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Lastly, the same disclaimer still applies.

Happy reading (and reviewing)

Chapter 2

(JPOV)

I was running around and around in circles. I was going insane and I knew that I was crumbling to pieces fast and in a way that I hadn't thought possible. I wanted to run, to flee the reality that had so quickly and painfully become my own. I had set my nose north, prepared to run until I reached the end of the world but the beast in me was already bound to its mate and stubbornly wouldn't allow me to leave the area so I ran a wild pattern back and forward, around and around in circles in the forest near the school.

For the first time in months I felt alone in my head, just me and the beast at war with each other but no one else. It wasn't until I wondered where the rest of my Pack were and why they weren't where I felt they should be that suddenly I was bombarded with so many voice that it almost brought me to my knees. My brothers were there alright and my wordless turmoil was disturbing the Pack mind enough that everyone who hadn't been phased before had ended up doing the same mad rush from classes, work and home that I had. We were Pack, we were together and both Sam and Leah were frantically looking for me even as they bickered over who was at fault for my mental breakdown.

Leah got to me first, her slender grey form taking up her usual spot to my right and just keeping pace with me. Her mind was looping a string of obscenities that ended in a phrase designed to get my full attention or to encourage Sam to shut up, curl up and die. He was stalwartly ignoring her and appeared as a black statue directly in my path bringing my frenzied run to an abrupt stop. He looked at me with eyes filled with endless sympathy and understanding. He knew I had imprinted. All eleven of the Pack knew and the wall of compassion made my muscles tremble where I stood.

Keep an eye on the area around the school! Sam's order settled over Leah who snapped and snarled at him, resisting his command almost as well as I had learned how and longer than any of my brothers could have before snorting derisively and turning away from us. Phase! His second command was clearly for me. For as long as I had been phasing his commands had chafed against me, pealing at my skin like someone had taken a cheese grater to it. I was born to be Alpha but until now I lived knowing that I wasn't ready, that I had too much to learn; now I knew that I would never, could never be ready. I gave into his command until I stood in front of him. He shucked on a pair of shorts and threw another pair at me.

"You called the whole Pack to you." Sam said as I pulled the shorts on and then faced him.

"It wasn't intentional." I couldn't keep the hostility out of my tone.

"Imprinting happens Jacob." Sam said in a tone meant to be soothing. "It's complicated and difficult but there are positive as well." I couldn't be sure at which point during Sam's opener on imprinting that I had started laughing but I was laughing hard by the time he said the last word. He did not look amused but then despite my laughter neither was I.

"You don't even know what's going on down there!" Suddenly I was angry again as I pointed in the direction that I was one hundred percent certain that the high school was in, if for no other reason than I felt like I had an invisible string pulling me relentlessly in the direction of her.

"You imprinted on a girl called Isabella Swan." He was short with me. "Spent a little too much time in the same building as vampires and with your imprint nearby…" He stopped talking again when I turned and buried my right hand into the closest tree trunk.

"She lives with them Sam. Follows them around like some weird sort of pet. Calls them family." I withdrew my hand, feeling the skin and bone heal almost as quickly as it had broken. I couldn't bring myself to look at him, to see the expression of disgust and sympathy that I knew would be etched on his face because I knew if the situation was reversed I would have looked and felt similar.

"They can't hurt her Jacob. They cannot feed from her or turn her. They know that." There was a new tremor in his voice but his words were just words and didn't comfort me. How long had they had her before bringing her here? How easily would they disappear with her when they had had enough of Forks?

"Until they move her away. Until she decides she would rather live the life of a vampire." The sound of bone grinding and sinew popping was coming from my body I realized as I fought the wolf. His instinct was to protect and destroy.

Fuck!

The pain in my body drove me to my knees. My soul throbbed. By my very nature I was destined to hurt the one being on the planet that meant more than life to me. The only way I knew of preserving her life would be to destroy the creatures that she called family. I knew what it felt like to lose one parent and even that much pain I wouldn't choose to inflict on an enemy but I was sure there could be no reconciliation between the Pack and a coven of bloodsuckers. All that my future and her future could hold was more pain and heartache.

"There has never been a recorded or spoken of instance where an imprint was rejected. Emily and Kim both had similar experiences. They said that being too far away for too long without contact physically affects them." He was pacing in front of me. "We'll call the coven leader, go over the treaty again and make sure they understand that we will hunt them no matter where they go if they harm her."

"We can't keep an eye on her every second of the day." I groaned.

"No, but you will know if something is wrong and we'll be ready." There was iron and violence in his voice but I was afraid that we wouldn't be able to prevent and could only plan for an eventuality that would destroy my soul.

"I'll talk to my mother tonight." Leah's voice said from a ways away. She was making no move to come closer than just within hearing range. I was sure that her eyes and body were still focused in the direction of the school. "I'll transfer full time over here and keep an eye on things close up."

"Leah." I said her name and didn't know what to say next but I was grateful toward her, more than I probably had been any other time in my life. Leah was a bitch and there were times that I hated being near her but we understood each other and I knew she was giving me a gift that I wasn't sure she would give anyone else.

"No." Sam's voice was tight again.

"Don't try and grow a conscience now." She snarled.

"You won't be able to maintain focus with vampires around you all of the time. I won't let you do this." There was a level of protectiveness in his voice that I found uncomfortable and I knew that Leah hated more than anything.

"Try and stop me Uley. The Elders will see things the way I do and since you're just interim Alpha you'll have to listen to them." She threw back at him.

"You'll do as you're told." He snapped.

"Bite me." Her voice trailed back to us as I took a deep breath and filled my lung with much needed air as the sound of her phase echoed off the trees. I looked up at Sam, ready to argue for her interference and found that I didn't have to. His face was grave, his countenance unhappy but already resigned as he locked eyes with me. "Join up with the twins so Jared can go have some time with Kim. Run the borders but stay away from the Cullen house. Leah will keep an eye on things with Embry from a little closer. I'll let you know what the Coven says once I've spoken with them." The weight of the Alpha order washed over me and I let it consume me knowing that there would be no form of peace for me any other way as I gave into the beast.

-BMR-

(BPOV)

I stood up and gathered my books with relief as the final bell of the day rang. I used one hand to rub the back of my neck while the other slung my backpack onto my shoulder. My head was pounding, all the muscles in my neck and shoulders felt far too tight. It had been a long day and I was exhausted. I hadn't been prepared for the amount of attention that my family and I had gotten all day from the rest of the population of Forks High but then I hadn't been in a public school since I was ten years old and it was felt that my education would be better served at home where it could be tailored to my pace of learning.

The girl in my math class, Angela, had been nice, quiet and thoughtful but her friends that I had met through the day had been an interesting bunch. Jessica and Lauren were clearly the center of senor gossip; Eric, Tyler and Mike were more interested in chasing the rest of the senior girls around than they were in school; and Angela's boyfriend Ben hadn't said a word to me when we were introduced. Being able to retreat to the boundaries that I understood within my own family had been a ready relief when they had been in my classes and at lunch but I felt unsettled like I was constantly being watched or maybe it was just Rosalie attracting too much attention again.

"Heard AP English was exciting." Jasper said when he met us in the hallway. He pulled my backpack lightly from my shoulder and slung it over his own to join his bag. I rolled my eyes but didn't protest the gesture as I dug into my jacket pocket for my truck keys. I lovingly stroked the Ford insignia, unable to believe my luck once again, as I pulled them from my pocket and walked through the door that Jasper was held for me.

Jasper felt bad about the night before. He always felt bad for the moments that he found it hard to live in the same house as a human being. If it wasn't for Alice and I, I wasn't sure that he would ever had decided to fight his nature and stick to a vegetarian diet but I loved him anyway. The next few days would be filled with his apologetic gestures and then things would go back to normal until the next time that the thirst got to him and he made Emmett become my personal bodyguard. I looked over at Alice who was giggling silently as she looped her arm through mine. She knew that her lover's actions were unnecessary that I never blamed him for his struggles but, like me she knew that he blamed himself and letting him act the gentleman made him feel better in the end.

"Yeah, exciting." I shook my head. That was one way to put it. "There was this guy. I could almost swear that he looked at me and I physically hurt him somehow, because he took one look at me and was out of his chair and the class room before anyone could stop him. It was bizarre wasn't it Alice?" I looked at her as I unlocked my truck. Jasper threw the bags in the back seat and leaned against the door he had closed again looking impassively at us.

"He was Quileute." She said by way of confirming what I said and her words were certainly not meant as a compliment. I got a heavy sensation in my stomach and a sudden need to defend him. Instead I took a deep breath and leaned against my truck as I bit my tongue. I was sure that it wouldn't take Rose and Emmett long to find us so we could head home and I could have some time to myself.

My head throbbed and then suddenly the pressure released without warning. I couldn't help the sigh of relief that passed my lips as the pain disappeared. My pleasure was short lived as I realized that my siblings were giving me a strange look and I got a secondary feeling of being watched like I had red hot laser beams boring holes in the side of my head. I wasn't sure what was more uncomfortable; the headache or the sensation of being watched. I turned my head to the left and froze.

A giant russet colored wolf, easily the size of a small horse was standing just inside the tree line staring intently at me. Even my heart seemed to stop beating for a moment as I locked eyes with it. I knew I should feel afraid. I knew I should alert Jasper and Alice. I didn't, I didn't because I felt calm, intrigued, even safe. I blinked, it was gone and Alice's hand was on my shoulder.

"Bella?" She was frowning. I looked at her blinking again and the pounding headache returned full force like I had never had a moment of reprieve making me wince. "Are you okay? You don't look so good." She was frowning.

"It's just a bad headache Alice." I said in hopes of deflecting any sort of further attention.

"You should talk to Carlisle about it when we get home. Do you want me to drive?" She said as she looked distractedly in the direction that I had been looking.

"No, I'd like to have my truck for more than twenty four hours before you total it." I replied and looked over at the tree line again. There was nothing there. Not a shadow or a moment in the trees. What I had seen, I had only seen for a split second, it had disappeared without a trace in the time it had taken me to blink. Had it even been there? Did Washington's Olympic Peninsula house wolves the size of horses so bold that they would prowl around densely populated areas? Why did I feel like I didn't want my siblings to know what I had seen?

"You say that like I've always caused the accidents that have led to my vehicular upgrades." She said she shared a look with Jasper that I wasn't even going to try to decipher and again with Rosalie and Emmett who had arrived at my side. I smiled a greeting and got in the driver's seat of the truck before anyone could argue with me. Rose gave me a strange look as she got in the passenger seat and the rest piled in the back, I shrugged at her and she frowned as I pulled out of the school parking lot. It didn't take us long to get home, for me to park my truck and for us to file into the house.

It smelled strongly like snickerdoodles in the hallway as we entered. Esme had been baking again and I was sure that there were enough cookies to feed me and a small army as well. My mother always had a hard time with moderation when she got it into her head to cook which is why I'd insisted on taking over cooking the majority of my own meals by the time I was thirteen. Her heart was in the right place but I couldn't keep the hungry kids in Africa out of my head.

"How was school?" Esme's voice drifted up from the kitchen as we all dispersed to different corners of the house.

"Fine." My voice joined in with four others as I headed for the stairs that would lead me to my room. I wanted to take a couple of aspirin and then I wanted to find out everything I could about wild wolves in the Northern United States and then I wanted to take a nap to help kill my headache.

I dumped my backpack in my room before hitting the bathroom medicine cabinet for aspirin. Had there ever even been wolves on the Olympic Peninsula? I took the aspirin as I wandered back into my room and closed the door. I put my water glass down on my bedside table as I discarded my jeans for a pair of sweatpants and pulled down the blinds over the large windows that took up almost a whole wall of my room. How big could wolves get, surely not the size of a horse? I opened my laptop and hit the power button. I wasn't going to get any sleep until I had some answers.

I pulled up google and typed in wolves in northern USA. Dozens of websites all on the same topic, the way that grey wolves were systematically wiped out in the lower forty-eight states. By the 1960s there were none known to be left in the United States. Since they were put on the endangered species list in 1973 wolves have slowly been reintroduced to the lower forty-eight successfully but the closest wolf packs to Forks were still hundreds of miles away and American Grey Wolves didn't fit the picture of what I had seen earlier.

At their biggest they could only get to five and a half feet long, three feet tall and about eighty to ninety pounds. What I saw was at least seven feet long and at least five and a half feet tall and probably weighed at least four hundred pounds. There was no way that something that big lived in the woods and no one knew about it.

I chewed on my lower lip and pulled up a new window with a new search page. I thought for a second and then typed in Quileute. The basic information was simple, a native people who had settled on a piece of land known as La Push in 1855 after an agreement with the United States government. They were a small community led by a tribal government headed by one William Black. It was the legends that were interesting and made adrenaline rush through my body.

Then Q'waeti' went on and reached the Quileute land. He saw two wolves. There were no people here. Then Q'waeti' transformed the wolves into people. Then he spoke to the people saying: "The Quileute shall be brave, because you come from wolves," said Q'waeti'. "In every manner you shall be strong."

Men turning into wolves. I blinked and sucked my lower lip into my mouth as I slowly typed werewolf into the search engine. Oxford was quick to define the term to mean, a person (in folklore) who changes for periods of time into a wolf, typically when there is a full moon. A fit healthy man could weigh between a hundred and seventy and two-hundred and fifty pounds which could possibly translate into a much larger wolf than grey wolves.

What the hell was I thinking? Only that since vampires exist, why not other mythical creatures too? It made sense on a level that werewolves, which were always a vampire's mortal enemy in folklore, also existed. But the images that came up in the search engine looked nothing like the animal that I saw. It looked like a wolf that grew two or three times too large, not like a Syfi channel human wolf hybrid.

"Urg!" I groaned, I was making absolutely no sense. I snapped the lid shut on my laptop as another wave of pounding in my head made me wince. I needed to try and shake the stupid thing before I could get my own mind to think straight. I set my alarm for an hour later and crawled under my large goose down duvet and pulled it up to my chin as I settled my head on my pillow to sleep. There was no way that people of any kind were descended from or turned into wolves, was the last thought that passed through my head before I let sleep take me.

The world I was in looked older somehow, more natural than any other place that I had ever been. The trees were old, tall and lush, the air crisp and clean and the paths were little more than deer trails leading toward untold secrets. The sun peeked out from behind a light cloud cover and I smiled almost despite myself. I loved the sun and there was such a sense of belonging here.

I walked without growing tired and without a sense of time passing. The headache that had plagued me as I feel asleep was gone and I felt invigorated and at peace. Somehow, I knew that I was supposed to be there, like I was a part of this place somehow. I knew the path that I was on would eventually lead me where I was supposed to be, the sounds of the forest were comforting and I knew home was nearby.

There was a rustling in the leave to my right but I ignored it. I knew this forest, I knew that I was safe, protected and that nothing that was supposed to be there was going to hurt me. There was another rustle, this time from behind me. I turned and looked to see a giant wolf step out from the trees, lips curled back to show off long razor sharp fangs, ears pinned back against its skull and the hair along its neck and back standing on end as it looked at me.

I turned and ran, ran right into hard, unforgiving marble. I looked up and blinked. I didn't know the face that I looked at but I knew to be afraid, perhaps more so than of the wolf behind me as a porcelain arm reached out and the hand was attached to it wrapped cool digits around my neck. He was breathtakingly beautiful, his golden brown hair caught the light, his flawless skin sparkled in the moments where the true sun light hit him. Crimson eyes, the exact color of freshly drawn blood looked at me, moved from my eyes to my mouth, along the line of my jaw to my jugular vein. His mouth twisted into a crooked smile, his teeth were pearly white and coated in an iridescent liquid that dropped off of sharp canines.

The wolf snapped and snarled from behind me but came no closer and my captor only gave it a fleeting glance like it was of little significance. "There is nothing you can do to protect her now." His smile was cruel.

I wanted to scream, I wanted to fight back somehow but I knew that my time was up. I knew that I was looking into the eyes of my own death and that there was nothing that my frail and trembling body could do to stop it. The wolf snapped and whined, paws pacing the forest floor behind me. He bent his head, his eyes fixed on the wolf, his nose brushed the corner of my jaw before he pressed ice cold lips to my neck, directly over the spot where my pulse was so visibly beating a staccato rhythm. His lips brushed my skin as they pulled away from razor sharp teeth, teeth that sliced through my skin like a knife cutting through soft butter. Fire entered my veins and the air around us was shattered by my screams.