A/N: *Peeks over back of sofa.* Oh! Glad you're still here. Soooo some people were ... ahem ... a little annoyed with me for the last chapter. Some of you just enjoyed the hot vamp-lovin'. Most of you seem willing to forgive me. I appreciate that.

Evelyn-Shaye and MunkeeRajah, the bestest betas in the world, did fast work on this chapter, so you're getting it a day or two sooner than I'd originally planned. I love them more than the last day of school!

Twilight is still all about the Stephie.

Chapter 38 – Saviour Machine

Leah POV

When you spend pretty much every day of six years surrounded by a pack of testosterone-addled, intellectually challenged mutts, you see a lot of action movies filled with car chases and explosions. Watch enough things blow up on screen and you might start to think you know what it would be like to actually be in an explosion.

You'd be wrong. I sure as hell was.

All the Dolby-quality, surround-sound booms of a hundred movie-house blowouts couldn't compare to the concussion of noise and force that pummeled us when the bedroom wall erupted inward. Heat, sound and debris crashed into the room, battering us. Tossing us.

We were frogs in a blender.

The blast was so intense, so powerful, that I couldn't tuck and roll, cover my head or even locate my ass to kiss it goodbye. I couldn't do anything but scrunch my eyes shut and wait for the buffeting to stop. When it finally did, I found myself jammed against the door of the room, buried under layers of vamp-boy, shredded mattress and smoldering drywall.

Although the explosion was over, the sound lingered, leaving a residue of buzzing and ringing in my throbbing head. I forced my eyes open and got an eyeful of Nahuel's naked, grime-smeared chest pressed up against my nose. I was half on my back, half on my side, wedged into the angle where the door met the floor. Nahuel was pretty much on top of me, and though his arms had somehow found their way around me, he wasn't moving. I was so tightly stuck I couldn't even budge my head enough to see his face.

My first thought was to wonder how our group's resident class-clowns-slash-village-idiots, Paul and Emmett, had pulled off a punk of this magnitude. In the next second, I realized this whole scenario was way beyond the limited capabilities of my blockheaded pack brother and his vampire counterpart. And not even Paul was enough of an ass to blow up a room just to jerk my chain.

Then, before either of us had moved or even drawn a deep breath, fury ripped through me, the kind of anger that could snuff out the sun.

I'd finally mustered the courage to tell my imprint the secret that had been eating me alive for days, and the god-damned room blew up. Really? Whose idea of a sick joke was this?

Fate was seriously fucking with me.

Shakes seized my body, rattling my teeth and bouncing my limbs. I wasn't sure if anger or shock were to blame.

I realized I was muttering something against Nahuel's warm skin. I tried to tune into it. Whatever was coming out of my mouth in a smoke-roughened whisper seemed to be on a repeating loop. I tried to shake the buzzing loose from inside my head and managed to move my noggin a few centimeters.

The cacophony in my ears began to fade. I gripped Nahuel's arms and focused. My breathy babbling resolved into coherent sound.

"I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant …."

Holy shit! the wolf-bitch screeched in horror. Not like this! Don't tell him like this!

I knew I should stop talking—had never wished for a muzzle more than in that moment. But the valve inside my head that should have been set to the "shut the fuck up" position was, instead, frozen wide open in "verbal diarrhea" mode.

No, no, no! He deserves better than this! You're ruining everything!

The truth that had been festering inside me burst out, and the same artless words kept rolling from my mouth brutally, repeatedly.

All of thirty seconds had passed since the blast. Too little time for me to figure out what the hell had caused it, what the hell was going on or what we should do now. Not even enough time for me to give more than a passing thought to where Jake and everyone else was, or just who was still screaming like a total pussy in the hallway.

But apparently, it was plenty of time for me to annihilate my imprint's sanity—and my own.

Maybe he's out cold and can't hear.

"I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant …."

As if someone had hooked his toes to an industrial-strength battery and electrified him, every muscle in Nahuel's body suddenly went rigid. I heard and felt the even, comforting thump of his heart stutter, stumble and then kick into double-time. When he sucked in a huge, rattling breath, it finally registered that he hadn't been breathing at all until that second.

His arms around me tightened to a crushing grip.

Ah, fuck! He's conscious.

"I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant … I'm pregnant …."

His head jerked backward away from me, and I finally got a look at his face. Even covered in soot and grime, his beauty pierced my soul. And though I'd prided myself on how good I'd become at reading his emotions, I was at a total loss now to define what I saw in his bottomless eyes.

Whatever it was, it stopped my rambling cold.

For a moment, he just stared at me with an alien, unreadable expression.

That invisible cable, which had been peaceful and painless for so long, wrenched excruciatingly. The crush of his arms and the thick, smoke-filled air drove my breathing into a shallow, insufficient panting. I poured over every line of his dear face, looking for any hint of what he was thinking, and I died a thousand deaths before he finally spoke.

"I heard you the first time," he said, quietly, his faultless lips barely moving to form the words.

His level voice was fatalistically calm. Distant and disinterested. As if he were a commuter commenting on the architectural appeal of a mildly intriguing building that he saw every day from the window of a speeding train.

Pain, sharp and fierce, lanced into the base of my throat as the invisible cable twisted tight. My fingers dug into his arms, and I opened my mouth to speak, even though I had no freaking clue what I should say—what I possibly could say—in response to his emotionlessness.

In the next second, his warm body was ripped out of my arms. The lights had gone out in the room when the blast hit, but in the smoky darkness, just enough moonlight reflected off the pale walls for me to see his legs being dragged backward over the small heap of debris that had been our king-sized mattress.

Something—or someone—had grabbed him from behind.

"Nahuel!"

Every muscle in my body screamed as I lunged after him. Still naked as the day I was born, I scrambled over the pile of rubble. My foot snagged in a loop of shredded fabric. I somersaulted clumsily down the other side of the wreckage, landing on my ass with my legs spread like a groupie who was ready to pay the hard way for a backstage pass.

My laboring lungs gave up their last molecule of air at the scene waiting for me on the other side of that moraine of debris.

Some variation of this vision had starred in my nightmares for days, ever since my near-rape in that fucking barn. I'd awakened from every one of those dreams shaking, sweating and gasping for breath—grateful beyond words to escape. Now I felt like I was trapped inside those nightmares, unable to rouse.

Remy stood stone-still in front of the collapsed wall. Cold wind rushed through the gap behind him, spitting pebble-hard shards of snow and ice into the room. The frozen droplets stung wherever they hit my naked flesh, but they bounced off his invincible back, pinging audibly. Some collected in his strawberry blonde curls and glittered there like a net of diamonds.

He held Nahuel in a headlock. With his elbows hooked under my imprint's armpits, Joham's errand boy had his hands clasped behind Nahuel's head, forcing it down onto his chest. My stomach iced over at the listless, hopeless vacancy in my imprint's eyes. Nahuel hung limply in Remy's arms.

He didn't struggle. He didn't move. He didn't even look at me.

"Well, hello, sweetness."

The tenor voice still held that bayou twang, but the whiskey smoothness was roughened by the way his breath whistled and hissed eerily through his ravaged face. It was hard to believe the asshole could talk at all. I guessed whoever had pieced him back together hadn't been able to fix the gaping wound where Nahuel had ripped away half the bastard's face. Wickedly sharp white teeth flashed visibly through the hole where his cheek should have been, and the torn edges of his lips faded into silver as they stretched and pulled over the exposed jawbone. The grisly awfulness of the right side of his face was all the more horrific for the perfection of the left side.

I felt a perverse sense of satisfaction that, even if I died here tonight, this fucker would go through eternity with a mangled face. This was the shitbag who'd tried to rape me. Who'd taunted Nahuel. Who'd fucked and knocked up my baby brother's imprint. Who'd used his remote-viewing abilities to violate Seth's privacy and emotions as thoroughly as he'd tried to violate my body.

He terrified me, but I faced him now with advantages I'd lacked the first time we tangled.

I wasn't injured.

I knew what he could do.

I had something unbelievably precious to protect.

"Don't you look delicious?"

Bile raced up my throat at his suggestive leer.

I drew breath to spit a curse at him, tensing my muscles in preparation to tap that inner core of energy that would turn me into a wolf. I gave only a fleeting thought to the repercussions phasing might have for my baby. There was no time to think about it; the change took less than a second.

But between the split second I gave in to instinct and triggered the phase, and the instant when the transformation should have begun, my body went inexplicably limp. The energy drained away from my limbs, retreating to my center in a burning rush.

I can't move! I can't fucking move! What the hell is happening to me?

A tall, dark silhouette appeared in the rent wall behind the rapist-vamp. Soundlessly, the figure stepped into the room, moving so lithely over the debris-strewn floor that the wreckage didn't even crunch beneath his feet. The form passed into a pallid patch of moonlight.

His skin was so pale it was almost luminescent. The shape and tilt of his ruby red eyes, the sleek, short hair that was glossy blue-black like a raven's wing, the long, lean line of his tall form—all were disturbingly familiar, even though I'd never seen this particular vamp before.

Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuck ….

He approached me eagerly, stopping when his shoes were just inches from my outstretched toes. For a moment, he towered over me before gracefully lowering himself to crouch beside me.

I wanted desperately to flinch away from the long, ice-cold fingers he brushed over my forehead. But of course, he wasn't allowing that movement—or any other. When he'd first arrived in Forks, Nahuel had told the Cullens about his father's ability to paralyze a victim. Joham had used that ability to murder my imprint's aunt. Now he was using it on me.

He smiled and his smooth, handsome cheeks dimpled slightly. Probably he meant the youthful grin to be friendly and reassuring—maybe even kind in his own sick interpretation of the sentiment. Instead, all I saw was a twisted perversion of Nahuel's sweet smile.

His frigid fingers stroked down my cheek, and his hand cupped my chin fully, lifting my face toward his, as if he needed a better view to inspect me.

"Hello, Leah," Joham said in a voice half a harmonic deeper than Nahuel's. "I am so very pleased to meet you at last."

We'd wasted most of the past day plotting how we would bait, track and battle Nahuel's batshit crazy DNA donor. Why hadn't it occurred to anyone that he was insane enough to come after us? Had we really thought our sheer numbers and the cooperation of the Volturi would be enough to protect us from someone so evil and insane that he made Aro look like a bubbly girl scout?

Joham had grown tired of waiting for us to come to him.

Tired of the dodge and dance we'd been playing for the past two months. Murders, kidnappings, half-assed attacks—he'd obviously had enough of it all. He'd brought the fight to us.

If he was here, in this room with me and his son, it meant he was confident he wasn't going to be interrupted. He'd either killed or controlled the other members of our group. Seth, Jake, my pack brothers, the Cullens ….

Stop it! Focus on what's in front of you, the wolf-bitch commanded. It's the only thing you might be able to affect.

Joham's gruesome burgundy eyes drifted south from my face, caressing down my naked body. Yet there was nothing sexual about his regard. He looked at me with the same impersonal interest a researcher might have for something particularly unusual in a petri dish. His gaze settled on my flat stomach, and if I'd been capable of movement, I'd have clapped my hands over my abdomen and scuttled away from him on my ass.

But of course, I couldn't move.

Why can't I move? Why isn't Bella shielding me? Where the hell is Jake?

Stop it! Focus!

"You are as appealing as Remy reported," Joham said, conversationally. He rocked back on his heels and studied me calmly. "You are an excellent choice to carry my son's progeny."

At that, Nahuel exploded into loud, shrill curses.

He'd been quiet and complacent in Remy's grasp, as if he hadn't really cared what was happening around him. Apparently, Joham hadn't been using his paralytic power on my imprint, because Nahuel began to struggle, clawing at the rapist's arms, writhing and squirming to break his hold.

I didn't understand whatever he was screaming—probably in his mother's native tongue—but Joham obviously did. And he didn't like it one bit. His lips pressed into a disapproving line, and he cast an annoyed glance over his shoulder at his son.

Nahuel's body sagged instantly, but he continued to rage and curse. Ignoring him, Joham turned back to me, a glint of censure in his eyes.

"He was unaware." An undertone of disapproval had slithered into his overly calm, friendly tone. "You did not inform him that you are breeding."

Joham's power over my body apparently didn't extend to certain internal muscles, so I managed to clench my sphincter and avoid disgracing myself totally. If I hadn't already emptied my stomach just minutes before, I'd be vomiting now, because my body wanted to void itself of the terror that ripped through me at having my worst fears confirmed.

He knew. My imprint's psycho father knew I was pregnant with his grandchild.

Suddenly, I was back in that hell hole of a barn, and the brain-rapist's cold breath was washing over my naked skin, his icy claw pressing into my abdomen.

"Looks like I'm not the only one who knows what he's doing. Who'da thought the loser half-breed had it in 'im?"

"I ain't too proud to take sloppy seconds. I'll enjoy a fruitless fuck just as much as I would planting one in you."

Of course Joham knew. Before I'd told Nahuel in the worst possible way, before Carlisle's ultrasound had confirmed it, before I'd even known myself … Joham had known I was pregnant. Because Remy had known. And whatever Remy knew, Joham did, too.

"Why would you withhold this information from my son?" Joham demanded. If I'd needed any more confirmation that he was a sick, crazy fuck, the righteous indignation in his voice would have sealed it for me. I gaped at him wordlessly.

"She knew I would not want it!" Nahuel spat, and the angry loathing in his tone, the venom in his words, splintered my heart. "She knew I would insist she get rid of it."

Joham's elegant brow creased in candid puzzlement.

"Why ever would you wish to terminate such an extraordinary pregnancy?"

Still crouched beside me, he pivoted to face Nahuel, showing me his back as confidently as if I were no more threat to him than a wounded rabbit.

Let him think you're no threat, the wolf-bitch growled. Over-confidence is weakness.

"You have sired a new species," Joham continued, speaking easily over Nahuel's snarling and cursing. "Congratulations, my son. You have fulfilled the purpose for which you were born."

Nahuel cringed as if his father had slapped him across his beautiful face. What little color he'd had drained completely from his cheeks. His eyes, hollow and horrified, drifted from Joham to settle on me where I still sprawled on the floor.

"She is my purpose," he choked, his voice barely audible over the whistle of the wind that gushed into the ruined room. "When she dies … when the monster I have put in her belly murders her … I will die, too."

Remy cackled like a jackal.

"Oh, Romeo! So dramatic! You sound like a school boy who fell for the first whore that popped his cherry."

Rage scorched across Nahuel's face, obliterating the despondency that had marred his beautiful features only seconds before. I welcomed the mood swing. I'd rather see him furious than fatalistic any day. Anger meant there was still something in him that was hoping and responding.

He began to curse again in that foreign language. Remy only laughed harder at Nahuel's helpless fury, but Joham seemed to find my imprint's display far less humorous.

"Enough," he said mildly. Nahuel made a gurgling sound and then fell silent.

Joham turned back to me, studying me speculatively. As if coming to some decision—one that probably would only make sense to him—he slid one arm beneath my knees, the other behind my shoulders and gathered me in his arms. Apparently, he'd decided it was time for us to go.

Something was moving inside me. Heat and energy spun slowly, cautiously, low in my abdomen. It rolled and tickled beneath the surface of my skin. Nudged and nuzzled its way toward the surface.

"It is possible she might survive," Joham said, his deep, resonant voice flat and clinical. "It would be regrettable if such a truly unique creature were to perish. I've invested much to achieve this outcome."

He rose smoothly to his feet, lifting me in his arms with that same unnatural grace and ease with which Nahuel always moved. He turned to Remy.

"Come. There is much to be done. I have many tests to perform. I am eager to learn as much as possible about the fetus while her body still seems able to sustain it."

A ragged sob tore from Nahuel's throat. Tears escaped his clenched eyes and streaked ceaselessly down his tortured face.

A low pulse of heat gently radiated out through my limbs. Something was happening. But what? Did I even have time to wonder?

And abruptly, without any conscious effort from me, the jumbled puzzle pieces of the past two months clicked into place.

Me. It had always been about me. Not Nahuel. Not Renesmee. Me.

Somehow, whether Huilen had told him or he'd found out some other way, Joham had known all along of my existence. He'd known that there was a female shape-shifter just hanging out, doing not much of anything, in the Pacific Northwest.

A female that would make an oh-so-interesting addition to his breeding program.

Taking Nahuel. Murdering Huilen. Torturing his son. Allowing Anjali to help Nahuel escape. Providing an opportunity for his flight north to Forks.

Joham had manipulated everything all along.

Maybe he knew what a vamp-whore his son had become and had gambled that Nahuel wouldn't pass on the opportunity for a unique lay. Maybe he theorized that he could manipulate circumstances to drive us together. Maybe he'd just thought he could throw us in a room alone somewhere and keep us there until we copulated. If he'd known of my apparent infertility, it wouldn't have mattered to him. He'd have thought of a way to jump-start my reproductive system if nature hadn't done it first.

Whatever. He didn't really have to have a good plan—or any plan at all. After all, he was crazier than a shit-house rat. The fact that he not only thought he was sane, but brilliantly so, only served to underscore the depth of his lunacy.

But there were a few things Joham couldn't have known.

Having no knowledge of, or interest in, Quileute legends, he'd had no way of knowing that I'd imprint on his son.

Having no capacity for love himself, he couldn't have anticipated that his son and I would fall in love.

Having no soul of his own, he'd have no idea that two broken, flawed spirits could come together to form a complete, perfect, powerful whole.

The softly glowing bud of warmth and energy that had been swelling inside me for the past few minutes suddenly blossomed. Serenity—radiant, healing and potent—settled over me like the comforting security of my father's strong arms. Something pure and strong and liberating pulsed through my body.

What? The wolf-bitch was bewildered. What's happening?

My eyes swept over Joham's shoulder and settled on my imprint, where he still hung limp and despondent in Remy's arms.

"Nahuel, look at me," I commanded, my voice steady and confident, as if being held naked in a bombed-out room at the mercy of two insane vampires were no more worrisome than discovering a splinter under a thumbnail.

Surprise flitted across Joham's striking face. Even though he hadn't been restraining my ability to speak, he hadn't expected me to say anything.

Nahuel's eyes popped open and locked on mine. His breathing was shallow and listless. The warm coffee-and-cream tone of his skin had curdled into something sallow and bleak. I stared at him, and waited until I was sure I had him—really had him ensnared—before I continued.

"I love you, baby, and I am not going to die," I told him, confidently. "We are not going to die. Not here. Not tonight."

I held his gaze just long enough to see a tiny spark of hope kindle in the depths of his teak eyes. Then I looked back at Joham.

He exuded the offended surprise you'd expect a scientist to display if the fungus he was studying under a microscope suddenly climbed off the slide and attempted to knee him in the balls. The ripple in his composure was only minor and momentary, however, and a second later, he seemed to conclude that I was about as impotent and absurd as that hypothetical fungus.

Wrong, asshole.

"You are a rare treasure indeed," he allowed grudgingly. "But sacrifices sometimes must be made in the interest of advancing science."

"Fuck your sacrifices," I replied calmly. "Fuck science. And. Fuck. You."

The breath of that punctuating epithet hadn't fully escaped my lips when I phased.

And Joham suddenly found his arms full of powerful, pissed off she-wolf.

End note: Oh-KAY! Who's ready to see Leah open a can of she-wolf whup-ass? A show of hands, please?