"Distrust and caution are the parents of security."

Benjamin Franklin

The worse trap to find yourself in is a false sense of security.

Each day we grew closer to catching the ginger bitch, and with two extra wolves, the strain had been made...manageable. We managed to finish another house only slightly behind schedule. Leah and Seth had taken to phasing with relative ease, Leah proving to be the fastest in the entire pack. The Rez was comfortably protected, Momma loved Red, Red loved Momma, everyone was seemingly happy.

We were due for an epic revelation, apparently.

As was our tradition, the pack intended to meet at my place for dinner. It was something we always did when finishing a house, and I could only assume that a little normality in the face of our mutual fucked up reality would be a welcomed respite. Both Seth and Leah offered to run full patrols, even against my more than profuse invitations to join. Their mutual logic was as such; this wasn't a pack thing, it was a work thing. Though it wasn't said, I could hear what was really being said: it wasn't a wolf thing, it was aman thing. I let it go, with the promise that two wolves would rotate out through the night to run with them; one on the border, and one the beach, two-hour shifts each.

I was grilling, the scent of smoke and flame filling the air around the cabin. The guys were due at any time, so I was in the kitchen, chopping tomatoes on the illicit countertop, when Red made her way over, looking tired and a little harried.

"I claim sanctuary," she said with a little smile. "Your mom thought it would be an awesome idea to let Ana and Nora have a sleepover," she explained. "Which might not be so bad, but one of the other girls called in sick, so I've just spent the last twelve hours at the resort."

Inwardly pleased that she'd claim my kitchen for sanctuary instead of say...Billy's, where her father and Jake both were, I pointed to the bar stool with my knife. "Have a seat, I'm just getting stuff ready for the cook out."

She pushed herself up into the stool and grabbed the head of lettuce. "Want some help?" she asked, fingers already shredding the leaves. "So..."

"So," I echoed, smiling a little. Clearly, she had not just come for respite. She had questions; that much was clear in the way she fidgeted. "Spit it out, Bella."

She huffed and nodded and rolled her eyes, probably at herself. "Since the fight with your mom, I've been doing some thinking," she explained carefully. To this day, I still had no idea what had been said during the fight, or how it had been resolved. I gave up on asking my mother; maybe it was better not to look that gift horse in the mouth.

"Thinking is good," I replied with a laugh, when she let her words trail off into an awkward silence. "Thinking about what?" I pressed gently, piling the tomatoes onto the plate.

Red didn't look up from where she was methodically shredding the lettuce head into ridiculously tiny pieces. "You and me."

My heart stuttered in my chest, breath catching quietly. "Oh?" I forced myself to say, in the calmest voice I could muster. "That's uh...an interesting topic."

She nodded like she agreed, eyes taking a somewhat faraway look. "Your mom said that if I was going to think about you, I needed to do it in correlation to myself," she said, almost absently, implying that she thought about me. Which was frankly awesome, all things considered. "So that's what I've been doing."

Sucking in a breath, I grabbed an onion, cutting through it on autopilot. "Conclusion? Questions?"

She shook her head, looking up at me with a confused look of curiosity. "See, that's the problem. I don't know what to think. I don't know what you are in correlation to me. I use to think you were ...the...the enemy. The bad guy, but I know that you're not, I guess. I know that you're just...trying to do what's right, but..."

"But?" Although I sensed this was going to get ugly, I wanted her to keep talking. I wanted to know what was going on in that pretty head of hers. I wanted to know everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

She let her hands fall into her lap, mutilated lettuce head abandoned. "What makes you right?"

"Pardon?"

She took in a deep breath, visibly calming herself. "What makes you right? What makes your word right, and your choices? What...what makes your intentions good? Good for who? Good for me? Good for you? I can admit that I was wrong...about a lot of things. That I was angry, and I was mean, and I wasn't thinking clearly for the better part of a year. But...just because I was wrong does not make you right."

I swallowed carefully, turning my eyes to the onion. "I don't think it's a matter of right and wrong, just...good. Better?"

"What makes you better than me?" she asked, eyes narrowing. And that? That I'd walked right into. That little glint of steely anger behind her eyes, I deserved.

"I didn't mean to imply that anyone was better then anyone else," I corrected quickly. "That's not what this is about either."

"Then what is this about?" she asked, open and honest. "What is this?"

Clearing my throat, I shifted on my feet in some sort of weird embarrassment-dance. "Red...Bella...You know how I feel about you."

Through my peripherals, I caught her blush. "I really don't," she murmured. "I know what you've said, that...that you like me. But what does that mean? And if you like me, why change me?"

"I never wanted to change you," I replied instantly, because I didn't, not really. I loved her fire, her passion. I hated her anger, her sadness. "I just wanted you to be happy."

"That doesn't even make any sense!" She breathed out, exasperated. "You didn't know me then, and you barely know me now."

"You don't need to know someone to want them to be happy," I argued. "I just...wanted to help."

"Again, I know now that your intentions were good," Red said, head tipped back, as she stared up at the ceiling. "Believe me, your mom has beaten that into my head on a daily basis."

There was something to be said about meddling mothers, I suppose, not that I cared much for my momma's methods if Red's exasperation was anything to go by.

"But," Red continued, much to my trepidation. "What makes your intentions right?"

"This is getting a little to philosophical for me," I said with a nervous laugh. "I already apologized for being...presumptuous."

She looked at me then, mouth pulled into a sad half-smile. "You hurt me," she said quietly. "It's not about apologies."

"I never wanted to hurt you," I replied, as earnestly as possible. "I never wanted to hurt anybody."

"But you did," Red said clearly, sitting up a little straighter. I diced into the onion slowly, drawing out the task to keep from looking at her. I feared what she might see on my face. "And...the whole time you did it...you thought it was right."

"You needed that push," I argued, feeling my own defenses rise. "Look at you now-"

"It doesn't matter!" she said sharply, slapping her hand on the counter. "If I'm better now it's because of me, not you. It's because I chose to be better, to feel better, to do better. I make my own choices and sometimes, they're the wrong ones. I can admit that, and accept my punishments. Can you do the same, Sam? Good intentions or not, you hurt me. You continued to hurt me-"

"I never wanted to hurt you!" I hissed, feeling the sharp blade slide through my fingertip. Blood pooled across my cutting board; the cut was deep, severing muscle. It would heal, of course it would, but it still hurt like a bitch.

"Shit," Red breathed, sliding off the stool. She grabbed the dish towel hanging off my stove, and grabbed my hand, pressing into the wound firmly. "I hate blood," she said, absently. I knew this.

I let her do it, amusement tingeing the tension. "I really never wanted to hurt you, Red."

"I know that," she said, angrily. The little wriggle between her eyes was deep as she furrowed her brow, still holding the dish towel. "But you still did. You might not have wanted to, but you still did it, and you still meant it. You're not even sorry for hurting me, only that you presumed I needed it."

We were close now, the heat of my body causing sweat to rise against her skin. She wasn't looking at my face, focusing instead somewhere around the center of my chest.

"What do you want from me?" I asked in a whisper. I'd give her anything, anything she asked for. I just wanted her to ask.

"You punished me," she said quietly, peeling back the towel. She grimaced as the blood clotted cotton stuck to my skin, pulling at the already formed scab. Moving around me, she discarded the bloody towel for a clean one, running it under the faucet mindlessly. She wiped at the blood coating my hand as she spoke. "You punished me for...for lots of reasons, many I will admit to deserving. But...what about you?"

"What about me?" I asked dazedly, as she wiped away the remainder of the blood. It was obviously the wrong to say because clearly I was missing the point.

"What about your fucking punishment!" She slammed her hand against my chest suddenly, eyes flaring to reveal a sliver of the girl I'd met on the road, the one who could only be mellowed but never tamed . "You put me through all that shit, you hurt me, and pushed me and made me cry and for what? So I could be happy? Are you even sorry? Where's your punishment, huh Sam? You are...were... you were nothing but a self-righteous, sanctimonious bastard. You just...got away with it, right? With treating me like shit. I know that I was wrong now! I know that, I admit it! But what about you Sam? You can punish me for being a selfish bitch, but what about you?"

"That's enough, Bella," Quil said quietly, pulling her away gently by her elbow. I hadn't even heard them in the yard, distracted as I was. The pack filed into my cramped kitchen, each looking on edge and uncomfortable. Red shook from his loose grasp, sending him a dark glare.

"No! It's not enough," she snarled, shaking her head. I watched her take a deep breath, calming herself with such a speed she shamed half my boys. "It's not enough to know that I hurt and you didn't. It's not enough that everyone let you hurt me, and didn't do shit! Because...because that's what they did. You're all just like the Cullens, in different skin. You don't care. You don't care about anyone but yourself."

"I think you should go now Bella," Jacob said, surprising us all as he moved around her to stand at my side. He looked down at the ground, and not at her. The whole pack was stoically quiet. They weren't angry at her. Ignorance could not be blamed; she didn't know our inner workings, and really it was better that way.

"No," Paul cut Jacob and Bella both off. "No. You stay, because you're welcome here. You're always welcome here, Swan. But you shouldn't talk about what you don't know. Sam paid for your sins and his own, and you should be grateful. He suffered, we all did, for you, Swan. I don't mean the vampire; hunting the vampire is what we do. He protects you, he's always protecting y-"

"Paul dude, she doesn't know. Leave it," Jared said quickly, curling a palm over Paul's arm. He shook it off roughly, huffing hard.

"Maybe she should know," he said quickly, digging something out of the pocket of his jeans. "Secrets will get you nowhere. You can't keep using ignorance as her excuse! She's ignorant because we don't tell-"

"Quiet!" I barked, and his mouth fell shut, but he grabbed her hand anyway, shoving whatever it was he had in his pocket, into her palm.

She opened her hand, revealing what it was to all of us and I could have punched Paul. "What the fuck is this?" she asked, holding it closer to her face with a scrunched frown. "Is this a-"

"Molar," Embry supplied helpfully, squinting to get a better look at the tooth in her hand. "That Sam puked up. After I punched him in the mouth."

"When the pack attacked him," Quil cut in, pushing his way past Paul to stand beside Embry, who had already fell in line at my side. "Because he ordered us to."

Red swallowed, hand clenching around my tooth. Her mouth fell open, but no sound escaped, saved for a choked breath.

"Because he thought he deserved it," Jared finished, shaking his head as he and Paul both made there way to my side. I felt weirdly at ease with them there, protecting me against the admittedly ferocious and well-deserved anger of my tiny imprint. "Because he hurt you."

"He hurt you and we all paid," Jacob breathed, looking at her for the first time. "You're right, we did let him hurt you, but you shouldn't make assumptions because none of us enjoyed it, least of all Sam. So we did as he asked and punished him. We paid for it with every punch we threw. Attacking my Alpha was the hardest thing we have ever been asked to do, and not one wolf here will say otherwise. He let us break him because he thought he broke you, and that's how we wolves work. It might have been his punishment, but it hurt us all. Don't compare us to your vampires, Bells. Because unlike them, we'll always be here. You're the one who runs."

There were tears in her eyes, and arms holding me back. "Why?" She breathed, quiet but with no little fire. "Why me? Why am I different?"

"That's easy," Quil replied, and I could feel him roll his eyes. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Sucking in a breath, I turned to silence him but he shook his head, giving me a pleading look. I let him continue, banking on my trust in the pack.

"Obviously I haven't," she breathed, already taking one step back.

"Jesus you're dumb," Paul growled, huffing. "You're special Swan. How hard is that to get?"

Elbowing Paul, Jared explained further. "What he means is your special to all of us. You're important to the pack. You're...a part of it."

"Are we important to you, Bella?" Embry finished.

She didn't answer Embry, eyes only for me. The momentary hurt and hostility seemed to melt away as she cocked her head to the side, tooth in hand. "You're not anything like I thought you were, are you?" she asked quietly, intimately, like we were the only two in the room.

I was struck so suddenly with the impossibly desperate urge to kiss her, that I took a small step back. "Probably not," I replied, scratching the back of my neck nervously.

She was already at the door, anger gone from her shaking frame. "You can't expect me to just...accept your word for truth when you keep so much from me," she said, looking at me over her shoulder. "The act of omission is just as much a lie as a lie itself."

She left then, making her way back to what was sure to be six-year old chaos. I watched her go, the pack silent around me.

"She's right," Embry said flatly, the 'I-told-you-so' clear in his voice.

Sighing, I shook my head, grabbing the damp towel and wiping at the blood-covered counter. "She doesn't even know what she asked."

"She doesn't need to," Paul, of all people, reasoned. "She's not asking for specifics. She's asking for the truth."

"It doesn't matter," I said, rubbing my hand over my face tiredly. "You probably scared her with your Spanish fucking inquisition. You ganged up on her!"

Huffing, Embry punched me in the ribs, earning a wince. "You're an idiot. Look, with Bella it's not always about words, obviously, but she needed to hear that. She needed to see that the whole pack isn't against her. We didn't gang up on her; we showed her what we were willing to do for her. Jacob was right, what you asked of us, for her, was hard. But we did it because we like Red."

"What about me?" I asked, feeling my mouth form a tiny smile. She hadn't left angry, and that...that was something.

Quil shrugged. "Eh. You're alright."

"Shit, she should feel welcomed. That was practically an engraved invitation into the pack," Paul said, stealing a tomato slice. "You know, if an engraved invitation was a molar."

"Why did you even have that?" Jared asked. "Seriously, who keeps a tooth?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I thought it might come in handy. Andit did."

tbc