Five
By the time the sun rose over the forested hills, Paul could barely concentrate on anything except seeing his imprint. He couldn't stop replaying how fragile she'd looked, standing in the doorway beside him, and he was willing to bet she hadn't eaten without him there to make her.
Go to her, Sam said. You're about to give me an anxiety attack just by listening to you.
You're just fine, he told Sam, aggrieved.
Yeah, but that's because Emily is fine. Bella needs you. Go wake Jake up to patrol and you can go to her.
But-
He could feel Sam's exasperation. Come on, Paul, don't make me Alpha order you. Seriously, just go get Jake.
Paul gave in, abandoning the perimeter he had been running and starting toward Jacob's house. He wanted to be angry that he wasn't strong enough to stay away from his imprint, but he couldn't bring himself to be anything but grateful for the chance to see her that much sooner.
He let himself into the Blacks' house so that he wouldn't wake Billy, and his imprint's scent filled his nose as soon as he took his first breath inside. She had been here, not within the past week or so, but her scent was finely diffused throughout the house from coming over many times before that.
Paul fought down an irrational surge of rage, that she had been here and not with him. He knew she was friends with Baby Alpha, knew that she had been at the rez off and on over the past few months, and he still hated that she'd been with Jacob and not him.
The house was small, as most houses on the rez were, so there were only a few possibilities for Jacob's room, and Paul's bloodhound-worthy nose swiftly led him to a door on the far end. He shoved it open.
Jacob was asleep, sprawled across a twin-sized bed that was way too small for him. Paul kicked one of the legs, and the whole bed frame shook.
"What?" Jacob sat upright, looking around wildly. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Congratulations," Paul told him. "You get to start patrol now, since I have to go babysit my imprint."
Jacob glared at him, though the effect was somewhat diminished by his slightly unfocused gaze. "You want to talk about babysitting imprints, Paul? Who do you think had to calm down a panicking imprint when she called here at midnight?"
Paul blinked. "What?" Before Jacob could respond, though, he remembered. Don't leave the house until I come back. "Fuck."
"Yeah," Jacob said. "Good going with that, really. She thought you were dead."
He was an idiot. The hunt for the leech had driven all thought of what he'd told her from his mind. "I'm going. Go patrol with Sam."
He hurried back out the front door before Jacob could respond.
After he returned to wolf form and began following the feel of his imprint's pull inside him, he berated himself for being such a dumbass.
He'd been bitching about his imprint doing stupid things, and now here he was, equally stupid. How was he supposed to know how to handle the bond without fucking everything up? He needed a fucking instruction manual.
For the first time since imprinting, he felt a spark of fear that he wouldn't be able to handle it, that he was doomed to drag both himself and his imprint down until they both went crazy.
The bond, which had been slowly increasing in intensity throughout the night, suddenly escalated to a white-hot band wrapped around his chest, snapping him out of his misery. He stumbled and almost plowed into a tree as he tried to regain his balance.
Paul? Sam's voice sounded alarmed.
Paul ignored him, focusing on the wolf inside him as he never had before. It was terrified, more scared than he had ever felt it.
Not right - get to her - danger. The primal panic intensified. Go!
I'm going, he thought frantically, speeding up as much as he could. Something was wrong, she needed him and he wasn't with her.
He covered the remaining distance to her neighborhood in less than five minutes, but as he got closer to her house, he realized with a sinking feeling that she wasn't there. It was six in the morning – why wasn't she at home?
The bond tugged him behind her house and into the woods. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in time with his legs hitting the ground. He needed to be with her now.
Finally, thank the gods he didn't really believe in, he could smell her nearby, and a minute later he saw her, her back to him.
She was crouched on top of a steep ledge that he had seen the redheaded leech catapult off of in Jared's memories a few weeks ago, her toes hanging over empty air. It was at least a fifty foot drop to the forest floor below.
"-gone, and I barely see you anymore," she was muttering. "What am I supposed to do if you go away completely, huh?"
Rocks and dirt crumbled away under her feet as her weight shifted. She gasped and fell back on her butt, but she didn't move any farther away from the edge than she had to, and her eyes remain fixed on the same spot of air in front of her.
Paul pulled her upright before she realized he was there, before he realized he had phased, pulling her back against his chest for a second to reassure himself that she was still okay, still alive, then pushing her farther away from the edge. She stumbled back a few feet until she backed into a tree and stared at him, shocked.
"What the fuck were you doing, Isabella?" His chest heaved with the effort of trying to contain his fury, not to phase again. He couldn't yell at her in wolf form.
"I just-" she clutched her chest and dropped her eyes, and he knew she was preparing to lie to him.
"If you lie to me, I swear to god I will tell your father how I found you." His bond burned painfully at the thought of being separated from her, but her in a psych ward was better than her dead. "Tell me the truth. Right now."
Her eyes filled with tears, but he waited. "I…sometimes I can hear h-his voice, if I put myself in danger, telling me not to do it. And," she added in a tiny voice, "I see him. Sometimes."
He took a deep breath. Then another. "You can hear and see the leech who dumped you scolding you if you risk your life," he said flatly. "That's so many levels of fucked up I don't even think a word exists to describe it. You know that, right?"
She flinched, tears streaming down her face now. "That's the only thing that gets me through the day, Paul! Knowing I might be able to see him, hear him."
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Absolutely not. He is not what you're living for." He grabbed her wrist and pulled her with him back toward the road. "I'm going to have someone in the pack on you at all times. I knew I needed to protect you from yourself, but I had no idea it was this bad."
She started crying again, trying futilely to pull away from him. "No! I don't need to be babysat!"
"For fuck's sake, you were considering killing yourself!" He got right in her face. "Do not even open your goddamn mouth and try to tell me that's not what you were thinking of doing."
She didn't.
When he could speak without his words trembling with rage, he said, "Your life is fucking priceless. I'm not going to let you throw it away."
She said nothing.
After he pulled on some shorts so her neighbors wouldn't have a heart attack if they saw him, he walked her home. She had stopped crying, and now her eyes were set straight ahead, blank. She didn't look at him as they walked.
Paul had known it was bad – hell, anyone who spent more than five minutes with her knew it – but he hadn't been expecting anything like this. She was talking to a hallucination that she knew wasn't real, and that probably hadn't even been the first time she'd considered killing herself.
His mind stumbled on the horror of what living in her head must feel like and he forced himself on, past that and onto something he could do something about – helping her.
Her dad's car wasn't in the drive – seriously, did the man sleep at the police station? – so Paul followed her inside the house and into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee, her hands shaking.
"Bella," he said, more gently this time. "We're gonna figure this out, okay?"
She turned away from him. "I don't want it figured out," she muttered. Setting down the cup she'd just poured, she turned, running up the stairs. He heard a door slam seconds later.
Paul sighed heavily, the last of his anger fading away to be replaced with the same fear he'd felt earlier – that he couldn't do this, that he'd fuck her up even worse than she already was.
He tried to tell himself that it was a good thing that she was mad. It meant she wasn't completely dead inside. It still didn't feel very good to have his imprint hate, him, though.
Pushing aside that thought, he looked around for a home phone. He was going to have to figure out how to keep his cell phone on him in wolf form.
He finally found a cordless phone plugged in on the far side of the couch. He listened for a moment to make sure his imprint wasn't about to come back down the stairs, but she was still in her room, either sitting or lying down and not moving much. He dialed Jared's number.
Jared, being Jared, started talking halfway through Paul's greeting. "'Sup, Paul? Did you just get off patrol? I bet doing eight hours fucking sucked."
"Yeah, it was about as exciting as watching paint dry," Paul told him. "Listen, Jared, I need a favor."
There was no hesitation. "Sure, man, what is it?" Such easy acceptance, Paul marveled. With Jared, everything was easy.
"I need you to ask Sue Clearwater something for me."
"Okay?" Jared said, sounding perplexed.
Paul explained.
After hanging up with Jared, Paul fell asleep on the couch. He hadn't meant to, but he'd obviously been more tired than he'd realized. It was too bad he wasn't like the leeches, who apparently never had to sleep.
His imprint coming down the stairs woke him up, and he was standing by the time she got to the bottom. They stared at each other wordlessly for a minute.
She'd pulled her hair back and changed out of her sweatpants and into blue jeans. She still looked tired and almost gaunt, but not like she was about to pass out. "I slept a little," she offered finally, coming to a stop in front of him. "I couldn't do that…last night."
Paul grimaced. "Yeah, that was my fault. I won't do that again."
"You never - " She broke off, looking away. "You never came back."
"I know," he said heavily. "I fucked up." He swallowed. He hated apologizing, but she deserved it. "I'm sorry."
She clutched her chest, and the pained gesture made him wince. "It's just, he's gone, and you were gone, and everything hurt. I wanted it not to, just for a little while."
"Does – seeing him - " he could barely get the words out. "Does it make you feel better?"
She stared at the floor, chewing on her lip. "In the moment, when I see him… but, afterwards, I feel even worse." She looked surprised after she said it, as if it was the first time she'd thought about it.
"I'm – I talked to someone. About the generalities," Paul rushed to add at her horrified expression. "No one knows about you. But she's going to tell me what we can do to, you know, help. Make you feel better." So you'll quit hallucinating your bloodsucking ex-boyfriend, he added silently.
"No pills," she said immediately.
"No," he agreed as if he'd never even considered that. It was a last resort, though she didn't need to know that now."But I think she can help."
She raised her eyes to his, and for once they were clear, focused on him. "Why – why are you trying to help me? Why do you even care?"
"You know why," he said, confused.
"Oh." Her voice was tiny. "Is that all?"
"No," he said, exasperated by her complete inability to understand that she was so much better than this. "Listen, I know you think you're broken, but you're not. I've seen you in Jacob's memories, how you used to be. You've been tormenting yourself for months over a decision the leech made, when you didn't do anything wrong. Whether I'd imprinted on you or not, I would still think that was a waste, you know?"
"I guess." She didn't sound completely convinced, but at that moment he caught sight of the clock on the wall behind her.
It was almost nine. "Shit, you're late for school."
She shrugged. "It doesn't really matter - not like I pay much attention in class anyway." Paul suspected that she hadn't always had such a blasé attitude about school, though. Yet another thing that fucking leech had taken from her.
"They'll call your dad to check up on you, though, won't they?" The rez high school was pretty lax, but Paul had seen enough teen movies to know that playing hooky from normal high schools wasn't that easy.
"Yeah, I guess," she said reluctantly. She sat down on the couch and pulled on her shoes. "I really don't want to deal with him coming down on me."
Paul walked over to get her backpack from where it was hanging over a dining room chair. "Why isn't he ever here? Is he working overtime?" From what little Paul knew of Chief Swan, he didn't seem the absentee father type, or even there-but-not-really-there in the way his own dad was.
A flash of pain crossed over her face, and he regretted asking. "He's been working at the station… a lot. He says it's because of the hikers who were killed, but I think he doesn't like to be around me." She smiled bitterly. "I'm not a lot of fun to be around, these days. If I ever was."
He held out the backpack so she could slip her arms through the straps, keeping his expression neutral. Did she seriously have no one supportive in her life? "He's not handling it well?"
"I think I scare him," she admitted. "He doesn't understand why I'm not just… better yet."
"You'll get there," Paul said firmly. Even if he had to drag her kicking and screaming every step of the way.
She nodded, but she didn't look convinced as she turned to open the front door. "Are you going to your school now?" she asked as he followed her outside and she locked the door behind them.
"No," he said, skipping over the part where he was a high school dropout. "I left patrol early this morning, so I'll probably go do another hour or two."
"And sleep," she said.
He blinked. "What?"
She looked at him seriously. "You need to sleep. Jake told me why you didn't come back – you took patrol all night so that the other guys didn't have to mess up their sleep cycle or make their parents worry."
She made him sound way too nice, but he didn't bother arguing the point. "I'll sleep," he found himself agreeing. It wasn't like he could deny her anything, even if he'd wanted to. "But I'll be back here when you get home."
"Watching me," she said, her lips tightening.
"Helping you," he corrected. "We're gonna get through this, together. That's what imprinting means. You've got my help, whether you want it or not."
She stepped back from him. "I have to go – second period is when they take attendance." He watched from the front steps as she climbed up into her truck.
"Hey," he said suddenly. She looked back at him. "I meant what I said earlier. I'm sorry about not coming back last night… And that we're gonna figure this out. Together."
She nodded, and her expression relaxed a little. "Okay," she said. That was all, but Paul couldn't help but feel there was something of hope in that one word.
As he returned to the forest that was feeling more like his home these days than his own damn house, he wondered if she'd fully understood what he'd meant.
They were gonna figure out her hallucinations, yeah, but he'd also been talking about their imprint bond.
It was gonna be an uphill battle, but they were gonna get there.
As always, thanks for reading.