Disclaimer: I only own Samantha; the rest is under copywrite to Stephenie Meyer.

Some of you have been asking if Samantha has a power. In all honesty, I don't know how to answer this. In my mind, she does. I don't know if you could guess it. It's very subtle, like Siobahn's gift of "willing" outcomes into being. If you don't figure it out, I will let you know by the end of the tale. However, I would love to hear your guesses. The first chapter, not the prologue, might give you some clues if you look at area of her personality that might have grown stronger.

I apologize for the lateness. This is unbetaed, and I am tired. Please don't complain about me getting it out so late. I am pulling an allnighter tonight so that I could get this to you, and I really shouldn't, because I am also sick. Frankly, I am very, very tired, and I am starting to feel as if this story is a lost cause. Please tell me what you think, and honestly. The more I hear from you guys, the more excited I get about this fic, and therefore, the faster the chapters come.

13

The sun rose higher in the sky, and still I didn't move. It wasn't safe, not yet. Jacob was down there, on the ground. I could see him through the pine needles, pacing back and forth on four legs.

"Samantha, you can come down now." Leah's voice broke through the foliage, and I turned, trying to see where she was standing. She was right beneath me, hands on her hips. The sight startled me; I hadn't expected to see her so close. I climbed higher.

"It's safe, I promise."

I shook my head. I was not coming down until I was sure that Jacob wasn't going to attack me. And I wasn't going to be sure until he was in human form again, and I could read his face.

Below me, the branches whispered as they brushed together. Leah was beginning to climb up. I straightened and hissed, like a cat. Like a vampire. I snapped my mouth shut to hide the horrible inhuman sound. "Don't come up," I commanded, my teeth locked together.

Leah paused in her ascent. "You don't trust me?"

"No." And it was true; I didn't. They had scared me too badly.

"But I was the one to save your sorry butt." Leah sounded impatient, irritated. It could easily have been a trap, her fooling me into trusting her again.

"It doesn't matter. You're too dangerous." I peered through the branches to look at her face. She looked irritated.

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"We wait until he changes," I answered. "Then I will follow you to Denali, not so close as to be worried about my throat. And you will keep your distance. I am not coming close again."

"Fine," Leah sighed, frustrated. "So we wait."

"Yes."

Leah kicked the tree and swore. "Do you have any idea how long we're going to have to wait?"

"As long as it takes. It depends on him." My eyes flicked back to Jacob's restless form.

"Great… Just great." Leah sighed again, and turned around. "Jacob, we're wasting time. If we want to get anywhere today, you'll have to shift. And an apology might be appreciated."

Jacob continued pacing, and Leah walked up to him. "Jacob," she said. "It has been days since I've had a shower. I am tired, I am cranky, and I am not going to wait around for you to stop sulking so that we can keep moving. Snap out of it. You can throw a fit later when no one else needs you to be functional, but don't expect the world to stop for you."

Jacob growled, and I shifted nervously. Why was Leah provoking him? But then her voice softened.

"It's easier to do other things, Jacob, to distract yourself. You'll only make yourself even more miserable like this. If we leave now, we can reach Denali tonight, so change and get dressed and do something, for God's sake. "

And to my surprise, Jacob obeyed her. I glanced away, even though the branches provided a natural screen.

"So you want an apology?" Jacob's voice asked, his voice strained with repressed anger. I looked up again. He was dressed now, or at least as dressed as he ever was in his cut offs. "Fine. Leah, I'm sorry I tore your ear."

"That's not what I meant," Leah said flatly. "You treed your little friend like a hunted animal. You hurt her. And more importantly, you scared the hell out of her. She won't even let me come close. And you're being so selfish I bet you didn't even think twice about it. God, Jacob, can you get any more dense?"

Jacob looked up at me, and I moved to the other side of the tree, hiding from him. He let out a long breath before he spoke, the anger gone. "Oh, God," he whispered, and looked up at me. "Samantha?"

I didn't move, prepared to bolt if I needed to.

"I am so sorry. I didn't intend to hurt you. Are you alright?"

"Fine," I replied curtly, my muscles taut from preparing to leap to the next tree over.

"You sure? Your arm?"

"It healed," I answered shortly.

"Will you come down?"

Against my instincts, I turned my head to look back at him, around the tree trunk. "Is that the only reason you're apologizing? Because you want to manipulate me? Because Leah told you to?"

"No," Jacob answered, but he didn't offer any more information than that.

"What the hell happened? Why did you attack me?" I knew I was overreacting, but they really did manage to freak me out. It reminded me of the way I would have nightmares about spiders after finding one in my bedroom, or the way I jumped whenever someone touched me, sure it was another spider. I knew that I was overreacting, but the knowledge never stopped me from freaking out. There was only so much I could take before shock and slow acceptance were overridden by panic. Yes, the Twilight books were real. And I suddenly found myself… not human. But then you take my only companions, the only people I had somewhat of a connection with, and turn them into snarling, toothy, clawed beasts intent on your destruction, and I couldn't take it anymore. There was a breaking point, and I'd reached it.

Jacob bit his lip, thinking. "I lost control," he answered finally.

"I thought losing control meant losing control of your form, not turning into some wild, crazy animal intent on destroying me," I snarled, turning around fully now, and I wasn't sure if I was preparing to spring at him or something else entirely. I was angry, and much less human, much more dangerous.

"Usually it does. I… It won't happen again. That's not me reassuring you, that's a fact."

I considered this, but then shook my head. "How do I know you're not lying?"

"You do know that we're going to reach Denali by dark."

"I know that's what you're telling me."

"And you know that the same way you know we're taking you to Denali; there is no other explanation. Why would we kill you now? There may be no reason to trust us, but there is a reason to follow us. What happened was my fault. I wasn't… prepared to hear some things, and I reacted badly."

"I'll say," I muttered.

"Are you alright?" he repeated.

"You tore my arm up. You tore each other up. And you're supposed to be like a family. That doesn't make sense; I can't predict how you're going to react to anything I say or do, or anything you say to each other. How can I trust that you won't hurt me again?"

"I thought you didn't want to live, that you didn't want to be responsible for another human's death. How do expect to do anything else unless you stick with us?"

Jacob raised his eyebrows, challenging me. I stared back at him until I finally turned away, unable to face him anymore. He was right. What did it matter if I could trust them or not, when they were my only chance at survival?

There was no other option. I lowered myself down one branch, and then another, cautiously, carefully. Jacob didn't move. Neither did Leah, standing some distance behind him.

"I still don't trust you," I said quietly. "But I'm only stuck with you for another few hours if we leave now. So let's go."

We moved onwards. I followed the two werewolves closely, but not close enough for them to surprise me. When Jacob turned his head suddenly, or Leah paused for the smallest moment, I flinched, jumped away. Once Jacob looked at me, and I shivered. His eyes were dark, and where I normally saw warmth, I saw my own fears reflected back at me.

There were no words, no explanations. I wasn't sure I would accept them anyway. There was too much I hadn't had time to come to terms with. I was still jumping at shadows.

"We have to be careful around here," Jacob said. "There are a lot of tourists in this area. Lots of wildlife photography, and photographers, for that matter." He didn't stop or look back toward me to speak.

"Then they won't be in the town; they'll live on the outskirts, like the others," I answered. "How do you propose to find them without leading me to the humans? The people," I corrected. It was hard enough to resist their scent when I viewed them as individuals, but to start believing them separate from me… That was dangerous, for them. It was much easier to justify.

"We circle around. We'll find their scent, most likely as close to the national park as possible. And we'll follow it from there. Stay close behind. Wandering off could prove dangerous for everyone else." This time, Jacob turned to me, his eyes challenging.

We stared at each other for a moment. "What's worth more?" he asked. "Your safety, or the life of a helpless human?"

I was still hesitant, but I nodded my head after a second. "Okay. I'll do it."

"Then come on," he said.

I stepped forward, once, twice, and then Jacob moved onward. Leah went on ahead. It was as if she wanted to pretend that neither Jacob nor I were there. And that was fine by me.

Darkness fell. I picked up the scent of old trails where humans had passed, too weak for me to lose control, but strong enough to make my throat turn to fire. Our circles became wider, as we avoided more and more of the trails. The burning accumulated, but I was still in control. Regardless of what happened tonight, I was going to have to hunt as soon as we found the Denali clan's home.

"Look," Leah said suddenly. "There's an old logging road that way. It doesn't look well used, but it might lead somewhere."

"Yeah, but where? Do you smell vampire?" Jacob asked.

Leah rolled her eyes. "Um, Jacob, I don't know if you've noticed, but it's kind of hard not to smell vamp at the moment…"

"I mean besides the obvious."

"No…" Leah said, "but if it were faint enough, I don't know that I could. Her scent covers it."

I jumped in. "It doesn't smell of humans… but it's not as grown over as it should be. They could have driven through here."

The two wolves looked at each other, and then back at me.

"Is everything alright, Samantha?" Leah asked suspiciously.

"I'm fine. Why do you keep asking?"

"Your eyes are getting darker. Not so bright," Leah answered.

"And you seem a little overexcited at the prospect of not smelling humans," Jacob added.

"You must be imagining my eyes," I told Leah, and turning to Jacob, I said, "And you are misreading me; I'm excited because when we get there, I get to leave you behind." And I suddenly realized that while a part of this was true, true enough that I could say it with confidence, there was still a part of me that felt sad, disappointed almost, to see them go.

I might have been imagining the embarrassed looks on their faces, but I wasn't imagining the way their shoulders crumpled. "Come on," I said. "Don't tell me you're not excited to leave me with some other vamps. I won't mess up your perfect little world of 'vampires are evil, werewolves are good' thinking, we won't have to smell each other anymore, and you can return to your normal lives without me."

"You broke her," Leah snapped at Jacob. "She was at least halfway human before. Now look what you did."

"He did nothing except what he was supposed to," I snapped back. "I've just learned that I can't trust you, that's all. That no matter what we pretend, we're still mortal enemies, and pretending anything else is useless."

"And what if we weren't pretending?" Leah asked.

I stared at her, meeting her dark eyes with pity. "Then you're lying to yourself."

She stared back at me. "You have been a newborn for less than a week, and you think you know more than us. You're a fool."

"Maybe," I allowed. "But I'm not the one turning my back on my job."

"Your job?" Leah challenged, her voice growing louder. "Job? Who are you to tell me that?" Her hands started to shake. "Vampires kill humans. But you are trying to avoid that. Don't tell me that I'm not really a wolf."

I backed away and smiled. "I was baiting you."

"Well you sure as hell did it," Leah snapped.

I shrugged. "I had to know you weren't lying to me. Now I know you were telling the truth. You don't want to kill me."

"I didn't… then," Leah muttered under her breath.

"Don't you want to know why I was baiting you?" I couldn't keep the smug grin off of my face. There was this feeling of superiority over Leah that I couldn't quite beat down. I'd been toying with her, gotten under her skin, without hardly trying.

"I already know," Leah answered. "If I lost my temper, then I am telling you the truth, and you can trust me. I'm not stupid, even when I get angry. We can't afford to lose ourselves like that. You've seen what happens."

The smugness disappeared. Leah was right when she had called me a fool. I didn't know anything more about this world than she had spent years learning. My little test was worthless.

"Samantha, Leah," Jacob called, jerking us from our conversation. "Aren't you ever coming?" He was already down as far along the trail as I could see, and he was walking back towards us. "No human scents so far."

"And vampire?" I asked, turning away from Leah's steady gaze.

"Not sure. There's vampire scents, some fresh, some not, further along. But I don't know if it's the vampires we're looking for."

"Great," Leah grumbled. "Something else we'll have to worry about." She jogged forward to meet up with Jacob, and I followed, the distance between us more out of my own embarrassment rather than fear.

If Leah knew what I had been trying to accomplish, was she still telling me the truth? Every nerve end in my body tingled. I couldn't tell if that meant yes, or no. Stupid instincts.

I was starting to get worried we would never find the place. We wandered on, the stars above moving slowly across the sky, marking the passing time. One hour, two… It must have been about midnight. The road seemed to go on endlessly.

And then the road opened up into a clearing, the trees fading away into an overgrown, circular drive. And at the other end of the clearing, where the drive ended, a mansion stood, almost carved into the mountainside.

"That has to be it," I murmured, and walked forward, past Leah, past Jacob, running towards the house.

When I reached the door, I realized that something was wrong. "The windows," I whispered, and reached out to brush my hand against them. Big boards covered the bay windows, hiding the glass from my view. Even the door had a two-by-four running diagonally across. No one had been here for a long time.

I grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open, snapping the lock and the board covering the door. If I hadn't been so worried, so scared that this was the right place, I would have been amused for using my strength for the first time.

The door creaked open. The hinges needed to be oiled, I thought. Foreboding began to coil in my stomach, making me something akin to nauseous. I was pretty sure vampires didn't throw up or gag unless they made themselves do it.

The floor creaked when I walked in, covered with the finest layer of dust that created footprints where I stepped. No one was here. No one had been here for years.

Please, no, please no, please no please no pleasenopleasenopleaseno… My mind chanted the words at me throwing them together faster and faster as I ran through the house.

Everything was as I would have expected of a vampire household. Everything except the kitchen was used. No one had touched the stovetop, the microwave, the refrigerator… No human food, no human scents remained behind, but here and there, I caught the trace of vampire. Here, one of them touched the wall out of habit, and the scent had soaked in after years of touching in the same place. Here, someone paced continually- the floor was slightly bowed under the prolonged strain.

Bedrooms, bathrooms, nondescript rooms empty of life, almost empty of scent… The furniture was covered in sheets, the curtains smelling slight of mildew from where they touched the glass, and everything else was gone. There was a shape here where a lamp sat, or here, where a vase was filled with flowers…

They were gone. The Denali coven had long since left, probably to protect themselves from the fans who might come looking for them, and there was no way of knowing where they had gone. No scents to follow. No hope that they would return.

I wandered back to the entrance. Jacob and Leah remained outside. "They're gone," I said quietly. "No one has been here for years. They were here, but they left."

I couldn't meet their eyes. Whether I trusted them or not, it didn't matter. They were going to kill me. What other options did they have now? Our one hope, my one hope, was gone, had disappeared with the vampires who hadn't even realized what they were taking. I took a deep breath to prepare myself, and closed my eyes.

"I'm ready."

Again, I am so sorry for the cliffhanger. I don't like leaving it like this at all. But unfortunately, this is the way it happens. Poor Samantha. Hounded at every turn. No pun intended.

Please, if you love me, or you love this fic, or you want me to survive the school battle long enough to continue writing this, review. Please.