Chapter Nine

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Jacob leads Bella away from everybody else; holds his breath. He doesn't want to risk killing her but he can't talk about anything in front of everyone else. He takes her hand and starts to walk away with her.

Through the trees, through the forest, into the clearing. She simply follows him; doesn't protest. Can still probably read him; knows that this is more about what he needs than what he wants. She is silent and solemn; he tries to speak as little as possible so that he smells her as little as possible. The less he gets to smell, the lower his chances are of losing control.

Monster, monster, monster.

Her hand is so warm in his and he remembers a time when hers would feel like ice. Their roles are reversed; she is now his sun. She is tiny and breakable but she is his sun and he is her moon and together they are the world.

He stops once he has reached it. He recognizes the big stone slab that he'd brought into the clearing. It is big and misshaped, with vines climbing around it artistically, like they've been there forever. Alice did a good job on those and the carvings in the stone.

Alexandra

The first and last time

I promise

Bella drops his hand and reads it; pauses. "Who's Alexandra?" she asks; she doesn't know if she wants to know or not.

Jacob freezes; doesn't want to tell her. She won't want him. She'll think he's a monster. (Can't hurt her if she's not around.) Closes his eyes and answers. "I killed her," he says quietly. "It was an accident—it wasn't supposed to happen." He would cry if he could. It's been so long. Too long. "Edward tried to stop me but… I was hungry."

Bella is silent. For the first time, she looks at him and really looks at him. She stops seeing only Jacob Black and now sees a vampire. A fearsome, bloodthirsty vampire. It doesn't matter that he sparkles in the sunlight and it doesn't matter that she's known him for so long. When stripped to his very essence, he is a vampire and he wants to kill her.

And, for the first time, she looks genuinely scared of him.

He takes her hand in his once more and she tries to jerk it out but he holds on tightly. She looks at him with scared eyes but tries to stare him down just the same; Bella will always be Bella, after all, even if Jacob will not always be Jacob.

"Jacob," she says; her voice trembles a little bit. "Why did you bring me here? What do you want?" Her voice demands an answer; her eyes beg to go painlessly.

She doesn't trust him now.

He doesn't really blame her. He wouldn't trust himself either. It still stings though; she was supposed to be the one who always made everything better; she was supposed to fix things, not break them. She was supposed to work tirelessly and endlessly to sew him back together slowly.

Instead, she's leaving him to fall apart; even taking the knife and cutting a few times herself.

It's heartbreaking, really.

"I'm better now, Bella," he insists. "I don't get so hungry now. Please trust me. It hasn't happened again once, I promise." He neglects to mention that she's the only human he's allowed himself near since then. "Bella, I just want to ask you a favour. Please. Please tell me you can do it and then I'll be gone forever. I promise."

She looks at him; his eyes plead with her. She looks troubled and uncertain but he knows what she will say. She closes her eyes; sighs and answers. "What?"

"Take care of Billy for me."

He turns and he walks away from Bella, leaving her alone in the forest.

It's a painfully familiar scene for her because her heart is breaking all over again.

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AN: There's maybe a chapter or two and an epilogue left in this one—very short story indeed. : ) It's coming to a close, which is happy and sad at the same time. Happy because I've actually managed to finish a story, but sad because… well, I've finished a story. ; ) (There's just no winning…)

Sorry for the like week-long delay in updating. My November is packed with writing because I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year, which I've mentioned before, and which takes place in the month of November. (I am currently 5k behind schedule word-count-wise… so I plan on tanking it this weekend. ; ))

Now then! I'd like to draw a quick attention to the poll in my profile: why do I have such a poll, you may ask? Well, because I felt like it, of course! : )

Thanks to: SpiritualEnergy, FashionDiva7, Nhler17 and Humanfire for the reviews! Yay you guys! : )

I own very brightly-coloured socks that I enjoy wearing more than I probably should. But. I don't own Twilight.