Author's Note: Sorry for the late update. I had midterms this week and because I have been so busy with work and Fanfiction, I fell severally behind on school work. Next week is busy too with two papers due but don't worry after my schedule thins out some, I'm all yours.

Thank you so much Kobe Grace for beta-ing my writing. We both know that it would be crap otherwise. Thank you Leiaaa for your wonderful ideas and agreeing to help me with this story.

A big thank you to all the readers that reviewed, alerted and Favorite Dangerous Obsessions, or Favorite me. Thank you to all those who PMed me and encouraging me to get off my lazy ass and update.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight or any of its characters.


Chapter 2

Sam

The voices started when she left.

Actually, it was just a voice; a condescending, know-it-all voice that constantly buzzed in his mind. The first time he heard it, it had uttered a name to him, one so familiar and still such a part of him that it wrenched his heart. Leah, the voice had whispered. Leah. The sound of it was like water dripping from a faucet: soft in its nature, but dominant against the quietness. Leah. Leah. Leah.

Some might have called it his conscience. Others would have told him to seek help — and perhaps they both would have been right. Given the events that had taken place in his life over the past two years, there was no denying that he definitely needed therapy. Only, how would he go about doing that? It wasn't as if he could just go to any psychologist and open up about transforming into a werewolf, leaving his girlfriend of three years for her cousin with no explanation, simply because some mystical force predestined his soul mate, then have said ex-girlfriend turn into the only female wolf in the history of his tribe, only to leave his pack and join Jacob Black on his crusade to save the leeches. No; if he ever opened up about things like that, he'd be in a padded cell faster than you could say 'schizophrenia'.

Thus, it was decided: since he couldn't get professional help, he would try his damnedest to ignore the voice instead.

As if it were just that easy.

Then the images started. Sweet, impossible images that popped up in his mind at any given moment; they made him question everything he knew or had ever thought about imprinting. When it first happened, he was sitting in his kitchen; Emily was stirring something on the stove, mindlessly humming a tune. All of a sudden, he was back in a different time, and seeing a different girl: her belly swollen with his child, and she was smiling at him lovingly, piercing him with the gaze of her warm, hazel eyes. The moment had been fleeting, but it was enough to make him bolt out of his chair in complete shock. The move had made Emily gasp and look over at him with concern, but he hadn't been able to meet her eyes. He'd hurried from the room soon after that, fearing her questions.

The images persisted over the next few weeks. They were never the same: sometimes, it was of hot, summer nights spent holding hands and skinny-dipping on First Beach. Other times, it was of rainy mornings tucked away in bed, sharing each other's warmth, with the dog at the foot of the bed and their children snuggled close. All of them left him feeling weak and undone; more often than not, he found himself shaking his head, torn between trying to dislodge the images from his memory and trying desperately to hold onto them.

Eventually, Emily and the pack started to notice the changes in his behavior. In a matter of weeks he had become uncharacteristically edgy, irritable — he was an out-right monster whenever his patience was tested. He lashed out against anyone and everyone, even over the most trivial things. In time, the pack had learned the hard way to never mention or even think of her name. She was a forbidden topic, and the pack knew that if they were ever caught discussing her, their alpha would raise hell. That was the kind of leader he had become.

And it was all because of —

Sam closed his eyes, and wrenched his mind back to the present.

He ignored the worried glances Emily kept throwing him, which further deepened his guilt. And she wasn't even mad at him! He felt like the world's greatest prick: last night, when they were making love, he'd been plagued with visions of Leah's face. It was Leah's body he pictured writhing underneath him; it was her moans that he'd longed to hear; it was her voice that he'd heard cry out his name in passion. And it was her name that he shouted when he came.

He'd been unable to face Emily after that. Besides, what he could say?'Sorry'?'I didn't mean it'? Was he to lie right through his teeth and deny having imagined Leah's tall, curvy form wrapped around him, doing things with her that he'd never even dare to consider with Emily? Was he to say no, he wasn't dying to see Leah's face again; that no, he didn't want to have sex with her anymore, when even catching the slightest trace of her scent within the forest made him hard?

In truth, however, whatever he told his fiancé didn't matter — there wasn't anything he could do to reassure her, not with that voice in his head that chanted another woman's name like a mantra.

There was no doubt about it. Sam was screwed.


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