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34 - Bonds
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Jacob pressed the "end" button on his cell phone and cracked his knuckles against the device anxiously as he paced back and forth in front of Bella's house.
They were on their way.
His dad and Emily had gone to meet them at the airport in the battered old white van that belonged to the high school. The entire Pack was waiting.
Like they had been doing for the last three days.
Endless waiting.
They were now, in human form, perched on the steps, on the porch, leaning against the old stump in the yard – looking like a flock of hungry crows from one of those B-movies Bella and he used to watch on Saturday afternoons.
Jacob rubbed his face with his hand at such a poignant thought as he sighed dejectedly. The innocence of those days could never be recovered.
Before wolves. Before vampires. Before the world was such a frightening and violent place.
A strident anxiety stretched the damp, chilly Spring thin and tight. It was suffocating. And the Pack's deeply troubled state had been the perfect excuse to bow out of joining his dad for the trip to the airport. Jacob knew he didn't have Billy fooled for a moment, though.
They both knew that Jacob was really simply afraid of losing control.
The general distress of the Pack ramped up his own wolf accordingly and piled on top of his already burgeoning protective and frustrated rage. Every last wolf wanted blood. And lots of it. Three days of no sleep and watchful waiting didn't help matters much either.
But they had all been surprised by the simple, congenital power of the Pack that ran deep and potent in every one of their veins – usually neglected and suppressed to the best their human ability. Having one of their own abducted and worse – and two of their frontline on the offensive – had left every single one of the Pack debilitated in frenzied agitation.
It had instinctively awakened the most profound aspects of their shared bonds and brought them together. Inexorably.
The whole Pack had pretty much stayed in wolf form over these days – close to each other, splayed out over Emily's living room in a big furry pile. It had soothed the lupine instinct - and it was as close as its human counterpart was going to get to any peace at all. With no biting comments bent on soothing uncomfortable human sensibilities, they had each and every one simply accepted the wolf. As a group they came to the profound realization that they were indeed neither human nor separate any more, and that by trying to pretend to be, they crippled their very souls. Their wolvish, supernatural, aggregate souls.
So they piled nose to tail and shared misery and soft whines.
Like some kind of practiced routine, each head lifted in unison whenever Emily's cell phone rang from where she was crashed out in the tattered, worn easy chair. Their sister; as much a part of the lupine family as those who were whining plaintively over lolling tongues and blinking with sorrowful yellow eyes at her feet. She never spent a second of these agonized, pining, worried days alone. And there were many seconds to be had in three days. Jacob had never really realized just how many. Until he had counted.
Now human – as the rest of them - Jacob's hands were trembling, his stride jerking… he had never been so close to losing control to the wolf. Ever.
Sam had phoned with a breathless update from the plane – Paul's heartbreaking lupine mourning keening over the roar of the engines– and Jacob had relayed the story with harsh, bitten words to the rest of the Pack. He hadn't trusted himself to Phase to do it.
He didn't know if he'd have been able beat the wolf back down again.
It was that bad.
Not as bad as it could have been -which was of minimal comfort to them all - but Bella was beaten and broken… and of course, so was Paul.
And by virtue of their very natures, the Pack was too. Jacob could feel it in the very marrow of his bones.
Sensing eyes on him, Jacob turned and found Leah watching him intently from the stairs. She glanced down meaningfully at his hands which were fisted and vibrating with a promise of violence and an impending Phase. Her black eyes were steady and understanding and it made Jacob pause. He and Leah had curled at the foot of Emily's chair all these days, resting muzzle on ruff while their brothers piled around them. Touching, always touching.
The sound of the old spluttering van in the distance made Jacob's head whip around. And he mused that it would have made an interesting scene, all seven heads turning in unison to no clue that a human would sense.
A human like Sue. She bolted up in alarm, wringing her quivering hands in the chill of the Washington Spring from where she sat on the old chair on the porch beside Seth.
"They're coming, Ma," he explained putting an arm around her and trying to warm the slight woman.
Thank God Sue was an experienced nurse practitioner – a doctor without degree Harry had always said – who had run the clinic on the Rez pretty much single handedly for years. Her expertise was the only hope Bella had to stay home. All three on the plane agreed that a sterile hospital with people she didn't know would not be the best place for Bella to heal. For reasons not entirely just Pack-centric and selfish, Jacob agreed.
As the van, driven cautiously by his father, finally pulled into view down the road, the tremors in Jacob's limbs became full-blown spasms. He gulped down the racing, heaving breaths that struggled to burst through his chest.
Shit, he really was gonna lose it.
Siphoning off the excess steam from the entire pack like some kind of safety valve had worn Jacob down – lineage be damned. After that battle and the endless trauma that came after…
Now Bella.
It was just too much… too goddamn fucking much. For the wolf as well as the man.
A harsh punch in his bicep made Jacob snarl reflexively as he whipped around.
Leah tossed her head with that habitual, efficient snap that threw her bobbed hair back from her face. "Hang tight, Chief," she gave him an irreverent smirk. "S'not time for the puppy pile yet."
It was just the distraction he'd needed.
Jacob expelled a breath of relief through his nose.
"C'mere chica," he grumbled grabbing her by the arm with the kind of roughness he could with her constitution and pulling her in front of him. He rested his big hands on her shoulders and absently kneaded the muscles. It was enough to soothe the choking angst so he could draw a full breath into his lungs. His wolf loved the way she smelled. Jacob did too, for that matter.
The van pulled into the crunching gravel of the driveway and Jared, Quil and Embry were by Jacob's side in an instant, waiting anxiously for instructions.
"Help them," Jake growled low, his hands stilling on Leah's shoulders and inadvertently squeezing hard with the return flood of his angst. Good thing she could take it.
Like it was choreographed, without a word, one boy pulled the chair out of the back of the van as the other approached to assist Billy, Jared going round the side to pull open the sliding door.
Sam popped out, turning to lift Emily down and the tension in the air pulled taut like a noose. Charlie hopped down from the passenger side and panned the group with eyes that looked a hundred years old while hands were being offered through the side door again.
It was as if the Pack held a collective breath as Paul nimbly ducked out of the vehicle and straightened with his immutable presence and intensity. A bundle of blankets was clutched tenderly, possessively, fearfully to his chest.
A tiny, frail bundle.
Far too tiny and frail to be Bella.
Jacob gasped – he could feel the depths of his Pack mate's suffering.
A strident howl pierced the air like a needle and pulled cleanly through the cloudy afternoon, long and lamenting like a subsequent thread.
Jacob tore his worried gaze from the scene before him.
"Brady!" he barked, releasing Leah's shoulders and turning on the wolf with bared teeth. The emotionality of the Pack had been too much for their newest cub. But he had to be kept in line.
The salt and pepper animal, danced with lupine distress on its paws in the middle of the shredded clothing, silencing its howl in a pitiful whimper.
It looked from its Alpha back to Sam and Paul and yelped once plaintively.
Jacob's gaze darted back to them. Sam had pushed Emily instinctively behind him, and Paul was just rising from a snarling crouch.
He turned back to see the cub hesitantly venturing toward them in a submissive crouch, its tail pitifully between its legs. His wolf was desperate to reconnect – and the human had no control. Jacob understood a lot more about their wolves now after such a salient ordeal, the Pack had profoundly changed with that knowledge even in these last three days.
He met Sam's furrowed frown of confusion.
"He just needs to scent you, see you're okay," Jacob murmured soothingly, watching his velvet words roll over each and every taut shoulder.
With a nod of understanding, Sam reaching out his hand to the beast, even while still pushing Emily back protectively beside Charlie.
"We all do," Jacob added quietly. Wolves were such physical creatures and they were all just beginning to truly understand. The Pack needed to assure that their brothers and sister were well and returned. A reconnection of sorts. Those casual "cool" shoulder bumps as they switched patrol shifts, those brief nuzzles and nips while running, even the rough boyish tussles. They had been doing it all along, but not realizing it. And right now, after all that had happened to their Pack mates, it was a frenzied compulsion that was barely tempered.
Jacob knew this for a fact because he felt it right now like knife in his back. His best friend. Bella.
He needed to see her. Touch her.
The rest of the Pack had slipped off the stairs, drifted around the car and were subtly drawing near the group. They couldn't help it.
Jacob stood his ground and clenched his jaw watching as the young wolf, shuffled toward them, stretching out its muzzle to rest on the back of Sam's hand with a soft lupine whine. With passively flattened ears, Brady snuffled up Sam's arm and over his chest, cowering when Sam batted it casually away from his crotch.
He looked up and rolled his eyes knowingly at Jake. All the young ones did that until the human side could fully control them when they Phased.
Satisfied by the brief examination, the wolf moved toward Paul, its head cowering in submission in the face of his innate intimidation. Like the dominant he was, he peeled his teeth back from his canines in silent warning, and Brady's tail shot between its legs as the animal scrabbled backwards fearfully. They had always thought Paul to be simply savage – the roughest one of them all – but really he was just the most real. He understood his wolf, and didn't make excuses.
At that moment, Paul swayed shockingly and was caught by the lightning reflexes of Jared as all eyes snapped to him in concern.
"They need to rest. There'll be time for catching up later," Jacob boomed to the pack – and to himself - taking concerned steps forward as Jared and Quil quickly ducked under each of Paul's shoulders.
His attention snapped back to that bundle in Paul's arms and Jacob stuffed his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking.
Taking a deep breath he glanced back at Sue who had been watching the brief interchange from the steps. With a furrowed brow, she now approached her eyes trained on the group with efficient attentive assessment.
As the other two men helped Paul toward the house, he met Jacob's gaze with grim, tired eyes that spoke leagues directly to Jacob's very soul. Inside Paul was burned barren, ravaged - like acres of forest after a wildfire. Such intimate and searing torment made Jacob respectfully avert his eyes. Sam followed at his side, his arm wrapped around Emily whose worried gaze was locked on Paul and Bella.
Both Sam and Paul tolerated the subtle, silent hands of the Pack as they made their way toward the house, brushing light fingers over their arms, their shoulders – a validating, human touch that soothed the wolves, Jacob knew – but when Embry's hand slipped to the blankets in Paul's arms, the man growled in ominous, vicious warning.
Jacob snarled in empathy, as a tremor rippled through his body. Hold it together.
"Come on assholes! Let's get them inside!" Leah barked and stepped forward holding her hand out to her cousin. "C'mon, Em."
She tugged the woman gently out of the knot of wolves, to Sam's utter shock and amazement. Leah, of course, pretended to ignore him, except to slap away his hand in order to capture Emily's. Apparently slaps were acceptable as "soothing physical contact" for the wolf too. But she couldn't hide the truth behind the gesture. Even to Sam.
The pressure relieved ever so slightly by the amusing interplay, a ghost of a smirk twisted Jacob's lips as Sam's surprised gaze locked on his.
If there was one benefit to this whole trauma, it was that the solidifying of the Pack. Which included a fledgling healing between the two cousins. It was even hard for the human side of Leah to stay pissed at someone when you watched her cry herself to sleep for three nights in a row from where you lounged on her floor as a wolf.
Paul stumbled weakly again, and in two strides Jacob's trembling body was before them, the others peeling back unconsciously at the agitation of their Alpha. Jacob bumped shoulders briefly with his Second as he made his way to Paul, clasping his shoulder warmly, subtly steadying him. Wishing he could do more. The desperation, the torment in Paul's eyes was held out to Jacob with no attempts at subversion, and Jake swallowed thickly.
With a deferential bob of his head, he reached out with a hand that shook like a leaf, Jacob ghosted them over Bella's tightly bound body, pulling the blankets delicately away from her cheek which rested over Paul's heart.
Jacob's entire world imploded. Bella. His sister, his Pack mate. His best friend. The one he had promised to protect. Her face was mottled with deep bruising, gaunt, and deathly pale. And still.
So very still.
"Jesus," Jacob spat in a whisper and then swallowed the bile that rose in his throat.
"You okay?" Paul croaked in a hoarse voice as Jacob's hands automatically snaked around the bundle to take her into his arms.
Jacob looked up with hollow, hot eyes and nodded curtly. The tremors, the edgy threat of the Phase had been instantly and completely doused by a bone breaking grief. If his mind had been coherent, Jacob might have been surprised - or even touched and grateful - that Paul was able , never mind willing, to hand his mate over. But Jacob was consumed by concern for the feather-light bundle that was gingerly transferred into his arms.
As if holding his mate had been the only glue cementing his very being together, the instant Paul released her into Jacob's arms, the man crumbled to the ground on his knees, head bowed in despair.
In retrospect, Jacob might wish he had offered him some words of comfort or gratitude, but at that moment the feel of Bella in his arms, the scent of her suffering, the frailty of her body simply overcame any sense at all.
Jacob turned on his heel and met Sue's intense gaze. "Get her inside," was her clipped directive.
Without know how he got there, Jacob was suddenly pushing open the front door to a house that he'd known all his life, Sue and others trailing after. The memories crashed over him like a tsunami as Jacob hastened up the claustrophobic wooden staircase to her bedroom. He laid her carefully out over the pristine white sheet of the bed that he had spent many a night holding her. Just holding her.
They were comfortably the poignant, profound memories of family now. Memories that should never have been tainted by … this.
Stretching her body out, Jacob wiped his hands on his shorts and turned with uncertainty, just as Sue hastened into the room, followed by Charlie.
Sue quickly and efficiently checked over the supplies on the desk. They had pushed all of Bella's things to the sides of the room and readied it just for this.
Just for this…
The rage that he had run on for the past days, drained in an instant, revealing a frightening emptiness and fear. Jacob pushed back from the bed with the slow creeping shock, as Sue carefully peeled back the top two layers blankets revealing Bella's thin arm bandaged in an amateurish brace of gauze and what looked like a rolled up shirt - her hand swollen angrily and black and blue.
As Sue uncovered more, Jacob's breath caught in his throat as his eyes ran over her battered body, clothed in a torn, bloodied dress whose scent told the painfully vivid story to lupine senses of what had happened:
That man… that vampire… that thing… had overpowered her, molested her…spilled his lust over her struggling body, even while he drained the life coursing through her veins.
The harsh, brutal, unfiltered reality of what she had experienced alone and without the physical ability to fight back – the struggle, the horror, the terror – hit Jacob like a sledgehammer to his heart and he doubled over with a spasmodic and strangled groan.
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Emily pulled away from her cousin and skidded to kneel before Paul.
"Paul, honey," she whispered, reaching out a tentative and tender hand to his cheek.
Paul shook her off and hunched over farther.
Emily folded her hands in her lap and looked up helplessly to Sam's grim expression. She knew he understood how Paul was feeling. How many times had she seen Sam exactly this despondent over what had accidentally happened between them?
And she'd never once in this whole year even come close to figuring out how to fix it.
"Paul?" she murmured again. "She'll be okay-"
Paul jerked his head up angrily, making Sam take several threatening steps toward them.
Emily shook her head minutely to her mate and returned her gaze to the glistening, maniacal eyes of undiluted agony.
His lips quivered – pulling back and forth from baring his teeth in a visual war with himself. "Em-… I-…she.." he choked in a guttural sob.
"Honey… she's strong. Look at me," she pressed with a silken dictate. "Look at me."
Paul's rabid eyes focused suddenly, his brow pinching in confusion at her tone.
Emily smiled sadly. "Look at me honey," she said softer this time, turning her scarred cheek meaningfully toward him. "I understand. We understand," she added glancing up at Sam, hoping he was hearing this too.
Paul licked his lips as his nostrils flared with his hitching breath.
"It hurts. And it will hurt. But she's okay – she's here with you now. With us now," Emily's brow dipped as she tried to convey her soul-felt sincerity with her eyes. "Looking back's not going to change the past, honey. But I know…I know… she wants to be here with you. Right now. With the past, with your present and your future together. With you, Paul. However she got here." Emily swallowed thickly as her heart bled into her voice, making it hoarse. "It's such a gift, Paul. Your mate… is such a precious gift… ," she glanced up to Sam. "And sometimes you have to pay for precious things."
Her gaze returned to where Paul was trying to hiccup his breath under control. She knew this would be the hardest time for him. For them all. After the adrenaline, the rage, the testosterone had abated, what they were left with was a tangled mess of deep and abiding feelings – some there before, others created – and untangling them and putting them to rest took attention and courage. And time.
"NOOO!" A screeching wail grated the falling dusk with a clawing hoarseness.
Like lightning, Paul had sprung from the ground over Emily's head with a whoosh of air that pulled at her hair.
"Oh, God. Sam!" Emily shrieked fearfully meeting her mate's eyes with her panic as she pushed off the ground.
"Shit," Sam spat as he dashed away on the breeze of Paul's departure.
Her heart in her throat, Emily sprinted toward the house, stumbling blindly up the steps and through the open front door. She clambered up the stairway on hands and feet as the chilling shrieks of pure terror continued, joined now by vicious snarls. It was like being thrown into the soundtrack of a nightmare.
Bella's nightmare.
Gasping, Emily flung herself against the door frame of Bella's room as Sam blocked her from entering with a brusque hand.
Peeking around his shoulders, she saw Paul crouched protectively on the bed over his mate, his feral eyes trained on where Jacob had pushed Sue into the wall, and now covered her with his body.
Jacob was talking quickly. "Paul! She's okay! Sue just touched her – it was just the touch!"
Emily's gaze snapped to Bella, laid out beneath Paul's quivering limbs. Her top laid bare of blankets and dressed in nothing but a bloody, torn dress, it was painfully obvious how wan, starved and beaten she was. Bella's head feebly whipped back and forth –eyes clenched closed - as her shrieks muted to weak whimpers.
"Oh my God," Emily gasped audibly. She couldn't be prepared for this sight.
Paul's yellow gaze immediately snapped to Emily with that unpredictable mercurial attention of the wolves.
"Paul! Comfort her!" Emily cried intuitively.
Immediately Paul froze and his gaze snapped down the woman he was crouched over. With an aching whine, he ducked and tenderly nuzzled into her neck his ripping growls melting into a soothing pining rumble. It was such a volatile and extreme shift that Emily blinked. It was a poignant metaphor for exactly what warred in Paul's breast. And in Sam's.
Bella immediately quieted with a soft shaking sigh, turning blindly into Paul's touch as he wrapped his arms around her.
The tension in the room instantly relaxed and fluttered like cut ribbons, but outside strident howls now took over the ghastly chorus. Emily ducked under Sam's arm.
His warm, soothing palm fell down on her shoulder as passed. "You're brilliant," he whispered by her ear.
Emily turned to brush her lips over his cheek indulgently – she couldn't help it – as she stepped into the room.
"You alright, Sue?" Emily reached out to take the hand of the woman who nodded with a brave purse to her lips. Thank God for Sue. How many times had the whole Pack said that?
"I need to find out what-… what else is broken," she spoke with an efficient and undaunted voice. "And I don't want to give her any kind of sedative because-"
"Your hands!" Emily interrupted suddenly, as she turned Sue's palm over in her own. They were like ice. It was cold outside, she was nervous: of course they were. She turned and called to the general room, "It's Sue's hands – they're cold! Like …" she left the sentence unfinished. No one in that room had any trouble connecting the dots on that one. And no one wanted to hear the word 'vampire' or any of its epithets again for a long, long time. How about never.
Sue drew in a deep breath of understanding. "Oh, no. I didn't think about that."
Charlie stepped in and wrapped a comforting arm around the woman's shoulders. "Not your fault, Suzie. It's a right crazy world a' new rules with our bunch – got that much figured out first hand. Let's go run 'em under some hot water in the bathroom," he comforted his old friend.
Emily was glad to hear Charlie so at ease and accepting and... and part of the Pack. That would go a long way toward in healing many broken bonds.
Emily turned back to where Jacob and Sam were watching Paul. He had covered Bella again in the blankets and stretched out along side her, tenderly stroking her forehead. She was peaceful again– well, that wasn't the word – but she was resting, her face lax and turned toward him, her breath evening back to slow.
Emily blew her breath into her cheeks as the adrenaline ebbed and Sam stepped to her side and wrapped his strong, loving arms around her. She couldn't wait until tonight. She had missed him so. There weren't even words for how happy she was just to feel his touch again. She wanted to strip and stretch out over his silky, warm body and listen to his heartbeat for hours. And hours-
"Get them out, Em," Paul's hushed husky voice made Emily start from her blissful fantasy. "All the males out," he rasped under his breath. His gaze was locked on Bella's cheek from where he lay beside her on the pillow, his forehead pressed to her temple as his finger brushed down her nose.
Emily squeezed Sam's hand silently and he reluctantly released her.
Jacob immediately turned his back too, meeting her eyes with a traumatized and anguished expression. Poor Jake. He had had a rough welcome to his destiny. But then again, so had Sam. So had they all. And Paul now sat steeping in his own personal hell. She had been his first hint of happiness in an already cruel life ... and now this.
Jacob's gaze mirrored those exact thoughts. She reached out and squeezed his arm sympathetically as he passed her.
"Send Leah, kay? And don't worry, Jake." Emily glanced toward the window and the long lamenting howls still lacing the afternoon. "Just take care of your Pack…"
"They are my Pack," Jacob murmured soberly, tipping his head toward the couple on the bed and holding her gaze with unfathomable eyes.
Pressing her lips together and nodding once, Emily sadly bowed her head as Jacob slipped silently down the stairs.
She turned back to the suffering in the room and bit her lip against threatening tears.
They were her Pack too.
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