Chapter 4: A Mother's Pain

Nessie's POV

It had been years. Seventeen very long and incredibly painful years that we'd been searching for our daughter. Our sweet, precious baby girl. Our little Carlie. Just thinking about her was enough to make me cry.

Our little Carlie Black has been a complete miracle. Grandpa Carlisle had told Jacob and I that we mostly likely would never be able to have children. With me being half vampire-half human and Jacob a shifter our genes just wouldn't be able to mix and create a new life. Jacob and I accepted that. We would be happy just the two of us.

So when I got pregnant it came as a complete shock to all of us. A very extremely happy emotional shock. Jacob was completely over the moon. I couldn't think of a time I saw him happier than when I told him we were going to have a baby. Except for the day I gave birth to our daughter. Jacob has insisted on naming her Carlie. He said and I quote "your middle name is so beautiful that it should be our daughter's first name," and that's how Carlie Black came to be.

I remember the first time Jacob held her. Our daughter was so small and helpless looking that he was actually afraid that he would break her. From that moment our baby was a daddy's girl. Those two were impossible to separate for long. I tried not to feel offended when her first word was "dada," instead of the usual "mama,"

We had never been so happy. The rest of the pack were having babies around the same time as well. Leah never imprinted on anyone but she meet a guy named Johnathan and fell in love with him the usual way. Together they had a son named Ethan.

Seth imprinted and married a girl named Lisa. Together they had two kids. A girl named Erica and a little over a year later a boy named Michael. Seth loved his kids to death. According to Jacob he had "grown from a goofy lovable kid to a goofy lovable father," and I believed it when I saw him with his kids.

Sam and Emily also started having kids around that time. They had a son that they named Marty because Back To The Future was Emily's favorite movie.

Embry had imprinted on a girl that moved to the reservation. Her name was Jessica. Together they also got married and had a son named Alex.

Paul and Rachel were also starting a family around that time. They had a son named that they named Jason. Paul still had problems with his temper that he started taking even more seriously after the birth of his son. He still got upset easily at times but Rachel knew how to keep him in check.

It seemed like everyone in the pack were getting married and having babies at the same time. Even grandpa Charlie and Sue surprised us with the news that they were having a baby of their own. Together they had a son named Charlie Swan Jr.

Overall it was a very happy time for the pack, the whole Quileute tribe, and my family. Nothing could ever shake or break that happiness. Or so we thought.

I could still remember that night with chilling detail. I was out hunting with my family that night. I had left Carlie with Jacob a few hours earlier when Jacob called me in sheer panic. I felt my heart stop beating when he said "Carlie is gone. I can't find her anywhere,"

My one year old daughter was missing. When I told my family we all went home as fast as we could. We were even more shocked to discover that it wasn't just Carlie missing. Leah, Seth, Sam, Paul, and even grandpa Charlie's baby. All gone. All of them missing.

We searched all of Forks, the reservation, and Port Angeles. They were missing. Someone had managed to snatch a bunch of babies and toddlers and disappeared without a trace. We searched and searched and searched to no avail.

Hours turned to days, days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and months turned to years. We never found them.

Jacob never stopped blaming himself for our daughter's disappearance no matter how many times I told him that it wasn't his fault. He always said "If I wouldn't have fallen asleep I could have saved her. I could have killed that monster before he laid a hand on her,"

I tried to hide my pain from him so he wouldn't feel more guilty that he already did. Of course I failed. I could never hide anything from him. He always saw right through me. Then he felt even worse when he realized I was trying to hide my pain for his benefit.

We never stopped looking though. We never stopped searching. Until the unexpected happened. As a family we decided to give our old friends the Denalis a visit.

Grandpa Carlisle came back from hunting in shock. Telling us that he'd run into a wolf. A huge oversized wolf. A member of the Quileute tribe type of wolf. Jacob went out later that night to see if he could find that wolf. He found our daughter and the rest of the pack's missing children gathered at a McDonald's.

Our daughter. I couldn't believe it! She was alive! She was here! They were all here!

She was literally here in front of me right now. I wanted to run to her and hug her. To never let her go again. I couldn't do that though. Not just yet.

"What are you talking about?" she asked Tanya Denali. "You, Kate, Elezar, Carmen, and Garrett have been avoiding us all week and now you're pretending like you don't even know us. Why?"

My eyes instantly went to Tanya who looked very nervous and scared all of a sudden. She didn't say anything. I was getting angrier by the second. The Denalis has known what happened years ago. They knew we were looking for Carlie and all the other pack's children. They knew...

Jacob was shaking. A sure sign that he was about to lose it. I put my hand on his arm because that usually calmed him down. It didn't work this time.

"Carlie, Ethan. I'm sorry but I think it's best if you all leave right now,"

"Start explaining what's going on right now Tanya," grandpa Carlisle said as calmly as he could.

"I-I-"

"Spit it out!" mom shouted. "You know where my granddaughter was this whole time! Why didn't you say anything?!"

"Because we didn't know-I mean we weren't sure-"

"What do you mean you weren't sure?!" I screamed. "You know what the wolves smell like! You would know these were our kids the moment you crossed their scent,"

"We weren't sure-"

"That's bullshit!" Jacob screamed.

"When we moved here they weren't wolves yet,"

"So why have you been 'avoiding them all week' as Carlie asked and why were you pretending that you didn't know them?!" I was trying to keep my anger in check but was failing. "Did you not want us to find them?!"

"It's not that simple. Yes we erased their scent from our house and yes we've-"

Tanya never got a chance to finish that sentence. My husband exploded into a wolf and went straight for her throat.

Carlie's POV

"That was really odd. Why'd she pretend that she didn't know us?" I asked Ethan.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? It was really weird though,"

"Yeah,"

"I think we need to tell the others about what just happened,"

I nodded my head in agreement.

It wasn't until later that we were able to tell everyone what happened. We were all in our wolf forms discussing it and trying to understand what it could possibly mean. I couldn't shake the strange feeling that the Denalis were hiding something. I mean why pretend not to know us?

"It doesn't make any sense," Charlie agreed.

We all heard a noise in the distance that made us freeze. It was the sound of another wolf howling. It was too loud to be a howl from a regular wolf.

"Let's go see," Charlie said.

We ran off in the direction of the wolf's howling. I skidded to a halt when I saw a wolf larger than any of us pacing in the distance. He had the exact same fur color as my son and I. He was easily the biggest wolf out of all of us. He paced back and forth angrily. Completely unaware of us. I stood over Noah and Chloe protectively.

"I wonder why we can't hear his thoughts?" I said.

"Who knows?" Charlie answered. "Our kind. What we are. It's all still a complete mystery to me. There's still so much we don't know,"

"I say we chase it off," Jason suggested.

"No. We don't know if he's a threat or not. It's best just to leave him alone,"

"No,"

"If he's a threat we should get rid of him," Jason said.

"That's a stupid idea," I said. "Why do you always have stupid ideas about fighting?"

"What did you just say to me?!" Jason shouted, hackles raised ready to fight. "That you always have stupid ideas that could get us killed!"

I tried to ignore him after that and not give into this temperamental hothead of a werewolf. Until he suddenly attacked me from the side.

I yelped and tried to fight back. He was much bigger and stronger than I was though. Only having three good legs instead of four didn't help either. In fact when he bit my leg it only made it hurt worse.

Jason had me pinned down to the floor when he was suddenly thrown off of me. I looked up to see that it was the mysterious stranger wolf. He growled at Jason viciously in warning before turning to me. He licked me a few times and nudged me carefully. He helped me get back up.

I limped along on my three good legs like I'd been doing all day. The wolf looked at me worriedly. Somehow I knew I could trust him. Somehow I felt safer around him. So when Charlie said "he wants us to follow him," I believed it.

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