Chapter 4: A Crossroads

Luther slipped out into the freezing night once his family had gone to bed. It was easier to avoid them than to explain what he felt he had to do. He had left a note for his mother in order to ease the blow, but he didn't know how to do the same for his father and brother. He dearly wished he did.

Bruno had covered for him when their father asked what had happened, shrugging off the confrontation with the wolf as just another brotherly disagreement. However, when he avoided eye contact with Luther and gave him wide berth in the hallway, it cut. Deeply. Bruno had always been Luther's tenuous tie to feeling some semblance of normalcy and now even he feared the wolf.

Luther sighed a plume of vapor as he walked in the open night air past closed cafes and darkened storefronts. Downtown Forks was always dead at this time of night, but one bus line would still run for another few hours. He would ride it until the last stop and figure out where to go after that. It was the best plan that came to mind when there was not much time to plan at all.

His heart lurched as he passed his father's bookstore. It made him stop in his tracks. He touched the freezing glass of the door in farewell. It couldn't replace saying goodbye to his father, but it was something. Sorry, we're closed. The sign gave him a horrible fresh feeling of finality. He would not be coming back. It was too dangerous. It took him several minutes to tear himself away and keep walking.

The bus stop bench loomed ahead beneath a street lamp. He felt like a condemned man walking to the gallows as he drew nearer to it. Before he could thoroughly lose himself in the new wave of self-pity, the wolf wrested just enough control to make him turn his head. The scent registered before the sight did; the thing from the forest was standing in the shadows just outside of the glow of the street lamp, but it was not the hulking beast this time. It was a man. At least, what he could see of him looked like a man. Luther swallowed the warning growl that the wolf tried to give.

"Leaving?" the figure called from his shadowy position.

Luther's blood boiled at the victorious tone of the question, and he could not be sure whether the response came from himself, the wolf, or both. This person, this thing, was why he was in this position in the first place. If he could have just finished his hunt in peace, he would never have lost control when Mike visited or when Bruno lost his temper. He never would have considered running away... well, running away again.

He squared his stance before the wolf could do it for him.

"No. Not anymore."

The wolf strove for control so strongly that Luther felt fur erupt down his spine beneath his fleece jacket. It wanted another round with this creature. He shoved the wolf back and took a few assertive steps forward toward the shadowed figure.

"Look, I'll keep away from La Push if you keep away from me and my family. None of us have done anything to you." His tone was even, but he allowed the wolf's growl to color his voice.

The figure crossed his arms and lifted his head. "What happened in the forest was a warning before you got too close," he growled back. "I did you a favor. I could have killed you outright."

Hot anger bloomed in Luther's chest. "Well, your 'favor' cost me a hunt. I'm more dangerous now than I would have been if you'd left me alone!"

"Stay out of La Push and it won't happen again," the figure replied simply as he turned and began to walk away down the sidewalk. He paused and said as an afterthought, "And if you're smart, you'll keep away from the Cullens, too."

Before Luther could respond, the creature looked up and down the street, rolled his shoulders, seamlessly shifted to take his bear-sized wolf form, and loped away. Luther stared after the creature and then the empty street for a long while after it had disappeared out of sight. The wolf gave him a flash of the image of his teeth meeting the neck of the thing's human form. Luther did not even bother to fight the growl in his chest.

"Yeah. Maybe I should have let you," he muttered as he turned to head back home.

He crumpled the note he had written for his mother and jammed it into his pocket when he returned home. The encounter with the thing had more than unsettled him; it had pissed him off. What gave this creature the right to beat the hell out of him for just existing? And worse, to sneak into his house where his family was vulnerable and unsuspecting? For once he and the wolf were of the same mind: nobody messed with his pack. Nobody. He would defend them tooth and nail.

But that thought brought up more questions. The creature was so unassuming and normal when he was not too preoccupied shredding a person's hide. Could it mean that there were more like him walking unseen in Forks? In La Push? The wolf plastered the image of a wolf pack across Luther's vision with an air of exasperation. Of course there were more. The creature was defending something, and if it had any wolf instinct at all, that something was likely his pack.

Luther did not dare go to bed. Instead, he shed his clothes in a secluded part of the yard and let the wolf out to defend their territory. He refused to sleep and completely give up control. He wanted to see every detail of the occurrences of the night. Despite his hypervigilance, there was very little to see for the majority of the night. He had almost gotten comfortable enough to draw the wolf back and turn in when something stole his attention. A boy with long black hair, perhaps a few years younger than him, walked slowly past the fence. From the look of him he was likely from the reservation. The wolf's hackles raised but Luther kept him from lunging right away.

The boy smelled like the thing in the woods, and perhaps others who were like the thing in the woods. It seemed that it was not enough to break into his room. They were making a point of keeping surveillance, too. Well, two could play at that game. Or three, if he counted the wolf. He let the wolf run just enough to startle the guy and menace him with his bared teeth. The message was clear: don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.

The kid ran, taking only one backward glance full of glaring green eye shine, and disappeared down the block. The wolf wanted to give chase and mangle the teen to send a message. Luther was able to pull him back, but only just. Maybe he did need the trip to Alaska. He was only maintaining control by the skin of his teeth, and when this unknown enemy was drawing the net closer and closer around his family, he needed to be the one to call the shots. He felt defeated as he fought to take his body back and drag himself into the house. This felt like running away again. But it wasn't really running away if he planned on coming back to face the problem... right?

Unable to believe that the kid he had scared off was gone for good and unwilling to sleep, Luther occupied himself with his phone. It had been shut off in his backpack to conserve battery when he intended to take the bus. Now, as the screen flashed to life, he saw that he had been inundated with texts from Mike:

u were supposed 2 txt me

r u ok?

getting worried

more blood transfusions?

luther?

stop freaking me out

if i dont hear from u in the morning im coming to ur house

Just as Luther poised his thumbs to send a response and assuage his friend's fears, he saw that he had received another text from an unknown number. He tapped the screen and he felt like his heart might explode when he read the message:

Hi, Luther. This is Alice from biology class. You know, the one with the extra pencils. :) I got your number from Mike Newton. I hope that's okay. This may sound odd, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea because I do have a boyfriend, but would you like to go to the Girl's Choice Dance with me on Friday? We really need to talk.

The wolf voiced its misgivings loudly in his head, but he replied before it could take his thumbs from him:

Sounds great! I'd offer to pick you up, but I don't have a car... would meeting you at the school be okay?

He hardly expected her to reply. No one in their right mind was up at that time of night with school the next day. He switched back to his conversation with Mike. Halfway through his reply his phone vibrated with a response:

Not a problem. I look forward to Friday.

Very aware of how big and stupid the grin on his face was, Luther replied:

Cool. Me, too.

He grimaced after he hit the send button. 'Cool'? That was the best he could think of? Alice, the beautiful pressed flower of a human being, had deemed him worthy of not only talking to him, but also asking him to the dance and 'cool' was his best description of how he felt? He rubbed a hand over his face and stared out the window overlooking the front yard as he thought up all the better, smoother, suaver things that he could have written instead. In the midst of his distraction, the half-written response to Mike was left entirely forgotten.