Hi guys, I've always been fascinated by Leah and this little story is my first attempt at giving her a life of her own. I like to think that it explores individuality and how hard it is to find your own when you are part of something larger and all encompassing like a supernatural wolf pack!
Rated M for lemons and a little bit of bad language. As always I do not own these characters, I just borrowed them.
LadyLetters
"No, Leah, try again," Sam was a patient teacher but I was clearly starting to test him. "It's like a soap bubble," he made an illustrative arc with his hands, "invisible but strong." I tried again, mentally blowing a bubble in my brain and moulding it to shield the innermost workings. For a moment I felt like it was working, the chatter of the others fading away into blessed silence. Bang! The fragile bubble burst as the loud noise flipped me into defensive mode, and instinct sought the connection and safety of the pack mind.
"Sorry," shouted Emily from the kitchen. She popped a sheepish head around the living room door, waving a saucepan. I glared at her before I could stop myself and she beat a hasty retreat. The shock of the sound had obliterated Sam's mental barriers too, giving me a bittersweet glimpse of his thoughts. As always I was in his mind. The only thing worse than the fact that he dumped me for my cousin is the fact that I am constantly reminded how bad he feels about the whole thing. The love he had for me, the trembling excitement of the night we lost our virginity together and the pure love that he feels for Emily keep me in constant agony. It would be so much easier if he was some sort of lothario that seduced me and dumped me. At least that way I could hate him and start the healing process. Sadly, there is no way that I could ever hate Sam.
"No problem sweetie," said Sam evenly to Emily's retreating form, recovering his composure and closing his mind off. Jacob might be the Alpha now but Sam is still the most responsible of our number. It was Sam who worked out how to put mental barriers in place to gain some privacy from the pack mind. Embry's intense humiliation at getting an erection when that school teacher brushed against him, Paul nailing some woman on a trip to Seattle, Jacob sniffing those postcards from Bella's extended honeymoon to check that she was still human and all of the thoughts and regrets that flooded him when he realised that she was; every moment of pack life was felt to some extent by everybody else. It's hard to explain, it's like the hum of telephone cables, or the murmur in a busy restaurant when you only hear the loudest laughter or the angriest words. Pack brain is black and white with the most emotional moments picked out in startling colour.
"How's Beth?" asked Sam. I knew that he was changing the subject deliberately, giving me some space to gather myself.
"Fine," I replied, a smile surfacing unexpectedly, "still desperate to join the wolf pack."
"Nobody has changed since the Cullens left," pointed out Sam, trying to allay my worst fears, that my fifteen year old sister would morph into a monster like me.
"But we've not changed back again either," I countered. He nodded in agreement. Neither Sam, Jacob nor the elders could explain why, when the threat had ostensibly been removed, that we had not returned to our usual forms. I know that it is outside my control but I would literally do anything to keep my little sister from this life. Sam smiled gently and I knew that he was sharing my peak in emotion, understanding what I was thinking without me having to put the thoughts into words.
The emotion spiked again, this time accompanied by a lump in my throat. I mean, it's the weirdest thing, as much as I want to be out of this screwed up little cult I would miss the communal brain. When we're out running in the full moon, the scent of the outdoors in my nose, the patter of pack feet beside me howling for the sheer joy of being alive it's quite simply amazing, it multiplies every sense and feeling by the number of people in the pack. Truly a double edged sword. Yet, without the cold ones living on our doorstep we were starting to fracture. Paul wants to move away, I want a life where I'm not Sam's cast off and the awkward female and Embry wants to lose his virginity without the rest of us putting pressure on him. The pack is holding together by a thread and I'm not sure that either Sam or Jacob knows what do about it.
"Emily, you're cooking!" Jacob's voice drifted in from the kitchen.
"You always seem to know when I'm cooking," exclaimed Emily, "lucky I always make extra."
"You're a good woman," said Jacob flirtatiously. He swaggered into the living room, greeting both of us with a brief hello before sinking into Sam's favourite armchair. It's December and he's wearing jeans and a checked shirt. Given our internal heat the clothes are a concession to appearing normal rather than a requirement.
"How's it going?" he asked, referring to the brain training.
"Fine," replied Sam, non-committally.
"Good," I said with a fake but enthusiastic smile.
"It's hard," said Jacob, with a sympathetic grimace, "you think that you're holding it together then something happens and it's like a dam breaking, worse then before." I smiled again and this time it was genuine. I knew exactly what he was talking about, we all suffered when that bitch Bella was breaking his heart bit by bit. "It's Christmas Eve tomorrow," he said, changing the subject, "I thought we could run."
"Great," replied Sam. "Paul's back from Seattle tomorrow so we'll all be here."
"I can't." Jacob fixed me with his gaze, demanding an explanation. "We're closing the shop early," I explained, hating myself a little bit for feeling the need to elaborate, "to go for something to eat then on to a house party."
"We'll do it later then." He turned his attention back to Sam, conversation closed as far as he was concerned.
"No can do," I said, firmly. "I'm staying at Maggie's place."
"Maggie," Jacob literally groaned, sinking deeper into Sam's chair, "if you can catch her in the shower again that would make my Christmas."
"The first time was an accident," I spluttered, flushing red at the memory of unintentionally plastering a naked image of my only real non reservation friend to the pack mind. "I was trying to keep her to myself."
"No wonder," said Jacob, his eyes gleaming, "she's a hot bit of ass. And you," he looked at me, accusation in his eyes, "you called her Margaret for months to try to make her sound like and old lady and put us off the scent."
"Is it so wrong that I want a friend just for myself?" I snapped. "Just this once?"
"No, no," said Jacob, spreading his hands wide in an attempt to defuse the situation, "I just thought that you might bring her here to meet your guys."
"Never."
"Never?"
"Never. There's no way I'm letting you bunch of horn dogs anywhere near her when she's the one person in this county that thinks I'm normal." I thought about it for a moment. "Okay, well normal-ish."
His eyes looked dangerous for a moment and I wondered whether he would use his Alpha command to make me come back for tomorrow's run. The pull of the pack mind was such that part of me did wish me that he would order me to stay. He might have, in the early days, but the influence of Sam seemed to have steadied him and he sighed, pushing his hand through his short black hair.
"We'll miss you," he said with a sigh.
"I know."
"So," he said, addressing both Sam and myself, "have you guys got your Secret Santa gifts yet?"
"Yes," said Sam, with a trace of smugness that made me feel a fraction less charitable towards him.
"No," I said, carefully trying to hide the fact that I had picked Jacob's name from the hat. It was an exercise set by Sam, a challenge for us all to buy a Christmas gift for another pack member with a maximum value of $10. This in itself isn't a problem, although in truth I was struggling to think of something for Jacob, the trick was in managing to keep it secret until Christmas day.
"Well, you don't have much time left," he said, smirking in a way that let us both know that he had already bought his present.
"You look great!" said Maggie.
"Don't sound so surprised!" I said, faux sarcastically.
"I'm not," she said, "I've just never seen you in heels before. You're a freaking amazon!" It was partially true, I was only a little shy of six feet tall in my three inch heels. Maggie was a full head shorter than me.
"It was you that helped me pick them. The jeans too." I gestured at the skinny jeans I was wearing with my new heels. I was initially reluctant to get out of my trusty baggy jeans and converse but Maggie took me on a shopping trip to Seattle and encouraged me to buy a load of clothes that I would never normally look at. She was also behind my new cropped hairdo.
"Turn around," she demanded, "let me check out your ass." Dutifully I whirled around, tensing slightly when her warm hand fondled the newly discovered curves under the denim. "Your ass is great," she sighed, "I'm so jealous." There was a slight undertone to her voice that I didn't recognise and for a moment I wondered whether her caress had gone on longer than strictly necessary. My stomach flipped, an unexpected lurch that made me grab my bottle of beer and take a swig to hide my reaction.
One of the downsides of being part of the pack is a prevalence of testosterone. I mean, I'm straight. Sam, to state the obvious, is a man. I dated other guys before I hooked up with him. Yet sometimes, just sometimes, I think that I'm starting to see other girls in the same way that the guys do. The feminine smells that my heightened sense of smell picks up, the curves and planes that make up the female form, suddenly I see, hear and smell every little thing. Mostly when I'm around Maggie. She's not an obvious beauty but there's something about her that draws me to her. We've been training for the Seattle marathon together. Just to be clear, I could easily run a marathon, even in human form, but I can't tell her that. So three times a week, on days when we are either at community college or working shifts at the store we go running. She knows that I am fitter than her so I drive her hard, pushing her further and faster every run. She just laps it up, pushing herself until her legs burn and her breath comes in great rasping gulps but never complaining. It's weird to see Maggie looking at the abs that I hate for being so manly in awe and telling me that I should be on the cover of a women's fitness magazine. All of the things that I hate about myself are things that she covets and her admiration makes me see myself in a different light, a light where I am a lithe and sensual rather than flat chested and angular, just one of the La Push boys.
"You look great too," I tell her. Her curvy form is encased in tight dark skinny jeans with leather knee boots over the top. She has strawberry blonde hair that falls in soft waves down her back and more freckles than I have ever seen on a human being. She always tells me that when I smile it's special because I do it so little but Maggie seems to have a never ending supply, an exuberance so close to the surface of her skin that she glows.
"My muffin top is nearly gone!" she exclaimed, lifting her slinky vest to show me her newly slimmed belly and waistline. She keeps her top up for a moment, admiring her midriff in the mirror of the cramped dusty staffroom above the shop. I can't tear my eyes away from the pale expanse of skin. "Come on," she said, letting the vest drop back into place and ending the moment. "Let's go party." She downed the rest of her jack and coke and slammed it onto the formica table before grabbing my hand and dragging me downstairs, out of the shop and into the cold night air.