Jacob.
We sprint through the woods in our wolf forms, hot on the trail of of this odd scent- clearly a wolf, but defiantly not one of ours. Eager to defend our territory against any outsiders, Sam orders us to track the wolf down and either run it off, or destroy it.
"The smell's close by," Paul announces.
"The wolf is running!"Quil states.
"After it!"Sam barks in our minds and blazes forward. I follow, wordless, but curious.
"Sam,"I begin. "There aren't any packs anywhere near here that we know of. So how could this be a wolf?"
"We can't take any chances." Sam tells me, dark eyes fixed straight ahead.
Suddenly, the wind shifts and starts to blow towards us, bringing with it the scent of the intruder. We all sprint faster, the scent getting closer and closer with each second.
"It's straight ahead!" Sam barks. "No mercy!" We pounce through the brush, exploding into a clearing, teeth gnashing.
What I see surprises me.
A medium sized wolf slightly bigger than Seth shrinks back against a large oak tree, white fur matted and stained with dirt and blood, its tail between its legs, its nervous looking eyes flit between all of us, and our thoughts explode in each other's heads.
"Different eyes..."
"One green ,one blue..."
"...a female..."
"Intruder..."
"...loner?..."
"Who are you?" Sam bellows at frightened female. Her left eye is blue, her right eye is green. She doesn't reply, just shakes with fear.
"Who are you?" Sam barks once more, advancing on her.
The She-wolf, still shaking, stammers "I-I-" her eyes are wide with fright and trained on Sam.
"What pack are you from? Who is your Alpha?"
"Please, don't hurt me," She pleads with a whimper as she backs away, trying to escape, but Quil and Seth block her path. "I don't have a pack! Or an Alpha!" she shrieks.
"So you're an exile then." Leah accuses. "A loner."
"No, I've never had a pack! Never!" the She-wolf tells us, her strange eyes flitting between as we circle her.
"This is not your land. This is our territory and you are trespassing." Sam edges towards her. "Trespassers are not tolerated here." he growls in warning, ready to strike.
The female shrinks away from Sam, only to back into Quil, inciting a growl and a nip at her heels. "I didn't know, I swear! I just ran! I ran until I ended up here! I didn't mean to..."
I see her begin to become more and more panicked, her white chest heaving up and down as she hyperventilates.
"Sam..." I warn. "Go easy-"
"Don't lie!" Sam roars at her, making her whimper and shake even more. "You musthave an Alpha, even if you are an exile!"
"I'm not-I'm not..." The female stammers and I see her body shudder hard and she yelps in pain. Slowly, her wolf form falls away to reveal a malnourished, pale, naked body. She's unconscious and curled into a ball. Her body is marked with cuts and bruises. I gasp as I see the many lash marks on her back which have turned into still-healing scars that glint silver in the moonlight.
"She passed out," I mumble.
"What do we do with her now?" Seth asks innocently. "We can't just leave her here."
Sam circles around her pale, frail body, sniffing her matted black hair that's so long, it brushes her thighs. "I've never smelled any wolf like her." Sam admits. "Hell, I've never even seen a pack other than ours. At least not anywhere around here."
"We should question her when she wakes up." I offer. They all just stare at me.
"And what, keep her? Where, Jacob?" Leah spits at me. "We don't know anything about her. She could've been sent here to kill us."
"Are you kidding me?" I retort. "Do you see her? Those bruises and scars? She was scared to death!"
"Yeah," Seth agrees quietly. "She doesn't seem to be a threat to us."
Sam shakes his head. "We can't take that chance."
"Sam, be reasonable!" I plead. "She's defenseless! Obviously, she's hurt and needs help. She said she doesn't have a pack or even an Alpha."
"Impossible!" Sam interjects. "Every wolf has an Alpha and a pack, unless they've been exiled, in which case, we want nothing to do with her. We will kill her now and avoid future conflict." He lowers his great head to the girl's exposed neck, jaws opening to reveal razor sharp teeth poised to pierce her skin and crush her neck, killing her instantly.
I don't know what came over me, but before I can think about it, I've jumped on top of the unconscious She-wolf, shielding her from Sam.
"Out of the way, Jacob." Sam growls at me.
I growl right back, glaring at him. "No. She has done nothing to us. She is innocent. You will not kill her."
A savage snarl rips out from between Sam's bared teeth. "Stand down! This is an order from your Alpha!-"
"I amthe Alpha!" I shout and get right in his face. I focus hard, pushing all of my will on his until, with another snarl, he breaks eye contact and backs away.
"Fine." He concedes. "But if anything goes wrong with her-anything-Iwill deal with her the way I planned." He bounds away, out the way we came, with the others following him.
"Sam won't let this go. You'll be punished. I hope you're prepared for that." Leah throws over her shoulder at me. When the others are gone, Seth trots to my side as I hoist the girl up on my back.
"What are you gonna do, Jake?" He asks, his big eyes looking at me expectantly.
"I'm gonna help her." I tell him as I walk back the way the others went. "I'll bring her to my dad's and we'll feed her and heal her wounds. I'll find out who she is and where she's from. If she has a pack, I'll send her on her way."
"And if she doesn't?" Seth questions innocently.
I sigh heavily. "I don't know." I shake to adjust the girl on my back.
I hope I had made the right choice.
…
I trot back into my front yard just in time to see my dad open the front door and roll out into the yard in his wheelchair. "Jake, who is that?" He motions to the still girl on my back. "Is she alright?"
I lower myself to the ground and revert back to my human form and cradle the girl in my arms, deliberately avoiding looking at her bare, pale breasts.
"The pack found her." I tell him and begin explaining the whole situation to him. "She passed out. Sam wanted to kill her but…" My voice trails off.
My dad sighs. "And you wanted to help her. Alright, Jake, bring her in." He leads me into the house, holding the door open for me. "Lay her on the table. I'll get the first aid kit and see what we can do about her wounds."
I gently lay her limp body on the kitchen table just as dad comes back with a heavy duty first aid kit and rolls up next to the table and scans her body. "Poor thing's been put through the wringer." He observes with a solemn tone. "All these scars and bruises…and she's clearly malnourished. She's so thin." He studies some of the cuts that riddle her body. "These aren't that deep. They're just scrapes." He dabs at the cuts with a wet cloth, brushing her long, tangled black hair out of the way, off-handedly commenting on the length of it.
"I think she's been running for a while." I say quietly, as if not to wake her. "How did she get all these cuts and bruises?"
"I'm not sure. We'll find out when she wakes up. You said she doesn't have a pack? How is that possible?" My dad inquires as he rubs a homemade salve on her injuries, and then bandages them up.
"I don't know. Sam thinks she's lying." I watch my dad work, patching up the small cuts on her face.
Dad shakes his head. "No, I think she's telling the truth. She doesn't seem like the kind of person to lie about something like this. And you have to understand how bitter Sam has been lately."
"Bitter? About what?" I ask.
"You asserting your birth right as the true Alpha of the La Push pack. He feels like you've undermined his authority—which is true; the rest of the pack doesn't have the same respect for him anymore. That pisses him off." Dad explains. "And Sam, being the child that he is, will naturally go against any idea you put forth, even if it is the right and rational thing to do."
I blink at my father, astonished. "You don't really think that, do you dad?"
"Of course I do," He says without hesitation. "Between you and me, Sam can be a bit of an ass." Dad grins at me and I laugh.
"Yeah, yeah he is."
…