Les Femmes Noires One-Shot Contest

Title: Something Dark, The Eyes Inside

Your pen name: fiberkitty

Characters: Leah

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight and you can all blame Naelany for dragging me by the ear to my computer and making me crank this out in an hour.

To see other entries in Les Femmes Noires Contest, please visit the C2 page:

/community/Les_Femmes_Noires/73127/


I felt Her watching me. Her eyes were on me at all times. Dark. Fire. Ice. She was in my soul in a way no one, not even Sam, had been before. The huntress within me had been fighting to get out. For days, I felt like I was losing control. My skin was no longer my own. I itched.

I longed to run. An entire day had been lost as I fled from Her eyes in the woods behind my home. I came across Sam, in his other form; he sniffed me and then ran, crushing me. The fever started shortly after. Her eyes began to look out through mine.

She sang to me, songs of the past, long lost by our people, and songs not yet written. I heard Her howl in my bones, the padding of Her feet on pine needles echoed in my blood. I dropped to the ground and let the shivers take over. My skin visibly shifted, my arm hair thickening into a pelt before retracting. My vision became brighter and then hazed. My stomach heaved, the past two meals coming up as I retched into the forest undergrowth.

"Submit to me. Give me your will." Her whispers lulled my senses and as I gave myself over to Her, to the Wolf Mother, I found myself flying. I saw the ancestors. I saw the first skin-walker. My body bowed before the Chief by a long lost instinct and then his eyes met mine.

"Rise, my daughter. You were wronged by patterns long since abandoned on our loom. Your thread has been removed from the normal weave. You are now a warp thread, no longer the weft. Your strength will hold the pack together. Weave their hearts together. Accept the change with my blessing and those of all who came before you, and all the cubs after. Your line will be one of female warriors. Be proud, cub of Clearwater. You are a wolf huntress now."

The drums of a thousand warriors met my ears as my feet carried me through the sacred forest, or perhaps it was the drumming of a thousand wolf paws as they went on the hunt. I felt the pack chasing me, herding me away from the woods. I spun on them, refusing to let their old ways dictate the new path. Sam, for no other wolf was as impossibly large, barred my path.

"No, Leah. Turn back. This is not your way."

His words echoed in my head as if my own thoughts of his voice.

"No."

"I command it."

"Fuck you, Sam."

I heard several laughs from different voices as four pair of eyes peered out at me from the woods. "Whoa, is that... It is? I hear Leah. But, that isn't possible."

"It is now."

"When the fever breaks and she shifts again, she'll be one of us. She is still in the dream trance."

~*~

I felt a hot hand, hotter than the fever raging through me, touch my forehead and I opened my eyes. Sam was sitting beside my bed. "You're becoming a shifter. I didn't know. I would have been here sooner. I'm sorry, LeeLee."

Sam abandoned English and began speaking in the language rarely spoken by any but the elders. His words lulled me back into sleep as I smelled sage and sweet grass begin to burn. I forced my eyes to open once again and saw the pack, the guardians, as they stood around my room.

"Sleep, Leah. Your body will do the most work tonight. Let him in. We will watch over you. At all times, one of us will be in wolf form to lead you through. Follow us."

I whispered, not sure if it was to Sam or to myself, "Her, Sam. She's a her. We don't follow anyone. We make our own path, She and I. Get used to it."

I fell back into the fevered dreams of running, of hunting, of protecting humans from the abominations. I dreamt of ripping out Edward Cullen's throat. His venom would burn me as surely as the flames would him as I set fire to his hardened form. He had stolen the mate of my pack-brother; he deserved nothing less than the torture I was being transformed to provide.

It was dark when I awoke at long last. Her voice was silent.

"No, I'm not, Leah, my daughter. I'm now inside you. I am you. You are the huntress. These woods are yours. Hunt!"

My skin grew impossibly tight before my consciousness exploded into white and black with a thousand shades of gray in between. Red colored over my vision, rage, fire, desire.

Out. Must be out.

Warm ones. They try to stop me. Bite. Not hard. He's not bad. Nip. Like a teething cub.

One yelped and smacked my nose.

Blood. I smelled blood. Warm, fresh. Rabbit.

I ran.

It ran. My prey ran.

I was hungry.

He was not.

Wind ruffled through my fur. Howl in delight. Howl again at the moon overhead. Silver fire on my skin.

Hunt, Leah. Hunt, Huntress.

Huntress. Not Leah any longer.

Snap. Fur. Flesh. Bones. Blood.

"Better now, my daughter?" Her voice returned my human sense of self to me.

"Leah, come back to us. Do not lose yourself to the hunt. Come back to me." Sam's voice echoed in my head and tugged at my heart. "It is an order."

My body shivered as the weight of my Alpha's command settled through me. I whined as my body ached, the wolf receding back into my soul. Soon I was shaking, naked, on the forest floor, my face and hands coated in blood.

"Leah, it's Sam. I've brought you clothes. I can leave them here although I bet you are too weak at the moment to dress. It's just a long nightshirt. I can help, if you want."

I lifted my head and then put it back on the ground. I was too tired to move. Sam came forward, moving slowly. He knelt behind me and carefully eased my head and arms through the holes and then lifted me into his arms. It felt right. He was warm. Sam was safe. He washed me with a wet rag, his shirt I noticed when I opened my eyes again.

He smiled and rested his cheek on my forehead as he walked. He wasn't running which was odd. I never wanted to walk again; I would always run, once my legs would hold my weight again.

"I am taking you to my home. Emily and I will tend to you as you regain strength. There is much that I can't do for you; that I shouldn't do for you, and she can."

Hearing him say her name sent the shakes through me again. I felt the huntress emerging, my vision slowly shifting from colors to black and white. I wanted to destroy Emily. He was my mate; I wanted her dead. I would destroy her and then bathe in her blood.

The change came faster this time and Sam shifted as well, his powerful body sending shivers of a different sort through me. I bit his shoulder and then jumped to the side. I wanted him. I wanted this.

"No," he bellowed. The images behind the 'no' were what intrigued me. I pushed at his mind, watching his thoughts as he imagined mating with me, taking me as we were, out in these woods. "I can't do that to Emily."

I raged against him and went for his throat and then rolled so that I was prone beneath him, claws up on his belly. "Release me, Leah. Release your Alpha."

My body went slack without my effort, and I found myself pinned by his black gaze alone. "I forbid you to ever attack my Emily. I loved you, but you cannot fight your imprint. I tried. It is like fighting the hunter. He always wins. Be my pack sister, the one person I know I can count on to watch my back. Be what we can be."

"I hate you, Sam."

His wolf form's tongue lolled out and I could imagine him smiling.

"I know, my little huntress."