Chapter Eleven – Consequence

Title: Through the Window Came the Wind

Author : lifelesslyndsey

Disclaimer: It might not mah sandbox, but I'm building castles. But I'm not profiting from them.

Pairing: SamxBella

Rating: NC-17

Warning: language, and adult concepts in probably graphic citrusy detail.

Summary: He fought to do what was expected of him and she did the opposite. If love was less about finding that perfect someone, and more about finding that someone who makes you perfect, you never know who you might find. Love might bring out the best in us, but first, it brings out the worst.

A/N Check out this bad ass new banner. New-cast. Dude is hot. I made it mah self.

. Just change those dots!

Also? Another perfect quote for the chapter, let me tell you.

"All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions."

Reinhold Niebuhr

I didn't see my momma for ten days straight, most of which I spent in wolf form, patrolling. Prowling rather, as I paced the empty lines of our boarder, sniffing for scents I just wouldn't find. I didn't go home, didn't fucking want to. He might have been there, for all I knew. I liked the peace being a wolf gave me, along with the ability to avoid reality. With orders to phase in emergency, I took a time off work, shoving my responsibilities at Jared and Paul who would flourish under them no doubt, but still it was selfish of me. I was hiding, and I would hear about it later, I was sure. There was just something about Josh that turned me into a bitch.

'Sam?'

'Embry, what are you doing...' He was on the list of last faces I wanted to see. I could already feel the tendrils of deeply buried ache that Joshua's total and utter obliviousness had caused in him. No matter how much I hated my father, at least I could say that I had one. Embry didn't even have that, not that he'd ever spited me for it.

'Your mom is worried, Sam,"'Embry spoke, his voice quiet and smooth in my head. 'She told me...about him. I understand why you're upset.'

'Of course you do!' I snarled, snapping my teeth at him. 'God, Embry, you understand more than-'

'I understand where your mother is coming from too ,though,' Embry cut me off carefully, lowering his head in submission. 'I don't expect you to want to see him Sam; he doesn't deserve your time anyway. But...if he does show that he's not going anywhere...that he'll be around...don't you think...don't you want the girls to have a dad? I just...I couldn't wish it on any one. Not on a place like the Rez where heritage means so damn much.' Bitterness, as rare as a dry day on our Coast, cut through his voice, sharp and quick.

'He'll hurt them,' I muttered, walking in a tight circle before dropping down into the dirt in a ball, dead-tired.

He laid beside me, curling up in his own ball. 'He might. But...they'll know that he's...theirs. They'll know that he at least...knew them. I know you're their brother Sam,, and that you only want whats best for them." He took a deep breath, pressing on in a rush, "but I'm their brother too, and I want the same thing. And I think...I think you should give Emilia and Josh a chance, not for them, but for the girls. Let them have a dad. Even a shitty one."

I phased almost instantly, and stared down at the wolf before me. Embry had never put words to the secret every knew but never said. He'd never made any claim, but to hear him call himself the girls' brother, my brother...

I'd been so caught up in my shit with Josh I forgot to consider that Embry was my brother too; not just another one of Josh Uley's bastard children. Did he look at me like a big brother? God, I should have been there for him sooner. His opinion should have mattered. "You're right," I said, staring down at his gray fur, and he whined, snuffling into the forest grass. He'd given me the perspective I needed to get out of my petulant little funk. "I'm sorry Em; you're right. If Josh wants to try and...do right by them, I shouldn't fight it. I should want that, for them."

Phasing, he looked away from me in an uncharacteristic display of emotional awkwardness. "It doesn't mean you'll let him hurt them, you know? You never would allow that. He puts one toe out of the line-"

"And we both cart his ass back to where ever the fuck it is he came from," I said firmly, punching him in the shoulder. He shrugged it off with a smile and a snort, as we both tugged the shorts from where they were bound at our ankles and tugged them on pretending we hadn't just had...a moment.

Walking back, he stopped short, curling his bulky hand over my forearm. "I...just to warn you, Bella has been coming around. And...well. She's seemed upset you haven't' been around. I saw her...yesterday. She thought you were avoiding her. She's...well. I don't know how to put it."

Christ on a fucking cracker, how could I miss that possibility. She'd opened up to me and I'd bolted for a fucking week. "Whats she doing?" I asked tightly, hands balling into fists. I felt her on the Rez, of course, but I only figured she was still coming with her friends.

"You're really straining the bond, Sam. She comes here every day now, she probably can't stand to stay away." Embry explained. "What happened? I mean, I tried to ask, she said you guys didn't fight. She said...she seems really confused. Since you left, I mean. But she still comes here, like clock work. Except she's...not alone."

"She comes with the Forks kids, right?" I asked, expecting as much. I didn't like them, but they seemed harmless enough. Good kids being bad; as bad as a bottle of Boonesfarm was. As far as I could tell, Red was the only one in the group who even smoked.

"Yeah," Embry replied, scratching the back of her head. "See, the thing is, she doesn't seem to have any girl-type friends."

That didn't make sense; I'd seen girls with her before. "Well then who is she coming with?" Impatience, like hunger, rumbled in my voice, because the opposite of girl-type friends were boy-type friends and well...I had limits. They were being pushed already.

Taking a deep breath, Embry bit out quickly. "Guys. Dates. It kind of sometimes looks that way anyways."

Blinking, I stopped dead in my tracks. "What do you mean kind of sometimes looks that way? How does it kind of sometimes look that way? What has specifically happened in which it was implied that the outing was, in fact, a date?"Anger had a way of always making me enunciate till I was spitting.

Bracing himself, Embry licked his lips. "Jared saw her up on the cove with some dude's the other day. The guy was really...friendly, I guess. Had his hand around her hips, and she wasn't being really shy about clinging to him. And you know that she's never been one for contact."

Silence reigned as we continued to walk. Conflicted mostly, I didn't know what to say. She had no reason not to date, if that's what she really wanted. But it burnt, because I had thought most her petulant little shit was borne from heart-ache. If that were the case, she'd hardly be dating.

Partly I was angry that were she ready, she hadn't come to me. Not that it made much sense because she was hardly my biggest fan, but it grated on me that I hadn't been an option. Couldn't she feel it, the way I did? Maybe not, and maybe that was for the better, for at least when it came down to it, she'd have a choice. But I had been so sure that with time...

For the first time since imprinting, I doubted myself.

It made me angry.

Really angry.

"Wait," Embry said suddenly, turning his nose up to the wind. "Do you smell that?"

I did, suddenly; hot, acrid and burning,"Vampire."

Embry looked at me, eyes wide. "Smoke."

We were both right.

The worst things in our lives seem to happen in a blur that will later sharpen painfully to torment us over the years. This was no different. This, like my attack on my mother and father, would live etched in my mind, painfully detailed when the dust, both proverbial and otherwise, had finally settled.

My heart hammered in my chest as I watched it burn, grateful that the now burning hallow was sequestered at the far north edge of the Rez. "I need to report a fire," I said urgently into my old cell, Forks Fire Department on the line. "Epheriam Hallow, down on La Push. It's contained now, but one strong wind and it'll head for the forest. Hurry."

Snapping my phone shut I whistled sharply, grabbing Red by the back of her shirt as her friends fidgeted. They stood where I'd ordered them to line up along the road, Quil glowering down upon him. He was still too green to handle a vampire, not ready to fight, so I had ordered him back to help me, much to his dismay. The pack was on the vampires tail, and here we here baby sitting a bunch of pubescent arsonist. My boys could handle it, I had no doubt, but it wasmy job to protect the pack while they protected every one else. Instead, I was watching history burn, ten seconds from bending Red over my knee andspanking her till she was red in the face..

"Let me go Sam!" She hissed, like I hadn't just pulled her out of a burning house. Like I hadn't just saved my imprint from near death. My skin tingled, but didn't shiver. I was wild with adrenalin, as I dragged her out of ear shot, swinging her around to face me.

"Do you have any fucking clue what could have happened?" I asked, shaking her at the shoulders. "You could have died. Your...friends could have died!"

"Well they didn't!" She said, as her teeth chattered with every shake. "I didn't! I'm fine! I don't fucking need you to save me! I don't need you here!" I froze, hands circled around her meatless little biceps. She was straining on her toes, and I set her back down, my hands coming up unbidden to cup the back of her neck, violently possessive in touch.

"You think this is about you?" I asked darkly, even if it mostly was. "You think everything is about you? It's not. You just burnt down Billy Black's childhood home. He was born there, did you know that? In the living room. He got married here too, to Sarah who was a little bit pregnant with the twins, if I remember right. All those memories, and you set them on fire, but you think this is about you?"

"Sam I-" I squeezed her neck, and she melted again, just like a cub in it's mothers mouth.

"Shut up," I hissed, leaning down to close the distance between our faces till we were sharing her smokey little pot breath. "Part of our land is burning to the ground, our old cheif's home Red, and a strong wind could take it to the trees. It could take it all the way to the Rez, proper. Right now Red, that could happen. Right now, a piece of our very limited land is burning to the fucking ground because you broke into a house that wasn't yours with your fucking date to get high and drink. Yes Red, I can smell it on you." She smelled disgusting, and if that didn't give it away, her eyes were yellow and red in a way that had nothing to do with tears. "And you think this is about you? You are the most fucking selfish creature I have ever met." Apparently I was destined to be surrounded by selfish creatures; Red, my mother, Josh...

"It was an accident-"

"You were accidentally thoughtless? You were accidentally high and drunk? It's an accident that your life means nothing to you, your friends lives mean nothing to you," I said, squeezing at the nape of her hair. Her eyes widened as she pressed into my hand without any restraint, instinctual. It made me want to bite her there, but I pushed the urge aside. Now was not the time; at this rate, there would never be a time. "But what about the pack, Red? Do you know where they are? Why they aren't here?"

"I-"

"You didn't even think. You didn't even notice. Do you ever notice anything outside that pretty little fucked up head of yours?" My fingers tugged at her hair, and I wondered if she realized how intimate the gesture was. "They're out risking their lives chasing a scent. They're out there with a vampire, and I am here because you fucked up. I am their Alpha, they need me. But where am I, Little Red? I'm here, saving your ass."

I spun her on her feet and forced her to watch, both of us helpless as a wind took the fire to the trees, and half my fucking heart with it. Where were the girls? Where was momma? If the homes caught on fire, who would help the elderly out? Would some one remember to get Billy? My boys were out there, chasing a Vampire. And I was here, helpless to both causes. "You did this, because you were thoughtless. Because you never think about any one but your damn self."

Fire trucks came, sirens blaring, as men in yellow jumped out, hoses in hand to douse the fire. Police cars lined the roads, keeping back passers-by. I saw my people, eyes wide and horrified as they watched Epheriam Blacks house burn to the ground.

Shoulder slumping, tears filled her eyes. "Sam-"

"Save it," I said, releasing here. I stepped away, taking a deep breath of Red-free air. "An empty apology does me no good. You're going to be punished for this, Red. The Forks kids? I'm handing them off to the Forks police to deal with, but you? Tribal punishment, before the whole council. You'll be treated as a Quillette, for your offense."

"Why?" She asked, choking on a sob.

A voice cut in behind her and she froze. "Because you burnt down Billy's house. Billy's house, Bella! Because you're a part of this community, Bella. Through me, through yourself. You can't come here and not respect the land. I stand by Sams decision," Charlie said, shaking his head. "I have tried Bells, so damn hard, to let you do this thing...to get it all out, but you have to draw your own lines somewhere. Shit has to change. I am so..." he took a deep breath. "I'm so damn disappointed in you."

Red choked on another sob, the sound of true remorse, and I waved Charlie off. "Go on chief Swan. I got this."

But I didn't. Not really.