Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No copyright infringement is intended.

Special thanks to Gredelina1, Augustmoon and Mary-Alice-Brandon-Cullen for pre-reading this. This was beta'd by Maxipoo1024 from Sparkly Red Pen.

Chapter Twenty - Influence

Jasper POV

It burst through the trees with heavy footfalls and panting breaths. A wolf, though not like any wolf I had ever seen before. The thick bands of muscle and raw power with which it moved showed me it was far more dangerous that its canine equivalent. It had to be one of the shapeshifters Carlisle made a treaty with.

In spite of myself, I moved down the tree hoping to get a closer look.

"Jasper!" Alice hissed. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know," I said honestly. I wanted to get a closer look, but that should not have overpowered my caution. I was always more careful than any of the family, now I was throwing caution to the wind for the sake of curiosity.

Alice's question caught the attention of the wolf as clearly as it had mine. It raised its huge head, and its dark hazel eyes fixed on me with a look of open hunger. I considered the beast as it considered us.

The wolf began to rake the trunk of the tree with its enormous claws, gouging deep holes in the bark. Our branches shuddered with each swipe of a paw.

"We need to get out of here." My voice was too low for human to hear, but the wolf clearly had enhanced senses as well as size. It stared up at me with its lips pulled over its teeth in a harsh snarl.

"Obviously." Alice rolled her eyes. She balanced precariously on the very tips of her toes and then launched herself into the air. She spun through the air and landed in an oak twenty feet away from me.

The wolf snarled as she landed and started towards her, only to freeze halfway between her tree and mine. It was torn with indecision.

"What are you waiting for?" Alice called to me.

"Nothing," I mumbled and scaled the tree to the branch she had launched herself from.

In truth, what I was waiting for was the wolf to attack. I wanted to fight it. I was never one to relish the thrill of the battle. When I was in Maria's coven, the fight was a necessary part of our life. I had never wanted to fight the way I did now.

She moved aside to allow me room as I braced myself for the jump. I leaped from the tree and to her side. The wolf was no longer torn; it snarled and ran for us. The oak we had landed in was much older and larger than the fir we had been in; the trunk was wide and strong. Unfortunately for us, the wolf seemed to come to the same conclusion. Its forepaws gripped the tree as if it was embracing it; they struggled to find purchase on the back and then its rear legs did the same. It was climbing the tree.

"Go!" I ordered Alice. "Now."

My urge to fight was overpowered by my urge to protect. I watched Alice's every move as she prepared to jump and then launched herself through the air to a nearby tree. The wolf dropped down to the ground again and raced to her tree. I crouched and then jumped into the next tree. The wolf watched with harsh snarls slipping past its teeth. I could clearly imagine its thoughts praying for one of us to fall. We leaped from tree to tree, making our laborious way back to our property and the added protection of our family.

We were halfway home, when two things happened at once. A wolf howled to the west and Edward's voice came from the east. "Alice!"

The wolf bounded away in the direction of his voice and Alice screamed.

"Edward! Get in the tree! Climb the tree!"

Her fear was paramount. She raced ahead of me, jumping through the trees with such speed I couldn't keep up.

"Alice!" I felt Edward's relief and knew that she had reached him.

With my last bound, I spotted Edward and Alice at the top of a large spruce. The wolf was circling the trunk of their tree, snarling and growling the whole time. Edward was snarling down at it, his fury barely controlled. His mate was at risk, and his every instinct was driving him to protect her.

The wolf raised onto its hind legs again and attempted to scale the tree. It was not nearly strong enough to withstand the grip of the wolf's enormous claws. I could see them gouging into the bark and knew it was only a matter of time before the tree would be brought down and Edward and Alice with it.

"Keep going!" I shouted.

The howls from the west were growing closer. There was at least one more wolf coming after us, possibly more. I was torn. Now Edward was here to protect Alice, I was free to engage with the wolf. I could give in to my need and find the fulfillment I knew the fight would give me.

"Jasper, no!" Edward shouted. "We have a treaty."

The wolf didn't seem concerned with a treaty so why should I be?

"Because we don't know how many there are," Edward replied to my thought. "I swear, Jasper, if you put Alice at risk, I will kill you."

The question of whether to fight the wolf or not became a moot point. It was running between my tree and Edward and Alice's when suddenly it dropped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Low whines and growls slipped from its throat, but it made to move to regain its feet.

"Now, Jasper!" Alice shouted as she jumped to the next tree.

I followed mechanically, my focus still on wolf and the strange way it had acted. One moment it was desperate to attack us, and the next it was flat on the ground as if held by an invisible force. It had ceased fighting, and I had ceased wanting to. Its docile stance had stolen the urge to fight from me too.

However, I couldn't help but feel a coward as I ran away. Isabella would never run away.

xXx

We were almost back at the house when we met Carlisle, Emmett, and Rosalie, running towards us.

"What has happened?" Carlisle asked, seeing our still tense expressions.

"Wolf," Alice said abruptly. "Jasper and I were in the woods, and we were set upon by a giant wolf."

"Is anyone hurt?" Carlisle asked, scanning our forms for signs of injury.

We shook our heads. Together we made our way back to the house and to Esme who was waiting anxiously for us at the door. We hurried through another explanation of what had happened to us for her benefit and reassured her that we were fine.

"It was one of the Quileute shape-shifters," Edward said.

Esme's hand flew to her chest. "I thought the line had died out?"

"So did we" Edward said. "But evidently we were wrong. There was at least one more. Carlisle, it was the strangest thing, I could hear two distinctly different thought trains in the wolf's mind. Do you think it could be some kind of mental illness?"

"It is possible," Carlisle said thoughtfully. "I imagine the stress of their phasing for the first time would be enough to fracture a mind."

"That's interesting and all, but why would they break the treaty?" Emmett asked impatiently. He was disappointed he hadn't been there to face the wolf, and it made him short tempered.

"Maybe they don't know about it," Rosalie said. "It's been decades since we saw the last pack. Perhaps the legends have died out."

Edward shook his head. "The confusion of thoughts made it hard to understand what he was thinking, but they definitely know about the treaty as one of the voices kept repeating the word…" He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Edward, you fool. It wasn't two thoughts, it was two voices, they were communicating."

I didn't like the sound of that. If they could read our minds, they would have a definite advantage in a fight.

"We are not fighting them, Jasper," Edward said firmly.

"Of course we aren't," Carlisle said, his smooth brow creased in confusion. "We have a treaty; whatever happened today is irrelevant to that. We are not going to start a war with innocent people. There is no need. We will have to speak with them to confirm the treaty, of course, but I want no conflict between us."

"You might want to tell Jasper that," Edward said bitterly. "He was all set to fight to the death when I caught up with them."

"Don't be dramatic, Edward," I scoffed. "I wasn't going to fight to the death. I was just angry that it had attacked without provocation. I wouldn't have killed it." At least I didn't think I would have. What I had exactly been thinking at the time was a little hazy now. All I could be certain of was that I wanted the fight, thirsted for it even, but Alice's safety was more important.

"And thank god for it," Edward said, again following my thoughts and replying to unspoken words. It was a little irritating to have my mind rifled through like this. I had enjoyed the privacy of my own mind while I had been in Volterra.

"Then perhaps it was the right place for you after all!" he snapped.

"Will you please stay out of my mind!" I was finally driven past endurance.

"Will you please speak so we can all understand," Emmett said, in the same irritated tone I had used. "What is the best place for Jasper?"

"Nowhere," I said shrugging off his question. "We are getting off track. What matters here is the wolf that tried to attack us and whether it is going to happen again."

"Quite right," Carlisle said. "Please tell us exactly what happened.

Alice and I gave them a detailed account of what had happened, leaving nothing out.

"How did you know what was happening?" I asked Edward. "You were too far away to have heard anything."

"I felt it, or rather I felt Alice," he said, drawing blank gazes from us all. "I was just reading, and I felt a sudden thrill of fear which I knew was not my own. Naturally, I followed your trail, and that was when I heard the wolf."

"The mating connection warned you of danger," Carlisle said, a fanatical gleam in his eye. "This is fascinating. I have heard of such things, but never believed." His smile faded slightly. "I have never felt it with Esme."

I thought I knew why. Esme had never been endangered the way Alice had today. From what I understood of their life, the closest the family had come to a dangerous situation was when they met the first shape-shifters before Alice and I joined the family. Then, it had been a lone wolf and Emmett had incapacitated it while Carlisle explained the differences in our family to other vampires. No real danger there.

I explained my theory and both he and Esme looked reassured. I didn't understand their doubt. I had never felt a love so strong as between Carlisle and Esme.

"I think I understand your desire to fight, too," Carlisle said. "As vampires, change is rare for us. One of the only things that can cause a shift in our personalities is mating. It happened to us all as we mated. We adapt to our partner. Edward was, forgive me for saying it, son, a rather dour man before he mated with Alice. Her vibrant personality altered his outlook on life and made him a happier person. Rosalie went through the same thing when she met Emmett. We are changed as people."

"That would make sense," Esme said. "From what Eleazar told us of Isabella, she is not one to shirk a fight. Her thirst for action has affected you."

Emmett snorted. "I wonder what she has taken from him. Do you think she is strolling around Volterra holding doors open for people and chatting with humans?"

"I do not chat with humans," I said scathingly. "And holding doors open is the polite thing to do. I am a gentleman, not a Neanderthal like some I could mention."

Rosalie snorted. "Yep, and thanks to this new mating thing, so is Isabella, now."

"It would certainly be interesting to see how it has affected her," Carlisle said.

I recognized the wistful expression and knew he was desperate for a chance to examine Isabella.

He needed to learn that people were not for studying.

Thanks for reading. If you would like a teaser of the next chapter let me know in a review or a PM.

Simaril x