A/N: A few chapters ahead now, so the next few won't be too long in arriving this time, I promise.

On Hurricane Ridge the air is still. Hemlocks and firs wear a dusting of icing sugar. The sun burns like an eerie golden orb at eye level on the mountain range. Jake sits, bare feet on snow and listens to the sound of two vampires approaching from lower down the mountain. One of the voices is yodelling so he suspects it's not Victoria, who he knows has also been recently in the area.

How freaking far does he have to go to be left the hell alone?

He stands, finds himself on a bare patch where his radiator-like body heat has melted away snow. The smell of sugar and decay makes his nostrils curl in disdain.

"Gnarly mountain, dude." Emmett Cullen is beaming at him, carrying a backpack and wearing expensive outdoor winter wear.

I mean, really. Do they always have to look like they are posing for a GAP advert?

Edward smirks, looks him up and down as if in response to his thoughts. His eyes say "Well look at your scrawny hand-me down cut offs" but his unsmiling mouth just says "Jacob," tilting his head in greeting, looking around at the scenery as if utterly bored.

"How did you find me?" Jacob's voice is resigned.

"You stink man. You've just got to follow your nose. It's like wet dog all over this mountain and right across the National Park." Emmett laughs.

"Right back at you, leech. What exactly is it that you want?"

"We're on a mission for the little lady." Emmett raises an eyebrow. "She's missing her favourite puppy."

Jacob sighs. He doesn't need to be told. He can feel a burning in his chest, a shortness of breath that starts in his solar plexus and rips like scorching fire through his veins. A warning from the imprint: don't stray too far from me. Bella is to the south-west, behind the photism of the setting sun, like a desert apparition that only a dessicated traveller would follow.

Puppy is about right.

He's on a short leash. That it's Bella he's tethered to is not the issue though – she's his partner, his equal, his future Alpha female. It's what has happened to her because of him that has got him so messed up. It's his fault – all of this.

I should have protected her better.

Even from this distance Jacob can feel the ghosting of every little broken bone in her hand, exactly where her elbow is shattered. It makes him want to rub his own, even though he can sense her healing too.

You are broken so I am broken. That's just how it rolls.

Part of his wolf wants to lick every one of her wounds, and the other part craves the hunt where once and for all he can rip every damn limb off Victoria's stone body and send her burningburningburning into fiery oblivion.

"Better off where I'm at." He growls.

Edward shakes his head. "If that's true, then she deserves better than you."

Jacob's eyes narrow.

What?

The challenge in Edward's eyes is blatant, like one dominant male squaring up to another for control of the pack.

"And who are you to say what is best for Bella, you parasite?"

They stand pitted against each other on the sunset ridge, silhouetted against a sky exploding with rainbow colours:

Coffee coloured Quileute…

…versus marmoreal ice.

"Maybe you are what is best for her right now, but I'd like to think that it's not always going to be that way." Edwards voice is lulling; lubricious.

"Stop talking in riddles." Jacob is on his feet and advancing towards Edward, who raises his hands, half-deferentially.

"Have you considered that she is only with you because of the imprint?"

"Have you considered that there's a steep cliff over there that would be perfect to throw you off right now?" Jacob retorts through clenched teeth. "This is none of your business, bloodsucker."

"I'm making it my business. We protect her too, Jacob. Better than you have anyway."

Jacob winces.

Edward half-smiles in triumph to himself. It's easy to hit a nerve when you can get inside someone's head and hear every thought clear as a bell.

"I'd still rather she was with us than with you."

"Oh," Edward coolly replies. "Then what are you doing still out here?"

Jacob starts to walk. Edward follows like a flash to stand in front of him again.

"Go to her. Fine. But don't be too hard on her. It's not her fault." Edward says quietly.

"Ed" Emmett says warningly. "This aint the time or the place for a showdown." He puts his hand on Edward's arm, but his brother brushes it away. Keeps looking at Jacob.

"It's better he knows. What if he were to phase and hurt her when she tells him?"

"Tells. ." Jacob says through gritted teeth.

"I'm talking about Bella and myself, Jacob. She showed me this morning that you are not the only one she has feelings for." Edward's voice is mellisonant with sweetness as he delivers his death-knell.

Jacob visibly reels.

"Liar."

Edward just keeps looking at him steadily, while Jacob's mind whirrs.

Rewinds.

Bella's voice:

"Their house is spotless, it's about the cleanest place I've ever seen…"

"…I didn't know. I didn't know. I just want to be normal..."

"…Maybe I'm meant to stop you guys fighting..."

Stop, already.

They stand eyeball to eyeball, glaring.

"Whoa, dudes. Time out. Let's leave this little discussion till later, okay? We found the lost dog. Time to go home. End of." Emmett's burly body steps between them, smile placating.

"Get. Out. Of. My. Way." Jacob growls. "Or not." His wolf is on the edge, and treaty or no treaty, phasing near Edward and seeing his head pop off would be damn satisfying. He quivers, and Edward takes a convenient step backwards, enough to avoid the rip and shimmer of air.

As man becomes wolf.

And wolf is focused on the kill.

Lunges.

Macerates an arm.

Feels the other grip his furry chest.

The wolf shakes off Emmett and sinks his teeth into Edward and then sky and snow is all one. There is a precipitous moment where they teeter out on Hurricane Ridge - poised like a butterfly with a just-broken wing - then the two of them skewer inevitably into the void.

Snow. Rock. Fur. Sky. Snow. Rock. Fur. Sky. Snow. Rock. Fur. Sky. Snow. Rock. Fur. Sky.

There's a point in the head over paws whirl of falling down a mountain side when fighting has to become holding on to each other. Edward scrapes down through snow against the mountain rock, carving out a stone gulley with his adamantine back. Jacob hits every damn tree, felling each trunk with the combined force of their bodies. An avalanche of snow churns in their wake, a cloud that follows them, becoming a shapeless beast with a tail of smoke, roaring and rumbling until they find themselves on the valley floor, cracking the earth where they lie under layers of crushing ice crystals.

The sound of female laughter fills the valley.

Jacob tries to opens his eyes but his body feels like it's trapped in cement after being put through a washing machine. He's phased back human somewhere in the roly-poly descent and is straining to breathe.

Then there is dizzy blue sky and Edward Cullen's impassive face pulling him out, then he looks down at himself and sees that he's naked, with warm blood from his head pinking the snow like raspberry ice. He barely takes in Edward's form with arms askew like a vandalised statue.

Both of them lie there for a moment listening to the crazy laughter emanating from a mocking sky. Girlish laughter, almost child-like.

Victoria is standing on the brow of the hill opposite Hurricane Ridge.

"What a lot of fuss over a silly human girl. You can do so much better boys," she calls out.

"Yeah? Try me for size," roars Emmett, as he clambers down the mountain side and across the valley floor in pursuit.

"You'll have to catch me first" Victoria smiles mockingly, then with an exaggerated flick of her crimson curls she's leaping away and only her laughter remains echoing around the valley.

Edward pops an arm back into place. Jacob's head stops bleeding. They look at the state of each other.

Jacob imagines the scene if a pile of snowshoeing tourists were to come happenstance upon them right now. Edward, knees and elbows sticking through his shredded clothes. Himself -naked in a pile of bloody snow.

"I think it's fair to say that we're being fairly counter-productive." Edward says wryly.

"You think?" Jacob looks to where Victoria and Emmett have disappeared. "Are we going after her?"

"We could try, but I suspect there's no point. Jasper thinks she has a gift for evasion, and it's the only thing that makes sense. How else would she keep getting away from all of us so easily?"

"You could have shared that little gem sooner. How are we supposed to catch someone who is as slippery as soap?"

"We need to stop trying to catch her. Wait for her to come to us."

Jacob lies back and feels his body start to mend itself. It might not be fatal, but that doesn't stop it being bloody sore. He glances at Edward out of the corner of his eye. The mountain has given him the beating up that the conniving leech deserved, but Jacob isn't sorry he took the fall either.

"You are not the only one who feels responsible. Who feels guilty. I promised to be there too." Edward speaks quietly, as if he's talking to thin air.

Jacob doesn't reply.

It seems like an age that they wait there in the silence. One heartbeat. One warm breath rising from heaving lungs. Stone and flesh, neither feeling the cold as they should. Lycanthropy and Vampyrism. Neither as mortal as they should be.

Emmett Cullen returns, unsmiling. His pale dimpled face grimaces with the untold story of a failed chase. "Dang. Why isn't Alice seeing her coming?" He runs an exasperated hand through his icy curls.

Edward grimaces. "It's as if Victoria knows about her, is deliberately avoiding making any decision so that we can't see what she'll do next or where she'll be. And that's really worrying."

"How would she know about you anyway? Surely you guys don't go about advertising yourselves?" Jacob frowns, thinking absurdly of Alice as a gypsy fortune teller at a Vampire social club, with vamps lined up round the corner to hear her dumb ass predictions about their dead end futures. Roll up, roll up, Come and see the freak tell your future.

Edward is thoughtful. "You are right. Victoria knows too much."

"Maybe she's met another vamp." Emmett raises a perfect eyebrow. "Someone who knows about us."

"This changes things. We should get back. That is," Edward shoots a look at Jacob, "if you are finished being such a lachrybozo out here in the forest."

"Oh, I'm finished all right." Jacob shoots daggers at him…

…Twists and shimmers…

…Bursts into russet wolf and tears across the valley floor, kicking up fresh snow.

"Beat your furry ass home." Emmett calls with a smirk, pulling ahead.

Jacob growls low in his throat.

And then Edward Cullen is beside him, speaking into his ear:

"You are a good man, Jacob Black. But if you let slip for a second, know that I'll be there for her."