February 1, 2015

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Bella's friend Mike didn't like him.

Jacob caught the brief, narrow-eyed glances and took it in stride, ignoring him in favor of doing what he came here to do, what he'd been doing for the past month. Being a good friend to Bella wasn't easy. She was gloomy and picky and sometimes just… strange. They couldn't listen to music or watch certain things on television. When they went to the movies, like today, it was action and gore and horror. Jacob didn't mind, of course. He'd take Face Punch, no matter how poorly made, over a cheesy romcom any day. It was less about the content of these limitations and more about the limitations themselves. The principle of them. Edward Cullen had broken Bella into a thousand uneven pieces, and she'd let him. That was the part he didn't understand.

"I think I'm gonna be sick."

Jacob watched over Bella's head as Mike jumped from his seat and ran through the aisle and then up the steps to the exit. Bella glanced at him. "Guess movie night is over, huh?"

"Because he can't handle a little blood? Nah, let's finish this." Jacob eyed the screen as a poorly photoshopped helicopter weaved awkwardly towards the ground. "I mean look at these graphics, Bells. How can you resist the –"

She laughed, even as she stood to leave. "C'mon, dork."

Dating was not new to him. He'd had his share of girlfriends, mostly since moving up into high school. As Bella made her way through their row at a turtle's pace, Jacob thought he should have been prepared when her hand slipped into his as they began their ascent up the stairs, towards the door. He wasn't. Bella was a pretty girl. Funny, when she wanted to be. Before Edward Cullen, back when they'd hung out while Billy and Charlie fished or grilled or watched their sports, Jacob had enjoyed being around her. Their relationship just hadn't ever felt romantic to him. He wasn't overly attracted to her. Didn't think about her much outside of worrying about her falling back into her Cullen depression. Had he been sending her signals? The last month flashed through his mind in a series of flickering, highlighted slides and, in each of them, he'd never said anything to indicate those kinds of feelings.

The lines between being nice and being interested seemed to have blurred.

Jacob didn't yank his hand away or try to run. He wanted to, but Bella still felt fragile to him. Right on the edge of falling back into the type of behavior that had Charlie calling Billy in the middle of the night, ready to send her back to her mother, which just wasn't like him. He'd pined and nearly drowned when Renee took Bella out of state. Charlie was a simple and dedicated man. He was gruff and frayed around the edges, but he loved his daughter, and he loved his friends. He'd do anything to see them happy; even if that meant sending the single most important person in his life away. Jacob struggled to imagine explaining to Charlie how he'd sent his daughter hurtling back into the abyss of teenage angst when he was supposed to be helping her.

"I guess we'll wait here." Bella pulled him around the banister of a stairwell a few feet from the men's bathroom and they sat down, side by side. "Probably should have just canceled when everyone else did. This was awkward."

"Well, I think Mike had a different idea when he asked you to the movies. Didn't he ask you to prom last year, too?"

Bella cringed. "Yeah. I didn't want to shut him down completely. He's a good friend. I just don't see him like that, y'know?"

"I do, yeah." Discomfort trickled down his spine. "You're right. Canceling might have been in everyone's best interest."

She snorted, ducked her head in that shy way he now associated specifically with her. Her hand was still clutching his and he felt his palm getting sweaty. The last few weeks had been weird. "Filling out" at seventeen wasn't unheard of, he guessed, but it felt a bit random considering he'd grown and done the whole maturation thing at the start of high school. His body felt on the verge of something; restless and achy. Jacob had never been cold-natured, but now he was hot all the time. He felt anxious and on edge and everything was amplified. Sounds made him wince; certain lights hurt his eyes; his skin felt taught and oversensitive, as if someone were pricking him with tiny needles all over, all the time. It was maddening. Part of him wondered if he was losing his mind; then, things like cancer had kept him up at night. Something consuming and fatal that would absolutely wreck his father and sister's world.

"Jake? You okay?"

He blinked and refocused on her face. "Yeah – yeah I'm good." The oddness in his gut was increasing, though. The pricks along his skin getting sharper. His bones began to throb and the edges of his vision wobbled strangely. "And you?" he asked to distract himself. "You okay?"

"Of course." She slanted her eyes to the side and her leg bounced frantically against his. "I'm always okay when I'm with you."

Damn.

"Maybe I should go check on –"

" – Wait." Bella gripped his hand and angled herself to face him, her other hand closing over his forearm. Jacob glanced down at her tiny pale fingers and the thick, bulging veins stretching from his elbow to his wrist. Were they like that before? She continued, "I wanted to talk to you. Now that this 'group' night is a bust, I figure it's as good a time as any."

Dread curled around his lungs. Or was that the anxiety? Everything was starting to run together. Was his body giving out? It kind of felt like that, but also like it was… expanding. His chest, which had felt heavy and constricted for weeks, emptied, only to slowly refill with a different weight. Something dense and arduous and… aware? Jacob's skull pulsed and all of those random symptoms he'd been having hit him at once. Moisture broke out along his hairline and upper lip and his shirt clung to a sudden sheen of sweat on his skin.

"I know you've been doing your best to help me since – since I brought you the bikes. And you have. I feel… better, when I'm with you. You're a good friend. A good person. At first, I thought that was all this was. Just us being friends like we've always been." Bella sucked in a deep, shaking breath and gripped his hand and arm tighter. "But I was wrong. I – I like you, Jacob. Like, really like you. And –"

He was dying. Her words battered against his ears and he could hear them, there just wasn't room in his head to accommodate them and what they meant. The room began to shrink, the walls shivering violently, and the floor beneath them felt weak and unstable. Everything was tilting. Jacob had been smoking weed with his sister and Leah and Embry and Quil for years. If there was a strain powerful enough to create this, he'd burn it all. The air in his lungs left him and he didn't see it coming when Bella, characteristically oblivious, leaned in and pressed her lips to his. Her hand slid up his arm to his shoulder, then his neck, and her mouth slanted to try and deepen the kiss. Jacob couldn't move. Couldn't breathe for fear of snapping in half; imploding; exploding. That was the word. That was what this felt like. His body, his mind, his entire existence on the brink of an explosion.

"Hey –"

Bella, thankfully, jerked away as Mike rounded the banister, but she didn't move in time to keep him from seeing what Jacob would later imagine looked like a quiet, intimate moment between the girl he liked and the goon she'd brought along on their date. The interruption did two things: it released him from Bella and the discomfort of what she'd just done, and slowly dispersed the haze he'd been sinking into as whatever was happening to his body consumed him completely. Unfortunately, the moment he resurfaced, his emotions and thoughts and the world around him resurfaced, as well, and the sensory overload sent him shooting to his feet and whirling around on Mike, who stumbled backward and out of the way. In that moment, the denseness in his chest flared, and thoughts of wringing this scrawny kid's neck speared through his otherwise recalcitrant mind. It was the only thing that seemed sensible.

"H – hey, man, what's your problem?"

Some distant, reasonable part of him imagined what he looked like to Mike, who'd just been here trying to get his long-time crush to feel the same about him. Some hulking, wide-eyed freak puffing his chest and looking on the verge of doing violence hadn't been on the itinerary… for any of them. Jacob gripped the banister and tried to get his breathing under control. His lungs and heart felt caged inside his ribs; too much air and blood and adrenaline in too tight a space. As Mike stared at him, palms up in the air, Jacob had the sudden and terrifying realization that he wasn't going to be able to stop this, whatever this was. It wasn't calming, even as he took deep breaths in through his nose and blew them out slowly through his lips.

Bella's fingers closed over his shoulder, and she sounded like she was underwater as she whispered, "Jacob? What's going on?"

His fist flexed around the thick wood of the banister and crushed it. The sound, Bella's quiet intake of breath, Mike's shocked expression, the burn against his palm as splintered wood cut into it; even in his half-frantic state, Jacob was stunned into immobility. The thing in his chest, though, was strangely calm. Run, it sang through his blood, and no matter how insane it might have been, he listened.

"I gotta go," he murmured, and took off through the double doors and into the parking lot, left his beloved rabbit behind, and crossed the road, into the light collection of trees and then into deeper, denser forest.

He knew his way around well enough, but the world was still wobbly and tilted, and his gait swayed with his vision until he was slamming into tree trunks with his shoulders and tripping over debris and falling face-first into the damp soil. Hands and muscles shaking, Jacob sat up on his knees and gripped the material of his shirt, pulled it over his head, and freed himself. The air was sharp. It felt good. For a brief moment, in the quiet of the woods, his pulse slowed marginally, and his overheated body was given fleeting relief by a gentle breeze. Jacob blinked purposefully and studied the bark of a tree. Hope bloomed in his sore mind. Maybe it was that stomach flu? Maybe he just had a bad reaction?

Jacob laughed breathily and glanced upward, through the forest canopy to the stars above. It was a clear night. He knew better than to bank on the stomach flu, but almost couldn't help himself. He'd been ignoring this for weeks. Unwilling to commit to an explanation that would hurt his family any more than it'd already been. They'd barely survived losing his mom. And then Rebecca bailed and they'd had to readjust again. Jacob, Billy, Rachel; they were a team. They looked out for each other and tackled things together. Maybe he should have told them? Should have said something before whatever this was overtook him completely and sent him hurtling into the forest and to his knees.

A sharp pain snaked from his chest outward, as if traveling through his bones. He doubled over, forehead to the cold ground, and dry heaved. Dying was sounding less and less like a worst-case scenario as his muscles constricted and tightened into horrible, cramping knots, and every inch of skin felt as if it were being dragged across hot coals. Heart pounding in his ears, head throbbing, the pain and stress and confusion were all-consuming and, as it seemed to be reaching the climax, the point where he'd either die from this illness or die from the pain, his body did explode, and everything just… stopped. Stomach-churning pain faded to dull aches and residual soreness and the pounding in his head eased enough that he could think a little more clearly.

All of this might have been a comfort if he hadn't looked down and realized that his hands were no longer hands, but giant, claw-tipped paws.

"It's alright, Jake."

He hadn't moved since landing awkwardly on his… feet. His legs were spread at a strange angle and he remained that way as he cautiously scanned the trees for the voice. A familiar voice. "Paul?" Jacob asked quietly, though no words left his mouth. He snapped his teeth together. Snout, then. He wasn't talking through his fucking snout.

"I know it's weird. Just breathe."

Rachel's new boyfriend had come out of left field. Jacob personally had no issue with the guy, but he'd heard things. Bad temper. Bit of a player. Arrogant, by some accounts. An asshole, by others. Jacob had seen him on baseball and football fields through the rec department, but they were never on the same teams.

"I've always had a bad temper. Since I was a kid."

Jacob saw him, then. Slinking through the trees, low on his belly, eyes glowing an eerie pale silver and averted, looking to Jacob's left rather than directly at him. For reasons he couldn't quite understand yet, this pleased him. As if everything else wasn't disturbing enough –

"It's something to do with our wolves… that shit you feel in your chest? Best I can guess, everything stems from that. You'll feel it all more clearly the longer you're –"

" – How do you keep doing that?" Jacob asked sharply. What would have once been minor irritation felt amplified. Everything felt that way. Stronger. Denser. He could hear the wind in the treetops ten, fifteen, twenty feet up, though the leaves were barely moving. And he could see those leaves. See them so clearly that he could count the veins from stem to tip; could make out the exact color despite it being dark and so far away.

"We're connected mind-to-mind," Paul answered, despite Jacob's distraction.

"There's more?"

"Me, you, Embry, Jared, and Sam, right now. But there are others showing signs."

Jacob winced as images flashed through his head; not his own, but Paul's. Paul's memories and private thoughts and conversations with the others. Jacob saw them all as wolves; varying coat and eye colors and sizes.

"The mind shit is hard to control at first. I blasted everyone with some pretty embarrassing stuff in those first few weeks. Once you get a handle on it, they'll only hear and see what you want them to. Just like having a regular conversation." Paul paused and his head tilted to the side. "Well, except for Sam. He can force his way into your head whenever he wants."

Jacob straightened his legs and stood a little more levelly. Twitched his ears and nose. Flicked his tail. Fucking bizarre. "Why? Because he was the first?"

"Nah, because he's the Alpha. We're a pack. A unit. And he's the boss." Paul lowered his head to the ground and Jacob felt, for the first time, the direct link connecting them. Like a string stretched between their wolves, chest to chest. There was something Paul wasn't saying. Jacob made eye contact and Paul whimpered. "You're like Sam. More powerful than the rest of us. Maybe even more than him."

That was it. What he'd been reluctant to say. "I don't want to be more powerful than anyone. I don't want… this. How do you stop it?" Jacob shook his head, tried to clear his mind. "Why did it happen to begin with? Is this some kind of fucking curse?"

"I know Billy's told you the stories. He's told everyone."

It came back to him in quick bursts of images and distorted voices and Jacob knew Paul was seeing it all, too. His mom and dad, first, telling him about Cho-Cho, the spirit of the forest, and its master, Chwyeh-Tee, the Coyote or man-God that created the Quileutes. Another day, when Jacob was older, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Leah, listening to Harry and Billy talk of cold ones and the lawotsakil, or wolf, that was created from the early Quileutes to destroy them. Packs of warriors designed around the sole purpose of protecting La Push and the Quileute people from vampires. Generations of boys and men thrown into an ancient war. Jacob's head throbbed and he shook away the memories.

"This is… insane." Jacob flopped down onto his stomach and let out a gust of air through his nostrils. Sam and his cult. It all made better sense now. "So, we change –"

" – phase, is the technical term we've coined."

"Phased, whatever. Because of vampires? There are vampires here?"

Even before Paul's thoughts slipped through and twined with his own, Jacob knew who it was. He knew who had caused this whole thing to happen; who'd thrown his life, and so many others' lives into absolute fucking chaos. "The Cullens," Jacob said, getting Sam's memories secondhand through Paul. Edward running through the forests of Forks at unnatural speeds; the scents they left behind that tagged them as threats… enemies. "When Sam disappeared and then showed back up beefed and cagey. He broke up with Leah. Is this why? Because of what he is?"

It was natural for Jacob to think of others while also dealing with his own personal meltdowns. Bad habit, sometimes. But if Sam had broken Leah's heart because he didn't think she could handle this, he'd been sorely mistaken, and Jacob was already determined to fix this thing. He'd never particularly liked Sam. Had liked him even less with Leah, whom Jacob had known and been friends with since he was too young to walk, or talk, or even remember. Theirs was a partnership forged in trust and dedication, and he'd wanted to fuck Sam Uley up from the moment she'd called him crying, telling him Sam had not only bailed but that he'd shacked up with her cousin. Jacob had never thought he was good enough, anyway.

But if it made Leah happy, he'd get his whole thing sorted out for her.

"Yes and no," Paul hedged, but couldn't stop himself for long. "Sam imprinted on Emily. Y'know, the whole 'fate draws them together' spiel. One look and the world stops turning until they're in your life. It happened to Sam, to Jared with Kim, to me with Rachel."

Not so fixable after all. "So, it's fate. We can't stop it?"

"Can't stop it, can't fight it." Paul stood up and stretched low and long. "And Sam couldn't tell Leah. The Council had him issue a gag order on the rest of us. They don't want anyone that doesn't have to know in on this. Guess they think it's safer that way."

Jacob stood, too. "Leah was his girlfriend. Safe to say she noticed the changes in him. They don't think people will wonder about a bunch of us suddenly hitting the high six-foot mark, putting on a few hundred pounds of muscle, and running around half-naked in freezing rain?" Jacob gave Paul a pointed look. "I noticed. So did Bella."

The moment he thought her name, it all hit him at once. That she was dating Edward. Going to the Cullen's house. The injuries and the bruises and the pitiable, withdrawn changes in her personality. Edward leaving. The depression. Jacob had thought, when Charlie started calling Billy on the verge of tears, that something more was going on. Then Bella had come to him and they'd hung out and he was almost convinced that Edward had been abusing her. Mentally and emotionally, at the very least, because she'd been so damn small. Bags under her eyes from nightmare-filled sleep, walking around curled in on herself like a zombie during the day; no interests or hobbies or friends; no expressive outlets or willingness to discuss Edward and what had happened in their relationship.

Now… well. He couldn't say it made any more sense knowing that Edward is a vampire. If anything, it made things worse. She'd known. Of course she'd known. And she'd brought him around Charlie. Had invited those blood-drinking freaks into her house and around her family with zero regard for anyone's safety, including her own. Even after everything, she pined for him. Defended him whenever Jacob made a scathing or smart remark about him leaving. The whole time, she'd known he was a monster, and she didn't care.

"You couldn't have known, Jake. Even if you did, what could you have done?"

He'd have told Charlie. To hell with what would have happened after. He'd have told the man that his daughter was running around with some ancient undead guy that had undoubtedly killed people and was now preying on Charlie's seventeen/eighteen-year-old daughter.

"It's against the rules, Jacob," Paul said in warning. "But then… I don't know. If it was someone I cared about, I'd probably do the same thing."

And he would have. Jacob could feel it through their bond, could sense it and see it through the thoughts that were flickering in and out. Paul might be a hothead, but he was a fearless, loyal hothead that would face down the Cullens on his own if he had to. Jacob was very suddenly relieved that Rachel had been tied to this one, rather than Sam, or even Jared, whom Jacob had always thought of as kind of shifty. Thinking of Rachel snapped him back to the present.

"I need to get home."

Paul snorted. "Took Sam two weeks or more to shift back. Took me almost three because I kept getting pissed off that I couldn't. It's been about the average. Just relax and –"

"Two weeks? That's not gonna work. Even if Billy knows what's going on –"

" – He does. The whole Council knows. Rachel knows. We'll tell them what happened and keep an eye on you."

"Not good enough. Rachel works and I go to school. We're on a schedule. Billy needs one of us home for certain things and I have work. I need to go home."

Jacob had been working out of his garage for the local mechanic, doing small jobs that the owner didn't have time to take on but didn't want to dismiss completely. Lawnmowers, weed eaters, dirt bikes and four-wheelers, and even some pressure washers and tillers. Andy Bishop's customers were loyal, and he appreciated them using him instead of some of the cheaper franchise shops in Forks or Port Angeles. Andy paid Jacob by the job and told his customers about him to help build his own clientele. It was a nice, flexible gig that worked with school and his responsibilities at home. He didn't have time for this.

"I know it's frustrating, man, trust me. I work too. But you can't put too much pressure on yourself right now."

To hell with that. "Just tell me what to do. How'd you finally calm down?"

"Sam usually does this whole introduction thing. The Alpha can pull rank, has some kind of magic influence over us. If he wants us to do something and we refuse, he can order us and we have to listen. But he can also calm us down. I was with him constantly at the start because being around him kept me level. I can call him, let him know –"

"No. I don't want – I just don't wanna deal with him tonight, alright? Give me a minute. Let me think."

Jacob didn't feel overly emotional or stressed. Now that he knew what was happening, though it was kind of nuts, he felt a little better. And he really did need to go home. Closing his eyes and inhaling deeply, Jacob cleared his mind of the new presence there; Paul and his wolf, the obnoxious, conflicting scents and sounds and emotions. He emptied it all out until there was only silence.

"Damn, dude."

Jacob opened his eyes, and he was on two feet. Paul was human and naked in the same place his wolf had been. His eyes were still pale silver and glowing in the darkness of the night. "This is wild," Jacob murmured, turning his hands over and studying them. They were bigger. He felt bigger. "Where the hell are my clothes?"

"If you were wearing them, they're shredded." Paul lifted a shoulder. "You get used to being in your birthday suit."

That was something Jacob didn't want to consider with too much effort at the moment. "Great." He turned a circle, eyes searching the forest floor with this new, clearer sight, and found his shirt rumpled on the ground a foot or so away. "This'll have to do." Jacob picked it up and used it to cover his bits. "Hopefully no one calls the cops."

"You're going back out there?" Paul laughed. "You've got a two-lane highway, strip mall, and parking lot to get through."

Jacob shrugged. "Like I said. Gotta get home."

"I have to tell Sam about this," Paul said, raising his voice slightly as Jacob turned and began jogging back to the road. "Can't promise he won't come looking for you. So be prepared!"

Tossing a hand up in the air, Jacob sped up and filed that away for later.