Trigger Warning: Graphic violence and death.

"What do you mean gone?" Sam snapped.

"I told you everything I know," Jacob said. He handed Sam the piece of notebook paper in his hand. Sam read it, expression dark.

"I just don't understand how he could do this." Sam picked up his phone. "I'm going to call him."

"I tried," Jacob said. "He left his phone. Rachel left hers too."

Sam chucked his phone across the room, cracking the screen and denting the drywall, then put his face in his hands. Everyone in the room flinched except for Leah. Nothing got a rise out of her these days.

Paul was gone. He took Rachel and his car and disappeared. No one saw it coming and no one knew where he was. In normal circumstances, even without being able to reach him by phone we could have just waited, probably only a few hours knowing Paul, until he lost his temper and phased. Then Sam could order him to come back. But Paul changed when he met Rachel. Now, his temper was always in check. It was like he was a different person. And he had new motivations now. Paul was gone. Seth was dead. Our numbers were dwindling.

"No one else leaves," Sam said through his teeth. I shuddered, feeling the weight of the order. "I didn't realize I had to say that." Everyone shook under the order except for Leah. Like Kim, orders didn't affect her, but she wasn't going anywhere. At least not until her brother's murderers were dead.

It had been nine days since Seth was killed, and those nine days had been hell, or maybe, hell if viewed through gauze or wax paper. It was a haze of suffering, as if our collective fatigue prevented everything from feeling entirely real. Day one, we had a private funeral, council only, because Seth had died in wolf form, so no one would ever see his human face again. Sue was inconsolable. Leah whispered something to her brother's body. She wouldn't tell us what she said, but we saw later when she thought back to the moment while we ran the perimeter. The bloodsuckers will die for what they've done. And they will die in agony. I promise. We were all scared of her now. Even more than we were before.

Unfortunately the bloodsuckers that Leah vowed would die in agony were doing anything but. They were elusive, somehow impossibly moving forward with their drilling project. Day two after Seth's death, Crimson broke ground on the first drilling site. The three remaining leeches were not in attendance.

The economic prospects that had been promised during the meeting in the school had yet to be seen. Instead of creating jobs in the community as they'd advertised, La Push was filled with a steady stream of contracted employees from other parts of the state and from other states entirely. They were fully human, but rowdy. They drank, littered, destroyed property, and started fights. The council was flooded with complaints. Even previous supporters of the project reached out to ask if the council still planned on suing. The council made no comments on this and brushed off every complaint on Sam's request. The threat of retaliation was too real. Even if the bloodsuckers didn't know that all of the council members were actively involved in the ambush on one of their associates and our parents, they killed the whole Gibson family after a few negative comments in a public meeting. We couldn't afford to call any attention to ourselves, and we certainly couldn't make mistakes.

It was increasingly difficult to run patrols. For one, the flow of contractors meant there were a lot more people in town, often outdoors. We had to widen our perimeter to avoid being spotted at active worksites. On top of false promises from the Crimson bloodsuckers and their use of contractors, they'd managed to circumvent regulations and move forward on the project without the approval of the council. They bulldozed a sacred site and had demarcated another for destruction. People speculated that they were involved in the Gibson's house fire, some vocally. I wasn't sure I would have suspected that Crimson would be so callous had I not known the company was run by soulless monsters, but the timing was a little too convenient. We were scared for the most vocal complainers and added their houses to patrol runs. Our patrol loop was constantly changing, becoming longer and increasingly serpentine. As a result, mistakes were increasingly frequent.

Day four after Seth's death, Quil accidentally ran through a construction site, and in response, the contractors started setting bear traps and posting armed guards. So on top of everything else, we had to worry about the possibility of children losing legs to poorly placed bear traps while playing outside, and about the possibility of friends and neighbors wandering into a construction site and getting shot by some trigger-happy moron.

Day five after Seth's death, the protests started. They started as small crowds at worksites, holding signs that read "Protect Sacred Land" and "Crimson Lies." The crowd grew fast. People were starting to come in from other towns and other reservations to show their support. Yesterday, eight days after Seth's death, all eyes were on La Push. There were newscasters and cameras among the crowds. The police were called to disperse the protests, and they did so with pepper spray and rubber bullets. The Forks police force were the first to be called in. Bella's father led them. He slouched, dead-eyed as he gave the orders, showing no empathy of any kind. Some people defended his harsh tactics. They said he wasn't thinking clearly as he was distraught at the sudden disappearance of his daughter. Billy wanted to speak with him, but Jacob and Sam asked him not to.

Sleep deprivation was a fact of life. We all made a habit of not sitting down. Whenever we would, we would fall asleep after just a few seconds. We still had no idea how the leeches knew what we were, but now I was convinced that their plan was to run us into the ground. The bloodsuckers teased our borders and left long trails to draw us periodically out of town. With Kim, Seth, and now Paul gone, we were down to six. After what happened to Seth, Sam was only willing to split three and three, which meant we could only split groups if we were all awake and running. Even then, three were too few to guarantee a win. A tie was the most we could hope for now, but we hadn't seen any of the bloodsuckers since Seth's death. Leeches didn't feel fatigue and didn't need sleep. They didn't even need to fight us. They could just run us to death.

The pack was different. It would never be the same. The absence of Kim, Seth, and Paul was impossible to ignore in wolf form. I didn't want to admit that I was more aware of the absence of Kim's thoughts than the thoughts of my remaining pack mates, but it was more than that. It was as if our thoughts were tired too, as if the very connections that tied us together as a pack were fraying apart. I couldn't tell if it was getting harder for me to hear the others, or if the others' thoughts were muted by fatigue. Maybe mine were too. Staying awake was especially challenging for me though because whenever I would fall asleep, even if only for a second, I would dream of Kim.

Day one, the day after Seth was murdered, after his hurried, hushed funeral, I stumbled home alone, setting foot in my room for the first time after she disappeared. By then, it felt as though she'd been gone for weeks. I stood in the doorway of my bedroom at first, staring at the piles of clothing strewn around the room, and the empty spot where my dresser had been, a small, token reminder of the major, gaping absence in my life. I felt like I was sinking. But the second I collapsed on my mattress she was there, waiting for me in my dreams. We were on the beach, and it was snowing.

"Look, all I'm trying to say is that kids are overrated," she said, rolling her eyes. Her hair was short now, a ragged bob filled with jagged ends and unpredictable angles.

"I'm not saying we have to have a lot," I said. "Maybe just eight or nine." I smirked at her as her mouth fell open.

"Eight or nine!" She wailed. "Ow my poor vagina! What if we got eight or nine dogs instead?"

"Oh like a little, mini pack?"

"Oh yeah, that would get confusing." She looked so serious, nodding as if that were an actual concern. I couldn't help but laugh. As long as we'd been together I still couldn't always tell whether she was joking or serious. "How about some plants then? I'd say we could have cats, but I'm allergic."

"How are plants like kids?"

"Oh they're better!" She looked up at me, eyes bright. "They're super quiet, a lot less work, and you only feel a little bad when you accidentally kill them."

"Oh my god, Kim!"

"Still think we should have kids?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah but… maybe I should watch them."

"That could work," she started nodding, and again, I found myself wondering, as I often did, whether or not she was serious. "I could really see you thriving in a house husband or a stay-at-home-dad kind of role."

"Ouch!" I laughed but for once she didn't. "What?"

She shook her head. "You're the one that wants eight or nine kids! Why should I have to watch them? Besides, I'll probably make more money than you."

"Ouch!" I cried again, thumping my chest. She shrugged.

"Does that bother you?"

It did. I wanted to take care of her. I knew she didn't want to have to rely on anyone, but it hurt that I couldn't be an exception. "No," I lied, with a smile. "I look forward to being rich without having to work for it."

"Rich?! Who said anything about being rich? I don't know about that."

"Anything's possible."

She looked up at me and smiled, but there was too much sadness in her eyes as well as sudden, knowing sympathy. "At least in dreams."

A wolf howled in the distance.

The howling always woke me eventually, but it was getting harder and harder to get up after. I never felt rested after sleep, just more tired, as if I was always trapped somewhere between sleep and awake. I craved it now. We were all tired, but the others were driven in ways I wasn't. We all wanted the same things to varying degrees. Leah wanted revenge more than the others. Sam wanted to protect Emily. I just wanted this to be over so I could spend as much of my time asleep as possible.

Maybe I was stronger before I met Kim. It hurt to think about, but I could admit that much. I used to know how to be alone. Kim confirmed this. Well, she didn't. She couldn't. She was gone. But she explained it to me in one of my dreams.

I was on the beach on a windless night. There were no waves in the ocean, the water as smooth and featureless as glass. Kim danced on the water, balancing on the surface tension. There was no disturbance, no rippling rings where she stepped. Her dark skin was lit with pinpricks of light. She looked like a constellation, a swirling body of stars that reflected perfectly in the still water beneath her.

I ran towards her, straight into the sea. I grabbed for her over and over. She danced away, just out of reach of my hands. I couldn't move as fast as her, trudging through water as she skated along on top of it. My frantic movements ruined the stillness, casting waves to the shore. When I was finally too tired to continue I fell to my knees, sinking into the water up to my heart. The stillness returned. And when I heard her voice in my ear, the stillness had settled deep within me. I couldn't move.

'You were alone, free, hurtling through space. Then you were a planet, pulled into the orbit of a brightly burning star. But when a star dies, some planets are freed, sent hurtling through space once more, some are consumed by growing fire, and some are pulled into the black hole. You are the third, a fragment of dark matter, consumed and devastated by the sudden death of a once bright star.'

That was the only dream so far I'd been relieved to wake from.

Sam's orders were the only thing keeping me going now. I knew I would either die, which was straightforward enough to imagine, or we would win, and I would survive. If that happened, Sam might lift all of the orders he'd put on me that forced me to get up when woken, eat when fed, run when instructed, and protect this town filled with failure, broken dreams, and tarnished memories. Then I would be free to hurtle through space, burn away, or fall into the dark.

Today, day nine, I ran for twenty hours between breaks. Then, I collapsed on my mattress again. As always, Kim was there the moment my head hit the pillow.

Our favorite fallen tree was dead and Kim's hair was long again, and her skin was unmarked by stars. Normal. She perched on the trunk, glaring at the sun. My heart sank. We didn't have much time together. How could she waste any of it by being angry?

Her expression softened when she looked up at me. "You look rough, dude."

I almost laughed. It was exactly what she would have said if she were here. "I know."

"Are you ok?" She raised an eyebrow. How could she ask that? I burst into tears. Then she was there, wrapping her arms around me. "Jared. Jared." I didn't answer her. I didn't move. I held on to the dream as tightly as I could, willing myself to stay asleep. She rubbed my back, said my name over and over, and far too soon, she pulled away.

"No," I protested. I didn't want her to let go, and I wasn't ready to wake up.

"Jared," she said again, voice firm this time. "You've got to get it together."

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, fumbling for words. "Wh-what?"

"Jared you-you have to take care of yourself, whether I'm around or not. You can't leave me wondering if you'll stop eating or sleeping whether or not I'm there to see it. You can't leave me wondering whether you'll take care of yourself or not when I'm gone." My skin went cold as her words took a familiar shape. She said something similar to me after prom. I thought back to that moment when she left me in the parking lot by her school. That time when she stopped answering her phone for weeks, and I wasn't sure if she would ever speak to me again. I'd fallen apart then, and when we got back together, she'd noticed. I hadn't given much thought to these dreams of her. They weren't always memories, but they were often more than dreams.

"Do you remember now?" Kim asked, dark eyes wide and wet. "You promised me you would be ok. Even if I left."

I had promised. I remembered. I nodded.

"You have to keep fighting," she said, so intensely that she trembled. "Promise me."

"I promise." I said, voice breaking. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said, tears filling her eyes.

There were real tears on my face when I woke up to barking. I forced myself out of bed and outside where I could phase.

Your turn, Embry thought. He was running back to his house for his hour of sleep. My body ached as I jogged to the perimeter to meet the others.

Twenty minutes into my patrol, the monotony was cut by a leech trail, a disgusting mingling of all three of their scents. No excitement registered, only a slightly heightened awareness. We ran inward first, following the trail to where it disappeared on a road not far from Sue's corner store. Which meant we had to follow it out. Sam tried to assess who would be the most able to run, but gave up, realizing we were all equally tired.

Jacob, Quil, with me?

I'm going, Leah growled. You stay, she thought firmly to Sam. You're dead on your feet.

Sam might have argued under normal circumstances, but nothing was normal anymore, and Sam could not deny Leah's observation. Leah, Jacob, and Quil followed the trail outward, east, and eventually into Olympic Forest, and Sam and I ran the perimeter around La Push. All five of us were slower than usual, forcing ourselves to lift our feet high enough not to trip and stumble. For once, Leah didn't complain about the pace of the others holding her back. Sam and I panicked every time we crossed the scent trail at the border, somehow forgetting that it existed and thinking it was fresh on every lap.

Should we wake Embry? I asked.

What's the point? Sam thought back to the bloodsuckers' last dozen or so false trails. Let him sleep.

We kept running. Long after I'd lost count of the laps we'd made, Sam spotted a plume of smoke over the trees.

Follow me, Sam thought. We charged through town dodging a few drunk contractors, and then into the woods. Luckily the fire was outside of town, beyond our perimeter. When we approached it, the first thing we noticed was the pungent, bloodsucker smell.

The female, I thought, picturing the brown haired leech. She was the first one we'd discovered, the one who murdered Seth, and as far as we could tell, the leader of the three. Leah growled from nearly fifty miles away, wondering if she should come back.

Sam and I circled the fire, trying to make sense of what we were seeing. It was a pile of pallets with a trench dug around it, as if to prevent it from spreading. A bonfire. We didn't notice anything unusual about it other than the bloodsucker smell.

Why would a bloodsucker start a bonfire? I asked.

Let's follow the trail, Sam thought.

Guys? Jacob asked. The others had stopped running. They'd reached a tree, permeated with the three bloodsuckers' scents. There was a sheet of paper nailed to it, with a note that smelled and looked as though it was written in human blood. The top line read: Dear Mutts of La Push.

Sam and I froze, pulses pounding, and breaths catching. The message seemed to echo in our minds as Jacob, Leah, and Quil all huddled around the letter to read the words at once.

Our instructions were simple and you failed to follow. You should have stayed out of our way. You should have left your miserable little town when you had the chance. You were given a warning, and you were told it would be the only one. Now you will all pay the price, and the price will be paid in blood.

My stomach lurched as I remembered that one scent trail, the same one that we'd sent Jacob, Leah, and Quil to follow, that Sam and I had crossed over and over, and written off each time as old. Of course they would have snuck in along that same line, the one place where we wouldn't think anything of their scent. They knew everything about us.

We all stood, frozen for half a second. Then we were all running at once. Leah, Jacob, and Quil sprinted towards La Push. This time Leah pulled ahead, and the distance between her and Jacob and Quil steadily grew. I thought Sam might caution her but he didn't.

We have to wake Embry, I thought, as I sprinted towards his house. Sam peeled away from my path. He didn't seem to hear me.

Emily. Emily. Emily. He thought her name, over and over, as he ran for his own house.

Sam! He ignored me. I swore. As frustrated as I was, I knew that if Kim was still here, I would have done the same. Sam phased back when he reached his house. I was alone. I swallowed, fighting panic as I raced towards Embry's house, but a smell stopped me in my tracks. Bloodsuckers. And gasoline.

The fire bloomed up through the trees so suddenly that I felt the heat through my fur, even though I was hundreds of yards away. I squinted at the building and the fire through the trees. It was Jacob's house.

Dad! Jacob's thoughts were a sob. He almost tripped before pushing himself to run faster. I gasped, numb with shock as I ran towards the burning house.

Billy! Billy! I barked and barked, but I stopped when I reached the drive. The heat and light were so intense my eyes watered. Flames coiled from the ground to the roof, furling out of the windows and doors. Jacob saw the fire through my eyes and collapsed in the woods.

The next thing I knew, I was flying. There was a loud sound, and then I was in the air, only to come crashing down again. Once I landed, I realized the sound was the air being forced out of my lungs. I tried to take a breath but I couldn't. My lungs rattled, blood bubbling in my throat and dripping from my nose and mouth onto the gravel under me.

"See if the others are here," a cold, female voice ordered, cutting through the ringing in my ears. I remembered the voice clearly, having heard it in the meeting, and through Seth's ears as he died. I tried to take another breath but only heard more rattling. I tried to roll myself up, to stand and fight as I'd promised Kim, but something cold and hard shoved me down again. The fire was loud enough that I hadn't heard her coming. By the time I realized she was there, she had already struck. My panic was almost overshadowed by the combined grief of Jacob, Quil, and Leah.

At first I was confused. I understood Jacob's mounting despair, but Quil and Leah? Then I realized that they were mourning me. They were too far away. I would be dead by the time they got here.

"All clear!" A deeper, male voice called from farther away.

"Some pack you are," the female jeered. She smiled at me and the light from the fire glinting off her fangs. She pushed me over onto my back. My vision blurred. "They left you. All alone."

I tried to breathe. More rattling sounds. My heart and lungs throbbed. I tried to swipe at her with my claws, to land just one hit, but my attempt was feeble, my muscles already starved for air. She caught my leg and broke it in her hands. I howled, blinded by pain, but only a hoarse, rasping sound came out, and more blood, pooling in my throat now, choking me. At least it was me, and not one of the others. They all had something to live for, sunlight or starlight to see by. There was only darkness left for me, in death or in life.

"That's for Chris," she hissed. "And so is this." Her cold, dead fingers clamped around another leg, twisting. I heard the bones crunching. My vision blurred. She couldn't torture me for long. I wouldn't last much longer. My head fell sideways towards the forest. At least I wouldn't have to look at a leech as I died. I could look at the forest. The trees shimmered, a distant, unexpected, welcoming movement.

A figure stepped out of the darkness, firelight reflecting off her skin. I felt the shock of the others, but I wasn't surprised to see her here. Kim came back to me whenever she could. She was in every waking thought I had. Every dream I dreamt was filled with her. She was always there, whenever I closed my eyes, waiting. I think part of me knew that she would be here with me in the end. Dying felt a bit like dreaming after all, in spite of all the pain. It was almost perfect. Maybe it was too much to ask for her to be smiling and close enough for me to touch, like she was in the best dreams. In my dreams, I'd seen her in many ways, with long satiny hair, or her jagged bob. I'd seen her skipping on the ocean with stars on her skin. I'd never seen her like this, sprinting towards me, looking above me instead of at me, face streaked with tears and contorted with rage.

Kim screamed, but there was no fear in the noise. It was a clear, piercing sound. A battle cry. She swung her arm in a wide arc with so much force she nearly unbalanced herself. Then it started hailing. Gravel sized pieces of ice pelted my ruined body. Then it stopped as suddenly as it started. Something was different about this ice, that didn't melt and seemed to quiver and twitch even after it landed, but I couldn't think about it for long. The two male bloodsuckers charged at Kim from both sides. My heart ached for her, even though I knew she wasn't real. Just before they collided, Kim swung her arm again, one after the other, and the bloodsuckers shattered like glass as she did, pieces of them scattering and bouncing across the ground.

My chest ached and my vision blurred, but through the growing darkness, Kim's face swam into focus. She was beautiful. Dirty and beautiful. The ashes and grime on her face were cut through by tracks of her flowing tears. Fresh tears welled in her eyes.

"Jared! Jared!" I swear I could feel her hands on my face. I wanted to focus, to stay there with her, in spite of all the pain. To savor her touch and commit the sound of her voice saying my name to memory, but I lost the fight for air and fell into the dark.

A/N: Whew! Good thing vampires aren't real! But sadly, greedy, oil-sucking capitalists are, and land exploitation is a major issue, especially for far too many Indigenous communities. If you've enjoyed this fic, hated Chris Columbus and Darth Bella as much as I did, or want to learn more about what inspired this truly out there canon divergence, I would urge you to look up policies surrounding Indigenous land rights and non-profit organizations working to protect and expand those rights in your area. For this story, I was loosely inspired by DAPL and the DAPL protests. If these issues are important to you, contact your representatives and vote whenever you can to make your voice heard! Support nonprofits that provide legal protections against land seizure. Your actions and words have power. Three chapters left! Thank you all for reading and sharing your reactions. It's been a ride!