CHAPTER THREE: Wolf

Bitterness isn't something that springs up overnight. It grows over time. Seeing Emily and Sam together was unavoidable. We ran into each other in town, at tribe functions, or just out socializing. Everyone was civil to each other. It was all very polite, no screaming matches or scenes.

Inside I was dying. The way they looked at each other seemed to twist the invisible the dagger piercing my heart. It was excruciating.

I avoided them as best I could.

Emily couldn't take it. She tried calling the house. I spent some of the money I'd saved for college to go buy us a new answering machine so I could screen our calls. My family knew not to put her through.

Finally she just showed up at the house one day. Dad answered the door. He tried to get rid of her, but Emily wouldn't leave, and dad was too soft-hearted to make her. I could hear their voices from the kitchen.

"It's alright, dad," I called out.

I put down the jar of spaghetti sauce I'd planned to use for dinner. Emily would've made her own sauce, from scratch. I felt my lips tighten. It was just another thing she was better at than I was. I left the kitchen, walked past dad and Emily out into the front yard and waited for Emily to follow. I knew she would. She'd come to see me after all.

"What is it, Emily?" I crossed my arms in front of me as I turned to face her. I knew it wasn't exactly welcoming, but I didn't care.

She clasped her hands in her skirt, rumpling the fabric unconsciously. "Leah, I hate what happened between us. I miss you. Can't we be friends again?"

I just stared. Was she crazy? I'd lost Sam, my Sam, to her.

Emily swallowed and stared at the ground. "OK, maybe not friends, but I'd really like it if you could find it in your heart to forgive us." She glanced up pleadingly. "It's tearing Sam apart."

So that was it. Everything wasn't perfect in Sam and Emily's brave new world. Emily was here because she was trying to make her paradise even more perfect. Heaven forbid Sam should be upset. I shook my head in disbelief.

"How can you ask me that?" Emily knew how I felt about Sam. She knew and she'd gone off with him anyway.

"Please, Leah. I miss you. I want to make things right."

I thought of the way people always watched surreptitiously whenever Sam, Emily, and I were in the same room. Everyone knew he'd dumped me for her. I hated the pity and speculation I saw in their eyes, like they were waiting for me to go after my cousin and ex-boyfriend with a carving knife. I was sick of how careful people were around me, sick of being watched.

"Fine," I said abruptly. "I'll forgive you."

Maybe people would stop staring if they thought everything was fine between Emily, Sam, and me. I walked past Emily back towards the house.

"Leah…"

Her voice stopped me but I didn't turn around. "What?"

"Sam and I are getting married in a year or so. I want you to be my bridesmaid, just like we always planned."

I closed my eyes against the pain. Why did she have to remember our stupid childhood pact now? We'd planned our weddings when we were twelve, and we said we'd be each other's bridesmaids. How could she not see how impossible that was?

"Sure, if you'd like," I found myself saying. In a year, maybe Sam would grow tired of her like he'd grown tired of me. Maybe he'd move on to a new love. Anything could happen in a year.

Emily's arms stole around me. "Thank you, Leah."

I cleared my throat and gently disentangled myself. "I've got to go get dinner ready," I said, and ran inside, not looking back.

Months passed. I spent a lot of time with my family. Seth discovered internet role playing games, and since it was my laptop he was using to play them, he played them with me sometimes. I was stuck in that limbo between high school and real life. Friends went on to college or jobs, but I seemed to just stay in a rut. I didn't know what to do with my life now that Sam wasn't a part of it anymore. God, how I wish I hadn't blown off college to be with Sam. How stupid was that?

Embry joined Sam's little gang of friends. He seemed to just shoot up like a weed overnight. Everyone seemed to be changing, growing, except me.

Then I changed too. I thought I was getting the flu. I felt sick, feverish. I went to bed early that night, tossing and turning on my bed, not wanting to wake mom and dad. Dad hadn't been feeling well and mom was already worried enough about him. Seth's room was right next to mine though, and he heard me. I heard him scratch at my door and pop his head around the corner.

The top of his head wasn't too far from the door lintel. Seth had grown a lot this summer.

"Leah, you OK?"

"I'm fine, Seth," I called softly. "Go back to bed."

"You don't sound alright," he said doubtfully and padded into my room.

"It's just the flu. I'll be OK."

Seth gave a disbelieving look and put his hand on my forehead. I swatted it away. "Go away Florence Nightingale."

"Huh?"

I guess all that game playing had rotted his brain. "Famous nurse in the Crimean War."

My little brother shrugged it off as unimportant. "You're burning up," he told me. "I'm going to open your window."

"Fine, whatever you like," I told him. Nausea roiled through me. I just hoped I wasn't about to barf in front of Seth. He'd never let me live it down.

Propping open the window, Seth nodded to himself and made his way back to the doorway.

"Call me if you need anything," he said, then shut the door.

I blinked at it in astonishment. My little brother was looking out for me? I was supposed to be looking out for him. I groaned quietly into my pillow and forced myself to stay still. He'd be asleep soon, and once Seth fell asleep nothing short of a brass band playing a Sousa march could wake him.

It got worse before it got better. I was so hot. I threw off my covers and then my nightgown and ran to the window, leaning out into the cool night air. The night seemed to be calling out to me, filling me, and suddenly my body seemed too small to encompass the siren call. I leaned further out the window, and then I was falling, my body exploding outward.

I was in wolf form by the time I reached the ground, landing on paws instead of feet. It was horrifying. It was exhilarating. I was me, yet not-me. I could smell things, hear things that I never could have as a human. I threw back my head and sniffed the night air. An owl was flying overhead. I heard its wings, smelled its aroma. There was a rabbit in the back garden, snarfing on mom's lettuce. I growled low in my throat and raced over.

With a crunch, the rabbit's neck was snapped. I spat it out, horrified. But part of me wasn't horrified, and demanded I finish the job, eat the rabbit, tear flesh from bone and let it drop down my throat. Shuddering, I ran for the forest. What was happening to me?

Then the voices came in my head, and I wasn't alone anymore. At first I thought they were figments of my imagination, a sign that I truly was insane and this was a delusion. I couldn't be feeling the mulch-like consistency of the earth beneath my paws, or feeling the wind ruffling fur, not hair.

The voices assured me they were real, and gave me names. Paul, Jared, Embry.

Sam.

It was his voice that convinced me. As he spoke I could feel his regret, his horror that I should be the one who'd changed, as if he hadn't screwed up my life enough already. The others felt his thoughts as well, and I could sense their embarrassment, their discomfort as if I were reading the expressions off their faces.

That's when I realized they could hear my thoughts as well. I wrenched my mind off the hurt and betrayal I felt whenever I thought of Sam, and focused on the rabbit.

'It's OK,' Jared thought reassuringly. 'It was just a rabbit.'

'Yeah, tasty little buggers,' thought Paul, and I pictured his toothy grin though I couldn't actually see it.

'Girls,' thought Embry dismissively. 'Squeamish over a rabbit.'

I felt embarrassment wash over me. I was being dissed by a sixteen year old.

'A sixteen year old werewolf,' Embry thought back triumphantly.

I stopped running and sat down on my haunches, the calm of the forest wrapping around me like a blanket.

A werewolf. I'd heard the legends, who in the tribe hadn't? I felt myself shaking my head, my doggie shaped head, with its long muzzle and a wet nose that was so sensitive it was automatically identifying the plants and animals around me. This couldn't be happening. I looked down at my paws, and dug my nails into the turf. I felt hysteria rising. What if I couldn't change back?

The voices came back then, wrapping themselves around me, all talking at once, yet I could hear and understand. We were one mind; yet separate selves. When Sam decided to come and get me, I knew it as soon as the others did, and felt his quick flash of concern about how Emily would feel about it.

No. Not you, Sam. Anyone but you.

Sam felt that too. I pulled my haunches off the ground and prepared to run.

'Stay there.' Sam ordered it, and suddenly I couldn't move. I sat back down with a thump. I worried at the command, tried to push it aside, but I couldn't. It chafed to have to obey, but obey I did. Sam was the pack leader; his word was law. It was to become the part of my new existence that I hated the most.

'Stupid girl,' I heard Embry mutter in my head, and felt Sam's displeasure wash over him.

Sam's wolf form, when it appeared through the trees, shocked me. He was black as midnight, and huge, bigger than me. I felt myself give a whine of fear and tried to back away, but it was like my feet were nailed to the ground. I'd felt so strong when I first transformed, but that was before I saw Sam.

Would he kill me? Get rid of me now that he had Emily and didn't need me anymore? His embarrassment over me was palpable. I felt it. The others felt it too, judging by the way their voice-like presence trembled restlessly in my brain. They saw me through his eyes too, and I realized that my form was smaller than all of theirs as they compared themselves to it and smugly came out the better for it.

Sam's eyes winced.

'Knock it off, you guys!' he commanded, and they were silent.

'Leah,' Even in wolf form, even without vocalizing it, Sam could still say my name and my whole world narrowed to him. I trembled, helpless against the pull of him, waiting.

'I could never hurt you, Leah.'

I felt his thoughts, knew they were true, but also false. He had hurt me. I glared at him accusingly, letting memories of his promises to me, promises he'd broken, spill out.

Sam winced again. 'I meant physically.'

I pulled myself together. He was right. He saw himself as the protector, the leader of a pack, and I was now a part of that pack. I saw from the others' thoughts just what that meant, patrolling our land, guarding it against the bloodsuckers.

Wait, bloodsuckers? That old myth was true too?

Affirmation, eager yeses and anticipation of battle filled my head. This is what the pack was born for. This was our job. More important than Sam or I, this was our reason for being. I bowed to the inevitable.

0-0-0

I went home to the shock of finding my parents awake and waiting for me, with my tatty old robe at the ready. Sam politely looked away as he talked me through the process of transforming back. He'd called my parents the moment he'd felt me change to let them know.

He left me with them and loped away without a second glance. I knew dad was a tribal elder, but he'd never seemed to take it all that seriously before. I realized that the elders, including dad, knew a lot more than I'd ever dreamed.

Dad hugged me, told me he was proud of me, but the worry in his eyes belied that. Mom cried, asked if I was OK. Seth slept through the whole thing.

I didn't hang out much with the boys while in human form. They convinced me to go cliff diving with them once or twice. It was weird feeling more powerful even while human. I was still smaller than them in build though, and they never let me forget it. After a while the endless joshing, and the male type humor grated. I was not one of the boys. I'd never be one of the boys. I was the odd man out in our little pack. I couldn't bear to hang out with them at Emily and Sam's house, and Sam, to his credit, never forced me to. He had me help patrol when he needed me. Other than that he left me alone.

Dad died of a heart attack when I was out on patrol one night. I didn't get back until it was all over. Mom had to go through the terrifying ride to the hospital, fill out the forms, and everything with only Seth to help her. I hated being a wolf. I loved being a wolf. The werewolf curse took Sam from me, but it also gave me a sense of power, of indestructibility that I just didn't have as a human, and dad's death taught me just how frail humans could be.

Jacob Black changed next. He'd been a nice kid, once upon a time. Then he took up with the bloodsucker's girlfriend. Sam ordered him not to tell her anything, but he found a way around it. I was angry at first, we all were. I'd caught the scent of bloodsuckers while on patrol, always too late to help the humans they slaughtered.

It's hard to describe how a vampire smells, because it isn't just a smell, it's a wrong-ness. It's like the absence of normal, the cessation of how things should be, a huge black hole of antimatter set right in the middle of good clean earth and forest. It reeks.

Still, I have to admit Bella gave us vital information. She did it at Emily and Sam's house, so I got it second hand from the pack's memories. I got more than that from them as well.

Jacob loved Bella. He loved her with a single-minded passion, with a hopelessness that I couldn't help but identify with.

He brought her to the bonfire, the gathering of tribal elders, and she heard with the rest of us the tale of how the Quileutes became werewolves. Emily and Sam sat across the fire from my family. I was careful not to look at them. It hurt too much, and the boys would see that hurt the next time I transformed if I happened to remember it. I tried not to look at Jacob and Bella either. He'd be in seventh heaven for days because she'd come. I remembered when I'd felt that way about Sam.

The bitterness grew.