One more step. "Or us. You didn't want to win."
"No!" Emily screamed, clutched the body of the woman next to her. "No, no, no…" Her voice trailed away, lost in sobs against Leah's slim shoulder. Leah did not move. Her face was blank, her tears lost in the bloody mud caking her cheeks. I realized her ear would never completely heal, the ragged edges frayed beyond repair. Without noticing, I'd drifted close to the two women, and I sat a few feet behind them. I didn't want to touch them, to interrupt—I saw how much they loved each other, and needed this crucial bubble to form around them. Even Leah, who didn't push or retreat; even Leah, who wanted to die, rather than live with knowing what had really happened between the man she loved and her cousin.
Leah loved Emily. Emily loved Leah. I left them to do that, but hoped another body beside them would somehow allay some of the roiling fear and pain that lapped at their island from the pack.
Their entirety suddenly shifted away from the women like the retreating tide in an instant: one word from Jacob's mouth. "Sam." It was a name, and a command; everything was still, the tears, the grief, except for the crumbled alpha, who lifted his head. Misery held every feature in a vise-like grasp, his pinched mouth and bruised eyes staring out at the two women in front of him. Jacob continued. "Speak."
"I told Emily." He looked up at Jake then, and a thread of shame spooled out, coloring his grief. "I told Emily about your imprint." Shock quieted any remaining sounds from the pack, and the breeze in the trees filled the background with a mellow hum. "When you and Bella…Emily didn't know what to do. She was terrified that you would imprint and leave Bella, and I couldn't….I wanted to reassure her that something like this wouldn't happen again. She was desperate to tell Leah—she thought Leah would understand better, if she knew…if she knew that I was weak. That I couldn't help myself—that I'm not the one. I'm not supposed to be alpha, and it shows—I'm not perfect. I'm not—"
Jacob cut him off before he could continue degrading himself. "But no one actually told Leah. I was in the kitchen with them…" He turned towards Leah. "And you already knew. How?"
"I wasn't sure." Her voice was the low, brutal monotone from the kitchen. "I'd been suspicious ever since you came back, Jake. The first time." Her eyes stared at nothing. The pack was hypnotized; I realized none of them knew, except Embry, that Jacob had imprinted. "You were so hurt, of course, and I told myself that if you'd wanted to live you would have had to come back to us, to heal…but then, I spend a lot of time alone, running…Seeing things. Smelling things. Meeting strange things out there in the woods." She never blinked. "I found the grave, but I didn't know exactly what it was, for a long time." Her eyes finally turned towards him. "I just knew it was one of the places I could go if I needed to find you." They watched each other.
I'd forgotten his imprint was buried somewhere in the woods around La Push. I shivered, thinking of his lonely years, the private grave under the pine trees. Leah's voice brought me back.
"But then, when Bella came back and you almost killed us to get to her…I started to think." Her eyes took in Jacob, steady and unblinking. "You don't know yourself, Jake…you don't forgive yourself. You would never have tried to be with her—knowing she was over Edward—if you thought you would imprint and leave her." She stared hollowly into his eyes. "The way you reacted to killing those vampires made it final. I didn't want to know—I didn't want to think about it. But I knew." Her eyes slid over to Sam. "When I started looking for proof, it was everywhere. Even in Sam's memory." Her eyes locked on to the broken alpha.
"But that's not why," Jacob said evenly. "Why, Leah?"
"Embry's not quite right," she said after a moment. Heavy silence, like a thick frost, coated all of us while we waited for her to finish. "I guess I lost it, just now."
"That's not an answer, Leah." The words came from her little brother, now standing, tentatively leaning towards her with horror on his face. Looking back at him, fresh tears trickled through the filth on her cheeks.
"I love you, Seth," she said, and the inflection in her voice made her seem alive again. "And Sam—I love you too, Sam." She looked around at them, her gaze ending at Emily. "I love all of you. You're the only things I love." Leah inhaled deeply, her words clearly hurting her to say. "My life is awful. It has its moments, but at the end of the day, it's miserable. But I love all of you. But Sam—" she took another deep breath—"when I knew that the imprinting made you hurt Emily, it just confirmed for me that maybe…maybe you're not supposed to lead us." She looked around again. "We're all going to die, if those vampires from Italy come here. Do you think they're going to let us keep living and breeding and making more vampire slayers? Do you think they're going to let Seth live, once they find out he's in the alpha line? Do you think they'll let your children live, Sam?" Her voice grew frantic, and she leaned forward. "It's just like before—we didn't believe that more would come, and they came. And here we are, on a reservation—there are only seven hundred of us left. Don't you see?"
The pack was frozen. All the smallest wolves were still, silent; Sam stared at Leah. I felt conspicuously white, my earlier exchange with Jacob ebbing away in the gloom, and suddenly Leah turned to me. I felt like I was looking at pure madness, her eyes bright and fevered; I rallied myself for an emotional beating in the second I had before her words hit me.
"Bella—tell them. Tell them the truth." Leah's tone was begging. Emily turned to stare at me too, and all the dark eyes before me glimmered in the dark.
Of all things to think of at the moment, James's face appeared in my mind. Relentless, timeless, and utterly indifferent to suffering. Slowly, Victoria's replaced his; tireless, waiting years to strike. I looked back at Leah.
"She's right," I said. She was. I didn't know if even Edward had thought that far ahead; he'd made a point of saying they wouldn't spare the lives of the pack, but Leah was right. They were more than ruthless, they were timeless. They could pick the lineage of the pack off one by one, taking a century to do it; they could wipe them all out at once, and had the money and power to make it appear natural.
"How?" Embry came closer, standing by Seth. I saw Quil stand up and lean against Jared, one arm draped weakly over his shoulder. Embry's fierce eyes swept over Leah and Emily, then came back to me. Deep and resonant, Jacob's voice stilled everything again.
"Come out, Edward," he said. Quil abruptly stood upright and howled, fury infiltrating the temporary lull in the pack's moving bodies. Edward came slowly out from the tree line. "Is this what you wanted to happen? Is this what you were talking about at the diner?" The low fury in Jake's voice did nothing to appease the growing hostility of the wolves.
"No," Edward said in his low, clear voice. His skin reflected the starlight above, a faint shimmer creating deep shadows in its absence around his hidden eyes. "I wanted Leah to tell Sam of her concerns." He looked around at the women, his head bowed. "I didn't know—for sure—if she knew of the imprint. She is, as you have said, very clever. Clearly, she can hide what she likes from everyone believing themselves privy to her thoughts."
"I didn't tell anyone what I was thinking because I didn't want to think it," Leah snapped. "I didn't want to think about the fact that Sam—or his imprint, or whatever the hell—attacked my cousin when you walked away from yours. That's what happened, I'm guessing?"
"Don't change the subject," Jacob growled. Another hush fell over the clearing. Edward looked back at the pack and picked his head up defiantly.
"Leah and I have run in to each other in the woods many times over the years." I felt surprise, but I realized the pack did not because the tension stayed at exactly the same hum. "We've rarely had anything approaching a civil conversation, until after the recent battle…" He looked over at Leah. "I felt I should apologize for my family's contribution to her difficulties—an apology which, I'm sure you can guess, was roundly refused." The tiny smile on Edward's face seemed out of place in the somber gathering. "But, given my unfortunate talents, I saw shades of her concerns, and I mentioned them to her. We spoke about them only once before I saw her in the diner." He raised his head to Jacob, his jaw firm.
"She attacked the alpha," Quil said again. He sounded like he was in shock. "You made her do it."