A/N: I know this is WAY early. Explanation down below.

Thank you so much for the amazing reviews for the last chapter! You guys are awesome! Were y'all teased? :D


Chapter Nine: Renewal

With thanks to SagaDevotee for her swooning and to domysticated for her Italian translations!

"Devi dirmelo!" Bella demanded. You have to tell me!

The lone vampire was a female, her eyes burning crimson from a recent meal. "Aro vuole che tu ritorni. Ha promesso di non punirti."

"I don't care if Aro's promised not to punish me. I'm not going back there," Bella informed the most recent hunter. In Italian, she continued to elaborate. "I know you're just doing a job, or that Aro has promised you riches or a favor. You're not the only one who's come here over the years." The destruction she and Levi had feigned had been effective...but somehow, word got back to Aro about the golden-eyed vampire who lived in the Hoh forest. A vampire who had a shield.

It irritated Bella. That "Southern Gentleman," Jasper Whitlock! He'd turned stool-pigeon, she was fairly certain. If she ever ran into him again...!

The latest bounty hunter's dark blond hair scattered over the light dusting of late November snow at the northern border of the Quileute land. Bella had just come home from seeing one of her favorite movie stars, Gregory Peck, in The Big Country. The bounty hunter's scent had been prevalent in Port Angeles and Bella had enticed the stranger to follow her.

She had good instincts – she had been honing them for years, watching out for Levi...

Ruthlessly, she banished his face and the taste of his skin from the forefront of her thoughts. She needed to focus on the current intruder into her life. "You need to turn around and leave."

A rush of air brought an achingly familiar scent to her nose and Bella closed her eyes for the briefest instant to luxuriate in the smell of her beloved. She had to leave...she'd promised. But what do I do about Anya?

"Attenta! Dietro di te!"

Accordingly, Bella spun around as the light-eyed wolf with enormous paws and variegated gray fur emerged from the trees. "Wait! I'll make her go away!" she called.

As the first words she had said directly to him since her avowal of love five years, two months and four days prior, it was pathetic. He stopped, eyes wide and focused as his enormous chest expanded with his panting breaths. He still smelled like mangy, wet dog and long-time-dead turkey vulture. And she still loved him.

He let out a low, near-desperate-sounding howl that made her shiver in the best kind of way right through her center. Then he snorted as if to rid himself of a bad smell – Bella figured it was her own or Anya's vampire scent – and stalked to Bella's side, glaring down at the bounty hunter. He growled, his lips pulling back from his sharp white incisors, fur bristling all around his face and body, his tail straight and parallel to the ground.

"Go," Bella advised Anya, her focus almost entirely on Levi. "Go now."

Without a word, the stranger leapt gracefully to her feet and made a trackless retreat.

Levi's heart was pounding audibly as he stood otherwise motionless next to Bella, his body's heat emanating to surround her. She felt her eyes sting with venomous tears. "Levi..."

His own eyes were burning, their pale color almost glowing in his lupine face. A rumbling sound rolled from him as he took one long step closer to her. She swallowed – a completely involuntary emotional reaction – and lifted one hand to his muzzle. "Hey."

Shaking her hand off, he turned in a circle. It was a sight so familiar to her that it made her chest tighten in bittersweet remembrance. "You need me to turn around, Mr. Uley? Fine." Chuckling a little, she made a show of covering her eyes with her hands and turning carefully away from him. The popping, stretching and tearing sounds she would never forget were as loud to her as the crashing of a tree in a storm. Followed by the remembered noises of trousers falling to the ground and a soft grunt as he slid into them and buttoned them up.

Breath she strangely needed got stuck in her chest as she waited for him to tell her it was all right to turn around again. Thoughts of Anya and others who had been sent after her faded and there was only Levi. His devotion to his people, his love for his son, and her own welling of love for him. Seeing him up close was devastating, invigorating, joy-inducing and yet she wanted to weep. She had said goodbye... He hadn't followed and she understood. It hurt, but it was right.

"Bel -" the deep, rumbling voice choked off thickly.

With a gasp, she heard his steps crunch on the snow. "Is it safe to turn around now?" she wondered, afraid to show the depths and complications of her real feelings. The light jest of so many remembered like circumstances was safer than sobbing against his chest just now.

With a sound of dark relief, he moved behind her again, his arms wrapping around her and spinning her effortlessly. "Bella, Bella," he murmured against the top of her head. He inhaled deeply and laughed a little. His words rolled roughly from his mouth like rocks that had only been in the water a little while. "I've smelled you all over the Rez, you know. Your scent kept me from looking for you. Knowing you were nearby. I've – I've kept track of you."

She smiled against the heat of his chest. "Me, too. Oh, I've missed you..."

"Me, too. I – It was so hard, not going to find you for real."

He smelled, but it was a welcome smell and she parsed the scents of him as he held her. They seemed to rock against one another, a slow dance of renewal. "How's Joshua?"

"Good. Bella, I am so –"

Without a thought, she pulled back a little to place her fingers over his lips. "No. No regrets. He's sixteen, right? And he still needs his father. I can't –"

Levi grinned broadly before lightly biting one of her fingers. The sensation made her gasp as her entire body reacted in a completely sensual way. She shivered.

"He's on a date. Went to the movies tonight."

"Really? I was at the movies, too."

"That Gregory Peck movie?"

She laughed and allowed herself to trace his face with one hand, wondering if these few minutes would have to last her another five years. "Yeah. So he was there?" She frowned. "Wait. Levi, no. I can't be near him! I've tried so hard to stay away!"

Concern brought on his frown as he thought through the implications. "I can try to –"

She shook her head and stepped away from him. "No. I'll just –"

"Just what, Bella? Quit going to the movies? You've always liked them."

"Maybe – maybe I can just not go on date nights?"

At her strange suggestion, Levi threw back his head and laughed. A deep laugh, full and rich and heartwarming. "Are we arguing about movies and my son? I haven't clapped eyes on you in years, and this is what we're talking about?" He closed the distance between them. "I need to just, just hold you. I kept waiting for the night I would go on patrol and not find your scent," he whispered roughly. "Quil would make these obnoxious comments and I'd be sure you'd leave."

"I promised I'd patrol," she reminded him, wrapping her arms about his muscled torso and thrilling to the knowledge that he could handle a vampire embrace.

"You promised you'd be a ghost," he reminded her in his turn. He nuzzled her hair again, smelling the wind and snow and, now, his own familiar scent just beginning to assert itself. "And you have been, you know. Have you heard?"

"I – I've heard some... And I kept wishing..."

"What?"

He pressed her more tightly against himself and she trembled. She loved him so much and had missed this contact with him every hour of every day for more than five years. "Wishing you were with me to hear them, too. Wishing you might be around one of those fires so I could see you. Sometimes wishing you'd just walk far enough away from them..."

"I scented you. I did. Listening to the stories the kids were telling about the ghost of a Quileute Maiden who guards our lands."

Bella pressed herself even more closely against him. "I've heard. The wolves are legendary, too." At his snort, she leaned back to look him in the eye, but her focus drifted to his lips. "But that wasn't all I was thinking about..."

His lips tilted as she watched them before shaping themselves to say, "Oh?"

"No..."

His smile left as he inhaled in a quick, sharp way. "My son." With a twitching grimace, he unexpectedly bent to pick her up, cradling her in his arms as he might a child. She stiffened for a moment, but only because it was so strange for him to carry her like this. "I've got time before he comes home. Can I – is it okay – if we go to your place?"

She laughed lightly; he was already running to the cabin. "I've only wished you were there every night for five years, Levi. Sure I'm not asleep and dreaming?"

He stopped before a cleared section of the forest – a place where trees had been burned and not replanted. Moonlight beamed to the gentle covering of snow which reflected the light and made the clearing very bright indeed as Levi stood there. "Not unless we're dreaming together," he said, his voice oddly grim for such a whimsical thought. Bella touched his cheek and he shook his head as a dog might to get rid of a pest. "Sorry, honey –" He started walking again, but his eyes were trained on her face and she relished the focused attention he gave her. "I can still call you that, can't I?"

Warmth seemed to drift over all of her skin and under it, too. Not just where his skin met her stony flesh, but all over her body. As if his continuing evident regard was liquid pleasure, poured generously out to her. She sighed and tucked her head under his chin, ignoring the irritating scents he emanated and forcing herself to consider only the good, manly aromas of pine, earth and sweat that came from him in such a uniquely appealing combination. It overrode his other, lupine odors. "For as long as you live," she breathed against his throat.

They were still bathed in the moon's radiance when he stopped and set her on her feet. "Bella." The air was suddenly thick with implications, it seemed to her. Heavy, too, with the years that had passed without changing either of them. Their feelings were still there. His sharpened his eyes, making the gray seem almost silvery as reflected moonlight glanced off the surface of his gaze.

She rested in the still-present circle of his arms. "Levi, I didn't mean to upset you –"

"No. I just want it out there. I want to – to be clear, now. You're here and it's like a miracle or something and I'm not going to lose this chance. I have not regretted any of the time I've spent with Josh."

"I know."

His expression was still so serious as he continued, his brows drawn down darkly on his skin. "He has needed me, but he doesn't as much anymore." Surprisingly, Levi chuckled a little and his muscles relaxed as he slid his hands around to grasp hers. "He's going to movies now. He's got a thing with Ephraim's daughter. They're dating."

"Chrissy? I've seen them together," Bella chimed in with a grin. "Ah, I should have seen it coming."

Levi sobered again. "How? You've never met him. We've both made sure of that, right?" At her nod, he pushed a breath out between his lips. "So. Anyway. He's not going to need me for much longer, Bella."

Hope danced cautious fingers along her face. "Really?" It had never occurred to her that he might one day be free of what he considered his obligations.

"Really. And...I've thought about it, Bella. And ... I – I'm looking like Josh's brother, these days. Not his dad."

Bella winced, wondering what that would mean for his life and purpose. "What are you going to do?" Absently, she stepped further into his embrace to rub her face against his skin. Their hands remained clasped. "Will you stop phasing?" The idea hit her with two entirely separate slices. On the one hand, it hurt to think of him having to continue to put himself in danger as a werewolf, and the pain he had to endure each and every time he gave his body over to his inner wolf was a sacrifice for him. On the other hand, if he stopped phasing, if he lived his life out as a mortal – a human man – to stay with his son, to remain a part of his community where he was loved and highly regarded, would mean he would be lost to her. In a matter of years. Perhaps decades, but soon as she regarded such things. He would go the way of all men.

The possibilities flew through her mind, her imagination fleshing them out in two of Levi's heartbeats so that she was already sobbing harshly by the time he had given thought to her question. He released her hands and took her in his arms again. She tried to take comfort from him, knowing it might be the last time, if he opted to leave her and remain human. With a huge effort, she tilted her head back to meet his eyes, wanting to know what he was thinking.

"Bella," he whispered. "I love you. I want to be with you." He knelt before her in the snow. It immediately melted under his knees.

She gasped and stared incredulously at him. "Levi?"

"I've imprinted once, Bella. When Linda died, it almost killed me," he told her. It was something she knew already, but she had the sense that he was saying something of greater import than his prior marital history. "I never thought I'd love anyone ever again. I never knew I could, after I'd imprinted, you know? But I love you."

"Vampires...we sometimes find a mate... I've seen mated couples. I've – I've not met mine, but I can imagine how it would be for you." What was he asking her? Her mind raced over several possibilities, most of which left her feeling euphoric but sad, too. She tugged a little on his hands. "Come on, Levi... We should –"

"I want to be with you," he repeated, tugging back so that she was standing almost flush with him. His eyes were level with her breasts and part of her yearned to free her hands and press him to her. Instead, she slid her fingers from his and moved them to brush his short heavy hair. "If, if we were normal." He inhaled harshly. "If we were human, honey. If we were, I'd ask you to marry me. We'd have to wait until Josh graduates and I know he'll be all right. I can't tell him about the wolves, but he – he knows about you. It would be enough to tell him I'd be leaving to be with you," he said, his voice dropping and his arms wrapping around her hips. "It would be enough, honey. Enough to be with you. Enough for always."

"He knows about me?" She didn't know what he looked like, though they had likely shared a movie theater that evening. Didn't know his scent...but he knew about her. Her heart ached to think that Levi had shared her with his son in some way...at some point over the past several years. And she had not been able to share him with anyone. Loneliness briefly opened up a chasm within her mind and heart. A rending that was quickly patched and mended at her beloved's next words.

"Yeah. And sometimes...sometimes I see him watching me, you know?" She didn't, but she nodded because sometimes people just did that. "And it's like he's wondering if I'm all right."

She fell to the snow at that, her arms now around his shoulders. "I love you, and I hate to see you so torn. I want you to be whole, Levi."

"I am, when I'm with you." Without hesitation, he lowered his head and slid his lips cautiously over hers. "We're Protectors, Bella. Both of us. And I can continue to be one, but I can't stay where I am. I would have to – have to live away from the village. Away from...my son..." he finished on a whisper. She kissed his collarbone in silent support. "Eph and Quil will come see us like they already see you. I can hook up a generator and we can collect rainwater and use the River, like you already do."

She had to laugh quietly in the face of all his plans. "You've got this all figured out, don't you? You'll need food, sweetheart. And a kitchen and money to get all of that. I've got some, sure, but –"

He cocked one brow at her. "I can still work. You do."

"Yeah..."

He smiled a little and cupped her face in his hands as they continued to kneel in the melting snow. "So I guess what I want to know, Bella, is will you stay with me? I'd say marry me, but..."

Her breath came strangely fast at his unconventional proposal. "My kind don't generally marry, Levi. It's all right." She brushed her lips against his skin again, flicking the tip of her tongue to taste him in all his male anxiety. It was kind of sweet and so sincere and she wondered how long he had been planning this since they hadn't actually talked with one another for years. "You're really a wonderfully surprising man, Levi Uley."

"Uh, thanks. Is that a yes?" His eyes flashed with eager hope.

She answered him with her mouth and hands until his breath was a groan and his heart tried to beat right out of his powerful chest. He took that as the affirmation it was and swept her literally into his arms to continue to their destination.

When he left her cabin later, it was with a smile on his face and determination in his heart. And measurements for a Franklin stove for the cabin.

[+]

"Did you see the new book in the library?" Miss Weber asked, her cat-eye framed glasses perched precariously on her nose. "It's called To Kill a Mockingbird and it's by a Southerner named Harper Lee. I wasn't entirely sure about it, you understand, but I read it so I could let the library patrons know if they should read it, too."

Bella crossed to the New to Forks! table and picked up the plastic-wrapped library edition of the novel. The black band on the top of the front contrasted with the reddish brown on the rest of it. "Shoot all the bluejays you want if you can hit 'em. But remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird," she read from the book's back cover. "That sounds intriguing."

"Oh," Miss Weber said with vigorous nods, "it is!"

"Romance?"

"Not a lick of it. But still. If you like this sort of thing, Miss , you might want to be the first to check it out."

"Thank you," Bella said, flipping lightly through the heavy pages with her still-gloved fingers. So far, she had considered herself fairly fortunate in this regard – women wore gloves in public in some places, though this practice was diminishing, according to the television programs she had seen. Levi had managed to get a television for the cabin, which had surprised her.

. . .

"It's so expensive!" she protested just before the Winter Olympics that year. "Levi, you shouldn't have."

He had grinned with pride and amusement as he muscled the thing in through the cabin's only door. "It's a good idea, you know. We can watch the television sometimes instead of going to the theater. And we can get news, too, without going into town and buying a newspaper."

She had consented and had been privately a little giddy to be able to watch television programs from the privacy of her own home.

. . .

The 1960 Summer Olympics were going to be in Rome and the evening news was previewing the events as Bella finished reading her latest library book for the sixth time. She was waiting for Levi...as she always did. Tonight, he was moving in with her. Officially. They were going to begin their life together.

She had hopes for that evening, she really did. In preparation, she was wearing a "little black dress" because every girl should have one. Sleeveless, it was a straight sheath and fell from a squared neck to just above her knee. With it, she wore black pumps; on it, she wore a brooch crafted of burnt orange Morgan Hill poppy jasper. It was a gift from Levi to symbolize the joy she had brought to his life and the joy he hoped to bring to hers.

She told him she was already so full of joy that any more might make her combust.

She heard him as she paced restlessly about the cabin, her fingers lightly touching on different knick knacks she had acquired over the years. A bookshelf with her favorite books she had purchased, including all of Austen's canon and Jane Eyre as well as recent bestsellers like The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, From Here to Eternity (the title captured her eye) by James Jones and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The sounds of running feet met her ears...crunching leaves, low laughter.

Laughter? Feminine laughter?

Bella froze in vampiric stress. What was it? Who was out there? Had hikers found her cabin again? It had happened more often over the past couple of years, since Levi had begun bringing things to update her home. The periodic roar of the generator, an occasional spume of smoke from her chimney when Levi came to visit, the occasional set of clothes hanging up to dry outside (for as much as she loved her werewolf, his clothing did smell up the cabin when it was wet) – all of these things seemed to draw uninvited guests.

There was already a light on in the cabin. Already a bed dominating the room – Levi would need to sleep. The cabin was actually quite crowded and there was no way to vacate it as she had done back in the '40's when humans got too close. No way to pretend the armoire was gone, or the television.

"Bella, it's us," Levi called just before she was ready to bolt out the back window nearest the chimney.

Relief almost had her sagging against the door frame as she pulled the heavy wooden door open. "Hello," she called softly. She heard the heartbeats of five humans. Levi's was as familiar to her as any sound on Earth. "Annie, Theresa!"

Theresa had grown impossibly frail over the last years and Bella sighed to see her. Cancer, the physicians said. Theresa had suffered through a double mastectomy but had been left permanently weakened, it seemed. Bella flashed over to her to help her from Quil's back. The former Pack Alpha had also diminished physically since he had stopped phasing. Quil was in his sixties and almost looked it, these days; Ephraim was several years younger but also appeared to be his actual age. It was both familiar and strange to see her werewolf, her Levi standing with these men. It wasn't all that long ago that they all appeared to be about the same age, all hale and fast with strong white teeth and flashing smiles. Now, only Levi was the young-looking one of the group. He stood in pleated trousers and a white dress shirt that took her breath away. Strange that seeing him so clothed would do that to her.

She dragged her attention away from him. "Theresa, good to see you," Bella murmured. "Would you like to come inside or...?"

Quil wrapped his arms around his wife. "I don't think there'll be room for all of us in there, Bella."

Annie grinned and produced a small bouquet of home-grown flowers. "Brought these for you."

Ephraim elbowed Levi and the humans laughed. Bella smiled uncertainly. "What is it?"

"Didn't think we'd let you live in sin, now, did ya?" Ephraim asked with laughter brimming through every nuance of his voice. "We're here to see you two put together."

Levi smiled crookedly at her and ran one hand nervously over his newly-trimmed hair. "Not my idea, but... I hope you don't mind?"

Her mind captured the moment immediately. If Levi were leaving his people...if his friends were aging...who knew how often they would be gathered together in the future. "Not at all," she whispered, extending her hand to him. "I'm honored."

As the sun set to their left, Bella and Levi joined hands and, repeating after Chief Ephraim Black, promised to love one another and care for one another all the days they both lived and walked on the Earth, under the Sun and through the forest. They promised, too, to protect the land and people of the Quileute Nation and all humans within their reach.

When their promises had been made, the men clasped arms and made solemn sounds of farewell. Annie had tears in her eyes that slipped into the creases at the corners of her mouth. "Watch out for him, Bella. We'll watch out for Joshua. He's like my own son, you know."

"I've heard," Bella replied, hugging the woman lightly. That Josh and Chrissy had become very serious was something Levi had told her, of course. "I wish them all the best, you know."

Annie wiped at her wet cheeks. "I know. You've been just wonderful. And I'm so happy for you two. I really am."

"What – what did Levi tell Joshua?"

"That he was going to find you," Annie said simply.

Levi had heard them, of course, and Bella met his direct gray gaze as he turned from his friends. A wind spun in the air, making a tiny little dusty cone and bringing some fallen pine needles and light twigs with it as Levi came to take her hand. "I told him I'd never lie to him again," her beloved said softly. "I had to tell him that much of the truth, anyway."

"Oh, Levi...I never meant to come in the middle."

He smiled gently into her eyes. "I know. You didn't."

She listened to the beat of his heart as it started to speed up just a bit while they stood, motionless, lost in the moment. It wasn't until Ephraim chucked Levi's shoulder that they snapped out of it.

With a rueful chuckle, Ephraim put a hand on each of their shoulders. "I hate to say it, but it's time to go. And – and I know Levi knows it, and I know that you, Bella, have always known it but – but I don't think we can see either of you in the Village. And maybe not even Forks. Not Levi, anyway. He's not supposed to be here."

Pain shot through Bella as she nodded in silent acknowledgment. Levi was, in essence, being cast out of the society of his friends. His people. Away from his son. For her.

"I'm so sorry..."

"Don't be. I can call from a pay phone," Levi said as he pulled her next to his body.

"But –"

Levi shushed her with fingertips on her lips and she had to smile. Then, he turned to the others. "Thank you. Thank you for everything."

"And that's our cue," Ephraim quipped. "Good luck, kids."

Bella snorted and their friends laughed as they turned to go. "They parked about half a mile from here, on the trail," Levi told her as the Chief and all who were with him disappeared from view.

"So...we're alone..."

Her words charged the air around them and Levi picked her up to carry her, in true bridal tradition, across the threshold of their cabin. The bed beckoned.

"I know we can't...fully...be together," Levi murmured, his hot hands moving restlessly over her before sighing and relaxing and settling her atop him, both still completely dressed, all the way down to their shoes.

"The venom, I know," Bella said against his throat.

"I figured we'd get creative."

"Me, too."

He laughed softly, moving her up and down on his chest as he did so. "So what are we waiting for, Mrs. Uley?"

She shivered to hear the name he gave her. "Oh, my. I like that. A lot."

"So do I."

They might not be officially married, but Bella understood that had been the purpose of the impromptu ceremony. Her last name was a matter of complete indifference to her usually, but taking his was special. Proper, in her way of looking at it. Right. She sighed happily. "Thank you." And then she kissed him.

They spent the night finding out just how creative they could get about making love without actual sexual intercourse. It turned out that imagination and enthusiasm went a long way.

"But we're going to need another bed," Bella decided as the sun glinted through the curtain on her eastern window. They saw the sunshine from the mattress that now sat on the floor at a skewed angle.

Levi had no eye for the window or the broken bed-frame. She could see that his focus was entirely on her bare skin where the sun refracted tiny rainbows. "Later..." he said roughly before blocking the sunbeam with his body and trying his best to begin their first day as outcasts in the most pleasurable way possible.


A/N: I posted this early to do a little shameless (?) advertising. WKY has been nominated in five categories at the Twilight Gem Awards, Pearl Round (link on my profile), and others of my stories have also been nominated. IF you are the kind of person who likes to vote for these things, please consider going to my profile and clicking on the link to check out this Wolf-Centric Award Round.

Now, because I like to keep to my word, I am going to do my very best to have the next chapter out to you by Wednesday of next week so you don't have to wait too long between updates. Chapter Ten is going to be long and busy, but I will do my best!

Thank you all for your support of this story. I love hearing from you. :-) ~LJ