8. HYSTERIA
Jacob Black's point of view
OH MY GOD...
That is just...wrong...
Now, wait a second!
So he just-
…
The other wolves were almost berserk. I didn't know what to think. My mind went entirely blank. Thinking was absolutely out of the question.
Seth...imprinted...on...
Is that even possible?
Can't be!
I thought you said that imprinting was for creating more of our species!
The minds of my pack were not able to comprehend it. Neither was I. Absolutely nothing could make sense...
I didn't stop their arguing and confusion. I didn't even remember phasing back. Getting dressed again, walking back to the house with a black expression... didn't even remember doing that.
But when I saw Seth on the ground... Somehow I was right beside him, and so was Alice... A tiny part of me registered picking him up and carrying him into the house. For some reason, it was hard for me to let Alice take him and set him on the love seat. Another part of me took in the shocked face of Edward when I entered the house.
Seth looked terrible... that much I could think through. His shaggy black hair was messy and he looked pale. He wasn't near as pale as the Cullens, but the dark circles under his eyes...
I felt guilty all of the sudden... I was the reason... the reason he looked so terrible, the reason he was different... I was the reason... and the one to blame.
I didn't remember going to sit by his unconscious body, but I was there somehow. I didn't comprehend that somehow my hand was on his shoulder... or that my heart was beating differently...
Not even Renesmee, the reason for my existence, coming to sit on her knees behind the love seat could make me think straight... Her soft, warm hand reaching for my cheek.
And the memory.
The look of my face when I ran back through the forest... My face when I saw Seth laying on the ground... I looked just as bad as Seth did... Renesmee's memory had captured Carlisle's short diagnosis of Seth...
Phasing to wolf form and then to human form so quickly... Seth had hit a tree... it had broken Seth's arm... and his collarbone... and a few ribs...
Then she played another distant memory... Bella was there, angry, furious... I was in human form, with Seth and Leah flanking my sides... my hands were in front of me... I was defending her. Before when she played this memory, her memory eyes had never left me... This time, they never left Seth.
She played the last memory... she and I were sitting at the piano... her memory eyes left us again though... somehow, they found their way to Seth...
I had never realized he was there... I had been too caught up in Renesmee's music... And he was suddenly blank... his face was suddenly clouded. She had looked away from him. Or she couldn't remember any more...
No.
That wasn't it.
The whole memory faded... it looked like someone was streaking water against it...
It was Renesmee's tears.
I looked at her with horror breaking my daze. Renesmee knew everything.
Then she was gone. Her tear-streaked face vanished. My eyes locked back onto Seth.
Tears were on his face too. They were there... just as dominant as Renesmee's tears... Tears for me.
My own vision clouded... my heart skipped a beat... A feeling of deja vu swept through me...
An oddly familiar heat flooded through me...
The same glowing I knew from before, since the day when Bella gave birth...
The lines I had tied to my life were cut again, like before.
Everything drifted away from me... even the bronze haired girl I knew so well... My heart skipped another beat... Everything that made me who I was now disconnected from me in that strange moment, such a similar moment to that which I had always held so dear.
The entire universe suddenly changed its course. Renesmee no longer held me to this life... The gravity of the earth relinquished its hold on me a second time.
All my confusion for this situation evaporated. I didn't realize that I was surrounded by the vampires, Renesmee included.
I could only grasp that my hand was no longer on his shoulder, but on the back of his head, and my thumb was stroking his tear-smeared cheek.
The pull that was being exerted from him was so much stronger than the pull Renesmee had before.
It was the shaggy haired boy on the couch that held me to my sanity.
No, I had lost my sanity too.
I had given it away. To him...
To Seth Clearwater.
Seth Clearwater's point of view
Life could not get any worse.
The reason for my existence the last two months had been to keep Jacob from learning. But he learned. And it was my fault.
He would choose Renesmee. There wouldn't even be a place for me on the ballot. I would never be able to wake up, would I?
I didn't want to wake up.
I processed suddenly that I was thinking.
I wasn't dreaming. My thinking was oddly clear. Like a great load had been lifted off of my shoulders.
Why? The weight of the load on my shoulders shouldn't have just evaporated. It should have been multiplied a million times over.
Jacob would most likely hold this against me for the rest of my life.
If I decided to stay alive.
But I was awake, and that meant I was still alive.
I could tell that I was under a very thick blanket. And a soft pillow was under my head.
My eyes started to open, a knee-jerk reaction to realizing I was awake. I defied my eyes, trying to close them. But they wouldn't.
Like it would have made much of a difference if I had.
The house, or I supposed that was my location, was entirely pitch black, except for the moon's light streaming in through the window. There, sitting silently under the window, was Jacob Black. He looked asleep, and I could here him snoring quietly.
My heart stuttered. He was here. Did that mean he knew?
Alice was suddenly beside me. Her appearance startled me, although I was used to the vampire's quick movement.
"Good morning," she whispered.
"Wha...what time is it?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. They were wet. I had been crying in my sleep? That sucks, I thought.
"8:00 P.M.," she announced quietly.
"Then..." I was interrupted by my own yawn. "Why did you say good morning?"
"I guess it just feels like morning to me," she replied sheepishly. "We've all been watching you for hours. You really shouldn't phase back and forth so fast, silly, 'cause you hit a tree and you broke your arm, your collarbone, and a few ribs."
"Really?" I asked, confused. I moved a bit to make sure I was alright. Nothing was hurting. But that was the reason it hurt so bad after I phased. But not the whole reason.
The other reason was sitting under the window, snoring lightly.
"Does... Jacob know?" I asked. For some reason, it didn't hurt as much to say that.
Alice's tiny face grew sad in the moonlight.
She nodded her head slowly, and then looked down. She looked almost ashamed. She hadn't wanted to be the one to tell me.
Then she looked up, suddenly, to behind me.
I looked too, turning my head.
I realized that there were a lot of people, well, vampires, scattered around the house. Rosalie, Jasper, Emmett, Tanya, Garrett, and Kate were all sitting in the other, larger part of the living room. They looked like they were playing a game of cards. I could hear Bella and Edward muttering quietly in the kitchen. Carlisle, Esmé, and the Amazonians, except Nahuel, were barely visible outside, by the pool.
Renesmee was there, in the kitchen doorway. Her face was not sad, as I expected it to be. She was looking at me. She was smiling. It was a small smile, tiny, but it was a smile. I could tell by the way she looked at me, and then glancing to the person sitting under the window, that she knew everything she could.
I smiled back, feeling terrible. I hoped she didn't think I would try to steal Jacob from her. No way. Alice was looking at me funny, almost like she felt a little contempt about it too.
"Nessie's not happy with me, is she?" I said, looking down.
"It's not that," Alice replied. That wasn't a very straight answer. "She... well... Jacob and she... they never planned to be serious, like dating for real, but she really did love him."
"Did?" I was confused again.
"Seth... this might make more sense if we had read through that book we bought."
Oh, I had forgotten about the book. The impending catastrophe because of the Volturi had stolen all my concentration.
The book was in Alice's hands so fast that I didn't realize that she had ran all the way to her car to get it, in half a second.
Alice began reading aloud, quietly.
"The imprintation of the Quileute wolf-men has been a mystery for as long as the wolf-men have existed. Imprinting takes place when a wolf-man sets eyes on his soulmate. There has been no study on this, as there are rarely more than two or three of the wolf-men existing at a time.
"There have been many strange cases of imprintation that are different enough to be recorded here. One of these strange events is the case of the wolf-woman. Sometimes, it seems that the wolf gene transfers somehow from the father to the daughter. The wolf-woman will imprint on a man, and in both of these cases, it has been on another wolf-man.
"Another strange case is called deprinting. There has only been one known case of this. At some point, the wolf-man imprinted. But for some reason, he may imprint again, on another person. This person will be their entire soulmate, as the first imprint may have been incomplete. Another very unusual event like this is when a wolf-man could know a person for a long time, but then imprint on them later, instead of at first sight.
"The strangest event regarding imprinting is the case of the same-gender imprinting. There is only one case of this. As the legend goes, a married wolf-man (not having imprinted on his wife) found his soulmate. This broke his wife's heart and she left. The reason she left is because her husband had found his other half in another man.
"The occurrence of same-sex imprinting puts to bed another theory that...
"Blah, blah, blah," Alice finished, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table.
My eyebrows pushed together. This didn't seem to give us any new information about same-sex imprinting.
"That didn't help much," I muttered, and frowned. Alice looked at me like I had just said that the sky was pink.
"Seth?" she said, waving the book in front of my face. "Deprinting."
"What about it?" I said, turning my head a little to the side.
She waited for it to click into place. I looked to Jacob. And then remembered Renesmee.
"Oh," I said.
That's all I could say.
Alice grimaced. This was exactly the reaction she had expected. My face was blank. My mouth was open, and my features were entirely smoothed out.
Jacob.
Deprinted.
On.
Nessie.
And.
Imprinted.
On.
…
Me?
"He watched you sleep for five hours, not saying anything," Alice continued quietly. "I'm glad he's getting to sleep.
I shook my head. I couldn't believe it.
Two nights ago, I had been at Jacob's house. I had first seen the little vampire girl. I had dreamed about Jacob again. Yesterday ago, me and Jake had gone cliff-diving, and then came here for dinner... Last night, I had tried to numb myself...
This morning, I had almost exploded in the kitchen... I remembered faintly my trip to the store, and coming home. The note from Alice, the short-lived trip to Port Angeles, the declaration of our impending demise... returning to the Cullen's to tell the other wolves about everything. And then screwing up everything I had worked so hard to keep intact. Breaking my bones, that was fun... And that had somehow all happened today...
But now, I was sitting on the couch in the Cullen's house. I could already feel the change in myself. I was suddenly lighthearted. That feeling was slightly dumbed down by the thought of Renesmee.
She must be broken. But her smile had seemed so real... I couldn't take it as a go-ahead. I would have to talk to her somehow.
I looked back over to Jacob.
He... imprinted on...
"Oh my God..." I whispered, shaking my head violently.
"It's okay, Seth," Alice whispered, and she was suddenly behind the love seat, her cold marble arms wrapped around my neck. "Hun... she's not mad."
I looked up at her. I would never believe that Renesmee could be happy with this.
"She, well..." she stopped, short for words. "She... was definitely unhappy at first. She cried. But she had someone there to comfort her."
She paused, and looked back to the kitchen. I looked too.
Renesmee was there again. She had her arms crossed subtly across her stomach. She hardly looked like a ten year old anymore. She looked closer to thirteen.
Behind her, was a familiar young man. His skin was dark brown. His long, braided, black hair was to his shoulders.
Nahuel was standing beside Nessie. He smiled at me. I smiled back. Renesmee smiled as well, a little bit brighter than before.
Renesmee was happy. With Nahuel.
"Thank God," I whispered, my spirit lifting.
I knew that Jake and Nessie had never planned to take their relationship to that level, but now Jacob had, well, deprinted on her... and imprinted on me.
I looked away from them and back to Alice.
Alice smiled at me. I smiled back.
And I had so much to smile about.
The boy I love loved me back now! That love was unplanned, and unprecedented, but it was there, as bright as the sun! Renesmee was happy, and there would be no contempt between any of us. There was a bit of a downside: the pack's reaction. Oh, well! I thought. They can deal with it! And my mom... she would be fine with it, as long as I was happy!
The one I loved stirred under the window.
I watched his eyes open.
His eyes were suddenly alert when he saw mine.
Something occurred between us there, in that moment, in only the light of the moon...
We were meant to be.