AUTHOR'S NOTE: Well. I've just broken my all-time record for reviews. Also just broke 100 story alerts. I am…psyched. You guys have no idea how much I love you right now. You are the most attractive readers anyone has ever had, of that I am convinced. Oh! Also. As you can probably tell, this story is starting to wrap up, and after this I only have one more compass point to go: West. I'm still not sure who I want to write it about, so maybe y'all can help me decide. There's a poll up on my profile if you want to throw in your opinion—options so far are Carlisle, Rosalie, Benjamin (the element-manipulator guy), Chelsea (the Volturi girl who changes emotional bondings), and Laurent. If there's anyone else you want me to write about, message me and let me know! Otherwise, go vote so that I know what y'all want to hear. And thanks again! 333
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As I understood it from Encyclopedia Britannica, there were basically two categories of murder: premeditated and crimes of passion. Premeditated murders were the cold-blooded ones, the ones that the murderer planned out, thought about, wore gloves to commit so that they didn't leave fingerprints. Juries usually didn't like those kind as much. Crimes of passion maybe you could sway them on—those are the kind that were based off a sudden love-related reasoning, like jealousy or heartbreak.
I had been wondering which category my murder would fall into. Not that Irina would be tried in court, or anything—no, the reason vampires walked around like they could get away with anything was because they mostly could. It was just that Irina wasn't much of a talker, and I didn't have anything else to think about. Okay, see, here was the dilemma: it had obviously been premeditated. I don't know how long it had taken her to figure this one out, but she had meditated on it at least a little, that was for sure.
Then again, it was also technically a crime of passion. I'd been a part of her husband's death, and that had made her angry, and extremely passionate about removing my head from my shoulders. I didn't know how to classify it.
Of course, it wasn't going to matter what the classification was if I was dead. I probably wouldn't care.
She'd broken my leg eight times. I couldn't help but think that couldn't be healthy. I mean, yes, I healed fast, but that might actually be working against me in this instance—if I didn't get help for that leg soon, it was going to be healing like a jigsaw puzzle put together by a three-year-old.
It did make for slower going, though, and we were barely moving as it is. I was not making things easier for her—I'd only actively attacked her a few more times, but I was definitely dragging my heels. She wanted to take me to Washington, and this morning I had wanted the same thing, but she wanted to take me there to kill me and therefore it was in my best interest to make sure that we didn't get there at all. I don't think we'd even made it to Canada, and it had taken her all day to get me this far. She'd even started talking about jumping on a bus, but I assume it would be difficult to explain a seventeen-year-old boy on a leash with a broken leg. Maybe she'd steal a car.
"Hey," I said. "I'm hungry." It had been ten minutes since I'd caused any sort of problem. Time to screw things up again. She ignored me. She was still annoyed from the last distraction, which was been me lighting her hair on fire. Don't even ask how I managed that one. "HEY," I said louder, and I stopped dead in my tracks despite the fact that it about snapped my neck to do it. "I'm hungry!"
"That's awesome!" she turned on me, looking ready to kill me on the spot. "I don't care!"
"I need food!" I yelled back at her (I'd discovered that mostly the only way to communicate with Irina was yelling). "Do you want me to die right here? I'm so sure Tanya would buy it if I disappeared halfway to Skagway, Alaska!"
"You're not going to die," she said scornfully. "It's probably been five hours since you've eaten, you can go like—days."
"Three weeks," I corrected unnecessarily. "Up to three weeks."
"Three weeks," she said, throwing up a hand. "There we go. You can go ahead and starve."
I was thinking about trying something else—that hadn't stopped her for all that long—but suddenly I had something else to pay attention to. I told myself not to stop, she hadn't seemed to catch what I just had. I wondered how good a vampire sense of smell was, because she sure wasn't smelling this like I was. The smoked russet flavor of someone behind us, getting closer, and somebody who Irina was not going to like. I didn't know who it was, but this was not a vampire. Someone was coming for me.
She finally caught the scent a few steps after I did, and her head snapped around with her chin tipped up. She was too late—a wolf was suddenly right there in front of us, snarling, and I did not recognize the wolf. I thought I knew everyone on sight—and considering that I'd now met both packs in probably the whole world, there was no excuse for not recognizing this small, white wolf with gray patches like leopard spots down the ridge of its spine. That was something I would have remembered.
No chance to be a wolf around Irina, though—she turned, and her eyes narrowed, and in a few seconds, I was going to know who it was. The fur was disappearing in ripples across the wolf's legs and back, and it became clear almost immediately that those were not boy legs. My eyes popped open, and then as her black hair started to come back in and her eyes, I realized who it was and I looked away. I felt like I should stab my eyes out. I felt like I should have had a little warning here, but to fair I hadn't expected Kira, of all people, to show up here as a wolf.
Just as I was really considering pulling an Oedipus, though, someone cut straight in front of her, blocking her out, and it was a person who could distract me on a dime. Tanya.
I suppose I had expected to see her again. I'd expected to see her again in the way that I hadn't believed that Kira was dead—people had told me differently, multiple times, and I'd tried to convince myself of these things, but somehow they had never seemed to stick. I saw Tanya come out of nowhere and I was surprised, but I believed it. It was right.
She wasn't even looking at me, she hadn't even said anything, too busy draping her parka around Kira's shoulders. I wasn't sure about what I should do here, and Irina seemed to be feeling the same way. Just to be safe, she jerked me backwards and wrapped her hand around my neck, holding me so that if she'd had a gun it would have been pointed at my head. Neither of us were sure who was here for what—I mean, Tanya hadn't exactly run into my arms. For all I knew she was here out of some sense of obligation. I did tend to get myself into these things, and maybe she thought she had to get me back out.
Either way, my chances were looking up. I put my left foot slowly down, leaning my weight on the leg even though it wasn't more than halfway healed. Whatever was going to happen next, I wanted to be ready for it.
"Tanya," Irina said, and her voice was strange. She knew she was doing something she wasn't supposed to—she'd been caught. Even though she still didn't think what she was doing was wrong, she still knew Tanya's opinion on the subject. "What's with the little bitch?"
"Hey!" Kira objected, struggling to her feet, but she might just have to get used to that one. It was just too easy—you were a girl who changed into a dog. It was just too easy. I'd have to get her to Leah and see if there were any special girl-wolf tips to be shared, Kira just seemed a little—young. I guess that first change always did come from stressful circumstances, and this was about as stressful as it got. I was just glad she wasn't dead.
"Irina," said Tanya in a voice so flat that it had to be anger. Either that or boredom. Hopefully anger. "You have to be kidding me."
"I didn't want you to find out." Was that regret I heard in Irina's voice? I doubted it. It was probably just regret that she'd gotten caught.
"I bet you did," Tanya said, and then grabbed a handful of Irina's fish-blonde hair.
I got out of there. I'd seen a few chick fights in my time, and those had just been the normal human kind. I was not getting in the middle of this. Especially because Kira already had hold of my arm and pulling me out from between them the exact way I'd done it for her earlier. She was stronger, I'd thought I had felt it before and there was no mistaking it now—she was strong in the shocking way that Leah was. I mean, when the rest of us punched through walls and stuff, you expected it, we looked like the kind of guys who punched through walls. Leah had never looked like that—still soft somehow, still small, and Kira was smaller still. But feeling her fingers wrap around my arm, I had no doubt that she could punch through some walls.
"Hi!" she said, clearly still pumped full of adrenalin and the wonder of that first phasing, discovering that your idea of you was actually bigger than you thought it was, way bigger, like discovering a whole new secret wing of your house. "Hey! Are you okay? We got here as fast as we could. Caleb knows what happened now, he found out when I turned into a werewolf. He told your Sam and Jacob, they're on their way. He can read my mind," she informed me, even though I knew already and so did she. It was just a whole new world, this werewolf thing, and I understood that smile on her face even if it was, technically, wildly inappropriate to the situation.
"Are you okay?" I asked, just in case.
"Oh jeez, I'm fine," she waved me away. "A little surprised, but I'll get over it. How are you? That leg looks terrible! Are you all right?"
"Kira," I said, looking at her in the light of a sudden new idea. "I think I need to introduce you to a guy named Seth Clearwater."
"Seth who?"
"Never mind," I said. We'd work that out later. "How did you—and why did you go to Tanya?"
"I didn't go to her, she was there," Kira said, distracted by the fight. "She showed up right before I changed, she was really nice about it—hey, don't you think maybe we should help?"
A good idea in theory—I mean, here we were chatting it up when Tanya was fighting Irina to the death—but Tanya didn't seem to so much need our help. She threw Irina halfway across the clearing and then she showed up right in front of us, smiling like Kira despite the fact that there were three long scratches across her face.
"Embry," she said quickly—Irina was already getting up, behind her. "Hi." And she grabbed me and pulled me into a kiss.
We hadn't kissed since that first day on the glacier—we'd been touching, we'd been holding hands, but we hadn't kissed again. Not till now.
"You came back," I said breathlessly, clinging to her. "You came back. Why did you come back?"
"Because I love you," she said, and then as Irina leapt at her she turned slightly and grabbed her by the neck, not letting go of me with her other hand.
"Tanya," Irina snarled, still reaching for me but I was too far away. "You can't be serious."
"Oh, I'm serious," Tanya told her. "And you, Irina—you broke the rules. We told you not to mess with him, we told you not to touch him. How dare you."
"He's a werewolf!"
"And he is my bond," Tanya snapped back. "We told you, every one of us told you, he is off limits. I don't care if he's a three-headed serial killer, he's my bond. Even Kate told you to leave him alone, Irina!"
"I—can't," Irina choked.
Tanya threw her down, shaking her head in disgust. "You can't," she repeated. "All right. Fine. You made your choice. You need to leave, Irina."
"Leave?"
"You're dangerous," Tanya said coldly. "You're insane. We don't want you around anymore. If you come back, I'll kill you."
"Tanya—" Irina said, getting slowly back to her feet.
"I'm serious, Irina!" Tanya yelled. "Get out of here!"
She got out of there. I wasn't sure how permanently she got out there, but at least she was gone. I was no longer in danger of immediate death—that was, if I hadn't wildly misinterpreted Tanya's kiss. "Embry," she said again, turning back to me with that same "hello" tone, the same sunrise warmness. "Sorry about that. Did I already tell you that I love you?"
"I'm not sure you should," I said.
"Why?"
She had me there. "I don't know," I said, trying to articulate everything I'd been feeling for the last two weeks. "I'm just—Embry." Yeah, that was what I came up with. Really eloquent.
"Well, yes," she said. She didn't seem to see the problem with this.
"That's the point," I explained. "You shouldn't be with me. I'm nothing special."
"Don't be stupid," she said, and kissed me again.
And I didn't feel like a nothing. There was just a way that I felt that I was with her, a soaring scope of feeling and I felt like there was light coming out of my fingertips, out of the top of my head. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, she was the most incredible impossible angel painting, and she wanted me. And I did not feel like nothing.
"Hey Tanya?" I said, after I could breathe again.
"Yes?"
"Do you want to go to Prom with me?"
Behind us, Kira made a small noise like an elephant stepping on a mouse, and covered her mouth with her hands.
Tanya smiled that light-up smile, melting me, defrosting everything within ten feet. Sunrise. "Sure," she said. "I'd love to."