And you woke the morning up

Running off my darkest night

The longest fight I've seen

Here goes a chance I know

Cashing in on all my chips

Let all my ships come fly

"Won't Back Down"

-Mat Kearney

Chapter 48:

Now we're just waiting to die

It only took me about a week to get over Sam's visit. I was able to gather my composure rather quickly, so we were able to coordinate runs and attack sequences with our packs. Sam seemed rather eager to forget our conversation as well. All we spoke about now was business.

Even though I had gotten over Sam's outrageous behavior, I had still yet to see or speak to Jacob regarding his childish attitude. I was eternally angered at him. I didn't care that he had ordered us to run with Sam's pack. I wasn't going to listen to him.

I had a great deal of fun ignoring Jacob. It was amusing how obsessive he got trying to reach me. He still wouldn't leave the Cullen's, which I actually considered a good thing. It meant that he couldn't come and yell at me. But he called every chance that he got, trying to speak with me. I usually just hung up on him. No one could hold a grudge like I could.

He spoke to Sam occasionally and asked him to talk to me. Sam knew better than to mention anything to me. He had given up on trying to relay messages from Jake that weren't related to training and running. Seth, Embry, Quil, and I only ran when we felt like it. We spent most of our time working on our reflexes and going over several different battle scenarios that might occur when the Volturi arrived. Most of the time, it was just the four of us. Jake didn't phase much. And when he did, I usually found an excuse to phase out so I didn't have to talk to him.

Sometimes we ran drills with Sam's pack. Paul and Jared annoyed me, but at least they were still silent to us. I met some of the new kids. They were so small. They usually just watched demonstrations given by Sam and Jared. Cody re-enacted his confrontation with the little dark haired vampire I had saved his ass from in the clearing. Something told me that he left out the part about him getting his ass kicked.

The six newest members watched everything with wide-eyes. In addition to the three boys that my mother had told me about joining the pack, there were three others. Sam told me who they were after the first time I saw them. Adam Wright, Danny Little, and Tommy Erwing. They were all thirteen. Putting names together with the faces only furthered my disappointment that they were all going to die so young.

Cody and Tommy were the only two that looked even remotely comfortable. The others looked overwhelmed. I felt bad for them. I told Sam that I didn't know how comfortable I was watching babies die in battle. He explained to me that there was no other choice. And unfortunately, he had a point. If the Volturi knew of the werewolves existence, they were certain to seek out all of them and sentence them to death anyway.

Embry and I were finishing up running a few drills with the new kids. I could tell that they were frustrated by the lack of communication. The way I looked at it, I was saving them the hassle of having to hear my thoughts.

Sam was in human form explaining to the kids about where the vampires were most vulnerable, and how to attack them. He was going to use himself as an example. I, of course, had jumped at the chance to show the kids what to do. I was more than happy to be the wolf that attacked Sam.

"You see how they are boxing me in?" Sam asked the newbies. Embry and I were closing in on either side of him while Collin snuck up behind him.

The kids all nodded their heads. I heard rumbles of appreciation.

"The first thing you want to do is corner them. They will fight back, but if you move fast enough and disassemble their limbs, it won't be much of a fight."

I grinned. I wonder how much of a fight Sam would put up if I bit his arm right now.

Embry laughed.

Go ahead. I'll hold him down while you rip him apart, he offered. Embry still had not forgiven Sam for treating me badly. He didn't have anything against Sam personally, but the fact that he'd hurt me so much was hard for Embry to stand. Then we can set him on fire and roast hotdogs on an open fire and live happily ever after.

I chuckled out a laugh.

"When you lunge at your target…" Sam motioned for me to leap forward. Wow, had he thought this plan through? Who in their right mind would ask their scorned ex-girlfriend to lunge for their unprotected throat?

Embry laughed at my thoughts. Maybe he has a death wish.

Well, he only has to wait three more weeks. Even if I didn't kill Sam by lunging at his throat today, he didn't have to wait much longer to die. Embry rolled his eyes at my pessimism.

Sam cleared his throat at me.

"Are you going to attack or not?"

Oh, I was going to attack alright. He better have a trick up his sleeve to get an angry werewolf's teeth off of his leg.

I lowered my eyes as I looked at Sam.

You sure? I'm sure he understood what I was trying to say.

He answered with a nod.

He was asking for it. I crept towards him in a crouch, waiting for the right moment to make my move. I heard whimpers of confusion from behind me. The new boys were concerned about Sam being hurt.

I sprang forward, tackling Sam to the ground. I placed my teeth softly on his arm. I didn't bite down. I wasn't really going to bite him. My mom would be really irritated if she had to bail me out of jail for accidentally killing Sam. Yeah, accidentally. That was my story, and I would stick to it.

Sam shouted to the watching wolves, "See how there was no warning before she tackled me?" he asked. "Never allow the vampires time to react." He shifted underneath my weight. "But be prepared if they do…" He shoved me away from him and kicked my feet out from underneath me.

I knew the maneuver well, so it didn't take me long to recover, but it had still caught me by surprise. Embry let out a soft growl from where he was standing.

I frowned at Sam. A little warning would have been nice, asshole.

"Embry…" He waved Embry to join the fight. "It's important to always cover one another," he explained.

Oh, I'm going to enjoy this. Embry was excited. He raced towards Sam. I quickly positioned myself behind Sam as Embry head-butted him in the chest. Sam stumbled backwards over me, but managed to regain his balance. Sam glared at the two of us. His look basically said Take this seriously damn it.

I nodded and backed off. Sam and Embry took a few more swings at one other, showing the kids how to effectively attack and defend. He gave them a few exercises to try on each other.

I watched them stumble around uncoordinated. It looked more like I was watching a Three Stooges marathon rather than a bunch of werewolves in training. God, we had a lot of work to do. I laughed. Compared to the newer wolves, Collin and Brady looked like they actually knew what they were doing.

Sam encouraged the little rascals to keep working as he asked to speak to me privately. I phased and threw on some clothes.

"They're…learning," he said optimistically.

"Not fast enough," I sighed. Even if we spent the next three weeks doing nothing but training, I don't think any of us were going to be prepared for what was coming.

"Would you like to be in charge of training tomorrow night?" Sam questioned. "I wouldn't ask, but Jared's sister is in town and he wanted to spend some time with her."

I really didn't feel like diaper duty. I didn't want to attend to six hyped up fraidy cat wolves. Fortunately, I already had plans.

"I can't. Seth's birthday is tomorrow. I promised mom that I would take him to get his license. And then afterwards, she insists on doing this whole "family" thing."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot. Sixteen, right?" Sam questioned.

"Yep."

"I'll make other arrangements for the pack then." Sam nodded. "Thank you guys for your help today."

He was thanking us for knocking him around like a play-thing? Had he hit his head on the ground?

"Yep." I had figured out that the shorter my conversations were with him, the less he irritated me. "Let me know if you need help again." I shrugged. If help consisted of knocking him over and bruising him from head to toe, I was totally up for it.

"I've got to go." I heard Embry walking up behind me. "If my mom gets home from work before me and finds out I'm not there, she's going to install an alarm system so I can stop 'pulling shenanigans and sneaking out.'" I had to laugh. That sounded exactly like something his mother would say.

"Yeah, I'm right behind you. My mom wants me to help bake something for Seth. She should just ask him. He's the one who actually likes to bake." My brother was such a freak sometimes.

Embry and I started to walk off.

"Tell Seth I said 'Happy Birthday.'" Sam smiled.

I don't see how Seth would care. These days, he hated Sam more than I did. He had been subjected to my negative thoughts about him for far too long.

After walking Embry home, I headed back to my place. When I got home I saw Seth walking Quil out the front door. Claire was a few feet in front of them. She ran over to me.

"Qwil got me high!" she exclaimed as she looked up at me with her bright eyes.

Even though I knew that I was hearing that out of context, I still couldn't help but laugh at how wrong that sounded. I had to wonder what she meant.

"What did she just say?" I snorted as Quil walked over to me.

"She likes to fly. I throw her in the air and catch her."

"I wanna get high again!" She reached up to him.

Still funny.

"Make me fwy up to the moon wike Superman!"

Oh man, this kid was a riot.

"I just stopped by to give Seth his birthday present." Quil picked Claire up and tossed her into the air. Her giggles filled the surrounding area. I couldn't help but smile. Watching Quil with Claire made me dislike him a little less. He was so good with her. I really wasn't surprised to see her with him today. He was spending all the time he had left with his little flying princess.

"Yeah, thanks again, man. It's always nice to get some DVD's in his house that contain more than chick stuff." Seth smiled in approval. Apparently Quil had gotten him a DVD chalk full of violence and things being blown to shit. Not too shabby.

"Good luck with your license tomorrow." Quil waved as he walked off with Claire laughing in his arms.

I followed Seth into the house. Just as we'd shut the door, the phone rang.

I saw Seth frown.

"That's probably Jake. He's been calling a lot today. He really wants to talk to you," Seth explained. "I told him that you weren't interested…"

"Did you call him an asshole like I asked you to?" I had given Seth specific instructions on what I had wanted conveyed to Jacob in the event that he called when I wasn't around.

"No." Seth shook his head. I frowned, but Seth grinned widely at me. "I told him to eat shit and die."

My jaw flew open.

"You didn't?" I couldn't imagine my sissy brother saying those words to his Alpha.

Seth nodded proudly.

"Left him speechless." He threw his arm around me. "No one messes with my sister and gets away with it." He paused. "Cept me, of course."

The phone was still ringing and it was annoying me. I let out a huff as I answered,

"Hello?"

"Leah?" Jacob was surprised to hear my voice. "Finally! I've been trying to reach you all day. Hey, what's up with Seth? He sure has his panties in a wad today."

"Well, maybe it has something to do with the fact that you've completely ignored your pack to hang with the new vampires in town." I frowned. "Or maybe he's upset that his best friend would use his Alpha command on him."

"That wasn't intentional. I got caught up in the moment," Jacob sighed. "Seth knows that."

"Well, whatever reason he has for being mad at you, I couldn't say. There's just so many disappointing things you've done lately. Anyway, I've got better things to do, so…later." I hung up.

As I was walking away, the phone went off again. I grumbled as I picked it up. Jacob didn't even let me say anything before blabbing away,

"I need you to tell Charlie something for Bella," he quickly spit out. He was probably trying to get that out before I disconnected us.

"Forget it! I'm not your slave, and I'm sure as hell not Bella's either!" I hung up, again.

I waited a few seconds, and sure enough, ring.

I grabbed the phone.

"You keep calling here and I'm going to rip your fingers off of your hand so you can't dial the phone anymore!" I growled.

"Leah?" I heard a nervous voice on the other end.

And now Charlie would think I was a complete psychopath. Wonderful.

"Oh, hey, Charlie. Sorry, I thought it was someone else."

"Obviously." He laughed anxiously. "I just had a question. I know Seth's birthday is tomorrow. I was debating on getting him a fishing rod. But I got to wondering, does he even like to fish?"

I tried not to explode into laughter as I thought about Seth stuck on a boat all day long with Charlie and Billy, listening to them chatter on about old people stuff.

"Sure!" I exclaimed. "I bet he'd love it." I chuckled under my breath so Charlie couldn't hear me.

"Great." Charlie smiled. There was a hint of relief in his voice. I bet he'd already bought the fishing pole.

"Tell your mother to call me when she gets a chance."

What did I look like? A freaking message pad?

I answered politely, "Certainly. Have a good evening, Charlie."

"And you as well." He paused before he hung up. "And next time, just try 'hello' when picking up," he offered.

"Will do." I hung up the phone. I'm sure he would get over my hostility. He'd seen me throw fits before. He knew I had a temper problem.

I saw Seth standing behind me. "What was that all about?"

"You're going fishing for your birthday." I opened up the cabinet to grab a snack.

"Oh." Seth thought about that for a minute. "Cool." He smiled.

Wow, turns out the little punk did like to fish. I shouldn't be surprised. He liked everything.

I spotted a box of chocolate covered treats and grabbed it.

"Ding dong?" I glanced at Seth.

He wasn't looking at me as he responded, "Moron!" He turned towards me and saw that I was holding the box of snack-cakes.

"No, would you like a ding dong?" I explained to him that I wasn't arguing with him.

"Oh." Seth smiled sheepishly at me and nodded. "Sure. Sorry. Habit," he explained. "It's my first instinct to fight with you."

"I can't fault you. We have spent our entire lives fighting." I opened the snack-cake and inhaled it. Normally, I wasn't one to eat junk food, but I figured I might as well do whatever the hell I wanted for the next month.

"Just my luck. The year we actually start getting along, and we're going to die in three weeks." He laughed sarcastically.

"Nothing in life is easy." I shrugged. "Welcome to adulthood." I winked at him. I looked around the kitchen. "Where's mom?"

"Oh, she told me to tell you that she's just going to buy a cake after all," he said. "I told her that I didn't care what kind of cake we had, so she said that she'll pick one up on the way home from Billy's."

Well, that caught my attention.

"Billy's?"

He noticed my nervous glance. "Yeah. Don't worry. It's mostly regular council stuff. They still don't know about the Volturi."

"Ah. Good." Keeping this from the Elders was a hell of a lot of work. As if my mother pushing me for information wasn't enough, I also had Billy asking me all kinds of questions. He did the same to Sam and Seth. All of us kept our mouths shut. Billy had even gone as far as trying to reconnect with Jacob to find out what was going on. They were constantly arguing over the phone. Things were just really tense lately.

I walked into my room and sat down next to my bed. I pulled out a box from underneath my mattress. I hadn't gone through this since my dad died. There were all kinds of photos and trinkets strewn about. I even found an old video recorder with a tape still inside. I was curious as to what was on this video. I slid it into the VCR on the little TV on my dresser and pressed play.

I immediately recognized the surrounding area and it didn't take me long to recall what was happening in this video.

I could hear my dad from behind the camera, cussing under his breath because he didn't know how to turn it on, when, ironically, it was on. Dad never kept up with the technology age.

"Sue, I think I got it!" I heard his voice from behind the shaky camera. The camera steadied and I saw my mom sitting on a rocker on our front porch, rocking with Seth in her lap. He couldn't have been more than a week old in this video.

"Harry, put that thing down and come hold your son," my mom ordered.

"But I'm documenting our first outing as a family." My dad moved the camera to the right and down a few inches. I was standing next to him staring up at him. Wow, even as a five-year-old, I had a pissy scowl on my face. He leaned down to me. "What do you say you go over there and make little Seth feel welcome here?"

"Okay." I let go of his hand and raced over to my mom and brother. I climbed to my mother's side and looked down at Seth. "Hi, Seth. I'm your big sister, Leah. And I promise that I'm going to stop bad things from happening to you…" I glanced at the camera. "That's what daddy told me that big sister's do."

I cringed as I heard that. I was breaking my promise to my brother. Because bad things were happening and I couldn't stop them.

"Just promise not to go into my room or mess with any of my toys and we'll be good friends," I said as I pat my baby brother's head.

That was some advice that Seth hadn't taken in. From the moment he learned how to crawl, he was constantly getting into everything. He would push his way into my room and steal every single one of my freaking toys. One time I got so angry that he'd taken my favorite building blocks that I threw one at his head. He screamed and wailed all the way to the emergency room. He had to get two stitches. And of course, I felt so crappy that I had sent him to the hospital that I let him have the damn blocks.

My father sat the camera down on a stand and joined us. He kissed mom and gave me a little squeeze of affection. He leaned in to kiss Seth's forehead. "You know, you might one day be man of this house, Seth, my boy. And I know you'll do a damn good job…"

"Harry, language." My mother didn't approve of cuss words around the kids. My dad was constantly getting in trouble for saying dirty words around Seth and I when we were growing up. I never understood why that was such a big deal. Even at five, I already knew words much worse than they knew. And Seth was a ball of blubber who bounced around the house like a munchkin on crack.

I cut the video off. I'd seen enough of it. Seeing my dad always brought tears to my eyes. Losing him pushed our family into some very trying times.

I felt bad for Seth. It sucked to have your childhood vanish from your sight so quickly. And for him, it had been a while since he'd had a chance to really be a kid. Dad's death had forced us both to grow up faster than we wanted to. Seth was very critical of himself. He'd always believed that dad would be alive today had the two of us been normal kids.

I wouldn't argue. As soon as dad found out about our fate, his health declined. But I never went as far as blaming this curse for his death. Maybe I should. It was definitely part of it. Even after the doctor told him he had high cholesterol, he still didn't alter his diet like he should have. And the last few years of his life, he packed on a few pounds. But seeing his only daughter completely freak out and lose her temper and exploding into fur couldn't have helped.

I started to grind my teeth together. I resented being a wolf. It pissed me off that there was something in my life that I could not control. I wanted to master this wolf thing. I wanted to get control of my temper. For the first time since I knew about the battle, I wanted to live. I wanted to prove to my father that I would protect my little brother, and that Seth would be man of the house...just like he predicted. I wanted to live the life we were supposed to have. And it infuriated me that we weren't going to get our happily ever after. Stupid vampire dictators!

I glanced over at my clock. I had been going through home movies and old family trinkets for quite some time now. It was one minute past midnight.

Seth was sixteen.

I sighed, "Happy birthday, kid," I said with mixed emotion. He was growing up. My baby brother was sixteen. But even though he was still just a teenager, he was somehow also a man. The past few months I had seen him mature in many ways. There were a few times that he said or did something that reminded me exactly of dad.

I closed my eyes. My brother was sixteen. And in three weeks, he was going to be fighting for his life.