AN: Sorry this one is up a little later than usual, everyone; the DocsManager (?) was down for a while. Enjoy!

*****

I saw on his face that I shouldn't have asked.

"They didn't want me to see you." All I could do was watch his face. His dark eyes flickered around the room again before resting on my own. "I wanted to see you."

"Jake…" Horrible possibilities flooded my imagination; an ancient image of two boys bursting in to wolves and locking in midair flew through my mind. I sat up. "No one is hurt, are they?"

"No," he quickly reassured me. "Leah pulled us apart. And talked to you."

"Leah must be pretty badass," I said. I was looking the down the length of his body before I could catch myself—I was only thinking of Leah, beautiful, tall and strong, but physically half of Jacob's size. "You're enormous."

"Thanks," Jake smirked, and jauntily raised an eyebrow. I could tell that many of his facial muscles hadn't been used in a while, and the combination of cocky implications and awkward actions almost reduced me to peals of laughter.

"That's not what I meant! Jeez," I shook my head. I knew my entire body was bright red now, and I was glad most of it was still hidden in the layers of clothing I'd worn all day.

"Sure, sure," he said, and I almost burst in to tears again from sheer joy. "Leah pulled them away. She got me to wait." He paused, and I realized he was watching my throat—my pulse. Waiting for me to calm down. "She is a good second for Sam."

I gulped, and asked, "Why aren't you second? I mean, you were the 'natural…'"

"Didn't want to be." He looked at me steadily for the first time, his eyes resting on my face.

"Is that all there is to it? How can you refuse, if Sam asked you to be?"

"Sam understood." I thought about it. Sam would understand; if Jacob didn't want to be second in command, he would hardly bring the kind of dedication to the job an enthusiast would. But then Jake threw me for a loop. "And he can't force me."

"What?" Of course he could—Sam was the alpha. The alpha. I knew from personal experience that disobeying a direct order was completely impossible for the pack. I'd watched Jake struggle with it before.

"I'm a lone wolf," Jake said, shrugging with a sly smile on his face. "I can't be forced."

Suddenly more of the conflict in the woods came in to focus; of course Jake wasn't part of the pack—he had defied Leah, and her authority was next to complete. He hadn't presented it that way, but I could suddenly understand the terrified look in her eyes. I stood up. Jake was immediately on his feet and breathing so deeply his chest muscles were flexing; he was smelling me, his sensitive nose perusing my pheromones, and lowering into a feral crouch.

"Jeez, Jake. Relax—I was just going to tell them it was okay, you're going to sleep here tonight."

His head cocked to the side again. "I don't sleep at night." His voice was beginning to have slightly more inflection, but it was also becoming more hoarse, as if it were tired.

I rolled my eyes. "I figured as much, wolf-boy. I just thought some of them might want to." I turned and looked at him more seriously. "You can leave whenever you want, obviously, but I would like you to stay and talk to me until then. Or until your voice gives out, whichever. If that's okay." I sighed. "I just don't want them to wait around outside, thinking we're on the verge of disaster here."

He didn't respond, but his chest stopped heaving. I took this to be as good a sign as any, and moved over to the window. I didn't see anything moving, but I knew they were there. I stage whispered, "Hello? Guys? It's okay—he's going to stay here."

Almost instantly I saw a wave from the trees. The wolves must be unnerved; their usual approach was silent, in spite of their size. Leah emerged, looking fierce but drained. I scanned her body shamelessly for cuts or bruises but she seemed unscathed. "Is he alright?" She didn't bother to whisper, and I put my finger to my lips in response. "Is. He. Alright," she hissed up at me. Her sarcasm was infectious.

"Ask. Him." I turned to look at Jake and jumped when I realized he was only a foot behind me. He laughed with no sound as my heart returned to normal, and I motioned behind me. "Now they want to make sure I'm not going to eat you."

Jake leaned past me out of the window. This was the first time he had stood fully upright, and I was close enough to his body to count his massive ribs. The smell that hung on him was mostly that of dirt, but there were traces of more sinister things—blood, primarily—in it. Jacob's body was covered with scars and calluses. What could do that to a werewolf's body, with their supernatural healing ability, I didn't want to know…and yet, I knew, given enough time, I would ask. I wanted to know everything about Jake's life—his second life, as it were, running in brutal conjunction with mine. How else could we move on to the next one?

"I'm fine, Leah." Jake said. His voice was becoming a croak. "Thank you." He pulled his head inside, slunk back down in a crouch, and ambled over to the end of the bed where he had been before. While I watched, he once again neatly folded his long limbs and lightly sat, sighing, his effort at human communication clearly taking a toll.

I looked back out at Leah. "It's okay, Leah. When he gets tired of me he'll just leave."

"I'm worried you'll get tired of him, vamp-tramp," Leah hissed back. She scowled up at me, but then shrugged. "But it is nice to hear him speak." She began to walk back to the woods. "I'm going to get Sam and Seth. The rest of us are done for the night." That's when I realized that the entire rest of the pack, however many that might have been, were out in the woods trying to keep the Jacob-wolf from me. I looked back over at him, and then back at Leah's fading form. I felt nervous and sad once again.

"Jake…" I began, then faltered. This wasn't my problem to mend. The pack was their own responsibility, as Leah had made clear to Edward earlier that night. I had no place in it.

"No one is hurt," Jake repeated, once again reading my mind as easily as if I had voiced my concerns out loud. "I frighten them because…they can't hear me."

"What do you mean?" I was sure I didn't understand. I came back to my previous post lying along the edge of the bed and looked down at him, and he once again mimicked me and lay along the floor on his side. He peered up at me using his eyes, his head facing forward. I expected his tongue to loll out of the corner of his mouth any second.

"No more pack mind." Ah. So Jacob had not only become a wolf ninety percent of the time, he was a wolf that didn't socialize with other wolves. I'm a lone wolf, he'd said, and I realized how complete his isolation must be.

Another thought occurred to me. Leah had wanted me to send Edward away without knowing whether Jake wanted to kill me or not? That seemed low, even for her, and I knew the expression on my face was crushed. Did I really deserve that? I knew now without a doubt, that Jacob could easily have killed me. Jacob…Jacob looked like he might actually give Edward a run for his money.

Jake sat up and brought his face close to mine again, his nostrils working to bring in whatever emotion I was feeling. I almost wanted to laugh, but I didn't have it in me.

"What did I say?" He knew I was upset, but he didn't know why.

"No—no, it's nothing you said. I just realized…I guess I was confused about the sequence of events earlier." He didn't move away, his eyes clearly telling me he was confused now too. "I didn't know Leah hated me that much, to be honest," I said with a rueful smile. "She didn't know if you were going to kill me, but she wanted to make sure Edward wouldn't get in the way?"

Jacob's lips pulled back and his teeth were bared at me in the same moment that I registered I'd said Edward's name to his sworn enemy.