DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I won't shoot the breeze with y'all this time cause I got other shit to say that is more important but just so you know, I literally live in mud.
Firstly, here is a link to the Quileute Tribe's "Raven Stories" which they have available on their website for FREE download. (it won't let me put the link in here it's fuckin' dumb.) If you don't feel like reading it all right now, (which I highly recommend because it is very interesting and also very short,) the Quileute passed these stories down in the oral tradition and would act them out often during the winter months when they were cooped inside their houses. I added an element of that into the story to illustrate the point, but I took some liberties with it so I would just like to give another DISCLAIMER that this story does NOT represent the traditions, beliefs, or culture of the Quileute people. The story Emily tells is word-for-word from the Raven Tales book because they made a point to write it in the way that their elders talked while telling these stories.
Secondly, This Chapter is by far my favorite. NeedMoreZzz's and I worked on the outline together and I appreciate all her help, without which this chapter would probably still be on my To-Do list. If you have somehow managed to miss the message about reading On the Run I hope you enjoy living without love.
Thirdly, one of the numerous notable quotables I'm including from this chapter is; "this whole project was brought on by scorn for the smorm." I can remember who said it, but one day it might come back to haunt me, so I plead the fifth.
Finally, the chapter of this title is 97764/jumanji-welcome-to-the-jungle-early-reactions-good-positive/ . No I will not elaborate.
XXXV:
The next day met us with a sense of anticipation; the clouds boiled overhead, thick and dark, but didn't release anything besides a periodic drizzle. The air buzzed with the electricity of a coming thunderstorm and hung heavy with humidity, but the floodgates held. All day while running patrol the pack was jumping at little noises, eyes searching for the cause of our unease, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
According to Sam, I was not allowed to pick up Bella from Charlie's house for the sleepover, as that would "make him suspicious." I was dying to see Bella; to hold her, to press my lips to her ear, to smell her hair and know she was safe. But Sam could tell how on edge I was. The slightest nudge either way might set me off, sending me bursting into a wolf at the drop of a hat. My insistent paranoia was intermingling with my growing anger towards the Cullens, particularly Edward. It's not that I doubted Bella's love for me, but I was pathetically unable to ask her the question continually on my mind; does she love him, too?
I wasn't sure I could handle her answer.
So I spent my waking hours as a wolf, and when Emily's sputtering VW Bug came chugging down the highway, I ran along beside them, keeping up easily. When they pulled into Emily's driveway, all four girls poured out of the car – Leah practically had to unfold herself to get out of the tiny passenger seat – and started inside.
I shifted quicker than I ever had, running up on the side of the house silently, and pulled my shorts on just around the corner from the door, hidden by the great, wild, vine-like growth of morning glories hanging from the eave. I waited until Emily, Kim, and Leah had all filtered through the door, then hooked my arm around Bella's waist.
"Bells!" I hissed, pulling us up against the side of the house.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the low light, but finally, she exclaimed, "Jake!"
Suddenly, as my arms wrapped around her waist, and her hands found my face, the friction of the day faded away. The clouds were still circling overhead, dark and menacing, and the wind continued to taste like steam – hell, a vampire army was still coming for us in less than forty-eight hours – but it was always good to see Bella. Her face was pale, but warm and rosy in the moonlight, with great blotches of color blooming on her cheeks, parting the fog in their sincere clarity.
Her brown eyes met mine as she smiled from ear to ear, lighting up her face, and her hair swung out behind when I picked her off her feet and spun us around in a celebratory circle, our foreheads pressed together. When I settled my back against the bare wooden siding of Emily's house, knees bent to be closer to her height, she wrapped her arms around my neck. I ran my nose against her jaw, searching, and she met my expectant lips with enthusiasm.
I no longer cared who Edward Cullen was; I didn't even remember his name.
"Hey, where's Bella?"
"I thought she was behind Leah –"
The voices inside broke through our bubble, and Bella pulled away, red from the tip of her ears to the end of her nose. I chuckled, brushing a chunk of hair behind her ear.
"It's good to see you," I said, stating the obvious.
"You too," she whispered, still panting.
"Do you think they'll freak out if I kidnap you tonight?" I whispered, pointing my thumb behind me.
"Hmm," she pretended to think about it. "I can't see why that would be concerning, no."
"Good," I laughed, running my hands along her torso, stopping at her hips. "'Cause I still wanna hear about what plans you had to thank me for the bracelet," I murmured, listening to her heart beat excitedly in her chest.
"It's not much of a surprise now," she sighed theatrically, glancing at the charm on her wrist. "You wouldn't have liked it anyway."
"No, I think I would," I assured her, fingers tightening on her waist.
She wrapped her arms around my neck, biting her bottom lip.
"But I might want to try it later," she hedged.
"The suspense is killing me," I groaned.
"I guess you'll just have to wait and see," she giggled.
"You're a stubborn little monster," I joked, picking her up and throwing her over my shoulder.
"Jake!" She squealed, laughing.
"I should surrender you back to the girls for the night, if you're gonna be like that," I teased quietly, but I should have known Leah could hear our whole conversation.
"Yes!" Leah exclaimed, poking her head out the door. "You should."
"Oh no," I pretended to quiver. "I'm so scared, Leah. What are you gonna do? Out-run me? Ha!" I laughed.
"You wouldn't last a minute," she replied.
"Jake, put me down!"
"That's not how kidnapping works, honey."
"I thought you were giving me back?"
"Never," I promised. "Bye, Leah!"
"Jacob! Don't you dare!"
At this point, a series of events unfolded which I am not at liberty to discuss due to pending disagreements. However, once it was debated at nauseating length over the course of many late-night dinner parties, I was granted permission to list a series of my own talking points in the aftermath. First off, Leah was far too silent for her own good and we needed to get her a damn bell. Secondly, had I been expecting her to attack, I wouldn't have turned my back, but this was a surprise, which should not be allowed in a fair fight, and if I had been facing her it would have been a whole different story. Third, and most importantly, why was I on trial for getting my sorry-ass kicked by a girl?
Leah dragged Bella in from outside and threw me off of Emily's front porch.
"Consider this a warning for the others," she growled, nostrils flaring. "Goodbye," she said curtly, slamming the door in my face.
I left Emily's house, scowling when I heard them all giggle as I stalked back to the forest.
The night was just more of the same stomach-churning anticipation, and though we were all on edge, Quil and Embry were taking bets on who would kill the most leeches tomorrow.
I say Jake, Seth said loyally.
Ten on me, Quil bet, thinking that if he lost he could afford it as long as he won the bet between him and Embry over how long Leah could stand the "estrogen convention."
Eventually, most of us settled in the forest, stationed on the border of La Push. We were all so tired that our eyes closed of their own accord. I couldn't say how long we slept - it felt more like a blink.
Then Leah shifted, and her fiery thoughts crashed into us like a burning tidal wave of fury, knocking all our own sleepy thoughts out of the way and putting all of hers front and center; because boy, did she have a story to tell.
"Forgive and forget. If you can't forgive, then just forget it."
The words echoed in my head, rattling between my ears like a gong.
This was Harry Clearwater's go-to phrase when his kids were pummeling each other with couch cushions, or getting into loud arguments through the bathroom door, or battling each other with saucepans on their heads for armor and wooden spoons in their hands for swords.
Leah had been seriously considering forgiveness.
Forgetting, in the end, was impossible, though the easier of the two. How could she? Sam was in her head and she was in his. She knew every kiss, every touch, every word that passed between Sam and Emily. She had tried ignoring it, and looking away, then finally stuffing fingers in her ears and singing loudly.
But it was no use; it would have been hard enough under normal circumstances for her to forget about the first great love of her life, which swept away all other worries or cares and in its passion carved out a part of her she believed would always belong to Sam. Even with ideal conditions, heartbreak rips and pulls parts of ourselves away, leaving in its place a fibrous tissue, hard and spongy, so the organ never quite works in the same way again.
Life goes on, sure; but Leah felt like her heart had been torn so many times it no longer had a pulse. She didn't have the strength to hold onto her anger and frustration any longer.
The idea had been knocking around her head for a while. Emily put it there, originally, when she tried to talk to Leah the first time after she shifted; but Leah scorned it, almost laughingly. The most she could ask of herself was forgetting. Forgiveness meant talking about feelings. She had other things to worry about – better, more important things than something so small and insignificant as emotions when there was an invisible war brewing between the leeches and the wolves.
But her chest felt like there was a hundred-ton anvil sitting on it.
If she examined the feeling at length – which she avoided – it was no longer anger. It was a deep sadness, festering and growing like mold on her ribcage, making every breath heavy and labored, until she felt light-headed and dizzy.
Leah loved her cousin; it wasn't something she could avoid anymore. The pack mind was heavily biased towards her, and being in our heads was bound to rub off eventually. Before Sam, Leah had been close with Emily, but it was superficial compared to the way she adored her now. As much as she tried not to, she saw how hard the busy little woman worked for her family, how open and overflowing with love she was, despite her scarred face.
Emily came in with a big plate of brownies and a deck of cards. The girls were playing Go Fish, but Leah kept losing, distracted by her inner turmoil.
How does she do it? Leah wondered, realizing that she had heaped her own mess of troubles onto her cousin, too. Their family was fragmented and grief-stricken, and it didn't need Leah's added venom on top of it.
But if Leah loved her – truly, and unconditionally, the way Emily loved all of her adopted kids, the way she deserved to be loved – then Leah would have to kill Sam Uley.
What he had done was unforgivable.
She would never forgive Sam, not if she lived a million different lifetimes on a million different planets. What he had done was unacceptable. Hideous, repulsive, toxic. If she didn't know that he felt the same way about himself she would have tracked him down and killed him as soon as she forgave Emily.
She could only ask so much of her forgiveness. Maybe one day she could be able to forget, but she would never forgive Sam for what he did. The only thing holding her back from killing him now was knowing that he would have killed himself, too, if Emily didn't want him alive for some unfathomable reason.
In Leah's mind, forgiving Emily meant taking on all the burdens that come with love – to Leah, love was nothing more than a burden. It held us suspended in hope until it left us ragged, torn up, and bruised.
Loving Bella felt like enough of a burden.
Leah grudgingly loved Bella in the way a mother might admit to love a child who was sickly more than her other kids. She prized Bella for her quick wit and impulsive nature and respected how daring she was, specifically because Bella was so small and breakable. And she liked how abundantly Bella felt. She thought the reason Bella couldn't lie was because she felt things so deeply, and so thoroughly, that her whole body became full of the emotion all at once. But Bella was also delicate, too soft for Leah's thorns, so she admired from afar while silently wishing she could allow herself to be friends with the insane human girl.
Leah silenced her thoughts with a healthy dose of Emily's special brownies, with a surprise ingredient later revealed to be a very potent cannabis strain. She assured herself that the rest of the pack were so tightly wrapped around Emily's finger that we would help her kill Sam if he ever went too far again.
Kick his ass, baby, Paul thought sleepily at that point in the memory, his own thoughts taking on a dream-like quality.
So Leah's mouth stayed shut – for a little while. Whenever Emily spoke, Leah tried really, really, hard not to grab her cousin by the shoulders and start shaking.
It didn't come to that, fortunately. Kim was a babbler. A chatty-Cathy, Leah thought. She kept a steady stream of conversation and did not stop talking unless her mouth was full. Leah tuned her out after a while, the way you would a radio, but then a fragment of the girl's conversation caught her attention.
"You gotta try this swirly thing," Kim enthused. "It's where you take his dick and –"
This also happened to be around the time they found out the brownies had weed in them.
Leah – who had consumed eight in total – found herself becoming loose, like the worn-out elastic of a comfortable pair of sweatpants. Her inhibitions seemed to have left the room for a moment, so while they weren't looking, she stood up boldly and theatrically, waving slightly on her feet.
"Do not," Leah growled, sounding more animal than human. "I repeat, do not talk about those boys' dicks when I am in the room."
Bella looked relieved, but Kim snickered.
"Sounds like you need to get laid," she joked.
Leah was stunned. It seemed everyone's inhibitions had gone to another sleepover at a different house and left them without the usual polite barrier of social conditioning. And her vision was slanted - or was she just standing crooked? Leah realized her head was tilted completely to the side, and she quickly adjusted, then blinked a few times to get rid of the blind spots in her vision.
For a moment, Leah was disappointed in the girls. She heard our thoughts, so she already knew we were pigs sometimes, but she had hoped the girls might be less vulgar than their male counterparts.
For a split second, there was a moment in her memories where Leah considered she should date girls instead, but by the time we all heard it, she was so mortified that we all politely agreed to tease her about it some other time.
Leah sat back down, and Emily folded her cards slowly, smiling to herself.
"Girls, while we are all together" – her eyes darted to Leah for a moment – "I should pass onto you what I've learned. I've been doing some digging into the old legends," Emily explained, leaning forward with her elbows up on the table. "And I think you should know."
The circle was no longer a group of girls gathered for a night of fun; this was an impromptu council meeting with the chief's future wife. The atmosphere became dense, like a wall of thick, billowy fog had fallen over them, a barrier between the world of magic and reality.
"Back before they were wolves, when the Quileutes were spirit warriors, they also had imprinting, but they called it something else. I don't know the word, and neither do the translators, so it's probably very ancient. The women in all of Old Quil's stories were women who loved their warriors, who manned the ships while the spirits protected their shores against invaders, and shaped their sons into good men so they would become good warriors. They passed down the wisdom of the tribe from generation to generation as part of bearing their own burden, along with their warriors."
The circle was silent for a moment, all three of the human girls looking at each other with meaning, while Leah leaned back and picked at her nails.
"So, basically," she drawled, feeling like more of an outcast than the albino. "It's your job to know the stories… and tell them for future generations… so the knowledge isn't lost?" Leah asked slowly, her muddled thoughts not understanding Emily's coherent speech.
"Yes," Emily replied patiently.
"What stories?" Bella asked.
"Bayak and Akil!" Kim exclaimed.
She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she flapped her arms to demonstrate how it gave her wings. It reminded Leah of a happier time, when she was small and yet unknown to the world of werewolves and vampires, with family who told nice, familiar legends with a moral at the end to wrap it all up with a bow.
"By-yuhk and Ah-kil?" Bella asked, sounding out the names.
"Yes!" Emily exclaimed. "The story of Raven and Bear - how Raven got his black, curled up feet. The raven is called Bayak and the bear's name is Akil, in Quileute."
Kim remembered the stories, too, and was eager to show off her acting skills, so she took up the role of the Raven by perching herself on the far arm of the couch, while Leah wrapped herself in a brown, furry blanket, jumped up, and started lurching around like a bear.
Emily laughed, then started to narrate the girls' actions.
"One time, Raven went to visit his old friend Akil, the bear," Emily began.
Leah rose her chin in a very solemn, prideful way, and opened her arms out wide.
"Bear planned a nice feed for his guest, a real feast. He told Mrs. Bear to fix a big dish."
Leah shook her fist at Bella with her hand balled-up in the blanket to represent the bear's paw.
"Bear went upstairs to get a bunch of dried fish to prepare," Emily said, and Leah picked up her knees and pretended to be walking up a set of challenging stairs, making Kim giggle. "For Bayak, the Raven. Raven watched him, every move he made."
Kim was still perched on the side of the couch, grinning widely as Leah grabbed a pillow from the ground, pretending it was a fish. She sniffed it tentatively, then held her nose as if it smelled.
"Akil started beating the dried fish, softening it to put in front of Raven."
Leah put the pillow back on the ground and started jumping on it, to the amusement of the other girls.
"Bear went to get something. He came back with two sticks with prongs and a straight one."
Leah went running into the kitchen. She came back with a large spaghetti pot.
"And he drove the pronged sticks, he drove them straight into the ground, one on each side of the fire, and he put the straight stick across the pronged sticks."
Leah plopped her prop under the other arm of the couch, and pretended to be setting up a spit over the spaghetti pot, as Kim continued to watch with interest.
"Then Akil got his box, his chair. He sat down by the fire, put his feet up on the stick, and started roasting his feet by the fire."
Kim fluttered down to the floor as Leah slumped back onto the couch, letting her long legs stretch out fully, feet dangling over the spaghetti pot.
"Raven was surprised! Bear was going to make oil for dipping the fish."
Emily turned to Bella and quickly explained in a lower voice. "Much of the winter supply of food was dried fish and berries that had been harvested earlier in the summer. This food was dipped in fish or seal oil, called 'grease,' before eating. They cooked meals in steambent boxes made out of a cedar plank. They'd fill the box with water and food, add rocks to the fire, heat them up, and then drop them in the box. The water would boil immediately – instant stew!"
Then Emily turned back to Leah and Kim, who had seen their aunts perform this story for them when they were young, and knew their lines very well. "Akil asked Mrs. Bear…"
"Is the oil coming down?" Leah asked, making her voice deep and low.
"Oh, yes," Emily called in a high-pitched tone, imitating Mrs. Bear. "It's dripping like everything and the pan is half-full already!"
"Ahh," Leah sighed, smiling and rubbing her belly, eyes closed in contentment. "We'll have a lot of oil for Raven to eat with his dried fish and even some to take home."
Emily's voice returned to normal. "Bayak was there watching, amazed at what Akil was doing."
Kim rubbed her eyes in astonishment from where she sat on the floor, watching Leah's feet hover over the spaghetti pot.
"The reason Bear was getting grease off his feet was because Bear has so much fat in his body, and in his feet, and everything. That's why he was putting his feet by the fire, so he could get the grease out of his feet. And they were dripping, dripping, dripping."
Leah craned her neck as if to check how much oil was in the pot.
"Finally, Akil got done with roasting his feet for oil, and Mrs. Bear set the bowl in front of Bayak so he could start eating," Emily said, picking up the pot and placing it next to Kim.
"Old Raven, he started right in eating, using the oil to dip his dry fish in."
Kim grabbed a handful of popcorn, then used her other hand to pick out each popped kernel individually and dip it in the empty spaghetti pot before plopping it in her mouth.
"And after Bayak got through, Old Bear told him –"
"You take this home to your wife," Leah declared, slapping Kim between the shoulder blades. "So you can tell her how good Old Bear feeds you and everything."
"Old Raven agreed. He said –"
"You bet! I'll tell Mrs. Bayak everything I ate," Kim exclaimed.
"Then Bayak said to Akil –"
"I'm going to invite you to come down to my place. I got some dried fish, too."
"Old Bear says –"
"Sure, I'll come."
"So later Akil came down the river to visit Raven. Bayak got what little fish he had, just a few, and he told his wife to build a fire."
"We're going to feed Mr. Bear," Kim said to Emily, flapping her wings again.
"Akil started watching Bayak, because he knows Old Raven," Emily said with a mischievous smirk. "He knew Bayak was going to do the same thing he had done, to try and get oil for dipping the fish. He knew Bayak always tries to copy what others do."
"So Akil watched, and he watched."
Leah stood back with her arms crossed, tapping a finger to her chin.
"Pretty soon Raven put two pronged sticks and a straight one crosswise."
Kim moved the pot back next to the arm of the couch.
"Old Bear said to himself –"
"I'll watch him, he's sure going to do what I did," Leah rumbled, taking her role very seriously, and making her voice even lower and deeper than before.
"And sure enough, Bayak sat down, got a box and sat down, and put his feet on the crosspiece by the fire to start roasting them."
Kim laid down on the couch with her feet hanging over the edge, dangling just above the pot.
"Soon he asked Mrs. Raven –"
"Lotsa oil coming down?" Kim squawked.
"She said, 'No-o-o-o, old man, there's not a drop. Your feet are just getting blacker and blacker.' So Bayak said –"
"Put more fire on! Put more wood on the fire, so it'll heat up my feet and the oil will start dripping," Kim cawed.
"So she put more wood on the fire. 'No, no, there's no oil coming at all,' she told him."
Kim got up and started jumping around on her feet, like they were burned and sore.
"Ahhh-sh, hoh-hoh-hoh-hoh!" She cried, her face twitching in fake pain.
"His feet began to curl up and dry up and crack and everything," Emily laughed, clapping her hands together for Kim's performance. "Mrs. Bayak said, 'That's what I told you, old man. You always try to copy what the others do. And it never works."
Emily sighed contentedly. "And that's why today, Raven's feet are curled and black."
"C'mon, Bella!" Kim giggled, grabbing Bella by the hand and pulling her up off the floor. "You can be Mrs. Raven this time."
So they told the old stories, and Bella joined in on the re-enactments, and they ended up falling into a big gaggle of laughter. It was very sisterly, but Embry and Quil disagreed, thinking there was potential for more interesting things to happen. Leah growled, but nothing could stop her memories from pouring over us like a flash flood.
The laughter died down, and the girls realized they were out of popcorn, so Kim followed Emily into the kitchen. The room was suddenly very silent. Leah didn't like being able to hear her own thoughts, so she turned on the T.V. and started flipping through channels, finally settling on a mindless-sitcom with a familiar laugh track heard at regular intervals.
Leah alternated her attention from the noise of the T.V. to the girls in the kitchen until she heard them laughing about "their boys," and giggling over the sound of kernels popping. With a look of disgust, she turned to look at Bella.
Someone forgot to tell Bella there was weed in the brownies. I probably should have mentioned something, Leah thought vaguely, as she saw Bella going in for a third. She quickly pulled her back onto the couch, giving her one of the empty popcorn bowls.
Bella requires a lot of supervision, she thought to herself. Leah was momentarily glad that I couldn't read her mind at that moment, a common occurrence among the pack members which inevitably made that person focus on it in particular. Since appointing herself as Bella's guardian wolf, she thought about me far more than she would have liked.
Bella stared down at the scar on her wrist and was very visibly turning something over in her mind. Leah noticed she did this often, even while sober.
She wouldn't usually have been brave enough to ask Bella about the Cullens, but since her worries had floated away, she no longer cared what came out of her mouth. Thankfully, it wasn't rude.
"Can I ask you a question? I promise I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm really just curious."
"Sure, Leah. What is it?"
"How did you… stand it?" Leah wondered. "Being around vampires so much."
"They're people too, just like you and I."
"They're dead. Or they should be," Leah rolled her eyes and took an angry bite of a half-popped kernel on the bottom of the almost-empty bowl.
"But they didn't have any choice in it," Bella argued. "No more than –"
"No more than us," Leah finished for her.
"Yeah."
Leah didn't like the comparison, because technically, the Cullens' proximity was what activated the wolf gene, but she could see where Bella was coming from. She couldn't imagine someone signing up to be an undead bloodsucker for eternity.
This was what Leah liked about Bella. She told you the truth even if your head was so far up your ass you had to squat to find it. It put things in perspective for her. She wondered if maybe it had all happened for a reason, then quickly shut that down. How cruel would fate have to be to have planned this?
Suddenly she asked, "Do you agree with the imprint?"
"I didn't, at first," Bella admitted.
"But you do now?"
"It's almost like it was there the whole time," she sighed. "But I couldn't see it at first, like I was distracted, you know? And well, the Cullens," she choked a little on the name, "I sort of thought they were going to make me part of their family, and for a long time, I considered them part of mine. But they left, and you guys took me in." Bella's breathing became labored, and Leah thought she saw a tear fall down her cheek from the corner of her eye.
Leah had a rule about staring at people while they cried. Too many people had stared at her after her father died – when all she'd wanted to do was weep uncontrollably – which she hated, and still made her stomach boil with anger to think about. Because of this she found it difficult to look at Bella who, at the moment, couldn't hide her emotional distress.
"What did you two… do together?" Leah asked after a moment.
"He used to sneak into my room at night to watch over me as I slept." Although Bella was facing the T.V., Leah could tell she wasn't watching. Her eyes were far away, in a different world.
"That's weird," Leah said, scrunching up her nose in disgust. "Did they all do that?"
"No, it was just him," Bella laughed. "And if you think that's weird, then you don't know the half of it."
"What other weird things did they do?" Leah asked, as flutters of curiosity turned into an odd sense of danger blooming in her stomach.
"Well, there was this one time," Bella began, a blush lighting up her pale face. "Our biology class had to do a blood typing lab –"
"He was in class for that?" Leah gasped.
Her jaw fell open and hung wide for a full thirty seconds, her eyes bugging out of their sockets. A leech was able to sit in a room full of kids pricking their fingers? Were the Cullens really bloodsuckers? She agreed with Embry that they must have all been lobotomized, or even better, neutered. A worse option was that they were some other demonic mutation, something that looked and smelled like a bloodsucker but was wholly new to the tribe's knowledge.
Fuck, if werewolves and vampires are real, what else is there? Quil thought.
"No, he showed up later, when I was walking to the nurse with Mike."
Bella's face was thoughtful for a moment. Leah could recognize grief when it tapped a person on the shoulder, so she quickly looked away.
"I got sick at the sight of the blood and had to go to the nurse, but he met me on the way and talked Mrs. Cope into giving both of us the rest of the day off."
"How?"
"I don't know, he just… asked. Very politely. But he had this way of smoldering."
"Smoldering?" Leah asked, raising her eyebrows.
"You know – like when his eyes would burn intensely, and his voice was smooth as velvet." Bella sighed. "People did whatever he wanted. There was a waitress who he bribed, I think, to put us in a private booth – and when he smiled at her I noticed it took her breath away, too."
Leah was suddenly struck with a realization that felt stupidly obvious. She wholeheartedly expected the leech was a manipulative jerk, so that part wasn't a surprise. But she realized he could also play mind games, mess with people's heads. He'd broken Bella's mind when he left. This was concerning news for the whole pack, particularly me, and startled me enough that I suddenly came to my senses long enough to find myself leaning on a tree outside of Emily's house, sniffing around for any bloodsuckers I could take it out on, before I was pulled back under the waves of Leah's grief.
Even if he couldn't read Bella's mind – which Leah was not inclined to truly believe, because she didn't trust a bloodsucker's word farther than she could throw it – he must know something about the mind of a seventeen-year-old, having read the minds of several thousand teenage girls in high school over the course of his years pretending to be a student.
"What else could he do?" Leah asked, inching closer to Bella intently.
"He ran fast – like, really fast. And he threw me onto his back to carry me sometimes. I was scared the second time because I thought it would make me motion sick, like the first time, but he convinced me to just close my eyes by kissing me. But then he got mad because I tried to kiss him back."
Leah had to hold herself down to the couch, her every muscle tensed and coiled, ready to leap into action. Her little dove – so innocent and truthful that she believed everything she was told – had been used and manipulated by an evil, undead creature. Leah refused to let someone with such honest eyes be killed by leeches, or let them twist her into something so wholly different from the original she would be unrecognizable. Such a loss would be unacceptable to Leah, not after we had all lost so much already.
This was her burden, if she loved Bella, which was becoming clearer to her now.
Leah may have had some loyalty to Sam, but he was not her first choice as Alpha. She looked to me first in all things related to the pack, though Sam often overruled me. Nonetheless, she considered herself to be part of "Jake's pack," more than Sam's. She felt the same way about Bella as Emily felt towards her boys; the protective, maternal feeling of an older sister.
Emily and Kim were still working on the popcorn, high as kites. They had started making it, but then spent a good deal of time in the kitchen shoving the hot, buttery popcorn into their mouths, until they realized they would need to make more. Leah laughed along with the soundtrack of the sitcom.
"What was it you said before..." Leah recalled suddenly, sitting up again. "About him sneaking into your room and watching you sleep?"
"They don't sleep, so he'd lay down next to me sometimes or watch from my rocking chair. We spent almost every day together."
"What did he do while you were asleep?"
"I'm not sure, really, I figured he read some of my books, but he seemed to be entertained by my 'human moments.' He used to tell me I said his name in my sleep." As Bella talked her eyes flashed with intuition, like two and two had come together to make four.
"It wasn't creepy having someone sneak in and watch you sleep?"
"Well," Bella began, and then her nose wrinkled up in concentration. "Now that I think about it… It does seem a little weird. But Jacob has done it, too…"
"If Jake is in a bed, he's sleeping," Leah snorted. "Besides, Jake has been begging for some action for months. And he asked you, didn't he? I remember that. He asked you every night for months if he could visit you at night, and you said no. Why didn't you say yes if it wasn't weird? It sounds like the bloodsucker was more of a stalker."
"But I thought he loved me," Bella said stubbornly. "He told me that I was his own personal brand of heroin. My blood smelled better to him than all the others, for some reason – I don't know, he compared it to being a recovering alcoholic, I think."
"And you thought that was romantic…?"
"Like I said, he was smoldering at me, Leah," Bella whined. "How could I not believe every word he said? But then that day in the forest, he took it all back. And it felt like I was the one addicted – to him. I was addicted to his smell, and his face, and I didn't see how I could go on if he didn't love me. But now I'm almost glad he left, because you've welcomed me so kindly and been so nice. I know I'm not always the easiest person to be around." She grimaced. "I can't thank you enough for being my friend, Leah. Even if I am just a slow human." Bella smiled up at her sheepishly, like she was ashamed of her word vomit.
Leah took Bella up into her arms and hugged tight, fingers clenched.
"Bella… You need to stay away from those leeches, do you understand?"
"What? I have to go lay a trail tomorrow, Leah, I can't avoid them –"
"When this is all over, you need to tell him to leave," Leah instructed, holding Bella by the shoulders and shaking her a little. "You can't let them get you, Bella. He'll put you under another spell, and I don't think you can recover from it again."
"I wasn't under a spell, Leah," Bella rattled through her teeth.
Leah quickly let go of her, balling her hands into fists to keep them from shaking.
She thought of what seemed to always be on her mind – Sam.
He had made promises, too.
"Men have a way of saying shit you want to hear," she said with a huff, slumping back into the couch, her head falling back heavily with sedation. "But I can tell you that Jake means it. And the leech is bad for you – unhealthy. I don't want to see you go through another heartbreak, Bells."
"But he looked at me with those eyes – I swear, sometimes when I looked in them, I got so lost I forgot to breathe, and I almost passed out a couple times."
"Are you going to tell him to leave when this is over?"
Bella looked up in confusion. "Why would I have to?"
Leah was unable to suppress an eye roll.
"Isn't it obvious?" She asked. "Jake didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"That the bloodsucker wants you back," Leah said slowly, wondering if Bella had been hit too hard by the brownies, while simultaneously feeling like she was making a horrible mistake.
Bella blinked a couple times, then laughed, and took a bite of yet another brownie which Leah quickly nabbed away from her, replacing it with a handful of half-popped kernels.
"That's impossible," Bella replied, unphased by the maneuver.
"You're going to have to choose at some point," Leah warned. "That bloodsucker is going to give you an ultimatum – and you're going to have to choose whether to stay with Jake or go and be strung along by a leech."
Leah gritted her teeth and gave her the truth she knew Bella would give her.
"And you shouldn't choose the leech."
Bella laughed. "I've already chosen! Didn't you hear me before?" She shook her head, laughing again. "You guys welcomed me when the Cullens left – and I found that I like this kind of life better than I ever liked the one with Edward." Then she hesitated. "But he always had a way of persuading me. I'm scared that if I get too close, he'll talk me into doing something I'll regret."
"You have to remember us when you start feeling dizzy," Leah urged. "Think of us, if you really like us better. I bet he can't tamper with your mind as easily as he does other people, if he says he can't hear your thoughts."
"Why do you want me to stay so badly?" Bella whispered, as Emily and Kim turned from the counter towards the living room, her voice low.
"Because Jake loves you, and I wouldn't want to have to put up with him if you died," Leah grunted, slouching.
"But why would he be so upset?" Bella wondered aloud. "All I've done is put him and his family in danger."
Leah shook her head. "You really don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?"
"What this imprint means," Leah sighed, wishing she didn't feel obligated to warn the innocent, fragile creature in front of her, with hollow bones and pale cheeks. "I can't explain it right. Emily knows –"
"Emily knows what?" Called the woman as she stepped into the room carrying a steaming bowl of popcorn. Kim came stumbling in behind her with another bowl – one for Leah, one for the rest of them.
Leah stood up and wrapped the fur she had used to be Mr. Bear around her shoulders again.
"Emily knows more about imprinting than I do," Leah declared, covering her hair with the fur and straightening out her back to stand at her full, imposing height.
"What are we telling now?" Kim asked excitedly.
"Explaining imprints – here, you come and be mine." Leah grabbed the girl's hands and started dancing, forgetting their troubles in a twirl that ended up throwing Kim flying onto the couch. The girls laughed again, but Emily sat calmly next to Bella, watching them with a knowing smile.
"There are other stories besides the Raven," Emily said once they had quieted down. "Some kept so secret they have been lost. The third wife is one of them." She sighed. "We will never know her name, but we know her story, and so we pass it on.
"You see, Taha Aki's third wife was not from our tribe. She came from the South, as a slave. She had been kidnapped and held captive in a neighboring tribe as a prisoner of war.
"The moment he saw her, his grief from losing his first two wives disappeared. It was no longer gravity holding him to the earth; it was her, and he knew immediately that where she went he would follow, even if it meant passing through the valley of death to find her spirit in the lands beyond the living. He immediately paid whatever price the Chief of the neighboring tribe demanded and took her back to his tribe."
Bella had been listening to Emily very closely.
"What did the third wife feel?" She asked.
Emily smiled. "We know better than anyone else what she felt. She spent a month recuperating with one of the noble families. She was alone, and scared, and very far away from home. She was a young woman when she met Taha Aki, but was told of his great deeds and many years alive, and was surprised by his apparent youth and dexterity.
"She was reluctant at first, when he started to show his interest in her. But Taha Aki didn't push her; he wanted what she wanted, and they were content as friends for a time. She found she was taken care of in this tribe, and loved, far more than she had expected. One day, she asked Taha Aki why he was so fond of her, and why he chose her out of all the other slaves to take home and treat like a queen.
"That was the night when he explained to her the odd phenomenon, with his best analogy being the way baby birds recognize their mother as soon as they open their eyes to see her in the first few moments of life. It felt like he had been suddenly borne anew into the world he had known for so long as something in his soul recognized something in hers; like their bodies had been molded out of the same clay, and he knew from that moment on that she was a part of him, a piece that had broken off long ago in some great schism.
"And she realized that she felt it, too. There was a pull to him; something instinctual, a feeling in the pit of her stomach when he took her hand in his; a whole, complete feeling, and she found herself understanding exactly what he meant.
"And that is why he stopped shifting. He did not want to live without his other half; there was no other reason to wake up and be human if not with her. The tribe had been safe for a time before that, so he was able to pass on the torch to his oldest son.
"The third wife chose him after the longest courtship known to the tribe – two whole years. She had a hard life before that, and came slow to trust, but she found that Taha Aki was faithful in his promise not to shift again, and began to age with her. They lived together, peacefully, for many years."
A hush fell over the listeners as the mist dissolved, and the world continued turning in its lackadaisical, rhythmic pattern. Outside, crickets rubbed their legs together like master violinists, creating a symphony of sweet music as the darkness grew still in the window panes.
Leah realized she was the odd one out. Her heart began to race.
She'd known she was a freak. Even if turning into a giant, hairy wolf didn't clue her in, being the only girl in the pack had put her differences out into the spotlight, where they seemed to become bright, shining beacons that highlighted everything she hated about herself. But now she felt like a freak sitting with these so-obviously-human girls. She regretted her idea of a sleepover with Bella more than ever, thinking that she had been foolish to believe she could ever have a "girl's night," when she was no longer a girl.
She was not one of them. She knew that.
The pack knew it, too.
She was not one of us, either.
Most of the pack had been relieved when we found out she wouldn't be bugging us that night. We had put her on the equivalent to cell-phone duty, like the boys. She hated having the same responsibility in the pack as her younger brother. She had been left out, confirming her suspicions that we all didn't like her very much – which, admittedly, we didn't.
Why was she here, with the girls, when the rest of the pack was running patrol? Wasn't she the fastest? Didn't they need her to protect La Push? Did they think they were going to lump her in with them, those fragile humans who Leah longed to protect? She was suddenly very angry.
She wanted to punch something.
No, she wanted to break something.
No, she wanted to break Sam.
Her fury focused like a laser beam on the one person she would never forgive.
Then it came to her – a white flash of hot anger, trembling in her arms, and she bolted out the door, trying to put as much space between her and the other girls as possible before she became a snarling, growling wolf.
As she shifted, running away from her friends for their own safety, Leah was suddenly completely alone. The feeling came over her in a split second as her skin shuddered and ripped open with a tear.
She didn't belong to either group.
A faint shimmer fell over her eyes, like a film of tears clouding her vision, and then she was a wolf.
This great sadness swept through and dissolved the fire, leaving a silent, smoldering pit of despair in her heart. Sure, she didn't aspire to identify with the imprints, but they were nice. She could get used to brownies and popcorn and telling old stories. But she could do more; she would do more.
You will never leave me out again, she commanded.
Fine, Embry barked. Can we go back to sleep now?
You owe me ten bucks, Quil told Embry.
Out in the tense night somewhere, Sam howled, and I laid my head on top of my paws with a sigh.