He sits, starts to cry. The beast has left him. What is wrong with him? He runs into the next room where she stands stunned.
"Bella, I'm-"
The veins on his forehead begin to thump, come to the surface like a swimmer surfacing for air. He pants, clutches the back of his skull where a crippling pain has shuddered into existence. It conquers his senses. He's left with a single image in his flaming, altered brain: a young girl, with bronze curls and warm brown eyes. The mental picture contrasts with the actual vision before him. Why are this woman's eyes golden? They should be…
Connected, chained. Each conflicting aspects of the same occurrence. His imprinting broke bonds as well as ancient rules of two species.
But he was human.
And in a way, so was Renesmee.
Yet Bella was…Bella was…
She was fast, and powerful. She was unstoppable. She was beautiful.
She belonged to another, and Jacob could never have her.
Renesmee was swift, and strong. She was undeniable. She was lovely.
She was his soul mate, yet he did not burn for her like he did for Bella. The sensation she gave him was paired eternally with grief, shame, and regret. It was easily ignorable. But he liked to grieve, he wallowed in shame, he sank into regret.
He had turned himself inside out.
"Look at my scars. Look at what you've done to me! What I've done to myself. Look at what time has accomplished. A happy little family and the stupid kicked dog in the corner."
He had accepted defeat. He had relinquished his hold on what was always most precious to him.
"I loved you!" he shouts. "I wanted to make you happy. Why wouldn't you let me take care of you?"
There was never an option in her mind, he knew. It was Edward. Edward, Edward, Edward. She was so blind. She needed to be taught a lesson.
"If you do something bad to someone," Billy had told him when he was younger, "Expect them to seek retribution. Revenge can come in many forms."
He pushes her down. It is far more difficult than it should be. She stumbles, makes a tiny sound of surprise and fear. The beast inside of him awakens fully, ravenous for more than blood.
The beast wants body. He'd saved her skin more than once. Shouldn't she pay him back?
He is not Jacob in this long moment. He is the monster his rival had always claimed to be.
He'd show him what a monster really was.
Her skin is hard and cold. It does not give, though he strains it. His thumbs press with harsh force into her shoulders.
"Jacob."
Her voice is far away. He does not look at her face.
Her clothes tear. She struggles and he growls with impatience.
The phone rings. He doesn't care. He's in a more primal world, filled with carnal lusts that are forever satisfied.
Her long dark hair fills his hands. Her navel entrances him.
His need is pain.
"Kiss me Jacob. Kiss me and then come back."
He tenses. Memories assault him and his black deed attempt.
"I want to stay here and make you happy and I can't and it's killing me."
He groans. His head is being ripped in two.
"I love you…you'll always be my best man."
His humanity is held forfeit, though, and it tries vainly to break free. He twists, falls off of the traumatized beauty and rolls around on the polished wood floor.
"Jacob!" she cries.
And for now, at least, that is who he is.
---
"I know you're worried. But you're overreacting. I mean it. You can't always trust your feelings." Bella giggles nervously. "Oh, Alice is calling me. I've got to go. But, Edward," she pauses solemnly and whispers, "I love you." She cancels the call and sighs heavily, rubbing her forearm with anxiety.
"I can't stand lying to him." She despairs, looking toward her tiny sister-in-law with large amber eyes.
Alice stares back, a crease in her slender brows. "I can't see anything. Isn't that strange? I don't know what's going to happen to Jacob. And I know you asked to me to search for Renesmee, but honestly, Bella, I'm blind as a bat here. No pun intended." She smiles grimly. "I won't tell Jasper what he did to you, but Jazz is too good with emotions to remain totally ignorant. What am I allowed to say?"
Bella collapses on the bed she and Edward share in their fairy-tale cottage. "I don't know, Alice. I'm so hurt, and confused. What is happening to him? I love Jake so much. I always have. But he's sick and I don't know how to help him."
"Bella, he hit you. He said awful horrible things. And he tried to rape you. There's no getting around that fact. If Edward finds out, he'll kill him. I have half a mind to do it myself."
Bella rolls onto her side, stroking the white gossamer surface of the bed's canopy.
"Alice," she says quietly. "Do you think there's a chance that Jacob never…got over me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, what if he still has some sort of a…romantic inclination toward me?"
Alice snorts in a very unladylike manner. "Bella, Jacob is crazy in love with Nessie. He imprinted on her, remember?"
"Yes, that's just it!" She yanks the canopy down and wraps up in it, as if she is cold. "How would you feel if you were forced to love someone other than Jasper? If some…supernatural force caused you to break every promise you ever made him? Wouldn't you hate it?" She sits shaking, every fiber of her being stretched taut.
Alice gazes down intensely at the downtrodden young vampire. "Yes," she says after a minute. "Yes, I would."
"Then is it so far-fetched to believe that maybe his inner feelings are, I don't know…manifesting themselves into an angrier, violent version of himself?"
Alice sits beside her sister and reaches for her small white hand. "Bella, you think that his broken bond with you is turning him into…Mr. Hyde?" she asks, referring ironically to the novel Bella had finished reading her daughter just the other night.
Bella places her head delicately into Alice's lap. "I'm not sure, Alice. But if I know anyone in this world, I know my Jacob."
The spiky black-haired vampire pulls her hand back slowly. "Bella, he's Renesmee's Jacob now."