Chapter 20

Bella POV

Edward and I waved from the porch as Mother drove off with Emmett, Jasper, and Alice to the grocery store in Forks. Alice wanted to pick up ingredients to make the mini-quiches Jasper loved so much, and Emmett was curious to see the town since he's never been. Jasper, of course, tagged along—where Alice went, he followed.

Jacob Black still snored loudly upstairs by the time they were ready to leave, so Edward and I thought it best to stay home. That way, our guest wouldn't wake up to an empty house. Carlisle surmised Jacob would wake up this morning with a bout of the flu; he'd been spiking a fever since last night, and it only increased as the night wore on. I could feel his temperature rising just from sliding my fingers under his room's door—his temperature rose so steadily, he made the entire room warmer. It would be prudent to have someone home to tend to him should the need arise, and, from the look of things, it seemed he would need care.

"How long before he wakes up, do you think?" Edward asked me with a salacious grin and touched his lips to mine in an exaggerated—and loud—kiss.

A sudden rumble came from the house. Muffled moans and barely contained growls resonated from the room where Jacob Black slept. No… it couldn't be. They were nothing but legends… Weren't they?

My eyes cut to Edward, and I was filled with terror.

Human. Fragile. Breakable.

Mortal.

My protective instincts went into overdrive, and my first thought was to dash upstairs and dispose of the threat, but that would create more problems than it would solve.

I cupped his face between my palms and held his gaze with mine, hoping to convey the dire urgency of the situation about to unfold. "Edward, I need you to listen to me very carefully. Do not question any command I give you. Do as I say without delay. There won't be time to argue or ask questions. Do you understand?"

His eyebrows pulled together in confusion. He couldn't hear what my ears were picking up from upstairs. "Bella, what's going on?"

Before I could answer, a massive figure broke through the glass window in Jacob's room and landed before Edward and me, growling in unmistakable rage. Its teeth, larger than any carnivore's currently in existence, were bared, paired with a guttural snarl that promised mayhem. An enormous russet wolf, taller than a horse and heavily muscled, with brown eyes that sparkled with ire and surprise to find themselves in this body, raised its hackles as soon as it spotted me.

Edward jumped back and yelped, trying to pull me behind him, but I didn't move. Instead, I swept my right arm around his waist and shoved him behind me as I crouched into a battle stance.

"What the fuck is that?" he shrieked in alarm, struggling to get back in front of me.

"That," I said in a deadpan tone, "is Jacob Black."

The wolf roared and locked eyes with me as he sauntered forward.

If I were to guess, this was his inaugural walk on the wild side, but logic told me he wasn't the first one of his tribe to shift. His father's attitude towards me at the grocery store made much more sense now. He had been afraid because he knew the legends were not merely legends, but actually true. Before long, the more experienced werewolves would descend to save Jacob from the big bad vampire—they'd be much too late for it if I had my way. As it was, I was letting him live, pending further assessment. One attempt to harm Edward, however, and the whole deal would be off. A threat to my mate would not be tolerated, nor dealt with reasonably. That was an offense punishable by death.

I kept my eyes fastened on wolf-Jacob as I spoke. "Edward, listen to me. When I say 'go,' run into the house, find Jacob's phone and call his father. Tell him what happened—he'll know all about it, so do not be afraid to report the events exactly as they unfolded. Tell him to send help for Jacob. Next, call Alice and tell her to keep everyone in town, away from the house, and then call Carlisle. Tell him to come home immediately. Just say 'The Quileute legends are real,' and he'll know what you mean. Whatever you hear, do not come back out. Do you understand?"

"What are you talking about? What are you going to do?" Edward asked, his voice cracking with fear.

"I need to restrain him until help gets here. He most likely never shifted before, and he's not in control of himself. But this is not the time to explain anything. Get ready to run when I give you the word." My feet shifted in tandem with Jacob, who seemed to be debating the best angle from which to pounce on me.

"No! I'm not leaving you out here with that… what the hell is he anyway?" Edward yelled, his arms snaking around my waist.

Bloody hell. If Jacob decided to simply go for it, Edward could be seriously hurt, if not killed on the spot, wrapped around me as he was.

"Edward!" I said in a menacing growl. "Listen to what I'm saying. I need you to run and call his father to send help. I'll be fine." I wiggled out of his hold gently enough so as to not hurt his arms. "The pup can't hurt me. Can you, puppy?"

I should have known better than to taunt the creature. He lunged then, growling in rage and baring his fangs. There was a split second to shove Edward out of the way as Jacob landed claws first into my shoulders. In my desperation to get Edward away from the beast's attack, I didn't shield myself fast enough.

"Edward, go!" I snarled through my teeth. "Find his phone and call his father, now!"

Sweet mother of mercy, that was painful. His claws actually pierced my skin. Vampires thought there was nothing in existence short of an atom bomb that could hurt our kind, but we were mistaken. There was a ragtag band of wolves right down the road who could hurt us, perhaps even kill us.

I saw Edward scrambling to his feet and running into the house, tripping up the stairs as his legs shook from fear and shock. The pain in my shoulder was such that it alone powered my rage. I aimed a kick at the wolf's rib cage, shoving him off me, and jumped to my feet. He landed on his rear and wiggled to his feet, growling and striding toward me once again.

I held out a pacifying hand. I didn't want to hurt the child, but I feared he'd force my hand. "Jacob Black, you must stop this now. Help should be here soon to guide you in making sense of what's happening to you." I wasn't sure how much effect my words would have on him; he seemed to be operating on pure instinct at this point.

In fewer than ten seconds, I had my answer: my words had not changed his mind. Jacob crouched on his back legs and jumped, his maw wide open, aiming for my neck. I protected myself in the safest way I could think of—I threw my shield out to meet his leap, wrapped it around him, and slammed him to the ground. He yelped and howled, clearly not expecting it. It would be easy to kill him now… But no, I mustn't.

Jacob Black was rendered completely immobile by my shield, but he could move his eyes. They were glued to my face, two deep pools of rage that burned with hatred. It was then that I knew: the Quileute wolves—and I was sure there were more of them—would attack us on sight, no questions asked, even without evidence of any transgression. The aftermath of this unfortunate encounter made me queasy with dread. My family did not want any enemies, but it seemed we had acquired an entire tribe of them whether we wanted to or not.

Edward came running out of the house, brandishing a cell phone at least five years out of date. "I called his dad. He said he'd send some guys to help out," he said, bewildered and out of breath. "Bella, what the hell is going on? Why is he on his back and not moving?"

"Because I'm keeping him that way until his friends get here. And he's lucky that paralyzing is all I'm doing to him." I bared my teeth at the stone figure on the ground and hissed as the pain in my shoulder flared when I moved.

"Holy shit! You're hurt!" Edward was now officially losing control. He ran to me and reached out towards my wound, his hand hovering over it but not touching. I could only imagine what it must have looked like to him—my flesh broke as human flesh would, but there was no blood—glistening, silvery venom oozed out of the gashes.

Edward turned to the wolf being held in a pathetic position. "Jacob, you shit! Why did you have to do this? What has she ever done to you, you fucking asshole?" He was working himself into a fit. Stomping toward Jacob, he stood by his side and aimed a kick at his stomach. Before his foot could land on my shield—and possibly break on impact—I opened a hole in it where his foot would make contact so he could get his vengeance. I doubted the kick would hurt the wolf, but if it made Edward feel better, I'd hold Jacob like this all day so Edward could kick his stomach until he tired of it.

"Motherfucker! How dare you hurt Bella? She was nothing but nice to you, you goddamn jackass! What is wrong with you?" Edward was close to hyperventilating; he was grabbing at his hair, his human brain unable to cope with what was happening around him.

"Edward, love," I said in a low, gentle voice. "I'll be perfectly fine in a couple of hours. Please, dearest, calm yourself. Everything will be all right."

"Not the point!" he snapped. "He hurt you," he said, his tone dripping with hatred of his own. I understood, of course. His mate had been injured and he was helpless to prevent it. Human as he was, he felt only an inkling of what I would have felt had our roles been reversed. I would have decimated the entire tribe had Jacob touched a hair on Edward's head, burned down the whole reservation, and danced on the ashes. I would feel no guilt over it.

"Darling, please," I said, hoping to coax him to calm down. "Come here. Come to me. Take my hand." I stood ten feet away from the wolf—I no longer needed physical contact to shield; I learned to project, thanks to my sessions in Alaska with Eleazar.

Edward finally tore his eyes off the immobile Jacob and walked toward me, taking the hand I held out to him. He moved to hug me, but stopped himself as though afraid to hurt me, since my shoulder still looked worse than it felt.

Keeping my feet planted on the ground, I pulled Edward to me with absolute gentleness and ran my hands up and down his back. He took a deep, rattling breath, trying to collect himself. My poor Edward. I had feared for his physical safety so acutely that I forgot to account for what this would do to his mind. He was distraught beyond words. I paid the beast back by giving my shield a little squeeze, and smiled when he yelped. All in all, he should be grateful I hadn't slaughtered him where he lay.

Heavy footfalls echoed through the forest, roughly a mile away. I concentrated on the sound and ascertained that three four-legged beings were fast approaching. I draped myself and Edward in my shield, throwing it a few feet outward for good measure. That way the creatures would not even be able to approach us. I wasn't so much concerned for myself; by this point, I was bloodthirsty and hoping for a fight, but I would not risk Edward's safety, not even to satisfy my need for retribution.

In less than a minute, three wolves similar in size and bulk appeared through the thicket of trees. Spotting Jacob Black immobile on his back, they bared their teeth and growled with as much menace as they could convey. Edward gasped at the sight of the newly arrived creatures and stepped closer to me.

"Could at least one of you shift back to a shape that will allow you to talk? I don't speak growl." This whole 'kill the vampire' act was getting ridiculous.

Their only response was to growl again, their eyes shifting back and forth between Jacob and me. "We can speak as rational beings, or we can solve this as the monsters we are. Let me assure you that if you pick the latter, you will lose." At this point, I was concentrating as hard as I could on holding myself back. My rage was building up, and bad things tended to happen when my ire grew beyond my control. I didn't want to slaughter them if we could reach a peaceful resolution. I've struggled my whole existence against developing my gift, against having the power to decimate sentient beings, but it seemed fate was determined to push me in that direction at every turn. I didn't want to kill again…

The largest of them—a hulking midnight-black wolf—considered my words for a moment before running back into the woods. Perhaps seeing the helpless state in which Jacob found himself, he believed that they would, indeed, lose if they chose to go toe to toe with me. As he ran, I noted he had a bundle of cloth tied with a leather strap around his left back leg. He reappeared a moment later in human form, wearing ragged denim shorts.

"What are you doing to Jacob, you filthy leech?" he spat as he sauntered towards his wolf companions.

"Keeping him from making a mistake," I said. It seemed this conversation would be less than cordial if it kicked off with the name-calling.

"It's never a mistake to destroy a cold one." His upper lip was raised in a sneer. Was he hoping to intimidate me with this pathetic display?

I decided a more diplomatic route would be best. Carlisle would be cross with me if he came home to find the corpses of barely-legal overgrown children littering the front lawn. "How about we start over without the offenses? My name is Bella Cullen. What is yours?"

He jutted his chin out so far, his neck was in danger of snapping. "Sam Uley, son of Douglas Uley, grandson of Levi Uley—"

I cut him off before he started naming his second cousins twice removed. "I don't need your entire family tree. Your own name will suffice." Sam Uley's friends snarled at my words, but by this point, it was just background noise to me. "With the introductions out of the way, now we can speak as the reasonable beings we are." I didn't bother to ask the other wolves' names. It wasn't like I'd be speaking to them anyway. They seemed extremely wary of being in a human form in my presence. "You are the leader of this pack, I presume?"

Sam Uley puffed out his chest with another supercilious glare at me. "Yes, I am."

Before I could say another word, Carlisle's Mercedes screeched to a halt in front of us, and he bolted out of the car to my side. His eyes took in the wolves and their for-the-moment human leader, Jacob paralyzed on the ground, and finally the gashes on my shoulder. He didn't seem sure what to make of it.

"Bella, what's happening here?" His voice betrayed no apprehension, but I knew him too well, and I detected the barest hint of fear.

"Jacob Black's fever, as it turns out, was not because of a bout of the flu. He was in the process of shifting for the first time. Edward and I were on the porch, seeing mother and the others off as they left for the grocery store when Jacob finally shifted and broke through the window, landing right in front of us, dead set on attacking me with no provocation." I waved a hand towards my injury to illustrate the point. "I had Edward run inside to call Jacob's father, Alice, and you. I've incapacitated Jacob for the moment; he was disregarding Edward's safety entirely in his attempt to get to me, and that is not something I could tolerate. He can hurt me all he wants, but not when Edward is standing right next to me." The memory of Jacob's attack that forced me to shove Edward out of the way had my mouth filling with venom again. The rage boiled in my chest, threatening to spill over, but I managed to swallow it back down.

I turned my face to the Quileute boys, my face a mask of fury. "Jacob, and the entirety of your tribe, for that matter, is lucky that he his attack didn't result in an injury to Edward. Because if it had—and heed my words, for I mean them with an intensity beyond your comprehension—by morning, you would all be extinct."

"Bella!" Carlisle looked appalled by my words, though he knew how true they were, and that if it were my mother the one under threat, he would have done the same thing.

"Carlisle, I ask of you, please, to reason with them. Reach some manner of compromise so that we can co-exist in peace, even if it means a demarcation of territories, so to speak." I was much too angry to be reasonable right now. The burning in my shoulder reached a fever pitch—the sign that the gashes were ready to begin knitting themselves closed, but it was not without considerable pain—and that pain just made my rage burn hotter.

Edward had been silent through this entire exchange, his eyes staring at my face, but unfocused. It seemed his mind had shut down to protect him from so much that he couldn't understand. Jacob had injured him after all.

Carlisle was already in deep conversation with Sam Uley, but I paid no attention to what they were saying. My main concern right now was my Edward.

"I'm going to release Jacob. As his pack leader, I trust you can get him to heel. If he takes one step towards Edward and me, that step will be his last." I would not stand for another act that might harm Edward. "I will go inside with Edward and leave you all to sort this out."

Carlisle glanced at me, and I nodded. He understood my meaning—he would be left alone with the wolves, but he would not be unprotected for a second. I'd enveloped him thoroughly with my shield, and he would be safe the entire time. I would take no chances with this bunch of mentally unstable shifters.

"Edward, love, come with me," I whispered to him, moving towards the front door, towing him by the hand. He followed me like an automaton, not really paying attention to the way, just trusting me to lead him.

Once ensconced in my room, I quickly shoved off the covers and leaned back against the headboard, pulling Edward onto my lap and throwing the comforter over him. He surely was in shock, and he needed to be kept warm.

"Edward, dear heart, can you hear me?" I asked after his head had been on my chest, immobile, for half an hour. He just lay there, staring yet unseeing, breathing in and out, entirely unresponsive. "Edward, love, please, talk to me."

He looked up at me with bewildered eyes, as though coming out of a trance. "I'm sorry, Bella. I don't— I don't know what happened." Pulling himself up to a sitting position, he continued, wringing his hands. "It was like, I couldn't wrap my brain around what I was seeing. It was too surreal, but also undeniably real." With a grimace, he shook his head. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"

I took his hands in mine to soothe his agitation. "You're making perfect sense, Edward. You've already had to deal with so much in so little time, things and beings that you could never even fathom existed in the first place. Your mind can only process so much of what it doesn't understand."

He nodded absently. "I guess you're right. I just have to get used to all the weirdness," he said with a chuckle.

Carlisle's voice reached me from downstairs. He had finished speaking to the shifters and wanted to fill me in on their agreement.

Standing up, I pulled Edward up with me. "Come. Carlisle wants to talk to us."

Once we were all settled comfortably in the living room, Carlisle broke the silence.

"They have agreed to a demarcation of territories, albeit grudgingly. The line along the Sol Duc River is the boundary. We do not cross into their land, and they will stay off ours. The town of Forks proper, of course, is a neutral area.

"I hope you included a clause in that treaty that says any threat to my mate—perceived or otherwise—is an immediate death sentence." My voice burned with the meaning behind the words. I would slaughter anyone who took a wrong step towards Edward. What with the Volturi vultures still circling overhead, my protective instincts were stretched taut. One wrong move and I'd be ready to kill.

"They surmised as much," Carlisle said, half amused, half exasperated. He knew he couldn't blame me for my current state of mind. He'd feel just the same were it about my mother.

I turned to Edward and ruffled his hair as I nuzzled his nose with mine. "I guess you're short a band member once again."

He gave me a blank look for a moment, then burst into laughter. "I guess you're right."