Seven
Paul had heard the expression of being shocked feeling like being dunked in ice water, but he'd never experienced it. Until he realized, with a primal fear so raw, so intense that it took his breath away, that the leech had been coming for Bella.
Bella who was his imprint – Bella who was his gravity – Bella who mattered above all other things.
She'd been in so much danger, and he hadn't even known.
He was so fucking stupid.
"Paul?" she said tentatively, and he remembered that she was scared, too, and he wasn't protecting her.
"We need to talk to the pack. Now." He rose with a growl, and his hands were shaking. He wanted so, so badly to phase, to tear the throat from the bloodsucker who was hunting his imprint. But he couldn't go after the leech, not yet. They made easy targets up on this cliff; their two figures would stand out clearly against the sky to vision as good as the leeches had, and Bella had been unsteady enough ascending the trail. He needed to be able to catch her if she tripped on the way down.
Bella followed him back toward the trailhead, looking uncertain. "Paul, you're…angry with me," she said. "Again."
"Not you," he said, distracted. He didn't get cell phone reception this far off the main road; it would be faster to get to the road and phase, and as soon as possible. "Myself."
She stumbled over a patch of loose rocks, and he reached for her hand without thinking about it. Warmth suffused him, and he heard her sharp inhale. "Sorry," he said roughly. "But we've got to hurry."
"O…okay." Her hand in his tightened, and they made their way down the hill at as fast a walk as she could manage, sending gravel sliding down the hill behind them.
Paul could hear her heartbeat racing, and he doubted it was all from the exertion. She was frightened, as she should be. He'd had one job: keep her safe, and he kept finding new and exciting ways to fuck it up.
When they reached level earth again, only a quarter mile from the main road, Paul took a deep breath, weighing his options. Telling the pack required being apart from his imprint for a few minutes, since he couldn't risk phasing close to her when his anger was so close to the surface. Not telling the pack meant she would be vulnerable if the leech was somehow able to injure or kill him. That was an unacceptable risk.
"Stay right here for a minute," he decided. "I need to phase really quick and tell the pack." Even as a human he could smell well enough to know the leech wasn't anywhere close.
Bella's eyes were wide, her breathing still shallow from their haste. "Stay here," she repeated. "I can do that."
"You'll be fine." Paul tried to sound convincing. "I won't let anything hurt you. Worst comes to worst, I can handle a leech myself."
He wasn't entirely sure that was true; wolves fought in packs for a reason. But she didn't need to know that, and he was pretty confident he'd be able to delay a leech long enough for the rest of the pack to get there and finish it off.
"Okay," she said quietly. He started to step away, but their hands were still attached. He looked down at her hand, so pale and small in his, in surprise. She glanced up at him, and a blush broke across her cheeks.
He opened his mouth, then closed it and released her hand, feeling awkward. "Just a couple minutes," he muttered, and jogged into the trees, just far enough to be out of her sight.
Once he phased, he immediately felt Jared and Embry's presence. They were patrolling on opposite ends of the rez, their thoughts on their task.
Without stopping to warn them, Paul sent them his memory of Bella saying that the leech was after her, along with his own sense of nauseating horror that had accompanied that realization.
Through the pack mind, he could see Jared freeze mid-step, immediately doing the logical thing and imagining how he would feel if a leech were after Kim. The overwhelming fear that Jared experienced mirrored Paul's own.
Embry hadn't imprinted, but he'd spent enough time in Jared and now Paul's minds to know what it felt like, and he, too, sent back anger and fear. And a question: What do we do?
Right now she's still on the rez, so she'll be safe if the leech comes back, Paul told them. But we've got to work out a plan with Sam before I let her go home. Until then, please…
He couldn't even think the words, but the mental image of his imprint bleeding out on the ground, while the red-headed leech lapped up her blood like a fucking carrion-eater was enough.
He felt Jared and Embry recoil.
We've got this, Jared said, for once not sounding joking at all. Seriously, dude, we'll keep her safe. Okay?
Paul couldn't force himself to believe that, though. The bloodsucking bitch was fast, and he had no way of knowing how seriously his imprint would take the threat to her life. Or even how much she valued her life at all.
Feeling like he wanted to throw up again, Paul phased back to human without responding to his packmates.
As he pulled on his shorts, Paul heard the rustle of footsteps coming from the main road toward Bella, along with indistinct murmurs. He tensed and prepared to phase again, but a split second later, he heard two sets of heartbeats. Humans, he thought, relieved, and stopped walking so they could pass without him having to interact with them.
The footsteps stopped right in front of where his imprint was standing.
"Hey," a familiar, friendly voice said. "Are you okay? You're not lost, are you? It can get kind of tricky out here."
It was Zach. Zach who had been Paul's best friend for nine years until Paul had been forced to walk away from him. Zach who hated him now.
Bella's voice came, strained but polite. "I'm fine, thank you. Just waiting for my…friend." She didn't say anything more, and Paul figured she was waiting for Zach and whoever was with him to continue up the trail.
But she didn't know what a disgustingly nice person Zach was to the bone.
"We can wait with you, if you want–"
Paul didn't have time for this. Steeling himself, he took the final few steps into the clearing and faced his best friend – his former best friend, he corrected himself. A girl from the rez high school whom Paul vaguely recognized clutched Zach's hand, obviously on a date with him.
"She's fine," Paul said gruffly, barely able to make eye contact with Zach. "Come on," he told Bella. "We need to get to Sam's."
Zach's eyes narrowed as he stared back at Paul, and all the friendliness in his demeanor was gone. He took an exaggerated step to the side, completely off the path. "Oh, of course," he said sarcastically. "Don't let me get in your way, Lahote."
That hurt. It shouldn't have; so many worse things had happened to Paul that it was ridiculous that his former friend addressing him by his last name would hurt so bad.
Pain wasn't useful to him right now, if it had ever been, and so he channeled the hurt into anger instead, and his hands started to shake. "Wouldn't dream of it." It almost sounded like a growl to his ears. He shifted his stance almost unconsciously, preparing for a fight.
Zach took a step backward, looking shocked.
"Paul…" Bella said nervously. He looked down at her, remembering where they were, what he needed to do. Protect his imprint. Right.
He took her hand again and led her past Zach and his plus one, too angry to speak. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not wanting to see Zach's expression. He was pretty sure he knew what it would show (disgust fear hatred) but he clung to that scrap of uncertainty.
Bella's truck was right where she'd parked it by the road, and he waited outside the driver's side door as she climbed in. "You know where Sam and Emily live, right?" he asked tightly. She nodded. "Go straight there. I'll be with you in half an hour."
She nodded again, but she didn't start the engine. Her brows furrowed as she stared up at him. He was tall enough that even with the height of the truck cab helping her, he was still taller than her.
"What?" Paul snapped.
"You're still shaking," she said.
He glanced down at his hands and clenched them into fists. "Yeah," he said. He inhaled deeply once more, not to calm himself but to make sure there were no bloodsuckers nearby.
Satisfied that his imprint would be safe for thirty minutes without him, Paul turned and jogged back into the woods, phasing once he was in the trees.
Paul knew anger.
It was a familiar feeling for him, as fear or anxiety or depression might be for someone else.
Most of his packmates probably thought it was something recent, something that had popped up as a precursor to turning into a giant wolf. You had to be angry to phase for the first time.
But Paul's anger was older than phasing.
He didn't remember the anger hitting him until after his mom had left. Maybe that seed had always been there, and you just didn't notice it so much in a little kid. Or maybe he was who he was now because his mom had left him.
All Paul knew was that by the time it had sunk in that he had gone from having parents to having a dad and they had moved from a two-story house in Tacoma with a hot tub and a granite countertops to a falling down, two-bedroom manufactured house in La Push, he was angry most of the time.
In class he could contain it, but by recess, something would have pissed him off enough during the day that he was ready to fight.
They didn't have a playground at the reservation school; they had the forest. It wasn't hard to find a place out of sight to get into fights.
Paul hadn't been especially big before he'd become a werewolf, but he'd picked fights like he was the scariest kid in school. Boys bigger than him, boys smaller, quiet kids and loud kids. Anyone who would fight back if he punched them.
He quickly learned which boys would fight back.
They had only two rules. No fighting once a boy was on the ground. That was as much to protect their asses as anything else. Some of the kids' parents were as oblivious as Paul's own dad was, but many weren't.
The second rule was to only fight one at a time. No picking sides and starting brawls. That would have started the teachers after them in about ten seconds, no matter how far away they got from the school.
They had a system, and Paul's anger finally had direction. He hadn't been happy, hell no, but he'd had shit figured out.
Zach had fucked it all up for him.
He had been a quiet kid, one of the ones who had refused to fight Paul weeks prior when he had taunted them.
He came from a perfect nuclear family, lived in one of the largest and best-maintained houses on the rez, had two parents who loved each other dearly and a little sister who thought the sun shone out of his ass. If they'd been white they probably would have gone to church every Sunday morning and hosted barbecue cookouts on the weekends.
Zach had never admitted it outright, but Paul was pretty sure he'd told his parents about the trouble-making new kid and asked them what he should do about him.
Their answer had apparently been, "Invite him over to eat cookies and watch Pokémon."
So that's what Zach had done, and suddenly instead of staying after school to get into more fights, Paul was arguing on with Zach on their walk to his house about which Pokémon was the best and who would beat whom in a battle.
The cookies hadn't hurt, either.
Nine years of friendship was what Paul had walked away from. Nine years of a best friend who helped him with his homework and whose mom let him stay for dinner and whose dad had taught him how to throw a football.
All gone, because Paul had apparently been "gifted" with the genes to turn into a huge fucking wolf.
When Paul had run off enough of his anger to phase back to human, he pushed open Sam and Emily's front door, calmer but not any happier.
Sam, Emily, Quil and Jacob were seated in the living room along with his imprint, who looked pale and drawn, seated between Quil and Jacob on the couch across the room, her shoulders hunched in. Paul's eyes zeroed in on the small amount of space between her and Baby Alpha, and Jacob scooted further against the sofa arm, scowling at him.
"Everything okay?" Sam asked Paul.
He grunted. "Nothing recent from the leech. But we've got to figure something out, Sam. I know she's not part of the tribe, but you've got to–"
Sam raised a hand, and Paul cut off. "She's pack now, Paul. We protect our own."
Bella twitched and raised a shaky hand to swipe her hair back.
"What?" Paul asked her. No one else had glanced at her, but then again, she wasn't their imprint.
She looked startled that he had addressed her. "Nothing."
He let it go, but he filed it away to ask her about later. It felt important, no matter what she said. He turned back to Sam. "The issue is protecting her while she's not on the rez."
Sam tapped his fingers along the coffee table. "She's safe at school, I think. As safe as she can be. It's driving and being at her house that are the big risks."
"She should come over here," Emily said immediately, turning her worried look on Bella. "You can tell your dad you're coming over to hang out with me in the evenings, Bella." Her smile split the long scars on her cheek. "We can watch old movies and bake cookies."
To Paul's surprise, the faintest shimmer of an echoing smile flickered on Bella's face before fear and worry shut down her expression again. "My dad," she said urgently. "I'll do whatever I need to do, but I can't leave Charlie unprotected."
"Is it likely that she would go after your father?" Sam asked her.
Bella bit her lip. "She's…the Cullens killed her mate. Not…not Edward, but I think she must blame him for it if she's here in Forks. She thinks that he–" She swallowed and clutched her chest. "She's wrong, obviously, but she must think she's getting a mate for a mate. Nothing else will matter to her."
Paul bit back a growl at hearing the leech's name linked with his imprint's "mate", even if she denied that claim.
Sam frowned. "She's been…unpredictable in the past, when we've been chasing her. No patterns we could ever see. And fast. We'll think we've trapped her, then she's suddenly gone."
"That could be her gift," Bella said. "Speed, or unpredictability, or being hard to catch, or something like that."
Sam nodded slowly. "I'd forgotten that some of them have gifts. I'm glad we have you to tell us about them."
A spasm crossed Bella's face, but she nodded. "I don't want anyone getting hurt because of me," she said softly.
"If anyone gets hurt, it won't be your fault," Paul said firmly, and all eyes turned to him, like they'd forgotten he was there. He rolled her eyes at their surprised looks. "She's got enough going on, she doesn't need to feel like we're blaming her because an insane leech is after her."
He imagined ripping into the leech that was hunting his imprint, biting off of what passed for flesh for them, imagined the bloodsucker's body going up like gasoline on a bonfire. It would feel so good.
"It won't be," Sam agreed. "Paul, now that we know what she's after, I'll widen your patrols in the evenings when Bella's at home so that you're in scent distance of her house. And I'll cover for you if you can't be there for some reason. We'll keep her safe until we can take down the leech."
"Alright," Paul said in relief. He hadn't doubted that Sam would protect Bella, really, but he was still worried that she wouldn't be as high of a priority to him as the tribe was. He would just have to be especially vigilant in looking after her, and get her on the rez as often as possible.
He rubbed his hands together, still tense from earlier and unwilling to let his imprint leave so soon. "So are we done, then?" he asked Sam, who had turned back to Emily.
Sam looked up again. "Yeah, everyone can go," he said. "Quil, go phase and let Jared and Embry know what we've decided. Paul, I'll see you at midnight."
Paul grunted, looking at his imprint, still way too far away from him across the room. Her head was down, her long hair shielding her face, and she was saying something to Baby Alpha that Paul couldn't quite hear over the shifting and talking in the room.
Jacob looked guilty, but he shook his head and rose from the couch, leaving Bella behind as he walked out the front door. Paul barely restrained himself from snapping at Jacob's back, though he doubted Baby Alpha was capable of doing anything that would intentionally hurt Bella.
He narrowed his eyes at her bowed head, and a moment later she looked up, immediately into his eyes, as if she could feel him staring.
He tilted his head toward the front door. "Come on." It was as much a question as he could make it. She still didn't seem to realize that she was the one who held the power between the two of them, and until she figured it out, he wasn't going to give her more control than he had to.
She followed him out the door, and her presence by his side as they walked calmed him enough that most of his anger faded into his normal background level.
It seemed to have the reverse impact on her, though. They had only been walking along the dirt road for a few minutes when she turned on him, her expression annoyed. "You left me!"
"I made sure you were safe first," he said immediately, defensively. And he had. With leeches around, there was no safer place for her to be than on territory protected by an active wolf pack.
"That's not the point. I–" She cut off, glaring at him like he was trying to trick her into saying something.
"What?"
"I wanted you there."
A warm burst of pleasure burst in Paul's chest, but he ignored it, focusing instead on his anger, which was bubbling up again. "It looked like you were doing a pretty good job of making do with Baby Alpha. Maybe if you'd stared at him a little harder, he'd have imprinted on you and you could have him."
He hadn't realized how jealous he was until he started talking. He had known she would always prefer Jacob Black, would probably always wish it had been her friend who'd imprinted on her. Paul had thought he'd accepted that.
Apparently not as well as he'd hoped.
Bella's eyes widened. "Jake's my best friend, Paul! I've even known Quil longer than I've known you. I'm allowed to talk to them!"
"You're allowed to do whatever you want!" Paul finally shouted, stopping in the middle of the road.
She blinked up at him. "What?"
"You're allowed to do whatever the fuck you want, with whoever the fuck you want. How the fuck hard is that to understand? I don't even know why you're still standing out here with me. Go be with whoever you'd rather be with."
She got every choice in the world and he got nothing, and in that moment he hated her for that almost as much as he loved her.
Before he could think better of it, he stripped off his shorts and phased, right there in the middle of the empty road and fuck anyone who happened to be hiding in the trees watching them. The simplicity of the wolf's mind would give him peace from his stupid obsession with his stupid imprint.
Bella stood unmoving, watching him with wide eyes. She didn't seem scared, though Paul doubted there was much scarier than seeing an angry six-and-a-half foot tall guy turn into an angry overgrown wolf less than three feet away from you. Pissed off as he was, Paul couldn't help but be pleased that she seemed to recognize, consciously or unconsciously, that he wasn't a danger to her.
She bent down to pick up his khaki shorts where he'd thrown them on the ground, and her hair parted at her neck as she knelt, revealing the smooth white skin of the nape of her neck. She looked so vulnerable, and Paul knew he couldn't walk away from her, now or ever.
"I came out here to be with you," she said quietly to the packed ground. "Emily said I could come over whenever I wanted, and Jake or even Quil would probably hang out with me if I asked them to. But you left me, Paul, and now you're mad that I won't leave you? That's not fair."
In a rush, Paul's anger was gone, and he knew she was right. He suspected that, her decisions related to the leeches excepted, she was usually right. He was being an even bigger dumbass than usual.
He took a deliberate step forward, waiting for her to flinch or step back, but she kept her eyes on him evenly.
Slowly, so that she could see he was in control, he butted his head against her side, between her arm and her hip.
It was the closest he could get to an apology in wolf form, and likely closer than he could get ever as a stupid male human teenager, but she seemed to understand. She squeezed the fur at his neck briefly and then released it. "I mean, you said we're in this together, right?"
He made a whining noise in his throat that she seemed to take as agreement.
Her hand resting on his head, Paul walked at his imprint's side, her perpetual guardian, as she continued down the road.