Author Notes: The suspense is mounting, right? ;) Let me just say: leave your theories behind for the next few chapters, or you might go crazy trying to solve this one. Jake is a determined guy, and Bella is starting to see that light she sadly ignored before. Will it work out? Read on and see! I really appreciate all of you that have favorited the story and left me reviews. Reviews are amaaaazing. This story is sort of my baby. It's my favorite out of the ones I've written for Twilight, and I hope that you guys enjoy it until the end. But... please don't throw anything at me before you get to the end, all right? xD

I couldn't say how I survived the month after Bella's betrayal. It was a string of memories that ran together in a meaningless blur. I worked on vehicles. I did my duty as alpha. I hid in front of my television at night and avoided any channel that might flash Bella or Edward's face at me. Leah stopped by from time to time, and sometimes I caved and talked to her about things.

Once, about a week ago, she'd been over when I'd answered the phone to Bella.

Over the past month, I had endured many late night phone calls from Bella. I'd answered her only once, but I knew that it was her that continued to call every night around midnight, because she was always on time, and she always only called once. The only time I had answered her, I'd quickly hung up before she'd said much more than my name.

Because I could tell that she was crying, and I knew that I was still too weak to hold out against Bella. Especially an injured, crying Bella, even though I didn't know what she had to cry about, considering she'd gotten exactly what she'd wanted out of the entire ordeal. Shouldn't I have been the one crying?

The week previous, I had answered her by mistake, because she'd caught me off guard by calling me during the daytime, somewhere around eleven on a morning when I'd just happened to have been having trouble getting myself to go out to the woods to check in with my pack rather than remaining hidden in my house feeling sorry for myself.

Leah had just shown up looking for me when the phone had rang.

"Jacob."

Shit. Not now. I couldn't handle this now.

"Stop calling me, Bella."
"Jacob, please! Please, listen to me. There's something I need to tell you."

I closed my eyes. "I don't want to hear it. We're over with. I'm not going to be your pity fuck anymore. I can't help it if Cullen's already lost interest in you."

I heard her suck in a tiny breath, and I felt like shit for saying that. I didn't know why. I deserved to be mad, didn't I? Bella had broken my heart, and now she wouldn't stop calling to rub salt in the wounds.

"Jake…" She had to stop to get the waterworks under control. "Jake, please, I need to tell you…"

"What?" I snapped finally.

I didn't know why I'd even stayed on the phone that long. I usually hung up right after discovering who was on the other end, but I couldn't this time for some reason. I also shouldn't have let her tell me whatever it was she so desperately needed to say, but I did anyway. Stupid me.

"Jacob, I—I'm pregnant."

I remembered the way the world had seemed to come to a standstill, like everything had just stopped—time, space, thought, and everything else. My brain was trying to tell me that Bella had just confessed to carrying a baby, and my heart was trying to somehow pick up enough of its broken pieces to ask me if it was my baby. I didn't know why my heart wanted to make that assumption. I didn't know why it even seemed hopeful about it, considering what had transpired between Bella and me, but it did.

My stupid heart never knew any better, but it certainly learned its lesson after it forced me to ask her and found out that the baby, instead, was Edward Cullen's.

Which meant… Which meant Bella had fucked him recently. She'd slept with him since she'd been back, because she hadn't been with anyone but me before then.

I barely remembered anything after that. Leah later told me that I threw the phone, and that it broke into several pieces, which would explain why Bella no longer called me every night, but I only recalled one thing.

Out of fury, out of pain, I had turned to Leah.

A month spent trying to distance myself from her had been wasted. Even though, in the back of my mind, I recalled my promise not to use her again when I knew that I could never love anyone like I had loved Bella, it didn't seem to matter when Leah heated underneath my kiss.

I'd nearly taken her on the kitchen floor, but something had stopped me at the last second. Something had forced me to roll off of her, panting, cursing, and full of the need for revenge against Bella. I couldn't do that to Leah, the only woman that had ever proven reliable in my life, because it was wrong.

I loved Bella.

And she was going to have Edward's baby.

Leah hadn't said anything when I'd pulled myself back. In fact, she pretended as if it'd never happened. She let me off the hook. She knew and understood what I was going through, and, for once, she didn't have any sarcastic remarks about it.

A week later, I was still foolish Jacob Black, saving himself for the woman that would never come back, burying myself in my work, and bleeding every night as I lay on my bed in my room and remembered how it had been Bella's for a few, blissful weeks.

Sitting on my couch one Sunday morning, flipping the little wooden wolf over in my fingers, I couldn't figure out what the hell I wanted anymore.

Seeing Bella in Edward's arms, hearing her tell him the three words I wanted to hear most, had felt like the end of the world. I'd never felt pain like that before, and I'd withstood a lot in the past years in the Bella department.

I'd fled New York swearing I was done, cursing Bella inside and out. I refused her phone calls and hung up on her when I answered by mistake. I didn't call her back. I didn't try to reach her or listen to her explanation. I just barred myself from her.

It should have worked, but it didn't. Trying to ignore the fact that she existed seemed to put all of my problems into a striking sort of clarity that I couldn't look past. I barely ate, I found no joy underneath the hood of a truck, and I was fast becoming a shitty excuse for pack alpha. Even now, knowing that Bella was pregnant with that leech's kid, I couldn't find enough resolve to put this behind me. I had dreams about going back to New York and trying again, even at the risk of seeing her wrapped up in Cullen. I was in love with her, and she was never going to stop haunting me.

I couldn't move on. I couldn't be with someone else, like Leah, who had silently filled the role as friend now rather than lover, as support system rather than partner. I hadn't asked her to, but she had. I might have drowned in my own self-pity over Bella if it hadn't been for Leah that month, showing up at my house, bringing leftovers from her place for me to heat up, keeping me updated and on track, and making certain that I remembered when I was supposed to meet with the pack.

It made me feel like an asshole, but I sort of just dropped myself onto her when I'd finally gotten too tired to carry myself.

I started slightly out of my thoughts at the sound of my screen door opening and slamming shut. I heard the rustling sound of footsteps in the hall. Speak of the devil. I knew it was Leah. I could tell by the way she moved.

"Hey, Black, I brought you some fish from my mom, and…um…" I could hear Leah shuffling around inside a bag. "Looks like she threw in some hush puppies too. I'll get you a plate."

I'd gotten past the point where I tried to reinstate my need for solitude in times like these to Leah, so I didn't bother to mention to her now that I'd rather be alone as she went straight into my kitchen and began fixing me a plate. She knew by now that I'd rather be alone permanently, sitting in the shadows of my house and pining for Bella like some love drunk idiot, and she wasn't going to let me.

She'd proven that each time she showed up at my house—at least three times a week—stirred me off of the couch, fed me, and made me talk about whatever was on my mind. After the night she'd found me splayed out drunk in front of the television, Leah didn't seem to trust me enough to manage on my own for awhile.

"Get in here," Leah ordered. "These don't taste as good if they have to be microwaved."

Rolling my eyes, I pushed myself off the couch and trudged into the kitchen. Leah had already filled a plate for me and sat it at the table. I took a seat and began depositing fish into my mouth as was expected of me. I didn't taste it, but all that really mattered was that I ate and survived, right? I used to like fish, but that seemed like years ago.

Leah must have had her share when they came fresh out of the fryer, because she stood leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest, eyeing my Styrofoam plate until she could see all of its white surface as I unburdened it of fish and hush puppies. I felt like a two-year-old forced to finish my vegetables.

"Do you have to stare?" I grumbled.

Leah didn't answer immediately. I kept my eyes trained on the plate. Friend and supporter or not, Leah still got under my skin. I figured that it would always be that way. Our personalities were both too strong to gently mesh with one another.

"Dr. Cullen's in Forks."

A piece of fish went down the wrong tube, and I choked. The face of a blond-haired vampire in scrubs swam into my mind. At one point in time, he'd been the only vampire I hadn't been able to really dislike, but, after Bella had disappeared to New York, I'd lumped him darkly in with the rest. Dr. Cullen was back in Forks?

"Why are you telling me?"

Leah lifted her brow. "You're alpha, remember? It's sort of your job to know. Sam scented them out this morning. Looks like they're here on vacation."

"All of them?" I asked.

"No. Just the Doc, his wife, Alice, and her creepy lover boy, Jasper."

"Oh."

It had been stupid to jump to the conclusion that Bella might have been with them. For one, this wasn't some sort of special trip. Dr. Cullen and a portion of his family had a habit of turning up from time to time for short vacations in the remote peace of Forks. They never bothered us. We never bothered them. They stayed for a little while, and then they left.

Secondly, Bella herself had told me that Edward had severed all connections from his family and hers. The other Cullen's were peace-loving vegetarians. Edward didn't seem to be that type anymore.

In other words, there was nothing significant about their reappearance, aside from the fact that this time it was just going to be an annoyingly painful reminder to me that their son had Bella, and I was here alone.

"Seth and I will keep an eye on them. You don't have to bother."

I looked up at Leah. Her face was expressionless, but I knew she was trying to do me a favor here, and, for some reason, it annoyed me. Like she thought I couldn't handle myself or my own responsibilities anymore. Just because I'd gotten drunk once and spent a good deal of time moping didn't mean I was incapable anymore. If I remembered correctly, Leah had spent a long period of time when all she'd done was mope too.

"I can manage them," I responded, tight-lipped.

Leah's brow quirked again. "I was just trying to help."

I scowled. "Well, don't. I'm fine. You've helped enough."

I had no right to be mean to Leah after everything she'd done for me, but it was asking too much from me to want me to be accepting of all the things that had come to pass, to concede to Leah's help, and to move on and forget Bella. That was probably what Leah was really holding out for anyway. Surely she had an ulterior motive for sticking around this long. She probably just wanted another good roll from me, because God knew that Quill and Embry weren't much to look at.

Great. Now I was lowering myself to insulting my own friends. It only made me angrier.

"You're an idiot, Black, and an ass. Why can't you just accept help?"

"Dually noted, Clearwater," I hissed. "Why do you keep offering it? I'm not interested in another fuck."

I might have overstepped my boundaries there. She took two strides over to me and batted my plate away. It didn't do anything but scatter crumbs across the kitchen floor, but I was probably lucky that she hadn't taken a swing at me instead. She did, however, catch me by the shirt collar and give me a shake.

What the hell?

"What makes you think I want one?" she demanded. "You aren't that great, Jacob Black. Which is probably why your sorry ass has been sitting here for a month mourning over the woman that left you."

It didn't take much more than that to piss me off. Growling, I knocked her hand away and pushed to my feet so fast I knocked my chair backward. It clattered noisily to the floor, but Leah wasn't intimidated. She inclined her chin a fraction and glared up at me like she would gladly duke it out with me.

"Get out of my house, Clearwater," I hissed through clenched teeth. "Stop coming over here, stop calling, and leave me the hell alone. When I want to see you, I'll find you. Now, buzz off."

I jerked a thumb toward the hall. Leah sneered at me.

"Gladly, Black, and don't come whining to me when you finally come to terms with the fact that Bella chose the vampire over you," Leah told me. "Asshole."

She pushed past me, ramming her shoulder hard into my arm as she stomped toward the hall.

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" I yelled after her.

I followed her to the door, thinking that I'd boot her ass out of it before it got the chance to hit her. That would be much more gratifying. I knew she could hear me coming up behind her, and when she quickened her pace, I sped up to get ahead of her. Triumphant, I reached the door before her, grabbed the knob, and wrenched it open. I stepped aside at the same time, flinging a hand out to point the way for her.

"Nice knowing you," I snarled.

"Black…"

I had expected a furious retort, and maybe a slap in the face, as Leah stormed out of my house, but Leah had frozen just before the door, maybe two steps behind me. Her eyes were wide and focused outside.

"What?"

I turned for the first time then, and I found Bella Cullen standing on my doorstep.

It was like a blast from the past to a month and half before when I'd opened my door to her after having just been cursing her husband's image on the television screen, but this time was different. Bella wasn't dressed in a slim, black dress, looking worn and tired, but still somehow upper-class and elegant with a cautious smile on her face and a bag in her hand.

This Bella was extremely pale, drawn, and haggard, standing empty-handed in overlarge clothing, which still didn't do anything to hide the large swell of her stomach. I gaped at her in silence, my mouth working but nothing coming out. It wasn't just how sickly she looked, it was the fact that she looked so pregnant. She was maybe one month through pregnancy, and she looked like she'd weathered seven.

Her eyes were the only color left on her face, and they were dark and scared and focused on me.

"Bella."

All my anger dissolved in the span of a second.

"Jacob." Her bottom lip quivered. "Jake—"

Whatever she started to say ended in a violent wince, and one of her hands went to her stomach. I saw her knees buckle, and I knew that she was going to fall before she did. My heart went straight up to my throat as I stepped forward and caught her against my chest.

"Bella, sweetheart, what's wrong?"

I could feel the mound of her belly between us, and I still couldn't quite believe how big it was. Confused, I pressed a hand to the back of Bella's head and began running my fingers coaxingly through her hair.

"Jacob, it's the baby…" Bella told me, her voice catching. "Edward found out. He…he took me to Carlisle a few weeks ago. It's a vampire like him, Jake. It's—It's killing me."

My heart stopped, and Bella broke into sobs against me. I forgot that Leah was there. I forgot that the rest of the world existed. There was a roaring inside my head that I couldn't place, and all I could feel was fear. It was a type of fear I had never felt before, and it almost brought me to my knees. No way. No way Bella was dying. Oh fuck. Oh shit… How could this happen? How could she be dying?

Because the baby's a vampire, you idiot, I answered myself. The blood-sucker is killing her from the inside out. It's not normal. That's why she's so big, because it's a freak. It's a little leech just like its dad.

No. I wasn't going to let that happen. Not to my Bella.

"It's not going to kill you, Bells. I promise," I told her. "How did you get here? Where is Cullen?"

As I waited for Bella to reign in her tears enough to speak, I felt the little sucker kick me. At first, I might not have believed it possible—considering my brain was still somewhere in the land of normal baby growth—but then I felt Bella wince directly after, like it'd hurt her.

I was going to murder Edward.

"He doesn't care if it kills me, Jacob. He's going to let it," she confessed miserably, and I felt a shiver of rage streak up my spine. "I'm not as interesting to him anymore. He didn't know that he could have kids, and now he wants one. It'll be his heir."

"That bastard," I snapped.

I had to control myself. The lines of the walls of my house were starting to blur, and I could feel that sliver of rage snake up my spine again. I knew what would happen if I thought too deeply about what Bella was saying, about how Edward intended to let her die.

"It hurts, Jake. So bad."

One of her arms was still wrapped around her stomach, but the other was against my chest, and I felt her hand dig into the cloth of my shirt.

"What did Carlisle say?" Leah spoke for the first time. "What did he say when Edward told him he was going to let you die?"

I shifted slightly to look back at Leah, but she wasn't looking at me. She was staring straight at Bella with a grim expression. I wanted to demand what the point of asking that kind of question was. Was she really going to try and make Bella suffer in a time like this?

Bella didn't lift her head when she replied. "Edward didn't tell him that. He pretended to be concerned. He asked if there was a way to save me. Carlisle suggested turning me right after the birth, but Edward's not going to. It was just a show for Carlisle."

I saw Leah's eyes narrow. "I didn't think he would go along with Edward."

I still didn't get the point. So what if Carlisle wouldn't agree to let the baby kill Bella? He obviously hadn't been concerned enough to help her when she'd went to him, and how could he not have seen how much she was suffering? Carlisle was just another leech underneath a false mask.

Bella sniffled. Leah's gaze shifted up to me.

"Carlisle is in Forks," Leah reminded me, and I lifted a brow. "You have to take Bella to him."
"What?" I growled.

Leah sensed my refusal, but waved it hurriedly away.

"Jacob, Bella looks like she's getting ready to pop. Who knows how long it takes for vampires to be born? It could be any second. She needs a doctor, and Carlisle won't let her die," Leah told me. "He's a… a good vampire. He's a doctor. Edward acted like he was going to save Bella. Otherwise, I'm sure Carlisle would have done something then."

I hesitated. Bella whimpered against me, and Leah's face darkened.

"You don't have any choices here, Jacob. Carlisle's the only safe bet. If you don't do anything, Bella's going to die anyway."

I clenched my teeth, knowing she was right. Standing there, holding Bella, I could sense her suffering. I had seen it plainly on her face. I could feel it every time she winced. But what Leah was suggesting sounded hardly favorable to me. If Bella had the baby, she would die.

If Carlisle delivered the baby, she would become a vampire.

I felt like the sole survivor on a deserted island, torn between making a raft and dying at sea or staying on the beach and dying on land. That was what it would be for me either way. The end of Bella's mortal life meant the end of me.

Very carefully, I placed my arm behind Bella's knees and hoisted her up into my arms. She groaned with the movement, but I pressed a soft kissed to her forehead and assured her that everything would be all right, because I couldn't allow her to die. No matter the sacrifice.

"Will you drive us?"

Leah nodded wordlessly and moved past me to lead the way. I started to trail after her, and that was when I heard the ear-splitting crack. I stumbled slightly as Bella screamed in my arms, writhing and holding her stomach, her face turning slightly purple. My face paled on the spot.

"Jacob?" Leah's fearful voice called.

I stared down at Bella horrified, knowing I'd heard what could only be a bone breaking.

"It—I think it broke one of her ribs," I told Leah, as fresh tears poured out of Bella's eyes. "Hold on, sweetheart. Hold on. I'm taking you to Carlisle. Everything's going to be fine."

I didn't really believe myself.

~!~!~!~

The drive to the Cullen house was too long. By the time we got there, I was wishing I could have phased and somehow carried Bella on my back, but we made it there, and I hurried up the path to their house as quickly as I could without hurting Bella.

I pounded on the door with the toe of my shoe. I might have kicked it in if Carlisle had waited a second longer to answer. Bella was crying, making soft, wounded sounds in my arms, and I was about to go fucking crazy, because I couldn't do a thing to keep Cullen's monster from killing her.

"Jacob."

Carlisle's smooth, youthful face caught me in the slanting evening light with a look of surprise, his golden eyes sliding from me down to Bella, where his expression became grim. I didn't like the fact that my existence depended on the blond demon in human clothes, but I was past having any chances on the matter at this point.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Where's Edward?"

I stepped forward, forcing Carlisle to step back into his house and let me in. I caught him glancing over my shoulder, spotting Leah in her car, where she would wait on me, she'd said, because she hadn't wanted to be inside the vampire nest. I didn't blame her. I was only here now for Bella.

Bella.

"Your bastard son was going to let her die, Carlisle. Bella came to me. She needs help. This thing is killing her," I spat, though glancing down at Bella's face took the wind out of me.

She was too hot. I was too hot. She probably had a fever, and my body heat wasn't going to help that. Reluctantly, I passed her to Carlisle, who took her into his arms without objection. I could tell by the look on his face that he'd understood and believed what I'd said.

You've got to do something to save her," I told him. "Anything."

He glanced up at me, hearing the desperation in my voice. The expression on his face was serious. I could practically see his thoughts churning around up in his head. I was thankful he'd kicked right into doctor mode. Leah had been right. Bringing Bella to him had been the right choice. I knew it.

Carlisle nodded sharply. "Come on. The others are in the kitchen. I'm going to need some help."