A/N: Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer. I'm just playing with her characters. The ideas of Jasper as the God of War and Peter just knowing shit belong to Idreamofeddy.
Thank you to my wonderful beta/prereader/sister, shelljayz, and my prereaders juliangelus, deebelle1, and shirleypositive 72. You guys are invaluable!
Thank you to everyone who has read, followed, favorited, and reviewed.
Anyway… on with the show!
oOo
JPOV
I wasn't aware of how much time had passed since the clearing nor did I really remember anything that had happened between then and a few minutes ago. Now that I'd come back to myself some, I felt like I'd been hanged nearly to the point of death, drawn and quartered, castrated, disemboweled, beheaded. Aside from the castration, I could bear the other stuff—it wasn't anything I hadn't endured before. Even the emasculation in the literal sense as well as the removal of the rest of my junk was something I'd experienced during my time with Maria many times over. It was one of her favorite ways to torture me and remind me that she had all the power, though she liked my dick and what I could do with it too much to keep that part of my body separated from the rest of me for very long, using her venom, not mine to reattach both—they were the two scars of the thousands my body bore that I truly hated. It was the feeling of being drawn and quartered—like I was being pulled into so many opposite directions—that was getting to me.
"You're confused," Savannah's voice sounded from the armchair that provided the best view of me as I lay on my bed with my hands resting on my stomach.
"I'm not," I assured her, my calm tone contradicting that I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I hadn't looked at her in a few minutes. I needed to look at her, to make sure I wasn't hearing things, that she wasn't some sort of auditory hallucination. She wasn't. I was somehow sure of this. She sat there in the same position as she had when she first took a seat, her hands gripping the armrests in her only display of nervousness and gazing at me thoughtfully and with affection. Savannah cared. It should have pissed me off, it did piss me off, but it made me happy too. "You don't have much experience with emotions besides pain and fear. It takes a little while to figure out what they all are and pinpoint them in others, but none of that matters. I know why I feel this way. I know what you did."
There was no use in pussyfooting around the issue. Savannah had forged a fake mating bond between us for some unknown reason—that she didn't come here to die didn't count—and now I was her disgruntled but mildly eager to please puppy dog on a short leash.
"I knew you would," she said, giving no emotion away. She'd hijacked my gift again, blocked my use of it and was using it for herself. "I'm sorry."
"I know you are, Savannah," I stated frankly, my gaze steely. "I don't care."
"You don't care that I'm sorry or you don't care about what I did?" she queried.
"Oh I care about what you did," I promised her with less malice than what should have been present in my voice, in my bones.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, a pained look overtaking her features.
Against my will, my heart softened at her distress but I was still irritated with her. "Quit sayin' you're sorry."
She nodded and tentatively got to her feet, making her way to my bed and perching herself by my side, close but not too close. I simultaneously wanted to shove her away and pull her closer.
"This coven you live with now—"
"Family," I interrupted, my annoyance still prevalent. "They're my family. It's not the same thing."
"Okay, your family," she conceded reflectively. This idea intrigued her. I felt it through our bond and as she relinquished control of my gift back to me. There was a profound sense of envy there as well but also of gladness. She reached out to touch me but thought better of it, drawing circles on my comforter with her index finger instead. It reminded me of Bella and the way she constantly doodled, and a sudden stab of anguish and fury shot through me. It was enough for my fingers to clench, tearing the fabric of my shirt and digging into my flesh, wetting them with venom. It faded only a moment later and my hands relaxed. If Savannah found it odd, she didn't comment on it. "Why do they have golden eyes?"
"We don't feed from humans," I explained, happy she was asking easy questions. "The golden color is from animal blood."
"But why?" she asked, truly confused and appalled at the idea.
"They value human life," I answered, purposely saying "they" instead of "we" this time. It wasn't that I didn't, especially after meeting Bella, but my decision to feed from animals was less about that and more about the toll feeding on humans took on me because of my gift. "So they found a different way."
Savannah frowned, her expression turning contemplative, but apparently my answer was sufficient.
"You said 'we,'" she continued, her head cocked to the side as she studied me. "But your eyes are red."
"That's an astute observation," I said with obvious sarcasm, and that's all I was going to say on the subject. Savannah may have bound me to her, but she didn't need to know everything about me. I just hoped she didn't press me on it because I knew I would cave—it was part of this fake mating bond shit. It would be nice if she left me just a little piece of my life to keep to myself.
Luckily she let it go.
"I never thought I would see the day when Peter and Charlotte gave up drinking from humans," she laughed. "I hardly believe they value human life. They really will do anything for you."
Peter and Charlotte valued human life in their own way and her doubt of that inflamed my annoyance with her. Who was she to claim she knew the first thing about them? She knew nothing.
As for her second statement, I cocked an eyebrow at her, my way of saying, Really? Does this surprise you, and did you really feel it was necessary to state the fuckin' obvious?
"Since you're stayin' here, you'll need to feed from animals too," I informed her. I wasn't sure if anyone had already told her this but I had to make sure she knew it. We couldn't risk violating the treaty, though if the wolves found out Savannah was here that wouldn't matter. They would be dead before they could do anything about it.
"What?" she questioned in disbelief, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Why?"
"If you want to stay here that's the deal," I answered. "If you're really sorry for what you've done, if you really care about me, you don't have a choice. I'm not leavin' Peter and Charlotte or the others."
I'm not leavin' Bella.
"I do care about you," she said, finally ditching her hesitance and cupping my cheek. "You know I do."
I leaned into the contact for a moment, my eyelids drifting shut before I snapped out of it. Grasping her wrist, I jerked her hand away from my face and twisted sharply. It fell onto my mattress with a soft thud, her venom darkening my comforter as it leaked from the severed limb and stump.
Savannah shrieked and pulled her forearm against her chest protectively, her eyes filling with venom and her chest heaving with the shock of the pain; I felt it, it turned my stomach, but I didn't care. I had felt worse pain, and I wasn't sorry. That was good. A lone pearlescent tear escaped and trailed down her cheek, leaving a luminous path on her skin that already shone faintly in the dim sunlight that filtered through the window. Savannah was the only vampire I'd ever met that could cry; she was probably the only one that could. She only ever managed a tear or two, but that was more than the rest of us got. Some would say she was lucky.
Instead of apologizing I picked up her hand and laved the jagged wound on the separated limb with my tongue, coating it with venom before gently prying her arm away from her chest and pressing the two ends together. They joined like puzzle pieces, and the sound of Savannah's screams as her flesh knit back together were piercing and agonized, overshadowing the faint sizzle as my venom met hers. If she really was my mate, it wouldn't have hurt her so much—one of those mate quirks that came along with the condo in Stepford-ville, the lobotomy and the job in the factory that built the pods to create the pod people that spread the madness and mayhem amongst the vampire population.
It took her ten minutes to heal because of how different she was, every second of them filled with tortured wails. When it was done, she trembled, her unneeded breaths coming in gasping near-sobs that made me smile, another tear slipping down her cheek as she rocked herself in an attempt at comfort as she suffered the ghosts of her pain in the aftermath. Another ten minutes passed before she brought her watery gaze to mine, unable to keep the hurt and accusation from flashing in her crimson eyes as she stared even though she tried to.
Doesn't feel so great, does it? I mocked internally, a sick feeling settling in my gut as I continued to take her in.
The fake mating bond reared its ugly head, overcoming me with the need to ease her torment, so I pulled her into my arms and settled her against my chest as I laid back down. She resisted at first, but when she stopped, she still came reluctantly. Once her head was nestled comfortably in the crook of my shoulder all the fight went out of her, melting against my body as if she belonged there. Savannah sighed, giving in to the contentment of the moment. The feeling spread into me, covering me like a heavy blanket; it set my teeth on edge, tightening my grip on her unintentionally.
It felt right for her to be here next to me, for me to hold her, but it also felt horribly, utterly wrong. I couldn't shake the feeling that it should have been a different body cradled to mine, different arms resting over my chest and underneath my back—warm ones—and real, warm breath tickling my skin with each exhale she made. Bella. It should have been Bella here with me, but that didn't feel right either somehow. Bella didn't want this, she didn't want me. Savannah, at least, wanted to love me. Savannah did love me, but that wasn't the point. The love I felt for her was manufactured; the love I had for Bella was real. That was the point. It took me a second to remember that I wasn't this guy, the guy that was willing to scrounge for any scraps a woman was willing to throw me, who was okay with being used and manipulated just so he didn't have to be alone. That wasn't me. It would never be me, fake mating bond or not. I would rather be alone for eternity than suffer this.
"I hate you," I growled, squeezing Savannah even tighter, to the point of pain.
"I know," she said, her own embrace strengthening. She was too weak for it to have the same effect.
"I'm not sorry," I told her.
"I know that too." And she was okay with the fact that I wasn't.
That feeling of being pulled in too many different directions intensified.
oOo
Sunday, December 27th, 2080
It turned out that I'd been out of it for just under eighteen hours, which didn't leave me much time to prepare for today's meeting with the wolves. Keeping Savannah's presence here a secret would be tricky but it had to be done, so there were things we had to do to make sure we could pull it off.
The whole family still intended to go with me. It would look odd if they didn't since they'd started tagging along the day before yesterday in such a fervent show of support, and we couldn't afford for the wolves to get suspicious. Only Carlisle wouldn't be with us, whose shift at the hospital didn't end until an hour after our meeting took place.
Since Savannah's scent was now present in the house, the clothes everyone planned to wear had to be chosen the day before and hung outside to make sure as little of it clung to the fabric as possible—Alice had been appointed to get an outfit together for me, and she'd selected one that was entirely Jasper-friendly. We also had to scrub ourselves to the point that, had we been human, several layers of skin would have been removed and we'd have been left bleeding.
Leaving Savannah was difficult. It made my chest ache and my body itch bone-deep. I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin, and it got worse the farther away I got from her. They weren't feelings that were entirely unfamiliar, which didn't make any fuckin' sense to me, and I was too goddamn fucked in the head at the moment to have the energy to puzzle it out. There was also the fact that I was too absorbed in my discomfort over leaving Savannah to focus on it much.
As a result, I was even less inclined to play nice with the Quileutes. By the time we left, they were more wary of me than ever and that gave me no small amount of pleasure. Unfortunately, that had been the only good thing about this meeting. Everything that was going on was affecting me too much for me to be able to feed despite my success with human blood the past two times I'd tried, which did nothing to brighten my mood.
When it was over and we were all a good fifteen miles from the treaty line, Peter and Charlotte pulled me aside and waved the rest of the family on. I didn't appreciate the delay; I was already antsy and pissed off enough.
"I don't want to talk about it, Peter," I growled before he could speak, my accent thicker than it had been in decades. "There's nothin' I can do about this shit, and even thinkin' about it pisses me off more than I already am."
They frowned first, which then morphed into scowls, and I could practically read their minds.
"Don't mistake that for me sayin' I'm not gonna fight," I said. "I have no intention of takin' this lyin' down, but you know how this goes. I'm so mind-fucked right now I can hardly see straight. One minute I hate Savannah so much I want to kill her and the next the goddamn fake mating bond is tellin' me I love her. It's drivin' me fuckin' insane. I need time to process."
Charlotte reached out and patted my arm, her eyes sad. She didn't pity me but she hated this situation almost as much as I did. She could hardly bear it and it showed. "We know. That isn't what we want to talk about."
"Then what?"
"Bella," Peter supplied.
Before I registered what I was doing, I had him pinned to a tree, my hand around his throat, fingers squeezing hard enough to make his flesh creak and crack. It was the second time today my hands had been slicked with another vampire's venom. A feral growl reverberated from my chest, violent enough to agitate the excruciating burn of my throat.
"Easy, Major," he soothed, frozen in place, not because he was afraid but because it was the smartest thing to do.
It was physically painful to pry my fingers from around his neck, the joints of my knuckles having locked in place with my iron grip. It had taken everything I had to even let him go.
"What about her?" I demanded through gritted teeth. "Where is she? Is she okay?"
In all the craziness of the last hours, it hadn't occurred to me to wonder, but now that it had been brought up, it was another thing I felt insane over—another conflicting direction I was being yanked in.
I could tell Peter was fighting the urge to massage his throat as it healed.
"She's fine," he assured me, enunciating the words. "We just wanna talk about the game plan."
I nodded tersely.
"We've got her set up somewhere else for the time being," he said.
I started to protest, but Charlotte cut me off. "You know she's not safe with Savannah around, Jasper, and I know you want to keep her safe."
"Of course I do!" I exclaimed, offended and a little panicked at the thought of something happening to her, and I did know it was a shitty idea for Bella to be around right now, but I didn't like the idea of her not being there either. It was another thing to be furious with Savannah for.
"We know," Peter repeated. "That's why we're not gonna tell you where she is, though you could find out easy enough if you tried, but you know you can't."
"Of course I know that!" I snapped, fingers flexing with the desire to wrap around his throat again.
"She's agreed not to come around until we say it's okay," Charlotte told me.
"How the fuck did you get her to do that?" I asked with disbelief. The Bella I knew would never agree to that. She must have put up one hell of a fight. "How hard did she resist?"
"Not that hard actually," he replied with a shrug.
"Are you kidding?" I questioned, even more incredulous.
"Nope," he confessed, a trace of a smirk curling his lips upward. Punching him seemed like an excellent idea.
"What did you do?" I asked again, my tone sharp and impatient. To say I was cranky and irritable was a fuckin' understatement.
"I told her as much of the truth as I could afford to," he revealed matter-of-factly, "I appealed to her better judgment ... and then I begged."
"You begged?" I mimicked him.
He shrugged again. "It worked."
"We've explained the situation with Savannah to the family," Charlotte interjected. "And we've laid out the game plan. Carlisle met with the wolves yesterday before his shift at the hospital to let them know we're heading to Alaska to spend New Year's with the Denalis but that we're leaving Bella behind. Obviously, to keep up the charade, we'll need to stay out of sight. In addition to Bella stayin' somewhere else, there will be no contact unless Peter or I initiate it, and no one is even allowed to say her name. All the others are gonna do their best not to even think about her."
"That's good," I said approvingly. "Make sure they give it their best shot. Savannah will be focused primarily on commandeering my gift to keep me under control, so I doubt she'll try to access Edward's much, if she does at all. Still, it's better to be safe than sorry."
"Glad you approve," Peter responded. "I've taken charge of the others. They're takin' their cues from me and Charlotte. We'll do what we can, brother, we'll support you, and we won't do anything stupid. We just need you to promise that you mean it when you say you're gonna fight."
Punching him in the face seemed like an even better idea now, so I did. It dislocated his jaw. "Did you honestly just ask me that, you dick?"
After he'd popped his jaw back in the socket, he smiled slyly but also with dead seriousness. "Just checkin'."
"Asshole," I grumbled irritably; then I sighed. "I'm just really fuckin' overwhelmed."
"We know." Charlotte sighed too, heartbroken.
"Thank you for taking care of Bella," I said. I was so damn grateful for that. I didn't know what I would do if anything happened to her, especially as a result of my past colliding with my present.
"You knew we would," Charlotte said. "We love her. She's family... The kind of family you are to us."
That revelation was astonishing. I definitely knew they loved her, but I had no clue she meant that much to them. I couldn't pinpoint how that made me feel but it wasn't an awful emotion.
"I'm gonna get my shit together," I vowed darkly, not sure if the words were meant for them or for me.
"We're gonna fight this and we're gonna win, Major," Peter promised. "We did the last time. Just remember that even when your head is so fucked up that you don't even want it because, at the very least, it'll be a reminder of what we're willin' to do for you, even if we go at a snail's pace for your sake."
I couldn't give a response to that. I wanted to believe we would, but this felt different than the last time I'd been through this. Cleaner. Purer. More powerful and less dirty. It still felt dirty of course, but in a different way. None of it made any fuckin' sense, and I was so goddamn confused and angry and damn it! I was happy too, but it wasn't real. God, I was going fuckin' insane. I wanted to tear my hair out and scream and break things, so I did.
I went at it for what felt like hours. I didn't tear my hair out but none of the surrounding forest survived my frenzied outburst, and when I was done, I didn't feel any better. I felt worse because I had been away from Savannah for that much longer. I also still hated the idea of having to stay away from Bella and that she was in danger from all this and my situation was absolutely the same. I was fucked.
My chest was heaving. I wished I could have said it was just from the effort I'd exerted, but that wasn't true. It was from the panic of being separated from my "mate." I needed to get back to her, but before I could, I suddenly remembered that I wasn't done here—I should have remembered it before, but I was still too overwhelmed and confused by the fake mating bond, still on sensory overload, and I'd forgotten…even when only minutes ago we were talking about this very subject. It was something I had to tell them, something they needed to know. Something important.
Peter and Charlotte had been watching me all throughout my tantrum, their expressions neutral, though, their emotions were anything but.
"I've got some intel for you," I told them in a rush. I had to get this done. I was getting dizzy and more anxious by the second.
They nodded.
"Savannah can block and use Edward's and Alice's gifts. Because Alice's visions aren't necessarily about any one person, Savannah's use of her gift is more universal rather than actually against her, but she can only use Edward's against him. As far as yours goes," I said, meeting Peter's eyes, "she can only block it, not access it for her own benefit."
"How do you know?" Charlotte asked, her suspicion evident.
"I asked," I replied. "She told me."
"She told you," Peter echoed. He'd been skeptical as well but now he was downright disbelieving.
"Yes," I said. "And she wasn't lyin'. She didn't block my gift when she answered. This fake mating bond shit isn't one-sided, Peter. That's one of the reasons I hate her so much for it."
For some reason, the two of them looked shocked by this information but I didn't understand why. How could they not have known that? How could that not have been something he just knew?
"Thanks for the info, brother," he said. "It's incredibly useful."
"I know. Why do you think I got it for you," I snapped, unable to help it. "Still, it's better if no one thinks about Bella. It could affect their emotions, and even though Savannah isn't great at deciphering them right now, she learns quick. We can't afford for her to get suspicious over anything."
Then I turned my back on them and raced back to the house—and Savannah—without saying goodbye.
oOo
Savannah POV
I didn't know where Jasper and the others had gone but I didn't truly care. I was happy to have the time to myself. I needed it.
I had wrecked things. I knew this. I had known it all along—that things would fall to pieces the second I set foot in that clearing, the second I set foot in this town. That was just it though—everything was already broken. Maria had done that centuries ago, and when I came along decades later, I had helped break things even more beyond repair. I hadn't wanted to. I had never wanted to but Maria hadn't given me a choice. Jasper took my life but he also saved it by pointing out how much potential I had. He never could have guessed the uses she would conceive of for using my gift against him. If he had, he wouldn't have bothered.
Something had gone wrong with my change. I'd been sickly all throughout my human life, so maybe it wasn't so surprising that I was weak as a vampire. No matter the reason, it made me unsuitable not only for this life as a whole but especially for a war and absolutely useless to Maria aside from the benefits I could offer in regard to Jasper. I wished I was the kind of person that was strong enough to sacrifice their life for the person they loved, because I did—I loved him so damn much—but I never had been that brave. At the time of my human death, I'd been ready for it, relieved. I'd been so tired of being ill so often. I'd gotten good at hiding it over the years, especially later on, but that didn't change that I was a burden to my parents and would become one to the man I'd been set to marry. I hated the way they all eventually came to look at me…like I was a fragile thing to be pitied. For some reason I never understood, when I was granted a new life, my will to live was renewed. I always despised that the only way I could manage it was by causing irrevocable damage to the man that held my heart so utterly.
I didn't lie about why I did what I did. I still wanted so very badly to live, and I knew if I didn't bind Jasper to me when I showed my face in Forks, Washington, I wouldn't survive longer than a few minutes, if that. It was very important that I survive because I hadn't actually come here to make Jasper, or Peter and Charlotte, suffer. If finding him wasn't so crucial, I would have left well enough alone and never even looked, and I had been looking for him for a year. I owed him—all of them, I suppose—the courtesy of leaving them to their lives without interference, but things had changed and he needed to know. If I didn't bind him to me, he wouldn't have taken the time to hear me out, and if, by some miracle, I managed to convince him to, he wouldn't have believed a word that came out of my mouth even if what I had to say was something he knew was entirely plausible. The fake bond, while not exactly helping my case, would force him to listen and feel the truth of my revelations—he would know if I was trying to manipulate his emotions—and he had to believe me. He had to understand.
There was no way I could ever make up for everything I'd done, but I could warn him, warn them all.
Oh how I wished I could make things right. I never could but I so desired it. Peter, Charlotte and especially Jasper would always hate me, and they should. I didn't begrudge them that. I deserved that, and warning them was a way for me to begin to pay penance. That wasn't the only reason I'd come, though. I had also come to say I was sorry, but sorry was in no way adequate. There wasn't a word that was, but it was all I had. I would say it a million times, I would say it for all of eternity or until I just couldn't anymore if it would make any bit of difference.
I hadn't come here half-cocked either. I'd had a plan, one designed to cause as minimal suffering as possible for Jasper, Peter, and Charlotte. Despite how much Jasper had helped me hone the use of my gift, both deliberately and because of the things Maria had forced me to do, I had become far more adept and skilled in it in the decades since I'd last seen him, and I would use that to my advantage. I would form a false mating bond between Jasper and me that was just strong enough to keep me alive so I could do what I came here to do. I was sure that just as they had the last time, Peter and Charlotte would help him break it even though that exercise of my power should have been permanent—their bond as a family was just that much stronger and even more permanent, I guess. Then I would either die, which I still didn't particularly want, or be on my way. The only problem was that something had gone horribly wrong after I'd carried out my plan.
I thought I'd known what to expect after all the years I'd spent watching the effects of the fake mating bond I'd forged between Jasper and Maria. I had anticipated that there would be differences of course. I had done some cruel things over the course of my vampire life, but I wasn't a cruel person; not in the way Maria was at least. That meant the bond I created between Jasper and myself wouldn't be quite so warped. I also intended to keep my feelings for him out of it, whereas I had used both Jasper's gift and the mating bonds he'd felt between legitimate mated couples and Maria's feelings for him for theirs.
Her feelings did mirror the mating bond in some aspects, like her possessiveness for instance, and she did love him in her own twisted way, so that had helped make it a bit more authentic and that much more unforgivable of me. I had used my gift to temporarily bond him with me back then too, to try to give him some relief from her, to comfort him in the only way I could. But just like now, my feelings weren't quite so psychotic and I certainly wasn't deluded enough to consider Jasper mine in any way, and keeping them out of the mix was one of the ways to ensure that our bond remained at the bare minimum. None of this was about me anyway, even if daydreaming about him loving me was my second favorite thing to do with all the spare time eternity afforded me—my actual favorite were fantasies of him forgiving me.
Just as I'd done before, I dug into the nearly fathomless well of emotions Jasper had stockpiled over the centuries, searching until I found the telltale thread of the mating bond hovering like a solitary ray of light in a sea of darkness. I had done this so many times before, hunting for those unique feelings that it consisted of, so much more potent than the ones cultivated through couples not fated for an eternity together, to keep the bond between Jasper and Maria strong over the years. It hadn't worked of course, which silently thrilled me, but it was required of me at the time if I wanted to avoid torture and death at Maria's hand. As powerful as those emotions were though, they had always been weak, hollow imprints of what I imagined an actual, undiluted mating bond felt like. Most of the emotions Jasper felt were stored away in the perfect recall of his vampire memory, but it was different than the rest of us because of his gift; it was more, a muscle memory. My theory was that he'd been put through so much pain and suffering that the positive emotions faded to shadows over time, unable to maintain the natural crispness that was such an intrinsic component of his gift. That was another thing I shared a certain culpability in, another deeply ingrained regret and shame that would never leave me.
Because of the weakness of that thread of those emotions I'd always had to work hard to make it into something formidable and permanent for him and Maria. It had always exhausted me in a way no vampire should ever get exhausted. The fragility of that thread was finally a blessing but not because it spared me the fatigue. It meant making this new bond wouldn't take much effort; this bond didn't have to be unbreakable or unstoppable.
And that was where everything had gone so terribly awry. My assumption that the thread of those emotions was still weak had been incorrect, and I hadn't realized it until it was too late. The false mating bond had already been forged and there was nothing I could do to take it back, nothing I could do to temper the strength I had unwittingly endowed it with.
I had known I would be affected by it—none of this was one-sided. It had never been a one-sided phenomenon, but I had prepared myself to let Jasper go, no matter how affected I became. I thought that conviction had also prepared me for how the bond would make me feel. It most definitely had not, especially since I hadn't accounted for the new tenacity of the emotions I'd fished out and manipulated to serve my purpose. I had not been prepared for it to hit me with the force of a nuclear bomb, so thoroughly destroying me once my work was done that my heart and soul lay in gory pieces in that field. I was confused and disoriented and disconnected and utterly overwhelmed, but for the first time in my life, I was also content.
I hadn't the first clue how I managed to fake that I had my wits about me enough to have a coherent conversation with Peter and Charlotte and this new family of Jasper's. I had never been good at that sort of thing, and I suspect that was Jasper's doing, as volatile as he was at the time—his typical temperament allowed him to disguise his emotions easily or maybe it was all his experience with absorbing them over the years. I remembered the words we all exchanged almost as an out-of-body experience. I had gone through the rest of the day in that state of half-lucidity, only able to pull it together totally when Jasper went off the deep end and when my determination to speak to Charlotte was great enough to temporarily penetrate the haze.
I felt like I was going insane with the bond. I knew it was more difficult for Jasper obviously, my reservations over all this were less severe, but the creeping madness was still there. It was miserable but miraculous and wondrous...and so very, very joyful. I didn't want to feel this way. Loving Jasper Whitlock was not something I had a right to do, but it was something I had never been able to shake. I wished I could, just not to set myself free from the heartache of it. I wanted it for him. We may not have seen each other in more than a century, but he deserved to be liberated from me entirely. Now I didn't see how that was possible because now I had no idea if the bond I'd created was unbreakable or unstoppable, and now letting him go would be that much more difficult. What was more, I no longer wanted to let him go. I was caught up in the love I'd felt for him since the moment I'd woken as a vampire and this new-found link between us. What was worse was that there had been short periods of time over the last hours when I forgot why I'd come here and done this, just plain drew a blank.
This was not supposed to happen, and I was in way over my head. I buried my face in my hands. What have I done?
I didn't know how to handle this. Oh, I was doing a decent—even remarkable—job of pretending, but the periods of contentedness and serenity never lasted long enough. So far Jasper was too lost in his own haze to notice or pick at me when I borrowed his gift to shield my turmoil from him, which was good. He would be so incredibly angry with me if he discovered how monumentally I'd screwed up, and he was already furious enough. He was too close to the God of War, and I couldn't always control him when he was in that state. I didn't really have a whole lot of practice with doing it on my own, having used my ability to do it more to help Maria learn how over the decades—Jasper was hers and no one else's even before I'd forged the fake mating bond between them. If the God of War made an appearance, it wouldn't end well for anyone, except maybe Peter. I knew without a doubt that if this bond ever broke, my fate would be written in stone.
I would die.
I couldn't worry about that now though. I had still come here for a reason. I would not forget it, and I would still stick with my plan. I would be honest about it and warn Jasper…eventually. Unfortunately, with the unexpected strength of the bond, I couldn't resist the urge to revel in the fact that Jasper Whitlock was mine. I had wanted him for so long and he was finally mine. I knew he wasn't really, but everything in me told me he was. When I tried to tell myself otherwise, it physically hurt me.
I knew I couldn't keep him. I wouldn't keep him. I just wanted a little while—to pretend our shared past wasn't so dark, that each of us hadn't been dealt such an awful hand, that Peter, Charlotte, this new family of his and I could have been friends. That what Jasper and I had right now was real, that he could actually love me back. Just a few days. Was that really too much to ask? Was it really so unreasonable?
I ignored the little voice in the back of my mind that whispered, Yes.
oOo
JPOV
The closer I got to the house and Savannah, the more I felt myself slipping, losing myself to the fake bond. It was a different sort of insanity where all the anger melted away and was replaced by complacency and obliviousness. These periods came and went just as the other outbursts did; I wasn't sure which I hated more. I tried to fight it, and I fought hard, but it was useless. By the time I reached the front porch, I'd been swallowed whole.
Savannah stood at the window when I entered my room, staring off into the distance just as Bella had the day before in hers. I glowered briefly at the derailing of my thoughts from the woman here, now, in front of me. In my slight haziness, I didn't understand why Bella would invade them now of all times, not when Savannah, who I was so thoroughly drunk on in this moment, possessed my senses. It was easy to push the brown-haired, brown-eyed girl from my brain and refocus my attentions back on the blonde-haired one.
I came up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist, drew her back against my chest and rested my chin on the crown of her head. "What are you starin' at?"
It took her a few seconds to answer. "I'm not really lookin'. I'm listenin'. I like it here, Jasper. It's quieter than the city. The sounds are natural. It's nice."
"You never were very good at shuttin' anything out," I recalled, feeling a pang of sympathy. A frown pulled at the corners of my mouth again. For some reason I couldn't name, sympathy seemed like it was the last thing I should feel. I couldn't explain it, but that nagging sensation faded a moment later and I was left at peace, forgetting I was even plagued by any sort of doubt at all.
"I'm still not," she said.
"We really should do somethin' about that," I mused. "I don't know why we haven't done it before now. I'm a very irresponsible mate."
Eventually learning to control our senses, turning the volume up and down on our hearing for example, was one of the keys to a vampire's sanity.
I really was surprised I hadn't insisted on it. Savannah was one of mine and I made sure mine were taken care of. How could I not have taught her after all these years? Why didn't I teach her right after we escaped from Maria more than a century ago? Hadn't we been together that long?
Savannah twisted around in my arms and peered at me, confused. "You're not irresponsible."
"Yes, I am," I disagreed, panicked. "I should have taught you."
"Jasper, stop," she commanded softly. "It's fine. I'm okay. I'll figure it out."
That made me feel marginally better but only a little. I knew she'd only said all that to placate me both because I knew her well enough to just know and because I couldn't feel her emotions—she was either hiding from me on purpose or she was upset and blocking my gift by accident. Neither option made me feel particularly awesome and all those different directions pulled at me insistently. I felt like I should have known why but I didn't.
"Don't you mean 'we'?" I questioned. We were mates after all. Weren't we supposed to figure shit out together?
"Sure," she answered, her voice a bit distant for my liking.
This was not good. This was not good at all. What was going on? Where was my girl?
"But we're gonna be okay, right, sugar?" I asked, my brow raised in my insecurity.
My apprehension must have caught her attention because she suddenly concentrated on me, as if I was the only person that existed. When our eyes met, the world fell away and she was the only person that existed for me as well. In the back of my mind, something dug at me, trying to get my attention but I couldn't fixate on it. Even if I had been able to spare it some time, it moved too fast and it was like my hands were covered in grease, making it impossible to catch. I had more important things to deal with right now though, and the thought was gone as soon as it occurred to me.
"Of course!" she exclaimed, her tone still soft despite the passion of her two-word gush. "We are okay."
"And…" I bit my lip, unfamiliar with being so uncertain, "...you and I…we…you love me?"
Savannah caressed my cheek and reached up to affectionately tug on a lock of hair that had fallen across my forehead. "You know I do."
I sighed, my relief palpable, literally flooding the room. It felt good to release it. Had I had a problem with that? I couldn't remember. I should have told her I loved her too but I couldn't force the words past my lips. "You and I…we've been through a lot over the years."
"Yes," she agreed, her tone tinged with sadness as she dropped her gaze from mine.
"Hey," I said, forcing her to look at me again. "If we can survive more than a century of bullshit together, we can get through anything."
Alarm filled every cell of her, her eyes going almost comically wide in a near-panic that I could feel, but it blinked out just as quickly. My haziness and confusion intensified but not enough that I couldn't think. "You know that right? That we can survive anything?"
"Jasper…" she responded cautiously. "We can, but—"
"What do you mean 'but'?" I interrupted, my eyes narrowed and my voice dangerous more from the anxiety that wrapped around my heart and squeezed than from anger.
"You and I will be together for as long as it's good for us," she responded in that same careful tone, still standing close but not touching me. "For as long as it's good for you."
"I don't know what that means," I said slowly. I was starting to feel sick.
"It means that you've been through a lot," she began, speaking slowly, "and that if I really love you, and I do, I have to be able to let you go when I'm not what you need or what's best for you anymore. Maybe it won't ever come to that, but if it does, that's what I'll do."
As she spoke, her eyes pleaded with me to understand something. I didn't have a clue what that unspoken something was but her dejection and urgency on its behalf was overt, and yet, as important as it seemed to be to her for me to understand whatever it was, she refused to voice it.
I had no response to her answer but the anxiety eased. It shouldn't have, which did absolutely nothing to alleviate the muddled state of my brain. None of this made any fuckin' sense but I wasn't in the proper frame of mind to question it.
I decided to question other things instead. I didn't want to fight with Savannah. That wasn't her personality—
"Why do you always feel the need to test my limits?"
"I test your limits because you insist on testing mine!"
The interruption came out of nowhere, and the first voice was unquestionably mine but the second? It was familiar but I couldn't place it. I liked that voice though. There weren't words for how much I liked it. Why couldn't I figure out where I'd heard it before?
I couldn't deny or suppress the thrill that ripped through me at the idea of fighting with whomever that person was. That sure as hell wasn't something Savannah could give me. As soon as I thought it I felt guilty. Then it faded like so many other things had since I'd gotten home, slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, replaced by another thought that disturbed me.
"Is your favorite color orange?" I asked, somehow knowing that wasn't right. Why was that color in my head when I knew it wasn't her favorite or anyone else's I knew?
"No," Savannah confirmed.
I growled in frustration as I plopped on my couch and clutched my face in my hands, more confused than ever but not angry. In my agitation, I didn't keep it there. "I can't remember!" I exclaimed irately. "How do I not remember what your favorite color is?"
"It's not a big deal," she soothed. "You never knew in the first place. I love shades of brown, particularly coffee and cocoa."
Why wouldn't I know her favorite color? I didn't dwell on that because, at the mention of those two specific colors, an image flitted through my head—brown eyes. The most beautiful brown eyes I'd ever seen. No, the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen period. God, what was happening to me? I was going fuckin' crazy. I didn't even know anyone with brown eyes! Did I? Why couldn't I remember? And why did the image of those eyes make the sensation of being pulled in so many different directions so much worse and more powerful, as if my limbs were literally beginning to part ways with the rest of my body?
I blinked and found myself massaging my left arm where it met my shoulder, but had no idea why I was doing it. My memory was all sorts of fucked up today. I almost felt the way I did when I sat in a room full of drunk people, absorbing the fog of the liquor.
"What's your favorite color?" she asked just to make me feel better. It didn't work.
"Blue." I flinched away when she moved to replace the hand still rubbing my shoulder with hers and she retracted it quickly. She tried to mask the hurt my rejection caused her but failed, knowing she hadn't managed it and turning away, but I couldn't bring myself to comfort her. It was another thing I didn't understand. She was my mate. Shouldn't I want to comfort her? Shouldn't I need to? As if thinking those things incited the irrepressible urge, I grasped her hips and yanked her onto my lap without elegance or grace. She landed practically in a heap, her back to my front, which brought on another sense of familiarity. Why did it seem as though something similar to this had happened before and why did it feel like it should be a different woman in my lap? Why couldn't I figure this out?
Resting my forehead between Savannah's shoulder blades brought me a little peace, calming my elevated breathing rate. I suppose it was the only way my body knew to handle all the extra stress, even though I didn't need the oxygen. The contact between us didn't bring Savannah any peace at all. She was rigid in my lap, her emotions a mess of uncertainty and reluctance.
She went to move out of our awkward position but my arms snaked around her waist lightning fast, and I adjusted us more comfortably. "Can we just sit?" I muttered against her spine. "I just need to sit with you for a while."
She relaxed against me, both physically and emotionally, and took the time to lace our fingers together. "Okay."
My mind wandered to unknown places, thoughts barely forming, filling it with pleasant blankness. I wasn't certain how much time passed as I was consumed by it, and I didn't care. It felt good to let my mind float free, never lingering on one particular thing for too long, if it lingered on anything at all. I knew if I let it, I would be back in whatever current hell had found me, and I needed a break. There would be time to deal with it later. I did have eternity, and I was so damn tired. I needed this respite.
My forehead remained propped against Savannah's back as I focused on keeping my mind blissfully blank.
Breathe in.
I wondered idly where the Major had gone.
Breathe out.
I couldn't decide if I was relieved or disturbed by his absence.
Breathe in.
On the one hand, I appreciated the peace it afforded me. On the other, he was always there to kick me in the ass when I needed it.
Breathe out.
Because of the cloudiness of my mind, I didn't know if I needed a kick in the ass, but the Major would know and it was more difficult to push him away than it was anyone else.
Breathe in.
When you shared your head with something or someone who was essentially you, it was impossible to escape them.
Breathe out.
Did I need the Major? Did I want him around to annoy me and complicate my life the way he generally did? Would searching him out help me or hurt me?
Breathe in.
I had to let this go. Thinking about the Major wasn't helping me. It wasn't keeping my mind blank.
Breathe out.
I let it go. I let him go… For now.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
This went on for another indeterminate amount of time until a voice in my head rose up, having had enough of my oppression. It was persistent, refusing to be ignored or denied my attention, and I was too exhausted to fight against its irrepressible will.
It was Savannah's voice. Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!
It rose in volume with each repetition of that one word until I wanted to cover my ears and rock myself to ease the sharp, stabbing pain of it.
Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!
I shoved Savannah roughly, forcefully, off my lap and gave in to the urge, clapping my hands over my ears but somehow able to keep from rocking. I shook from suppressed adrenaline instead.
Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!
I didn't pay attention to where or how far away Savannah landed or if anything broke her fall. I wasn't able.
Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!
The relentless pain finally penetrated the fog and forgetfulness I'd been drowning in.
Okayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokayokay!
But it was not okay.
The pain subsided, and I was abruptly furious.
"No." It came out quiet and menacing. I still wasn't one hundred percent but I was a hell of a lot more me than I'd been only moments ago.
I didn't address anyone in particular, though I didn't actually have an audience. It was more that I had to voice my defiance, to get it outside my head and into the world where it was real and not this fabricated bullshit I couldn't always make sense of.
"Jasper?" Savannah questioned uneasily, her voice small.
And then it was no longer about merely giving a voice to my defiance. Now it was about focusing it on a singular point, a solitary place to lay it and pin the blame for my suffering and disorientation. There was only one person to focus it on.
"No," I repeated. It was a snarl this time, not just dangerous but lethal.
Savannah, wisely, kept quiet.
"Nothing about this is okay!" I shouted, and I was ashamed to admit that my voice betrayed the brokenness of the words, the brokenness of me in that moment. I wouldn't let that allow her to win, but really, how much could a guy take? It was only momentary, but even I had my limits and having my free will stolen from me was one of them. I was aware enough now to remember that's what Savannah had done. I was more determined than ever to beat this, to beat her, but I also had to acknowledge what I was and was not capable of. As angry and dead set as I was, I wasn't capable yet. I was still too embroiled in the fake mating bond to sever it, and I couldn't do it alone. Even if I somehow could manage to without anyone's help—even with help—there would be dire consequences for me. There were things I could do though.
I had Savannah pinned by the throat where she'd crashed to the floor, the wood of one of my bookcases clearly gouging into her back, my right knee driving into her gut ruthlessly and my teeth sunk into her neck before I'd completely processed the impulse. The bite nearly tore clean through her flesh but not quite. I did it that way by design.
She bit her lip to keep from crying out, cleaving a good portion of it practically off her mouth with the effort. I was disappointed she hadn't severed it completely. She was in a tremendous amount of pain from that simple injury, enough to disrupt her ability to comprehend anything, so I absorbed the minimum that would allow what I was about to say to sink in.
She watched me with wide, fearful eyes. "Five millimeters, Savannah. Just five millimeters, a yank and a match, and you're a pile of ash."
Her throat bobbed thickly, vibrating with a whimper she fought and impressively succeeded in suppressing. She didn't respond, but with my hand still so tightly wrapped around her throat—to the point that I was actually crushing it—and my teeth returned to a hair's breadth from the danger zone, speaking was difficult.
After several seconds, I moved away from her neck and met her gaze. Mine was steely and unrelenting; hers was acquiescing and accepting. It irritated me and twisted my heart in a painful and uncomfortable, almost regretful way, but I wasn't about to let that stop me from following through. I continued to stare Savannah down until resignation and weariness joined her eyes and emotions.
"I could kill you," I said, voice deadly calm. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to say something. I could feel it. I loosened my grip solely for the sake of curiosity.
"I know," she responded, her own voice matching the eerie acceptance in her gaze.
"I should kill you," I stated bluntly.
"You should," she conceded, her tone mirroring the calm of mine but lacking the deadly quality.
"But I won't," I said, wishing I didn't mean it and not liking the turn this conversation had taken.
"You probably still should," Savannah replied, and she meant that, "but I still don't want to die."
"Don't count on me showin' you mercy forever," I warned. "And don't push me."
"I don't plan to," she promised. Slowly, carefully she reached up to twine her fingers in my hair even though I still had her pinned beneath me and my hand around her throat, waiting for me to stop her. I wanted to. God, I really wanted to, but I didn't. I couldn't.
"I hate you," I told her for the second time today.
"I know," was her same response.
She bit the lip that hadn't fully healed and winced before her expression turned hesitant. "Did you miss me?"
I should have been infuriated by that question. Instead I felt nothing, hollow even. "No."
Her smile was sad. "I didn't figure you did," she murmured absently, "but I missed you."
"Is that supposed to make a difference?" I demanded, gripping her hand and removing it from my hair, my tone bitter.
"No."
oOo
It was after midnight before Savannah and I ventured downstairs. It wasn't the best idea but I was sick of the seclusion. I couldn't be away from her but I couldn't stand to be alone with her anymore either.
We settled on the unoccupied couch—it provided the most comprehensive unfettered view of everyone and everything in the room—Savannah's and my thighs pressed close together and her hand resting on my knee.
Rosalie did attempt to hide her huff of contempt but couldn't quite manage it, and I felt the rawness of her animosity. Charlotte and Alice were a different story, however—the scowls on their faces were particularly nasty. The expression for Charlotte wasn't surprising, but it was for perpetually sunny Alice, even in the shittiest of situations. She always had been fiercely protective of me—nearly as protective as Charlotte—so maybe it wasn't so shocking after all. Still, seeing her lips twisted in such an ugly way looked wholly unnatural and forbidding. The fake mating bond told me to be angry about it but the defiant part that was still me was gratified and wanted to hug her.
Emmett and Edward were also fiercely disapproving of the situation but were far better at hiding it, barely casting more than a cursory glance at Savannah and me before they forced themselves to go back to their video game. Carlisle and Esme were also in the room, watching us intently, and even more stellar at concealing their disdain of the situation and of Savannah.
Alice, Rosalie and Esme had a more difficult time returning their attention to their magazines than Emmett and Edward did, and Carlisle, Peter and Charlotte made no attempt to get back into their previous activities. Peter and Charlotte, I knew, had only come downstairs moments before Savannah and I had, not giving up their post outside my bedroom door for anything which I was mostly grateful for.
Again, Savannah didn't seem remotely disturbed by their intent scrutiny, but even though it was to be expected, it pissed me off and forced a compulsive need within me to take her hand in a show of support, protectiveness and possessiveness as well as shoot threatening looks their way.
Peter and Charlotte were predictably unperturbed while Carlisle predictably was.
I sighed. There were things I still needed to take care of. I knew Peter and Charlotte wouldn't have bothered to introduce Savannah to the family and that once they explained the situation that they wouldn't have taken the time to introduce themselves either. I didn't plan to share many details, just the basics, because she didn't need to know anything beyond that, but it would be easier on everyone if she at least knew everyone's names.
"I suppose introductions are in order," I said, gesturing to Carlisle first. "Savannah, this is Carlisle." I would not go so far as to give her last names. I had felt Savannah's surprise when she discovered that I was here with anyone besides Peter and Charlotte, which meant she had no idea who exactly the family was. We weren't well-known for several reasons: our diet, our ability to cover our tracks and Carlisle's friendship with the Volturi to name a few. My next introduction was the vampire beside him. "His mate, Esme." My bronze-haired brother and petite sister. "Edward and his mate, Alice." My other blonde sister and gargantuan brother. "Rosalie and her mate, Emmett."
Savannah smiled. "It's nice to meet you all officially."
None of them returned the sentiment, which wasn't unexpected. Not by me or her.
Carlisle swallowed uncomfortably, steeling himself, and spoke, ever polite, "How are you settling in, Savannah?"
"Just fine, sir," she responded genially, leaning into me and resting her head on my shoulder. Everyone watched the gesture, some covertly and some blatantly, all clearly listening. Their disdain was powerful.
It was at this point that Carlisle generally would have corrected her, told her to call him doctor. I supposed he didn't give a shit what she called him.
"And how long do you plan to stay with us?" he asked next.
This was a question I hadn't bothered with yet. I wanted to know the answer, of course, but part of me was afraid to.
I could only see Savannah's profile but it was enough to observe the way her mouth curled up wryly. "I imagine I'll wear out my welcome fairly quickly," she said, "so I won't be stayin' much beyond that."
Peter and Charlotte snorted in their skepticism. The others shared it but kept it physically underwraps.
"And will you be taking Jasper with you at that time?" Carlisle questioned, his tone on the cusp of sharp. His emotions were a mess, tangled and roiling and enough to make me feel a little sick, or sicker.
She sighed. "I already told you that isn't my intention. His home is here. Mine isn't, and he doesn't want to leave. Contrary to popular belief, I don't enjoy makin' him do anything he doesn't want to."
I squeezed her knee out of misguided obligation even though I didn't believe her. It didn't matter that her emotions and voice were sincere, or that I wanted to. I couldn't believe her.
Carlisle nodded but his emotions mirrored mine. He didn't believe her either. No one did. Emmett, being Emmett, even went so far as to contribute a "bullshit" sneeze. I would have found it funny under different circumstances. Instead I wanted to tear his arm off.
"And what is it, precisely, that you're doing here if you don't mind my asking?" Carlisle continued with his mild interrogation.
"I do actually," was her succinct response. It was another question I hadn't bothered with for this reason. Savannah wouldn't reveal her purpose for showing up all of a sudden until she was damn well good and ready, if she ever planned to reveal it at all.
A low growl resounded from Charlotte's chest, my sister simply unable to quell it. It made me go more rigid than I already was, as on high alert as I needed to be in this room full of potential hazards to my "mate's" health, my gaze shooting to my sister in an instant. Her eyes were narrowed murderously and black with fury, her teeth bared and glistening with venom.
Red creeped around the edges of my vision, a guttural, vicious snarl ripping from deep within my chest, my lips curling back from my teeth in warning as venom dripped down my chin. I shifted so my body partially shielded Savannah's, paying close attention as Peter placed a cautioning hand on Charlotte's arm, but it did nothing to silence her overt display of instability and threat. It kicked my already frazzled, out of control instincts into an even higher gear, and before I knew what I was doing, I'd launched myself out of my seat. In those moments, I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I felt nothing but blind rage and the anxious need to keep what was mine safe.
"Jasper," a quiet but steady voice, her voice, called, clear as a bell.
I came back to myself a little and heard sounds, inhuman ones, the snarls of a wild, cornered animal. It took me a moment to realize they were coming from me. I had Peter by the throat again, I could only assume because he'd intercepted me before I could hurt what was his. The difference between now and earlier was that the fingers of my other hand were buried just past knuckle-deep in his chest, wrapped around his frozen heart and squeezing, ready to yank it out and crush it to dust. I knew from experience that, even though we no longer needed them for survival, it was not a pleasant feeling.
He was utterly still, just as he had been after the meeting with the wolves, still unafraid of me, merely resigned that this was the way things were for the time being. If I had been truly self-aware, it would have saddened me to feel this from him, but I wasn't yet. In those moments, I still hadn't quite registered what I'd done, what I was still doing.
It wasn't long before I did become aware, achingly aware. I withdrew my hand with the speed of the strike of a bolt of lightning, my eyes wide, ignoring everyone else in the room as I focused on Charlotte, furious. Only I was enraged for a different reason now.
I chucked Peter off her unforgivingly. His shoulder clipped the rim of the back frame of the couch, the force of it landing him in an ungainly heap on the spotless floor on the other side. My fist closed around Charlotte's elbow punishingly before I whipped my gaze back to him. "You. Stay. Here!" I ordered nastily and then wheeled around to Savannah. "You too!"
Then I towed Charlotte across the room, not giving her a chance to find her feet as I did it, dragging her all the way to her and Peter's bedroom, her shoes scrabbling for purchase for the duration, and slamming the door behind us before I let her go. I didn't so much let her go as I really flung her away from me.
She remained crouched on the floor in a prone position as I paced, waiting for some of the steam of my wrath to dissipate or maybe just waiting for me to kill her, and that was why I was so fuckin' pissed off. I grabbed the first thing I could reach—a lamp—and hurled it with all my strength at the opposite wall. It shattered with an ear-splitting crash, but the sound didn't even come close to the volume of when I finally let her have it.
"Goddamn it, Charlotte!" I exploded savagely, trembling from the fury and raking hands that were still wet with my brother's venom so roughly through my hair it hurt. At the sound of her name, she finally lost her submissive posture and looked up at me. Her eyes had transitioned back to gold from black but they were no less fiery or feral. I had no doubt that mine were a fathomless shade of black. "Hours! Just hours ago you said you were gonna support me! You said you weren't gonna do anything stupid, but your idea of stupid must have taken a nosedive or maybe you went brain dead between then and now!" I picked up another random object in my sightless wrath and threw it, destroying this one just as spectacularly as the last. I only registered after the fact that it was the frame encasing the picture of the three of us that Bella had given us for Christmas, and I felt a pang of remorse and devastation but not enough to truly penetrate. I started pacing again. "Are you tryin' to get yourself killed? Do you want me to kill you?"
My harsh, impassioned words sapped some of the fire from her eyes, venom welling in its place. "Maybe I do!" she shouted heatedly. "Maybe I would rather be dead than watch her lead you around like a dog on a leash—"
"Don't!" I roared, livid. "Don't go there." Charlotte's mouth snapped shut but she was fuming, her whole body shaking with it and her grief over my predicament. Her despair washed over me like a tidal wave, sinking into every cell in my body and saturating me. It was overwhelming and I was already so overwhelmed by everything else. I wrapped my hands around the tops of her arms and shook her, just shook the ever-loving shit out of her. "You have got to stop! Just stop. You cannot pull this shit, Charlotte. You're supposed to be setting an example."
"I know!" The words burst out with desolation. "I just hate her! I hate her so fuckin' much!"
"I. Don't. Care," I informed her frankly, resuming my fevered patrol of the room but not taking my hard, intent gaze off her. "The others may know my reputation but they don't understand it, and you're Rosalie's best friend. She respects you and her temper is probably the most violent of everyone in this house's besides mine, and yours apparently, at least over this. She looks to you and if you can't get your shit together she's gonna start thinking that lashing out is okay!"
She dropped her gaze from mine almost sheepishly. My restless pacing ceased again and I went to her, kneeling just in front of her knees and silently begging her to look at me.
"I can't do this, Charlotte," I continued softly, brokenly. "Savannah's hardly been here for more than a day and I've nearly killed Peter twice. Peter. Twice."
A tightness seized my chest, different from the one Savannah evoked, and I pulled Charlotte into my lap, squeezing her tightly and rocking her like a small child. "I can't do this," I repeated. "Do you know how awful I feel for hurting him? Don't you understand what it would do to me if I hurt you because of her? Because I know the two of you are gonna put yourselves in the line of fire for the others, for me, but I need you and Peter. I have always needed you. I can't do any of this without you. You need to do better than this. Just please, Charlotte. Please."
Her arms snaked around my neck as she returned my crushing embrace. "I'll try."
"Don't try," I snapped. "Just do."
She nodded into my shoulder. "I will," she muttered. "I promise."
Holding Charlotte always felt better than when I touched most everyone else, but still never entirely pleasant or comfortable. For once it felt nice, probably because of everything that was going on. Not right because I doubted it ever would with anyone—a very faint voice in the back of my mind whispered that wasn't exactly true, emphasizing its point with a vague image of brown hair and eyes, but it was yet another thing that faded quickly, forgotten in the wake of the chaos of Savannah and our fake bond. My feelings over holding Charlotte were another of the endless conflicting directions I found myself pulled in, and a voice in my head that seemed familiar couldn't help but wonder just how many more of those different directions I could take being yanked in. I loved this woman and it was real. She had been there for me through thick and thin, never judging and always loving me back except for at the very beginning when she didn't know me and had no reason to. That knowledge had always provided me with a certain sort of peace, but it was particularly comforting in these moments. We stayed like that for quite a while—until I couldn't stand being even this far away from Savannah.
"You ready to get your shit together?" I questioned, meeting Charlotte's eyes.
She sighed. "As I'll ever be. Just...don't make me promise to like her."
I couldn't help but chuckle. "I would never ask that. At least not when I'm in my right mind."
She gave me a weak smile, and satisfied, I maneuvered out of our embrace and got to my feet. Reaching my hand out to help her up, she took it and we finally, resignedly, returned downstairs.
I took my place at Savannah's side with a sigh of satisfaction, feeling complete yet hollow. I missed Bella, but I couldn't think of her now. It was dangerous, so I did my best to shake my thoughts of her. I was unable to fully banish her from my consciousness; she lurked in the back of my mind like a dull toothache. At the thought of the woman I truly loved, Savannah's touch began to feel like everyone else's—very unwelcome.
Charlotte returned to her place next to Peter, snuggling into him with an uneasy expression on her face as she watched me and Savannah together, but she forced herself to turn the majority of her focus to her mate, which helped her relax some.
Once we were settled, Emmett paused his and Edward's game, placing his controller to the side and shifting his gaze unabashedly to me and then to Savannah. His eyes moved back and forth between us several times before he fixated solely on her.
"So, Savannah," he said. "What do you do?"
"What do you mean?" she inquired, confused.
"In your free time," he elaborated. "Interests, hobbies...fetishes," he added slyly.
This was Emmett's way of trying to make Savannah feel welcome as much as he didn't want her here because I knew he didn't want her here. I could feel that, which meant she could feel it. Now that I was mostly recovered from the confusion of earlier in the day, I was torn between being vindicated and pissed off. It was also his way of collecting intelligence on her. No one could say the guy wasn't clever.
"Emmett," I warned, unable to ignore the need to protect her—that last part wasn't really appropriate.
"What?" he asked innocently, shrugging. "Aren't we supposed to treat her like she's one of us? That's how we are to one another—we laugh and joke, we give each other shit and ask inappropriate questions. It's who we are."
Savannah met my gaze and attempted to hide a smile. She liked that Emmett wanted to include her, even if he didn't want her here. It took her a few moments to answer. "I like to read," she answered finally, "and travel. People watching is always fun—"
Rosalie snorted and scowled, crossing her arms over her chest as she regarded Savannah with poorly disguised judgment. I was surprised she'd tried to hide it at all.
Savannah knew exactly why Rose had reacted the way she did. "My people watching rarely has anything to do with choosing my meals. I like it because humans are interesting and because I think it's fun to make up stories about the people I see. It's kind of like reading or watching movies, though I haven't had many opportunities to see films over the years. Comedies are my favorite. I haven't had much to laugh about in my life, so it's nice when I get to."
Her words made the majority of my family frown simply because they made Savannah sound so human, for lack of a better analogy, and relatable, and kind of like less of a monster.
No, no, she is a monster. Don't forget all the things she's done to you.
But was she really a monster? Hadn't Maria put her between a rock and a hard place? Hadn't she just done what she needed to do to survive?
Snap out of it, Jasper!
I shook my head to help me do it, and it made it easier. I would not feel sorry for her, at least not for any other reason than because the fake mating bond forced me to.
Savannah looked at Carlisle. "I find your animal blood diet very interesting, if wholly unappetizing. Do you mind if I ask you about it?"
"What would you like to know?" our patriarch questioned with shock and a bit of suspicion.
"I don't know," she replied. "Jasper said you all do it because you value human life. It isn't that I don't believe him, but I've lived the majority of my vampire life in a warzone. I've never met anyone that cares about humans."
"Now you have," he said matter-of-factly. "What's your opinion on the matter?"
I could tell from her profile that her expression turned contemplative. "I've never been given the luxury, so I don't have an opinion one way or the other. It's something to think about, I guess."
"No matter what conclusion you come to," Carlisle stated with unyielding eyes and a serious voice, "you're required to live on our diet while you're here."
"Jasper told me that too," Savannah assured him, "and I have no intention of arguin' with you over it."
His nod was brusque. "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"
"Not at the moment," she replied. "If I think of anything else, can I come to you?"
"If I'm home," he answered shortly. "I work long hours at the hospital, though I will be taking a bit of time off in a couple of days."
Her eyebrows shot up but she said nothing.
Then Emmett brought the conversation back to the earlier topic. "It's a few decades old, but have you seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin?"
"No," Savannah responded, burrowing deeper into my side. "I've never even heard of it."
Emmett grinned deviously. It didn't reach his eyes, and when he spoke, his tone was colored with forced cheerfulness. "Well, here's your chance to further your cinematic education, and lucky for you, comedies are my forté."
I was tense over the prospect of watching this movie. I wanted nothing to do with anything sexual while in Savannah's presence. The thought of it filled me with a sense of dread. The simple fact of the matter was I wanted her. There was no escaping it—ordinarily I would have no fuckin' interest in her at all, but the fake mating bond changed that. It told me I did want her, and it had been a really fuckin' long time since I'd had sex. For obvious reasons, I'd been on the verge of exploding for a while. It would be so easy to just give in, especially if I lost myself in the confusion and haze that accompanied all this shit, and I would because that was the reality of my current situation. In that state, I wouldn't know any better nor would I be able to help it, and the idea made me sick. If I did give in, whether it was completely unintentional or only half so, it was the equivalent of being forced, and that was the last thing I wanted no matter what the fake mating bond told me. I would be damned if I didn't fight that the hardest of all this shit, but even watching some ridiculous movie about a dorky jackass trying his best to get laid wouldn't make the effort any easier.
Fuckin' Emmett.
oOo
A/N: There have been very minor edits to this chapter to account for a couple of continuity issues with the Savannah plot arc in later chapters.
