Charlie opened the front door after hearing my truck's roaring engine, and he waited for us on the doorstep while we jumped down. I tripped over my own feet when I landed, and Jake caught me with slightly more agility than a normal human would have. Charlie's eyes narrowed as we approached, his suspicion obvious.
"How ya feeling?" he asked Jake, watching him closely.
"A lot better. Food poisoning. Don't go to that little Italian place by the clothing store in Port Angeles." Jacob was standing close to me, both of us on the front porch since my dad was still blocking the doorway. He looked like he wanted to put his arm around me or something, but didn't know how Charlie would react.
"There are about a hundred of those, you might have to be more specific," Charlie said, and I laughed nervously, glancing up at Jacob again. He seemed very at ease, but I could see in his eyes he was a little antsy.
"You staying?" he asked, eyeing my truck in the driveway. Jacob hadn't brought his own vehicle.
"If that's okay, Dad. Sorry, I told Sam to call when we left but he must have forgotten," I lied, knowing he probably wouldn't buy it. He seemed to consider my words for a second, deciding not to ask and stepping back.
"I guess he can stay for a little while." He moved out of the way so I could pass, and I slipped through the doorway easily. Jacob's broad shoulders and six and a half feet of height weren't as easy to maneuver into the already filled hallway with my dad taking up half of it, and I laughed as Charlie backed up hastily, seeming to have forgotten how big Jake was.
"Sorry. No funny business," Charlie grumbled, then walked into the living room, plopping noisily down on the couch. He unmuted the TV and the sounds of a sports game sounded, and I wondered how he kept finding games to watch, even at this time of day.
I grabbed Jake's hand and pulled him into the kitchen, and he grinned down at me, pulling me into his arms. "I wasn't touching you for like, two seconds. And it still hurt." He was whispering, and I pulled back to look up at him, making sure to keep in physical contact.
"Does it really hurt?" I asked, and he wrinkled his brow, shrugging.
"Doesn't like…hurt, hurt. But it feels weird. Especially like, I was so close to you for such a long time on the way back and then not being able to touch you was a little weird."
I laughed at his description, holding my finger to my lips and listening for sounds from the living room.
"I wonder if my dad would let us go up to my room, or if he'd literally kill me."
"I wouldn't let him literally kill you," Jake said, his lips twitching like he wanted to smile, and I elbowed him again.
"We'll have to be quiet," I whispered, tiptoeing to the staircase, and he stayed where he had been standing. After several steps where I subsequently fell into the banister, he rolled his eyes, walking to me in one long stride and sweeping me up into his arms. I slapped my hand over my mouth so I didn't squeal in surprise, and he was somehow entirely soundless as he carried me up the stairs.
He looked down at me silently, questioning which my room was, and I pointed to the right door. Shifting my weight to one arm, he turned the knob and strolled right through the doorway, setting me down on my bed lightly.
I looked up at him in mock anger but real confusion, and he laughed quietly at my expression, closing the door slowly and quietly. "Sorry, but you are the opposite of quiet and would probably have broken your neck walking up those stairs on your tiptoes."
I laughed despite myself, kicking off my shoes and moving back so I was sitting length-wise on my bed, leaving room for him next to me. I fluffed some pillows behind my back expectantly.
He rolled his eyes again and sat next to me on the bed, pulling me so we were half-lying down and I was wrapped in his arms. I lay there quietly for a few minutes, reveling in the perfection of every moment I spent with him.
"By the way, Jacob, for future reference," I said, turning my head so I could look up at him, my chin on his chest. "Maybe you should ask permission before you do stuff like that."
He laughed, and I covered his mouth quickly, glancing at the door. I didn't want Charlie to hear us up here and come investigating, because he definitely would. And when he found us lying in my bed, he would exile us to the living room with him, where we would get absolutely no talking done.
"I'll ask permission next time."
"Thank you." I didn't want to tell him that there shouldn't be a next time, because I definitely wouldn't mind there being one.
We were quiet for a little longer, and my eyelids started drooping a little bit, too comfortable and warm in Jacob's arms. I wondered if he felt how warm he was, or if he was just kind of at a neutral temperature all the time. I decided I'd ask him eventually.
When I had determined that I was ready to start asking questions, I sat up, and he stayed lying down, the wrinkled t-shirt he'd thrown on before we'd left La Push twisted around his stomach. I put my hand on his chest above his heart, feeling it beating slightly faster than normal under my palm.
"Jacob, keep talking about imprinting," I murmured, smiling when he put his hand over mine on his chest. I crossed my legs, my knees and shins against his left side.
He looked nervous again, and I wondered what was so embarrassing about the whole thing. He closed his eyes, tightening his hold on my hand.
"Where did I stop before?"
"You asked me when you looked at me, and I said you looked at me when the woman was freezing me."
"Right." He sighed, and then words came out of his mouth very slowly, measured. "Well, when I…turned into a wolf. The first place I looked when I was changing was at you. I looked at you, and something in my mind just…clicked. It decided, I think. Or maybe realized is a better word."
He was quiet for a little while, and I decided to urge him on. "Realized what?"
"Just – that I was yours, I guess." He blushed, and I reached to touch his cheek with my free hand, unable to resist. His skin responded under my fingers, a smile stretching his face. "Sorry if that's weird."
"It's not, not at all. You are mine, Jake." He opened his eyes to see my face as I said the words, and his answering grin showed he liked what he saw there.
"Well, I don't know that I could really imprint on you until I was back to being a human. But it was just like – when I looked at you, as a wolf, I felt this perfect fire under my skin. Sam told me he thinks it made the transformation hurt less. Because something so good and pure was happening at the same time."
I smiled, moving my fingers from his cheek down his jaw and onto his neck, tracing lines on his chest as he spoke. "It was like the way I was on the planet changed. Instead of being pulled to stand on the ground, I was being pulled to you. I had to stay with you, I had to protect you, I had to be whatever you wanted me to be. Instead of being just Bella, you were my Bella, and I needed you. None of that has changed since then." He paused, gauging my reaction. "Well, except for the fire thing."
I was almost speechless, trying to figure out how I felt about it. "Give me a processing minute," I whispered, taking a deep breath. So Jacob's transformation, or just being a wolf, had triggered him to – to what, connect with me? I tried to decipher it, the words of the other wolves and Emily running through my confused mind. Utterly devoted, Emily had said.
"What – why does it happen?" I asked, and hurt registered briefly on Jacob's face before I started shaking my head, moving my hand back to his cheek. "No, no, Jake, I'm happy it happened. I really am. I'm just confused. Curious." I tried to smile in encouragement, still processing.
He looked like he was forcing himself to talk. "Sam told me he doesn't really know why it happened, but it has to happen after the first transformation and it's the first time you see the person after you change when you imprint. It's irreversible. I guess I'm going to be super attached to you for the rest of my life."
I grinned, trying to make sure he wasn't embarrassed. "Wow, that'll get annoying."
He knew I was joking and laughed, the rumbling under my hand comforting. "It shouldn't. When we imprint, we become whatever our imprintees need us to be, whether it's a best friend, a brother, a protector, a – a lover." He looked uncomfortable now, probably having spoken near verbatim what Sam had told him. Sam and Emily flashed through my mind, their love no doubt a result of his imprinting on her. I tried to picture me and Jacob like that, and blushed immediately.
He kept talking when I didn't respond, probably knowing where my thoughts had gone. "When I turned, when I was finally a wolf, all I knew was you. I needed you, I was pulled to you, I needed to protect you, but that vampire woman reeked, and Sam's voice was talking me through it. 'Leave Bella, you have to chase that woman. Bella will only be safe if you chase her. Follow her, don't look back, Jacob.'" He was impersonating Sam's tone, and it was impressive how alike they sounded. "So I did what Sam said, and I chased her down. Sam told me what to do—" He cut off, looking scared to finish. He sidetracked. "But even through everything, no matter what, every thought kept connecting back to you. I needed you to be okay, I needed to go back and follow your scent and make sure that you were safe."
"I kind of did the same thing," I said, hoping it would make him feel less creepy. "I couldn't stop thinking about where you were and if you were okay. My mind kept saying, 'is Jacob okay? Is Jacob okay?'"
He smiled, nodding. "Emily told me that imprintees don't really imprint, but they can tell. And there's something in the imprintee genetic makeup that makes you just as attached as we are."
"I think I remember her talking about that. I was a little bit awake."
He laughed. "A little bit? What else did you hear?"
"Just that. And Jared making fun of me."
"Yeah, he's good at that. Ignore him." He reached up with the hand that wasn't tangled in mine and played with some strands of my hair. "So we don't really know why it happens. Sam has an explanation that's a little bit weird."
I grinned. "Well, when you describe it like that, you have to tell me."
He blushed as he spoke. "I guess Sam thinks – that we imprint on the people with the best chance of like, passing down the genes. The werewolf genes." He didn't meet my eyes, looking up at my ceiling.
I shrugged. "I guess it makes sense. He and Emily probably both have the ancestry. I don't really know that I have it, though."
He still wouldn't meet my eyes. "I dunno. We think it happened with one of our old chiefs. He had a couple wives before he imprinted, and when he finally did they were perfect together."
"That's a good thing." I smiled, touching his lips and running my fingers along his chin and jaw for my own comfort and also so he would know I didn't think any differently of him. "Why it happens isn't the important thing. The important thing is that it happened, and we're together now."
He nodded, smiling. "You're right."
"Was it different seeing me this morning? When I saw you at Emily's for the first time."
He looked thoughtful for a little while, and it was getting harder and harder not to touch his face constantly. It was just so perfect, flawless. I could stare at him forever and ever.
"It was kind of the same reaction I'd had as a wolf. Glowing heat under my skin, and like there was a rubber band around us pulling us closer together. I think it was like, a confirmation imprint." We both grinned.
"Why a rubber band?"
"Because it's more effort to stay apart than to be together. Imagine like a huge rubber band; it gets tiring to keep it stretched apart. Not to mention it feels like you have your own gravitational pull, pulling me to you."
I smiled, trying to imagine a rubber band around the two of us. Surely it would take a lot of strength to stretch the rubber band apart while we moved away from each other, and it would be a relief to stop stretching it and be together. Maybe that was why he wanted to be touching me all the time, and why it was kind of the same for me.
"I'm glad. It's kind of like that, for me," I tried to explain, reaching for his hand and running our fingers together. "I just have this need to be with you. I think about you a whole lot." I know it couldn't compare to the strength of his imprint, but maybe knowing I felt the way I did would take away his discomfort.
He laughed a little bit, and I wondered how I could make him feel better before he shifted, sitting up. His face wasn't even a foot away from mine, and his perfect features were so close. I analyzed them, my eyes catching on his lips and staying there.
"Bella," he murmured, and I watched his lips make my name, pushing together for the beginning and parting at the end. "You look scared."
"No, no, Jacob," I said, backing up to climb onto my knees and then scramble over his lap. "I'm not scared, Jake. If anything, I'm just scared of how…obsessed with you I am, I guess. You just seem too perfect to be real."
He grinned, and I regretted getting this close to him; his warm body was surrounding me, his musky-outside-cologne smell overpowering my nose. The perfect features of his face were close enough that I didn't even have to reach out far to touch them, and I brushed my fingers on his lips, forever enraptured by their smooth surface. He snatched my hand out of the air and his lips spread into a grin.
"I think I know how you feel." He put my hand on his shoulder and then moved his hand to touch my face, tipping my chin up so I met his eyes. "Bella, you ever think that we're kind of weird?"
I laughed, nodding. "Definitely."
He froze for a millisecond and then started whispering very quickly. "Charlie heard, I think, he's on his way up."
I leapt off the bed and slipped on some water that had dripped off our shoes coming in the room, and Jacob was on his feet quicker than I had been, catching me from falling. He quickly righted me, and I mussed up my sheets like they had been when I'd left rather than like Jacob and I had been sitting on them seconds previously.
Charlie opened the door, and I looked up at Jacob desperately, searching for something we could say that wouldn't give my poor father a heart attack.
"Thanks for showing me your room, Bells," Jacob said, looking instantly calm and collected. I stared up at him for several seconds before glancing at my dad, most likely looking like a deer in headlights.
"Right on cue, Charlie, we were just going to come downstairs and test my hand at helping with dinner."
I had absolutely no idea what to say, but Charlie seemed to perk up at the mention of dinner, nodding. "Yeah, you kids don't need to be up here all alone anyway. How long did it take you to show him your room?" he asked me directly, and I tried to normalize myself.
"Not long. We were in the kitchen for a little bit before I decided I'd show him around. Complained about my slow computer, ya know." I glanced up at Jake to see if he approved of my lie, and his lips tugged up at the corners. So I hadn't been that convincing. I should have let him do the talking!
"Alrighty, then." Charlie didn't question me, either somehow believing my horrible lie or just in denial, and we followed him down the stairs. He looked at Jacob hopping off the last step effortlessly with questions in his eyes, and I remembered my dad joking about Jake's and my combined lack of coordination. Well, that scale had become unbalanced quickly.
Charlie left us alone in the kitchen again, to my surprise, but I guessed that he probably expected to hear us making noise as we cooked. I opened the fridge and started scanning for things I could make that were easy and fast, not wanting to spend too much time in the kitchen before we could escape back up to my room again.
"You're such a bad liar," Jacob breathed behind me, and I jumped, feeling his arms snake around my waist. I leaned into him and twisted a bit so I could look up at him, and he was grinning down at me. "Especially to a police chief, that was so sad."
"I guess I gotta get better at it, huh?" I asked, and he looked confused for a second. "The wolf secret, and everything."
He nodded, still grinning. "Yeah, when you hang out with a bunch of werewolves, you might have to lie once or twice."
I laughed and shook my head, returning to scanning the fridge. Finding nothing, I shut the door and started toward the pantry, and Jake's arms loosened and then dropped from my waist. He pulled a chair out and plopped into it, and I rolled my eyes.
"Thought you said you were going to help, Jake!"
He laughed, resting his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand. He looked like such a sculpture, so perfect, that I had to tear my eyes away, no longer really seeing what was in front of me in the pantry. "When you need me, you know where I'll be."
"You're hard to miss, that's for sure." I glanced at him to check his expression, noted that he laughed, and then looked away quickly again. Staring at the items in the pantry, I grabbed a box of pasta and a jar of alfredo sauce, setting the noodles on the counter and popping the lid on the jar. I was on autopilot, unable to get the image of him out of my head.
"How kind of you."
"Kind is my middle name." I didn't even really realize what I was doing, setting up an easy dinner with more effort than it should have taken, and I didn't even jump when the phone rang. Jacob was at my side to answer it in a second, pressing a button to pause the microwave so it wasn't sounding in the background of the call. When had I started the microwave?
"Swan residence." I heard a small babble on the other end, able to tell that the voice was deep but not hearing actual words. Jacob's brows pinched in the middle, and he nodded to himself, his jaw set. "Thanks for telling me. Do I need to be there?"
My stomach clenched, and I reached for him instinctively, not wanting him to leave. I grabbed his warm hand and he laced our fingers together before I could, his expression showing he didn't want to leave me any more than I wanted to leave.
"That sounds a little fishy to me, but hey, you're the Alpha." Jacob nodded again, and I wondered if he even noticed. "Okay. Let me know what happens." He hung up the phone, and I waited for an explanation but got nothing.
"Jake?" I asked, untangling our fingers and restarting the microwave.
"Bella?"
"You gunna tell me what that was?"
"Nope."
"Why?"
"Sam said not to. With him being the Alpha, I'm literally unable to disobey an order from him. I get all tongue-tied, I just can't."
I wrinkled my brow, not sure what to question him about first. Deciding to keep my mouth shut for now, to just enjoy having him, I finished dinner and put it on the table, wondering after a second if there was enough for all of us with Jacob's werewolf appetite.
After dinner, Charlie returned to the living room and we lingered in the kitchen, but I decided to throw caution to the wind and take Jacob back up to my room so I could talk to him more. Even though we were in a totally separate room from Charlie, I still didn't feel confident enough to whisper about Jacob's secrets.
I started up the stairs and Jacob swept me off my feet again, carrying me up halfway before he stopped and put me down. "Oops," he whispered, grinning. "Permission?"
I grinned back and held my arms out. "Permission."
He picked me up quickly again, making absolutely no noise as he climbed the rest of the stairs and put me on my bed.
We were both lying down, my face pressed into his chest, when I had mustered the courage to speak. "Jacob, what can you tell me about the call you got?"
"It was Sam. He and the others got some news when they were running."
"Was it about the woman who escaped?"
He paused, as if testing what he wanted to say to see if he'd be able to get the words out. "No."
"Was it about vampires?"
He started to speak and then the breath rushed out of him, ruffling my hair. I glanced up at him and saw a lot of concentration on his face, color rising in his cheeks. "You can't say." He shook his head. "So probably, then."
He didn't respond.
I lay my face back on his chest and sighed, wishing things were simpler. "It's not about the woman vampire, but it's about other vampires. How comforting."
He kept silent.
"Will you have to leave me?"
"No." The one word came out instantly, forcefully, as if even had he not been able to say it, he would have made it come out anyway. "I'm going to keep you safe, Bella. You have nothing to worry about."
I nodded, sighing again. His arms tightened around me and he shuffled us onto our sides slowly, yanking the blanket out from under us and throwing it with the arm that wasn't around me so it fluttered and landed on top of us. Not that we really needed the extra warmth, what with Jacob being a thousand degrees. He reached over and switched my bedside lamp off, and the darkness and warmth eased my tired mind to rest.
I woke up to a rhythmic beating, wondering if it was Jacob's heartbeat beneath my ear or something else. My face was still against his chest, so I imagined that the former was likely, and tried to fall back asleep.
I couldn't. I was also cold, I realized. It felt like someone had pointed a fan at my face, and every once in a while a freezing drop of water would sting against my cheek or forehead. I blinked awake fully and looked around, lifting my head from Jacob's chest. Had we left my window open?
Well, I'd been right about outside air, at least – Jacob had me wrapped in his arms, carrying me wedding style. The rhythmic beat was the pounding of his feet on the muddy ground as he sprinted, and I was surprised they were making any sound at all based on his recent acquirement of supreme agility. He noticed that I was waking up, and he smiled down at me then lifted his eyes back to the forest around him. "Sorry, I was trying not to wake you."
"It's okay, I think," I murmured, looking around. We were speeding through pitch black trees, and I chuckled when I realized Jacob had wrapped me in one of the smaller blankets from my bed.
"I didn't want to go through your closet or anything," he said, and I laughed, leaning my head against him again.
"It's fine, Jacob. You're great."
"Thanks." His white teeth glinted with reflected moonlight as he smiled, still running impossibly fast carrying my weight.
"Where are we going?" I asked, wondering if he was allowed to tell me. "And what time is it?"
"It's close to two in the morning, I think. Sam called again and told me I needed to get down here, and that I could bring you because it was safe. I don't know anything else." His honesty was very apparent, so I nodded, not sure what to think. What could be something safe, but still urgent enough to call Jake down to wherever "here" was in the middle of the night?
"Where are we going?" I repeated.
"Some clearing. I don't think I've ever been down here. It's pretty far from Forks and the reservation."
"That's strange."
"You're telling me. I'm guessing it has something to do with the call earlier, but Sam didn't say."
"Yeah." I was starting to get scared, wondering how long we'd been running and if the vampire woman was going to try to get to us. I trusted that Jake would be able to turn into a wolf just fine, but it would still terrify me to have to watch him fight another vampire. Was he ever going to be safe again, truly safe?
We reached a break in the trees, and Jake slowed as we crossed through it, stopping at the edge of the trees and tensing immediately. He seemed to smell something wrong, how he had with the first vampire woman we'd encountered, his nostrils flaring; I looked ahead of us, seeing nothing through the blackness with the clouds covering most of the moon. Shapes broke through the dark and came closer to us, and I was comforted by the familiar silhouettes of the giant wolves, starting to shift so Jake would be able to put me down. His arms tightened, and he took an involuntary step back, as if the wolves were something to fear.
It was then that I realized my Jacob wasn't afraid of his wolf brothers, but what was behind them. Emerging from behind the giant wolves were people pale enough to reflect the faint moonlight off their skin, each incredibly beautiful even in the dim lighting; I noticed that Sam was in his human form, walking out with them, but I couldn't take my eyes off the others. I didn't believe it. It couldn't be happening.
Right in front of me, facing my Jacob in his fragile human form, were three vampires.
The closer they got, the tighter Jake's arms got, and I pulled at his warm fingers with my freezing ones, wanting him to look at me. He needed to turn into a wolf, to attack them, I knew. So why wasn't he doing it?
"Jacob, I'm going to need you to calm down. You're going to hurt Bella, we don't want that." Sam's voice was a command, and I hadn't even realized Jacob was shaking, vibrating how the wolf boys sometimes did when they were about to turn. How could Sam have said that it was safe to bring me? Was Sam somehow involved with these vampires?
"She can't be here," Jacob growled, his voice a painful struggle between his need to protect me and a command from his Alpha. "They'll hurt her."
"Look at their eyes. You've heard the legends, Jacob. Have there been any so far that weren't true?"
I didn't know what Sam was talking about, unable to see the vampires' eyes in the darkness with my feeble human ones. Jacob could apparently see them, however, and his shaking dulled momentarily before beginning again. His hands were tight on me still, too tight. "Jacob," I breathed, worried that he would turn and hurt me how Sam had hurt Emily. I hated myself immediately for having the thought, but didn't get any less scared.
"My – I have to get her out of here, my Bella," Jacob breathed, taking another step back toward the trees. He looked visibly in pain, and I was too, but for a much different reason; his fingers were digging into the sides of my thigh and my rib cage, and I wasn't very sturdy. I already knew I was going to have bruises – would he break my bones on accident? Or would he calm down before then?
"They're good, Jacob. They say they do not harm humans and they don't smell of human blood. Their eyes are not red like those who hurt our people, Jacob. They can be trusted." The way Sam had phrased the last sentence sounded like he had meant that just because they were trustworthy didn't mean he was going to trust them.
I also noticed that Sam was saying Jacob's name quite a lot. Why was that?
The clouds shifted out of the way of the moon briefly, and I caught a better glimpse of the vampires; one was a very, very short woman, slight like a ballerina with dark spikey hair; the other two were tall men, equally beautiful with thin but strong frames. One of the men had a very kind face, very light blond hair blowing slightly in the cold wind. The other's hair was orangey, almost – bronze, I realized. A reddish brown that was very different from the reddish brown of my Jacob's skin, and in a careful disarray. Other than the wind ruffling their clothing – which looked awfully expensive, probably designer – and their hair, they were completely still. Like perfect white statues.
I couldn't see their eyes from the distance I was, wondering what color I would see. The two wolves sat on either side of the trio, watching Jacob and their Alpha, but I didn't look at them for very long, having to stare at the strange, well-behaved vampires. The bronze-haired one was looking back at me and he was far stiller than the others, his expression taut, almost in pain. He actually looked very angry – what had I done to him? Along with his anger was a touch of confusion, and I wondered why on earth this beautiful vampire boy was angry. Hadn't he harassed my pack of werewolves and gotten me woken up in the middle of the night? Shouldn't I be angry with him?
I hadn't realized that Jacob's hands were loosening on me, and I gathered up my blanket so it didn't touch the muddy ground when he set me down, wind blowing cold on my ankles and shins. The blond vampire took a step forward, a sweet smile on his perfect face. "Hello, Jacob and Bella. I have already spoken with and introduced myself to your other pack members, and of course you deserve the same. My name is Carlisle Cullen, and this is my daughter, Alice, and my son, Edward."