Chapter 11:
Bella's POV:
I woke up sweating again. I nuzzled against Jacob's neck, and I heard him snore lightly. And I opened and turned my head to look outside, and I saw that it was grey and cloudy. And I remebered what we had to do today. I sucked in a deep breath. "Bella..." Jake said, groggily. I turned my had back to him. I gave him a peck on the lips.
"Morning Jake." I said, softly. "Come on, we have to start getting ready, were leaving soon." I said, putting my hand on his cheek. He put his hand over mine.
"Ok..." He said, sleepily. We got up and I saw him look outside. "You should dress warmer for the way up and tonight. There's going to be a storm." He said turning around. He just put on shorts and his running shoes. I took the outfit Alice had picket out for me earlier, and I changed. I went to the bathroom with Jake to wash my face and brush my teeth and hair. And then we left to the garage to wait for Alice. When she got there, she asked if she could speak with me alone. So Jacob just went inside to grab something to eat quickly.
"Bella?" Alice asked in a sad voice, shifting over and curling up against my side. Her voice sounded so miserable that I wrapped my arms around her shoulders in comfort.
"What's wrong, Alice?"
"Don't you love me?" She asked, in that same sad tone.
"Of course I do. You know that." She grimaced. "What?" I demanded.
"How much do you love me, Bella?"
"Why?" She stared at me with pleading eyes, her long black eyebrows slanting up in the middle and pulling together, her lips trembling at the corners. It was a heart-breaking expression.
"Please, please, please." She whispered. "Please, Bella, please - if you really love me... please let me do your wedding."
"Aw, Alice!" I groaned, pulling away and standing up. "No! Don't do this to me."
"If you really, truly love me, Bella." I folded my arms across my chest.
"That is so unfair."
"I'll bet Jacob would like it." I groaned.
"I'd rather face the newborns alone."
"I'll owe you for a decade."
"You'd owe me for a century!" Her eyes glowed. "Is that a yes?"
"No! I don't want to do this!"
"You won't have to do anything but walk a few years and then repeat after the minister."
"Ugh! Ugh, ugh!"
"Please?" She started bouncing in place. "Please, please, please, please, please?"
"I'll never, never ever forgive you for this, Alice."
"Yay!" She squealed, clapping her hands together. Jake came back downstairs eating an apple. I looked at him miserable, and he looked at me and Alice confused. "I get to do your wedding!" She squealed, jumping around. Jacob's jaw dropped, and it looked like he almost dropped his apple. She continued giggling. And he walked over and gave me a comforting hug. I breathed deeply, inhaling his scent. "Ok, I have to go to the clearing now, you guys can go meet Edward now, bye." She said, rushed, coming over and giving me a hug, and she was so happy, that she even gave Jacob a hug, and after she left, I had to laugh a little, and he groaned. Then we started walking to the meeting place. We saw him waiting by a tree and we walked over.
"Hi Edward." I greeted him when we got closer.
"Hi Bella."
"Where do I take her?" Edward pulled a map from a side pocket on a pack and offered it to him. Jacob unfolded it.
"We're here now." Edward said, reaching over to touch the right spot. Jacob recoiled from his hand automatically, and then steadied himself. Edward somehow didn't notice. "And you're taking her up here." Edward continued, tracing a serpentine pattern around the elevation lines on the paper. "Roughly nine miles." Jacob nodded once. "When you're about a mile away, you should cross my path. That will lead you in. Do you need the map?"
"No, thanks. I know this area pretty well. I think I know where I'm going." Edward seemed to have to work harder than Jacob to keep the tone polite.
"I'll take the longer route." Edward said, fading into the trees, heading in the opposite direction. As soon as he was gone, Jacob turned cheerful.
"Ready to go?" He asked, with a big grin. I rolled my eyes.
"Same old, same old. Bunch of vampires trying to kill me."
"Yeah." He agreed. "The usual."
"The usual." He laughed.
"Well." He said. "Let's get going." He bent down and swept his arm behind my knees, knocking them out from under me. His other arm caught me before my head hit the ground.
"Jerk." I muttered. Jacob chuckled, already running through the trees. He kept a steady pace, a brisk jog that a fit human could keep up with... across a level plane... if they weren't burdened with a hundred-plus pounds as he was. "You don't have to run. You'll get tired."
"Running doesn't make me tired." He said. His breathing was even. "Besides, it will be colder soon. I hope he gets the camp set up before we get there." I tapped my finger against his shoulder.
"It doesn't matter... I have you." He smiled. The pathless way he took began to climb more and more steeply, but it didn't slow him down. He leapt easily from rock to rock, not seeming to need his hands at all, with his warm arms wrapped tightly around me. There was just the sound of his measured breathing and the wind roaring high above us in the treetops. A cliff face rose sheer beside is, bare, rough gray stone. We followed the base as it curved upward out of the forest.
"We're not far now, I can smell him." I sighed.
"There's really nothing at all I can say to make you stay is there?"
"Sam's calling the shots, not me." That reminded me.
"Alice told me something the other day... about you." He bristled.
"It's probably a lie."
"Oh, really? You aren't second in command of the pack, then?" He blinked, his face going blank with surprise.
"Oh. That."
"How come you never told me that?"
"It's no big thing."
"It is. So, how does that work? How did Sam end up as the Alpha, and you as the... the Beta?" Jacob chuckled at my invented term.
"Sam was the first, the oldest. It made sense for him to take charge." I frowned.
"But should't Jared or Paul be second, then? They were the next to change."
"Well... it's hard to explain." Jacob said, evasively.
"Try." He sighed.
"It's more about the lineage, you know?" I remembered something Jacob had told me a long time ago.
"Didn't you say that Ephraim Black was the last chief the Quileutes had?"
"Yeah, that right. Because he was the Alpha. Did you know that, technically, Sam's the chief of the whole tribe now?" He laughed. "Crazy traditions." I thought about that for a second, trying to make all the pieces fit.
"But you also said that people listened to your dad more than anyone else on the council, because he was Ephraim's grandson?"
"What about it?"
"Well, if it's about the lineage... shouldn't you be the chief, then?" Jacob didn't answer me. He started into the darkening forest, as if he suddenly needed to concentrate on where he was going. "Jake?"
"No. That's Sam's job." He kept his eyes on our pathless course.
"Why? His great-granddad was Levi Uley, right? Was Levi and Alpha, too?"
"There's only one Alpha." He answered, automatically.
"So what was Levi?"
"Sort of a Beta, I guess." he snorted at my term. "Like me."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"It doesn't matter."
"I just want to understand." Jacob finally met my confused gaze, and then sighed.
"Yeah. I was supposed to be the Alpha." My eyebrows pulled together.
"Sam didn't want to step down?"
"Hardly. I didn't want to step up."
"Why not?"
"I wasn't ready when he offered, and so it's just stayed the same ever since."
"Chief Jacob Ephraim Black" I whispered, smiling at the away the words sounded together. He rolled his eyes. Just then, the wind shook more fierily through the trees around us, and it felt like it was blowing straight off a glacier. The sharp sound of wood cracking echoed off the mountain. Though the light was vanishing as the grisly could covered the sky, I could still see the little white specks that fluttered past us. Jacob stepped up the pace, keeping his eyes on the ground now as he felt out sprinted. I curled against his chest, recoiling from the cold snow. It was only minutes later that he dashed around to the lee side of the stoney peak and we could see the little tent nestled around us, but the wind was too dire to let them settle anywhere. Edward looked up and flashed by our side. Jacob cringed, and then set me on my feet. Then he pulled me closer to his side, then we started walking towards the tent, past Edward.
"Where are you going?"
"Getting her inside. This is going to be bad. Is that tent secure?"
"I all but welded it to the rock."
"Good." Jacob looked up at the sky - now black with the storm, sprinkled with the swirling bits of snow. His nose still flared. "After, I'm going to change." he said. "I want to know whats going on back home." Be brought me to the tent, and Edward came in too. He got me in the sleeping bag, then turned towards Edward. "When she gets cold, get a hold of me, and I'll come right away. And if you so much as even move towards her without her consent... I will rip you to shreds." He growled, and Edward looked down, as if Jacob's words were an order for a wolf, from an Alpha, I smirked. And he turned around, and bent down, ad kissed me quickly. "Love you." He whispered.
"Love you too." And then he left. The wind shook the tent again, and I shook with it. The temperature was dropping. I could feel it through the down bag, through my jacket. I was fully dressed, my hiking boots still laced into place. It didn't make any difference. How could it be so cold? How could it keep getting colder? It had to bottom out sometime, didn't it? "W-w-w-w-w-what t-t-t-t-time is it?" I forced the words through my rattling teeth.
"Two." Edward answered. Edward sat as far from me as possible in the cramped space, afraid to even breathe on me because of Jacob's warning. The wind rocked the tent roughly, and I shuddered in harmony with it. A sudden howl ripped through the roar of the wind. Edward scowled. I sighed in relief. "Why don't you go fetch a space heater or something?" Edward muttered. Jacob answered, in his human voice startling me.
"Go fetch a space heater." He grumbled. "I'm not a ." I heard the sound of the zipper around the tent door pulling swiftly down. Jacob slid through the smallest opening he could manage, while the arctic air flowed in around him, a few flecks of snow falling to the floor of the tent. I shivered so hard it was a convulsion.
"I don't like this." Edward hissed as Jake zipped the tent door shut.
"Why didn't you call me?" He demanded, ignoring Edwards complaints. As usual, when he'd been running around as a wolf, he'd only thrown on the bare essentials - just a pair of shorts, no shirt, no jacket.
"J-J-J-J-Jake, you'll f-f-f-freez-z-z-ze." I tried to say.
"Not me." He said, cheerfully. "I run a at toasty one-oh-eight point nine these days. I'll have you sweating in no time." Edward snarled, but Jacob didn't even look at him. Instead, he crawled to my side and started unzipping my sleeping bag. Edward's hand was suddenly hard on his shoulder, restraining snow white against the dark skin. Jacob's jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring, his body recoiling from the cold touch. The long muscles in his arms flexed automatically. "Get your hand off me." He growled through his teeth.
"Keep your hands off of her." Edward answered blackly.
"C-Cut it out E-E-E-Edwar-r-r-rd." Zipping the sleeping bag open farther, he crammed his body into the nonexistent space, forcing the zipper up behind himself. He was so warm. His arms constricted around me, holding me snugly against his bare chest. The heat was irresistible, like air after being underwater for too long. He breathed in sharply when I pressed my icy fingers eagerly against his skin.
"Your freezing Bella." He whispered, quietly.
"S-s-s-s-sorry." I stuttered.
"Don't worry honey. Try to relax." He suggested as another shiver rippled through me violently. "You'll be warm in a minute. You'd warm up faster if you took your clothes off." Edward growled sharply. I blushed. The shuddering slowed, became bearable. "There." Jacob said, pleased. "Feeling better?" I was finally able to speak clearly.
"Yes."
"Your lips are still blue." He mused. "Want me to warm those up for you, too?" Edward sighed heavily. I giggled. Then he lowered his head and kissed me, and within a few seconds, my lips felt completely arm. I sighed. Then Edward coughed purposely. And I hid my face between Jacob's shoulder and blanket, and blushed a deep shade of red, remembering that Edward was there. "You could leave, you know - give us a little privacy." Jacob said. And Edward to up in one swift movement.
"My pleasure." He answered, coldly. And then left, and we were alone. It was already warm and snug inside the sleeping bag. Jacob's body heat seemed to radiate from every side - maybe because there was so much of him. I kicked my boots off, and pushed my toes against his legs. He breathed in sharply again, and then leaned his head down to press his hot cheek against my numb ear, and I pressed my lips to his shoulder. Then I took off a few layers... and I was left in shorts and my lace bra. He ran his ran over my back, pressing my body even closer to his. I noticed that Jacob's skin had a woodsy, musky scent - it fit the setting, here in the middle of the forest. It was nice. I wondered if the Quileutes and the Cullens weren't just playing up that while odor issue because of their prejudices. The storm howled like an animal attacking the tent, but it didn't worry me now. Jacob was out of the cold, and so was I. Plus, I was simply too exhausted to worry about anything - tired from just staying awake so late, and aching from the muscle spasms, which Jake was lightly messaging me, and it felt good. My body relaxed into his slowly as I thawed, piece by frozen piece, and then turned limp. As the silence lengthened, my eyelids drooped and shut, and my breathing grew slower, more even.
"That's right, honey, go to sleep." Jacob whispered, kissing the side of my forehead. I sighed, content, already half-unconscious. It was quiet then, inside at least. Outside, the wind shrieked insanely through the trees. The shimmying of the tent made it hard to sleep. The poles would suddenly jerk and quiver, pulling me back from the edge of unconsciousness each time I was close to slipping under. I felt so bad for Seth, who was stuck outside in the snow. The wind ripped around the tent, shaking it like an an earthquake. Jacob's arms tightened around me protectively, as my arms tightened on him protectively, we both smiled and fell asleep.