Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Stephenie Meyer and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Sorry about the wait. I'm going to start working on the next chapter immediately, so you shouldn't have to wait too long for that one. :)

Note about Bella in this chapter: Bella's thoughts on the Quileute stories reflect how she was raised by Renée, and how Renée raised her, both in canon and in this fic...yeah, not so good. Really not so good, and in the context of this story especially in fostering a healthy environment for a child from two different cultures/heritages. I think I made this clear enough in the chapter and the previous ones, but writing it here in this chapter was kind of uncomfy for me so I just wanted to reiterate it again. Hope you don't mind. :P

As always, I hope you enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~full moon~

~chapter 6: the cold ones~

I sat in my room that afternoon, trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth, but really listening for the sound of my truck. I would have thought, even with the pounding of rain, I could have heard the engine's roar. But when I went to peek out the curtain – again – it was suddenly there. Also again, I was glad for the fact that Nonna was still out. I wasn't sure how I would've explained to her what had happened today otherwise, having to come up with a way to dampen the truth on the spot.

I wasn't looking forward to Friday, and it more than lived up to my non-expectations. Of course, there were the fainting comments. Jessica especially seemed to get a kick out of that story. Luckily, Mike had kept his mouth shut, and nobody seemed to know about Edythe's involvement. Jessica did have a lot of questions about our lunch together, though.

"So, what did Edythe Cullen want yesterday?" she asked in Trig.

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. "She never really got to the point."

"You looked kind of mad," she fished.

I tried to play oblivious. "Did I?"

"You know, I've never seen her sit with anyone besides her family before. That was weird."

"Weird," I agreed.

Jessica was annoyed by my lack of answers, flipping her dark curls impatiently. I didn't know what she wanted from me: a good story to pass on? Or, perhaps more accurately...a specific type of story. I could see the curiosity behind her eyes. It made me concerned, because I didn't think I had given any inclination to who I was in that respect at all. But if she was already that kind of person, maybe it wasn't too hard for her to believe that something as immutable as sexuality was somehow a disease and contagious...it certainly would befit the political climate up here...

No, I tried to convince myself. Her perchance for gossip aside, Jessica was a nice person. I didn't want to stop being friends with her unless I had to, especially because of all the drama I had a feeling would be involved.

But, I digress.

The worst part about Friday was that, even though I knew Edythe wasn't going to be there, I still hoped. When I walked into the cafeteria with Jessica and Mike, I couldn't help from looking at the table where she sat with Rosalie, Alice, and Jasper, and the one where we had sat together yesterday. She wasn't at either of the locations, although her siblings were out of character for a change, talking with their heads close together. I didn't think about them for long, however; gloom engulfed me as I realized I didn't know how long I would have to wait until I saw Edythe again.

At my usual table, everyone was full of our plans for the next day. Mike was animated again, putting a great deal of trust in the local weatherman who promised sun tomorrow. I'd have to see it before I believed it. But it was warmer today, almost a full sixty degrees. Perhaps the outing wouldn't be completely miserable.

I intercepted a few unfriendly gazes from Lauren during lunch, which I didn't understand until we were all walking out of the room together. I was right behind her, just a foot from her slick, silver blonde hair, and she was evidently unaware of that.

"I don't know why Bella – " her sneer at my name was so exaggerated, even I could see it with her back turned to me " – doesn't just sit with the Cullens from now on."

I heard her muttering it to Mike. I was caught off-guard by the malice in her voice. I didn't really know her well at all, certainly not enough for her to dislike me – or so I'd thought.

"Bella's just being nice with them, the same way she is with everyone. Besides, she's my friend; she sits with us," Mike whispered back loyally.

Lauren wasn't impressed. "Are you sure that she's – ?"

I let Jessica and Angela pass by me after that. I didn't want to hear anymore.

Maybe I really hadn't been as discrete as I thought I was, as much as it was almost unbearable to think about.

That night at dinner, Nonna was enthusiastic about my trip to La Push in the morning. She was excited, I knew, for me to go back there for the second time since I had moved to Forks, because I hadn't been there since. Of course, she knew the names of all of the kids from Forks going there, and their parents, and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents too, probably. I wondered if she would approve of my plan to ride to Seattle with Edythe Cullen. I wasn't ready to tell her about it just yet.

As she told me what she'd heard about Kevin and Connie Littlesea recently, I decided to broach the subject that I'd wanted to discuss with her ever since she'd come home last night. I didn't know if she would know anything about it, but I figured she might because of my father. It wouldn't hurt to ask, either way.

"Nonna, do you know a place called Goat Rocks or something like that? I think it's south of Mount Rainier," I asked casually once she was finished with her little story.

I watched her blink in surprise. "Sì, Bella. Why?"

My shoulders moved with a shrug. "Some kids were talking about camping there."

"Really?" She sounded surprised. "It's never been a good place for camping. Too many bears. Most people go there during the hunting season, and even then your father said there were always problems."

"Oh," I said. "Well, maybe I got the name wrong."

"Hmm," my grandmother hummed in response. It seemed like there was more she wanted to say on the matter, but she didn't.

I couldn't help but think how unusual that was for her, but the thought slipped my mind soon enough.

The next morning, I meant to sleep in, but an unusual brightness woke me. I opened my eyes to see a clear yellow light streaming in through my window. I couldn't believe it. I hurried to the window to check, and sure enough, there was the sun. It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn't seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun. Clouds ringed the horizon, but a large patch of blue was visible in the middle. I lingered by the window for as long as I could, afraid that if I left, the blue would disappear again.

The Newtons' Olympic Outfitters store was just north of town. I'd seen the store, but I'd never stopped there – I didn't have much need for any supplies required for being outdoors over an extended period of time. As I drove over there, dread filled my stomach; I tried to ignore it, but my fingers still rapped against my steering wheel anxiously. While I was using today as an excuse to visit La Push after so long, I didn't feel any more ready to go there now than I did before.

In the parking lot of the store, I recognized Mike's Suburban and Tyler's Sentra. As I pulled up next to their vehicles, I could see the group standing around in front of the Suburban. Eric was there, along with two other boys I had class with, and I was fairly certain their names were Ben and Connor. Jessica was there, flanked by Angela and Lauren. Three other girls stood with them, including one I remembered falling over in Gym on Friday. That one gave me a small smile as I got out of my truck, which relieved me some. I was used to people giving me dirty looks for my clumsiness instead of somewhat understanding ones. Lauren, meanwhile, shook out her cornsilk hair and eyed me scornfully. But, I'd been expecting that.

Mike was happy to see me, if nobody else. "Bella, you came!" he called out, delighted. He raised his arms towards the sky. "I told you that it was going to be sunny, didn't I?"

"I told you I was coming," I reminded him.

"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha...unless you invited someone," he told me.

"Nope."

He looked satisfied. "Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."

"Sure," I agreed easily.

"You can have shotgun," he promised. I noticed Jessica glowering at us at this, and I had to hide my chagrin. It seemed that even though they were only going as friends, she hadn't gotten the hint. That was good for Mike, but it would still make things complicated at the same time.

Oh, well. I knew I couldn't make everyone happy.

There was a slight reprieve, if only because Lee brought two more people than he'd said he would and that meant every seat was suddenly necessary. I let Jessica not-so-subtly wedge herself between me and Mike in the front seat of the Suburban. Mike could have been more graceful about it, but she was appeased.

It's only fifteen miles from Forks to La Push, with gorgeous, dense forests edging the road most of the way and the wide Quillayute River snaking beneath it twice. As hard as it was for me to return, I could appreciate the beauty of the journey along the way. I stared at the window most of the time, grateful for the window seat. We'd rolled the windows down – the Suburban was a bit claustrophobic with nine people in it – and I tried to absorb as much sunlight and fresh air as possible. The scent of the forest took me back a bit.

I remembered when I'd once been excited to come back to La Push, regardless of how much I vastly preferred California and Arizona. I remembered my aunt Allison and the way she'd braided my hair and taught me and Sam to skip rocks at First Beach. I remembered making mud pies with Jacob, because Rachel and Rebecca had always been too caught up in their own world as twins to play with me, and rough-housing with Jared and Paul. I remembered listening to the scary stories that the elders would tell by the fire, even though I barely remembered most of those stories now. I remembered everything that I could.

The mile-long crescent of First Beach was breathtaking when it came into sight, as it always was. The water was dark grey, even in the sunlight, white-capped and heaving to the grey, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water's edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly grey from a distance, but up-close were every shade a stone could be: terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue-grey, dull gold, and more. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone-white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some laying solitary, just out of reach of the waves.

There was a brisk wind coming off the waves, cool and briny. Pelicans floated on the swells while seagulls and a lone eagle wheeled above them. The clouds still circled the sky, threatening to invade at any moment, but for now the sun shone bravely in its halo of blue sky.

There wasn't anybody on the beach that I recognized immediately, only one or two people out and about in the late morning. I knew it wouldn't last that way for long; once the teenagers our age realized that a group had come in from Forks, once some of them realized that I was here...

I wasn't looking forward to it, but I would brave it.

I would, I told myself, repeating it for further emphasis.

We picked our way down to the beach, Mike leading the way to a ring of driftwood logs that I knew had been used many times before for parties like our. There was a fire circle already in place, filled with black ashes. Eric and the boy who I thought was Ben gathered broken branches of driftwood from the drier piles against the forest edge, and soon they had a teepee-shaped construction built on top of the old cinders. Mike lit some of the smaller sticks with a cigarette lighter, and soon all of the wood was in flames. The flames were blue, due to the salt – a beautiful and awesome sight for those who have never seen it before, though there were none like that in our group. He came to sit down next to me afterwards, Jessica on his other side. She engaged him in conversation as I watched the blue and green flames crackle towards the sky.

After half an hour of chatter, some of the boys wanted to hike to the nearby tidal pools. It was a dilemma. On the one hand, I didn't want to deal with my peers from La Push so soon, because I didn't feel ready to deal with their questions about why I hadn't come sooner besides my visit to Sam and Emily, among other things. I also loved the tidal pools. They had fascinated me since I was a child, and they were another thing that Aunt Allison and Sam had loved to take me to before she'd gotten sick. On the other hand, I'd fallen into the tidal pools a lot. It wasn't a big deal when I'd been seven and with them as company, but now it would be. And it reminded me of Edythe's request: that I not fall into the ocean.

It was Lauren who made the decision for me. She didn't want to hike, and she was definitely wearing the wrong shoes for it. Most of the other girls besides Angela and Jessica decided to stay on the beach as well. I waited until Tyler and Eric had committed to remaining with them before I got up quietly to join the pro-hiking group. Mike gave me a huge smile when he saw that I was coming.

The hike wasn't too long, although I hated to lose sight of the sky in the woods. The green light of the forest was strangely at odds with adolescent laughter, too murky and ominous to be in harmony with the light banter around me. I had to watch each step I took very carefully, avoiding roots below and branches above, and I soon fell behind. Eventually, I broke through the emerald confines of the forest and found the rocky shore again. It was low tide, and a tidal river flowed past us on its way to the sea. Along its pebbled banks, shallow pools that never completely emptied were teeming with life.

I was extremely cautious to lean over too far over the little pools. The others were fearless, leaping over the rocks and perching precariously on the edges. I found a very stable, faintly familiar-looking rock on the fringe of one of the largest pools and sat there nervously, but nevertheless spellbound by the microcosm below me. The bouquets of brilliant anemones undulated ceaselessly in the invisible movement of the water, twisted shells scurried about the edges, obscuring the crabs within them, and starfish stuck motionless to the rocks and each other, while one small black eel with white racing stripes wove through the bright green weeds, almost all waiting for the tide to return and sweep them back out to sea. I was completely absorbed, except for one small part of my mind that was wondering what Edythe was currently doing, and wondering what she would be saying if she was with me right now instead.

Finally, the boys got hungry, and I got up stiffly to follow them back. Even with the dread returning to my stomach, I tried to keep up better this time through the woods, so naturally I fell a few times. I got some shallow scrapes on my palms, and the knees of my jeans became stained green, but it could have been worse.

When we got back to First Beach, sure enough, some of the teens from La Push had joined our group. There weren't as many of them as I had been expecting, and the faces that I saw were all ones that I recognized: Paul, Jared, Jared's sister Jessica, Jacob Black, Embry Call, Quil Ateara V, and four others.

"Hey, look, there she is!" Jared announced my presence with a feral grin, shouting it out.

I felt myself blush all the way to the roots of my hair as I walked over to him. "Hey, Jared," I said. I felt the eyes of the rest of the group from Forks on me.

"You sound so unenthused, Loca," he teased.

"Yeah, unenthused to see you," Paul snarked. As Jared spluttered, he held out his fist to me. "'Sup, Bella."

I tentatively fist-bumped him back. "Hi, Paul."

Thankfully, the reunion wasn't much more elaborate than that at first, because the food had already been passed out and the boys I had come with hurried to claim their share as I sat down next to Angela in the driftwood circle. Jared sat next to me, surprising me when he took the extra plate – of an even mixture of the food we had brought and the La Push group had – that the girl on the other side of him had on her lap and handed it to me. "Kim, this is the one and only Bella Swan," he introduced her to me. "Bella, this is my girlfriend, Kim Connwaller."

Kim gave me a genuine smile. I didn't really recognize her, although I recognized the surname – it was the surname of one of the elderly women in La Push. Kim was probably one of her granddaughters, and must've moved back here with her family fairly recently. "It's nice to meet you, Bella," she said.

"It's nice to meet you, too," I told her earnestly. But, I was surprised. "You didn't tell me the last time we talked that you have a girlfriend now, Jared."

"Oh, Jared and Paul are keeping tons of secrets these days," Quil Ateara interjected as he walked past.

At first, I thought I was imagining the edge to his voice, but then I saw Paul, Jared, and Kim all tense. It was just part of the mystery going on with Sam and the Cullens, I assumed, since Jared and Paul had become such good friends with Sam that they had been hanging out at his place while he'd been at work.

I relaxed sitting between Jared and Angela, or at least as much as I was able to. Angela was a restful kind of person to be around – she didn't feel the need to fill any silence with conversation, and was a quiet but avid listener to the talk that I had with Jared, Kim, and Paul, with interjections from Mike and a few of the other people from Forks. They were curious to how I knew everyone, even though I was sure they all knew my mom was Quileute and I knew everyone as an extension of that.

During the entire meal, I was aware of someone staring at me with pointed interest as I ate and spoke. I tried to ignore him at first, but it was of no use; it didn't make him any less curious. Finally, I gave in and looked his way. As soon as I caught his eye, which was instantaneous, Jacob Black gave me a wide grin. I tried not to grimace.

By the end of lunch, the clouds had more than advanced, slinking across the blue sky and darting in front of the sun momentarily, casting long shadows across the beach and blackening the waves. Once they'd finished eating, people started to drift away in twos and threes. Some walked down to the edge of the waves, trying to skip rocks across the choppy surface. Others were gathering a second expedition to the tide pools. Mike – along with Jessica and Lauren, making my joining them impossible unless I wanted to be even more uncomfortable than I already was, and that was a hard task to manage – headed up to the one shop in the village. Even Jared, Kim, and Paul left, so that by the time they all had scattered, I was one of the only ones left at the driftwood circle. Tyler was occupying Embry and Quil with the CD player that he had brought with him today along with the other girl remaining, leaving me with...Jacob.

I was surprised that he waited a few minutes after Angela had left my side to come over, sitting down next to me. He was young, only fourteen if I recalled correctly, maybe fifteen, with the long, glossy black hair that almost all of our people had pulled back with a rubber band at the base of his neck. His skin was like my mother's, silky and russet-colored, and the same went for his dark eyes, which were set deep above the high planes of his cheekbones.

In theory, I had nothing wrong with Jacob Black. He was younger than me, but his age was in no way, shape, or form his fault. He was the son of Billy, my father's best friend. He'd fixed up my truck before my grandmother had bought it off of his father. The most time we had ever spent together had been when we were children, making those mud pies I previously mentioned.

But over the years, even when we'd been children, Jacob had never been particularly subtle at making it known he had a crush on me. On the basis of his sex alone, a relationship between us would never have been possible. His age, too, because I already felt older than my peers my own age as it was.

What had always gotten to me the most, though, was how I felt like our fathers had always secretly been rooting for us to get together behind the scenes. Charlie and Billy had never voiced their opinions about it, at least not to me, but I'd noticed the way they'd stared at us. Like there had been some kind of hope for what could be – could have been, because it never would have been possible in the first place.

Jacob had not grown out of his crush at all since I had seen him last at Charlie's funeral, not that I had expected him to. "Hi, Bella," he said, giving me a radiant smile. "How are you?"

One of these days, I knew he was going to pick up the courage that I desperately did not want to.

One of these days, I knew I was going to have to come up with a response that did not out me or hurt his feelings too much.

But, that day was not today.

"I'm good," I answered him evasively. "How are you?"

"Great," he replied cheerfully. "And your truck? I heard you got into a collision a bit ago."

I tried not to cringe. "Yeah. It's fine. I'm fine, too."

His grin widened. "So I heard. I am thankful your grandma bought it off of us. My dad wouldn't let me work on another vehicle when we had a perfectly good one right there, no matter how slow it is."

"It's not that slow," I protested.

"Have you tried to go over sixty?"

"No," I admitted.

"Good. Don't."

This was a remarkable beginning to our conversation. I wanted to keep it that way, since I had the feeling he would not want to stop talking to me anytime soon.

Without trying to come across as being too interested in the topic so I wouldn't give him any ideas, I asked, "So you build cars now?"

"When I have free time, and parts. You wouldn't happen to know where I could get my hands on a master cylinder for a 1986 Volkswagen Rabbit, do you?" he added jokingly.

To my surprise, the laughter that came from me was genuine. He was an easy person to talk to, his crush on me aside. "Sorry, no. But if I do, I'll let you know."

He flashed a brilliant smile. "So, what have you been up to lately?"

"Oh, I don't know," I said. It was too easy for me to think back to the main subject of everything that I did lately: Edythe. Unfortunately, this was not a good thing for me to do. "Going to school, making friends some of the kids there..."

"Like who?" Jacob seemed genuinely interested.

"Mike, Jessica, Angela, and Eric," I recalled. "Edythe, too..."

At the mention of her name, I watched Jacob's expression ripple with shock. "Edythe Cullen? You've actually spoken with her? You've become friends with her?"

It looked like he was aware of the drama going on with them, too.

I leaned back at first, surprised. But then, as I stared at him, an idea occurred to me: Jacob was young, young enough that he still had some naïvety, and he had a crush on me. Maybe, I could get him to tell me what was going on, since everybody else in my life seemed to unwilling to...

I knew that it was a bad idea – not in the sense of getting answers, but morally and ethically. Guilt crashed down on me; I wasn't usually like this, because usually this idea never would have crossed my mind before.

But, I wanted to get answers. I had to understand everything that was going on around me. I had to figure out the secret that Edythe was keeping. I knew she didn't want me to, but I wouldn't rest until I did.

So, I played oblivious. "Yeah, why? What's wrong with her?"

Jacob looked at me for a moment, then he turned his head to look around at the rest of the group. "Come on," he said, getting to his feet. He offered me his hand, and just for the sake of it, I took it. "Let's go for a walk."

We headed for the shore, walking over the smooth rocks; we didn't go all of the way to the sand. Jacob remained silent until then. "Sorry," he apologized. He rubbed at the back of his neck anxiously. "It's just – I don't really believe in it, but my dad and all of the others have been instilling in us the importance to not talk about this to outsiders lately. Don't ask me why."

For some reason, I wasn't surprised by this. If anything, I was silently glad that I was not included in the outsider group for a change. Yes, nobody had ever when I was a child that I was an outsider at La Push, they had included me in everything that they could when I'd spent time here during the summers with Charlie, but some things didn't need to be said. Even Embry Call, who I remembered was one of Jacob's best friends, seemed like he belonged here more than I did due to having lived here since he was born, but he was Makah. I didn't want him to feel an outsider like I did, but sometimes it just didn't make sense.

"And what exactly is 'this?'"

Jacob glanced at me, biting his lip. "Do you remember the story of the cold ones?"

The name sounded familiar. I knew I had to have been told the story before, probably around a fire. But it seemed it had ended up like all of the other stories that I had been told in that way.

"...No," I admitted.

He became a bit exasperated by this. "Bella," he sighed lightly. "That's our culture. That's our heritage. You should know about it. Do you even remember the story of Taha Aki?"

It's your culture, I thought. Renée had never much cared for the cultural stories or anything else to do with the Quileute Tribe after my uncle Lucas had died, hence why I had only ever heard of the stories at La Push. She was much more enthusiastic about the more secular holidays: Halloween especially, but also Thanksgiving, Christmas, and etcetera. Two Thanksgivings ago, she'd tried to make an entire feast just for the two of us. It hadn't gone well, and we'd gone out to Denny's afterwards.

"It's been a while since I've heard the stories," I told Jacob cautiously. "I think I just need a refresher."

Thankfully, unlike Billy or the other elders, who I knew I most likely would've received a verbal lashing from, Jacob took my response well. "It's okay," he replied. "I get it. Paul was the same way before he and his dad moved back up here. Although," he added, his expression becoming dark, "I'd say now he's become too invested in the stories."

I didn't push my luck with that statement.

We strolled to a nearby driftwood tree that had its roots sticking out like the attenuated legs of a huge, pale spider. He perched lightly on one of the twisted roots while I sat beneath him on the body of the tree. He stared down at the rocks, a smile hovering around the edges of his broad lips. I could see he was going to try to make this good. I focused on keeping the vital reason I had for all the wrong reasons out of my eyes.

"Do you remember, at least, where we came from?" he began. "The Quileutes as a whole, I mean?"

I had to claw deep into the recesses of my brain to come up with an answer, but this particular tidbit of information was easier for me than the broader strokes. "We're descended from wolves, right?"

"Right," he echoed. "I can kind of get you understanding for not knowing this particular story about the cold ones, because it's fairly new, but some of the other stories about the cold ones are as old as the wolf legends. Anyways, according to the most recent one, my great-grandfather, Ephraim Black, knew some of them. Yours, too. Levi Uley." I blinked in surprise. My and Sam's great-grandfather was the namesake of his son. "Ephraim was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land." Jacob rolled his eyes.

"Really?" I encouraged.

"Yeah. The cold ones are supposed to be our enemies, remember." Now that he reminded me to do it, I thought I might've. Like the memories of the stories were now edging to the surface of my mind from the weighted box I had put them in... "But this clan that came to our territory during Ephraim and Levi's time was different, so they said. They claimed that they didn't hunt the way others of their kind did, that they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So Ephraim, after consulting with Levi and Quil Ateara II, plus some of their elders, decided to make a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces."

I was able to put together the dots easily enough in that respect, but I still wanted some more answers. "But if they weren't dangerous, then why...?"

"There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilized like this one was," Jacob said. "You never know when they might get too hungry to resist."

"...'Hungry?'"

Jacob let out a laugh, kicking his legs in the air. "Yeah, Bella, that's the best part. The cold ones are supposed to eathumans. But, this clan didn't. They said they'd figured out a way to prey on animals instead."

Suddenly, the wisp of one of the stories appeared in my mind quite vividly. I barely remembered the rest of the story, but I remembered the part about the Third Wife. When our tribe had been in danger from the cold ones, she had taken one of her son's knives and plunged it into her stomach. She had distracted the female cold one, long enough that Taha Aki, one of the chiefest ancestors of our tribe, and some of her other sons had been able to kill the cold one by ripping off her head. Except, they hadn't done so in the shape of men.

They had done so in the shape of wolves.

Thinking about the wolves and the cold ones made me think of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My mom had been obsessed with it for a while.

I almost gulped.

"The cold ones..." I began tentatively. "They don't...drink blood, do they?"

Jacob was oblivious to the tenor of my voice. "You got it," he told me with a dark smile.

"And the Cullens...are they the descendants of that clan, or are they just like them?"

"No." He paused dramatically. "They're the same ones. There are more of them now, a male and a female, but the rest are the same. In our great-grandfathers' time, they already knew of the leader, Carine. He'd been here and gone before the pale-faces even arrived.

"But, don't worry about it." Jacob hopped down from his spot above me so he could sit down next to me instead. "That's just what the elders are saying, that the Cullens are the same group as the cold ones back then. Some people are believing way too much into it, like Sam, Jared, and Paul," as he said this, a shadow briefly casted over his face. "But personally, I don't put too much stock into it."

I laughed nervously. "Aren't you the son of the Chief, Jacob?"

"Well, yeah," he admitted. He held out his fist to me. "Promise not to tell him? I don't want him to say I'm not taking the stories seriously enough."

I fist-bumped him. "Only if you promise not to tell him I forgot the stories."

"Deal."

The sound of the beach rocks clattering against each other warned us that someone was approaching. Our heads snapped up at the same time to see Mike and Jessica about fifty yards away, walking towards us.

"There you are, Bella!" Mike called in relief, waving his arm over his head.

Jacob squinted his eyes. "Is that your boyfriend?"

It took active will on my part to not snort. "No, definitely not." I didn't want to give Jacob any ideas, but I had used his crush on me to initiate this conversation. So, I winked at him. He smiled, elated by my inept flirting.

"So, when I get my license..." he began.

I didn't think that would be some time yet, if I remembered correctly that his birth month was January, but I didn't mention it. "You should come see me in Forks. We could hang out sometime." I felt guilty about this, like I was holding the unattainable carrot in front of him. But, if Jacob could grow out of his crush on me one day, I wouldn't mind getting closer to him. He was someone I could easily be friends with.

Mike had reached us by now, with Jessica still a few paces back. "Where have you been?" he asked, though the answer was right in front of him.

"Talking with Jacob," I volunteered. "Just doing some catching up."

He nodded, not bothered by this, though he did look a tad regretful. "Well, we're packing up now," he explained. "It looks like it's going to rain soon."

We all looked up at the glowering sky. It certainly did look like rain was imminent.

As much as I wanted to spend more time with Jacob and maybe even some of the other Quileute teens, now that my nerves had been calmed in some ways (in others, made worse), I jumped up. "Okay, I'm coming."

"It was nice to see you again," Jacob said.

"It really was. Next time I come to see Sam and Emily, I'll stop by at your house, too," I promised.

His grin stretched across his face. "That would be cool."

"And thanks," I added earnestly.

Jacob shook his head. "There's nothing to thank me for."

I pulled up my hood as we tramped across the rocks towards the parking lot. A few drops were beginning to fall, making black spots on the stones where they landed. When we got to the Suburban and the others were already loading everything back in, I crawled into the backseat by Angela and Tyler. I almost felt bad for leaving Mike alone with Jessica in the front, but I knew he'd been able to handle her on his own before.

I needed time to think, and my companions gave me the opportunity to do just that. Angela was silent, staring out the window at the escalating storm, and Lauren twisted around in the middle seat to occupy Tyler's attention. So, I closed my eyes and let the tropical cyclone brewing inside my head become unleashed.

Word Count: 6,231

Next Chapter Title: nightmare