Two feet. Two hands. Four paws.

Running is the thing she does to get away from everyone.

For a few moments, a few sharp, precious little moments it works better than anything. Forest beneath her feet, trees line in the distance, the scent of the evergreen trees fulling her up and her thoughts not fighting for space. Being nowhere that reminds her of anything. Not Emily's house, and all the bullshit involved in that. Not work, where she's not allowed to be alone in case she brings the hut down. Not her bedroom, that reminds her of too many people. It's peaceful. It's beautifully fast. Faster than she could ever have dreamt of. Fast and quiet. Then Sam or Jacob or Jared or Paul shove their way in. Because she's still too volatile to be left alone in this form. Fuck that. She's as volatile as she's always been. If anyone's making her erratic it's the voices in her head that won't leave her in peace.

And it isn't like she doesn't have the right to be angry.

Everybody is right now: angry she's here, angry about the awkwardness, angry that out of every girl in the tribe it had to be her to break tradition and join the band. Even her dad is angry because this shit wasn't supposed to fall on her and now she's stuck in whatever the hell kind of life this is.

She's not angry about Bella. She can't be. She can't think about her. There's too much to unpack if she starts thinking about Bella.

She's angry about her hair. Sam cut it badly. After that first day her new form had slipped past her it was matted with leaves and mud. Her first little run was disorganised and panicked and ended with a fight somewhere around Olympia that left them all shaken. "This is why we can't keep it long," He'd said, and she supposes it makes sense, why the boys of the wolf pack had one by one fallen to a crew cut and a pair of cutoffs. It's all so very utilitarian and so very sensible and so entirely distant from the little gang/clubhouse/cult theory she's been running on when Jacob fell to it and Billy started acting weird.

Sam's hands were shaking when they took the scissors to her hair.

Hers were too.

It was the first time they'd been alone together in almost a year, and she was crying about hair.

"Is this some kind of fucking punishment?" Leah had wetly asked as he sheered off the first handful of hair and left it uneven just below her chin. It felt like losing a limb. Leah rarely felt beautiful, and usually, it didn't matter much. She felt tall and imposing and strong. Usually, she felt like the kind of person noone really wanted to be but her. But losing her hair feels like losing a piece of herself that she loved once. Sam used to stroke it when they were in bed together, does he remember? Her mom used to comb it in long, slow strokes by the fire while she told her stories. Bella said it was beautiful.

Don't think about Bella.

"It's just hair, Leah," Sam had said, but his voice was thick in a way that made her think he knew full well it wasn't just hair. "It's just more practical."

It is more practical. More practical for a life that's spent half in the woods in fur and half in a blur of sleep and arguments and nudity. That's another thing to be angry about: how much unnecessary nudity is there in life now? Four boys: Paul, Jared, Jacob and Embry. Four boys and her and she's seen every inch of them either in the flesh or in each other's heads like a constant, badly shot X-rated movie.

And how much have they seen of her? Everything.

She clenches her fists hard, nails digging into her palms to stop that line of thought before she shifts. She's really working on her control, and she doesn't want to shift in her own bedroom. She fixes her eyes on her bedroom, on the photos on the wall, on the Seattle poster, on the piles of shredded clothes on the floor. She fixes her breathing, going in and out with long, slow breaths. Don't shift. Don't think about the boys. Don't think about Bella. Don't change.

Her dad knocks gently on the door, and even though it's shut she can hear the ticking of his heart that's just a little more laboured than Mom's. She can smell the salty spray of the ocean on him that tells her he's been down by the shore, probably Native Grounds. He goes there a lot now to see Sam, now that she can't be trusted in the enclosed space in the public eye, the Pack have taken it in turns to run the place. Don't think about that either.

"Did she call again?"

"Nothing today. But that's good, you were gettin' all upset." Her dad looks guilty. He shouldn't, it's not his fault that she's not been able to get within three feet of the phone anytime it rings. Like a boundary line, she's been repelled anytime that shrill noise starts sounding. Sam's orders are powerful things, and the first law he's laid down was that there was to be no contact at all with Bella Swan. The first few days, anytime it rang she'd race for it like she could trick his little curse with sheer force of will and the speed she has that no one can match. She couldn't, and she'd shifted half a dozen times, completely cut off from even Bella's voice down the phone, snarling and heading for the trees to rage.

"Time's running out on the mono excuse." She remarks as he sits down on the end of her bed, her voice snippier than she likes to get with her parents. Everyone else can get the anger, she doesn't want to lay it on her dad. He's been looking rough lately, and this whole thing is a pressure he doesn't need. "What's the plan after that?"

"We'll deal with that when we get there." We'll get there, Leah thinks to herself. Bella will keep calling. She wouldn't let Leah's mom and dad keep her away, not without proof of Leah kicking her out herself. She's sure of that. She hopes that.

Don't think about it.

She didn't call today.

Her hands start shaking all over again and she stands sharply, heading for the window but not ducking out of it just yet.

"I still get to have a life." She grinds out slowly. She's said it plenty over the last week. She can stop shifting. Taha Aki from the stories had. He'd settled down and stopped changing, grown old, and had a family. If he could do it, so could she. They couldn't make her stay like this forever. That's why she needs to get a hold of herself, be as fixed as Taha Aki was and will herself to stop and settle down. Except, of course, he did it after three wives and who knows how many years, but she can't think about that either. "I can't be this forever."

"Then we just need to focus on that control of yours," he nods towards her shaking hands, and his wise, slightly judgemental face just makes it worse as she ducks out and darts across the open lawn and into the cover of the woods.

As soon as she hits the cover of the trees she tugs off her thin vest and her running shorts, nearly ripping them in her haste. She doesn't waste time tying them to her leg like the older ones do, just letting them drop into the springy ferns to find later. Like a wave, she folds into a fresh skin of silver fur.

Leah! The voice comes though, Jacob. She doesn't try to hide her irritation because it won't work. It tinges her thoughts like molasses, thick and heavy. It's rare she can turn and not find someone already there, calling out for her. Now that there are five of them, there is almost always one patrolling. Maybe that's good, they need protection, she just doesn't want to be it.

I had control over it. She thinks, pleased that it's the truth. She didn't burst into this form in a fresh, senseless rage. She slipped into it like clean sheets. It wasn't involuntary.

Pretty impressive! Jacob concedes.

Any fresh scent? She says, cutting off that smug, pleasant line of thinking before it grows. She doesn't want congratulations for controlling a freak show, not from him, not from her dad, not even in her own head. Control is necessary, it's not a skill, it's not a gift or a blessing. It's not something to be proud of.

Don't think about it.

It's the shit she has to get done so she can get this over with and get on with her life.

Don't think about Bella.

Her claws wrench deep rivets in the earth as Jacob gives the answer, a trail, just around the boundary line, crossing the river over and over like a tease. That sweet, sickly scent crisscrossing the forest.


Emily's house. Damnit, that's something she's got every right to be angry about because it's goddamn beautiful and there's a picture of her in it. Emily and Sam have a lot to be sorry for, but getting a photo of her printed, putting it in a frame and sticking it above their staircase is number one on her list.

She'd been dragged inside the first time by Sam's orders. The Alpha had enough of her refusing, filthy and bloody at the threshold to go anywhere near the little wooden house near the shore. So she's been marched in and dumped in the bath tub and Emily had stared at her until Sam, sweetly, kindly, lovingly asked her to leave, stroking those scars on her face. Emily's clothes were too small for her, and she'd had to wear Sam's home.

"Just like old times, right?" She'd sniped bitterly, pulling his hoodie over her naked chest. He didn't say anything. He'd just called her dad and told them they needed to talk at his place. Then he told her dad she was a freak. The only one, the very first: the girl shapeshifter. She's surprised her dad didn't have a heart attack right then and there, with how white his face had gone.

She thinks about it a lot. How freaked out did he have to look when he already knew about the other four running around the woods?

"Leah?" Emily calls from the kitchen, leaning out the open window to see her on the porch, sheltering from the rain in her mismatched jean shorts and vest. She doesn't startle, hearing the minute shifting of weight from the kitchen, the brush of condensation from the glass, the sad, disappointed sigh.

Caught, Leah opens the door and slips inside. It's hard to avoid her at her own house, but Sam insisted they meet here to map the scent's progress across the peninsula. to try and work out what it wants and where it's going.

"Hungry?" There's a dishtowel thrown over her shoulder and pearly soap bubbles clinging to her wrists. Did Emily ever think about college? Or was this enough for her? Caretaker, pack mother, dishwasher, and muffin maker?

"Ate before I came." She lies, looking around, noticing a new precious memory in every corner of the house. Nicknacks, junk and photographs. A whole life together in just a few months. "Sam?"

"Just visiting Billy, wanted to see if he'd managed to dig up those treaty records."

Leah nods stiffly, and Emily looks uncomfortable, wringing her soapy hands. Waiting for her to explode. There it is. On the wall by the stairs, there's the photo of her and Emily when they were barely teenagers, smiling because they hadn't done anything to each other yet. Leah and Emily both have long hair, and clean, layered clothes, and they're the same height.

"Jacob told me you're getting faster. You always did like -"

"I'll wait outside." Leah interrupts her, pushing open the door with her shoulder, managing not to push it off its hinges as she barrels into the tree line.

Her last pair of jeans: gone in a second.

Her thin threads of control: gone in a second.


It isn't her coffee shop. It isn't her tourist office. It's a shed with a coffee maker and a few maps owned by somebody else that she works. She barely even likes it there. It's just warm and paid and easy. And hers.

Seeing Paul fucking Lahote in there is a slap in the face.

"Paul knows as much about customer service as he knows how to get a damn date," She grouses, watching him from the tree line across the street as he switches the coffee machine on and doesn't bother with the heater because he's his own furnace now. she kicks the stones with her toes and they fly.

Paul scowls and mutters a quiet 'fuck off', because of course Paul can hear her bitching and then he slams the window shut.

And on one of the first sunny days of the season? They'll be lucky if the La Push tourist trade survives Paul fucking Lahote. But apparently, this is what pack is. 'Pulling everybody's weight' 'sharing responsibility' 'trusting Paul fucking Lahote'. She's shaking the second he puts out the open sign. Shaking so hard Sam looks concerned she might actually kill him.

"Relax, Leah. You wanna keep getting paid, you let one of us keep the place open. And it's Paul's turn." Sam says, his voice careful and authoritative. It means nothing to her, calling Paul a fresh list of foul names, and trying to stop the tremours, certain he can still hear her. Then she stops. Her heart jumps into her throat. Because it's there, it's the roaring, ridiculous orange truck and Leah wants to scream but she's rooted to the spot. She's still shaking. God, she can't stop fucking shaking. Deep breaths, pulling in air. She can't stop shaking. Fucking Paul! She wants to scream. If it wasn't for fucking Paul she would have been calm, cool, collected. She could have smiled and waved and maybe managed a conversation underneath Sam's watchful glare. But because of fucking Paul she can't get a grip and it's not safe.

She's not going within ten feet of Bella when she's shaking like this.

She thinks of Emily's scars, she thinks of Bella's soft skin. She thinks of spilling blood on the asphalt.

She turns away, sucking in deep breaths to try and stop them. If she can do it, if she can get control, if she can prove how okay she is, maybe Sam won't order her not to. Maybe she'll get her chance to see Bella properly, to apologise for not coming to the phone. Sam owes her that, doesn't he? She won't get to stay, or explain for real, but it'll be something. She can't imagine what Bella thinks is going on with her.

She can hear her stomping across the gravel. She can smell her on the wind, sweet and fresh but it's not helping. If anything the proximity to her and the proximity to Paul's weak-ass lies only makes a snarl crawl out of her lips. Is he doing it on purpose? Trying to fuck up her life even more?

"Leah fucking hates you," Bella snaps and that's the last straw because Leah wants to laugh and she wants to cry and she wants her friend back but she can't go near her. She bolts, rippling, ready for the change. She shakes so violently she nearly buckles, Sam's hand on the back of her shirt wrenches her up and throws her out ahead of him and the other boys as they follow her. She needs to get the hell out of here before she loses her damn mind. She barely makes it under cover before she changes, Jacob just a second behind her to keep her in check.

Don't think about Bella.

Don't think about it.

Asshole! Stupid, selfish, asshole! She snarls, careening into an old redwood, needles dropping and bark splintering at the aggression. Jacob reels around her as she replays Paul's words in her head, knowing she'll see Bella's face through his eyes later. 'Leah doesn't want to see you,' he'd said. What gives him the right? She's got two hands tied behind her back to keep them apart, and he barges in like he can speak for her?

Like a slideshow, she can see the back of Bella's head, the memory of her in Jacob's mind. What did her face look like when Paul told her that shit? Does she even want to know? Will it be agony or indifference, will it be the way she was at New Years: that hollowness?

He shouldn't have said that. Jacob's head is full of calming thoughts. Quiet lakes, smooth stones and breathing techniques. Jacob's a marvel of control, the king of cool and god if he isn't smug. It drives her crazy and she howls, Long and loud and clear. Surely Bella hears it as if her friend has any capacity to translate the cry into a feeling and relate it to her.

I'll kill him. I'll rip his face off for saying that.

Stop it. Sam's voice barges into her consciousness like a blooming bruise as he shifts, heavy and thick and impossible to ignore. It chokes her. Paul shouldn't have said that. But you know you can't go near her. You're too volatile.

I'm getting a handle on it! She paws the ground, raking bracken. Her display today was anything but control. Her body heaves with deep breaths coming too fast. Jacob's incessant in and out's in the background of her mind make her snarl.

You could have hurt her. It's better she stays away. Flashes slip between them. Those weeks Sam had spent away when they were still together, the first shifted and scared, avoiding her completely. Then, unbidden, Emily's face comes between them, scarred with long, deep furrows. She's not completely sure which one of them thought it. Then a thought that's definitely hers. Bella's face, that soft, pale skin marred by the same scars. Or worse, Bella bleeding on the ground and silent. she can feel Sam screaming out at the image, translating Emily's face onto Bella's and vice versa, the memeory like a brand between the three of them of Emily screaming.

She howls again, the sounds lower and more breathless as the image reflects in Jacob and Sam's head both.

Don't think about Bella.

Leah… Jacob thinks gently, and his thoughts are a slideshow. Her, just now at the shack, the smile on her face when they both heard that ridiculous truck with a hole in the dash where a radio was supposed to go. Bella, windswept and pale and furious at the window of Native Grounds, Paul's presence carefully thought around.

Stop it.

She tells Jacob, but she can't stop herself, because she thinks about Seattle. She imagines the space needle and a flat like a sitcom they could share together. But it's ruined, the whole imagining scarred because she can't do it like this. She can't go to Seattle like this and then, like a joke, she remembers they guy in the coffee shop from Seattle that had been flirting with them both like he deserved one of them or both. She's nearly phased then, before she even knew what that was. Before she even considered what she and Bella were.

You can't keep a secret from a Wolfpack.

Leah… Jacob thinks again and he sounds so awkward because he's cycling through a bunch of lifetime movie 'acceptance' tropes again before she snarls, diving forward to dig her teeth into his leg.

No! That's mine! She digs her teeth in harder, drawing blood as Jacob snarls until Sam barks sharply at her and she pulls away. But she doesn't stop thinking. That's mine and you don't get to have it. You don't get to know it or think it until I fucking tell you that with my own mouth. Don't think about it. Don't think about Bella. Don't think about me.

She wants to cry but in this form, she can't. She can only feel angry and strong but she wants to curl up into a ball and cry. And she hates crying. Between patrols and not being able to stay calm and not being able to answer the phone and not having her thoughts to herself she's hardly had time to think since her first phase. She can't go home, because she's doesn't feel secure enough to put her parents in danger like that. Sam leads her back to Emily's - the last place on earth she wants to be - but she goes. Even waits in the bushes for him to bring her clean clothes but she doesn't go in. It's raining gently, though the sun is a weak and spilled yellow, but just enough that it looks like the forest is spotlit.

Curled up in a copse of trees, Jacob and Sam leave her to continue their patrols and give her space. They don't try and console her again

Fucking Emily doesn't get the memo, turning up with tissues, a blueberry muffin and a knit blanket, bundled in a sweater.

"Starting to see how your face got so messed up. Approaching angry werewolves with tissues sound like good idea?" It's a low blow, but Emily doesn't even flinch, tossing her the things in her hands and squatting a few yards away from her. Leah lets the blanket and the tissues drop to the dirty ground but catches the muffin in her lap. Emily, idiotic Emily holds much closer than Sam would recommend, given today's antics. She rears up automatically. She's thought about it, but she can feel what that would do to Sam like a knife to the gut.

"Sounds like a stupid one, but you're not angry." She says gently, smoothing down the hem of her sweater with her knuckles. It's not a nervous gesture, but one of comfort, like Emily needs comforting.

"I can still throw up a few claws if you're that desperate." She leans her head back heavily against the damp bark. She uses the hem of her vest to rub her eyes, only a little petulant. She can't even feel the cold, in the spare clothes she keeps at Sams now. Frustratingly, it's difficult to muster any anger now. She's tired and wrung out like an old dishcloth, the holes starting to show in the fabric. Phasing would be a useful escape from Emily, but would it be worth it to be thrust back into the Pack's mental conversation? Who knows. Whatever, she doesn't phase.

"Sam said Paul's driving you crazy again."

"Paul's been doing that since school. He's an asshole." Emily snorts gently, prettily. She rolls her eyes because she can already imagine Sam's little swell of love at such an action if she ever thought about it in front of him. Emily's like that to Sam: a woman of endless fascination, every action like a portrait or poetry.

Leah wants to throw up. The rain finally stops, she can feel the change in the atmosphere before it happens, the gentle rise of the hair on her arms. She curls her arms around her middle, the way she would if she could feel the cold through her wet hair and damp limbs.

"Why are you so okay with this?" Leah asks eventually, head lolling against the tree trunk, taking a bite of the proferred muffin Emily tossed toward her because she's starving damnit. Phasing is like the most ridiculous cardio she's ever experienced and she needs the carbs if she's going to be able to go home.

"With what?"

"'With what?' Your fucking boyfriend is a werewolf genetically inclined to love you." It's accusatory, it's rude. It's direct and Sam'll give her hell for it. "You feed and clothe a bunch of naked assholes that can't control their tempers. Including now, me. How are you okay with that? How are you okay with any of this?"

"Loving someone? Being loved? Having five people that protect me and the tribe and the land I love?" She sighs deeply, as if it's that easy. She gestures to the scars running down her cheek and she looks younger, annoyed and huffy and the mere twenty years old she actually is but never looks anymore. "It's hard, obviously. It wasn't the plan, but whether it's love or the imprint or fate… It's more than I thought I'd get to have."

Emily always wanted a family. A husband. Children.

Emily's mom and dad weren't… what she wanted.

"Sam thinks it's a genetic thing, to pass on the shifting gene," Leah says, staring into the bracken and not at Emily. "I don't know if he ever told you that?"

"He had that theory," Emily says, sitting down with a sigh. How does she feel about that? Knowing that their love story, their destructive imprint was all built on biology and breeding? "I don't believe that." That is surprising. Leah almost forgot Emily could differ from Sam, like the two weren't one body. Emily worries her lower lip like she isn't sure she should continue. "You have all this power: Speed and strength and healing; eternal youth if you want it. I just think… for some people, maybe they wouldn't give it up without good reason."

Leah snorts. Sure, Sam thinks about the time he won't have to do this anymore; when the tribe is safe from sickly sweet scent trails and he can settle down with Emily properly, thinks about kids and a future in his little wooden house, but that's so far away and such an impossible task, all based on a thread of control that even he, the oldest can't keep a hold of some days. "Voices in your fucking head and never moving on?"

"Not everyone sees it that way," Emily says and her voice is almost a reproach. Suddenly Leah thinks about Paul, the bastard, and the joy he feels sometimes when he can differentiate the scent of different flowers from ten feet away and feel the oncoming rain, how pleased he is by the senses he'd been given. She thinks how free running on four paws is. How fast. How quiet it can be in the forest. "Taha Aki didn't find his imprint until his third wife, maybe hundreds of years after he changed. If it was about biology, why didn't he find her sooner? Why didn't he imprint on any of his first wives? He had children with all of them, so why not the first or second?"

"So the imprint is a little 'job well done' sticker and retirement?"

"I think it's a reason to stay."

She finally meets Emily's eye and she could say what she says so much more cruelly. When she speaks she speaks almost softly. "But Sam is still out there."

"I know," Emily nods, and her eyes are a little watery. "But if you believe in that, maybe the fact that we found each other so soon means he'll be done soon."

And god, that's so fucking sad. Because Emily really believes this is a fairytale. That it's going to end the way she wants. And it's so much sadder that she wants to believe her.

"Then why was it you and not me?" That's bold. And dangerous. Sam might kill her for asking it, or he might cry. Either option is despicable. Emily holds her gaze for a long minute, but she doesn't look upset, or surprised, or offended.

"Oh Leah," Emily says and it doesn't even sound pitiful, more like Emily knows something she doesn't. "Do you really think you're ready to stay?"

Don't think about Bella.

"No."

Don't think about Bella.

She thinks about the guy in the coffee shop instead. Or she thinks about some stranger appearing in La Push like a bad dream, of catching his eye and being caught the way Sam was caught. She thinks about losing Seattle again, that college might not hold the same call once she's settled in to be someone's wife, of never even getting the chance to go and come back before she stays. She thinks about leaving Bella; for good this time before they even got a chance. The boys can see it in her head but Emily can surely see it on her face. No, she's not ready for the house by the shore and a peaceful life like they are. She's not ready for the feeling the way Sam feels it, like a calling. Like settling down. Like stopping, in any sense of the word. What would be the better option? If she could see Bella again and imprint, pull her away from Seattle with her and keep her here, on a house by the shore and calling that love. Or not imprinting? Letting her go alone while she waits, stuck here to see if she can get out or if she can fall in love and pull someone in.

But there's an option worse than all of them.

Loving her.

Being with her. Whether it's here or in Seattle, building their little future together, and letting some stranger come along and rip it all away because it's what fate or biology decides is fair.

"No. Not yet."