Arms, around my belly. Failing to lift.

Voices, calling. "Lochlan, it's too heavy, give us a hand."

Fingers, curling around my ankles, hoisting.

I wanted to bite the invader. Let me die. It had taken months to run myself into this weariness. Minutes to drag myself into the surf, ready to collapse and drown. If I could drown. Stupid werewolf characteristics.

I growled, baring my teeth.

"Cal, anaesthetic, quick. We've got a angry one."

And the cold steel of a needle sliding effortlessly into my rump. Did they really think that drugs would work? My blood would burn it so damn fast that if I went out at all, it wouldn't be for long.

Little dots tumbled across themselves, like waves at the beach, from the sides of my vision. Then nothing. Sweet, blessed, comatose sleep.

I growled, pissed off. Freaking months of preparation, and some kid has to drag me to safety. It had been hard, getting far enough away that I couldn't hear them. I could still hear faint calls.

Jake… That would be Embry, interfering bastard.

Bella would be married by now. And turned into a bloodsucker.

My words came back to me. I don't have leeches on my speed-dial.

I willed the animal to take over again, take me away from Jacob Black, and turn me back into the beast. Eat, drink, sleep, run. Nothing else. No complicated emotions.

The anaesthetic had numbed me into a vegetable.

I'd be a tomato. Everyone thought it was a vegetable; it put up a good show. Hell, it even fooled itself. But the tomato was a fruit. Not a vegetable. I wasn't human, no matter how much I tried to persuade myself and Bella that I was.

My senses came back slowly.

Touch. Cold, against my back. Lino, by the texture.

Taste. The fading chemicals. So they had force-fed me some stronger stuff while I was under.

Hear. Water, gurgling down pipes. A heartbeat, slow and steady. Breathing, measured and deep.

Smell. Cosmetics. Strawberry shampoo. Ouch. That stung. Bella'd used strawberry. Too close. Probably the same brand. A human smell. A nice human smell. And something else. Like a leech, but not quite. An ancient scent, at least three years old.

But no sight. It must be bloody pitch-black. Even a wolf needs a little light to see by, though less than most.

I pieced together my surroundings. I was in a bathroom. Most likely a girl's. I stretched cautiously and my toenails clicked against a bathtub. An ensuite then. Too small for a normal size. And the girl would be outside, asleep in her bed. Bloody brilliant.

Come home… I pushed Quil's voice out of my head. At least, I tried.

We understand. So sorry. Come home …

They were getting clearer; getting closer. They would find me. Drag me back to the place with all the memories that I didn't want.

There was one way to make their tracking process harder. They couldn't follow my mind this way, only sniff out my trail. I phased back to a human shape.

It was hard to control my limbs. I hadn't even thought of this form for months. I staggered slightly as I placed one hand on the doorknob.

She was breathing slowly. In. Out. In. Out. Still asleep. I turned the handle millimeter by millimeter, memorizing its gold-plated odor and listening for waking sounds from the girl. Then it was open, and I was striding silently along the fluffy carpet. It was dark in the room, and when I glanced toward the heartbeat, all I could make out was a shadowy shape. Even with my eyesight, it was dark. No one liked absolute darkness. This chick had problems.

I inhaled a breath of air. The girl. The disconcerting stench of a vampire. And then that tinny gold.

It was better after I crept out. There was more light. It suddenly came to mind that I wasn't wearing anything and that it would be pretty conspicuous strolling through town without any clothes on. I sniffed. Denim. Cotton. Lynx. These combined seemed to suggest a man's wardrobe. I could only pray he was my size.

He was a textbook fit.

Now to mingle in with the other teenagers in this city. School. Malls. Beach. I mentally scratched malls and beach when I noticed the date on a calendar next to the front door. Halfway through the school term. I wondered how to enroll at a school without a parents' help.

Would anyone notice if I just showed up and asked for my timetable?

"I'm Trixie," one of the girls surrounding me said, fluttering her eyelashes. "So where did you move here from, Jacob?" Trixie's face was the picture of sincerity, as if she really cared. But still, I had to be on my guard.

"Uh," I hesitated. "Around." Maybe they'd be happy with that answer. It would probably sound mysterious to their eager brains.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Trixie warbled. My ears were so busy protesting at the shrill pitch, that it took a while for me to discern words from the mindless noise.

"No." I answered shortly. I wish. If I did have a girlfriend, I felt like saying, I wouldn't be here. I would be back at La Push with her, every second I could with her. But Bella had chosen the leech. Or Edward as she liked me to call him.

"All the more time you can spend with me then!" Trixie sounded delighted. "You lucky boy!"

A grunt of amusement was unexpectedly thrown into the mix. So I wasn't the only one that found the idea of wasting time with this primping skeleton appalling. I glanced in the direction of my comrade in ideas.

And then I saw her.

I was glowing.

Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the face of the girl. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was - my love for the girl in Forks, my love for my father, my little remaining loyalty to the pack, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self - disconnected from me in that second - snip, snip, snip- and floated up into space.

I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was.

Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing - to the center of the universe.

I could see that now - how the universe swirled around this one point. I'd never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.

The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.

It was the slim girl twisted elegantly in her chair that held me here now.