CHAPTER ONE: Pocahontas Girl

-December 2008-

When it snows, drink.

Leah Clearwater thought it was the unofficial motto of both her people and the citizens of Hungry Horse, Montana. Though given the extremely inebriated state of the two dozen patrons of the Gold Fever Saloon, it was ever more clear that the white people of the tiny, frozen hellscape of a town on the edge of Glacier National Park could drink her people under the table. Leah herself was just drunk enough, because it was damn hard to get really drunk when your body temperature burns off alcohol almost as fast as you can swallow it, to consider another motto for the town - The Horses May Be Hungry But The People Are Thirsty. She snickered at her own joke and glanced around the room. She was there for two reasons: one, because her motel room smelled like stale pot and maybe had the debris from a hastily abandoned meth lab in the bathroom and two, because she was bored while she waited for the only mechanic in town to put a new carburetor in her car. How she was going to pay for said carburetor and still eat on her trip was something she was trying not to think about at the moment. Or possibly she was searching for answers in the bottom of beer bottles. It was a dangerous equation but she'd stopped caring hours ago. Alcohol did that to a person, even a wolf-ish person.

She leaned forward and motioned to the tatted up bartender. "How much do I owe you?"

"Nada, sugar," he said, gesturing into the crowd, "J.R. is picking up your tab."

Leah narrowed her eyes and followed his thumb. "Who is J.R.?" she asked, wanting to politely decline his offer out of distaste for the strings that were no doubt attached.

The bartender pointed more specifically at the barstool next to her. "Him. And don't worry, he's only just sat down there."

J.R. took the introduction as permission to cop a feel.

And Leah suddenly remembered him. It was not the first feel he had copped. The first had been when she played pool with two other women and he "bumped" against her ass with his hand. He really was rather lucky she hadn't punched him then.

"So much for politely declining," she muttered under her breath.

"What's that, sweetheart?" he said, blatantly reaching across her for the bowl of pretzels but really meaning to brush against her chest.

She leaned in to him, her fingers tight around a nearly empty bottle of beer, letting him get that eager puppy dog look. "I swear to God, if you touch my boob or my ass one more time I will shove this bottle so far up your ass that you will taste beer in your mouth."

"Oh, feisty," he laughed, leaning against the bar beside her. He'd been there, and drinking, as long as she had and it showed in his bloodshot eyes and slurred words. She was honestly a little surprised he had the coordination to touch her boob on the first try. "Now, honey, I saw you dancing and I'm paying your tab so the least you could do is give me one dance."

"Listen, buddy, I wasn't dancing. You have me confused with…"

"Nobody else here looks like you, sweetheart."

She closed her eyes and took a breath, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he did not mean her skin color even though he probably did. She just continued on with what she had been about to say. "...someone else. I don't need you to pay tab, I don't want you to pay my tab. I do not want to dance with you. I want to stop touching me. Please."

"You don't have to be a bitch about it," he snapped, reaching out to grab her butt again. "All you native Pocahontas girls need us friendly white boys to pay your bar tabs."

She twisted his arm the wrong way, ready to smash his face against the pockmarked bar. She was only vaguely aware of the familiar feeling of being about to phase coming over her. She only wanted to hurt him.

And then there was someone between them, pushing her backward and away from J.R.

"How 'bout you leave my girl alone?" J.R. shouted indignantly.

Leah started to protest being called anyone's girl but then she took a breath and froze. Either she was incredibly, hallucinatingly drunk or there really was a vampire standing between her and Handsy McHandsy.

"She didn't say she was your girl," J.R. retorted with alcohol-enhanced boldness.

"You wouldn't have believed her."

It wasn't just any vampire standing between her and the idiot. It was Jasper Hale. Leah shook her head to try and clear it. The vampire was turning out to be far more distracting than her over eager admirer.

"Hey, sweetheart," J.R. shouted, obviously having tried to get her attention before and failing. "I said, are you this white boy's girl or do I need to put him in his place for you?"

A laugh bubbled out of her. "Yeah, as amusing as that would be to see, you better just be on your way. I'd hate to see your pretty face messed up." She made the threat carefully but happily.

"Leah." The warning was clear in Jasper's voice. "Just leave it. He's walking away. So should we."

"Oh, am I walking away?" J.R. said with a derisive snort. "I don't think so, buddy. You out to learn some manners and let your cute Pocahontas girl speak for herself. Girls like her have rights like that now."

It was too much. She couldn't let it stand, and she lunged at him. She meant to do him harm. She was too drunk to recognize the beginnings of a phase in her body. And then, suddenly, she felt a calm so deep she staggered. Staggered right into Jasper, who picked her up and held her as she slumped against his chest. "I guess I got here too late," he said, to the man now backing away and the rest of the people watching in the bar. "I better get her home and to bed."

Leah felt entirely powerless to do anything about it. And she found she didn't mind the feeling, so she went to sleep despite the tugging call of her subconscious to fight.

Leah woke up with a start when a shaft of blinding light landed on her face. She swore into her pillow and then froze when she realized the pillow did not smell like pot. It should have smelled like pot, as awful as that was. This pillow was soft, expensive, clean. Sitting up slowly, she thought back over the events of the night as she looked around the much better appointed room. "What the hell…" she murmured, trailing off as she wondered if she went home with an asshole who called her Pocahontas or a vampire she was biologically tuned to kill.

"So you are alive," an amused voice said from nearby.

Jasper.

She blinked and focused on him. "What time is it? Where am I? Why did I go with you?"

He chuckled and held up his hand. "One question at a time."

"Answer them one at a time, then," she muttered, happy to note she had been sleeping in her jeans and flannel shirt, with only her boots gone, and that there was no drool dried on her face - she wasn't exactly the neatest when she was drunk. "You have perfect recall, don't you?"

He allowed that with a shrug. "It's 5:30."

"5:30 p.m.!" she yelped in dismay. "Please tell me it's only one day after the saloon. And what the hell was that light? Shouldn't it be dark?"

"It is dark. The lights were headlights from an eighteen-wheeler. This cabin, it being where you are, is unfortunately close to a bend in the highway. You came with me because I manipulated your emotions before you could phase on a gentleman in a place called Gold Fever Saloon." He leaned back in the rocking chair he sat in and folded his hands over his stomach. "Any of that ring a bell, Clearwater?"

She snorted at the memory of the so-called gentleman. "Yeah, Hale, it does."

"Whitlock."

"Huh?" She realized it didn't sound very intelligent but it got the point across.

"Hale is Rosalie's last name. We pretended to be siblings. Your father's name was Clearwater, my father's name was Whitlock."

His face showed no emotion as he said all that and she wished, a little bit, that she had listened to Seth a bit more often when it came to the Cullen family. And then she decided it was better that she hadn't because she hadn't cared and still wasn't sure why she would. "Well… thanks," she yawned. "You know, for not letting me phase there. How did you know I was there, though?"

"I didn't, not until I walked in."

"My head hurts," she groaned, "can't you just pretend I asked why you, being what you are, walked into a saloon in a tiny ass town in the middle of nowhere?"

Jasper got up and retrieved her boots from the mat near the door. "There's a diner nearby, get ready and we'll go so you can eat and feel better."

Leah blinked, trying to understand what in the world is happening. "Right, of course," she said, taking her boots because she really was in need of food, greasy diner food that would fill her belly and help cure her hangover. "Of course a vampire should answer a question about being in a bar with an invitation to a diner. I'm only going because I'm hungry, not because this makes sense. You are paying, right? Because I may have spent all the money in my wallet at said bar."

"I'll pay," he agreed, "and I'll even order and let you eat it."

She hadn't heard a plan that good in days so she yanked on her boots and followed his directions to the bathroom where she used the meth-free toilet and washed her face.

There weren't many people in the diner and she let him pick the booth closest to the door. His eyes weren't the creepy golden color Edward liked to show off but they weren't black either, so she figured it was better safe than sorry. If he could keep her from phasing, she could keep him from snacking. It helped that her body temperature was high and no normal human would want to sit next to door that might open and immediately freeze his food. They didn't talk until she ordered a double cheeseburger and fries and he ordered the same, because she decided she probably wanted two.

"I can't believe you knocked me out with some creepy vampire skills," she said, inhaling the scent of the more or less burned coffee in her cracked white cup.

Jasper shrugged, turning his own cup in his hands. "I'm the only vampire with those skills and, more importantly, you were going to phase…"

"He called me Pocahontas," she interrupted with a scowl.

"I heard. And I'd have let you punch him for it. Just punch him."

She smiled in satisfaction at that. "Well, I guess it's a good thing you stopped me before I did more than that."

"You're welcome," he chuckled, despite not having actually been thanked.

Leah sat back when the waitress brought their plates and didn't speak again until she had chewed and swallowed a mouthful of double cheeseburger. "So… what were you doing in a saloon last night? Taking up drinking?"

He shook his head and picked up a French fry for looks. "No, not that. I actually needed gas for my car and, you may have been too drunk to notice, but that place is actually called Gold Fever Saloon and Gas."

She snorted around her burger. "I had not realized that. Did you get your gas?"

"No. I got drunk wolf girl instead."

She flung a French fry at him. "Jackass."

"Guilty," he grinned. "In any case, I don't have anywhere particular to be so it doesn't matter."

Leah had heard, without a real desire to hear it though that did not matter to her little brother, that Jasper had left the Cullen family and was on his own. There was, according to Seth, a little worry that he would give up the animal diet though Alice had promised to keep her creepy vampire skill eye on him. "Right. I did hear that you're flying solo now," she said, trying to make polite conversation. "Troubles at home?"

Jasper blew out a breath. "General feeling of not quite belonging despite everyone assuring you that you do."

She raised her coffee cup, a little surprised when he did the same and touched his to hers. "I do know that feeling, though the pack was probably a little less intense about it than the Cullens."

"Probably," he agreed. "Is that why you're in Hungry Horse? Running far, far away?"

A noncommittal noise was her answer. "I'm on a road trip, studying my people. Not just the Quileutes, before you ask, and our tiny patch of land. Native people, my people."

"The Dakotas?" he guessed, given the direction from La Push to Hungry Horse and beyond. "Little Bighorn and the Badlands?"

"Eventually, and sort of. I'm going to all the famous places. My dad told me stories about all the great chiefs… Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, Red Cloud, Cochise, Tecumseh, Geronimo…"

"Geronimo wasn't a chief. He told me he didn't want to be a chief."

Leah blinked at the second thing he said. "He told me he didn't want to be a chief. Me. Like… Geronimo told you that he didn't want to be a chief?"

Jasper nodded. "Yeah. That's what he told me."

Trying desperately to remember what Seth had babbled to her about Jasper Hale's history, she tried to comprehend how this could be that he talked to Geronimo. Geronimo had been her father's favorite warrior, his hero. But she had zoned out when Seth talked, and she would apologize for it next time she talked to him. Probably. As long as she didn't have to explain why she was apologizing. It might work better to just listen next time he talked.

He leaned forward on his elbows, pushing his plate toward her. "I was a vampire then, obviously. The coven I was in then fought for territory across the southwest. Geronimo and his warriors left a lot of newly dead and dying behind them. My coven leader, a woman named Maria, didn't like to lose and Geronimo knew what we were so Maria sent me to work out a deal with him… we got the ones he left behind, with the heads up of where he was going, in exchange for us not going after him and his warriors."

It was not often that Leah Clearwater forgot about food but she had forgot about food entirely. "You're making that up," she blurted out.

"I'm not," he replied with a shrug, "but I can't prove it so believe me or don't."

She wanted to believe him. She knew her father would have believed him, the vampire thing aside. It was so weird to believe him.

"The waitress is wondering, I think, why we're not eating." he murmured.

Leah took a bite without tasting it. "You knew Geronimo," she whispered with just a touch more awe than she was really comfortable with.

"We weren't friends," he clarified. "I met with him three times. That's it."

She waved a French fry at him. "Still counts as knowing."

Jasper shrugged. He wasn't particularly comfortable talking about himself, about the things he'd done for Maria. "So… where are you heading from here?"

"The Dakotas, I suppose," she sighed. "The road out of here goes that way."

"Yes, but it isn't the only road." He had an idea, one that he thought couldn't be right, but it was the best he had. She would, he suspected, turn him down but some part of his logical being was compelling him to press forward with it. Alice had told him before he left, and the few times they'd spoken since, to trust himself. Maybe this was what she meant. She couldn't have seen Leah interact with him, he would disappear with the wolf girl, but maybe she had seen something on the other side. And maybe it would be okay.

So he mustered up his courage and plowed ahead. "Will you… before you go on, go into Glacier National Park with me? I need to hunt but…"

Leah blinked in surprise. She should see the need to hunt and the fear of hunting alone in his eyes. She found herself thinking of her answer in two ways; that it was her duty as a shapeshifter to protect unsuspecting hikers and skiers from him and that she wanted to help him out of some sense of camaraderie over their shared sense of not belonging. It was weird. "You did buy me two dinners, and saved me from wolfing out last night," she said with a shrug. "I'll go with you."

Jasper nodded once in thanks and watched as she ordered two pieces of triple chocolate cake.