I do not own Twilight!

Jacob's POV:

An unbearable ache plunges into Jacob's heart on the second night that Jacob is away from Clary, the feeling so intense that it brings him to his knees after phasing out of his wolf form. His body curled into itself, while the pain in his chest exploded. It felt like his heart was bursting from his chest, like a sword stabbed him from the back and exited through his chest. From far away, Jacob heard Embry, Quil and Leah phase into their human forms.

"Jake!" Embry knelt next to Jacob's thrashing body with a worried expression on his face. "What's wrong?" Jacob's only reply was a scream of pure agony.

"Embry!" A female voice echoed from the dark forest and the small pack tensed up at the sound, until Keally came crashing into view. "Jacob! Somethings wrong with Clary, but I cannot feel her anymore."

"What do you mean you cannot feel her anymore?" Leah looks confused, while Quil and Embry just appear wide eyed and paled.

"I felt Clary's misery, which was the most intense feeling I have ever experienced and then there was just…nothing. It was as if the link between Clary and I was severed. I don't feel anything from her. I don't know how or where she is anymore!" Keally sounds like she is about to breakdown, her voice cracking with emotion. She turns her eyes on Jacob's crumpled form on the forest floor and frowns. "What happened to him?"

Embry frowned and looked concerned for Jacob again before responding. "We were doing our patrol and then he just phased back, thrashing like this and has been unresponsive."

"Hopefully he is not having a stroke," Quil offered unhelpfully.

Embry threw him a dark look, while Leah rolled her eyes, murmuring "Way to deescalate the situation, genius."

"What?! It's possible," Quil exclaimed. "What is the acronym for a stroke? Oh yeah! F.A.C.T. What's his face look like?"

Leah glanced at Jacob for a long second and then peered at Quil. "Isn't that obvious?" She looked at Embry and Keally, as if needing confirmation. "I mean the guy looks pretty bad."

"And in pain," Embry agreed.

"By the way, Quil, the warning signs of a stroke are F.A.S.T. Face, Arms, Speech, and Time." Leah pointed out the fact and frowned down at Jacob.

"My god, are you guys always like this?" Keally stared at them, incredulous at the packs helplessness air for aiding Jacob, or there lack of aid. "Move." Keally knelt down next to Jacob and placed her hand on his chest, closing her eyes. After a few minutes, Jacob stopped thrashing and was motionless.

"What did you do?" Leah glanced at Keally, a little suspiciously.

"I took away his pain." Keally appeared slightly ill and shaken.

"Is he dead?" Quil quipped and everyone groaned. "He's dead, isn't he?! I told you it was a stroke."

Embry shook his head. "He's not dead, Quil. He's still breathing." Leah nods in agreement and squints into the dark curtain of the forest. "Do you think that the connection with Clary and our…situation with Jacob is a coincidence?"

Keally awarded Embry with a pained expression and Embry sighed. "I didn't think so. Where was Clary when you last felt her?"

"She's in Pennsylvania. She was attending her father's wedding," Keally looked like she wanted to say more but pressed her lips together in a firm line. A groan echoes off the walls of the forest and everyone turns to the crumpled form on the ground, the body that is now not motionless. Jacob winced as he sat up. "I feel like I was hit by a tractor trailer," Jacob muttered. Then, glancing at Keally, his brow furrowed. "Where is Clary?" Keally repeated former statement but would not meet Jacob's eyes. "You just let her go alone?" Jacob's voice growled out the question in demand. He rose from his crumpled form on the ground quickly, ignoring the objections from his pack and the growling warning from Embry. "Why are you still here and not helping her?!"

Keally glared at his towering form, but did not seem to bulk at his…situation of nudity. "Clary told me she needed to do this alone. It was a request that I needed to trust and respect her with, Jacob."

Jacob gulped and pinched his brow. "But something is very, very wrong right now with her. So where is she in Pennsylvania?" Keally told him and made frequent glances at the pack, while she talked and they planned.

When Keally and the wolves found Clary, she was covered in dried blood and mud. Leaves matted in Clary's auburn hair were caked with clotted blood, dirt and sticks. There were streaks on her dirtied face that trailed from her eyes to jawline from obvious tears. Her eyes were closed and her breathing slow. At first glance, Keally thought she was dead. She shuddered at the thought of losing her best friend and fell to her knees, curling Clary into her body and brushing away the disarrayed auburn locks from her battered face. There was a long scratch down the left side of face and what appeared to be claw marks down her arms. Clary's once beautiful dress hung in tatters and her body was smudged in bruises and dried cuts. However, most disturbing was the bite mark on her left shoulder, which deeply marked her pale skin. Keally tensed as she heard rustling nearby, and then relaxed slightly when she saw Embry and Jacob in there wolf forms. The wolves froze at the scene, stunned into silence. Jacob let out a whine that was heartbreaking and filled with agony before carefully trotting to Clary's side, nuzzling her face softly with pleading eyes. Then, Jacob's nose filled with the scent of another wolf and growled low in his throat, as his eyes filled with rage at the sight of the bite mark on Clary's left shoulder. With another growl and whine of pain, Jacob phased back and fell to his knees. Embry followed soon after.

After shrugging on some of the clothes that Keally brought in her bag, Jacob ran a frustrated hand over his face. "The bastard marked her," Jacob choked out. "The scent reeks of the black wolf." A long silence takes over the group, which allows only the sound of the rustling trees to play in the background.

A gasp of breath breaks through the silence and Keally peers down at Clary's eyelids fluttering open. "Keally?" Clary's voice croaks slightly. "Run!" Clary shrieks out and jerks her body upwards, turning her head around to look for a danger that haunted her dreams and recent reality. Then, her emerald eyes widened at the sight of Jacob and Embry. Jacob took a cautious step towards Clary to try to comfort her and so much fear filled Clary's eyes.

"We need to get her to a hospital," Keally stated in a soft voice. Another step towards Clary caused a stab of pain because Clary scurried away from Jacob, her jaw clenched and eyes filled with distain. Jacob tried to fill the gap between them again, but Clary's back slammed against a tree in her retreat. "Don't come near me," she spat.

"Clary, what happened? Where is the rest of your family?" Keally's question caused flashes of horror and grief in Clary's eyes.

"They are all dead," Clary murmured in a voice that didn't sound like her own. She continued speaking with her eyes pinned to the ground. "There was so much blood and screaming. So much death…"

Clary's recount of the wedding, which had quickly turned into butchery, caused Keally to wince. "Let's go, Clary." Keally pulled Clary to her feet and allowed her to lean on her for support. Keally's eyes flicked to Jacob and Embry. "I'm taking her to the hospital."

Clary's POV:

Jacob kept trying to be near me but I kept cringing away. I knew he just wanted to help anyway that he could, and yet I couldn't stomach looking at him. Him, or any of the other wolves, because each time we made eye contact, a flashback of the black wolf hovering over me and sinking his teeth into my flesh consumed me. I wanted to hold my hands over my ears, close my eyes, and just scream. Scream until the terror of this nightmare startled me awake. Then, maybe I wouldn't find myself an orphan, alone and afraid. Maybe I wouldn't be sitting in this hospital bed, trembling from what the doctors identified as shock. I wouldn't have had to make a statement about the sudden deaths of my entire family, and my family's closest friends. I wish the guilt of what happened wasn't so heavy on my chest. "You shouldn't be here."

"Clary, you don't mean that. Please, let me help you." The words sound foreign because whenever I look at Jacob, I see the massacre of innocence. The faces of my nieces and nephew stained with blood, cold and lifeless. "Please, Clary, you're my imprint. I—"

I look at my hands, which appear marred with scratches and shaking on the background of the hospital sheet of the hospital bed I was recently assigned. "I don't want you anymore," I whisper.

Keally and Embry shift their weight from foot to foot, feeling like intruders on a personal moment. I look at Jacob and I just feel dead inside, as flashes of his wolf form spark behind my eyes. It feels so wrong to even look at him right now. A sick ache enters my stomach and I conclude that the idea of him being a wolf fills me with nausea. "What happens if I don't want this? To be forced into your world because of some tradition."

"It's more than a tradition," Jacob mutters with his eyes directed upward, staring at dull lighting of the hospital room. I look up and the sight is damning and bleak. Jacob doesn't seem to want to elaborate on his answer but I remain silent until he continues. "It's law to us."

My eyes flash open "It is not law to me." My voice is cold as ice but Jacob just grins slyly, with a hint of amusement in his darkened eyes. I want to wipe that grin off his smug, beautiful face. A face, so beautiful and strong, but that could have been the one that slaughtered my nieces and nephew.

"All I am supposed to see is you," Jacob pleads. "Clary, all I see is you." With startling realization it hits me that I am in love with this man… My heart yearns for his embrace, but then my mind flashes through the massacre, again. Like a band aid, I decide to rip quickly away from this dangerous feeling, this imprint, before I have a chance to know and love Jacob Black. Before these wolves take even more from me.

With visions of black wolves and my family dying dancing behind my eyes, I swallow my heart whole after stomping it into submission. I glance at the internal bloodshed with a numbness that overwhelms me, the hurt doesn't show but the pain grows until I say the words out loud. Rather than just rolling them over in my mind. "I reject the imprint." A scream erupts in my head from my dying heart but I merely glance down at the withering, wet lump in my fingers with indifference before I crush all the life that remains. I look at Jacob and decide that I don't have a heart. That from now on…I will practice so that people can love me but I won't love back. And no one can hurt me anymore.

Jacob stares at me with his jaw clenching and unclenching. His face breaks out into a grin, as if challenging my emotionless expression, but then falters once he looks deeply into my eyes. His hand grazes my cheek and drops down to my neck, tousling some of my curls to the side. "You don't mean that," he whispers but it's more like a plea coming from his soft lips. He looks hauntingly beautiful with the dull backdrop of the hospital room. "Clary…I-" Jacob paws at his chest in horror and his voice becomes chocked, almost desperate for relief from that pain I had become accustomed to since I met Jacob. That pain could be excruciating, and a part of the imprint that was almost a curse. The part that desperately fought for love, or laws, as Jacob put it. I understood, in my actions and words that I was giving up on Jacob Black.

"Please leave, Jacob." My voice sounds foreign and cold, but Jacob stays firm in his spot, stunned into silence and unwilling to comply with my request. I turned away from him with the corpse of my heart staining the sands of our budding relationship red with missing love and misplaced hope. "Get me out of here, Keally." If Jacob wasn't going to leave, then I'd be the one that made the move and walked away. I looked at Keally and, twenty minutes and a struggle with the hospital staff later, I fell into the seat of a hotel room with a numbness that encapsulated my childhood.

I know this is long overdue but I've been underwater with assignments. Review, please!