Chapter Eight
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"So how does something like this… happen?"
Bella is standing in front of Jacob; it's taking everything in him to not pounce (and maybe having Emmett and Jasper hold him back is helping a little bit). She smells so wonderful; he isn't used to being so close to a human for so long. Focus. Focus. He can't kill Bella.
No more Alexandras.
He holds his breath; refuses to breathe again until Bella is safe and gone. She can't tempt him if he doesn't let her. She's much too precious to let die.
"It's quite simple," Carlisle says. Jacob somehow hates the formal way that he speaks; it's unnatural. It's so perfect. But he knows that he can get used to it. "It doesn't happen very often anymore, but it's not altogether unheard of."
Jacob feels strange, standing as he is now. He feels like an animal; doesn't like being restrained. It makes him feel unsafe and wild and he just doesn't like it. He wants to be tamed, if only so that he can go and be safe around humans.
"There are two ways that a vampire can be born. There's the traditional venom method, where a human is bitten. With the venom is a person's system, their painful transformation slowly begins, right?" Carlisle says. Bella nods; her hair bounces and Jacob knows that, were he not holding his breath, he would be hit by a fresh wave of her delicious scent.
"It happens when one of his kind dies," Edward says, a little bit resentfully. Jacob gives him a dirty look. Edward flashes him a toothy grin in response; Jacob wonders (not for the first time) what Bella sees in Edward. "If their bodies aren't burned soon after death, they don't die—they become one of us."
Jacob hangs his head; shame, shame, shame. He can't even stop himself from becoming that which he hates. He can't even die properly; if he can't manage to die, what can he do? He doesn't know what will happen if he loses Bella too. He's lost his friends, his family; he can't lose his Bella, too.
She's looking at him; he refuses to meet her gaze. She's going to hate him. He knows it. She's going to turn; walk out of his life just like everybody else. She's going to laugh in his face.
She walks towards him; pauses. Puts a hand on his cheek. He's surprised that she doesn't get frost bite from his cold skin. She smiles encouragingly and Jacob feels almost okay. He feels almost warm; almost alive.
Bella always did know how to make everything better.
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AN: So. That grounding was actually much shorter than expected. : ) I totally struggled with this chapter though. I didn't know how to write it so that it wasn't too like… info-dumpy, you know? So I tried to split it up in a less info-dumpy way—hope I did an okay job. ; )
And no. I haven't forgotten what happened last chapter. We find out by the end of the story what happened, naturally. But where's the fun in just outright telling you all what they planned? : ) For the record, I think it's obvious—but that could just be because I'm writing it and have had it planned since the beginning, haha. : )
Thanks to: SpiritualEnergy for the review. : ) You know how I love them!
I own my shiny "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" DVD, which I got for my birthday! But I don't own Twilight. That belongs to Stephenie Meyer. ; )
