Nessie tears through the house like the Tasmanian Devil, hair streaming out behind her. "Nahuel's coming, Nahuel's coming!"
"With guests," Rosalie spits beneath her breath as Bella scoops up her daughter. "Unfortunately."
"Aw, c'mon," Seth says, nudging her, because unlike Jake and Embry he's never really been intimidated by Rose. He gets the feeling there's something inside her that makes her spew the things she does. After all, just look at his sister. "It'll be fun. More half-vamps to go around."
She rolls her eyes, stalks off. Emmett punches him playfully in the arm. Edward steals Nessie away from his wife, hands her to Jake, who tosses her to him.
It is, in true honest fact, the last normal day of his life.
Nahuel runs a hand through his braided hair, doing something like a bow before Carlisle and Esme. Nessie rushes forward and catches him around the knees; he looks so shocked by the gesture it's a surprise he doesn't topple over.
"A pleasure," Nahuel says, Spanish accent blurring his words, then inclines his head backward as he smoothes a hand over Nessie's cheek. "And my sisters."
They are dressed like beauty queens, like royalty, while their elder brother wears nothing but dirty trousers. Nessie stares at them in awe, and Seth can see her imagining that this is what she will grow up to be.
Esme reaches out a hand to them. The smallest, whose dress curves around her tiny hips and skims the dewy ground, accepts it first, and with a winning smile that gleams against her dark skin. "Nanihi."
Nessie waves shyly. The second sister, gems at her neck reflecting more sunlight than her own skin, steps forward next, offering a slim, caramel-colored hand. "Eshe."
Leah's brow arches at the sight of the jewelry weighing her down. Seth pats her shoulder and grins. "I'll steal it for you."
"Do it," Leah dares, chuckling, as the third sister, height topped only by Nahuel, steps toward Esme.
"Magdalena," she murmurs, and Seth's eye is caught by the pearls woven into her black hair. Her gaze is dropped to Esme's kind face, but when she looks around he can see that her eyes are blue enough to drown in.
And when they meet his, he breaks ten thousand years of shapeshifter tradition and really does.
"You can't."
Seth holds Jacob's gaze without flinching. "You did."
Jake throws his hands into the air, pacing wildly through the clearing. Leah is leaning against the nearest tree with a hand over her eyes, like maybe she can block this whole thing out.
"That's different," Jacob snaps, and Seth nearly screams hypocrite. "That's— Nessie's— she's little!"
Seth's stare turns incredulous. "It's okay for you to imprint on a baby, but I can't do it to Magdalena?"
Leah growls, ripping her hand away and joining Jacob in his pacing. They look so much like his parents freaking out over a bad grade that he wants to laugh and barely holds it back. "Don't say her name!" Leah snarls.
He snorts. "Like that'll snap me out of it or some shit?"
"Dammit!" His sister pinches the bridge of her nose, and for a second, Seth finds himself thinking she doesn't look pissed— only sad. "Jake, do something!"
And that's when it hits him, right there, with Leah asking, begging, someone else to fix things, for the first time he can ever remember: his life just took a turn for the fucking worse.
"Please do not be obtuse, I know you are following me," are the first words she speaks to him. Sheepishly, Seth steps out from behind a tree, rubbing his arm in a nervous tic.
Goddamn, she's beautiful.
Her skin is the color of the coffee Leah likes to drink on the weekends; she still has pearls scattered through her hair like stars; her dress is red-carpet appropriate even as she strolls through the forest. She is his entire world and he has no idea why.
"Sorry," he says, for lack of a better introduction. Her mouth is parted faintly and she refuses to look him in the eye.
Good thing it only took that one time.
"Please be going," she says, hands fisting in the fabric at her hips. "I prefer my walks taken alone."
He shrugs. "Okay." If she wants to be alone, he'll leave her alone. She's his imprint; making her happy is his job. "If you want me to."
Wolf form is three seconds away when she raises her hand to him. "Excuse me!"
Seth turns and the moonlight is making her skin luminescent, glimmering. "Yeah?"
He is just close enough to see her throat flutter as she swallows. "I suppose… I suppose you may— walk with me. If you please."
She says it like she is queen and he peasant, barely worthy of her gaze.
Then again, that's how he feels.
A smile splits his face wide as he jogs closer. "Sure," Seth says.
And they walk.
She isn't tiny like Nanihi or slim like Eshe. Her hips sway when she walks and her breasts entice him way too much.
"How old are you?" he asks the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Their walks are becoming something that is Not Talked About in the Cullen house.
He always gets the same answer. "Too old," Magdalena sighs, and the fifth night allows him to take her hand to help her over a fallen log. "Much too old."
Seth thinks of Rose, of Leah. Of words so biting they keep away anyone who might care. "You're not too old," he tells her, and hopes to God it's what she wants to hear.
He isn't supposed to stumble upon her and Nahuel, but it's late and he's just finished patrol and he doesn't pay attention to the warning signs of too-low voices and jumping shadows. Magdalena is pacing, nightgown flowing over her long legs, and Nahuel looks so tired Seth nearly labels it weary.
"I have chosen my life, irmão," she says, fine brows narrowing. "Not my fault Father refused my request, obviamente."
Nahuel rolls his eyes, wet unbraided hair brushing his shoulders. "He is not the puppeteer of your life, minha querida. You may do as you see fit."
"You don't know him as I do!" Her voice is sharp as knives, and Seth stares at how fury transforms his imprint's face. "Eu não posso, brother, I cannot."
"Do it," Nahuel says lowly, echoing Leah's words from the day of his arrival. The dare now is just as inherent. "What can Father do? Even he must have some morals, mustn't he?"
Magdalena's next words sear through the room like fire. "You know that man doesn't."
Seth backs away from the room. He can't stand to hear another word.
"You have imprinted upon me."
The sentence shocks Seth so badly he nearly tumbles from the log he's sitting on. "What?"
She sits primly at his side, smoothing out skirts so dated he'd be willing to bet good money they came with a corset. "I have heard talk, menino lobo. Nahuel thinks it my gift, to hear secrets more clearly than other whispered words."
Oh, is what he thinks, of fucking course.
Magdalena pounces on his absent response. "So it be the truth, then? I am to you what the child is to your Alpha?"
The comparison makes him want to choke a little. "I— yeah, I, I guess. But obviously we're a little di—"
She cuts him off with a finger pressed to his lips. The contact makes his heartbeat quadruple, his blood hum the words yesyesyes. A strand of hair falls from the intricate knot she always has it wrapped in and spirals across her cheek like charcoal.
"I hear talk," Magdalena murmurs, leaning forward, and Jesus she's gorgeous I love her I love her— "that it is your duty to make me happy."
And he can't lie to her, he can't. It would break him. "Absolutely. I lo—"
"Sh."
Somehow, he senses that is the phrase that will break her, and doesn't say another word.
Silence pays off when her eyes flutter closed and she leans in closer. Her chin rests on his shoulder, warm and cold at once, and her arm wraps itself through his. His very veins are on fire, his ears pounding, because he knows no other woman in the entire world will be such a perfect fit.
Magdalena raises her head, so her lips brush his ear. Seth's stomach lurches in panic, in pleasure. "I need something," she murmurs, and he can feel the moistness from her tongue.
"Anything," he promises, and means it more than anything else he's ever said.
Her scent is making him dizzy; she presses her breasts to his arm, leans in so close her sharp, sharp teeth skim the shell of his ear.
"Kill me," she whispers, then pulls away and vanishes into the woods.
When Seth finds her, she is shaking and he cannot find a single word.
She looks up at him, arms wrapped around her knees where she sits in the damp grass, and says, "I meant it."
"No."
A frown mars her pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, perfect— "You've said you must."
Something in Seth snaps. "I can't hurt you! You're missing the point of the imprint!" He slams his hand into the tree she's sitting beneath; its leaves tremble and quake.
He feels like he's going to puke.
Magdalena regards him with a face wiped blank of emotion. "Nothing," she says, her voice cracking from the truth of it, "would make me happier."
Suddenly she is standing. The top of her head reaches his collarbone, and she trails her fingers there. Her features twist into something like wonder. Seth's heart jumps, contracts. This is the moment, he thinks, when she takes it back.
It has to be.
Ever slowly, her arms twine around his neck. The rightness of this moment blinds him so forcefully that he nearly misses the four shattered words she breathes into his skin:
"I want to die."
"I can't."
"You won't."
"Oh God, Leah—"
Suddenly he's sick again, and Leah presses a wash cloth to his neck, wringing cool water there. When he's finished, she passes him a cup of water.
Her voice is quietly steeled when she speaks again. "You're not going to."
Seth is seized with the desire, locked up here in their tiny bathroom with his big sister, to hug her as tight as he can. But he probably smells of vomit, considering how often he's been doing just that, and Leah's never liked hugs or kisses or affection and she would shrug him off and say something like Don't mention it.
So instead he rinses his mouth and slides down the wall, completely resigned to his fate.
"I'm going to," he whispers, and the sentence rings in the air for a full five seconds before Leah slaps him as hard as she can. Her breathing labored, she kneels between his thighs and looks into his eyes the way she did when they were kids and she wanted to know what he took from her room.
"You are not," Leah growls— and God help him, he almost believes her.
"You don't want this."
Magdalena looks the happiest he's ever seen her, and his breakfast badgers him for a reappearance. "I do. Oh, by the Gods, you don't— you don't know how long I've waited."
If only Seth could pretend she was talking about finding him and spending the rest of their longs lives together, instead of him going wolf and slicing her delicate-looking swan neck.
Her eyes have gone dreamy. "Nahuel made me vomit up the poison I drank, the last time. But he can't bring me back if I'm too far gone." She glances at him, then unclenches his fists and places her tiny hands inside them. The gesture is so intimate it leaves him breathless. Oh God I love you I love you I love— "Don't let them bring me back," Magdalena hisses, her fingernails digging into his palm until he smells blood. "Don't you dare."
She raises his hand to her lips and licks until the scent of blood has left his palm and is now in her mouth. "Don't you dare," she croons, like she's singing a lullaby, and Seth can tell she's dreaming of death.
He doesn't tell Jacob, or Sam. Doesn't tell Embry or Quil or Paul or Colin or Brady.
"Don't," Edward says the next day, as he's leaving after sitting in the living room for an hour straight, watching Magdalena cradle Nessie in her lap like she's the second coming.
"What?" Seth asks, and tries not to think of his heart breaking.
You do what your imprint wants.
Always.
Edward simply says, "Please don't."
He can't speak; Edward touches his shoulder gently, and he nearly jerks away. "Ask her," Edward says, a warning in his golden eyes of what can happen when you think of your one true love dying and are not completely sure about anything.
Seth blinks and Edward blurs, and is gone.
Magdalena's eyes are blazing, the color of a badly flickering candle. "You need no reason! I am your imprint, your— soul mate, I ask it of you, you must do it!"
"I need a reason," Seth says again, feeling sicker and sicker the longer he denies her. This is not how this goes. Imprints, they are supposed to fall into a wolf's arms and swear their eternal love and devotion. They are not supposed to ask for impossible favors and then leave their mates to deal with the mess afterwards.
For the first time, he channels Leah and wonders what is wrong with the half-vampires.
Magdalena paces wildly through the clearing she'd drug him to, claiming it the perfect place. For a kiss, he had allowed himself to hope for just one second. The perfect place for a declaration, a peck, a vow. Anything.
But this.
"I need this!" she all but sobs, and oh God, Seth can feel his heart breaking. But he reaches forward and grabs her shoulders, hauls her nearer. Tears shimmer in her eyes; she refuses to let them fall, to streak her skin like proof of weakness.
But isn't that what her wish is?
Head aching, some un-imprinted part of Seth's clogged mind wants to shake her. "Tell me why," he orders lowly, for the first time in months remembering that he is related to Ephraim Black through his father, related to the Alpha. "Tell me, dammit!"
For one moment, they both stand frozen, Magdalena breathing hard and for once looking him directly in the eye.
Oh thank God, Seth can see something in her giving, finally, finally.
Her tears seem to retract back into her; the voice she next uses to speak is absolute monotone. "I want to be with my baby," she whispers, and Seth can feel his heart splintering to the core.
Then, as is her habit, she turns and disappears.
The letter he finds pinned to the tree she had been curled beneath just a week ago is written on what Seth can only term parchment; the words are in ink, in beautiful script even as they kill him.
Phrases jump out at him, though he can't digest the entire thing at once. Magdalena writes of her stunning, striking daughter, of the human man who fathered her in an immortal's place. She spends a paragraph on the baby's eyes at birth, brown like Nahuel's, like fresh turned Earth, looking at me like I could be the one to save her.
He tries to add up in the years in his head, but she does her chronology strangely, jumping back and forth in time so that one moment the girl is a newborn and the next, Nessie's size. Eventually he settles on six or seven when Magdalena tells him of wanting to send her to school, to do letters and numbers and learn of the Lord. She was human enough to benefit from Him, I thought. Isn't He supposed to love everyone?
Seth's vision goes red when Magdalena's handwriting is unsteady as she describes the shaking, the writhing. Nahuel's Huilen even gave her special herbs, potions, mixtures for good health, but still she fell and shook and moaned and oh God the spasms—
The one jarring sentence is allotted its own line, free from distractions and adornments that might take away from its horror:
Joham wanted perfect, not epileptic.
And on and on and on it continues even after his heart has broken into a million little pieces that make up the shape of her name. And on and on and on and Eshe will have babies for Father, dozens, and Nanihi will be kind and loving and they will never miss me and Nahuel will not stop me and the water will take me away and I am sorry.
The lie burns Seth like acid even as he crumples to the ground.
Nahuel buries his eldest sister in the way of his people.
Nanihi and Eshe protest, at first, wanting to turn the body over to Joham, but Nahuel stands firm and even Carlisle and Esme help him hold his ground. For whatever reason the two agree with him, and somehow their authority must have seeped into the two remaining sisters' bones because they step aside that July and allow their brother to build a mound atop Magdalena's shallow grave.
Seth does not attend the funeral, but swears he can hear Nahuel singing a song in a language he can't grasp but is so purely sad that it soaks into his muscles and tendons and veins as he runs. That's all he does, now. Runs and runs and runs and runs and envisions pale skin lit by moonlight and pearls peppered through midnight hair.
Magdalena.
In all of his memories, she has such a sad face.
Two hundred years later, he visits Jacob and Nessie, the two of them finally back on the rez and so deeply comfortable with each other that they barely need words. So much and changed and everything is the same.
He lies and says he is a distant cousin of Jake's and when Nessie pats his hand he feeds her images of long nights racing through fields of corn and howling at an unforgiving sky.
The elder hobbles up to the fire one deep dark night and clears his wrinkled throat. "I have a story to tell," he says. Seth draws in the sand with his toes, scrawling cursive M's until they turn to scribbles that mean nothing.
"Listen closely," the elder warns. Seth wants him to be Billy so badly that for a moment, breath escapes him.
Nessie quivers ever so slightly as he launches into a tale of the Half Cold Ones, human enough to blend in and monster enough to just barely stand out. Jake touches her cheek, her arm, in comfort. Seth's heart burns and he realizes why he has put off visiting for so long. What was almost his, it hurts too much to see.
Sometimes, in the darkest hours of the night, he curses Magdalena and everything she is. Calls her a coward for giving up, weak for not wanting to go on. Horrible for denying him what so many wolves have wanted.
That, he knows now, is the worst and deepest kind of hate— the kind you have for someone so ingrained in your heart that ripping them away would unravel you.
He knew her, all in all, for three weeks.
Seth leaves before the elder can tell the story of the Almost Lovers. The story of a Half Cold One who drowned herself in the very river young children still play in these days, after her wolf imprint refused to take her life.
Something has changed amongst the people (they do not realize it but they see auburn hair and warm pale skin), and there is less contempt in this story— many ask why the Half Cold One was so very sad, but no one can answer. The only one with the capability is already eighty miles away, trying to run fast enough that three weeks worth of memories are swept off by the wind.
Two hundred years, and he still can't stop loving her.
This isn't love, Seth thinks one night, yet another hundred years later.
This is the worst kind of curse.