Disclaimer: Twilight, and those characters belonging to it, is property of Stephenie Meyer and I profit none whatsoever from using them for the fan fiction I write.
…
Sitting on the floor in front of the couch, Renesme read Charlotte's Web aloud to her mother and father, Bella brushing out her little girl's hair while Edward stood stoically at the cottage's window, facing the direction of the Cullen household. In the past few months the two young parents had been able to gradually relax, knowing their daughter's aging would eventually stop, finally able to enjoy their time with her completely free of added worry. Reading her love's posture from the corner of her eye, Bella questioned what he was undoubtedly listening for, "Is she back?"
With a small inclination, Edward nodded turning briefly, "Just now, she and Esme are going to take her out to lunch tomorrow."
Lips pursing, Bella knew lunch probably was not the best setting for the two women to meet with Seth's imprint, but it would keep up the charade of normalcy the Cullen family strived for. Hope she doesn't mind eating alone.
Edward smiled, though he was not able to read her thoughts without contact and her forcibly removing her shield, he could easily see where that scenario would play to, "We have props for this Bella," he turned grinning at her, "School was different. Naturally we have to be seen drinking and eating sometime."
Head tilting Bella processed that information quietly, plaiting Renesme's hair and smoothing her fingers down the completed work, "There."
As any child kept sitting too long, Renesme was on her feet within the same second rushing off to see the completed work in the bathroom. Though their daughter would certainly be able to hear them just as well if she were still in the room, Bella had waited until she left to ask, "Rose?"
The face she thought so beautiful darkened perceptively, "Nothing," he looked back in the direction of the house, "If Rosalie's coming back, she hasn't decided when yet."
Standing, Bella was behind Edward as soon as she thought about moving, arms wrapping around his waist, head leaning against his shoulder blade, "But she will. Right?"
Running his hand over hers, Edward looped his fingers thought her thinner digits, "She always does." Maybe it was something in his voice, a reminder of the time before he left her, a sadness but Bella felt – sensed he may not be so sure.
…
Of the 900 acres of parkland available to Leah in Olympia, the she-wolf had covered nearly half of it, the residential areas being ignored in what she was starting to consider her 'true' form. Having heard from neither her mother, Sue, nor her pack leader, Jacob, she had taken to shifting nearly as soon as her studies were done in effort to contact her brother who had been the center of her thoughts since he had begun his trip earlier in the week. I should be there, this is something a second should do. Who says you're second?
Just 'cause I'm not there doesn't mean you can sneak past me weasel, I'm second.
The soft sound of a snort accompanied the next thought, Please I've been part of this pack longer.
Leah rolled her eyes, gaze casting over head at the dark night sky, a brief glimpse of stars that was obscured through Seth's mental overlapping image of tree lines, By a day, not even.
Seth shook his head, paws eating up the ground as he moved, twisting around the forest's growth with ease to follow the familiar smell of sickly sweet undead. Over the past few days he had followed a lighter, somewhat more tolerable smell alongside the blonde Cullen's, at first it had been close than had dropped back but now as he moved though the evergreen he realized Rosalie must have stopped briefly, giving her pursuers time to catch up. Leaping across a fallen animal carcass, the younger Clearwater knew what she had paused for and it was there that all scent intermingled.
Seth? Inside his head, Leah's normally sharp tone was questioning, a sound reserved for he and his mother since their father's passing. Careful, his sibling cautioned, both feeling his body slow, the scent much stronger and overlapping as he passed another body of four legged dead.
Stepping over a log, the tawny wolf paused surveying the area; it was not one log, but a long line of suddenly crushed trees. In a space covering no less than a quarter of an acre, the trees that so thickly populated the northern border to Canada had been demolished, wood splintering in thick shards, branches cast as haphazardly as their parenting trees now lay propped up against themselves, leaves coating the floor like grass. When large golden orbs fell to the middle of the dip in the land, the young wolf felt his stomach drop.
There were no thoughts from his normally sarcastic and razor tongued sister, no quick wit comment, just a sudden jolt of feeling passing from the siblings that would have been as significantly experienced had they been in both human form and standing together. Seth wished he were, that way at least there would be someone physically there with him. A few seconds passed before Leah's question rang more like a statement, Thats her.
Staring at what was left of the torn body Seth could do nothing but acknowledge, It was.
Cast around the lot of trees and debris were the broken pieces of stone hardened porcelain flesh and shredded clothes; arms, legs, fingers and torsos, a body part could be seen propped at one place or another. One head, closer to the wolf's chest than he cared to see, had hair the same shade as the earth beneath his paws, the moonlight glistening off its cracked cheeks the only indicator of its presence. Further away, closer to the remaining shoulders it had been ripped from, was the once beautiful face of Rosalie, golden tresses as thick and lush as they had been the week prior when the Quileute youth had seen her last. The last he had seen her, alive.