JACOB

In some ways, it was kind of like trying to run with a broken leg.

That was the way she felt to me, a Bella-shaped hole ripped clean through my heart. I needed surgery, I needed emergency medical attention. She seemed to have taken some pretty important bits of me with her when she left.

Was that what love was? Cosigning on this huge future happiness with another person, and then being left to pay the debt when they were gone? I was trying not to think about the nevers of it—never see her again, never sit on the sidewalk and lick melted chocolates from their wrappers with her, never tell her how dumb she was for hanging out with vampires. It was the most absolute thing that I'd ever come up against in my life. I felt like a fly colliding over and over with the same window, bouncing off it again and again, but what was I supposed to do? What other direction did I have? I couldn't stop pulling up memories of her, snapshot after snapshot scrapbooking her life. I couldn't stop wondering how she had died.

The pack kept telling me that revenge was a bad idea, but I disagreed. It was a goal. It kept me moving forward, counteracted the crippling joint-freezing guilt and grief. If I wasn't running I would be curled up in a corner somewhere, choking on the dead aftertaste of love.

I passed Houston very wide—it was morning now, no reason to go running through the center of the city as a horse-size wolf. Just past the city was the first time I caught sight of Edward, the top of his head over full-grown wheat stalks, the ripple in the field where he passed. I moved behind him and sped up, a growl ripping from my throat as my predator instincts kicked in. He didn't turn—didn't even react as I closed on him, just kept running his easy lope through the field, dazzling golden through the golden stalks. He was obviously unconcerned about secrecy anymore, vampire in the wheat, but infuriatingly enough he sort of blended—camouflaged like a lion in tall grass. I looked so monstrous in comparison, black against the landscape.

My anger surged up as I closed the gap, more furious the closer I got until I felt I would burst to ash, sift down onto the wheatstalks like a cremation. I lowered my head and all my anger collected into a point, lasered right between his shoulderblades as I hit him. This is your fault. Bella is dead and I've run for a thousand miles to make sure you pay for it.

I probably should have attacked him with my teeth, tearing into that stone skin of his, but it felt good just to slam into him as hard as I could. It was a pretty good-sized field but he must have gone through half of it, snapping stalks with his body. I expected him to hit the ground like a cat and come back at me, but he just—stayed there, crumpled on the ground. My wolf-body quivered with the tension of it, waiting on the enemy, but he just pushed himself up on his hands and knees and—stayed. No more movement.

It's a trick, my instincts were screaming, it has to be a trick. I pushed off again and pounced back at him, expecting that his shoulders would square and his hands would come up, but they didn't. It was only after my last step that his head started lifting, and his eyes were so—destroyed. They shocked me—probably would have stopped me if they could, but I was already hitting him. I sank my teeth into his shoulder and threw him another fifty feet, farther for my frustration and for the strange sudden panic I felt from looking him in the eye.

I found him at the end of the second swath of broken, snapped stalks, circled around him like a halo. He was on his hands and knees with his head down again, looking so sacrificial. Fury boiled over the top of me—what was he doing, why wasn't he fighting back? Did he think he could make me feel sorry for him, that I would pat his head and make excuses for him like Bella had? I stood at a distance and snarled at him, throated barks at him, half-frantic with the whole situation. I was a wolf and a human both, and still none of my instincts knew what to do here. I could kill him—it would be easy—but God, it would be cold-blooded.

Get up, I thought furiously, I knew he would hear me. Get up, what the hell do you think you're playing at? You think I won't kill you?

Again I was expecting big movements, the liquid fast-motion vampire motions I was used to. Instead he pushed himself up onto his knees, slowly, arthritically stiffly. There were ragged holes in his shirt where I'd bitten him, holes in his skin like puncture marks, unbleeding. His eyes got to mine before I could look away.

Vampires didn't generally look like they were walking dead people—they looked pretty and vibrant and glowing with life, you couldn't tell. But I looked at Edward's eyes and they were dead, just flat dead. The kind of dead that makes people close the eyes of corpses, because of that uncomfortable, hollowed-out stare. He looked like he knew he was dead.

His eyes provoked all this incongruous pity and shame in me, which converted almost instantly to anger as I blazed at myself for pitying him and at him for looking like that, he had no right. Blood pumping to my head again and I was moving, slamming my shoulder into him but not as hard as I should, skidding him back a few feet and fighting with the impulse to snap my teeth into his neck. What is your problem? I snarled at him. Do you want to die?

His eyes caught mine again and suddenly I knew the answer to that question. Yes, he wanted to die. Yes, he wanted me to bite into him at the base of his spine and rip out his thoughts and feelings, wanted me to deaden him outside to match his inside. Yes he wanted to die.

No. I wasn't taking that from him. I wasn't taking his regrets and I was not going to be his suicide. He didn't deserve this, he hadn't earned it. Are you kidding me? I snapped at him. You're just want me to kill you, just like that? You think you deserve that, after you killed Bella?

That got the first real reaction out of him that I'd seen—his head snapped up, his eyebrows pulling down in confusion. "I didn't—" His voice sounded a little uneven coming out at first, unused. "I didn't…kill her."

If his voice had sounded defensive or angry, I would have killed him right there. But it was weird, he sounded almost—surprised, almost unsure of what I meant. I stayed back and gave in to a little confusion of my own. What do you mean you didn't kill her?

"I mean I didn't kill her." Now he sounded a little angry, as if offended that I would even suspect it of him. Yeah, right. "Who told you I killed her?"

Well, I said, suddenly scrambling for proof, it's not like it's a hard conclusion to get to.

"I didn't," he said bluntly—not happy about it, just fact, she was dead either way. He was getting to his feet, wheat kernels falling off him as he rose.

They said there were marks in her neck, I threw at him, finally remembering what I was doing here.

"That's because Jasper killed her."

I blinked at him. Jasper? I tried to get the name to connect to something in my memories—whose face did I need to move the target sign to, now that it was moving off Edward? Strangely enough, I did believe him. I'd always known that he would do everything he could to protect her, it was just that I'd never believed it would be enough. I knew he had loved her—I'd seen the way he looked at her, it was sickening. He wouldn't have killed her if there was any way in the world I could help it. Now seriously—who the hell was Jasper?

"My brother," Edward explained. "Tall, blond hair? Lots of scars?"

Oh, I said unhappily, finally pulling up a picture. That, I could believe. The pack had always been edgy about that one, moving around him with care not to turn our backs. We'd always felt that he was dangerous, and I guess now we had our proof. Well then what are you doing here?

"Same thing I suspect you're doing here." He was a little more in control now, restoring a little of that cool careful tone. "Someone killed her, and I was going to kill them."

I hated it that I understood him so well—I felt myself connecting to him, perhaps the only other person in the world right now who was feeling the same things I was. In a lot of ways we were the same, at least when it came to Bella. That was why we'd been such enemies—because we filled the same slot in her life, and there was only room for one of us. But now, with her gone…

Oh, I said. My plans were shifting quickly around this new knowledge, unthreading and stitching back together in different patterns. My anger was running down a different path now, toward a different end goal. Well…can I come with you?

He looked surprised and then unsurprised in quick succession—it was so very logical that it had come to this. This was the only way we'd ever come together in the past—for Bella. To protect her, and now to deal with the fact that we'd failed to protect her. "Um," he said. "I guess."

I broke into a trot, switching him with my tail as I passed. Come on then, I said. We've got some ground to make up.