Guest reviewer, you brought up something I was wondering if anyone remembered. I did not forget that detail and expect to meet said shifter when more pieces fall into place. God, I'm missing Bella.
It had been a day but to Dol it felt like years. Slow motion. Blackness, the sound of bones cracking, and they were gone.
They'd vanished. According to both Alice and Edward it had been a split second decision by Zafrina. There hadn't been a chance to react.
It didn't change anything.
It didn't change the fact that Dol had been trapped.
Zafrina had stolen a needle off one of the vampires and injected her with SH.
Dol couldn't save her.
She couldn't try.
Leah was dead.
Bella was lost.
Dol was scared.
She couldn't change yet.
She had slept with Mike; three times.
She was drinking.
She felt like shit.
She was going to Hell.
"Dol?" Mike shook her gently and she groaned, pulling the blanket over her head when someone else turned the light on. She hadn't been asleep; she'd been lying in her bed drowning in her sorrows, curled up with a bottle of whisky.
"Go away."
"They're going to bury her." He pulled the blanket off her head and she blinked rapidly, pushing the fog out of her vision.
"No." She mumbled as he grabbed her arm.
"I need your help. I need you to focus, Dol. I need you to wake up." She groaned as the bond between them forced her mind to focus. I don't want to be sober. She went to pull the lid off the bottle but it was snatched away before she could.
"Dol." She looked up to see who had stolen her drink and was met with violet blue eyes. At first her voice hadn't really registered in Dol's brain but now it was clear.
"Go away, Rosalie."
"How many times have you slept with him?" Dol blinked, narrowing her eyes.
"What does that matter?"
"He didn't do it for himself, he's engaged to Jessica. He did it because he cares about you. If you weren't so lost in the fucking alcohol you've been having Alice bring down you'd see how much harm you're causing. I get it, I really do. You didn't get to save Leah, you can't sneak around the city because you are still trapped in your human form. Dol, a few weeks ago you were completely trapped in Bella's mind. You had no one but her."
"Exactly the issue. I had no one but her! Now I don't have her." Dol sat up, glaring at Rosalie.
"You don't have her but you have us. You have me, Mike, Alice, and Emmett. You somehow have Stefan pulling strings to keep all of us out of trouble for what Kachiri caused." She laughed without any humor. "Have you even tried to help Bella get out of her head since Leah was killed or have you been so wrapped up in you that you haven't tried?"
"Do you think I haven't tried? Do you honestly think that? Twelve hours. While the vampires were all out searching for any trace of Zafrina and Senna I was begging Bella's mind to let me in, I begged her mentally and verbally. Twelve hours I tried." Tears filled her eyes as she spoke, hostility in her voice. "I know that everyone thinks I've been completely out of commission since she died, the truth is, I can't be out of it. Apparently my DNA won't let me, notice the bottles behind me, those are from this afternoon or whatever this is. I shouldn't be coherent but here I am; talking to you like it's any other day."
"You need to get rid of the alcohol, you need to stop drowning in your sorrows, and you need to realize you're hurting more than just yourself by doing this." She shook her head and headed for the door. "Your DNA should have sent your head to the front when you slept with him. Which means one of two things. Either Mike was completely alright with cheating on Jessica or you ignored your instincts. I'm going to assume it was the one that makes you selfish. I could be wrong." She turned to face Dol, standing in the doorframe. "Get off your ass and come say goodbye to the girl that saved your sister's life." She left the doorway and slammed the door behind her; Dol could hear the faint sound of the wood cracking.
"I'm sorry." Dol mumbled, not looking at Mike.
"You aren't." She rolled over looked at him, surprised by his tone. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her with a wary expression. "I know you aren't sorry, Dol. I have realized something though. This…thing, this bond, Imprint, or whatever it is. You may not have noticed it but I have, your…connection to me, it's either faint or gone. Your DNA may be sobering you up and making you protect me but, Dol, I think when Bella blocked you out of her head it broke your soul."
Dol considered his words, she had been going through the motions, and she knew how some humans coped with grief so she'd done it. Not the positive ways, she'd sunk low and the more she thought about it now the more she realized how little she cared. The part of her that cared was like a drop of blood in a pool of water, so distant that she wondered if she could ever draw it out again.
"We need to go to Leah's funeral, Dol."
"You're right, Mike. No more alcohol, no more sex. I know using you like that was wrong."
"I want to return to the surface." She looked at him, that drop was screaming at her to tell him no.
She nodded. "Okay."
"You got into Bella's head before by not being forceful. Have you tried that?" He asked, standing and heading to the door.
"I have tried to get into her head."
"Try asking." He stated, pushing the door open and stepping into the hall. "Before you do though, come say goodbye to Leah. She died because she saved your sister's life." He closed the door leaving Dol alone.
Alone.
Dol was alone.
Bella was gone.
Mike was gone.
Her soul was cracked.
She needed to try.
First she owed it to Leah.
She would go to the funeral.
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The funeral was small. Dol was aware the shapeshifters were less than humans here but the knowledge that when a shapeshifter died it meant nothing gnawed at her basic instincts. The same feeling that had hit her when she'd seen the shifters in the dungeon. Dol acknowledged this fact but she didn't care.
They were on the surface, in a small field behind Emily's Diner. There was a hole in the ground where Leah's body, wrapped in a golden blanket, lay. On the side of the whole was a large pile of dirt with two shovels in it. Edward, Emmett, Rosalie, Dol, Mike, Jessica, Alice, her mate –who Dol had learned recently was named Jasper-, Emily, and Stefan were all gathered around it, none of them speaking. Jessica was clinging to Mike shooting daggers with her eyes at Dol.
Dol tried to care but now that it had been brought to her attention she couldn't. Edward's eyes shot up to her when he caught onto her inner thoughts.
Don't bring it up to them, not right now. It's wrong to do that.
He gave her a look that said something along "it's wrong for you to be here if you're thinking like that."
I get it but I have to be here. For Bella.
He shook his head slightly and looked back at Leah. The group was silent, they stood there for a while without speaking. It seemed to stretch on for years before Rosalie finally spoke.
"I didn't know her, at all." She spoke softly. "I only saw her as a shapeshifter that followed Kachiri around and never made a move to ask about her. I regret it. She did something good and didn't deserve what happened to her."
Emmett touched her shoulder and she nodded slowly. "I knew her." He spoke quietly. "I raised her from a very young age." Dol would have asked questions about that but she knew it was the wrong place. "I watched her grow up, I kept her on a drug that kept her human.
"I'm sure you can understand doing necessary things." Dol remembered Kachiri saying that to Emmett before everything had gone terribly wrong.
"When Kachiri approached me and told me I had to choose between being kicked from the city or giving up the girl I'd raised I was put in a bad position. Kachiri had told me she had no intensions of doing harm to her. After a lot of time I agreed. I will never forgive myself for it and I will never be able to apologize to her face. I'm sorry, Leah. I'm sorry that I raised you in the city, I'm sorry I let Kachiri take you. I'm sorry she used you to torture other shapeshifters. I'm sorry I didn't protect you."
He'd raised Leah?
Rosalie wrapped her arm around his back and leaned on him, it bothered Dol, reminded her how alone she was. She touched her bond with Bella, she did care when it came to Bella.
"May I?" Dol spoke softly, when no one objected she took a breath and began. "I didn't know Leah. I encountered her a couple times and what she did -even if it had been for herself- saved Bella's life. I will never be able to thank her for what she did. I respect her for what she went through from Kachiri and I can't imagine what it was like for her."
Dol closed her eyes and touched the connection again, wishing Bella was here. "I know Bella is gone, lost in her head." She shot an accusing glare at Edward when she said that. "I want to thank you, Leah, from Bella. Thank you, Leah." She let out a small breath. "I would have saved you." She hadn't realized she'd said that until the hostile glare from Rosalie hit her.
"I heard her thoughts." Edward spoke up, he didn't look at them. "She'd never spoken words, not in her entire life. She never found them necessary so in her final moments, she showed me what she wanted to be shared. I saw a lot of things. Her childhood, she showed me how good you were to her, Emmett. She didn't show me Kachiri, the things done to her after that. She showed me the man who raised her. I don't think she would've had it any other way." He looked at Dol. "She also showed me you and Bella, she showed me times she'd seen you together, none of the other times." He looked at the ground. "I have never seen a happier mind. Even when she was under the influence of Kachiri, she almost never thought about it, except when it was necessary."
There wasn't much left to say so the group was quiet for a while longer. Emmett was the first to make a move; he stepped forward and picked up one of the shovels, silently shoveling the dirt into the hole.
No one spoke as he did this. The only sound was the wind blowing gently and the humans, and Dol breathing.
"Hold on." Dol swallowed and stepped to the edge of the grave, she wished that the SH had worn off, she couldn't do what she wanted. Her instincts told her what she was supposed to do. She was trapped though so instead she slid down into the hole with Leah, someone made a sound of objection but if they moved to stop her she didn't see it.
She touched the blanket, right over the side of her head, she closed her eyes and sighed softly.
Dol didn't know what she was doing.
Dol was beyond herself.
Dol was scared.
Dol could feel Leah's soul.
She hadn't moved on, Leah was still in there. Her body may have been decaying but Leah's essence was still there.
She couldn't be saved.
Why was Dol compelled to be down here with the terrible smell of Leah's decaying body?
She let her instincts guide her, not knowing what would happen.
Then she felt it.
It wasn't Leah's essence.
It was the jaguar that Leah shared a bond with. It was the essence of her jaguar she felt. Dol opened her eyes and watched a yellowish brown essence came floating to the surface of Leah's body, to the outside of the blanket and slid across it, all of it entering into Dol through the hand that was laying across her head.
Dol was frozen, fear and awe filling her.
What was happening?
When all of the essence had left Leah's corpse the world began to spin around her, she could feel the jaguar's essence clawing beneath her skin, wanting freedom from the confines of the human body it had entered. Dol took a deep breath and turned away from Leah's corpse, above her Edward was standing there, holding a hand out for her.
She could've sworn she saw something along the lines of fascination in his expression.
She took his hand and allowed him to pull her out of the hole.
"She's gone." She spoke softly, looking at the others. "I absorbed the essence of her jaguar; I don't know exactly what it means." She looked at Mike and saw a small smile on his face, he felt it too then. The question was, why?
When Leah's jaguar essence had entered her she'd felt the connection between them either strengthening or reestablishing.
She felt…good.
Dol? Both she and Edward froze as the voice entered her head.
Bella?
