42

"What happens when an imprint dies?" Bella asked Jacob, thoughtfully.

"It isn't good," his usually jovial face was sombre now. "We don't age when we phase, so the ones with imprints tend to have to watch their loves grow old and die while they are still young."

Bella winced, knowing that that was what could happen between her and Edward if she decided she didn't want to change. "And?" she asked.

"They go mad with grief. This is another reason to be grateful that I haven't imprinted, if a wolf manages to mate with a non imprint I imagine it would be bad enough, watching the woman you love grow old and fall ill, things that you can't do." He put his feet up on the dashboard and his speech took on an almost poetic rhythm, "One of our oldest legends speaks of Taha Aki, he lived to be almost 200 years old, before he imprinted on his third wife. The village was attacked by a female vampire, the wolves had killed her mate weeks earlier and Taha Aki's sons had been tracking her ever since. Taha Wi, the eldest son and the other five wolves searched but she managed to kill all of them. First she killed the four eldest as they tracked her and then she killed the two youngest as they guarded the village. The only wolf left was Taha Aki himself and he had not phased since his imprint almost 20 years before, in order that he should begin to grow old and be with his wife as she aged. They had two remaining sons, but both were thought to be too young to change, all the older ones from his previous marriages were either dead or had never become wolves in the first place, and the eldest of the third wife Yaha Uta had been killed on the shore in front of his mother and father. Taha Aki was old by this time, not just in years, but in body too, but when the female attacked he threw off his body and attacked her. She was too strong, she had defeated all his sons before him and Taha Aki was no match for her alone. That was when his third wife made her choice, she took a dagger that was on the shore for gutting fish and stabbed herself in the heart. The scent of fresh blood distracted the female and the two very young sons phased suddenly and helped their father to kill her. They tore her limb from limb and watched, horrified as the pieces tried to join back together. In the end they threw her onto the fire and burned her to ashes. But Taha Aki was no longer with the tribe by this time, the death of his wife had driven him beyond anything he could bear. He left the tribe and returned to the forest home of the wolves. His young sons would occasionally report to the tribe that they had seen him, but they could no longer hear him in their thoughts and eventually they assumed he was dead, but no one ever knew for sure… he could still be out there pining for his lost love."

Bella was fascinated by the story and felt a shiver run through her as he considered the old man's fate. {How typical,} she thought, {they know all the men's names but the heroine of the story is only known as the 'third wife'!}

"Other's have had something like the same happen," Jacob continued, "but not for the same reason. Levi Uley, Sam's great grandfather, imprinted on a woman from the Makah tribe, when she died in a house fire he went insane, he attacked my great great grandfather, begging him to kill him, and when he refused he threw himself off the cliffs to the north of the village and drowned." She shuddered in horror. "Then there are the stories of other terrible things, like when one of the pack killed another packmate's imprint by mistake, that caused the whole pack to go mad with grief."

"How?" she asked.

"When we are in wolf form we can hear each other over vast distances, this is great when hunting, it helps us track and coordinate, but we also feel each other's feelings, for example, we ALL feel guilty for Sam imprinting on Emily and leaving Leah, even though it has nothing to do with any of us. If Sam feels it, we all do. Imagine not only feeling someone go insane from losing their imprint, but feeling the guilt for her death at the same time? That was the only generation in our history where we ended up without a single wolf." He told her. "They all stopped phasing altogether, the imprinter killed himself, as did the one who was responsible, the others just could not stand the thought of sharing the burden and stopped phasing altogether."

"I thought that Sam had been alone?" Bella said, "I'm sure Carlisle said there were no older wolves."

"That's right." Jacob said. "The pack that went mad was my grandfather's. They were the last to phase until Sam, we had been 27 years without guardians, it totally skipped my father's generation. Quil the elder is the only one left of that pack who decided to give up their wolf form, all the others died years ago." She remembered that old Quil was her father's uncle by marriage, and was in his late 70's.

"I suppose I understand a bit better now." She said, musing on all she had heard.

"Yeah, that's why we all decided to allow you to be changed. No one wants a vampire mad with grief in the area, even if he IS an animal drinker. Who would have guessed that we had something in common with the Leeches?" he grinned.

"Besides being fairy tales?" she asked him.

"Myths or legends please! Not fairies!" he laughed and she joined in. "So, you're gonna become a leech?" he asked. She shrugged. "The Cullen's have promised to look after you and make sure you stick to their diet, not that we have much of a say in it, but you can't come back here if you aren't an animal eater, you know that don't you." She nodded.

"I thought you were the ones who set the treaty, what do you mean you don't have much say in it?" she asked. Jacob looked rather abashed.

"No, the Cullen's offered us the treaty. Think about it, if one female vampire could take out the whole of one generation's pack, what could the five of them have done in a generation where there were only 3 wolves?" She thought about it, Rose and Emmett were young at the time, but Emmett was strong as it was, how much worse would he have been in his newborn time? She could also imagine Carlisle and Esme being dangerous in their way if the family was at risk, and she already knew from hints the family had dropped that Edward had killed many men in his time. The fact that Carlisle offered the tribe a truce was to protect the tribe, not to protect the Cullen's.

"I'll be honest, I'm not sure what I want at the moment. When we were on the island everything was perfect, I asked Edward to change me and I decided to wait until July or so to go ahead with it, but then we come back and Charlie is here and is going to be all alone, and Alice threw out all my clothes and tried to make me into a Barbie doll!"

"Sucks to be you eh?" she looked at him and he crossed his eyes at her, she laughed. "There are worse things in the world than having a whole new wardrobe forced upon you, you know?" he patted her on the shoulder and continued before she could protest. "Look at poor Emily, she is still in school and since Sam phased he's had to give up his job at the local garage to be available to the others who are changing if they need help controlling themselves. As Alpha of the pack he is responsible for making sure that they behave and don't phase in public or even get seen by the general population. Can you imagine what would happen around here if the story of giant wolves got out? The farmers already try and kill all the normal wolves they can find so they don't prey on their livestock." He shook his head in disgust, "I don't think Emily has had new clothes in months, but she makes do, we all eat a hell of a lot nowadays, it's about all she can do to afford to feed Sam never mind clothe them both."

Bella remembered the feeling she had had when Jacob had carried her to his house. The feeling of having so much more than him and maybe being able to help. She felt ashamed of her temper earlier in the day and an idea began to form in the back of her mind.

"Thank you, Jacob." She watched as the three surfers finally came into shore and picked up their boards, they waved at Jacob and her as they sat watching through the windscreen. She was surprised to note that their shorts were ragged and they didn't seem to have any other clothes in the vicinity to wear, even if they couldn't feel the cold, shouldn't they at least pretend to be normal where members of the public could see them?

"Hey!" she could hear them quite well through the poor seals of the truck. "Fancy a run, Jacob?" the second tallest of the men spoke, as he got close to the truck he screwed up his face in disgust. "Jeesus she reeks!" Bella blushed and sniffed the air delicately, she couldn't smell anything. "She's the leech's lover?" Sam, a step in front paused and turned to slap him around the back of his head.

"Paul! Mind your manners. Yes, that is Charlie Swan's daughter."

"The necrophiliac!" he sneered nastily.

"At least I'm not into bestiality." She said before she could stop herself, Paul laughed loudly and gave her a thumbs up for her rejoinder, she silently thanked Rose for using the word one day and providing her the ammunition to use.

The other surfer laughed too and he also slapped Paul but in a more friendly fashion. "Ohh burn!" he said and ran to a truck that made hers look modern at the far end of the car park. She had supposed it was an abandoned wreck but he jumped in and after a few tries he started the decrepit vehicle up. As he passed Paul and Sam jumped onto the flat bed on the back and accompanied by many a misfire the truck disappeared around the corner and headed into the small village.

"Ignore them," Jacob said, "though you seemed to cope with Paul well." He laughed. "Want to come and get your watch? Dad will be back from the centre soon and you don't want to be around when he gets home, he still won't forgive the Cullen's for existing."

"Why don't you all object?" Bella asked a question that had burned in her for a while. "I mean you are supposed to be mortal enemies and all."

"I think it's because we have grown up believing that not everything is black and white. Old Quil is a lot more forgiving of the Vampires than my dad's generation is. According to them the leech's are evil and that's that, even though they all know the truth about the Cullens. We have seen more now though, we know the only reason most of us are here now is because the Cullen's refused to kill us back in my great great grandfather's day. But more than that, we caught a leech when you were away, he was on our land, and it took four of us to kill him. He only had one arm and we had a hell of a time taking him out. If what Charlie told us is right then the Cullen's killed a pair of leeches a few months ago that could have wiped us all out."

"James and Victoria." Bella nodded, "They had been travelling the country killing off vampires, whole groups of them sometimes." Jake shuddered at the thought of someone so powerful being close to his people.

"See, we have something to be grateful for, back then there was only Sam, not even Paul and Jared had phased, he would have been slaughtered."

"It wasn't pretty, they were going to attack us and if it hadn't been for Edward reading their minds and attacking them first it could have been nasty."

"You were there?" he asked astonished.

"Yeah, we were playing baseball, well the Cullen's were, I was umpire." She told him the tale of the day Edward arrived with a bit of judicious editing. There was no need for the tribe to know about how close Edward came to killing her, she doubted any of the tribe would be a singer to the vampires given that they disliked the smell of wolves and their kin as much as the wolves didn't like the smell of vampires.

"Wow, that must have been cool!" he commented. Bella looked at him as if he was crazy, which she figured he must be.

"No, it was frightening." She told him.

"I must admit when we took out the leech with the dreads it was terrifying, he was less than 50 yards from the back gardens of Quileute Heights when we saw him, he was watching the kids coming out of the youth center after a class, he looked at them as if he smelled something bad, but tasty at the same time. He was off like a shot as soon as we got close, but we caught up with him a couple of miles inland. Even with all of us there he was tough to kill, we got lucky when Paul managed to grab his arm when I had his shoulder and we could pull him apart." Bella grimaced, she was past feeling squeamish at the description, knowing there was no blood involved, but still, it wasn't nice. She looked over at the boy beside her. He had grown almost a foot in height since she had arrived in Forks to live. He also looked quite a bit older, probably about 22 or 23 compared to the 16 that she knew he was. He too was dressed in a pair of old shorts and nothing else, his hair, which had been half way down his back before, was now hacked off untidily less than an inch or two long all over.

"What happened to your hair?" she asked.

"It's a bit awkward if you have long hair as a wolf, it is all shaggy and gets knotted up, you can't believe how painful it is to try and get twigs out of your fur!" he told her, she laughed. "As soon as one of us starts to change, Emily gets the scissors out. I didn't like the way she cut it so did my own." Bella grimaced at the ragged ends of his once-beautiful hair.

"And the shorts? A new uniform?" she asked.

"Not really, the trouble is, if we change quickly it's like the incredible hulk, our clothes rip, they don't change with us and we are miles too big and the wrong shape for them. We go through clothes quickly, especially at first when we can't control our tempers properly and so we wear the bare minimum, I don't think Sam actually has any spare clothes at all now, he had to change so much to help the others when they started phasing. He can only control using the Alpha command when he is in wolf form, and sometimes it's only that that stops one of us from causing problems."

"Alpha command?" she asked.

"When he has to the Alpha of the pack can force the others to do what he says even if they don't agree, it's to stop dissension in the ranks, we HAVE to obey when he uses Alpha commands."

"Isn't that unfair?" she asked, thinking of her earlier thought of Edward treating her like a slave. No matter what he did though, she still had free will. From what Jacob said the boys didn't, they HAD to do whatever Sam told them to.

"He doesn't use it often, so far he has only used it to protect the tribe, which is what it is for. He can stop one of us running wild when we change through temper." He said, he seemed to think it was reasonable but Bella objected to the very thought of it.

"I thought you were going to be Alpha." She told him. Charlie had said he was anyway.

"I don't want to be." He told her, "I'm quite happy to let Sam be Alpha. If he did something I really didn't agree with then I may have to step forward and remove him, but that usually involves both wolves fighting it out and to be honest Sam is a great guy and he believes in protecting the tribe above everything. I can't see there ever being a time when I would disagree enough with him to challenge him for the leadership, no, let Sam have the post, he's happy running things and I'm happy not." Bella could agree with this in a way, it was the sort of decision she would have made, she would never want to be a leader either, she was always happier in the background. But in a way she was disappointed that Jacob was giving up his chance to lead, to be more than he was. "We really have to move if we are going to get your watch before Dad gets home." He told her, she put the truck into gear and allowed him to direct her to the small red house she remembered from before. She got a better look at it now she wasn't so ill. The whole place was in a bad state, there was a tarpaulin on the roof held on by bricks and weights, the wooden slats of the front of the house were rotten down at the bottom near the ground and the paint was chipped and peeling off the whole building. The wheelchair ramp didn't have any hand rails at the side and was much too steep for Billy to push himself up. She knew Charlie's house wasn't exactly a show home, but it was in much better condition than this one.

She turned off the engine and followed Jacob into the house. It was just as she remembered it, a tiny house with barely enough room for a wheelchair to manoeuvre. Once again she felt sorry for her thoughts against the Cullen's she could well imagine why they wished to lavish her with things, knowing that she had not had them when she was growing up and them having more money than Bill Gates to throw around. Well she had a new project for the Cullen millions. Alice should be pleased to death, she would get to shop to her heart's content for generations!

Jacob squeezed into his tiny bedroom and she stood at the door. He was so tall now he kept catching his head on the hammocks that held his meagre clothes. He undid the watchstrap that was keeping it fastened to the headboard and handed it to her with a smile.

"I asked Old Quil to have a look at it, he used to dabble in watches and clocks years ago, he gave the workings a good clean and says that it should keep perfect time from now on. I checked it and it seems fine now."

She smiled brightly at him, moved. Obviously the Quileutes could not afford to throw things away so they fixed them rather than buying new. Rather like her truck. She remembered the truck that Jared had driven off in and shuddered. She guessed Edward felt the same way about her in her truck as she did about them in that one. Even more, because she was his mate. She sighed. She really had been a brat. How Edward put up with her she didn't know… yes she did, the poor man had no choice! She vowed there and then to treat him better.

She fastened the watch onto her wrist and looked at it, she checked her phone. The time was less than a minute off. She altered it and grinned at Jacob.

"Thanks." She said and reaching up as far as she could kissed him on his cheek.

"Sure, sure." He told her, blushing.

"I better leave before Billy comes home." She said, Jacob nodded.

"You can come back any time you want, up until you change." He told her. "I could teach you surfing." He offered. Bella raised an eyebrow and they both laughed loudly, probably remembering the same incidents that occurred when they were children.

"I'll pass." She told him. "But after I become a vampire I may challenge you to a surfing race."

"It's a deal!" he led her out of the house and she noticed that the usual rain had started to fall, turning the ice covered dirt roads into slush. She contemplated taking off her snow chains but didn't feel quite comfortable driving without them while there was so much ice still on the surface.

She turned onto the highway, Billy was just making his way to the top of the road, she waved at him as she passed, he grimaced at her but did deign to wave back.

She put her foot down, eager to get back home to her husband and let him know her plans.