Previously:

Which was why the concept of value didn't apply to us. But Alice humanized the world she touched. She wanted an answer.

"I value Elise. Is that what you want to hear?"

She frowned, plucking a leaf from a tree and holding it out to the sun.

"No, Jasper," She said. "I don't think you do."

Jasper

The next few months accelerated by quickly. Elise and Emmett spent a good amount of time going off and doing various activities. Go-Karting, ice-skating, horse-riding. They made sure to check off most things that elicited thrill.

Meanwhile, I traveled back and forth between Arizona and Idaho, monitoring training schedules and delivering worthy recruits to the delegates. Maria took Texas. We had a majority in the South. Elise being away with Emmett gave me more time to tend to my needs. In Idaho, I kept with the Cullens and limited my time with Edward. We barely saw each other anymore. Any excuse I could pull to vacate his radius, I used it.

Besides the details, Elise and I spent majority of our time together. I found her in my room more than often, curled up in an armchair, writing away in her journal. She took the change seriously and seemed determined to remember everything. The other day, she had requested newspaper clippings to rip apart and stick onto her pages. She wanted to write down exactly what she was feeling about the current state of the world.

Today, I found her in that exact same spot. My hands clutched a labeled box, and I set it in front of her on the small coffee table. Her eyes lit up and quickly grabbed it.

"Yes!" She grinned, and opened the box to reveal small, aluminum-wrapped chocolates. "I love the hazelnut kind." She plopped one in her mouth, then proceeded to tape its wrapper onto the pages. She scribbled down a note next to it.

I watched her excitement and how it impacted the color of her cheeks. I turned my head away quickly. I was doing it again. I was holding onto these human traits of hers that were going to be non-existent.

Was this scarcity? If so, I hated it. Why did this creature subject me to loss? What right did she have?

"Jasper?"

I looked back at her. None of it was her fault.

"Will you take a seat? You're making me nervous."

I slowly sat in the chair next to her. I was with her in presence, but my mind chugged away at Alice's words. She didn't think I valued this woman.

She has value because of her shield. But that doesn't mean you value her. If you did, you would be keeping her far away from the alliance. That was the last thing she had said to me before demanding that I leave.

I did keep Elise far from compound efforts. The closest thing I did was introduce her to a changing newborn that would be used for battle, which was entirely for her benefit. Meeting Peter was going to happen at some point, and we got it out of the way. I didn't see the problem.

I ran a hand along my jaw. Why was I justifying her value to me? After Elise turned, she would be an undying constant in my life. Her scarcity would vanish. Value had no meaning. Alice was instilling these human traits in me that I wanted nothing to do with.

All I knew was that my involvement with the alliance wasn't set in stone. I was still very much in the sidelines. But if the situation required it, I would fight, and she would be there with me. That was the consequence of having a mate. We would do this together, or not at all.

"What are you writing?" I asked.

She smiled slightly, then closed the book. "Just how goofy Emmett looked riding a horse. There's a line between riding and eating a horse, but he seemed very confused."

The months had passed with no real incident. I hadn't introduced her to new dead bodies, any victims in mind, or any vampiric-related training. Instead, she was getting comfortable with the human activities and unnecessary realities.

But the smile she wore when she talked about them almost made it okay to be in an emotional haze.

"Vampires can't get motion sickness, right?" She asked.

"No," I shook my head. "Your inner-ears are what control your balance. When the mechanism in there combined with your sight and touch send conflicting information from your surroundings, that's motion sickness. Vampires have a synced sense of motion. It is impossible to be motion sick."

"It's also why Emmett's better at me at everything," she chuckled. "I'm most excited for running. You can just run, run, run for hours. You like it, too. How would you describe it?"

I hung my head and gave her a smile. "Exhilarating. Freeing. Have you ever jumped off a tumbling waterfall? That's what it feels like."

Her lips parted. "No, I haven't."

The look of hunger in her expression almost made me want to throw her off one to fulfill the desire. I supposed it wouldn't hurt.

An hour later, I set Elise down on a rock facing the grandiose tower of water that cascaded down elegantly from a cliff edge. It was an hour North of the Cullen residence, and to my knowledge, no humans had been around the area for weeks. This gave us the utmost privacy.

I put down a bag of extra clothing and towels and turned to her. "This is your chance."

"We're jumping down that?" She pointed at nature's persistent water experiment.

"Thirty feet. You'll be begging to do hundreds after you realize it won't kill you anymore. So, do it while it can."

She stood up, determined. "You won't let me die."

"Won't I?"

She threw me a look, then eyed the towels. "It's going to be freezing, isn't it?"

"Another experience you'll miss. We're hitting two birds with one stone. Tell me I'm not better at this than Emmett."

She scowled at my wolfish grin, then unrolled the towel out on the rock. "Maybe this incredibly shy sun will warm it up for me. I wish I had a bathing suit."

"No time," I grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to face her beast. "Go get 'em."

"You're not coming?"

"I'll be right here." I tapped the rock.

She gave me one big nod. She pulled off her shoes and her socks, then tiptoed over to the boulders that climbed up to the top. I watched her footing, hoping that she also did. If she fell, I would catch her. But she didn't need to know that.

She climbed slowly but steadily. She paused occasionally, shaking her hands to relax them from their tight grip. The climb wasn't steep, but it was messy.

It took fifteen minutes for her to take the last step to reach the top. I watched as she examined the route she took to get where she was. She put her hands on her hips and glowed. Not for me. Not for anyone. But for herself. She was proud of her accomplishments, and it made me want her all the more. She hadn't asked for me to run her up there. She accepted my offer of bringing her here, but she led herself the rest of the way. Her self-leadership was enticing.

I took out the clothes she had brought with her for after the fact. The jeans she had on wouldn't dry quickly, so she did best to bring some sweatpants and a simple long-sleeved shirt. I, too, shared the same wish she uttered. Why wasn't she in a bathing suit? She would look marvelous on top of the beast she was conquering.

But my thoughts dissipated quickly. One moment, I could see Elise's feet firmly planted on the rocks on top of the waterfall, and in the next, she was a flash of skin and hair as she threw herself into the depths of the lagoon. The splash was loud enough to push birds out of their resting tree branches. It was a beautiful sight.

I waited for a few seconds, but there was no sign of her except for the foam she left behind on the surface. My eyes watched the waves she created, but she was nowhere to be seen. A jolt ran through me. Her absence tugged at the strings. Without thinking, I jumped into the water.

My mind raced. The drop wasn't severe. There weren't rocks on the bottom. The sand would be the only thing that she could've touched. There were no sea creatures that could've grabbed her. So, where…

Suddenly, Elise's head popped out of the water, her lungs gasping for air. Her hands came up to wipe the water from her eyes. She unexpectedly burst open with laughter.

My eyes narrowed, which made her laugh harder.

"Oh, I had you," She said in between her gasps of joy. "You really jumped in after me." She splashed me with a little bit of water. "My savior."

She focused in on the look at my face. Annoyance and incredulity. We treaded the water in silence.

"Oh, come on," She tapped my shoulder. "Would your world really end if I died?"

"Probably," I sighed.

She stopped treading, sunk a little in the water, then realized she needed to move her feet to stay afloat. "Really?"

I turned back to swim back to the rock. She followed close behind.

"I'm sorry," She said when we reached the towels. She grabbed the one on the rock and wrapped herself in it. Her clothes were soaked, and she needed to change. "I shouldn't have worried you."

I waved a hand dismissively and handed her the clothes. "Change before you start freezing."

Uncomfortable silence blanketed the cool afternoon. I turned around to give her privacy. When she was done, she wrapped the towel around her head to soak in the water from her hair. She sat on the rock.

"What ties you to me, Jasper? What aren't you telling me?"

I watched her, water dripping down my shirt. I kicked off my soaked boots and sat on another towel. "Alice was right. I don't know why I ever doubt the psychic."

"What was she right about?"

I held out the palm of the hand that I had cracked open to let her taste a little bit of my venom. "Remember when I did that?" I motioned a fingernail over my palm. "Remember the sweet cream?"

She looked away, eyeing the journal that stuck out of the bag by her feet.

"That is what she was right about."

Her eyebrows nestled together. "Alice told you we were mates? But that doesn't make any sense. I'm still human."

I ran a hand up to slick my hair back. "That's what I keep telling her. You have no venom to motivate you. But mine," I paused to tear my eyes away from hers. "It's more than motivating."

She pulled her knees to her chest, shivering slightly as the wind blew. She was silent. For too long.

I quickly grabbed her journal and pen from the bag and held it out to her. "Write it out. Please. Anything and everything that you're feeling. It will be important."

She snorted. "You out of all people want me to write about my feelings?"

I pressed the items forward. She reluctantly accepted.

What was she feeling? Fuck if I knew. I would take down a million trees to find out. Was she not happy with us sharing a mating bond after her change? Was she scared? How uncertain did this make her? Uncertain enough to refuse the transformation?

No. That wasn't an option. I peered at her from my place on the ground.

She slammed the pen down on the journal and closed it without marking its pages. "I don't know who you are," she bit out. "You do all these things and you say all this crap that makes no sense. And then you come out and tell me you're my mate."

"Alice said it, not me."

"Of course. Because you want nothing to do with me." Her tone was sarcastic. She knew we spent too much time together. She knew how close we had gotten. She was lashing out for no reason.

I stood up and leaned on the rock, right beside her. Our shoulders were inches apart. "You are incredible, Elise. Over the past few months, you've taken everything that I've thrown at you and made something out of it. You've packetized my lessons and stuck them somewhere in your brain, and it's going to make you a better vampire. All I've done is ensure your prosperity."

She played with the bindings of the journal. Anything I said wasn't important to her at that moment. "Are you going to be fighting in this war?"

The question was enough to force me to break eye contact. If I did, she would join me. Was that the reason Alice thought I didn't value her? Because I would subject her to battle? She could handle it. She had so much promise. That wasn't a lack of value. That was pride in her abilities.

I had to get this value talk out of my brain. Why did it bother me this much?

"There is a possibility. But it's uncertain," I told her.

"What about me?"

I pursed my lips and repeated. "It's uncertain."

I searched her eyes for any indication that she wanted to take a step back from it all. That she didn't want to die. I found none of it. But she looked at me with such precariousness that I wanted to reach out and make sure she wouldn't fall off the rock. "I don't know what to believe."

I tapped on the journal. "Write it down. Everything that's going through your head."

She shook her head slowly. "I don't even know what to write. What to feel. How to react. You're cold one day, and hot the next day. The soup I'm drinking keeps chilling my bones, then scorching my tongue. It's all so confusing."

I again emphasized the pen and bound paper. That kind of thinking was something she could definitely write down. Her newborn senses would be strong, and her persona would take time to settle down inside her dead vessel. The journal was my plan of taking her back down memory lane. To remind her how she thought and how she processed the stimuli around her.

Her hand hovered over the lines for a few seconds only to put the pen back down. This wasn't working. I grabbed her instruments and set it down. I took her hands instead.

"Don't force it," I said. "Just look at me. I've taken you through all of my baggage. You've seen the girls, heard their screams, you've slept in the cabins. Psychologically, you've transformed in more ways than you even know. You're stronger because you didn't run the other way. Because you stuck through it."

A small smile crept on her lips. "I should've ran the other way."

"But you didn't," I took a deep breath. "I've brushed Alice off for so long, but I'm seeing that it's useless. The evidence of the bond is blatantly obvious."

This was it. This was vulnerability. And I wasn't a fan. But I swallowed down the panic and reached up to run a thumb over her cheek. Her eyes were a soft brown, and some of her hair poked out from the towel. I gently pulled on the fabric to loosen it and free her wet strands. The towel fell on the dirt, right by the rock.

"Let me do this," I whispered. Her eyes darted to mine quickly.

I smiled when I could hear her heart beat faster. "Don't turn your head this time."

"What?"

I pressed my lips against hers. It was simple, soft, and lingering. The kiss dimmed the anxiety and the entire world. She didn't refuse me. She didn't fight. She kissed back, and that was all I needed. The water splashed into the lagoon, the wind sang with the trees, but we could've been in a basement for all I cared. My venom soared through me. It didn't push me the extra mile to twist her face and sink my teeth into her neck. It let me have this.

She was the first to pull away. Her hand tucked a piece of her hair back behind her ear. She grinned, almost embarrassed. How long had it been since she had been kissed?

Her hand played with mine, and her voice was a sweet melody. "Well, thank you for giving me something to write about."

A/N: Happy long weekend, guys. I had extra time to type this bad boy out.

My two cents on this chapter? It's too calm. Too. Calm.

That should be ringing red alarms in your head.

And on your two cents: Jasper's having trouble with the concept of value. What do you think of his dilemma? Is Alice right? Is he acting only on behalf of himself? Does he care for her enough to put his own life on the line? His idea of mating also seems flawed. But, we'll get to that.