Here's an alternate ending. As promised.
Leah was born in a slaughterhouse. At that time, she'd had no one. No real family, nothing. She was a number in a line. All she'd been was one of many shapeshifters waiting for whatever terrible fate came to those shapeshifters that were taken.
When Emmett had arrived and bought her she hadn't expected anything good from the large vampire. Not in the least. She'd followed him out without question and kept her head down. It wasn't like she could truly communicate anyway.
It had been implied more than once by the vampires that she'd be put with a vampire who didn't need her voice. That she'd be used for the worst of things.
Emmett hadn't been like that. He'd been a great man, someone she would gladly refer to as her father. Up until the day Kachiri demanded he give her to her.
Leah would never blame any of what happened to her on Emmett because none of it was his fault. Not really. Kachiri took what she wanted and if she didn't get her way, people got hurt.
Then there was her Imprintee. The boy she met again and again. Not nearly as often as she wished. It was his presence that held her together over the years. People like Renesmee weren't ever as lucky. Anything that wasn't a vampire almost always broke in its own way, shape, or form. Stockholm, depression, insanity, there were endless things that happened to the different beings held by the vampires.
Leah hadn't succumbed to any of those things. Leah had always had someone to hold onto, someone to wait for. Even when she knew nothing could ever work between them. It was all she could do to wait to see her Imprintee. It broke her heart that they were so far and few between.
Then she died and saw him one final time. Only briefly but it had been long enough to know. For her it was years in the making but for him it was the end. She knew what it meant when she saw him appear after her death, she hadn't quite moved on yet. In that brief moment that she saw the world around her, her attention wasn't on the people panicking because of her death. Her attention was on Collin as he materialized out of nothing. As he knelt down by her corpse and spoke softly. The words rang through her as she felt something flood her. Something old and powerful. Something that made her feel lighter than air and like nothing at all.
She was being pulled away, in the last moment she rested her hand on his shoulder, tears filling her eyes as she was pulled into darkness.
That was then.
A long time ago. A lifetime ago.
Now she'd been reborn. If she tried hard enough she could remember the shadowy faces of her parents from her new life. The people that had been killed by a bear. They were foggy memories, people she tried not to think about. The wolf pack may have raised her. They weren't her family either. They'd been selfish in raising her new incarnation as an animal rather than returning her to society.
Of course there wasn't a single time she'd hate them for it because she'd found Collin.
That brief time with Collin had been everything she'd wanted since her childhood, even if she hadn't been able to tell him who she was, she'd been able to spend time with him and it was everything. Even if he hadn't known who she was, it had been him, the boy she'd fallen for all those years ago. Everything that could never be. For that brief time she'd gotten to be around him, even if she couldn't be with him. She could be near him.
Knowing your future made everything worse. All of it worse. A selfish part of her wished Collin had never met her. If he'd never met her she could've lived a semi normal life. If he'd never met her she never would've fallen in love. Her heart never would've been broken by him.
When Collin had been pulled into his memories Leah had been able to tell by looking at him. That had been a long time ago too. Not nearly as long as her first life but long enough.
She'd gone through the motions and called Brady who'd informed her of his family's new status as humans. While she'd waited for Brady she'd alternated between sitting with Mary and Vasilii and sitting by Collin's side.
Mary had slept the entire time they were there. Leah knew basically nothing about how to help her so she was forced to call Nahuel. Nahuel had told her that without the proper equipment there was nothing that could be done until she woke up. She'd warned him that he was going to die then hung up, not bothering to explain the details.
Mary hadn't woken up. Not for a while. It had taken Brady three days to make his way to them and when he'd shown up the way he'd looked at Mary had broken her heart. An Imprint almost as impossible as hers.
Leah had refused to leave Collin in the middle of the woods. She'd demanded Brady let them take him to one of the abandoned cities. Leave him there until he woke up.
The argument had been short, she was pretty sure he didn't have the energy for it. Brady had struggled to carry the statue of his cousin to the SUV and had set him in the very back. When Leah had joined in him the passenger seat she'd peeked in the back to see Mary sleeping in the middle seat with Vasilii under her, her head resting against his leg. Vasilii didn't speak a word until a month and a half later when Mary woke.
They'd left Collin in one of the close abandoned towns, setting him in one of the houses there because it was all they could do. When he woke it would be too dangerous to have him in the house. Not with all of the humans.
Leah had joined Brady in returning to their home in California. Leah had claimed the den as her bedroom and Vasilii had claimed the guest bedroom for himself and Mary. Leah didn't talk to anyone, not really. There wasn't much for her to say. She was waiting for Collin. Waiting for him to wake up.
It wasn't until two weeks after Mary had woken that anyone had pushed her into conversation. It had been Daula. Leah was grateful it was Daula. Daula didn't push conversation about what she planned on doing. Daula just told her stories. Stories of her daughter, of when her and Collin were children. Daula talked about how excited she'd been when she'd learned her mom was pregnant. For the first time since her and Collin's conversation she'd managed to smile.
Time went by. A lot of time. After the first year passed Brady had arrived with legal documents and the information that he was enrolling her, Ayla, Mary, and Vasilii in school so that they wouldn't spend all of their time sitting around the house. She'd accepted her new identity without a fight. Leah Clearwater. A false family brewed in memory of some of those they'd lost. According to her documents she was Leah Clearwater, sister of Ayla Clearwater and daughter of Emma Clearwater. They hadn't bothered listing a father because it didn't really matter.
Mary and Vasilii's identity had been of Mary's making. Mary and Vas-they'd decided Vasilii was too strange of a name- Uley were daughter of Dol and Paul Uley. It had been an obvious play on Brady's lineage and no one had commented on it. It was easier that way. According to the school system they were distant cousins that had come to live with Brady and Lila. The school system didn't pry. They were people, which was more than a lot of the world had.
School was boring, Leah learned this pretty quickly. When she'd been in Missouri, Emmett had educated her, so she would let Holly take over control during school and suffer through the day for her. Holly had developed better social capabilities though she was still pretty wild. One time she'd even bitten a class mate who had tried to push her down in the hall.
It had been a hilarious day. Especially when Brady had shown up giving her an all too knowing look which she'd smiled innocently at.
Things were getting easier.
Every night she would lie in her bed and reach out to feel the Imprint. It was her reassurance that he was still alive. That one day she'd see him again.
At some point in the second year they'd received a phone call from Brady's daughter letting them know that Collin was gone from the house they'd left him in. Not dead, just gone. They had checked on him occasionally but they weren't sure when exactly he'd left. There wasn't anything they could do. Based off the death tolls in the news there were very few shapeshifters and vampires left. Even then, they couldn't risk contacting those that were left. They had to give them a chance to escape the werewolves, even if they knew Vasilii's plan would work out.
Leah had waited. She'd waited for a long time after that. Waited for Collin. Time passed. Daula died, Seth and Nahuel stopped calling and they suspected they had been killed.
High school was worse than elementary and middle school. When she'd entered into high school she'd actually begun stepping into new territory education wise. Guys and girls had flirted with her and she'd rejected them, except once. The years of waiting for Collin were taking a toll on her. Part of her, a part of her that wanted desperately to be loved again, it had finally given in.
There wasn't a moment she'd regret it because it had given her an escape for two years. It had taken him two years to piece together how broken she was. While he didn't know the details once he'd realized she was using him to cope he'd confronted her and they'd agreed it was better to break it off before someone was hurt.
It was around Leah's twentieth birthday when Ayla and Mary came out to the family about their relationship. Everyone had known about it before then, everyone except Leah. Leah had been so lost in her longing she'd been blind as to what was happening in her very own house.
That was when she'd finally realized she might never see Collin again.
If Collin didn't come back the reason why he'd do it was easy enough. To give her a chance at a real life.
It wasn't what she wanted. Not really. What she wanted was her Imprint. The boy she'd loved since she was ten. After she understood what was happening she'd shut down. She'd shut herself out of the real world and fallen into a habit of reliving every memory she had of her time with Collin. She clung to that until finally Mary confronted her. Leah remembered the conversation clearly.
"Leah, open this damned door before I break it down!" Leah hadn't opened it; she'd just curled up into a tighter ball under her blankets and shut out the sound of Mary beating on the door.
To be honest, she hadn't expected Mary to actually kick the door open. The sound of wood splintering filled her ears and she had about ten seconds to jerk into a sitting position and turn towards the doorway before Mary was on top of her.
From an outside perspective the position might've seemed intimate, or maybe like the beginning of a rape. The way Mary straddled her waist and used her feet to hold the now struggling Leah's legs to the bed while she gripped both of Leah's hands in one hand and pinned them above her head to glare into the Leah's eyes as she held her down, her free hand clenched in a fist at her side.
Anyone that knew Mary knew better than to assume that. Mary had grown into a smaller woman. Shorter than the average woman. She'd made up for the risk of being a small woman by building up as much strength as she could while she was young. She didn't plan on being weak just because she was human. She knew how to fight and the fact that Mary had Leah immobilized scared her for more than one reason.
"Okay, Leah. I love you to death. Really, I do. You're part of my god forsaken fucked up family. But this shit has to stop. I love Collin. You know that. He's my brother. I ruined his childhood to have him by my side for eternity. What happened then happened and I'm sorry. I really am. But this has to stop. What you want from him he can't give to you. You know it and I know it. He won't come back. You need to accept this and move on. Dwelling won't help. This," what Mary did then stunned her.
It was an action she never would've expected from Mary. Not in a million years. Mary kissed her, she closed the distance and she kissed her and dammit. Leah would be lying if she said she didn't surrender to the feeling of closeness, no matter how fucked it was. She surrendered to the kiss and struggled against the other girl's hold for a whole other reason. The fight was futile and both girls knew it. When Mary parted she was relaxed and Leah knew that the kiss had no meaning to the other girl. It had been a point, a solid point.
"That was real." Leah blinked as she tried to recall what Mary had been talking about. When she did she turned her head away to stare at the white wall. "I don't know you, Leah. Not as much as I wish I did. But I know what you're doing to yourself. Torturing yourself with memories of your lost love will not make him come back. It will put you through Hell. You'll suffer and break apart until there's nothing left. But this. This here. Me being here. This is real. You have to stop clinging onto something that can never be because it will destroy you. If you don't want to fall in love, fine, don't fall in love. No one is asking you to do that."
"What I'm telling you is that you can't lock yourself away from the world. Stop hiding in here and reliving memories of what can never be and come out there. Spend time with the family, watch one of these terrible movies with us. Hell, if you want come join me and Angel and we'll give you the night of your life. Just stop doing this."
Mary freed her after that and just before she could leave the room Leah sat up and called after her, "Mary."
"What?"
"Has he contacted you?"
Mary went rigid in the doorframe, lethal silence for several long moments before she spoke softly. "No." Leah could hear the cracking in her voice then the other girl slipped out the doorway and she was alone.
Leah had thought over that conversation for a long while. Everything Mary had said and done had wedged into her. Lodged into her consciousness. Yet, something felt wrong about her reaction. That single 'no' felt like a lie.
Leah wasn't a nosy human being, not normally. All of her time in that city had made her careful about staying out of other people's business, and yet, she found herself drawn in by that single 'no'. Maybe it had been her grabbing at straws, maybe something more, but she had to find out. She needed to know.
So she accepted Mary's offer, and yes, she knew it was a stupid idea but she needed an excuse to go to Mary's apartment. An excuse to be there. An excuse to nose around in Mary's more private belongings. Holidays were always spent at Brady's and without raising suspicion as to why she was doing it she needed a reason to go to Mary's.
So she waited a year, she made a point of spending more time with the family, then she confronted Ayla and Mary with a singular request which the girls had accepted after making sure it was what Leah wanted.
No it wasn't, she was more interested in what she could find while at their apartment. She smiled and nodded and that was that. Three days later Mary picked her up and they held true to their promise, which, admittedly, Leah had enjoyed.
It was three AM when Leah got up off the futon in Mary's living room and crept into the kitchen where she'd seen Mary plug her phone in earlier in the night. She didn't honestly expect there to be anything of use in it but figured it was worth checking. Silently, she pulled the phone off the charger and put in the code, that she'd seen Mary put in before. To her confusion it told her incorrect password. Frowning, she tried again and yet again was met with an incorrect password.
"Leah." Leah jerked around, nearly dropping the phone, when Mary's voice came from the dining area. "I told you before that you need to stop clinging to something that can never be."
"You lied to me." Leah's voice cracked. So she'd been right. Mary had known something else.
"I did it for your own good, Leah. I was trying to help you."
"Help me?!" Leah snapped, "Help me?! Mary, you know exactly what uncertainty does to someone! You and me sat in his mother's house for a month while you waited and feared that he'd die! You knew what I was going through, even if you never addressed it. Fuck you if you think that lying to me was the right thing, you can go rot in Hell for all I care."
Mary flinched but other than that remained calm, looking away as a groggy looking Ayla crept into sight in the corner of her vision, "Either way you've been damned since the day Collin was born. I thought lying would give you a chance at normalcy."
"And how's that working out, Mary?" Leah responded angrily.
"Pretty shitty." Mary admitted as she leaned into Ayla's side. "Put my phone down, go to apartment two forty one and go in, it's never locked."
Leah stared at Mary as Ayla buried her face in the other girl's shoulder. "You promised him." Leah heard Ayla mutter as she made her way past the two girls and out the apartment. These apartments were cheap, places that would've screamed danger in her first life. Now, they were just convenient places to live. Crimes weren't usually domestic anymore, usually committed on the streets. She'd heard Brady blame it on the years of supernatural influence but she just figured it was humanity devolving. There was only so high a species could climb before it hit its eventual downfall.
Two fifty three, two fifty two, two fifty one, two fifty… She counted each apartment door until she found the one she had been looking for.
Two forty one. She reached out and touched the handle, grabbing it and turning it before stepping through the frame.
The apartment was scarcely furnished with a single couch and small TV mounted on the wall. On the couch, watching her as she entered, was an older man in his mid to late fifties, a man that Leah had to do a double take on when she saw.
That wasn't possible.
She stared in complete shock at the sight before her, because it couldn't be. It wasn't possible. There was no logical explanation for what she saw before her.
And yet, she knew who it was. She knew by the sight of those chocolate brown eyes, the sight of his mother's eyes.
"Collin." She choked out and stumbled forward as the man pushed himself into a sitting position.
"You shouldn't be here, Leah." Collin told her sadly as she stopped behind the couch.
"You're alive." She whispered, completely ignoring his words. "All of this time and you're alive."
"And old." Collin responded mournfully.
"Damnit, Collin." She muttered angrily as she crawled across the edge of the couch and, to the shock of Collin, right into his lap. "You can be such a moron sometimes." She wrapped her arms around him and leaned into him, burying her face in his shoulder and crying. "I told you to come back to me. You told me you would. I didn't care about anything else. The details, the shit that came afterwards, it didn't matter. I just wanted to see you. To know you were alive." His arms wrapped around her and held her as she pressed closer into him, feeling a shudder go through him as she continued, "I hate you so much, Collin. I hate you so damned much."
"No you don't." He muttered into her shoulder as she squirmed, trying to pull away. Collin didn't give her that privilege, holding her in place. "You're stupid enough to love me no matter what. Stupid enough to do anything to get back to me. Let me tell you, I'm going to kick Mary's ass for letting you cross that line."
Leah went rigid under him, feeling her face reddening at the implication.
"Yes, I know." Collin sighed into her shoulder, letting her go as she pulled away this time, searching his expression but not able to read it, Mary told me that there was a chance she'd tell you the truth tonight. Told me exactly what was happening."
"I did what I had to do to get back to you. I knew she was lying." Leah told him and he looked away.
"You'd think she'd be better at it after living for as long as she did." He remarked quietly and they sat like that for several moments before she broke the silence.
"Why are you old, Collin?"
There it was, a difficult question that she needed to know the answer to. A terrible painful question. The final barrier between them. The reason she knew he'd stayed away.
Collin leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Mary thinks it's part of my family's curse. The fact that we can never have what we want. I think it's just my age catching up with me." He paused and shifted slightly under her weight, "I was in memories for a really long time. When I got to my final point…I thought that it was the end. I believed I was going to die. Everything inside me screamed that I was dying. I held onto you, all I could think of was my promise to you. The promise that I'd come back."
"You didn't."
"No. I didn't." Collin shut his eyes, "When I woke up, I felt like I was dying. My entire body felt as though I'd been run through a car compactor. When I moved my bones felt like glass, it was a miracle that I managed to dial a number on the phone someone had put on my bedside table. I called Brady. It was the only number I knew by heart, I called my cousin and Lila answered. I managed to tell her help before I passed out from the agonizing pain I was suffering through."
"Brady's daughter came to me that day and she helped me to the best of her abilities. They told you and the others that I'd disappeared. I was under constant care by her for six months. During that time I learned why everything felt wrong. I wasn't in the body I'd been in for years. Not anymore. I was physically as old as I should've been. I couldn't come to you, not like this. I called Brady and talked to him. He told me that you were doing okay, that you weren't in pristine condition but you were doing okay."
"We decided to keep up the ruse that I was gone, see if you could move on. I kept a lot of tabs on you and talked frequently with Mary. I didn't go to California. I didn't want to risk you seeing me. Up until a year ago I'd been living in Colorado. I moved here because of Mary. You were having a breakdown and she was concerned. We agreed if you ended up in bad enough shape I'd show my face."
"She screwed up though." Leah said, taking his words in.
"Or you're just too observant for your own good."
"I'm not your aunt. I'm hardly observant or curious."
"And yet you screwed my sister as an out to find me." Collin grinned at her when she smacked him in the side of the head.
"I wouldn't have had to do that if you weren't a selfish asshole."
"You didn't have to do it anyway. A million other ways you could've tried to trick her. You chose to screw her and her fiancée."
Leah narrowed her eyes before smiling innocently before speaking, "Fine. You caught me. I wanted to fuck your sister. After she kissed me I couldn't stop thinking about her-"
Collin kissed her, finally kissed her, it was short and sweet and everything she wanted. The physical age gap didn't matter, none of that mattered because he was hers. It was what she wanted and who she wanted. When they pulled apart she had to blink tears from her eyes.
"You don't know when to stop talking do you, Leah?" He asked a bit breathlessly and she grinned at him.
"I kept my mouth shut for far too long. I'm not subordinate anymore." Then she was kissing him again and for that short brief moment she allowed herself to forget how terrible their situation truly was. This couldn't really work. Not in the long run. She was physically just turning twenty one. He was too old. If she let herself get too far into this she would never survive his death. It'd kill her.
Oh, who was she kidding? It was going to kill her anyway. There was no coming back from two lifetimes of loving the boy who wiped the unnatural from the planet. There was no chance she'd ever get past him. Not in a million years.
The pulled apart at the sound of knocking on the door. She sighed and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder as she listened to someone open then shut the door behind them. It wasn't hard to guess who it was.
"Hey, Mary." Collin greeted, shifting on the couch, wrapping his arms around her and holding her in place as he moved.
"There's no coming back from this for her." Mary stated bluntly as she couch shifted and Mary no doubt settled into it.
Leah didn't bother lifting her head from Collin's shoulder to check as she muttered, "I'm right here, you know."
"I never would've known considering you're basically morphing yourself into him." Mary responded blandly. "Collin."
He sighed, his hold tightening on her. "Leah, you can still walk away."
"No." She told him without a thought, "I won't. Never again." She pulled back and met his gaze, "If you try to make me go I will kick your ass." She warned and he sighed, shaking his head, a small smile appearing on his face. "What was it you said, Mary? I've been damned since the day he was born?"
"I did." Mary answered quietly, Leah looked over to see her watching them with a sad smile on her face. "I think…in the long run this will be better for everyone. Even when it comes to its end."
No one addressed exactly what that meant though they all knew the damage that Collin's death would eventually do to her.
"I'm going to sleep." Mary spoke up after a minute of uncomfortable silence. "Leah, you should really let Holly in on this revelation. This affects her just as much as it affects you." Mary pushed off the couch, stretching before making her way to the door.
"I will." Leah told the other girl and watched her leave.
"Leah?" Collin asked after the door shut.
"Yeah?" She asked, curling closer to him and shutting her eyes.
"I love you."
Tears filled her eyes, a massive grin appearing on her face, "I love you too, Collin. From now until forever."
Yes, things were fractured between them. There was still deep rooted anger towards him for what he did, for him leaving her. But it was better than the alternative. Having him by her side was so much better than the idea of never seeing him again. It wasn't perfect, it couldn't be perfect, but it was something, which was more than she could've ever wished for.
I liked this ending better, though that final paragraph was cheesy as hell. What do you want from me? For you not to use cheesy lines. Sigh. What? Nothing. Anyways, I almost, almost gave them a perfect happily ever after. Then I realized two things, one, I don't do perfect happily ever afters, and two, if I did that it wouldn't really fit with the rest of the series. I mean Blood ended with Bella sinking into her insanity. Essence ended with Dol dying, which I still hate you for, and Bella never quite being whole again. I've never actually made an ending for this that was perfectly functional. Blood had the alternate ending where Dol joins Bella in her insanity, Essence had the two endings, one where Dol lives but is broken and the other where Bella's broken soul ends up snapping her sanity completely to where she mistakenly kills herself. Which was really depressing. But yeah. This is the alternate ending I came up with. I had about a hundred different ideas for what Leah would discover in that apartment ranging from a comatose Collin that she'd end up killing to a still vampire Collin. It was really difficult to come to a decision on that one. She sat her for half an hour arguing with me on which to use. That I did. Dol wanted me to go with Sleeping Beauty and have a comatose Collin that when Leah kissed him it magically pulled him from his coma and they lived happily ever after. What's wrong with that? Well, for one, Disney endings. What's what supposed to mean? You were so sheltered. I wonder why that is. I'm going to cut this note now because it's dragging on. I'm messing with The Lost Chapter but I honestly don't know if I'll go through with it. I want to do it but I don't. That make sense? You're rambling. She's right. I am. I'm going to end this note here, The Lost Chapter may or may not happen. Don't get your hopes up. Come on. Alright. With that. This note is done. Thank you all for reading, I love you all. Those of you that stuck around to the end, you were great. I'm curious which of the trilogy was your favorite? Personally, I loved Essence. My favorite was Blood. Of course it was. I'm going to end this for her. Goodbye everyone. Bye, everyone!