Flight Path by Lisa Charles
Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns the Twilight Universe, I'm just dabbling in it.
Chapter One: Pre-Wedding Jitters
It never took Jake more than twelve minutes to run to the Cullen House but he seemed to make the trip even faster whenever Nessie called him. Of course, the fact that they were engaged now probably had a lot to do with his incredible speed these days. In any case, Jake was just phasing back as Nessie finally managed to fight off the fervent female vampires that had kept her holed up in the living room of her parents cottage, enveloped in a cloud of silk organza, flowers, and pearly stationary all morning. Ever since she asked Jake to marry her, the entire Cullen clan had been in some sort of wedding hyper drive. Honestly, with the amount of "ideas" her family members seemed to be coming up with, one might think that they'd been waiting all her life to marry her off.
Jake still shudders when he remembers that day in June when Edward found the memory of Nessie's proposal in his thoughts. The entire family was together to celebrate Edward's birthday and he was performing his latest composition when Jacob happened to walk right into his field of view. Try as he might, six years had been nowhere near long enough for Jake to learn how to conceal his musings from the century old mind-reader. Something about Jake's earnest desire to make his Ness happy and the joy that it brought him made the wolf an open book whenever Edward was curious enough for some light reading. Of course, Edward generally made it a point to avoid Jake's thoughts at all costs as Ness grew older. A painful fear of uncovering images of his own baby girl in any romantic situations, real or imagined, meant slip ups were very few and extremely far between. Accidents do happen however, and as a father who could really blame Edward for that rare and inadvertent invasion of privacy?
In any case, that one lapse had resulted in the need for Jacob to rescue Nessie from her mother, grandmother and aunts at least twice a day for the past three and a half weeks. With the wedding date not even set yet, Jake could see no end in sight for the matrimonial madness that consumed his in-laws-to-be. According to them, it was absolutely unforgivable that Jake and Nessie attempted to keep their engagement a secret, even if it had just been for a meager four days. As recompense for this grievous error in judgment, the two of them had been accosted at every turn, whether while watching TV, playing video games, or even hunting. At all times of the day and night they were questioned on their preferences on food, music, guests, and cake flavors. Obviously, Nessie wasn't quite as concerned with that last one (she had never developed much of a taste for sweets), but Jake refused to simply let Alice dictate the terms of the most important day of his life. There were more than a few customs and traditions that went along with a wedding in his tribe, not to mention the union of an imprinted wolf and his mate.
All of this made for very intense wedding planning which caused a blowout between Alice and Jake one evening after just a week of work. Alice had just settled on a destination wedding when Jake decided it was time he spoke up. "Quileutes marry on their own land," Jake said quietly. "Well that's not a rule or anything," replied Alice absentmindedly as she flipped through three travel magazines. "But that's what my parents did. Right in front of the house my dad built for my mom," Jake insisted. "And I'm sure that was really romantic but it's not like you've built a house for Nessie," retorted Alice,having barely glanced away from her magazines.
Wrapped in Jake's arms on the living room couch, Ness could feel him beginning to tense up and moved to intervene. The look in Jake's eyes stopped her short. He seemed almost determined to handle this himself and with most of the family off hunting for the night,this was his only chance. "Alice," he began evenly, "I know this wedding is like a dream come true for you and your sisters but I need you to understand something." Annoyed at having her attention torn from her magazines, Alice sighed. "What is it Jacob?" she asked with the slightest hint of exasperation. With his temper beginning to rise Jake continued, "I appreciate all the work you've been doing but this is Ness's big day. She and I are the ones getting married." Glaring at the man who was nearly twice her size Alice replied, "I know that Jacob," just a little icily. "Well I really think Ness and I should plan our own wedding," added Jake as firmly as he could manage without leaving the couch.
"You wouldn't know the first thing about planning a wedding Jacob. Trust me, I've done this at least six times," said Alice as she folded her arms across her chest and made to leave the room. Jake stood up quite abruptly, desperate to get his point across, and blurted out "I've been dreaming of this day for six years!" As Alice turned to face him he continued, "I've gone over what I want to say to her under an archway of wildflowers for every night since the one I imprinted on her. I've pictured her hair glowing in the warmth of the sunset as I promise her my life, my love." Alice placed her hands at her sides as she admitted she hadn't known how Jake felt. She was, however, still quite reluctant to give up on what she felt was a great idea and insisted Jake could "do all of those things somewhere else just as easily as he could in Forks." This seemed to genuinely upset Jake. He appeared to be physically holding himself together as he spoke in a stern voice that seemed out of place in his mouth. "No. No, I can't. Ness and I are getting married in La Push and that's final."
Alice, more angry now at the thought of her wedding prowess being challenged than by anything Jacob was actually saying, burst into a fit of rage. "What makes you think you can just prance in here making all kinds of demands about a wedding? Its sweet and all that you're imprinted and wolfishly in love or whatever but you are still a guy and know absolutely nothing about all of the details that go into planning an event this huge! Sunset and flowers don't make a wedding Jacob! And La Push? Seriously? How will any of the wedding guests be able to attend if the ceremony is in La Push? You might be "alpha of the pack" or whatever but you and I both know the tribe won't stand for vampires in their territory," laughed Alice mercilessly. "You're absolutely right Alice," Jake responded, his voice now completely drowning out the television program he and Ness had been watching. "You and the rest of the Cullens have been welcomed as family since I imprinted on Ness but none of your vampire friends will ever be welcome on Quileute land. Luckily for Ness and I, none of our friends are vampires. We want our wedding guests to be people we actually care about, our friends from college, the friends we both grew up with, not the assorted blood-suckers you all have gotten chummy with over the last century or so," Jake finished with a bit of a growl.
At this point, Ness could stand by no longer. The others would be home soon and she knew she had to diffuse the tension before her whole family became involved and everything got out of hand. Touching her hands to Jake's face, Nessie showed him a vision of her compromise while sending a pleading look to her aunt Alice. "Aunty," she began to ask in her best placating baby voice, "what if we had the ceremony in La Push and then the reception wherever you wanted? We could even do it here like mom and dad's wedding. Wouldn't that be just so romantic?" Alice simply said "I suppose," as she started to realize how silly she'd been. "It might be nice for a little change of scenery between the ceremony and reception," she began to concede as she recognized the possibilities having two locations offered her in terms of decorating schemes.
"What about you Jake, can you live with that?" Ness asked as she removed her hand from his face and looked into his brown eyes. "Of course Ness," he answered, "as long as your aunt agrees to give you and I the final word in all wedding decisions from here on out." Alice conceded while rolling her eyes, "You hereby have all veto power, go to town," she promised as she raised one hand into the air palm forward and adding a little curtsey by way of apology. "Great," Jake responded with a hint of sarcasm, "thanks for the green light and the red paint." With that all things went back to normal for the next two weeks, or as normal as a house full of vampires planning a wedding can be, with daily dress fittings, cake tastings, and wedding band rehearsals to contend with.
As it was, it hadn't taken long before Ness had reached her limit as well on one particular morning some 15 days later when she reluctantly sent an S.O.S. text to Jake at 10:45 am. She hadn't wanted to wake him. He'd spent most of the night patrolling the northern border of the Quileute territory searching for a nomad whose scent had been picked up by the pack a night ago, but she really had no choice. After being roused at the crack of dawn to test out another hairstyle idea and then forced to sit through seven combinations of lipstick, blush, and eye shadow, she just couldn't take it any longer. In the few minutes it took Ness to distract Rosalie and Alice and wipe off her face Jake was there practically growling like the wolf he'd just morphed from. Stalking right towards Alice, Jake spoke in the coldest voice Ness had ever heard him use, "Enough is enough Alice!"
After hearing his voice echo through the little cottage Jacob mastered his anger just enough to begin to add a "please" but it was already too late. Jasper had heard Jake yell at his wife and was at the cottage in a flash, ready for a fight. Southern sensibilities wouldn't let Jasper allow any man to raise his voice to a woman, let alone his own wife, especially not when that voice belonged to a wolf whose temper might cause an accident that couldn't be taken back. Before Jacob could even notice what was happening Jasper had yanked him back through the front door of the cottage and thrown him twenty feet away towards the tree line. Taken by surprise Jake still managed to phase back into his giant wolf form before the first of his hairs had even touched the wood. That, however, meant that his impact shattered not just the tree he hit but toppled over those nearest him as well. The resulting crash sounded throughout the woods as did Jakes painful whimpers.
Ness flew to his side immediately, assessing his pulse and checking for broken bones. As she called for Carlisle's aid, she attempted to calm her fiancé down and back into his human form by showing him happy images from her own memories. Finally Jake was himself again and Carlisle was able to set to work on him. Though the damage hadn't been serious, the accelerated healing all of the wolves exhibited always made Carlisle's work rather difficult. As a doctor he hated the pain it caused his wolf patients to re-break and set their bones properly whenever they were so injured in the task of defending their people against unfriendly vampires. He typically felt a tad guilty about the whole predicament but knew that his job had to be done quickly and as such he worked on Jacob, whom he now deemed as family, with a speed he sometimes forgot he had.
Nessie, however, didn't stick around to hold Jacob's hand. Instead she rounded on Jasper, Alice and even Rosalie (who hadn't moved an inch since Jacob burst through the door), eyeing them each like a cat on the hunt. Ness sputtered trying to find the words through all of her anger. "W...Wh...What...What were you thinking Jasper!? And Alice why couldn't you see this was coming!? All of this is your fault! I'm so tired of all of you always butting in,thinking you can just take over my wedding! And you Jasper, always trying to diffuse the tension! It's not going to work now! Nobody asked you to get in the middle and Jake wasn't going to hurt Alice, he is perfectly capable of controlling himself! I'm just so sick of all of you throwing yourselves into the middle of everything..." Finally at a loss for words her tirade ended and Ness returned to Jake's side, gently lifting him from Carlisle's administrations. After carefully carrying him to her car and placing him inside she drove off to Billy's house but not before warning the others to not bother following her.
End of chapter one