Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me.

Author's Notes: I'm sorry this chapter took so long to get out, but life kind of tackled me to the ground and it took awhile to get back on my feet. Oh, and I had a birthday, which was fun, but distracting.

But I hope you enjoy and thank you so much for sticking with the story!

Oh and special thanks to Robmau, without whom this chapter never would have been posted. Thank you for the tech advice and all your kind reviews!:)

Winter Moon

by Kristen Elizabeth

Forty-eight hours after encountering the newborn in the woods, Jacob woke from a dream about Nessie...only to find Quil and Seth staring down at him.

"Look who decided to quit faking sick." Seth poked his shoulder with a grin. "Wakey-wakey, Jakey-Jakey!"

Quil rubbed away a twitch in his temple. "Really, dude? Really?"

Jacob frowned as he struggled to sit up. "Nessie?" he asked, gritting his teeth against the pain that lingered in his recently-broken bones.

"Bella, Alice and Rosalie finally talked her into taking a shower and getting something to eat," Seth said. "It wasn't easy. She's been in here ever since we got here."

Exhausted from the effort it took just to pull himself into a sitting position, Jacob slumped back against the headboard. "Why?"

Quil and Seth exchanged a look. "Jake...what do you remember?" Quil asked.

He closed his eyes. "Vamp. Newborn." His muscles clenched. "Couldn't get her off of me." His eyes opened slowly. "Blood...everywhere."

"You nearly died," Seth informed him. Quil kicked his foot. "What? He has a right to know."

Shaking his head, Quil looked at his cousin. "You're gonna be fine. Doc says the transfusion worked better than he'd hoped."

"Transfusion?" Jacob looked back and forth between them. "Which one of you...?"

"Doesn't matter," Quil declared. "You would have done the same for any of us."

With a silent sigh of understanding, Jacob laid his head back against the carved wood of the headboard. "Thanks. I owe you one."

"Shut up," Quil told him with gruff affection. "You don't owe us shit." He cleared his throat. "Seriously, we're just glad you hung on, Jake."

A moment passed before Seth added, "So is Nessie."

Jacob swallowed heavily and winced at the stab of pain from the healing wound on his neck. "She hates me."

"No way." Seth folded his arms. "She might be mad at you, but it took three vampires to get her to leave your side, man. Nessie doesn't hate you."

"You don't get it, Seth." The more he talked, the stronger he got, yet he was still weak as evidenced by the effort it took to move his head back and forth. "But even if you're right..." Jacob closed his eyes again. "She should hate me."

"You know, I didn't leave Claire during the chickenpox, fly all the way here, and spend the last two days smelling vampire stink just to watch you throw yourself a damn pity party," Quil scowled.

"Great bedside manner," Jacob muttered. His cousin flipped him a casual finger. "If you'd hurt Claire...the way I hurt Nessie..."

When it became clear that he wasn't going to finish the thought, Quil looked at Seth. "Give us a minute?"

Seth rolled his eyes, but did as he was asked. "Gee, can't wait 'til I imprint so I can stay up with the big kids." For emphasis, he slammed the door shut behind him with more force than necessary.

Jacob broke the silence that followed. "Claire has chickenpox?"

"And her mom's terrified she's gonna scratch and leave scars." As he talked, Quil wandered over to Nessie's dresser and the framed pictures that decorated it. "Like that would matter." He paused as he studied the images of Jacob, Nessie and the Cullens. "She'll always be perfect to me."

"Yeah," Jacob echoed.

Quil looked back at him. "You're right about Seth not getting it. He thinks that once you imprint, you never look at anyone else ever again. But we know that's not true...right?"

At the same time, with the syncronicity that only came from having grown up together, they said in perfect unison, "Megan Fox."

Jacob looked away first, but now there was a small smile playing on his lips. It slowly died, though, the longer he stared off blankly. "I did more than just look. And I did it with Leah. With Leah, Quil!" His fists balled up against the sheets. "What the hell is wrong with me?"

"You gotta let it go."

"I would love to," he mumbled. "How do I do that again?"

Quil snorted. "Do I look like your fucking spirit guide? I don't know, Jake," he went on when a look of agony spread across his cousin's face. "Put it behind you. Move forward. Forgive yourself. Learn to embrace the now. Just do it!"

"You know what I just realized?" Jacob said a minute later. "I have your blood in my veins now." He frowned. "I think I can feel my brain cells dying."

Again, Quil snorted, but this time in laughter. "Screw you. If you're feeling good enough to be a dick, then I think it's time I head back to..."

There was a light knock on the door just then. A second later, before either of them could respond, the door opened and Nessie entered her bedroom.

She let out a little gasp of happy surprise upon seeing Jacob awake. Jacob instantly tried to sit up straighter, but exhaustion and pain kept him from moving too much. Still, their eyes met, stares locked.

And Quil suddenly felt like the worst kind of third wheel.

"Hey, Nessie," he said on his way out the door. The girl only acknowledged him by turning her head slighly towards him. She never looked away from Jacob. "Go easy on him, would you?" Quil asked her. "I know he's an idiot, but we try not to hold it against him. Maybe you can do the same?"

Without waiting for a reply from either of them, Quil slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him. Grinning, he went in search of his phone. It had been at least an hour since he'd called to check on Claire.

"Quil's right." Jacob's voice sliced through the silence. "I'm an idiot." Unable to bear the lost look in his eyes anymore, Nessie turned her head away from him.

He swallowed heavily as he watched her search for a safe place to look, even more convinced now that Seth was wrong and that he was the last person Nessie wanted to be around. Sure, she had kept watch over him and made sure he didn't die, but that was only because she had the most beautiful and tender heart of anyone he'd ever known. She would have done the same thing if he'd been a stranger or a sworn enemy.

"I'm going to go back to the res with the guys," Nessie's head snapped up, but by then Jacob was staring at his hands and didn't see her reaction. "As soon as Carlisle says it's okay...I'll leave. And I promise..." His throat closed up without warning. "I won't hurt you ever again, Nessie."

The silence that followed hurt worse than having his throat nearly ripped out by vampire. But when Nessie started chuckling...somehow that felt a hundred times worse.

"I cannot tell you," she began, shaking her head, "just how sick and tired I am of everyone in my life deciding that they know what I need better than I do."

Jacob frowned. "I'm only trying to make things easier for you. I thought..."

"That's the problem," Nessie cut him off, all amusement gone. "You thought, you made a decision...and now not only am I supposed to live with it, but I'm supposed to be happier for it." She took a step towards the bed. "But here's what you didn't do, Jake, and it's the reason I'm not arguing the fact that you really are kind of an idiot." She paused. "You didn't ask me what I thought. Just like my father didn't and my mother didn't and Nahuel..."

Her abrupt silence made Jacob's imagination run wild. "What about him?"

Nessie jerked her shoulder. "It's nothing."

But he wasn't buying it. "The hell it isn't!" Jacob struggled even harder to sit up all the way. "What happened with him, Nessie?" She folded her arms tightly across her chest, as if protecting a great secret. "If he hurt you, I swear..." Jacob could feel Quil's blood boiling in his veins. "Just tell me...what did he do to you?"

"Everything that you wouldn't!"

Never, in all the years he'd known and loved her, had Nessie ever yelled at him before. The tone of her voice took him by surprise so much that the implication in her words didn't catch up to him until a few minutes later.

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "Jake, I didn't..."

It explained everything. It was his worst nightmare come to life. Unable to form any coherent sentences when his mind was filled with gut-stabbing images of Nahuel and Nessie together, Jacob just held up his hand for her to stop. There was no triumph in her expression when he was finally able to look at her. Just regret and guilt.

Again, somehow that was much worse.

"So," Jacob started, drawing on every ounce of his diminished strength in order to keep his tone cool and neutral. "We're even, then?"

Nessie's chin trembled. "Jake, Nahuel and I..."

"If I promise to never mention Leah around you again," Jacob cut her off, "can I ask that you never talk about him around me?" He took the lowering of her lashes as a yes. His shoulders relaxed against the headboard, yet every muscle in his body remained taut. "Are we good, Nessie?"

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. "I don't know. Are we?"

"You decide." He took a breath. "Do you want me to leave?"

Without hesitation, she shook her head. "I never wanted you to leave." Nessie blinked up at the ceiling. "None of this should have ever happened," she whispered. "If you just would have..."

"Stayed?" he finished for her.

"Loved me back."

After a long time had passed between them, Jacob let out his pent-up breath. "Nessie...I might be an idiot, but I'm a damn lucky one. Know why?" He answered his own question, "Some men spend their whole lives trying to figure out why they were born. I figured it out when I was seventeen." He looked her straight in the eye. "I was put on this earth to love you."

"Up until now, I have done a shitty job of showing you that," Jacob went on a second later. "I was stupid and I was confused and I made some huge mistakes. But from now on...you will know every day that I love you."

"Jake..."

Once more, he quieted her, this time by asking for her hand. She tentatively touched her fingers to his, surprised at the warmth of his skin after so many hours of deathly cold. "It was never about me loving you, Nessie. Never. I have loved you as a brother, as a friend, as a guardian...and when I realized that I loved you as a man..."

The barest hint of a smile colored her cheeks. "You freaked?"

"That's one way of putting it."

Nessie looked down at their joined hands. "Jake, I need you to know that Nahuel..."

"It doesn't matter," he insisted. "It only matters if you love him." He frowned suddenly. "Nessie, do you...?"

"I care about him," she murmured. "But I barely know him."

It wasn't exactly an answer that was going to help him sleep at night, but it was the best Jacob figured he could hope for. After all, it had been no one's mistakes but his own that had driven Nessie into Nahuel's arms. And even if the bastard had been the first to make love to her, Jacob was determined to be the last.

He hadn't realized that he'd closed his eyes until he felt Nessie pull her hand away. The loss of contact made him want to reach for her, but she was already too far away.

"I'm sorry. I should let you rest." Backing away from the bed, Nessie flashed him a half-hearted smile. "Unless you're hungry. I could bring you some soup or something."

Right then, he wanted whatever would bring her back to him as quickly as possible. "Soup would be great."

After giving him another smile, Nessie slipped out of the room and firmly closed the door behind her. Resting her forehead on the wood frame, she shut her eyes in self-loathing.

Why had she done it? Why had she lied? Why hadn't she shouted at the top of her lungs that she most certainly had not had sex with Nahuel the moment she realized what she'd said?

How the hell could she claim to have forgiven Jacob only to turn around and make him suffer?

Thousands of miles away, Zafrina set a steaming bowl of stew in front of her half-human guest only to watch him push it away a second later.

"To my knowledge, Senna has not changed the recipe," she told him. "She will worry if you do not eat."

"I am sure it is delicious," Nahuel said, "but I cannot."

"Someone else ate this very dish in this very kitchen not so long ago," Zafrina mused. "Perhaps she is the reason your appetite has changed?"

"Why did she leave?" His eyes grew dark with confused anger. "Tell me why, Zafrina!"

"Alice told us that they were sick for home. She missed her family. Nothing more than this."

Nahuel shook his head. "It was more. I upset her. I moved too fast, too soon." He bent the spoon in his hand under the crushing pressure of his fist. "It was my fault."

Zafrina looked back and forth between him and the spoon. "Do you intend to do something about it or do you wish to ruin all of my spoons? You are the only one who uses them, you know."

"What can I do? What is there for me to do?"

"Do you no longer believe she is your destiny?" After a moment, Zafrina added, "Go to her."

Nahuel sighed as if he had already considered this and dismissed it. "She does not want me."

"She is very young. She does not know what she wants."

"Or she does and I am not it." Nahuel looked down at the bent metal in his hands. "My Renesemee...I would give anything to see her one more time."

Zafrina cursed in her native tongue. "You men are all ridiculous!" she chastised him, but not without a fair amount of familial amusement. "Go to her, do not go to her...the choice is yours. Either way, do not mope about my house as if you are the star of a television drama!" Throwing back her wild hair, she strode towards the living room, but paused at the door to add, "You will live forever. Would you really never know for certain?"

A long time after she left, Nahuel slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed information. "Manuas Airport," he told the operator. "Ticket information."

To Be Continued