"I don't understand. Why the hell do Jacob and Sam have a say in where Leah lives?" Charlie said, his eyebrows furrowed as he stomped about the small living room of the house he now shared with Sue. "You own the house. Seth and Leah live in it. Since when does Sam Uley determine where Leah Clearwater lives?"

"It's...complicated," Sue said with a forced assurance in her wan smile. Charlie's connections led him ever-deeper into a supernatural web which, at any moment, would burst his cloud of ignorance into a downpour of uncomfortable truths. He could not avoid it forever.

Leah snorted. "It's not that complicated. Sam doesn't approve of my, uh, new man and won't let him onto La Push."

Charlie's unexpected burst of expletives made Leah chuckle. "How in the hell is your love life any concern of Sam Uley? After all that son-of-a-bitch put you through, he has the balls to think he can still tell you what to do? I'm gonna go there right now and give Sam Uley a piece of my mind," Charlie shouted, his face turning red as his anger rose.

"It's not just that," Sue cut in. "It's, uh, well, it has to do with the Cullens."

Charlie guffawed and pounded his fist against the mantle of the fireplace. "Not this again."

"I'm afraid so," Leah said. "You see, Nahuel, that's my new, uh...man...he is a relative of...Renesmee. Yeah. He's Renesmee's cousin."

Sue rolled her eyes and mouthed something that Leah couldn't understand. Leah shrugged.

Charlie gave her a dubious eyebrow raise. "Renesmee's cousin? Wouldn't that make him Edward's nephew?"

"Edward?" Leah asked.

"Yeah. Edward, Yeah, you know - Renesmee's uncle?"

"Her uncle? Seriously? That's the best story they could come up with?" Leah snorted and hid her laugh behind her hand. Sue sent her a sharp look to cut her off. Leah straightened and gave a half-hearted attempt at back-pedaling. "Yeah, sure. Nahuel is Edward's nephew...his very, very distant nephew. They'd never actually met until recently."

"How did you meet this guy?" Charlie asked.

"Oh, the Cullens had a...uh...family reunion, of sorts. I met him there."

"You...You want me to believe that you attended a family reunion with the Cullens?" Charlie asked, his skepticism inflating like a helium balloon.

"Sure. I hang out with them all the time nowadays. Since we are practically family," Leah answered. She knew her words dripped with more sarcasm than a honeycomb dripped honey, but she didn't care.

Sue threw up her hands in exasperation and gave up trying to preserve Charlie's last shards of credulity.

"So, this, uh, Nahum..."

"Nahuel."

"Whatever. Does he, uh, live around here?"

"He will now...hence the conflict with Sam."

"Where is he from?" Charlie asked.

"Brazil."

"That's a far cry from Washington. What is he moving here for?"

"For me. We eloped over the weekend," Leah said with a calculated shrug.

"YOU WHAT?" Charlie shouted. He threw up his head so fast he knocked his forehead against the mantle and he swore loudly while cradling the growing lump. "Pardon my poor hearing but I ain't as young as I used to be. I coulda swore you said you eloped."

"We did. Well, in the Quileute traditional way. We can't actually elope in the American sense yet, but we'll get to that eventually."

Charlie rubbed his temples and sank into the chair, silence carving into him like a glacier through a valley. He let out a long breath. "I am beginning to understand why Sam might have had some concerns."

"You have no idea," Leah whispered. Sue sighed, closed her eyes, and shook her head.

"And now you have to find someplace to live since Sam's got the elders more scattered than a fox in a henhouse...and your...man...has got no place to live and no job and, if I am right in my assumption, no legal status to work."

"That about sums it up."

"Mother of all that is holy, what you gotten yourself into?"

"I should add that Nahuel is going to stay with the Cullens for awhile. They need to catch up on their...cousinly bonding. They are helping him...acculturate...to life here."

"Well, thank heaven for small mercies. When do I get to meet this fellow?" Charlie asked.

"Soon. I'd have brought him right away, but Bella wouldn't let me."

"Bella...now my daughter is dictating who I can meet or not meet? Leah, what's really going on here? Is he an escaped convict or a scam artist or something? Is someone, uh, forcing you into this? You can tell me. I have connections. I can help you."

"No, Charlie. Nothing like that," Leah said, knowing as she said it that it felt like a half-truth and a full-truth at the same time. "It was love-at-first-sight and will make a wonderful, romantic bed-time story for small children everywhere someday. In the meantime, I need a place to stay that off the Res, while I try to get us a job and our own place."

Charlie clasped and unclasped his hands. His moustache twitched as he considered Leah with an intensity that made her squirm in her shoes.

"Leah Elizabeth, I have known you since the day you were born. In many ways, I have spent more time with you than my own daughter. I'm gonna shoot straight with you. Yeah, this is sudden and you are young, but who am I to talk? I know what that's like. I also know what it's like to have people disapprove.

"Renee's parents, well, let's just say they didn't approve and words were said that couldn't be unsaid. Bridges were broken that made us start off in Forks instead of near Renee's hometown. I always wondered...maybe...if Renee didn't have to marry Forks along with me...if we had stayed close to her home, maybe it woulda turned out different. I can't say that for sure, of course, but still I wonder.

"I don't want you to have to wonder, Leah, and I sure as hell don't want you to feel like you have to choose between your family and your heart. As far as I am concerned, you are family and you always have a home here, if you need it. And if things don't go well, don't you ever be ashamed to come home. I want you to know, this is always your home."

After more words than Leah had heard from the man in six months together, he gave a terse nod to seal his final statement. Leah threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, tears threatening to wet her dark eyelashes.

"Thanks chief, " she said. "You have no idea how much that means to me right now."

He gave her an awkward pat on the head, reminiscent of her girlhood days when he used to bring her and Seth a bag of saltwater taffy and show them his latest fly fishing lures.

"I'll move my stuff in tonight and bring Nahuel over tomorrow so you can meet him," she said.

"Sounds good, kiddo," Charlie called out after her as she slammed the front door with a bang.

oooooo

Granny Grace had faith that could move mountains and a heart of steel, but the woman had two fears that she could never fully shake. The first was earthquakes and the second was tsunamis.

"In old times, if the ground was a-shaking, the Quileute would fill their canoes with all their belongings and flee to the prairies inland to be safe. Now what are you gonna do? We never forget the time the whole world flooded and moved all the Indians around. The Hoh down south used to be at Quileute till the waters came and washed them away. You wanna tell me those fancy finagling high rise buildings can withstand the ground shaking like its filled with the Holy Spirit? Those don't got roots and they don't know how to bend. They gonna just crumble and fall and leave a right mess. No, thank ye. If the ground is gonna shake...and it's always gonna shake in these parts...I'm gonna stay far as far from the beach as I can and stay away from any building taller than a tree."

Sue Clearwater kept an earthquake and tsunami kit under the kitchen sink, full of flashlights and cans of beans and a hand-crank radio...just-in-case. These were useful in the immediate aftermath of the ground shaking, but what about after? After the shaking stopped and the bricks had unbricked and the roads had buckled, then what? How long did it take to rebuild something new and put life back together again?

At first, Leah thought all she had to worry about was how to forge a relationship between "enemy" species of supernatural beings...but that wasn't enough of a shake-down for her. Oh no, and then there was the whole "I'm from La Push, Washington and you are from Fonte Boa, Amazonas" thing. She grit her teeth, buried her feet in the sand, and prepared herself to face it all head on.

But what struck her first like a brick between the eyes was the basic requirements of "adulting."

First challenge: where to live.

Nahuel's red-eyed aunt was disinterested enough in Leah as long as she was nothing but passing fancy and a weekend fling. When Nahuel made no signs of leaving Forks and declared his wish to make his weekend romance last a bit longer than the weekend, Huilen's appraisal became scathing. The woman looked at Leah as if she were the black widow about to devour Nahuel and tried all manner of threats and cajoling to tear her nephew away.

Leah didn't blame her. Huilen wanted to go home and she wanted her beloved nephew to accompany her. Cue relational conflict #1...Leah decided then and there that all future imprints should come with an automatic "leave and cleave" clause as part of their genetic hardwiring cause she was not moving to Brazil.

Nahuel agreed. After a hundred and fifty years in one place, he was ready for a grand new adventure...and he just so happened to like Leah...a lot...enough to stand up to his aunt and turn his back on the only home and family he'd ever known.

(Add one brownie point to Jungle Cat's scorecard.)

At this, Huilen decided she loved her nephew more than she loved Brazil. Cue relational conflict #2. There was no way, short of an apocalypse, that Huilen would be allowed on the Res…for any reason…ever. That meant they had to find a place to live off the Res. Leah still avoided the Cullens' house, on principal. She tried to avoid Huilen, but the woman stalked her nephew with as much dedication as a baby duck follows around its mother. Leah appreciated her love and dedication for Nahuel, but the woman required no sleep and felt no qualms about sticking by her nephew's side, day and night, despite all Leah's subtle (and unsubtle) attempts to have some time alone with Nahuel. It took sharp words from Nahuel to grant them any reprieve.

Leah moved in (temporarily) with Sue and Charlie.

"I don't care if she married the devil himself, she's my daughter and she can always, always come home to me," Sue told the elders when they protested the arrangement.

The Cullens agreed that Nahuel and Huilen could stay with them while they adapted to "vegetarianism." Cue relational conflict #3.

"We are immortals," Huilen protested. "It is our duty and our honor to protect the mortals and ease their passing into the Afterlife."

"No, no," Edward tried to explain in Portuguese. "We can live on animals. You don't need to kill anyone."

"But that is our purpose!" Huilen cried. "That is why our people seek us out! When the burden of their lives is too much to bear and their bodies are weary of their many toils, they come to us and ask for their souls to be freed to the Eternal Realm! Why would we be selfish and deprive them of the honor of being a sacrifice?"

Edward, momentarily dumbfounded, had sifted through Huilen and Nahuel's thoughts and memories for a time before he could understand what they meant.

"Apparently, they have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the Ticuna," Edward explained to Leah and Carlisle later. "The Ticuna view them as deities. In exchange for their protection from enemies, the Ticuna send all their sick and dying to them. Between the introduction of European diseases, warfare, and the rubber-tapping empires, they have never had a shortage of ready food sources and they've helped their people consolidate their hold on different areas of land. They do not hunt the healthy or the strong, unless they are enemies of the Ticuna, and so they do not see their behavior as wrong or immoral. They see themselves as almost a kind of angel of mercy, granting a quick and painless death to those who are already dying."

"Oh," was all Leah could manage to spit out in response to that. Really, what else could she say? "Cool, man, go be the Grim Reaper?"

Edward and Carlisle spent days trying to explain that it was different in Forks. For one, antibiotics were a thing. For another, the majority of the population of Forks had no intimate relationships with shamans, spirits, or experiences with the efficacy of supernatural curses and healings. They would not be as likely to accept the open presence of this pair of Ticuna immortals as the Ticuna had been.

"Wait, they do not know you are immortal?" Nahuel had responded in amazement. "You pretend you are human? I do not understand why."

Yeah. Leah called operation "learn-to-be-human" a "work-in-progress." Cue relational conflict #4. Nahuel had no idea how to be human. When Bella finally gave Leah permission to bring Nahuel over to Charlie's, Leah was reminded just how "not human" Nahuel really was.

Leah had been helping Sue make dinner when Charlie came into the kitchen, as white as a ghost.

"You ok?" Leah asked him.

"What is he?" Charlie responded, his hands shaking at his side.

"Oh no. What happened?" Sue asked. "Are you ok?"

"Nahum...he said he'd never heard of baseball. I thought I'd teach him how to play."

Leah groaned, already knowing this could not have ended well, judging by Charlie's awed and terrified face.

"He can uproot a tree with his bare hands...and I think he hit a pop fly all the way to Canada."

"It's a gifted family," Leah said with a shrug.

Charlie grumbled under his breath and wrung his hands together. "I couldn't fully understand him, but he said something about helping hunt. Then he started shooting squirrels with a blow dart. He's skinning them for you now."

"Alright, then," Sue said. "I'll, uh, Google a recipe for squirrel stew. He does eat, right?"

Leah groaned. "Smooth, mom. Real smooth. Of course, he eats."

"Just asking."

"Wait, why would you even need to ask that?" Charlie said.

"Inside joke."

The next big challenge came in figuring out how to make enough money to get by.

Leah had been working part-time since she turned sixteen. In her "Plan A" life, she would have continued that while she completed her math degree at the University of Washington. However, the turmoil of her last year of high school saw her grades drop faster than the tide during a full moon. Battles with newborns and nomads and Volturi weren't exactly conducive to freshman college classes or regular job shifts, but she was stubborn enough to complete a couple of classes. Sam might have lost every dream he once had, but she refused to and she was determined to continue on during the spring semester…despite being on "Plan Z" of her life.

She also managed to pick up odd jobs cleaning houses and tutoring kids in math to keep her afloat. Her jobs gave her the bit of spending money she desperately needed to augment the household food budget and provide her with a cell phone and limited savings. But she was nowhere near self-sufficient and now she had two people to support.

Then there was the rather inconvenient fact that Nahuel was the essence of an undocumented immigrant. He had quite literally walked to Washington from Brazil and without any form of a birth certificate, passport nor visa to his name. Finding legal work was out unless they got him some kind of visa status in the U.S. It proved more complicated...and expensive, than she had ever dreamed.

"What do you mean I need to submit copies of phone records, photos of us together, and evidence our relationship has existed for years and years and years?...It costs how many thousands of dollars?...How much money does the 'sponsor' need to make?...It takes that many months to hear a response on just the initial stage?...This is ridiculous." Leah slammed down the phone with USCIS in disgust and nearly decided to move to Brazil.

The Cullens said they had a contact that could "help" Nahuel acquire all the necessary paperwork. She assented, but put her foot down at letting them cover the cost.

"You are already housing him and feeding him. He's only here because of me. I need to pay for it," she said, trying to scrape together whatever pitiful scraps of her pride and self-respect she could maintain in the process. While it depleted her meager savings entirely, it also meant they could try to find Nahuel some form of work.

This also posed a problem. Even with dubiously acquired work authorization permits and documentation, he had limited employability. He couldn't read or write. He had no discernible skills…other than wickedly sharp teeth, unnaturally good aim with a blow dart gun, and the fact that the man was apparently a linguistic genius.

Seriously, a linguistic genius.

He had first taught himself to speak by two weeks of age. The man took to languages like a fish took to water. He was completely fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Ticuna, Baniwa, Wapixana, Yanomami, and Guajajara and conversational in at least a dozen other Amazonian dialects.

Yeah. She's pretty sure he could speak whale.

Alice and Jasper taught him rudimentary English on the walk to Washington, hence his West Coast American accent, but they only had time to teach him what he needed to know to testify to the Volturi. He knew little else. In his first few days' interactions, his conversation followed a very predictable format:

"Hello. My name is Nahuel, son of Pire. I wish to kill my father. Joham, prepare to die."

While not usually the way to romance a lady, her wolf genes didn't care. He could have recited a toothpaste commercial without any inflection, and she would have found it a turn on. Her family and friends found it less endearing.

It didn't take long to correct his limitations and within another week, he was fluent in English and beginning to pick up Quileute. Leah had to admit she was impressed. It was an amazing skill (and quite useful in their budding relationship). She thought he probably could have earned a living as a U.N. interpreter or international businessman or diplomat or something…if they lived somewhere other than Forks. Though interpreting American English to Canadian English was sometimes necessary, she didn't think he could get paid for it...and it would require him wearing pants.

Cue relational conflict #5. Nahuel was born before Washington was even part of the U.S. and she figured he'd been wearing the same type of loin cloth getup since before the Civil War. If she thought it was hard to teach an old wolf new tricks, they had nothing on the stubbornness of hybrid vamps. Since most businesses and employer included pants as part of their overall dress code, they came to another impasse.

"Why are you trying to change me?" he decried when she asked him to wear jeans for the umpteenth time. "I thought you love me as I am."

"I do, but sometimes when you are in Rome, you have to dress like the Romans," she responded.

"I thought we are in Washington. Is Rome a village nearby?" he answered and she could only groan and throw her hands up into the air.

Edward was the only one successful in getting Nahuel to try something other than his preferred leather skirt. He cornered the half-vamp one afternoon and told him how attractive Leah would find it if Nahuel conducted an "appropriate courtship ritual." Edward gave Nahuel lessons in etiquette and an overview of what to expect on their "date".

When he showed up at Leah's door in that charcoal grey designer suit, his black hair braided and gelled back behind his ears, and his brilliant smile lighting up his face like a Christmas tree, she nearly swooned.

They never did make it to the restaurant for their anticipated evening.

"I do not understand this courtship ritual," he complained. "Why was I told to wear these strange, uncomfortable clothes when you removed them as soon as I arrived, before I even greeted you properly. Would it not have been more efficient for me to come to you as I always do and save us both time?"

Edward refused to help her again and told her she was on her own.

Jacob tried to help Leah, in his own way. Just breaking the news of her imprint to Sam (and taking the successive beating and screamfest after) was enough to make Leah feel indebted to the guy (even if she pulled the "you're the Alpha, you get to tell him" card to make him do her dirty work for her.) He went above and beyond to help Nahuel acculturate and support Leah in the process.

"Did I tell you that he wants a car?" she told Jake as they hung out at the beach one day.

Jacob gave her an amused expression. "But he can't drive."

"Oh, it gets better. He wants a car like Edward Cullen's."

"The man has taste. I can't deny him that. I would also like a car like Edward Cullen's."

"No. The man is developing unrealistic expectations that are soon to be shot down once we get our own place."

"Yeah, maybe staying with the Cullens isn't the best preparation for life with you."

"Ya think?" she said with an exaggerated eye-roll. "Ugh, at least its inspired him to find a job. Bella helped him get a spot at Newton's Outfitters. It was a plus that he could speak Spanish. He even agreed to the dress code."

"Bella told me. I can't wait to see him there," Jacob replied with a wide grin. "Though that might not be the best path to Aston Martin ownership."

"I didn't want to burst his bubble just yet."

"Speaking of bursting his bubble, where is he?" Jacob asked. His eyes scanned the grey waves for the familiar brown figure, but he was nowhere in sight. Moments before, Nahuel had been happily swimming along the shoreline, but now he was gone. They both walked towards the waterline and searched it anxiously, but no dark head reemerged from the waves.

"Maybe I should go after him," Leah said, biting her lip in her growing agitation.

"Yeah, I'll come with you," Jacob said. Before they could immerse themselves in the cold, salty water, a glossy head interrupted the horizon. He swam towards them so fast he looked like a motor propelled him. When he saw them, he grinned and held up something large and red in his right hand. The red thing wiggled and waggled in a way that showed it was alive.

"Octopus!" Leah and Jacob shouted in unison as they recognized it. In his next motion, Nahuel had bit off one of its tentacles and soon was ingesting the next. He gave them both a wide grin and held it up in offering.

Jacob burst out laughing while Leah groaned.

"We went to the grocery store the other day and he started eating food while we walked through the store," Leah said. "Everyone stared at us and Nahuel couldn't understand what the problem was, no matter how I tried to explain it."

"I do that sometimes when I'm starved," Jacob said with a good-humored shrug.

"From the meat department? He tore open a package of raw steak and ate it like a burrito."

Jacob's hearty laugh rang out across the beach and he clapped Leah on the back. "You got me there. I have never done that. I get it though. Cultural differences. You know, I'll never forget the time when we went to Vegas to meet Rebecca's in-laws and they served poi. I thought it was pudding. Yeah, it so wasn't...I embarrassed myself pretty well that time."

"Not the same at all," Leah said.

"Sure, it is. My brother-in-law only wears a shirt and shoes when he goes out to eat or gets on an airplane."

"Jacob, shut up. Your brother-in-law is Hawaiian. Not the same."

"Sure, sure."

Despite all this, they slowly adjusted to their strange new lives together. She juggled her jobs and classes and all her spare time was spent in the forests, far from the Cullens house, where she could be alone with Nahuel. Leah, while busy, had more free time than she'd expected. She was freed up a bit by the fact that she'd stopped phasing. Not intentionally. For a week after her imprint, she had avoided it simply because she didn't want her nosy, busy-bodying pack members riling around in her head. Then, when she tried to phase, it didn't work. No matter how angry or frustrated she got, she didn't so much as shudder.

Jacob laughed and told her to enjoy her honeymoon. She'd earned some relaxation. She'd punched him in the face in response.

ooooooo

She'd always heard to be prepared since it was the little things that sparked off the big things. She was prepared for the classic "toothpaste argument" or the "let's stay in, no let's go out" or the "Bachelor verses Seattle Seahawks" debate.

She was not prepared for the "my strength is too great to assist you in domestic tasks, woman. My attempts to clean would end in ruin and despair for any object I touched."

Nahuel pulled that one when the dishes were overflowing in Charlie's kitchen after Leah cooked them a big dinner. She was tired, too tired. Her school work had been particularly wearing on her that week and she just wanted to hide away in her pillow and sleep the world away for a week. However, she did not want to leave such a mess for her mom and Charlie.

She thought it was an appropriate request. She asked nicely and she even showed him how - you know, in case his jungle ass had never learned and needed a demonstration (but his pride would keep him from asking). His response left her momentarily dumbfounded.

She thought he was joking, but he was dead serious. When he assured her again that it was "not the place for men of his class to do such work because they were too strong," she opened the back door, picked him up, and threw him out of the house.

"Well, my strength is too great to share oxygen with deadweight like yourself," she told him as she shut the door in his face.

The ensuing argument escalated so that three trees were uprooted and it took two families-worth of supernatural beings to intervene and calm them down.

Leah wasn't sure if she was fighting Nahuel or the imprint bond or herself, but she fought to win…and that's what made her sure to lose.

Huilen didn't help. She gave Leah dirty looks and filled her nephew's already big head with commentary on "how a man like you should be treated" and "a real wife would…" and "a real wife wouldn't…" till Leah wanted to scream out that Nahuel wasn't living in the 1850's version of Brazil where Huilen had learned her initial lessons in "this is the way the world works."

From Nahuel's perspective, the wolf pack's influence was just as meddlesome. They clicked their tongues and said if they treated their women like that, they would be strung up by their balls on the nearest tree.

"I am not you," Nahuel shouted back, the rub of constantly feeling out-of-place and like a fish swimming upstream finally catching up with him. "Why must I change to be like you when I am not like you! Why am I not enough as I am?"

Carlisle was forced to step in and mediate. He came with a good, long talk on "not bad, but different," and "what works in Brazil doesn't necessarily work in Washington and what works in Washington won't work in Brazil. You will both need to learn to bend and build bridges between both of your worlds. It is unrealistic and unfair to expect Nahuel to think and act and react exactly like Leah...and Leah has grown up in a completely different world from Nahuel. His perspective makes sense where he comes from, even if it makes no sense to you."

"What if I don't want anything to do with his world?" Leah shot back with a glowering expression on her face.

"Then you can't ever truly know him or love him," Carlisle answered sadly. "You cannot separate him from the world that has created him. When you tie yourself to a person, you also tie yourself to the place and people that raised him, for better or for worse. Each time and place and people have their good parts, their gifts that they give the world and the lessons they teach us about what it means to be human. Each time and place and people have their bad parts and the things they teach us about how much harm human beings can inflict on each other with their corruptible natures. You both have been given the gift of merging two worlds. You get to pick the best of each and create something new and beautiful and completely unique to you."

Leah groused inwardly at being told they were "special" again, but Nahuel was thoughtful and quiet.

"I have been so very busy expecting you to change into me that I have failed to know you as you are," he told her. "Forgive me for wishing to turn my wolf into a jungle cat."

She uncrossed her arms and glowered at him before she sighed. "We got a lot to work on," she said.

"I will be an honor to work on it all with you," he said with a wink.

"Wonderful," Carlisle said as the various onlookers started to drift away from Charlie's backyard. "While I will encourage you in any and all progress, I would recommend that you hold off on such arguments until the next thunderstorm. The local inhabitants are all convinced they felt an earthquake on this side of Forks and we don't want them to have any more gossip."

The various friends and relations dispersed leaving the pair to go inside…and do the dishes together.

ooooo

Author's notes: Well, I guess this is going to be longer than three chapters after all. I'd give an estimate, but I don't want to jinx it. Basically, this isn't an epic long story, so prepare yourselves for that.

I love all the feedback I've gotten on this story! You, dear readers, make the writing process oh-so-fun and rewarding!