All of us turned together and looked where his eyes lead.
Staring back at us, Edward by their side, were five of the palest, scrawniest children I'd ever seen. Rags covered their filthy frames, and one of them clutched a dirty doll to its chest. They held hands, toddling out in a weak line, smallest last. Emily and I both gasped and covered our mouths; even with the all grief tonight, this was easily the most pathetic thing I'd ever seen.
Even Leah was affected. "Oh my god," she whispered. "They're just kids…"
"They're not vampires? They're so pale…" Embry's stunned voice stumbled through his horrified thoughts out loud, unable to settle on one. "Why are they children—what are we going to do with them, they look like they haven't eaten in weeks…"
Sam quietly stepped forward and put his hand on Jacob's shoulder, guiding the new alpha forward. The children halted outside of the circle, firmly gripping each others hands. I inhaled sharply when the tallest one spoke, her voice heart-breakingly frail and weak, though clearly brave.
"We're seeking the Hunter. You call him Jacob." She looked around fiercely at the gathering, her eyes lingering on the small wolves for a moment longer than the rest. Her accent was European, but faded; it sounded like she'd lived in the United States for a while. Her eyes finally rested on Jake, who Sam had positioned in front. "You're him," she said, and it was not a question.
"Alice sent you?" Jacob's voice was welcoming; it occurred to me how much energy he must be spending just to sound gentle. He'd spoken to the children more than anyone else tonight, and his manner with them was nothing but tender. I realized one of my hands had crept over my belly, and self-consciously removed it, my skin reddening.
The little girl was once again staring at the group of younger boys; something hard held her jaw firm as she nodded again before meeting his eyes. "She told us we wouldn't have to fight for place." Her grip on the child next to her suddenly made sense; she was their alpha. They were ranked, their sad, ragged little troop in a line from greatest to least. "But if we have to, we're not afraid." The younger La Push boys stood up to look at her more closely, and a feral growling sound came out of her throat.
"We don't fight for rank," Jacob said firmly. I could tell from the tone he was trying out his alpha voice on her, and it clearly worked; the girl gasped, and the smallest child swiftly ducked behind the one in front of him, afraid. Her mouth clapped closed with a small, audible snap.
"Fine," said the girl, quickly recovering. I wondered what the alpha command did to her; to the La Push wolves, it was like a psychic invasion, disallowing any contradiction unless, of course, you were Jacob. Thinking of his newly shaped body so long ago, the crush of adolescent frustration in his eyes as he tried to defy the command in my bedroom, I studied the young girl. She had the same rigid defiance as Jacob. Maybe it was an alpha thing. Maybe all alphas hated being bossed around, no matter whether they were always the alpha or not. Her voice shook me back from the past. "How do we get rank?"
"By growing up." This came from Leah, her narrowed eyes also clearly recovered from the shock of seeing the scavenger children for the first time. "When was the last time you ate?"
"Who are you?" The girl held the hand of the next tightly; she searched Leah's face for the first time. I realized all of the other children were boys. Perhaps this was the first time she'd ever seen another female wolf. But her mother…I thought, and then tried to remember the bits and pieces Edward and Jacob had mentioned about the Children of the Moon. It could be that her mother was never infected. Or that she was dead. I shivered, remembering my nightmare, the hot whine of my hidden daughter.
"Leah," came the short reply, and the girl nodded.
"She said there was another girl. A fighter." The pack laughed.
"What are we? Chopped liver?" Ever the cut-up, Quil came closer to the tiny alpha in front of him and leaned down. "We're all fighters here, missy."
"You fight vampires." Again, it wasn't a question. The girl watched Quil warily, and I suddenly noticed her other hand. She held a silver blade deftly against her palm.
"Leah—" I whispered, but all of the wolves looked at me; my adrenaline gave me away. The newcomers didn't notice the swift turns of their heads.
"I know, Bella. So does Quil. Calm down, before you frighten them." Leah muttered at me out of the corner of her mouth. Edward anxiously watched all of us, nearer to the pale children than the rest, but not too close. The youngest watched him with wide eyes and mouthed his thumb.
"Yeah." Quil grinned broadly. "We fight vampires." She studied him before replying. He kept his hands on his knees, bending over, but was still almost three feet taller than her.
"We came to fight them too." Quil hooted, but Embry stepped closer to the girl. Periodically, her eyes darted back to Jacob, but then rested on the men directly in front of her. The knife was well placed; it glinted against her pale skin but without the dim refraction off of Edward, I may have never seen it. It occurred to me that he may have angled himself to purposefully warn the pack, but I couldn't read his expression to say for sure.
"You might be too young to fight them," Embry said quietly. "We've got plenty of big, grown-up fighters here—why don't you get some food, some sleep, and let us show you how we're going to take care of them?"
"You don't know what we can do." The girl again spoke plainly, bluntly; there was no inflection to hint of pride or boastfulness. She looked round at the bunch of men in front of her. "You don't know what we can do when the moon comes." Quil whistled low and rocked back on his heels; Embry's brow furrowed again with his characteristically deep canyon right between his eyes. It was the brash boy, of course, who spoke. He'd drawn nearer, coming to stand in front of his friends, and looked at the ragged lot in front of him with his hands on his hips. "What do you mean, when the moon comes?" He tilted his head the other way. "Like in the movies?"
"We can fight now, if you like," the girl said grimly, and the blade ticked out from behind her palm and flashed boldly. Quil and Embry both put their hands in the air, but the brave, bratty, unbelievably brash little wolf took another step towards her, head still cocked, hands still on hips.
"We don't fight like that," the boy said simply. "We like to wrestle in our wolf bodies—do you want to see?" And just like that, he phased. The children gasped, and Quil and Embry circled around, keeping close, yet far, just in case the knife came out again.
"It's true," the girl said, awed. "You can change when there's no moon?" Her eyes scanned the pack. "You can be wolves whenever you want?"
"He's so small, though," said one of the others; he had no European accent, and instead spoke in the small, hushed consonants of the American deep south. The girl looked at the bratty boy wolf appraisingly as he stood, panting, surrounded by shredded sweat pants. His fur was a rich, dappled grey, and even though he was diminutive compared to the grown wolves, small was not the word that came to my mind when I looked at him.
"He is small, but he's a wolf right now, and we are not," the alpha girl said. Suddenly, she looked up at Jacob and dropped her knife in the grass. "We want to join your pack, Hunter. We want you to teach us this change."
"They cannot make you different than you are." Edward's quiet, lovely voice crept across the clearing from where he stood. He spoke as though he were repeating something, albeit patiently, to an unruly, unwilling child, and perhaps he was.
"Let him say it," said the little alpha girl, staring at Edward angrily. "Let him say the words."
"We can't change your nature," Jacob replied. He sounded sad; how strange it must be to meet someone who wanted the very nature he had fought to extinguish, in children exactly her age. With a shiver, I remembered, briefly, wanting to be a vampire, and then threw the thought away as quickly as it came. It seemed a thousand years ago. How awful for Edward to refuse me, how awful for me to ask…It was too gruesome to dwell on, so I didn't, and I noticed that my hand had once again wrapped around my middle.