CHAPTER NINE – BIG CHANGES
Edward was running through my mind all day, no matter how much I willed myself to think of something, anything else. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had passed with my resolve strong. I was not going to talk to him. I was going to leave him alone, for both our sakes. I was better than pining after some guy, no matter how oddly good looking he was.
But if that was true, why did I feel like there was a thin string of yarn connecting the pit of my stomach to the boy in question? I swore I could feel whenever he entered the room without the need to so much as look up from my desk. I felt his presence. That feeling grew stronger every day. Even when I woke too early in the mornings, I had this feeling of loss so real I could swear he had just been there.
Of course he had, in my dreams. They had morphed from the running forest dreams to more sedate ones: Edward and I riding around in my truck or his Volvo; Edward and I laying on the floor of my bedroom, laughing at something I never could remember; Edward and I in a passionate embrace. I didn't know why these dreams had started to plague me, when a week ago I could ignore him as if he was a bug on the sole of my shoe.
In other news, I was getting sick. This stupid, temperamental Washington weather had thrown me for a loop and now I was coming down with a cold, I was certain—strep and the flu were runners up on my WebMD list of afflictions. Next was cancer. I was hot and cold and trembling all at the same time, and I was tired of it.
Thursday and Friday passed in a blur, as Jessica and Angela were anxiously preparing for the dance on Friday night. The dance I had bought a dress for, but had no intention of attending.
"Come on, Bella!" Jessica had whined. "You bought a dress! That means you have to go!"
"No, that means I bought a dress and it will look great in my closet for all of eternity," I had responded.
"But…" she tried to change tactics.
"I don't dance, and I don't attend school functions," I told her succinctly. "Conversation over."
And then there I was, in the same situation I was in last Saturday: nothing to do. Although Jake had called me to apologize about his absenteeism of late, I had let it go to voicemail. I was going to stick with my plan of attack: no friends, focus on school, get away.
I decided that despite my feeling like a balloon full of Jell-O, I should go on the hike Jake and I had planned. Why shouldn't I, after all? Maybe it was just the thing to clear my mind. I looked outside at the sun, which was threatening to make itself known through the clouds. It was only ten in the morning; I had plenty of time to get out to the trailhead I had decided on and hike for a few hours with plenty of daytime left.
Half an hour later, my bag was packed with water, some trail mix and a can of bear mace, just in case. I left a note for Charlie and loaded into my truck to head up the one-oh-one. A smile crept up my face as I drove down the almost deserted road with the windows down and the feel of the wind tugging at my hair. I knew this was what I needed: something to change up the monotony of my life: a literal change of scenery, if only for a little while, to refresh my soul.
As I climbed out of my truck at the trailhead, I checked the laces of my never-before-used hiking boots and shrugged on my little backpack. I followed the trail for about thirty minutes before the sound of a bubbling stream drew me westward. I was fairly certain I could find my way back on my own, but just in case, Charlie's extra GPS device was nestled in the front pocket of my backpack, ready for use at any time.
The air was clean and fresh, and even a little sweet as I took in a deep breath of forest air. Already, I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted that I hadn't known I was carrying. I found the stream and marked a tree with a few sticks crossed at the base to remind me where I had turned. I followed along the stream for a ways, ambled across it at a shallow point; after a while, I emerged into a beautiful clearing, a circular meadow with the earliest blooming wildflowers strewn about the area in random beauty. I could rest here, even though I wasn't tired. I could stop for a snack and take in the serenity.
Just as I had taken off my pack and hunched down to unzip it, I heard a crack of something stepping on a twig or branch in the underbrush. I was immediately on alert and moved to get the bear mace.
"You know, they say little girls shouldn't go into the woods alone," a voice from behind me said.
"Yes, did you ever hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood?" another voice said, somewhere to my right.
I whipped around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voices.
"Oh, look," a third voice said, right behind me, "a snack."
I turned around again; this time I found a body to match the voice. A tall, blonde man wearing jeans and a denim vest stood in the clearing. What was he doing here? I was pissed off that he was toying with me. Nobody toyed with me.
"Where'd you get the Canadian tuxedo, asshole?" I sneered.
"Ooh, this one's feisty," the second, high-pitched voice said from my right. Emerging out of the trees was a redheaded chick that looked even more bizarre than the first guy. A third person joined the two, another man with dark hair.
"You want to fight, bitch?" I asked, suddenly itching for a fight.
Then, out of nowhere, Edward was in the clearing with Alice and Jasper. Edward stepped in front of me, protective. Rationally, I knew he was doing me a favor, coming to my aide, but I couldn't control the anger that was spiraling out of control.
"How the hell did you get here?" I asked, my ever-present anger rising to near boiling point.
"Later," he said under his breath, not even bothering to look at me. Gah, that made me mad!
"This area is already claimed," Jasper said.
That little phrase did me in. I literally felt that my skin was on fire, my blood boiling. I couldn't seem to calm myself down! I'd never been so mad in all of my life; this anger was tearing me apart… literally. I felt my skin tear, the pain excruciating, as my vision sharpened and shifted to a higher vantage point.
What the fuck? I thought. The same thought was echoed in my head, from several different voices. Ah, shit, I've gone crazy.
All of the people in the clearing- good and bad alike- looked at me like I'd grown another head.
"What?" I'd meant to say, but it only came out as a bark.
A bark? What in the hell is going on?
Bella? A voice in my head asked. Is that you?
Of course it's me, voice in my head. Geez, you'd think that my schizophrenic personalities would know whose head they're residing in.
Bella, it's Jake. Jake's voice in my head said.
Oh, hey Jake! I thought back. How did you get in my head? Am I hallucinating? Did I even wake up this morning?
But of course, it didn't feel like I was hallucinating. Everything felt very real, bizarre as it was.
You're not hallucinating, Bells. Just hold on, we'll be there in a second.
I tuned back into the heated conversation going on around me. I took a deep breath to speak again, but coughed instead after inhaling the most sickeningly sweet smell I'd ever smelled. It was like a more horrible version of burning caramel. I whined, trying to cover my nose with my hands. Instead of my little hand, a snowy white paw came up and bopped me on the nose.
I heard footfalls like horses running, both inside my head and behind me. Apparently, the people in the clearing heard them, too, because we all turned to see what was coming. Huge wolves, three of them, came into the clearing, and without warning, jumped on my would-be attackers. I saw—both with my own eyes and in my head closer up—the carnage that was wrought.
The blonde male was a goner, as a large russet-colored wolf immediately set upon him before he could react, tearing his head from his shoulders with only his teeth. Where there should have been blood, there was none, only a sickening metallic screech like some strongman tearing a piece of steel with his hands. The other, dark-haired male was also doomed, as a pure black wolf the size of a horse grabbed him by the thigh and ripped his leg off before dispatching with his head. A smoky silver wolf was chasing after the woman, and although he got a chunk out of her side, she managed to escape into the woods and disappear.
I looked back toward the growing pile of bloodless man-limbs, lay down on my …four paws… and whined. The adrenaline from everything that had happened was wearing off, as was my anger. I didn't know what had happened, but I wasn't mad anymore, just scared. I could hear everything the voices in my head thought, but I realized now that they were coming from these huge wolves. The wolves were people: Jake and Sam and Paul. And I had hit myself with a white paw when I went to cover my nose, which meant that I was a wolf. Either I had passed out and was having the weirdest dream, or somebody needed to do some explaining… and now.
Give me a minute, Bells. Jake's voice said. I'll tell you everything, I promise.
"Need a light?" Jasper asked, slowly approaching the pack of wolves with a match.
The russet-colored wolf nodded its head, ran into the woods and came back as Jacob, pulling up his pants a little. He grabbed the match from Jasper and moved to strike it against a rock on the ground. Taking the match, he walked quickly over to the pile of body parts and touched it to a hand, which immediately caught fire and set the rest of the pile to smoldering in a matter of seconds.
"Thanks for that," Jake said to the Cullens. "But I need to know why you were here, across treaty lines."
"We've been keeping tabs on Bella," Jasper began. "Edward has, or I should say, had a special connection to her."
"What kind of connection?" Jake asked, all business.
"A mating," Alice spoke up. "I've been trying to keep tabs on her, but I could never see her properly, only her surroundings. I saw the forest, this clearing, but then everything went black. We were concerned for her safety. Obviously, something strange is afoot." She nodded towards me. "We'll go now, and leave you to sort this mess out."
Jake nodded and the Cullens departed. Edward lingered for a minute longer, taking a long, pained look at me before departing. The string I had felt toward him had transformed into a huge steel cable since I had… morphed? into this new body. His departure caused the cable to tighten and a pain to form in the center of my torso, near my heart.
"Bella," Jake said softly, approaching me slowly. I whined in response. "I want you to try to calm down. Think about something calming, like riding your bike and the feel of the wind on your face. Can you do that?"
I did as I was told, completely envisioning myself on Sadie; I got lost in the vision. I could feel the wind on my face, the whipping of my hair behind me… and suddenly, I was shrinking back to normal size. Everything hurt, and I cried out in pain. Jacob offered me a t-shirt while looking behind me. When I took the shirt, I realized why: I was naked. I quickly put on the shirt, which was more like a dress on me, glad to have something to cover up with. I tried to stand up, but winced in pain.
"Slowly, slowly, Bells," Jake cooed.
"What happened?" I asked. "Why does it feel like I've just spent ten hours on the rack?"
"I think we should head to La Push," Jake said evasively. "We all need to get some questions answered here."
"But, my truck!" I protested, knowing full well that I was in no condition to drive it.
"Shh," Jake comforted. "Paul, shift and find Bella's truck at the trailhead. Drive it back to Old Quil's house; that's where we'll be. Get my father, too."
The dark silver wolf trotted off the way I had come and was soon out of sight. Jake picked me up and carried my small form through the forest, while the black wolf—Sam—stayed close by. We arrived at Old Quil's house thirty minutes later. I still felt like I had been tortured, but the level of pain was minutely less. Jake walked in the front door with me still in his arms, not bothering to knock.
Old Quil was sitting on an old rocker, chatting with Billy, whose wheelchair was next to the older man's chair. Paul was lounging on an old, worn couch; Sam walked in not long after we did. Jacob sat me carefully on the opposite end of the couch, where I curled up as much as possible, whimpering in pain.
"Did you tell them anything?" Jacob asked Paul.
"Nope," Paul responded, "I figured you'd want to have her here before anything was said."
"You were right," Jake said to Paul before turning to the two old men. "Do either of you care to explain how Bella Swan shifted?"
"She did what?" Old Quil asked, astonished.
"She fursploded in the middle of the forest while we were on patrol," Paul offered. "Can't really blame her, when she was surrounded by vamps."
"Surrounded by whats?" I asked.
"Leeches, bloodsuckers, fangers," Paul offered up again, before clarifying: "Vampires."
It sounded like a load of crap; logic made me want to laugh at him and call him crazy, but it felt true. And hell, if I could be a wolf, what's to say that the Cullens and those creepy people that found me in the woods weren't vampires?
"Back to the more pressing subject: how can Charlie Swan's daughter, someone completely unrelated to the pack, turn into a wolf?" Jake was looking at his elders, looking for an answer that I needed as well.
"Jake," Billy began cautiously, "there are some things, that no matter how they are explained, cannot be fully understood by anybody who was not involved."
"Dad," Jake warned.
"I never knew this would happen," Billy sighed, cradling his head in his hands. "You're going to want to sit down, Jacob, and for everybody's sake, if you feel yourself losing your calm, you need to leave."
"Get to the point, Dad," Jake said through gritted teeth.
Billy sighed again. Old Quil put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Paul looked disinterested and Sam looked uncomfortable, like he shouldn't be in the room.
"First of all, let it be known that I loved your mother dearly until the day she died," Billy said. "I love her still. I am not a perfect man. I was only unfaithful to your mother once… I had gone to Charlie's to pick something up; I don't even know what it was now. Renee answered the door in only a robe. She had just gotten out of the shower. She told me Charlie had been called into the station—he was a new cop back then, fresh from training at the academy, and he was called in to man the station for someone who had called in sick.
"She seduced me; that's not to say I was an unwilling participant, or that it excuses my actions. I'm ashamed of what I did, what we did. And then a month later, Renee found out she was pregnant. She didn't know who the father was, whether the baby was Charlie's or mine. She became increasingly nervous as the pregnancy progressed. What if it came out looking like me?
"When she was eight months pregnant, she split town. Nobody heard from her for three years; Charlie was fraught with worry, and then went through a period of depression when he was served with divorce papers from a lawyer in Phoenix. Through the divorce proceedings, he found out that Renee had given birth to a daughter, Isabella Marie Swan. Swan! I thought that meant that the baby had to have been Charlie's.
"In the negotiations of the divorce, Charlie was granted partial custody, and Isabella came to stay with him for a few weeks in the summer, and then for Thanksgiving. I noticed she was a little more tan than either parent, but not by much. I attributed it to her spending most of her time in the sun in Arizona. But her eyes…" he paused his confession for a second and looked to Jacob, then to me with pain in his eyes. Jake was vibrating, his fists balled up at his sides. "You have my eyes."
"So wait a minute," I said, ignoring the pain I was in along with my undress as I stepped forward accusingly toward Billy. "You're telling me—us—that you had an affair with my mom? And that I am the result of that affair?"
"There was always a chance that you were Charlie's," Billy said. "But this… this is irrefutable proof…"
"So you're my father?" I asked, incredulously. "No, no. Charlie Swan is my dad. You're his best friend! Jacob is only six months younger than me you sick bastard! You knocked two women up at the same time?!"
I was fuming, my body humming, so alive in my rage.
"Bella," Sam said quietly, "you need to try to calm down. You don't want to shift right now, not in this living room."
"I can't control it, Sam," I whined, my anger dissipating, being replaced with fear. "Help me…"
Jake turned towards me, away from his father—my biological father—and grabbed me in a bone-shattering hug. He moved us out of the house, down the back porch steps and into the forest where I promptly fursploded, as Paul put it. I howled out my anger and sadness; Jake joined me shortly thereafter.
As he howled, his thoughts and memories flooded into my mind: his first shift, where Sam and Paul found him and told him he wasn't losing his mind. Next he showed me the history of the pack, the one I had heard before but not believed, and why they were made in the first place: to destroy the Cold Ones—Vampires. He showed me all of his memories of us playing as kids: making mud pies and fishing and that one time when Rachel and Rebecca dressed us up and had a pretend marriage ceremony.
Wow, I thought, that's pretty fucked up now that we know we're siblings.
Jake's mental voice laughed as his wolf form tried to do the same, but only ended up sounding like he was coughing.
He continued his mental rundown of more recent events: when Sam told him he was the rightful Alpha, as Ephraim Black's heir. Jake telling Sam he didn't want that responsibility and that Sam could keep the role. Finally, after another ten minutes of the mental slide show, the images slowed down.
I guess we should head back inside, Jake said reluctantly. There's some more information that we need. We didn't even know females could shift until Leah did; it's never happened before. Also, you're smaller than we are; you didn't go through a growth spurt before your shift, while the rest of us did. We've got to figure out what this means for you and Charlie and we need to work you into our patrol schedule.
Sure thing, I said. Can you do me a favor though? I think I'm going to need another shirt…
Jake shifted and walked into the house coming out with another oversized t-shirt that smelled like Paul. He left it on a branch and walked back inside, allowing me some privacy as I visualized my happy place in order to shift back into my human self. It was almost too painful for me to bear, but bear it I did, and I grabbed the t-shirt, slipping it on before I walked back into Old Quil's house.
"What do the legends say about this, Old Quil?" Jake asked as I walked in.
"There are no tales of female protectors, you know this from our discussion of Leah Clearwater," he admitted, "nor of anyone who could skin change that was not a full-blooded Quileute."
"So am I going to hit some crazy growth spurt and grow twelve inches?" I asked.
"We don't know," Billy said, looking me in the eyes. "I'm so sorry you've been brought into this, but I am not sorry that you're here. I may be your biological father, but Charlie is your dad and what we've learned doesn't change that."
I nodded my agreement. Charlie and I had grown extremely close in the past three months—he was my dad, no matter what anyone said.
"Everyone here, and the rest of the Pack, will keep this secret. No one else will know that you aren't Charlie Swan's daughter," Old Quil said authoritatively. "You will continue to live with Charlie as well as continue going to Forks High School."
"I'll call the rest of the pack for a meeting to let them get to know our newest member," Sam said.
"Can it wait 'til tomorrow?" I asked. "I'm really tired. I just want to go home and get some sleep."