A/N: Okay so this is a bit of an introspective chapter. It's mainly Leah giving out explanation for her behavior and then thinking about Jacob's question. I hope it will help you to understand my view of her a bit better and I am sure it will help you to understand many of her reactions, especially the jumping of the cliff.

Jacob's Black departure left an ache, an open wound in the rest of the pack. Embry and Quill were invaded by sadness, Jared and the rest of the boys, by deception and Paul felt irritated, while Seth felt desolated by the sudden loss of his hero. And Sam? Sam understood it, or at least he could try to, and he took the situation in the best way he could, the same way Billy did.

I was the only one who felt furious.

Furious because Jacob had the choice of making his exit as dramatic as possible, knowing that, wherever he went, he would be pitied and comprehended. I was furious because, if Jacob whined, if he burned with hate towards the person he was running away from and loved, everyone would accept it as something natural. How not to feel hate when his rival was his worst of enemies, someone that no one in the pack would ever feel pity towards?

I felt furious because Jacob could give himself the luxury of being childish, of abandoning his family, his pack and his obligations like if those things weren't wrapped as shackles from his paws. He could fall into desperation, forget about the whole world, turn into the most selfish person to walk the planet…and it would be okay. It would always be okay.

I was furious because our stories were so much alike that it was like a knife piercing through my soul every time I looked at him, every time I heard his thought about iher/i, his pain was a painful memory of my own, of my weakness.

That is why I had bothered him so much that day at the cliff. I knew how I felt: the ripping apart, the fury, the sadness, the self pity, everything mixed and burning inside your chest like acid that corrodes your guts. I knew it, cause that was they way I had felt, betrayed and sad but, over all things, lost. Lost because the sun by which almost my whole life whirled around was now gone, leaving me turning on an empty orbit. I knew how much the pitiful glances itched the same way that the pats in the back, the empty words of consolation and the hurtful stare in the eyes of the person who had once looked at you with love and admiration.

In its moment, the fury I felt for the injustice of her situation was the thing that saved me. It saved me form depression, of sinking slowly and inexorably into the abyss of self pity. The fury allowed me to walk with my chin high even when every one of her footsteps crashed my soul, it allowed me to wake up every morning even when my world didn't have a sun by which it could spin around.

I couldn't hate Emily even if I wanted to, with her sweet smile and infinite patience. I tried, I tried with all her might, but I couldn't. The ire blazed in my veins but I couldn't turn it over my cousin, my best friend, my sister. I knew, even in the deepest of pains, that Emily never wanted to hurt me; that she would have cut her hand off if it could save my suffering. No, I couldn't hate Emily.

I could have tired to hate Sam, but it would have been absurd. The moon could not crash against the earth, the earth could not get away from the sun, and I couldn't have gotten mad at Sam even if she had craved to do so. At least not in that moment.

And I couldn't be mad because they were together, not when she saw the bond that joined then, the love that shined in their eyes. Not when I remembered Sam's desolation those weeks that Emily was in the hospital or the way she forgave and comforted him. I couldn't get mad when I knew what I knew now, how the scars that now cut Emily's face had been produced and all the pain that they had brought.

I couldn't even get mad at imprinting as a whole, because now that I saw Sam and Emily, even if it brought me pain to know it, I know they were made for each other. Sometimes I wondered if I could have been able to forgive Sam if I had been on Emily's shoes, if I could have overcome the horror of knowing his secret, of seeing the darkest side of his nature. I looked at my reflection in the water, wolf eyes looked back at me, and I got my answer almost too quickly; No, I couldn't have. I couldn't have looked over it or even accept the fact that he had a life in which I would never be completely included, that there will always be angry for not sharing his genes, his destiny. I had seen my own dark side at Claire's party, the way I had snapped at him, the way I had forgotten all reason and attached him. I wouldn't have been able to forgive him, the same I can't forgive him now.

I couldn't get mad with Emily or with Sam, not even with the bond that joined them. So I focused my ire and poison on my own destiny, the heritage that took away the man that I had always loved and the life of my father, that will always mark my future and the one of my family. I focused my anger at my own nature, with the duty that I had been forced to carry, with the new family that I had to accept but, over all things, I got mad at receiving other people's compassion and playing the role of victim that my loved ones forced me to play every day.

I committed myself to destroy the image of martyr that people had built for me. I was sick of being "poor Leah", with my heart broken and my truncated hopes, everyone's pond of pity. Perhaps many people would have loved to see me dump my feelings on Sam and Emily, but I never liked pleasing anyone and I wasn't going to do it now. So I unloaded my fury with the rest of the universe. I built a mask of coldness and cynicism for myself and when not even my mind was free of privacy violation; I constructed a shield of hurtful thoughts and wretched feelings so that no one could see my heart bleeding on the inside.

I decided that she preferred hate over compassion and I focused to get it but, in the end, I only managed to hurt myself, because the guilt and the anger kept impregnating every single one of my thoughts about Sam, every single one of Emily's words. It killed me slowly, but saying it out loud would only have gotten me even more compassion, more poison to my already weary soul. I knew what hurt the pity, the self compassion, and it why I tried to help Jacob in the only way she could: making him mad. If he got mad, if the ire won depression, maybe he could recover a bit, keep going despite the pain.

It amazed me how I hadn't thought about all of this before. How I never had time on my own to think over things and get to the bottom of it all. How I never really took the time to glance into my own soul and clean out the fog that made it obscure and lonely. Maybe that's why Jake left me to be alone, for me to think and understand myself before trying to make him understand me and my crazy decisions.

It was looking through it all that I got the answer I was looking for. I had jumped because it would have been the easiest way to put closure in a chapter of my life. I was certain I didn't longer loved Sam, I didn't hold any grudge against Emily, I didn't felt any pain when I saw them together only awkwardness. It was so complicated to make everyone believe I had changed, especially after my attack. No one would believe it even if I screamed it. They thought I would never change. The only one who was willing to witness that transformation in my soul was Jacob. He was the only who could have stopped me from jumping off that cliff and that is why I erased every single thought of him away from my mind. I was decided to die; I wanted it to happen so I got rid of everything that made me want to keep living, Jake being the strongest one.

"It wasn't that hard, wasn't it?" I heard a deep voice in my head. I turned around only to see Jacob standing by my side in his wolf form. He had been hearing all along. I wanted to be mad at him for spying me but that had only made things easier for me since I didn't have to put anything into words.

"I guess not, not when you are hearing my thoughts" I replied with a small laugh that came out as a bark. "You followed me all the way from my place?"

"Yes, I never really went away. It is just easier to keep an eye on you when I am not being too obvious"

I wanted to hug him, badly. So I simply went near him and placed my head on top of his neck, my wolf way of hugging him. He gently moved his head up, caressing my fur with his and then playfully licked the side of my face.

"Hey! You know how many of your germs I have now?" I thought jokingly and we both gave out our barks of laughter which, slowly, dieD out until we only looked into each other's eyes.

Words weren't needed; we both knew what out bodies felt, what our souls felt. Taking our time, we phased back into our human forms. My cheeks burning more than usual at the sight of his naked torso. I bit my lower lip as he walked closer, my heart threatening to pop out of my chest, adrenalin already rushing through my veins and that sensation in my stomach beginning to make me feel uneasy. Gently, carefully, his hand went down my bare arm and I closed my eyes. His lips touched mine almost as if he was scared of breaking me. Little by little, our kisses gained intensity, our bodies gained heat, and our brains shut down allowing us to simply give in.