Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer, not me.
Author/Note 1: This story is the sequel to Our Dawn 5. For the ones who don't know anything about Our Dawn Series, you can always read Our Dawn 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, and Our Dawn Series Specials but if you don't want to bother I have a resume on my profile page. As it would be expected this is a next generation story and as such, it's focused on Jake and Leah's children.
A/Note 2: A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed Our Dawn Series so far.
A/Note 3: I'm not a native English speaker so I'm sorry for my grammar and spelling. Thank you for reading.
Alpha
Book III – The Challenger
William Black
51. Greenland
"So… you're going to get your girlfriend…" I was about to leave the house when my sister appeared out of nowhere.
"Eavesdropping again, Sarah?" These days, all that my sister did was eavesdropping other people's conversations and look for Vader, her squirrel friend who was now inside my new car probably eating my cereal bars.
"I wouldn't have to eavesdrop anyone's conversations if you talked to me in the first place. But no one tells me anything in this family!" She spat crossing her arms over her chest.
"Don't dramatize Sarah."
"Dramatize?"
"I told you the truth. What more do you want?"
Actually, I didn't tell Sarah the truth because I wanted to include her in this secret, I told her because I wanted to get back at my parents. It hadn't been one of my best decisions but now it was too late to go back.
"I want to be included on whatever's going on… I want people to stop talking to me like I'm some kid!"
"You are a kid, Sarah. And the less you're included, the better. It's for your own good."
"You're not the one to decide that! I'm seventeen years old! I'm only ten months younger than Isaac!"
I almost laughed in her face. Sarah had yet failed to understand that all our parents had done, all the lies they had told her, were meant to protect her. She was a spoiled child and she still had a lot of growing up to do.
"Look, one day you might have your dream come true and join one of the packs. And when that day comes, you'll see that things are not as wonderful as you thought they were. It may sound awesome and appealing but join a pack, becoming a protector… comes with a price."
"Now who's dramatizing?"
"Wake up, Sarah! Do you really think this is all rainbows and sunshine? Look at us! Look at the people around you! Our lives changed, we changed… and all because of a gene who forces us to protect people who, sometimes, we don't even like!"
Okay so maybe I was overreacting a little. Things weren't so bad, at least not for us, the younger generation of wolves, and certainly not for me or Harrison. We had been privileged because when we joined the pack there were many wolves, including our parents, to teach us and help us whenever we needed.
When Sam, Jared, and the others phased, they had no one to guide them except for Old Quil's sparse knowledge based upon things he had learned when he was a child and his father a wolf.
Sarah was in silence, startled by my reaction, so I kept going.
"Look at Isaac… he was at the University, he could be whatever he wanted and now he's stuck here! Look at EJ… he was living in his own house, he had friends and now he's back in his parents' house and his friends hate him."
"His friends are all criminals and morons," Sarah whispered. I agreed of course, but I didn't mention it.
"Look at Danny… he wanted to save money to travel and he was a happy kid before all of this and now he's always in a bad mood and EJ's always picking on him." I paused for emphasis. "And look at Jay… all he wanted was to be with you and now he can't."
"Yes, he can! When I join the pack, we'll be together again!" She almost yelled.
So that was her plan. She wanted to be included and to join the pack so she could be with Jay but that would never happen now that he had an imprint. It didn't matter if she morphed and became a wolf. Jay was an imprinted wolf now and nothing could change that.
"If you join the pack. There's no way you can know that you're going to phase for sure."
"I've been dreaming about wolves all of my life. I didn't know why then, but now I'm sure that I'm going to be one."
Sarah did have a high probability to phase one day for, like me and our brothers, she was a child of the alpha pair. Actually, everyone thought that Sarah would be the next girl to phase. Instead, that fate fell upon Rhea.
My mate. The girl I was about to retrieve from the hands of a mercenary vampire.
"I have to go," I told my sister. "Your damn squirrel is inside my car." I threw her the keys. "Make sure he's not there when I return."
"Wait! I need you to tell me something and I need you to tell me the truth." She pleaded.
"What is it?"
"I heard you and the others talking about alpha commands. Isaac explained to me that a wolf can't fight an alpha command…" She hesitated. "I need to know if Jay was alpha commanded not to speak to me again, or even pick up my phone calls… please, Will… I just need to know."
I could see my father doing that as a way to ensure my sister's safety but Jay didn't belong to dad's pack anymore and I doubted Isaac would put an alpha command on him.
"No. Jay wasn't alpha commanded. He doesn't speak to you because you're not his soul mate. I'm sorry Sarah but you and Jay weren't meant to be."
Sarah's eyes were now filled with water but she forced the tears not to fall down her face.
"What do you mean?"
"Jay imprinted on a girl. It's a wolf thing. She's his soul mate, his world, the love of his life…" I approached my sister and held her lightly. "He still might love you but he won't be able to fight the imprint for you. No one can… It's magic and it's forever. They are now bound together by bonds harder than steel. With time he will forget about you and focus only on her." My shirt was suddenly wet. Sarah was crying now and trembling in my arms. "You're going to forget him too… trust me. When I return with Rhea, I'll explain everything you want me to, so… just wait for me, okay?"
My sister gave a little nod and I kissed her forehead, then I let her go.
"You're a tough girl, Sarah. You're definitely Leah Clearwater's daughter. Everything's going to be fine."
She smiled but her smile didn't reach her eyes. I felt like a criminal after telling her this but she needed to know. I wasn't trying to be cruel to my sister, I was just trying to make her move on. She was still young and I didn't want her to be stuck on Jay. She had to react and move forward.
"Who is she?" Sarah asked when I was already going down the steps of our porch. "Do I know her?"
There was a lump in my throat. I wanted to tell her that Ella was Jay's imprint but I was afraid of what Sarah could do once she found out.
"I don't know who she is."
"Then how do you know he found his imprint?"
"You can tell by looking into his eyes."
Without breathing another word, Sarah turned around and went inside.
xxxxxxxxxx
Alice had spent thirty minutes talking on the phone to Jean-Pierre to convince him to lend us his damn jet. Then we left to Portland. Jean-Pierre lived in the city's outskirts on a huge property. According to Alice, he had inherited said property from his dead uncle in the 19th century and he had never lived elsewhere.
"Surely people noticed there's something wrong…" I commented.
"Not really. Jean-Pierre is quite ingenious." Jasper explained. "He rarely leaves the house and when his servants start to get suspicious he gets rid of them and hires new ones."
"Gets rid of them?" I asked suspiciously.
"Some of them are spared. Sometimes he fires them other times he changes them into vampires." Edward answered my unspoken question. "Others… become meals."
It was like I feared.
"I'll deal with that bastard when we get back," I said.
"Jean-Pierre has been a vampire for almost two hundred years but he has made few casualties. Like BB Ray, he also buys blood from the local hospital's blood banks." Edward informed. "Like Jasper said… he rarely leaves the house. He hates hunting. He thinks that hunting is a waste of time and he prefers to spend his time doing research. And he's pretty good at it."
"He's been studying biology, geology, technology and genetics," Carlisle said.
"So, what you're saying is that I should spare him because he's a scholar?"
No one answered my question because we had finally arrived at Jean-Pierre's personal aerodrome. His mansion was many kilometers away so he wouldn't be there to meet us. Instead, he had sent one of his servants.
When Alice said her friend had a private jet and that the jet could take around five people, I never thought the aircraft to be so small. The white jet looked like a freaking nutshell.
"Don't worry, it will make the journey." Edward smiled. "You're more like Jacob than you think you are."
"What do you mean?" I wondered.
"Your father doesn't like airplanes either."
"I'm not afraid to fly!" I argued immediately.
"Yes, you are." He said lowering his voice. "But I won't tell anyone." At the hangar, Jasper and Emmett were both playing the 'rock-paper-scissors' game to see who was going to be the pilot, while Carlisle was speaking to Jean-Pierre's servant.
"All set." The Doctor said joining us again.
"Come on Jazz… I'll pay you two hundred dollars and a new car." Emmett begged.
"No. I won fairly so I get to fly this baby." Jasper said cheerfully.
"This baby?" I wondered. "This looks like a damn toy."
"It's not a toy, kid," Jasper told me, going up the jet's stairs. "It's the last edition of the Dassault Falcon 5000 series. Now let's go boys, and don't forget to put your seatbelts on!"
I had never seen Jasper this happy.
"Asshole." Emmett groaned.
"I heard that!" Jasper said from inside the aircraft.
"I hate you."
Emmett and Carlisle went up the stairs leaving me alone with Edward for a minute.
"You have nothing to worry about, Will. Jasper is an experienced pilot… actually so is Emmett and me." He put a cold hand over my shoulder and gave me a reassuring smile. "In an hour we'll be in Greenland… in an hour, we'll have Rhea back."
Edward was right about Jasper. He was a good pilot but he couldn't perform miracles, so we would have to endure a one-hour flight until we reached our destination.
Emmett had been able to excuse himself to the pilot cabin and was trying to get Jasper to accept him as his co-pilot. Carlisle was studying a map of Greenland while Edward was paying attention to weather reports.
"Will it be dangerous to land in Greenland?" I decided to ask even though I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer.
"No. It's actually not the weather that concerns me."
"In that case, why are you listening to weather reports?"
"You're perceptive."
"Not really. But I'm not deaf."
Edward smiled.
"We're going to arrive in Greenland at one 1 pm. The sun will set at 18:23 pm. That gives us a five-hour window to search for Rhea."
"Lack of sunlight won't make a difference, Edward. We can see perfectly in the dark."
"I know, but the darkness also gives our enemy an advantage. And it's important that we capture her."
"Why?"
"We need her, to understand what's really going on."
"But I want to kill her," I admitted. She had to pay for kidnapping Rhea.
"We need to know what she knows. Okay?"
I considered his request and nodded.
"Fine. We'll capture her." I finally said. "But if she tries to escape, I'll kill her."
Jasper ordered us to put our seatbelts twenty minutes before landing. It was raining heavily and the strong wind was shaking the jet from one side to the other.
"I thought you said you weren't worried about the landing?" I looked at Edward.
"Jasper has landed bigger airplanes in worse condition," Carlisle informed.
"When?"
"During World War II," Jasper answered from the pilot cabin. "I was a pilot during the war and I went to pick up the US survivors that fought in Europe when the war was over. In one of those trips, we were caught by a thunderstorm over the Atlantic. I was responsible for two hundred lives that day and fortunately, I managed to land the airplane safely in Virginia."
"You're a war hero?"
"I had another name back then. Jasper Hale was never a hero." He replied. "Plus, I made sure to disappear before they started to ask questions."
"Too bad you don't have a medal of honor to prove it." Emmett mocked.
"Jealousy doesn't suit you, Emmett." Jasper rebutted.
"Speaking of jealousy… are you really still jealous of my father?" I asked Edward. I was curious but I also needed something to distract me from the bad weather.
"Not in the way you're thinking."
"Really?"
"In the beginning, we were both fighting for Bella's love, so yes, I was jealous of your father. He was quite stubborn and didn't give up easily. Besides he knew how to fight dirty." Edward confessed. "But then Bella became a vampire and her future with a human boy, who was also a wolf, was impossible."
"But Jasper said that..."
"I still feel a bit jealous…" He cut me off. "I feel jealous of what your father gave your mother, of what he accomplished with her, of what they created together."
"You're jealous because he has a family?" I asked surprised. "You have a family too."
"I'm jealous because I took away Bella's chance to be like any other human girl. I'm jealous because I couldn't give Bella what he gave Leah. And I'm jealous because despite what I initially thought of him, Jacob turned out to be a very good father. He was eighteen when you were born and had just finished high school. He didn't know what to do when you were crying… He used to call Rose for help when he was alone with you and Harrison all the time. But everything turned out all right."
I nodded slightly, not wanting to admit that dad had done an okay job with all of his children.
"It saddens me that once I'm gone… and I mean really gone, I won't be leaving any piece of me behind. No one will ever call me 'dad', no one will ever carry on my name. People think this problem only affects vampire women but that's not accurate."
"I think I understand." I conceded.
"But the worst part is to know that Bella will suffer the same because of me. Maybe not now or in the following years but one day she will realize that when I turned her she lost too much… and she will never forgive me for condemning her to this life."
I shrugged. I had never seen Bella complain about her immortality or inability for having children but in the future, it was possible that she would feel some resentment towards Edward for her condition.
Would Rhea feel that way about me too?
"It's not your fault that she carries the gene." Edward pointed out.
No. But it's my fault that her gene was activated and that she was claimed eight years ago.
"I don't think she regrets that."
"How can you tell?"
"Well, she did sleep with you a second time, didn't she?"
My train of thought rapidly focused on a sudden noise coming from the aircraft's right wing. There was a minor explosion and smoke started to come out of the engine. We all looked through the small window.
"Is this for real?" I wondered nervously watching the black smoke. "I can't believe we're going to crash!"
"We're not going to crash," Carlisle said from behind me. He was calm and confident. The opposite of how I was feeling.
"We've just lost an engine!" I practically yelled.
"We have the other one." Said Jasper from the cabin, but he couldn't ignore that fact that the small jet was already falling.
I sat down and grabbed the arms of my seat. This was going to be the most useless rescue mission in History.
"I wouldn't say that," Edward said. Like his father, Edward was calm and serene, as if nothing were wrong.
"This is the same as if the Carpathia had sunk after rescuing the Titanic's survivors!"
"Don't be so dramatic." Emmett laughed out loud.
"We're going to fall, dumbass! Fortunately, you don't have to worry because you're already dead! But I'm not!"
"Your head is as hard as a rock. I'm quite sure you'll survive the fall." He mocked me.
Nice time to make jokes.
"What if I'm decapitated? Or impaled? What if the jet falls into the ocean and we can't get out? I might drown or die from hypothermia."
Okay, so maybe I was freaking out a little but I had my reasons to be shitless scared. Unless you're a vampire, there are almost zero chances of surviving a plane crash.
"I can jump out of this thing before we hit the ground."
"I find that comment quite insulting," Jasper said. "Didn't I tell you I'm a great pilot?"
"Well, I'm sorry to break this to you Jasper, but the plane is still falling and you're not doing anything to stop it."
"I'm going to land this thing smoothly."
"Smoothly? This piece of shit is starting to disintegrate!" I said as the aircraft began shaking harder. "I should've followed my initial plan. I should've come swimming. I can't believe this is actually happening… I swear to the fucking Spirits that if I die when this crap crashes, I'm going to haunt you all for eternity and I'm going to kill that Jean-Pierre… I'll find a way to shred him to pieces and burn him!"
"That was an awesome speech! It was passionate and inspiring! You should apply for the Academy!" Emmett laughed. He was starting to get on my nerves. "It would be great if you started crying, though. It would be wonderful to watch you cry like a little girl while saying goodbye to your family. I'm sure you'll look great on Facebook."
"What?"
I watched astonished to Emmett who was holding a camera. He was recording everything as if we were having fun.
"I think it's enough Emmett. Put the engine back on. We can't risk Will to phase before we land. Jean-Pierre would never help us again if we destroyed his precious jet." Jasper said and I gasped.
Had he turned the engine off to scare me?
"You should see your face, Will. That was priceless!"
"Bastard!" I growled. "Give me that camera!"
"No way." Emmett retreated to the cabin and pressed a red button. The engine that I thought had failed started working again.
"Buckle up. We're over the runway already." Jasper informed.
"You're going to pay for this Emmett," I said throwing a magazine at Emmett's head.
"Hey! Behave! We're landing and you don't want me to switch off the engine by mistake, do you?"
"I fucking hate your stupid pranks."
"Payback's a bitch."
"You almost made us crash so you could get even at me for ruining your whiskey collection. You're an asshole."
"Please… I had everything under control." He stated smugly. "And we're not even yet, William. Not in a million years. I said you were going to regret what you did, and you will."
"Bring it on!"
"Come on, kids! Behave!" Carlisle laughed from his seat. "You look like two five-year-old children fighting for a toy."
"He started!" Emmett and I said in unison.
Edward and Carlisle shook their heads.
"Five more minutes and we're going to land," Jasper announced and I felt the aircraft slowly descending. Fortunately, with the second engine working, the jet had stabilized.
"Where are we landing?" I asked. I could see a small runway below but the place didn't look like the typical airport. There were no lights to guide us or other aircraft around.
"This is the Mestersvig aerodrome. From 1956 to 1963 Mestersvig harbored the workers of a lead and zinc mine but the harsh working conditions and the low temperatures drew people away. Then it worked as a military outpost until late 2016. Now it's completely abandoned." Carlisle explained. "It's the perfect hiding place for a mercenary vampire with a hostage."
"But there are other possible places where Rhea might be," Edward added.
Jasper did land Jean-Pierre's jet smoothly in the one-track runway of the abandoned aerodrome. A few miles away there was a compound formed by the ruins of three buildings, which were still standing. There had been more houses there but now only the foundations were visible under a thin layer of snow.
"Jasper will stay here," Carlisle said. It was obvious that they had already worked on a plan. "We need him to stay in the jet in case we need to leave in a hurry."
"Emmett and I will go south. We'll check the city of Ittoqqortoormiit since it's the closest town and Eva may still be looking for medicine or provisions."
"You and I will go north, to the Danmarkshavn weather station." Edward continued Carlisle's instructions. "You better phase now. We can't waste more time here."
I'm coming for you, Rhea. Just hold on a little bit longer.
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Karisan