Wolves
A/N for 2018-09-12: Much gratitude for everyone's responses to this story so far. Guest reviewers: Some of the comments you folks leave are downright insightful and helpful. Would love to chat more - and we could if you had accounts!
Now I'm going to go bury my head in my students' papers.
~ Erin (AT FlamingMapleWrites on FB)
"It isn't me you need to be watching for," Edward growled, confronting the thoughts that had waited for him in the woods.
What were you doing with her? One particularly angry mind growled.
"Keeping her safe," Edward replied levelly. Recognizing the distinct tenor of the thoughts, he added, "unlike you."
There was an audible growl now.
And what's your interest in her? The next mind posed. Sam's.
"None of your business," he growled back.
It's entirely our business, Cullen, Sam thought at him. She's one of ours. The memories that flickered showed Edward just how much.
He raised his eyebrows. "I have no interest in violating the treaty."
That wasn't what I asked, Sam retorted.
"If you can't be bothered to keep her from human harm, then don't question those who do."
Jacob's mind snorted, but there was a visceral line of jealous thinking that went along with this. Sam was more pragmatic, his sphere of concern beyond the one Bella had found herself so recently ensnared in.
Edward had no interest in dignifying Jacob's juvenile pettiness. He directed his comments to Sam, who could be relied upon to turn to business, even if he was surly about it. "You've scented them, yes?"
Friends of yours? Sam asked, the emphasis on friends distinctly snide.
"No. We'll warn them off if we can, but you should careful."
Then stop wasting our time, hovering at the line! Jacob barked.
Sam ordered him to be quiet, and compliance came with a disgruntled whine. We'll keep our own safe, Cullen. His mind thought of Bella, and what he imagined was Edward's real interest in her.
Edward was glad that Sam couldn't read his mind. His gruesome and grisly speculation wasn't so far from the truth. That monster still screamed for her, but he heard it less.
"She can make her own choices," Edward said. "I mean her no harm."
And your kind can be counted on for so much good, Sam thought sarcastically.
Edward knew the burden their presence placed on them. The particular one Sam carried.
He ignored the taunt. "If you object to the protection I offer the girl, then provide it yourself." He knew they couldn't. Was secretly glad he could hoard those opportunities himself.
They knew they couldn't either, and Jacob's frustration bubbled under Sam's ordered gag.
"Do your jobs, and leave us in peace to do what good we can," Edward finished with.
There was a vague, but disgruntled acknowledgement.
Edward nodded, knowing it seen, and turned to make his reluctant way home.
When Alice had paused, her sudden thoughts flickering with Bella's face, he hadn't even waited to hear her words, simply grabbing his keys up and bolting for the garage. They'd spoken on the phone as he drove, she reassuring him he'd make it in time, but then growing anxious with what else she saw.
It was true, that he could track Bella's phone. If he'd had the right equipment. She hadn't questioned the means of his finding her though, at least not openly.
So many layers to her.
Alice had seen her at the bookstore, and so he, like Bella, had found first one, then the other, following the breadcrumbs of her smell over the covers of novels and texts, and then the streets.
On impulse, he'd bought the titles she'd touched.
They were in the trunk of his car. Sequestered offerings he longed to make to her at the right time. When she knew.
Did she know?
It was so frustrating, the silence of her mind.
Alice might know. But she might not tell him, either.
They were on the most strained of terms. As he was with Rose. Risking us again? She hissed silently, hearing him arrive.
Inside, the family gathering was impossible to avoid.
"Let's discuss this together," Carlisle called.
"Tracking her cell phone, Edward?" Rose sneered. "How plausible."
Carlisle ignored the jibe. He was preoccupied with worry for Edward, the family, and Bella.
Edward's feelings for Bella were an open secret: known, but not yet discussed. Rose was plainly done with the pretense.
There had been near revolt when he'd sent Bella back to Forks. Too close to home.
And just out of their reach.
It'd driven Rose nuts.
He'd smiled at that. It was a small measure against the weight of his loss, not himself being able to see Bella at will.
Carlisle had made rare use of his authority, quelling the arguments that had erupted.
"We do owe her, Rose," he'd said softly. "As much as it might not be her life, we owe her Charlie's. We're responsible." He hadn't lowered his physical gaze, but his mental one was thick with guilt. "Our warning to the nomads was inadequate. We could have spared her...much."
Just how much, he didn't say. The obscuring of his thoughts was well practised, but not enough to spare Edward all the things he'd seen with Bella.
Rose remained resentful and surly. She didn't want to leave. Not yet. They had, at best, a few more years here, if people didn't start asking questions.
If.
Seated around the dining table, Edward sat with folded arms. He expected a verbal assault, and a worse one, mentally.
Alice showed him her persistent vision, and he gritted his teeth. Then she showed him the one he tolerated better: of Bella, and Alice, together—human, and vampire, as friends. She actively resented Edward's refusal to introduce them.
"How you feel for Bella is no secret, Edward. I wish we could simply be happy for you finding your mate, because clearly, she is that." He looked around the table, observing the mixed reactions there. "But we all face the...complexity this presents."
"That you've made worse," Rose muttered.
"She's safe," Edward growled.
"Where we can't get to her if she does decide to blab," Rose hissed, "let alone see what's coming."
"Does she know yet?" Carlisle asked Edward. "Beyond what she's suspected?"
"She's close, but I'm not sure."
Carlisle nodded. "She's safe to speak on the reserve." He didn't need to say where she wasn't safe to talk. HIs inner unease was more visible to Edward now.
"No," he said, "I haven't told her how I feel."
Rose huffed openly in frustration.
"It cements our safety, Edward, the sooner that mutual bond is made."
He didn't need to be told this.
And it won't help if you accidently kill her, Rose snorted silently.
Carlisle thoughts were becoming more grim. "She's...been through a great deal."
Around the table, the other family members' thoughts rippled uncomfortably at this understatement.
"I'm concerned she's not stable," Carlisle concluded aloud. "If you're sure of your course, Edward, then we need to do everything we can towards it. That means helping her." Here he looked at Rose.
"Are you serious?" she asked.
Carlisle's voice was very soft. "I'd think you'd be uniquely qualified to offer her some assistance."
Rose hissed in a breath, standing, and walking away. If she'd been human, her face would have been a blisteringly angry red.
Emmett winced, looking at Carlisle, and then letting his eyes follow Rose's path away from the table.
She'd been insulted by the comparison.
"Perhaps help from other quarters," Esme suggested to her husband. "Human ones might be a place to start."
Carlisle was remembering the last, fractured conversation he'd had with Bella.
Edward was simultaneously trying not to listen, and yet found himself pulled by the powerful compulsion to absorb every piece of it.
She'd cracked open in tears, blurting out some of what haunted her still, then just as quickly sealed it all up, refusing to say more. Refusing help.
"She's resilient," Carlisle concluded. "But there's a limit to that for everyone. Help would be better sooner."
Edward set his mind to all the possible ways he could squire her to such assistance, heartened by Alice's tracing of each decision, illuminating these spidery strands with the whole of her gift.
"Thank you," he whispered.
You're welcome. Maybe. But first, you need to introduce us.
He smiled at her persistence. "Soon," he promised her. "Soon."
But first, he would help Bella.
- 0 -
She hadn't realized she'd been screaming until the sound stopped.
There'd been a rattling, and then a sudden splintering when the door had smashed open. Jacob was standing at the edge of her bed, face taut and stricken, the tell-tale clink of a belt-buckle in his hands, now at the waist of his shorts. "Bella?" he asked.
She needed no other warning.
She was up and gone, the speed of her steps a testament to the fear that owned her back, her breathing, and the rigidity of her jaw.
Her bare feet pounded into the soft ground, meeting small twigs and stones, but mostly wanting the air between her strides and the dark wetness. Pivoting, she turned to curve around the house and head for the woods, where she'd have a chance to hide.
Jacob's more efficient breathing and gait were closing in behind her.
There was a frightened sob that told her the panic was gaining traction.
Just past the treeline, Jacob reached her, his long arms a tight and constraining circle.
She fought him, shrieking and screaming, futile kicks not reaching anything.
Then low and menacing growls reached her, bubbling up from where her feet finally rested on the ground. They made her bones vibrate.
She stopped fighting, letting her eyes sweep up with the sound, following the trajectory of giant paws, planted impossibly deep in the needly carpet of the forest floor. These were attached to legs—several sets—and then to wolfy bodies whose size was beyond what reality allowed.
Consciousness deserted her, and the last thing she felt were Jacob's tightening limbs against her loosening form.
When she woke up, she was on the Black's small couch. Jacob was sitting in the chair opposite, his leg jiggling with nerves, eyebrows flexed deep in worry.
She gasped. "Wolves—there are—"
"Wolves. Yes."
She hadn't expected to have this confirmed.
She thought of the book she'd been reading before bed.
"I thought someone was hurting you, Bella. That's why I came in to check." He sounded embarrassed. Like he'd made a mistake. "You scream really loud when you have nightmares. Apparently."
She nodded, not particularly caring about how loud she screamed, her mind preoccupied with what she'd seen. "Why are there giant wolves in the forest?"
"Why did you run when I came in?"
"You had a belt, Jacob." Her voice quavered. Her glance flicked towards it, now done up. Still. She sat up, getting ready, if she needed to.
"I was just doing up my shorts, Bella."
"Why were they off?"
He blushed.
It made him look very young.
"I don't always sleep with clothes."
"Oh," she said, making her shoulders relax a bit. Her logical mind clambered over her primal one. He thought she'd been in trouble, that someone was hurting her. He'd come to help her. Nothing more. She had been screaming, she knew. There was nothing untoward here.
Just the giant wolves.
"Are the wolves still there?" She looked towards the forest. "My God, they're huge—they—"
"Protect us," Jacob said, lips now devoid of any smile, or embarrassment. "It's good that they're here."
Bella stared, then swallowed, thinking of the contents of the book. Of Edward. Of his father. Jacob had seen the wolves too. She hadn't been imagining things. And he said they protected them...from…
"What do they protect us from?"
"The cold ones," he answered, without hesitation.
The cold ones.
Like Edward.
Her breathing sped up again, and her eyebrows slid into a v-shape. "The Cullens—"
"Are not welcome here." It was a low growl from his throat.
"Are they—are they the cold ones?"
Silence. Jacob's eyes did not travel from her face. After a moment, he said, "it's late. We have school tomorrow. Should get back to sleep." Then he frowned, legs shifting slightly. "Can I ask you something?"
"OK." Her jaw was still tight. They were alone, as far as she could tell. She wasn't sure where Billy was.
"Did you think I was going to hurt you? When I came in?"
There was enough of her thinking self present to know he meant well, but she still couldn't make herself nod.
"I would never hurt you, Bella."
He was a man. He had the means to. She'd had a man's ressurances before.
And the most profound of disappointments too.
"OK," he said, seeing her silence persist. "I'll, um, fix your door tomorrow. My room locks. Do you want to sleep there?"
She nodded. Eagerly.
Billy had warned her he'd be washing bedding that day. She'd come home to a neatly made bed, the corners folded and tucked. That familiar lump in the throat had presented itself at the sight of Billy's care. Jacob's bed was still in this pristine state.
Not slept in.
What had he been doing?
She let herself speculate as to the reasons, but then stopped, trying to not exactly calm her body, but more succumb to the exhaustion panic always seemed to carry with it. The remainder of her night's sleep was fitful, and full of confused horrors she could not make coalesce into sense.
DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.