Chapter Two

Werewolves of La Push

Well, I know a thing about contrition,

Because I got enough to spare.

And I'll be granting your permission,

'Cause you haven't got a prayer.

Well I said hey, hey hallelujah,

I'm gonna come on sing the praise.

And let the spirit come on through ya,

We got innocence for days!

-My Chemical Romance, "House of Wolves

It was probably the most terrifying day of my life. Not that there was much security in any of the other days since my friends and I made the transition to becoming wolves. It had only been a short while since I'd become a wolf, myself, but it was beginning to feel much longer. The curse-or "gift", as Sam likes to see it-was starting to become natural to me, much to my dismay. I mean, don't get me wrong, the pack is great and there are a few perks to this deal, but I find myself often wishing that I could go back to being normal and oblivious to this kind of stuff. I wondered if there would ever be a day when I could just relax and not spend my spare time hunting for red-headed leeches in the woods. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad to me if the little bitch wasn't after Bella.

That day, we'd been after the blood-sucker, Victoria. Bella had seemed down lately, so I had promised her that I'd take her cliff-diving. I never would've pegged her for a thrill-seeker, but she'd more than proven herself in the months we'd spent together. Sometimes, she even worried me a little bit. We weren't supposed to be hunting that day, but the ginger had reared her ugly head and was heading toward the mountains; Sam was certain that we'd corner her if we hurried. I just wanted the nightmare to be over, so I followed Sam, figuring that I'd catch up with Bella later. I never imagined that she'd jump without me.

The woods had been eerily quiet the further toward the mountains we'd gotten. It was the kind of quiet that suggested a natural disaster was about to strike. Sam could sense my nerves and turned his large, black head to look at me, a gesture that I think was meant to be reassuring. The woods smelled wet, the earth made pungent and the air made a little thick with moisture. We were cautious now, moving slowly through the trees rather than running to reach our destination. Wherever she was, she was close. Thunder rumbled overhead, adding to the ominous feel of the still forest. I was beginning to feel edgy and hunted for the leech more earnestly; Sam must've felt the same, because his eyes began to scan quicker and his stride opened up. I was just about to pick up the pace, myself, when I saw a flash of red hair flit across my line of sight. Both my and Sam's ears pricked up and our heads whipped in her direction of travel. If there had been any doubt of what exactly it was that moved that quickly, the sickeningly sweet scent of a bloodsucker confirmed it for us.

After her, Sam thought at me, the muscles in his haunches coiling before exploding him forward after the leech. I was right on Sam's heels in an instant, my eyes struggling to keep the red of her hair in my sights as she flashed in and out between the trees.

There was no telling how far we chased her. At some point, I began to worry that we'd lose her, but we always seemed to find her again whether by sight or scent. For a bloodsucker, she was kind of clumsy; if there was anything in her path that could possibly cling to her scent, she brushed against it, leaving a solid trail to her everywhere she went. From what Sam said, her behavior or lack of awareness was pretty unusual. According to him, the leeches were sneaky and cunning and very hard to track if they were trying to be discrete. I little tingle of suspicion rose in the back of my mind, but Sam and I ignored it for now. That was, until we got to the mountains and found that our target had completely vanished.

Sam growled with frustration, his head whipping back and forth, looking for her. I immediately set my nose to the air, sure that she'd left some sort of unwitting trail to follow. After a few moments, though, I had to admit defeat; her scent was everywhere and it was impossible to glean a lead from it. It was almost as if she'd rubbed up against every piece of foliage in this clearing. Even stepping into the tree line again did no good. My nose was beginning to burn with the icy scent and I rubbed at it with my paws, a whine escaping my throat.

Damnit, she played us! Sam snarled. It was one of the very few times I'd ever seen our pack leader lose his temper.

After my short stint of thinking that Sam was Satan incarnate, I'd come to actually really respect him. While he would've been pack leader anyway because he was the first of our generation to change, I could honestly see us voting for him to be leader if it hadn't been that way. Sam was the oldest and mature beyond his years. He'd had his time to suffer through this mysterious power with no one else to confide in but our parents and grandparents, who weren't actually going through the same thing. So, Sam had done the whole "lone wolf" thing in the most literal sense; he could appreciate having a pack now. He was patient and fair when I'm sure he didn't really want to be with us, but he also left no question as to who was the Alpha. Considering he was so young, his amount of self-control was highly impressive. Of course, that self-control had come at a heavy price. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I was more impressed by Sam's discipline or Emily's devotion. At any rate, Sam was definitely the leader that we needed and we were lucky to have him. While I'd never say something so lame out loud, I kind of wanted to be more like him when I got older.

She was jerking us around, Sam thought at me, knowing that I'd already come to the same conclusion. Clearly, this was a diversion. We need to get back to La Push. She's probably after Bella.

My heart stopped for a second. Panic was beginning to set in. We had to get back to La Push before the bloodsucker did. I would never forgive myself if anything ever happened to Bella. The idea brought on unbidden images flashing across my eyes like a waking nightmare. The image of Victoria bearing down on defenseless Bella, Victoria's sharp and grotesque fangs piercing the soft flesh of Bella's neck, Bella's beautiful brown eyes vacant and dead or-much worse-crimson and evil. Sam growled at me to get a grip.

There's no time for that! Let's go! Sam ordered. He didn't need to tell me twice.

It was as we made it back to First Beach that I heard Bella's scream. Wild-eyed, I whipped in the direction of her voice and saw her plummeting from the cliff into the water. I couldn't believe my eyes. As I began running on two human legs, having changed back before reaching civilization, my eyes quickly checked the top of the cliff for any sign of someone having pushed her in. There was no one. Surely she wouldn't have jumped, though. Surely, Bella wouldn't have been that stupid. I told her to wait for me. It wasn't like she was suicidal, so of course she would've waited for me. The second my bare feet hit sand, I was already stripping off my shirt and shorts. I could hear Sam and the others yelling after me in the distance, but I didn't stop.

A short gasp escaped me as my ankles submerged into icy water and my heart squeezed further with fear. It was so cold. There was no way Bella could swim in this for long. She would go numb. Somehow, I managed to push myself faster until I could dive into the water and swim. Up ahead, I could still see her. She was struggling to keep her head above water, but she was still doing well. I ducked my head for a minute to push myself further toward her. The waves were undulating madly in storm that had already begun. The sky looked angry and full of malice as it sent cold rain pouring down. Why the hell would she jump in this? I looked up again and was panicked when I didn't see her head anymore. I tried calling her name, but got cut off by water filling my mouth. I spat it quickly and began searching again. No good. She was nowhere to be seen. With a deep breath, I ducked under water and forced my eyes to remain open as I searched.

It took me a moment, but I eventually saw her pale outline beginning to fade away into the dark gloom of the water. With a hard kick, I swam down to her, using my long limbs to propel me along. I somehow managed to grab her wrist and jerk her towards me. Oddly, I felt a hard resistance, like something was holding her down there, but a second jerk brought her free of it and to my side. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't reacting to me, so she was clearly unconscious. Acting quickly, I brought us to the surface. When I didn't hear Bella immediately take a breath, I began to panic and swam us to shore as quickly as I could.

Once on land, I laid Bella on the sand as easily as I could in my haste before beginning to administer my very limited understanding of CPR. It was as I was pushing on her chest that I noticed the huge gash on her forehead.

"Oh, God," I remember saying. "Oh, God, Bella, come on. Breathe!"

I could hear running behind me. I didn't have to turn to tell that it was Sam.

"Oh, shit. Jacob, I have to call an ambulance," he said. I nodded to indicate that I'd heard him, but I didn't let up on pumping her to get the water out.

"Breathe!" I hissed again. "Breathe, Bella! Come on!"

It was on my sixth pump or so that I wondered if I was supposed to perform mouth-to-mouth. I knew that it was a part of CPR, but I didn't know how often I was supposed to do that. Absurdly, I felt my face get hot at the idea of putting my lips on Bella's. Jesus, Jacob, get a grip! I admonished myself. Everyone knew that I was head-over-heels for Bella, probably even Bella, but now was not the time to be worrying about that. It wouldn't be a kiss, it'd be blowing air into her lungs. Steeling myself, I took a breath and prepared to give her the "kiss of life" when she coughed hard and water began to spew from her mouth and nose.

"Oh, thank God!" I gasped as she began to turn herself on her side. I helped her do so, not wanting her to choke again on the water she was regurgitating. "Bella! Bella, are you okay?"

She didn't answer me for a long time. Once she had coughed up all that she could, I could hear the ambulance's sirens screaming from a relatively close distance. I kept pestering her, calling her name and trying to get her to look at me, but her eyes were all over and fluttering like crazy, almost as if she was trying to take everything in but was too exhausted to keep her eyes open for long. For some reason, that frightened me.

"Bella, answer me! Are you okay?" I asked her one more time. Finally, I got her to look at me. I remembered the image I'd envisioned of Bella's eyes vacant and dead; while not dead, her eyes were definitely vacant when she met my eyes. Her brow furrowed slightly with confusion and her lips quivered like she didn't really know what she wanted to say.

The para-medics took her away and secured her in the back of the ambulance before I could get her to say one word, but I was calmed somewhat by the fact that she had the ability to look at me and try to respond. I insisted on riding with Bella, this time remaining silent the entire ride. I took the opportunity to call Charlie and let him know what had happened, even though it terrified me to do. What if he blamed me? So far as he knows, she comes to La Push to see me. What could I tell Charlie that could possibly justify taking his one and only child to do such a dangerous activity such as cliff-diving? Much less unsupervised? Fortunately, he didn't ask for specifics over the phone. That would come later.

At the hospital, it was a blur of bodies throwing around medical jargon. I tried to keep up, but they wouldn't allow me everywhere with her and the speed at which the doctors moved made me a little dizzy. I wound up having to sit it out in the waiting room while they looked at her. It was probably the most agonizing time I'd ever spent. My mind kept torturing me, telling me that she might die, that she might have permanent brain damage and be a vegetable now. A darker part of me told myself that at least that way she wouldn't continue to endanger herself by associating with leeches. I felt a terrible pang of guilt in my heart as soon as I thought it.

When Charlie came in, I stiffened, waiting for the demanding questions of how his daughter got into that situation. Instead, he came forward and hugged me.

"Thank you," he mumbled as he hugged me, his voice thick with emotion. "You saved my daughter's life. If you hadn't been there..."

He stopped talking for a moment, not daring to finish that sentence. If I hadn't been there, she would've died. But if I had been there, she would be awake and fine right now...

"Why would she do this? Why would she jump off a cliff?" Charlie asked, searching my eyes for the answer. I could tell he didn't expect me to know the answer, but I couldn't really meet his eyes when he asked. Instead, I found my father rolling in behind him with a knowing look on his face. He must have made up a story for where I'd been and told Charlie as much truth as he could. It seemed like Dad was doing things like that a lot now. He said it was part of his duty to his tribe, but a big part of me felt like he wouldn't have gone this far if it wasn't his son on the line.

"It's a fun activity with me and my friends on the reservation, Charlie," I told him, trying to soothe his suspicions that Bella was suicidal. "She saw us cliff-diving once and she said she wanted to do it. I didn't think she'd do it alone, though..."

Charlie looked at me with utter confusion in his eyes, as if what I was telling him went against some law of nature.

"Bella's not that kind of person, Jacob," Charlie told me, as if it changed the facts of what happened. "She's not a risk-taker. She can't even walk down the stairs without a hand on the railing. Why on earth would she want to do something like..."

All at once, Charlie seemed to get a look of dawning comprehension. Ice coated my gut. Did he figure it out? Does he realize that it must somehow be my fault? That I'd been indulging her wild side for months now? The police chief's eyes narrowed into a bitter scowl.

"That damn Cullen boy," Charlie muttered darkly.

Cullen? I thought blankly for a moment. Surely the one Bella used to date. Edward, or whatever. But what did he have to do with all of this? My mind was drawing a blank until it all started to click. I had heard plenty of how broken Bella had been with the Cullens had left. Hell, half the reservation had been out looking for her when she'd gone catatonic in the woods. Sam had been the one to find her and he sometimes still mentioned how dead she looked, how the only thing she'd say was that "he's gone". Nobody saw her for months. Then she randomly came by with a couple of motorcycles for me to fix up. That was it. Adrenaline rushes were the only things keeping her from sinking right back into depression and I was the one who could help her achieve them. Immediately, I was hurt. Bella had used me to keep herself afloat. She was never interested in me, but the bikes that I could fix for her. But then, she didn't leave right after we were done with the bikes. She didn't abandon me. She tried to help me when she thought that I was getting involved in a gang with Sam and the others. She called for weeks without me answering her when I had my change and she refused to leave me alone even after I tried to shove her away. Bigger yet, she never told my secret to anyone and it didn't turn her away from me, even knowing that I was meant to hunt things like her precious bloodsuckers. Whatever Bella's original intent when she came to see me that day with a couple of junked up bikes, it was clear that she was here for more than that now.

So then why did she jump?

I began to recall the sadness still lingering in Bella's eyes, the haunted look that never really left. Was it all too much? Did she intend to try and kill herself to escape the lingering feelings of pain over the leech that had dumped her? I could feel rage begin to seep into my veins the more I thought of it, so I turned away from the idea. I couldn't make any assumptions. Maybe there was a good, totally unrelated reason behind it. I would just have to ask her when she woke up. Which she would. And she would be fine. I had to keep telling myself that.

Wouldn't it just be typical that when Bella woke up, she couldn't remember a thing? At all. Period. Seriously, I feel like we're in a really crappy episode of "Days of Our Lives".

Balancing an amnesiac Bella with searching for Victoria was a little exhausting. At the time, Sam didn't want to remind her of us and what we were and I definitely agreed with him. If I could, I'd forget all of this crap existed, too, and get a good night's sleep for the first time in several months. That, and I was secretly afraid that if she remembered what we were, she'd remember the Cullens, too. My hatred of the filthy leeches aside, they were the same Cullens who had devastated Bella and ruined her life by leaving her. I mean, I knew that they were inhuman freaks, but even I didn't think they were that cruel. Besides, who knew if Bella would even react to us the same way that she did before? At least when she found out that we were werewolves, she'd already known that vampires existed. It was no wonder she didn't freak out about us when she not only knew about the leeches but was content to date one. It was as difficult as it was before to be keeping secrets from Bella, but I was certain that this was the right thing to do.

However, Sam began to have a change of heart a few days in. It was late one evening, perhaps two in the morning, and it had actually held off on the rain tonight. We had tracked Victoria down a little ways outside of Forks and had tried chasing her back further, but she shook us and managed to get within a mile of Bella's house before we could scare her away again. With such a close call, we made sure to pass by her home in order to check up on her. Once there, we found her window wide open to let in the pleasant breeze. Of course a window wouldn't have stopped Victoria from getting in, but pre-accident Bella would have had the window shut so that she could at least have a chance of hearing someone sneak into her room. I could see the possibilities of Bella walking into the woods on her own and running into Victoria play through Sam's mind over and over. I tried to argue with him, to tell him that I would stay on Bella as long as Victoria was out there, but he forbade it. If I was constantly with Bella, that would leave other perimeters vulnerable and limit their man (or wolf) power. As much as I didn't want to admit it, he was right. A vulnerable Bella made her way harder to take care of. We couldn't always be on her to make sure she was safe.

Sam advised that we not tell Bella about her intimate relations with vampires and I also agreed. He said that her friendship with them was unnatural and dangerous and that it would be better for her if she forget that willingness to be around them. When thinking about it too much, I began to feel like Sam was asking me to lie to Bella about her past rather than omit certain truths. I tried to ignore that feeling when it reared its ugly head. It wasn't like I was taking advantage of her amnesia to brainwash her; I was just trying to instill a sense of self-preservation in Bella that seemed to be missing.

And that was how we got where we were today, with me standing before a previously-oblivious Bella in my wolf form as she struggled to grasp the impossible.

Slowly, so as not to freak her out, I backed into the tree line so that I could change back and clothe myself. I told Paul to leave some clothes back there so I could get dressed after and he swore that he would. As I shifted back into my normal self, I could hear Bella's voice still shaking and Sam's steady, calm responses. I felt a weight in my chest. What if she didn't accept this like she did before she lost her memory? What if she looked at me like a monster when I came out? I heaved a deep sigh. What was done was done and there was no undoing this. The best I could hope for was that she got her memories back and then we could return to being friends, if worse came to worst. I began to search for the clothes Paul left. I eventually found them behind a tree a few feet over. I pulled on the jeans and shirt before coming back out of the woods.

It took me a second to be able to meet Bella's eyes, but when I did, I saw relief there. She had been worried about me and she was relieved to see me safe. I couldn't help the wide grin spreading across my face. Elation flew through my system, making me feel light and giddy.

"Hey, Bells," I said a little sheepishly. "Enjoy the show?"

I was surprised further when she ducked under Embry's arm and raced toward me. I'm sure the impact hurt her more than it did me, but she never complained as she squeezed me tight. It was the first hug we'd shared since before the accident. I hugged her back just as tightly until she complained that she couldn't breathe. She backed up and craned her neck back at me, her eyes expressing confusion and vulnerability.

"It's gonna be okay," I told her. "I promise. We'll explain everything."

She nodded slowly at me, showing resolve.

"I trust you, Jake. Whatever you say is good enough for me," she replied.