fifty-two.
(Leah)
"There's no way Seth will go to the wedding," Leah declares, leaning back in her chair until she's balanced on two shaky legs. "Please. A houseful of vampires— you've got to be joking."
Brady shrugs, his mouth twisting into something sheepish, something guilty. "Pretty sure he's already looking forward to it. I think he's gearing himself up to ask Charlie Swan if he can hitch a ride, too."
"I can't believe him." Leah scowls. "That little traitor! I bet he wasn't even going to tell me."
"He'll probably ask you for gift advice, knowing him," Brady says. Then he snorts. "What could you even give them, anyway— a deer carcass? Or—" His head jerks up, eyes snapping to the side— to the wall, as if he can see right through it and towards something happening far, far away . . .
She's about to ask what's wrong when her heart jolts again— again, because Brady's sudden movements had startled her, but now it's something else gnawing at her. Something awful, something which has her staring in the same direction as the kid, because maybe there's a missing piece, a truth that'll become apparent if she stares hard enough at the plasterboard.
"You feel that?" Brady asks, his voice low and distant as he stares and stares, eyes glassy and unfocused. She stares with him, trying to focus her mind and tune into a frequency she has never been able to slide into, fighting the high-pitched buzzing in her ears, the fuzziness clouding the edges of her vision.
And then there it is again— that jolt. It's enough to force her to her feet, pushing her back from the table without thinking.
"Something's wrong," Brady says. A statement, not a question.
The word is out of her before she realises her lips have moved. "Jacob."
Outside, Collin howls.
Brady whips round, eyes widening.
"Jacob," she says again. She doesn't know how, she doesn't know why. She just knows. Her body is operating off of instinct alone as she backs into the wall, slides down and down until she's on the floor, chin resting on her knees.
Brady drops down in front of her, hands outstretched and eyes wide with panic. "Leah? Leah. What's wrong?"
She has to swallow twice before she can say it, her voice no more than a whisper even though all she wants to do is shout. Shout, scream— anything to jolt the world into action and tell it of the panic that grips her so fiercely. "Jacob. Jacob."
It's not that she can feel him there, can see what he is fighting against out in the woods; it's what she cannot feel. For the first time since her father's funeral, Leah feels nothing in her chest: not the slow, lazy pulse of energy, nor the twinges that strike when he is particularly needy, not even heaviness in the space he has hollowed out for himself. From trial and error, she knows that their bond dims to a muted thrum when he sleeps; she remembers that the spidery tendrils grabbing at her chest are weaker when he is further away. Despite everything she has tried, there is nothing within her control that she can do to make the alien feeling any less distinct.
Now, when the fingers curled around her heart have loosened, have fallen away entirely, it creates a whole new sense of unease. For the first time since he saw her, really saw her, she cannot feel him.
She cannot allow herself to think about what that means.
It's pretty impossible to do anything but think, though, and she's spent so many hours contemplating every way that today could go— futures where Jacob comes swaggering in brandishing a lurid red clump of hair, ones where the battle lasts right through to the early morning hours, versions of reality that return her family with missing and detached appendages. The worst is a persistent nightmare she's had about Seth, one in which a battered and bruised Jared carries him all the way to Emily's backyard, blood soaking into his bare skin.
When she closes her eyes, all she can see is disaster.
She's faintly aware of someone crouching down beside her, their hands pressing on her back, smoothing over her shaking shoulders, but it doesn't warrant a proper look. Unless they are Jacob— and she is unequivocally sure that they are not— she is not interested. Even so, the warmth of someone beside her is a small comfort, something to take her mind off of everything else. The panic is still there, but it ebbs with the slow circular passes, receding a little further with every breath. It's enough, at least, to allow her to focus on the conversation around her, to make sense of the clipped tones and terse words being exchanged.
"I don't know. She just started screaming and then— I didn't know what to do."
"You did the right thing, Brady," Paul says, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "You had a hard job."
Brady scoffs. "You were the one fighting. I sat here and did nothing while—"
The pair glance at Leah, belatedly realising her interest in their conversation.
Paul squeezes her shoulder, that familiar warm hand rubbing over her shoulder blade, offering her a sympathetic smile. "You've got a damned good pair of lungs on you, Clearwater. I'm impressed."
She stares at him for a long moment, searching for any traces of grief, any signs of disaster. He looks weary, his skin decorated with countless intersecting pink lines of scar tissue, but he appears otherwise calm. Intact.
"Jacob," she says hoarsely, curling her fingers around his forearm.
Paul regards her for a long moment, almost as if he's judging what he should and shouldn't tell her in case she turns hysterical— again. He instead chooses to turn his head back to Brady, his expression unreadable.
"Sam's called Collin back," he tells him. "You better go, too. He could use your help."
Entirely out of his depth, but needing no explanation other than his Alpha needs him, Brady nods. He looks young— so young and nervous. "Will you—"
"Yeah, I'll stay. Go on, kid."
Brady gives her a small smile, almost apologetic. Leah tries to nod, telling him it's okay, but she's not entirely sure she succeeds. Either way, whatever she gives him, it's enough for him to find the strength to turn on his heel and leave.
Something about Paul changes the second they are alone: he groans, his shoulders falling, and he drops out of his crouch to sit next to her on the floor, stretching his legs out. But, one way or another, he keeps his hand tethered to her, and she to him, the physical connection a lifeline they are both wordlessly trying to hold onto.
A fresh wave of panic threatens to pull her under. If he's told Brady to go, if he's struggling to hold it together this much—
"Jacob," she demands again, fingernails digging into his skin. "Is he—"
"No," Paul says, knowing how that sentence was going to end, and though the relief Leah feels is crippling, it is quickly washed away by his next words. "But one of the newborns got its arms around him." His voice shakes a little. "We don't know how hurt he is just yet."
Breathing becomes difficult as she again tries to feel for the thread that ties her to Jacob, but there is nothing to hold on to, nothing that answers back except for the soundless void between them.
"They're taking him home to get patched up," Paul continues. "Doctor Fang is going to meet them there."
"Carlisle," she says dazedly. She feels empty.
Paul nods, disapproval settling into his worn expression. "Sam's escorting him."
Jacob would never allow a vampire to set one single toe on the Reservation, and yet a bloodsucker is going to be within the walls of his home, in spitting distance of Billy, in clear violation of the treaty.
"It's bad," she whispers. "Isn't it."
Paul doesn't reply, an answer in itself— because he would know; he was there. He would've felt everything, seen everything. That is when she understands.
Her gaze roves over him, trying to see deeper than the faint lines upon his skin that are rapidly healing with everything passing second, all but disappearing before her eyes. Her body is screaming for Jacob, but Paul is family, pack. And family always comes first. That is why he has come, why he is here before anyone else.
Hesitantly, she clears her throat and asks: "Are you . . . okay?"
"Christ, no." He lifts his free hand between them, and they both watch with a kind of absent interest as his fingers shake uncontrollably, almost violently, without end. After a moment, he closes his hand into a tight fist and blows out a long, jagged breath. "Never been so fucking scared in my life, actually."
This is why he sent Brady away.
"Then I heard you," he carries on, "and I thought . . . well, what I thought doesn't matter." He scrubs his hand over his face before looking at her again. "Can you walk?"
Leah swallows harshly, staring down at her legs that feel as leaden as the rest of her body. The effort to even shake her head is painful.
"That's okay," he says. "Try again in a minute."
"But Jacob—"
"Isn't going anywhere," Paul insists firmly. "You're still in shock; he won't get any better with you hyperventilating over him. Just take a minute. And if you want to, y'know, cry, or whatever—" he waves a hand, allowing himself to display as much emotion as he ever does (which is to say, very little, because to the outside world, Paul Lahote deals exclusively in fiery tempers and unwavering loyalty) "—then don't worry, I won't tell anyone."
As if to prove it, he tips his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.
"If it makes you feel any better," he says then, "I puked all over the porch before coming in. Seriously. Do what you gotta do."
She doesn't cry. In the wake of it all, she doesn't feel much. Still, at the very least, the hard-edged tangle of panic in her throat softens a little at his words. For all he and Jacob grate on each other, she knows Paul would not be content to sit idle if his brother was near death.
So, when it comes down to it, the silence is a welcome reprieve.
Leah counts the minutes, waiting until her head clears and she can take a breath without it catching, without feeling like she is going to fall apart, until the stretched silence turns deafening. Emily's house bursts at the seams most days, full of life. But now, with nobody here but them, it is too quiet. Too still.
The last she knew, Kim was in the garden with Emily. Leah must have chased them out of the house with her hysterics; they are nowhere to be seen— and, in the absence of Jacob, neither are the two whose company Leah craves most.
"Embry?" she asks then, voice still a little hoarse. "Quil?"
Paul snorts. "Embry will need a week or two to repair his bruised ego, and we might have to put Quil in therapy— hell, after today, I think we'll all need a shrink— but they're fine. Everyone's okay. Nobody died. Even Seth made it out with a notch on his belt."
That quickly, her world tilts again, stealing her breath.
Seth.
But he'd been hidden, he was supposed to be safe—
No.
No.
"I didn't mean— oh, fuck." Paul's hand is unforgiving upon her shoulder, forcing her to remain upright. "He's okay. Everyone's okay," he tells her again. "The redhead found them— she and another one caught Edward's scent and tracked him to the campsite, but Edward killed her. Seth killed her buddy. Didn't even get a scratch on him, the little punk."
The stark realisation that her nightmare has come so very close to fruition is what finally spurs her into action. She wants Jacob, needs Jacob, but in no world can she live without Seth.
"I want to see him," she says, gracelessly scrambling to get to her feet. Paul quickly follows suit. "I need to see him."
When she takes a wobbly step forward, Paul lurches, his hands snapping out to break her inevitable fall. She has to refrain from batting him away, his touch not the one she needs or wants, but right now she is depending on him and it would be stupid to refuse his help.
"I'll take you," Paul promises. "But you gotta stop freaking out on me, okay? I can't deal, Lee. My nerves are shot enough as it is."
That makes two of them.
After a brief argument, she allows Paul to carry her, too impatient to suffer the limitations of her pitiful human speed. He sets her down just as they hit the dirt track leading up to the little red house, and she leans on him for the rest of the way, neither of them trusting her own feet.
The morose march towards Billy's front lawn conjures echoes of a funeral procession not long past. Her feet are like lead, her chest still hollow; all she can do is survey the surroundings and check for fragments of her family. A strange sort of calmness bubbles slowly as she takes them in: Collin and Brady, sitting silently on the grass; Quil, hovering over Embry who is sitting on the ground, his knees pulled up and arms around his head; Seth.
Her brother immediately begins jogging to meet her, catching her the second she launches herself at him. Half of her dread and panic winks out in the instant she throws her arms around his neck, and it's enough to stop her from crying in earnest when he hugs her back, for once not protesting that she is embarrassing him.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" she demands, fingers scrabbling over skin for signs of injury.
"M'fine, Lee. Nothing happened."
"Liar," she mumbles, pulling back to scan him properly. She can't keep her hands steady as they ghost over his face, his shoulders, searching still. Relief courses through her when she cannot find a single mark.
"Okay, something happened." He leans back, out of her reach, his triumphant smile barely contained— a smile that is short-lived, falling as soon as he glances towards the little red house and remembers himself.
Leah's eyes follow Seth's suddenly heavy gaze, her unspoken question hanging in the air.
He sighs. "He's . . . It's pretty bad, Lee. Carlisle is with him now. Billy and Charlie, too."
Shit.
Charlie.
She doesn't need to say it; Seth understands. "Charlie thinks he's had a motorbike accident."
It's not surprising that the pack have already taken the time to rehearse their cover story, knowing that Billy was keeping Charlie out of Forks and on the safety of the Reservation for the day. Leah kicks herself for not thinking of it sooner.
"He's pretty pissed we didn't take him to the hospital, but he at least stopped shouting about it when Carlisle turned up." Seth continues. "Shocked him into silence, I think."
"No shit," she mutters. Billy's public dislike of the Cullens was a thorn in Charlie's side even before Bella came to town.
"He asked about you," Seth tells her, "but Sam said you were with Kim— not technically a lie, so you don't have to worry. Just go along with it. I don't think Charlie's really paying attention to the hows and whys at the moment."
Leah lets out a breath, nodding along. Small mercies, she supposes. It's enough that Charlie's not executing a bit of tough love by reading Jacob the riot act and issuing him with a speeding ticket over his deathbed; the man has undoubtedly reached his limit for handling crises in recent years, especially where his precious daughter and her friends are concerned.
Bella fucking Swan and friendship— what a ridiculous concept.
Something deep inside Leah's guts stirs to life. Rousing. Not anger, or a promise of retribution, but—
Jacob.
As if in answer, her feet begin drifting away from Seth and towards the house, a miasma of trepidation rising and building in her throat, one which suddenly feels tight from the anticipation of what she is going to see, what she is going to find.
She drifts past Quil and Embry, Paul, the pack, barely sparing them all a second glance. Something is wrong there, she knows it— Embry has hardly moved since her arrival, not even looking in her direction, but she can't wait any longer. Jacob is waking, and he is calling. She doesn't need ears to know that.
The universe is playing a cruel joke upon her when it brings Sam to meet her at the front door. He blocks every inch of space she might intend to slip through, cutting an imposing figure that orders her to stand down, to give up before she has even tried.
"You're better off out here," he says. "Trust me."
Leah doesn't know what to shout at him first: the fact he has allowed a bloodsucker into the house— has escorted a bloodsucker across her beloved reservation— or that he thinks he has the right to keep her from Jacob. "Get out of my way."
His mouth tightens into a thin line as she shoves him, over and over and over. He doesn't move an inch. He doesn't even seem to feel it. "The doctor is in there with him," he tells her quietly, low enough so that nobody else can hear. "He keeps passing out; he's healing too fast. His bones . . ." Sam swallows hard, his composure fracturing for a brief moment. "Carlisle needs to set them right. It's not something you need to see."
She refuses to register his words. "Get out of my way."
Sam stares her down, bracing a hand against the weathered door frame. "No."
Blood roars in her ears. When she tears him apart, and she will, she has enough faith that she will be able to find someone to spit on the pieces she leaves behind— a job that would ordinarily fall to Jacob, only he's too busy dealing with his own problems right now to provide such moral support.
"I swear to God—"
"Hey, hey, what's going on?" cuts in a voice. Of all people, it is Charlie Swan who Sam needs to thank for saving his ass. It wasn't too long ago that the Chief of Police was gunning for Quileute blood, no thanks to Bella.
(It's always Bella fucking Swan.)
Sam sighs in defeat, stepping aside only enough that Charlie can peer around his shoulder. Enough that she can see Charlie's face fall into a picture of sympathy when their eyes meet, an expression she has seen a thousand times over in the months since her dad died.
"Sweetie—" he starts gently.
"Please, Charlie," Leah pleads. He will let her in; he has to. "Please. I have to see him."
"And I've told you—" Sam huffs, once more fighting to hold her back "—it's not a good idea."
"It's not up to you!" she snaps, feeling herself turning increasingly hysterical once again— only this time, it is a growing thing, a kind of panic that creeps over her body and wakes her up instead of shutting her down. "Jake! Jacob!"
Sam ignores her, mostly, but Charlie is not as unaffected. He winces, his mouth pulling at the edges. "I don't know, Sam. Maybe it'll do Jake some good," he says over her. "He was asking for her—"
At this, Leah screams again. "Jacob!"
"Sorry, Charlie," Sam says, turning to the man. How he can manage to make his tone so respectful and yet so dismissive at the same time makes Leah want to spit. "It's not up to you, either. She's part of my— my family."
There are very, very few times Leah has ever seen anger set into Charlie Swan's features. He takes a step forward, straightening his shoulders with a frown. "Now wait just a minute—"
It's now or never.
Leah takes advantage of the distraction he has provided and darts through the gap that Sam has unwittingly opened, hurtling into the living room and down the hall before Sam's reflexes kick into action. She bursts into Jacob's tiny bedroom, very nearly tripping over Billy's wheelchair— it's only by the grace of Carlisle's own reflexes that she doesn't fall to the floor.
She cringes away from the ice that stings her too-warm body, warmth that is Jacob's and hers and right, looking anywhere except the golden gaze upon her that is kind and foreign and wrong.
Once Carlisle is satisfied that a second patient has not presented itself, he releases his hold, stepping away from the bed just enough for Leah to see. Although she has been warned, words do little to prepare her for the sight of Jacob on his childhood bed, his beautiful skin tarnished with blood. It's a small mercy that he is hardly conscious, his body unable to withstand the pain.
She can't look into his eyes and tell him it will be okay.
She can't even tell herself.
Forced to wait outside, she sits between Paul and Quil, their hands joined, and she wonders if they feel what she feels. Excruciating pain splinters through every inch of her body as Carlisle resets Jacob's bones, almost as if she is the one the doctor is putting back together, one reduced fracture at a time.
When Jacob screams again, she vomits over her sneakers.
Someone holds her hair back. Paul— or Quil, perhaps both. "I don't think she can take any more of this," one of them says, only just loud enough for her to hear. She is in such agony that she can't even make the distinction between their voices, only that neither of them are Embry.
"I don't think any of us can," the other replies shakily, rubbing her back as another one of Jacob's screams pierces the air around them.
"Leah? Do you want to leave?"
She reaches blindly for the owner of the voice, nails digging into the warm skin she finds as she gasps for breath and shakes her head. She can't see through the tears, through the pain, the imprint binding her to its source.
No, she wants to say. I'm not leaving him. I should be in there. Let me go.
But she can't.
Jacob screams for the seventh, eighth, ninth time, and she retches again.
There is nothing left for her to give.
She is vaguely aware of Charlie hovering, seemingly drifting between her and Billy. At one point, he replaces Paul and Quil who are called away by Sam— to help hold Jacob down, she thinks, but they are wise enough to not say as much before they hurry off.
"Don't worry too much, sweetie," Charlie says, clumsily patting her back. "Anyone who can cuss with that kind of energy is going to recover. Just you wait and see."
He doesn't sound convinced, but she loves him for trying.
"Though if your old man heard a boy talking like that in front of you, he'd toss them out on their ass, broken bones or no," Charlie jokes, though his laugh that follows is a little too shaky. Still, he persists. "Then he'd raise your allowance for teaching Jake to insult somebody's mother like that."
Leah feels a smile tugging at her mouth, weak but nonetheless grateful for the effort Charlie is trying to make. It has been nearly four months since her dad died, and most are still too frightened to even mention his name in her presence.
Not Charlie.
"Weird day today," he comments after a few minutes of tolerable silence between them. "You know, I've never put much stock in any of Harry's funny superstitions— or Billy's, and he's even worse— but it was odd . . . It was like Billy knew something bad was going to happen today. He was nervous as a turkey on Thanksgiving all morning. I don't think he heard anything I said to him."
She can't speak.
"And then," Charlie continues, "weirder than that— do you remember when we had all that trouble with the wolves?"
Her nod is weak.
"I hope we're not going to have a problem with that again. This morning, we were out in the boat, and Billy wasn't paying any attention to me or the fish. Then all of a sudden, you could hear wolves howling, and boy, was it loud. Sounded like they were all over the Rez. The strangest part, though, was that Billy turned the boat around and headed back to the harbour like they were calling to him personally. Didn't even hear me ask what he was doing.
"The noise stopped before we got the boat docked. But all of a sudden Billy was in the biggest hurry not to miss the game, though we had hours still. He was mumbling some nonsense about an earlier showing . . . of a live game? It was odd.
"Well, anyway, he found some game he said he wanted to watch, but then he just ignored it. He was on the phone the whole time, calling your mom, and your friend Quil's grandpa. Couldn't quite make out what he was looking for— he just chatted real casual with them. He even called Emily— I heard you were there, too. As if my day wasn't weird enough." He pointedly glances at her with raised eyebrows. "Don't think you're going to get out of telling me about that."
"Long story," she croaks, looking away.
"Uh-huh," he replies sceptically. "Last I knew, you'd burnt all the family photos . . . Anyway, where was I? Oh— yeah. So the howling starts again, right outside the house, and I swear to you, I've never heard anything like it. There were goose bumps on my arms. I had to shout over the noise just to ask Billy if he'd been setting traps in his yard. It sounded like the animal was in serious pain."
Leah winces, but Charlie is so caught up in his story that he doesn't seem to notice.
"Of course, I forgot all about that 'til just this minute, 'cause that's when Jake made it home. One minute it was that wolf yowling, and then you couldn't hear it anymore— Jake's cussing drowned it right out. Got a set of lungs on him, your boy does."
At least they have that in common.
Charlie hardly has a chance to continue his monologue; Billy rolls his chair down the ramp, as shaky and pale as the day they'd lost Sarah. The memory almost overwhelms her for a minute, because surely he wouldn't look like that if . . .
No. No, she tells herself; she can finally feel Jacob, she can hear him. He is not dead.
She leans forward again, and Quil rushes forward to push her hair over her shoulder— probably a little too quickly, especially in front of Charlie— but she has nothing left to vomit. The motion leaves her gasping for air. Not dead not dead not dead not dead not—
"Best if you go home, Charlie," Billy says. "Not much else to be done. Just gotta give it time."
And so they wait.
Leah is hunched over at the sink when she hears the roar of a truck. She looks out the window and sets eyes on the absolute last person she wants to see— aside from the bloodsucker who crumpled Jacob like a paper bag, though this visitor is plenty awful in their own right.
Bella Swan clambers out of her truck on shaky legs, slamming the door shut without even taking a second to figure out whether she is actually welcome, and it pushes Leah completely past irritated and well into furious. Her skin prickles at the sight: Bella's doing her typical shy routine, brown eyes as wide as they can be, wandering towards the porch like this is any other day, as if Jacob is not writhing in pain because of her.
Hands grab at her arm the moment Leah reaches to open the screen door, but a single look at Quil, at Paul, is all it takes for them to release her. That, along with her growled warning of what she will do should they intervene, is plenty convincing.
(Embry wouldn't have stood for it.)
Bella's bony fingers reach out towards Leah as she approaches, still doused in vomit and sweat and tears. "I came as soon as I could—"
"Leave," Leah spits, feeling her pulse thrum in her ears. "I warned you about coming here— about coming near Jacob, but here you are, scuttling back like the pest you are. I hope you know that this is your fault."
She's expecting Bella to cower, to flush lurid pink at the insult, but the mouse-like menace has the gall to smile, crossing her thin arms over her chest. Leah's fingers are already curled into fists, fingernails biting into her palms, and the vivid sting of pain is enough to keep her grounded in the moment.
"Do you know where he was today?" Bella asks, tucking her chestnut hair behind her ears. "Other than the battle, of course."
"I get the feeling you're going to tell me either way," Leah mutters, now only a foot away from Bella.
Bella hardly looks affected by Jacob's resounding cries; her stupid brown eyes are still as gormless as ever, but there's a flicker of something that Leah can't quite place, an expression that rarely takes residence on Bella's features.
"He came to see me," Bella says sweetly, fiddling with a lock of her hair, "and he asked me to stay human. Jacob said that he wanted me to—"
Later, Leah will admit that she should have waited for the end of the sentence before punching Bella Swan square in the nose, if only to get some closure on the whole ordeal. Even so, the moment is just as satisfying as it had been in her dreams: her fist lands solidly in the centre of Bella's face, causing a fine spray of bright-red blood to mist both of them in true cinematic fashion. Leah only has a second or two on top of Bella before she is pulled off, but it may as well be a lifetime; it will be at least a decade— longer, even— before Leah forgets the distinctive shriek and loses the vivid image of the Swan girl crying for mercy.
It is opportune, really, that Carlisle follows closely behind the boys, watching the messy scene unfold with an impassive expression. "Well," he says carefully, considering Bella's recently rearranged features, "I think that may be our cue to leave."
A strange feeling tugs at Leah as she watches Carlisle lead Bella to her truck. Not anger, or fear, but . . . emptiness. Suddenly, she feels devoid of the incessant stress that has been weighing them all down for weeks on end; she feels the panic wrested from her bones now that Jacob's screams have ceased. It almost feels like nothing at all— that something has been there, has been taken, has left a mark.
Warmth wraps around her.
Quil.
"Nice right hook," he murmurs, squeezing her shoulder. "Did it help?"
Unable to answer, Leah sags into him, watching the rust-coloured truck drive away, staring until it is little more than a dot on the horizon, until Bella Swan is little more than a finished chapter in a story that will continue in her absence.
Once the blood has been scrubbed from her knuckles, her shirt exchanged for something decisively less offensive, Billy beckons her into Jacob's bedroom, closing the door behind her.
Jacob is awake this time— he looks like death warmed over, but he is breathing and blinking and his shoulders sag a little when he takes her in— and the dull throb gives way to something vital. Despite her worst fears, it is not over yet.
They are still going.
Jacob pats the space beside him, somehow managing not to wince when her hip brushes his ribs. "You're here."
"I'm always here," she says, smoothing her fingers over his sweat-soaked hair. "You know that."
"Yeah," he breathes, his breath catching. The coughs sound painful, every movement contorting his grimace into something uglier, a hurt unable to be masked.
"You promised," she says, tears pooling in her eyes. "You promised you'd be careful."
"It was going for Embry," he rasps, shifting on his tiny bed to get a better look at her. "It had Embry, because the idiot just had to try and prove that he's . . . I had to do something. You would've, if you were there."
She groans into the blankets, fingers grasping at the fabric. "Why did it have to be you?"
"For the same reason I would have done it for any of them," is all he says. "You love him."
Losing Embry . . . Losing any single one of his brothers (and hers, because that's what they have become) would have caused her more pain than what he is in right now. He has been aware for some time that she has found her family, that the pack have become her people— even Sam and Emily, resentment be damned. Even if she will never admit it out loud.
"I do love him, but I love you, too," she replies, her tears finally falling. Her eyes never leave his, not even when the childish ache of self-consciousness grips at her, when his dark eyes bore into hers.
His grin is a little mangled, but it makes her heart skip a beat all the same. "You're just saying that 'cause I nearly died, aren't you?"
She chokes, torn between a laugh and a sob, and wipes her nose on the back of her hand. And she might have never looked worse, with her swollen eyes rimmed red and hair sticking to her wet cheeks, but the copious amounts of morphine in his bloodstream are surely easing the sight, enough for him to look at her as if she is beautiful still.
"Yes," she says, because she is nothing but honest, "but it doesn't make it any less true. I do love you."
He tips his head back against his pillow and smiles. "Can you tell me again when I'm not so high? I'm afraid I might not remember any of this."
"What? That you're an idiot?"
"Yes, that. But the other part, too. The bit where you said—"
"I love you, Jake. And you're an idiot," she tells him quietly, a smile in her voice, and he hums happily. Giddily. The drugs, no doubt. "Sleep, now. Doctor Fang will come back soon."
She forces herself to count to one hundred before folding herself around him on the mattress, wedging her body in between him and the wall. Though tomorrow may involve more bone-breaking, and she will have to kick Embry's ass into the next century, Leah falls asleep content with the knowledge that she and Jacob will do it together.