Chapter 8: The Way Of The Wolf
Jacob
I had a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I could not quite place. It had been there for the last several weeks now. It had been growing stronger and stronger by the day. It was at the point that it was nearly impossible to ignore now. Staying away from her had been much more painful than I had ever expected it to be. It was excruciating. But I had made this commitment eighteen years ago and I was not about to renegade on that now.
I could still remember the day as if it were only yesterday rather than eighteen years ago. After the bloodsucker had dumped Bella she and I had grown closer together. We were just friends. But sometimes, well, a lot of times, the lines between us began to blur. Bella often saw herself as damaged goods. I hated that she could never see herself as clearly as I did. I didn't care that she was pregnant with that bloodsucker's baby. It was an aberration. Sure. It was a creature that had no right to exist. I tried to convince her to have an abortion because I had been terrified of what that baby was going to do to her in the end. After all, it was half vampire. But Bella vehemently refused to do so. So I supported her instead.
I was there with her the day that she went into labor. I was the one who rushed her to the hospital. Charlie had already left for work for the day. I was afraid to leave Bella alone since we still hadn't caught the red headed bloodsucker that had been lurking around. I stayed with Bella at the hospital the entire time. After thirty long, grueling, and painful hours she gave birth to a baby girl. Renesmee. My imprint. I imprinted on that baby girl the very first time that I saw her. This was unexpected. Imprinting was a very rare phenomenon and I hadn't expected that it would happen to me.
I grappled with how I was going to explain this to Bella. Bella knew my secret. I helped her figure it out not long after I started phasing. I told her everything there was to know about my kind. I had told her all of the stories. Imprinting was the one thing I had never mentioned. Not because I was purposely trying to keep it from her. But because I never saw a need to explain that particular phenomena. Until that very moment. I tried to think of a million different ways to explain imprinting to Bella without sounding like a pedophile.
I decided that the best course of action would be not to tell her. I thought that staying away from that baby girl altogether was going to be best for everyone involved. So, the very next day, I left Forks altogether. I never saw Bella or Renesmee ever again. Though from what I heard from the pack she asked for me a lot.
Staying away sounded very simple. It turned out to be one of the most difficult things I had ever done. The crushing pain of staying away from my imprint was almost too much to bear. The pain was unspeakable. I spent the better part of my days as my wolf self. As a wolf I was able to tolerate the pain a lot better than as a human.
When I was human I spent the better part of my time getting drunk in bars and hitting on single women. I'd had a lot of one night stands with these women over the years. More than I really cared to remember. It was a one and done thing and I'd usually forget about it by the next day.
Only just a few weeks ago I discovered that one of these one night stands had resulted in a baby. Apparently the woman had been killed shortly after giving birth. Since she had no other living relatives, social services tracked me down since she named me the father. A DNA test was done which proved beyond a reasonable doubt that I was the father. I didn't want the baby to end up in foster care so I decided to take on the responsibilities of being a father and I took in my daughter. Her name was Hailey.
Then less than a week ago something very strange and unheard of happened. She phased. I still remembered the moment that her crying had suddenly turned into howling. The fear and absolute shock I felt when I found a small reddish brown female wolf pup in the crib instead of my very human baby girl.
Never in the tribe's history had a baby ever phased. Especially not a baby girl. It took forever to calm her down enough to phase back. Then every time she cried she would end up phasing. After about two days of this I decided that the best thing would be for the both of us to remain wolves for a while. At least until she was able to gain control of her phasing. We'd been roaming the woods together for the last several days. Hailey loved it. She had a very curious mind that was quite advanced for a baby. She loved exploring her new world with newfound curiosity.
It was around the time that Hailey came into my life that I had started to feel the strange nagging feeling in the back of my mind. With everything that had been going on I pushed it to the back of my mind. But the harder I pushed back against it. The harder it fought to be in the forefront of my mind.
"Daddy what's wrong?" my daughter's concerned thoughts echoed through my mind. She whimpered. I shook my head. It was hard to believe that she was not even a month old yet.
The urge to stop resisting the nagging feeling suddenly became much too strong for me to ignore. I grabbed my daughter by the scruff of her neck and ran as fast as my four paws could carry me. I realized, then, that it wasn't a nagging feeling. Something was pulling me with a force stronger than gravity itself. I hadn't felt this feeling since I imprinted on baby Renesmee all those years ago. I didn't know where I was going, what was happening, or why. But I couldn't fight the feeling anymore. I could only give in and run toward my destiny. Wherever that may be.