It seemed that my life was plagued with nightmares anymore.

I'd yielded my bed to Ren the previous night and slept a rough sleep on the couch. I'd woken up choking out Bella's name, my whole body on fire, and I'd thrown up in the bathroom again. This time, however, I'd made it to the toilet, knowing what was coming. My joints had felt worse than an 80-year-old man's, and my bones were feeling pretty brittle. I felt like I had aches and a fever and probably the flu.

I'd went to work anyway, because I couldn't stay cooped up in my house with Ren with Bella on the brain and all those secrets to swimming between us. I'd needed some time to think, to bathe my hands in oil and sink my thoughts into an engine so that I could clear my head. I'd opted to let Josh fix Ren's car, and I'd set my sights on a random one in the shop.

I didn't care whose it was, so long as it wasn't anyone I knew. I needed the indifference.

Unfortunately, it didn't do a whole lot for me. The fatigue continued, the heat as well, accompanied by sweats and a strange smell I couldn't get out of my nose. I must have looked as shitty as I felt, because it wasn't long before Josh noticed and told me to go home.

I'd looked at him for several seconds in silence, considering refusing, but, for once, Josh was right. I wasn't well enough to do my job. My consolation was that, when I got home, I could tell Ren that I was sick and go to bed without feeling guilty, because it was true.

I'd offered her a place to stay. I didn't have to entertain her with conversation every second of the day to fulfill that promise. She could have her share of my house until she figured out what was going on, and I'd do what I could for her until then. In all likelihood, the thugs following her would give up unable to follow Ren in any way to my house, and Ren would finally wise up and go home.

And then I'd no longer have to face the attraction, the annoying desire to act upon it and threaten the bachelor status I was beginning to decide to live with permanently. I didn't need anymore problems, and Ren obviously had several.

I left Ren's car in the shop and called a cab. I sat in the back on a ripped up bench seat, trying to inhale as little of the stale smoke still hovering in the car as possible. It was making my new-found sickness worse. My stomach was rolling, and I could feel sweat pearling and sliding down my spine. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it home before I lost my lunch again.

I was starting to shake by the time the cabbie pulled up my drive. Not just regular shakes, but convulses that rattled my teeth. I noticed the cabbie shooting me nervous glances in the rear-view mirror, and I could tell that he felt he couldn't get rid of me soon enough, as he didn't pull all the way up to my house before he parked to let me out.

I tossed him a few bills for the fair and didn't stick around to get my change. As he backed out of the drive, I dry-heaved at the side of my driveway. The ground beneath my feet seemed to twirl in a drunken dance. I felt my body threaten to tilt with it.

Just have to make it into the house.

It was a lot harder than usual, considering that I was shaking from head to foot, dizzy and nauseous, and not to mention unbearably hot. I tried to lick my lips, but there didn't seem to be any moisture left except the sweat running down my back.

"HELP ME!"

I stumbled to a stop, the world swaying to the side. For a split second, I saw Bella's face, heard her quiet voice mingling with Ren's. Was I hearing things now? Were my nightmares of Bella becoming that real?

I might have believed I was that desperate if I hadn't heard Ren scream. It would have frozen the blood in my veins if it hadn't already been molten hot lava. It was stupid to waste time standing there as I listened to another scream rise from the beach behind my house, thinking about how I had only been gone two hours.

Two hours, and whoever had been looking for Ren had found her in that short span of time.

I inhaled a breath, trying to calm my stomach, but something in the air stung my nostrils, and almost made me gag in reflex. This time, the smell seemed to connect with some lost memory, jarring it loose, and I was jogging toward the back of my house before I realized what it was.

My brain made the connection the same time as my body. I felt everything align so smoothly, flattening out all the wrinkles that separated me from the past, but the discovery was bitter sweet as the lava in my veins seemed to flame into licks of fire so hot I could have roasted the sun. My joints, so sore, seemed to tear apart, and I could feel—I could actually feel—my bones breaking, splitting, and reconnecting.

How could I have not known what the sickness was? I wondered, as I rounded the last corner of my house, my haven that had been discovered and soiled. How could I not remember this pain?

The man's skin was a sickly sea of diamonds, sparkling grotesquely in the sunlight. The vampires I had known had hid in shadows, and it might have been the first time I'd seen one of them lit up like a disco ball.

He had Ren by the hair—the fucking hair—and was dragging her across the beach away from my house. She was still putting up a fight, though I could see she'd been beaten around. Her alabaster skin was bruising.

The fury I felt seeing that Ren had been beaten was instantaneous. It was the spark that lit my short fuse, that reignited the gene inside of me that had gone dormant as I inhaled the disgusting, rotting smell of the dark-haired vampire on my property.

I was running through the screaming pain in every part of my body, through the throbbing in my head and the cracking of my bones. I felt it coming, as I had felt it coming a thousand times before. I could feel my body mutating, my human side receding into the heat and anger of the wolf.

Ren spotted me, howled my name as I howled hers.

My clothes tore at the seams, shredding into oblivion as I tore free of their boundaries and the boundaries of my human flesh. The dark-haired vampire spotted me then as I landed on four legs and howled Ren's name again in a tongue only I could understand.

"Jacob?"

"Jake? Hey!"

"Where the hell are you? Where did you go?"

Leah. Quill. Embry.

All a million miles away, an entire galaxy away at this exact moment as I phased, tearing back into wolf form my only thought of Ren.

My every thought on Ren.

I had been prepared to lunge, to take the leech down by the throat, but the first thing I had laid eyes on upon phasing was Ren, and I had frozen as my world rocked for the millionth time in the past couple of days. This time, however, it was incredibly different.

This time, it rocked me over and let me fall. The only thing that stopped me was the chord between Ren and me, the one I had felt before, the one, I realized now, that was unbreakable and taut and all-powerful. I felt my heart stumble, stop, and then beat again in rapid succession, throbbing Ren's name with each pulse.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I could feel the possessiveness squeeze my chest so tight that I felt each of my ribs would break. I wanted to reach out to her, to envelope her, to fall right down into her so that nothing could or would ever separate us. She was mine. Forever. Everything I ever had or ever wanted had grown, it felt, from her.

Nothing else existed.

Not my pack or their voices still rioting questions inside my head. Not my life before her, or the love I'd had for Bella. Not my goals or dreams or career. Nothing had the slightest drop of meaning unless it involved her.

I stared at Ren, who I knew so little about, and I felt the all-encompassing emotion I feared the most devouring me though I might have tried to scream in protest. Her gaze held mine from her sprawled position in the sand, the vampire's hand still wrapped into her hair though she seemed not to feel it, as if she felt only what I felt for that one horribly glorious second. As if we were connecting for the first time, discovering each other, realizing our fates.

"What the hell?" I heard the vampire hiss.

I hadn't realized I'd howled again. I wasn't sure why I had. In pain? In loving? In fear?

Christ, it hurt. Not the bones breaking, or the joints realigning, or the fire in my veins that burned everything as I phased, but the love that was bleeding through me, burning in a way that the fire had not, scarring me beyond all repair.

"Jacob," Ren whimpered.

And I felt raw fury consume me. I wasn't sure what was worse: the fact that I was in love by force or that a vampire was hurting the woman I loved. I growled loudly, pulling back my lips so that my sharp, dagger-like teeth were exposed. I was going to kill the leech, and then I was going to rip out my own heart.

I couldn't feel this much. It was going to kill me.

The vampire, however, seemed to have other ideas.

"Shit," he hissed. "Where the fuck did he go?"

He looked around quickly, as if searching for someone. Another leech? I inhaled the salty air, recoiling. Yes, there had been two of them. The vampire didn't want to face me alone.

I waited as leech number one glanced down at Ren, waited to see if he would make a move, hopefully jarring me into motion. He seemed to be weighing his chances and finding them less than pleasant.

"Another time, Nessie dear. I'll be back, and he won't be able to help you."

The vampire released Ren's hair after one more meaningful tug, and then he disappeared. I watched him go, more than capable to detect his movements that were so incredibly fast, but I didn't follow. I let him go.

If he had stayed to fight, I might have lost. I'd never felt weaker in my entire life.

Ren lay in the sand staring uncertainly at me.

"Jacob?"

I felt a shudder jar my whole body as the sound of her speaking my name washed over me.

Mine. I felt the squeeze in my chest. Mine, mine. Mine forever.

Everything inside of me pulled to her. Everything inside of me fought against it. I started towards her, and wasn't sure if it was the need to touch her or the need to escape from the voices of my pack still dimly demanding answers in the back of my head that changed me back, but I was human when I dropped down into the sand beside her.

All the awkwardness of strangers fled. There was nothing between Ren and me. Not according to that chord between us, that certain way that Ren had suddenly become the one thing I rotated around, pulled by something more intoxicating and dangerous than gravity.

She was propped onto her elbows. I touched her face, slid my fingers across her skin to cup her cheeks in my hands. She stared at me with her dark brown eyes looking helpless and completely at my will. But I felt like she was the one controlling me.

"Ren," I breathed her name.

It felt like shards of glass coming up my throat. I was almost too greedy to speak it. I wanted to contain it forever.

She said, just as quietly, "Renesmee."

My heart swallowed her real name, her whole name, imprinting it into the fibers of my being.

Imprinting? Imprint?

I stared at Renesmee in horrified disbelief. This was imprinting. This was my soul's recognition of its mate. This was the chain clasping my ankle to hers. This was my loss of freewill.

No. No way!

There were so many questions, so many secrets. Why didn't that matter to me anymore? How could I fall in love with a stranger? How could I be forced to be her prisoner?

Why was there a vampire after her?

"Who the hell are you?" I demanded.

Ren opened her mouth, but I swallowed her response, desperate to taste her lips. They were soft against mine, and warm. Her gasp of surprise was delicious as I flicked my tongue across her bottom lip and then explored her mouth.

I felt her hands climbing my back, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

I felt Bella Swan dissolve into oblivion as if she had never existed.

My heart pulsed with Renesmee, with love and desire and horrible, weakening need for her. Everything else inside of me screamed in pain and torment and denial.

I did not make this choice.

----

RPOV
I had thought that death would be only seconds away. I had thought that I was destined to die on the beach behind Jacob's house, staring up at the sun until I was blinded and gone. Liam had promised death if given resistance, and I had refused to become part of the Volturi.

But death had not come swiftly, as he had promised, and, then, it had not come at all. I hadn't felt the pain of Liam's hand in my hair anymore. Not after that first angry howl. The howl had seemed to shake me right down to the soul, like it was calling to me specifically.

Liam had frozen in surprise, and I had just a split second to turn my head. I hadn't realized that the first howl had come from a man, because Jacob had seemed to be more wolf than man as he had raced to my aid. When he exploded into fur, phasing right before my eyes, I had never seen anything more glorious.

The second howl had quaked inside my heart.

All the sizzling chemistry I had felt below the surface the past couple of days had seemed to explode into full-blown lust. As the wolf form of Jacob Black had watched me, I had been consumed by need, by love and desire so strong I could have been driven to the brink of insanity. The bruises no longer ached, my scalp was numb. I felt only my need for Jacob.

It was absurd and unexplainable, my sudden feelings. They seemed to grow from nowhere, thought it felt like they had been there all along. I watched him bare his teeth, and felt nothing but awe at the massive creature he was.

When Liam released me and ran, I barely noticed. I couldn't blame him, but I felt no fear at his threat to return. I felt no fear at all with Jacob in my view. I was enveloped in a warm cocoon of protection. I knew nothing would harm me with him near.

The second most glorious sight was Jacob as a man. I couldn't move when he came to me. I could barely breathe. When he touched my face, I thought I melt dissolve into the sand in bliss. I told him my name thoughtlessly, wanting to hear it rather than the nickname.

His question, I knew, was an accusation in disguise. I might have tried to explain, helpless to do anything but tell the truth underneath his searching gaze, but he muffled my response with his lips, and I didn't protest. I reached for him instead, knowing that any further living without him was a waste of my existence.