Author Notes: I know it's been a long time coming, but here is Chapter 10. I apologize for long I've made you all wait, but I am in my thesis semester of my master's degree, so time is very limited, and so is inspiration in anything other than what I have to write. For this chapter, you can thank my week-long vacation in Florida, a beautiful view of the beach from my balcony, and having to read several books that included horribly tragic romances. Like I always say, please bear with me how long my updates take to get out. I try to get them as fast as I can, but sometimes it's just not possible. Thanks to those who have stuck around, and I hope I don't disappoint you. I won't quit until the story is done though. Promise!

I knew better. I knew better.

I know better. I run so fast that I am just a pace short of toppling. I left the house barefoot, and I can feel every sharp piece of the earth jabbing the pads of my feet, but I don't care. I know that there is a possibility that Jake is following me, so I don't stop or care about my feet. I have to get away from my house, where a real part of the world is sitting: my brother. And he is harsh and cynical and doesn't believe. He's just like the part of me that I want to hate but embrace too—the part of me that could protect me from an even bigger fall. I can't escape this.

I don't know why I decide to go to my mom's, but I know I can't go back to Embry's, not unless I want to be the cause of the biggest wolf fight of the century. Besides, Embry only offered me physical comfort. I'm sure he doesn't want the full emotional burden of what it is to be with me. I'm also sure, even though he didn't act worried, that he doesn't want the confrontation with Jake.

There is always the chance that the leaches are visiting with Charlie, and I most definitely do not want to see them at my most vulnerable moment, so I go to the side of the house. I stand on my tiptoes to push my old bedroom window open. None of my mom's windows are ever locked. I guess she doesn't need the security, sleeping with the police chief and all. The window slides open with only a small sound of protest, and I climb in, shutting it quickly behind me. My room is still arranged the way that I left it, so I land on my bed once through the window.

I don't try to go any further than that. On my side, I curl up into a ball, pressing my back against the wall beneath the window. I realize that I am struggling to breathe—gasping really, and my chest hurts, and I feel winded, but I can't be winded. I'm part wolf. I don't tire easily. I hope it's not a sign of a coming onslaught of tears. I don't want to cry. I just want to breathe and think and figure this out.

What I was doing, before Seth showed up, that felt like it had worked. It felt like I had gotten through to Jacob by pushing all of those memories into his head. For a few minutes, twined on the grass, we'd felt like we were together without anyone between us. Had it been real? Or had I imagined it in the short time it had taken for my brother to arrive and shatter my haven?

I shouldn't have run away from my house. I know that. I should have stayed and made Seth leave so that I could discuss things with Jacob. But it had hurt listening to him struggle to tell Seth he had feelings for me, like I had imagined that whole episode in my yard. Seth is cynical, like me. Of course, he doesn't believe in this, in the possibility of Jacob and me. It's hard enough to convince myself that it can work.

The tears are coming. I can feel their hot, molten nastiness welling up against my eyes until they have their say and push forward. I close my eyes tight against their warmth and at least refuse to make a sound. I won't be so weak, I tell myself, and yet, I feel like I must already be giving in to defeat.

What do I want?

I make myself consider the question. Do I want to let go, to stop fighting, to surrender Jake to Renesmee? Can I live with that? Will I ever find someone else to take his place? I think of my encounter with Embry. It had just been sex, raw need and nothing else. Can I live with a relationship like that forever? If I can't, then I have to get off this bed and go back, deal with Jake face-to-face and force him to—

My bottom lip quivers, and I feel like an infant. Force him? I don't want to force him to do anything. I want him to want it.

I reach above my head, blindly, and am glad that my mother left things the way that I left them. My fingers push into the soft belly of a childhood toy: Stitch, a sock monkey. I draw him down to press him into the center of my chest. The bells my mom sewed into his arms jingle as he moves, and I wince against the sound. I don't want to alert anyone to my presence. Especially if Charlie and the leaches are home.

But then the sniffling starts. Just when I think I have my teeth clamped over the tears, my shoulders start to shake. I can feel it coming up from my gut: the wracking, wrenching sensation of the worst kind of tears. The ones that come from somewhere deep and closed-off, the kind that brings on sobbing. Not just crying, sobbing. I don't want to sob, but my best defense still lets pitiful little whines through.

I'm whining before I know it, like a wounded kitten.

How pathetic, I tell myself, but that only worsens the sensation of needing to sob, to let go and wail out loud. I realize I shouldn't have come home. Lying in my own bed, surrounded by the ignorance of my childhood, I am left with nothing to do but to compare the stark contrast between my life then and my life now. I have always known Jacob, but I only know now what it means to love someone. Even Sam wasn't like this.

That heartbreak had come at a younger age. My first love. Yes, it had been ripe, that hurt, but nothing like this. Sam and I hadn't had enough years under us to understand what this kind of feeling meant. Sam had never been my imprint, and Jacob had marked me, compounding all of my other feelings. What I feel now, for Jacob, overshadows everything. Thinking of things without him, I can only see a dark, looming shadow.

I let out a pitiful whine, and my mother, her sensitive, radar ears alert, knocks on the door only five seconds later. I curse myself and don't answer, but my door has never had a lock, and my mom lets herself in. I feel her presence hovering near the door, as if she wasn't quite sure what to expect when she entered the room and is a little frightened of what she has found.

"Leah?"

I can't answer. The whines are nothing compared to the horrible, animal wail I can feel pushing hard against the backs of my teeth. I especially can't talk to her, my own mother, who has, only a handful of night ago, it feels like, shown her acceptance and approval of Jacob's relationship with Renesmee. She is with Charlie. She is with the leaches.

I listen to the soft tread of her footfall against the carpet as she moves toward me, slow, like approaching a wounded animal.

"Leah? Leah, what in the world is going on? What are you doing here? Why—Why are you crying?"

I dig my fingers into the plush material of Stitch's back, smashing him so hard against my chest that I worry that he might rip. All of these years of his faithful companionship, and I might lose him in my anguish.

"Mom." It's an effort to address her through clenched teeth. "Not right now."

She doesn't know what to do now any more than she knew what to do with me when I was curled into the fetal position like this years ago, over Sam. She's a hovering presence, stuck between reaching out and being afraid to push my limits. Finally, her hand rests on my shoulder.

"Leah, what's wrong?"

I don't answer.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me."

I continue to bite my lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. I can't tell my mother. She has crossed to the dark side in her relationship with Charlie. She will not understand her daughter's need to constantly yearn for men who are already spoken for. Especially one that is now involved with Charlie's granddaughter. God forbid I disturb any more of the peace.

"I'm serious, Leah. What has happened? You can't stay mute forever. Is this about Sam? I thought, after all of these years, that this would—"

A hysterical laugh is bubbling up my throat while, at the same time, I am furious that she has even considered that Sam could be involved in my newfound misery. The anger from that alone finally forces me to find my voice.

"No!" I look up at her through bleary eyes. "No, this isn't about Sam. Why the hell would this be about Sam? Sam is over. Done!"

My mother recoils at the curse word that rolls off my tongue. "Leah, your language! What is wrong with you then? I can only guess if you won't tell me!"

I feel the tone of her voice against my skin. Patronizing is what it feels like. Like she's expecting that, whatever it is that I'm upset about, it's unimportant—a little girl's worries. I know it, even though she hasn't said it, and I feel myself sharpen against it, the desire to prove her wrong, to make her feel shocked or hurt or something other than mild interest. I want to break her out of her perfect Charlie Swan world.

"I'm in love with Jacob." It comes out as a hiss, a defiant declaration, just daring her to reject it.

I feel her hand freeze. She had been rubbing my shoulder in a comforting sort of way, but now her fingers dig momentarily into my shoulder.

"What?" She is disturbed by what I said, I can tell.

And I'm glad. I lift my head again and look straight at her.

"I'm in love with him."

"But, Leah—"

I see the protest all over my mom's face. She's practically saying Renesmee's name without really saying it. Maybe she has already adopted Renesmee as her own grandchild. Maybe she loves her more than me, because Renesmee comes without her problems. Her future is already predestined. There are no road bumps for her. There is nothing in her future to make her a horrible mess like me. So long as she has Jacob, and I don't.

The thought infuriates me. Things are not supposed to be that easy. Not for anyone. I would rather bear this pain forever than fall into the steps that someone else chose for me. I push myself up to sit, drag the heels of my palms across the tears on my cheeks that have managed to escape.

"What?" I demand it from her. I want her to say it.

And she does. "But Jacob is with Renesmee."

I snort loudly to show my disdain, but the hiccup that follows undercuts the venom of it. Even more reason for me to be angry. I can't even be strong now, when I need to be.

"He's been with me for a long time now too."

My mother's face pales at the news, though I think some part of her must have suspected. Surely after all of this time, someone suspected.

"Leah!" Her voice is already a plea. "You can't! You can't do that to someone else! Jacob is with Renesmee."

I grit my teeth together against her words. My own mother, taking the side of the leaches instead of considering that I might have some right to my claim in Jacob. But that will destroy her perfect world, won't it? I am not perfect. I am her flawed child always causing trouble.

"Leah, you just don't do things like that."

Her words hurt me, so I want to hurt her back. I am so hurt already, however, that I know I am digging too deep to inflict the wound. I know it is horrible before I say it, but I can't stop it. For years, the accusation has been festering, and I want someone else to feel the hurt that I feel.

"I can't want what some stupid genetic trait predestined, wrongly, for someone else, but it was okay for you and Charlie to hook up basically the day after dad died? Or were you always seeing him? It happened so nice and neat, you'd think it'd been going on for a long time, and dad barely cold in the ground. And I'm the bad one?"

I had wanted to hurt her deeply, and I see now that I have. She blanches at my accusation, and her mouth hangs open with nothing to say to defend herself. I think that I might as well have slapped her, and I almost feel guilty, until the doorbell rings. I feel bad, but I also don't want to apologize, so I jump up and storm passed my mother, who is too struck dumb to move for a few more minutes.

I don't know why I hurry to the door, except that I might run out of it before greeting anyone that stands on the other side. I swing open the door and gulp a breath of clean air after breathing the polluted toxins in the air of my childhood home—all of the accusations I had just now breathed to life.

But my air turns to lead in my lungs when I see Jacob standing on the other side.

"Leah." He breathes my name like it is air.

The resentment I had felt upon leaving my house has dissolved into nothing. Through the short conversation with my mother, I realize I have come back to my final decision: I want Jacob. If I don't fight for him, I will be left with whatever scraps I can get. Would a life I could live with someone like Embry be full and satisfying? No. Not for me. I decide, right then, that I am not going to back down again.

"I can't keep going like this, Jake."

He looks pained, lines creasing the space between his brows, but, before he can answer, my mom appears in the doorway behind me. I feel her anxiety and urgency pressing into my back. I want to shove her into the house and shut the door, care only about resolving things, once and for all, with Jake, but she opens her mouth before I can react.

"Jacob, what are you doing?" she says. "You have made a promise to Renesmee. You can't—Neither of you can—Have you even thought about this?"

Her words wound the imprint wrapped around Jacob's spine, and I can see it playing out across his face: his two sides vying for dominancy. I want both sides to know that I am here, and I'm not backing down.

"The imprint wasn't his choice. I am." I feel breath swelling inside my chest, so I say it again, "I am."

I step up to Jake and kiss him, right in front of my mother. Whatever was battling inside of him, diminishes. I feel his compliancy in the way his rigid body relaxes against mine. My mom lets out a little gasp as his hands find my face and pull me to him, rather than push me away.

There, I want to say. Right there. This is why I am telling you that he's mine. Even the imprint can't fully deny me and my rightful claim.

But I realize, when I come up for air from our kiss, that my mother was not simply reacting to our defiance. Over Jacob's shoulder, I see the three Cullen's and Charlie Swan standing in the driveway, their mouths agape.

This, I realize, in a matter of seconds, this is the moment where I will finally know. I pull back and take Jacob's hand, the hand that has the life line with me that runs far longer than the one with Renesmee. I want to show him that, but there is no time.

It's right now that he has to decide.

"Jacob." I gesture with my chin to the people standing behind him.

His body tenses again, but he turns to look. I watch his face, but it is impossible to tell how he feels. Too many emotions cross it at once.

"Jacob?" Renesmee's choked call sounds like an accusation.

I watch his fingers curl into his palms.

Edward is the first one to close his gaping mouth. Of course. He can read minds. He can read everything that has transpired in an instant. His mouth, instead, becomes a hard line across his face. But he doesn't look surprised. I study him while tears spring to Renesmee's eyes.

I wonder if, all along, he wanted something like this to happen, to finally cut Jacob Black out of his life.

Wish granted, I want to say. They should have known, shouldn't they, that wolves were never meant for vampires? Maybe Edward and I have finally reached mutual grounds. Neither of us wants Jacob to end up with his daughter.

Renesmee lets out a wail, though, and that seems to snap Edward back to his priorities.

Edward looks to Jacob.

"I think it's safe to say," he says at length, "that boundaries are reinstated. For obvious reasons, I don't want you anywhere near my daughter."

Jacob only nods. There is no objection on his lips. Is this a positive sign for me?

Edward takes Renesmee firmly by the arm and pulls her away. I don't look to see what Bella does. I don't care. I reach out and touch Jacob's arm. He doesn't look at me until they have all climbed into their car and pulled away, but he does look at me.

"I love you," I say.

I can almost see a great knot tightening in his throat, so I kiss him softly on the mouth so that I don't know for sure whether or not he can say it back. I will have to take my victories, however small, however I can get them.

"Your place," he says, his voice deep and gruff.

I nod and pull him down the drive. I think my mom is still shouting protests as we disappear into the woods.