A/N:

My first piece of fanfiction ever, here we go.

It's a bit of a strange story, but I hope you enjoy it.

I've changed some fundamental things.

In this world, Sam died in a fire during the training for the Newborn battle. As a team, Jacob and Leah got the pack through the rest of training and through the battle but the pack were falling apart a little, and Quil was killed by the newborns.
Then, after the battle, all of the Cullens leave Forks, and take Bella with them (willingly). Sue moves in with Charlie and the two comfort one another. Jacob goes AWOL as in the books, but when he returns he gives up pack life entirely, stops phasing, and holes himself up in his garage. So the responsibilities of Alpha end up falling to Leah.
I've significantly changed Sam and Leah's back story. I've basically invented a new one. So, that part is non-canon.
I've also added a few (annoying) new characters.

Please feel free to call me out on timeline details that I have got wrong, I'm sure there will be many.

Lastly, 'Twilight' and everything to do with 'Twilight' belongs to the author Stephenie Meyer, and definitely not to me.

Thank you to the Quileute tribe - and I feel like I should thank them on behalf of Stephenie Meyer, also - for the use of your legends and traditions and your name.

There was a time,

When I was so broken-hearted,

Love wasn't much

Of a friend of mine.

It was like this.

I was hit by a surge of fear and panic, and I knew it wasn't mine. Like a seething wave, it coursed through me. It bowled me over, and tore a million holes through my lumbering body. Some holes were in the shape of letters. They were E's and M's and Y's. Others were smiling black eyes and scarred skin, a soft body underneath me.

As I squirmed and whined on the ground, trying to regain control of myself, I saw the pack scamper towards me from the black corners of my eyes. And beneath Emily's terror, I felt these little pinpricks of dread and alarm. They must have been terrified. In the encroaching darkness they stamped and howled, but I could barely see their paws and thrashing tails. I had been completely disabled. Blinded.

Once I collected myself enough to move towards her – as fast as I could, with no word of explanation to anyone – the darkness flew away. In fact everything was brighter and clearer, almost fluorescent. It was like someone had spring cleaned my eyeballs. It was like I was on drugs. It didn't feel real.

My feet barely touched the ground. I wasn't running. I was being dragged by a flying rope and I could barely keep up.

I remember a siren wailing down my ears. In response, I put on a muscle-tearing spurt of speed. By then all I could feel of my own body was my legs pounding and my paws flying over the velvet mud below.

I suppose, because my legs were all that carried me towards her, they were all that mattered to the imprint. The rest of me had stopped. I wasn't even breathing. My lungs were expanded tight across my chest, frozen.

The unmistakable tang of smoke hooked onto my nostrils and dragged me faster. There were green hemlocks ahead of me but all I could see was the fire I knew rampaged through Emily's little red house.

She was on the end of the rope. She was pulling me towards her. Her signal was Help Sam Help Sam Help Sam.

Oh God, Emily. I loved her so much. Emily, God, Emily.

It was like this. It was like the trees and the river and the peaty mud and the salty air and everything pumped through her and flowed into me in this great, red, throbbing, wrenching circuit. It was something I had no control over. It was something which terrified me. It terrified me from the moment I learned to think about it.

My heart sailed above me. It was a heaving mess, coating the hurtling rope in thick scarlet paint. As I ran through my hot drops of blood I felt like my heart was baptising me. Like it worshipped me.

And then, when the wet red clouds began to blind me, blood piling up in my eyes, I realised it was the other way round. I was a slave to a quivering lump of gore. And it wasn't baptising me. It was hailing me with thousands of scarlet bullets. A part of me wished they were silver.

When I broke through the tree line, the signal from Emily cut out. Her panic and terror tore out of me.

I prayed: not dead.

Not dead.

Crying people were gathered around the little red house. I cursed the fire engine which was only now trundling leisurely over the grass. Someone screamed as I hurtled towards my imprint. I was moving so fast now I probably didn't look like a wolf. I was probably no more than a streaking black shadow.

I burst into the red matchbox we called a home. My huge, brutish body shattered everything in its wake. I scrambled up the stairs, and the ceiling collapsed behind me. I knocked the walls and they began to fall down too. I knew the staircase was impassable now, blocked and smothered by burning wood.

It was all coming down around me.

The whole world was falling apart.

Emily was trapped in our tiny bedroom. I nudged the hot door open with my nose and was immediately hit by an eye-watering wall of smoke. She was lying on our bed, almost like she was sleeping peacefully. Her blankets gave her away. They were low grey clouds that coiled their fingers around her wrists and ankles. I didn't let myself think about how much she'd inhaled. She was breathing, that was all that mattered.

I paused a moment, to take in the cruel scars tugging at her skin. Seeing her lie there was like looking at her after I'd clawed her apart. She was trapped then, too. She couldn't escape. She just lay, paralysed, gazing at me. I could see her teeth grinding through the flaps of her cheek: a whole invisible world made visible.

A loud, deep crack rendered the air. I knew the beam of the ceiling above the kitchen had just fallen through. We had moments. With my teeth I gathered her clothes around the nape of her neck, and picked her up, pulling her over to the window. It wasn't far to fall; Emily's house was almost a bungalow. Everything was low ceilinged. Even so, I leaned out as far as I could, my hulking form shaking to remain still as I lowered her so her feet swung only half a metre above the ground. I jerked my head forwards when I let her go, so she landed a little way from the house. As she collapsed onto the grass I felt the fresh air push its way down her throat and into her lungs.

Quickly, I recoiled through the window. The air was so hot in our little room. I felt smoke throng around me in a suffocating mass. And all the ash and smoke and heat, I sort of welcomed it. It took my oxygen away kindly, with the comforting embrace of a pillow pressed over a baby's mouth. Half-blind as I was, it was almost like being surrounded by people. Grey figures looped their ghostly arms through mine like old friends. I fell into them.

Beneath me, the floor dropped an inch. My eyes streamed. My throat stung like I'd downed a pint of crushed glass. Somewhere far away, I heard Emily cough. I hoped.

The floor was melting. The walls were blistering, eating themselves up. You know, I was happy to see the box room open. I was happy that the trap was breaking. Despite the raging pain in my lungs, a heady sense of freedom elated my chest. Emily woke. She dragged oxygen towards her, desperately. The sigh of relief I breathed cut like a swallowed knife.

Her little red house groaned. The floor dropped away again, and then the ceiling fell through and collapsed on top of me. I was held.

Between the burning timbers, the last thing I saw was the night sky.

It was as boundless as I felt. Through my smoke blanket, the stars were smiling at me.

A/N: The quote at the beginning is from the smashing Aerosmith song, 'Cryin'.'