 87 of It's You
She started to say something else, then shook her head, and Jack knew that she was accepting the absoluteness of his decision. “Think hard, son. Think about what you’re doing. We can have someone take care of her.”
Jack sprang to his feet, facing her, eyes burning and claws dropping. “I will kill the person who ends her. Then I will kill myself.”
His mother’s eyes were burning too, but her fangs and claws remained sheathed. Her voice was calm, but firm. “Sit down.”
He remained standing. “I mean it.”
She nodded once, keeping her eyes down, and his fangs and claws retracted slowly.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked in a leaden voice, meeting his eyes.
He nodded once.
“Are you sure? If she can even come to love you, Jacques, how will you protect her? From yourself? From others who would harm her?”
“She belongs to me.” He ran a hand through his hair, resting it on the back of his neck. “No one will hurt her. No one will ever find out about her.”
Tallis stood up and placed her hands on his broad shoulders, tilting her head, her sad smile and tired eyes beseeching him to reconsider. She still didn’t understand that his binding was as solid and irreversible as her own.
“I saw you that night…with Lynette Reynard. You know better than anyone,Maman. It can’t be broken.” He looked down for a moment to collect his thoughts before recapturing his mother’s eyes. He clenched his jaw together, his mouth a thin, white line. “I am bound to Darcy Turner. Me. She belongs to me.”
Tallis had taken a deep breath, then raised her eyebrows at him as he used her own words, the words she’d used after the murder of Lynette Reynard. Finally, Tallis nodded her head in acceptance.
“Then, so be it. For what is bound cannot be broken. You need two council members to acknowledge the binding before the solstice. It will be me, of course, and the only other I trust is Tombeur Lesauvage. He’s young and liberal. A forward-thinker. He was the one who encouraged us to try to resettle the Southern Bloodlands. I will speak to him, and if he agrees, we will acknowledge in blood tomorrow.”
She cupped his face with her hand.
“Oh, Jacques. You’re choosing a terrible path. I wanted so much better for you, my son. A fine binding with a good hunter. Not this. Never this. I see so much heartache and pain ahead. How I wish…I just wanted…”
Jack pulled away from her, feeling the ties that bind a child to its parents strain and snap to dangle helplessly between them.
“It doesn’t matter what you wanted,Maman.Iwanther.”
After Tombeur Lesauvageheard the whole story, he agreed to acknowledge Jack’s binding, combining his blood with Tallis’s and Jack’s, then inking the initials D.T. next to Jack’s name in the sacred text.
But Tombeur had strict conditions first, which, if not met, would result in him alerting the council to Jack’s aberrant bond and initiating the process of hunting down Darcy. Jack bristled against the conditions but grudgingly agreed.
Failing to convince Jack to turn Darcy, he insisted that because a Roug-Human binding was unproven and untested, Jack was to stay away from contact with Darcy for a period of ten years. He made it clear that he hoped that because the binding wasn’t with one of his own kind, it would fade over the course of a decade. Jack had protested bitterly, but without recourse and fearful for Darcy’s safety, he was forced to agree to the condition.
Tombeur further stipulated that during those ten years, Jack would agree to live in the Northern Bloodlands and work for the council, steeped in the culture and traditions of the pack.
“Hoping you can brainwash my binding away, Tombeur?” he’d asked bitterly, but Tombeur had only raised his eyebrows, remaining quiet and waiting for an answer.
Jack had reluctantly nodded.
Tombeur went on to insist that if Jack somehow reached the age of twenty-eight still determined to make a life with Darcy Turner, he would be responsible for outlining a plan to reenter her life without exposing the pack or otherwise placing it in jeopardy.
“She can’t live here, so you’ll have to live among her kind, and although I’ve tried to advocate living in some kind of harmony so that we could reclaim the Southern lands, I’ve never heard of a Roug willfully livingwitha human. And while I don’t give much of a fuck about your precious pet either way, I will hunt her down myself if she becomes a liability for my kind, Jacques Beauloup. You’ll have to figure out how to control your impulses. I don’t know how. But this is your road, not mine.”
Jack had leveled his eyes with Tombeur’s.
“That’s right. It’s mine.She’smine.”
“I’m not going to bullshit you,louveteau. I fully expect for you to relinquish this binding over time.”
“Je ne suis pas un louveteau. Je suis un Roux-ga-roux ligoté.”I’m not a cub. I’m a bound Roux-ga-roux.
Jack held Tombeur’s eyes in a show of courage and equality and wouldn’t look away or down, regardless of Tombeur’s fierce stare and the aggressive stance of his far more muscular body.
