19
They managed to get Charlie, Renee, and Jacob back to Olympia in a matter of hours, which wasn't easy considering two were in the midst of their change and one smelled like wet dog. While Edward and Bella loaded a silent Charlie and a screaming Renee into the back of one of the black SUVs, Jacob settled in the middle seat. His wounds had already started to heal, which Bella wondered was a part of his wolf gene. His eyes were guarded, shifting between each of them with a mixture of fear and resentment. Putting herself in his shoes, she could understand his feelings. After all, he might have fought to save her parents, but she'd killed his friends. Quite easily, in fact.
Bella laid in the back, her body wrapped around her mother, hoping to somehow shield her from the pain as her body changed, morphed. Edward drove with Carlisle sitting in the front passenger seat. The others made the decision to cram themselves into the second SUV, and Bella knew it had everything to do with the stench coming off Jacob Black.
A little more than a day later, they pulled up at the big white house in the Denali National Forrest. While Charlie hadn't moved, screamed, or flinched, Renee had done nothing but flail, scream, and flinch. Bella hated every minute of it. For her, the change had been almost painless, peaceful, but the three years before Edward changed her had been filled with pain and agony, something she hadn't wanted either of her parents to ever experience.
Jacob was out of the SUV the minute Edward stopped, and as Bella climbed out, she saw him hurrying to the woods. He looked back at her just before he transformed into a russet colored wolf that would have towered over Sam Uley.
"He won't go far," Edward said, sliding his arm around her. "He just needs a little bit of time to . . . to process everything."
"Don't we all," Bella murmured, looking up at him. "Did I make the right decision?"
"Yes," he lied, or maybe not lied. She couldn't tell, and to be honest, there wouldn't be any way of knowing until Charlie and Renee woke. "Let's get them inside. Then we need to hunt."
"I can't leave them," she whispered, shaking her head.
"Sweetheart —"
"I can't leave them," she said, again. This time firmer, with more conviction.
And without giving Edward the chance to argue with her, or insist that she go hunting, she pulled herself out of his embrace and to the back of the black SUV. She threw the doors open, cringing when one of them flew off, hitting the ground with a thud.
"Sorry," she murmured before lifting Renee out of the back, cradling her against her.
"Don't worry about it," Edward said as he lifted Charlie. "It was Emmett's. He's been wanting a new one, anyway."
She would have laughed had it been any other time, but right them, nothing was funny.
When Bella and Edward carried Charlie and Renee into the house, Eleazar, Carmon, Tanya, and Irina were immediately on their feet, their eyes flickering from the two humans in their arms to Edward and Bella to Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Kate.
"Well, looks like we missed all the fun," Irina quipped, folding her arms in front of her. She grimaced. "Why do you smell like . . . rot and death?"
Bella felt her shoulders tense, but didn't defend herself. Instead, she simply motioned with her head for Edward to follow her down the hallway to the same room she'd been changed in. She thought maybe, even though they didn't know, it would give them a sense of comfort. It didn't.
Charlie, as he had since she sunk her teeth into his flesh laid still, calm — too still, too calm. Renee screamed, cried, whimpered, flailed on the bed until Bella reached out and placed Charlie's hand on top of Renee's. Then, just like that, she stopped. It was like Charlie calmed her.
Bella closed her eyes for a minute before she reached out, placing her hand on Edward's cheek. She felt her shoulders tense and her eyes rolling backward.
Tell me I did the right thing, she thought.
Edward simply nodded, and he looked right at her. "I would have done it, too. Had it . . . had it been my parent."
What if they . . . what if they didn't want to be changed, though? I had the choice, and I don't regret saying yes, most of the time anyway, she added with a shrug. I didn't even give them the choice, I just decided for them. Was that wrong, Edward?
Edward shifted off the bed, moving so that he was kneeling in front of her. He placed his hands on either side of her face, causing her eyes to flutter close, and had she been human still, her heart no doubt would be racing just from his touch. The way he made her feel, she knew was love. She was in love with Edward Cullen, but would there ever be a time when the world wouldn't feel like it was closing in around them?
Listen to me, sweetheart, he thought, his fingers caressing her skin gently. Your mom and dad loved you so much, they risked everything so you could live. They knew they would be crossing a line, yet you were important enough for them to take that chance. And they . . . Sweetheart, they are worth taking the chance on, too. Will it be easy? Probably not, but together, we'll get through anything thrown at us. I love you, Bella. I love you so much.
She felt her lips curve into a smile. "I love you, too. I do, Edward. I . . . I love you too."
The smile that spread on Edward's face was short lived when his body tensed and he groaned as he looked over his shoulder just moments before the door to the bedroom opened. Garrett stood there, looking more disheveled than he had when they left La Push roughly a day and a half ago. His eyes shifted from Edward to Bella to Charlie to Renee and back to Bella before he tilted his head, motioning for them to follow him outside.
Though Bella wasn't ready to leave her parents alone, she knew they still had at least two more days until their changes would be complete, if she hadn't been too late, of course. So, with an air of reluctance, she and Edward followed Garrett into the living room, where they found everyone standing in a tense standoff. Bella was annoyed, but before she could say anything, she both smelt and heard Jacob approaching the house. She threw Edward a look before she turned and walked out the front door.
Jacob stopped about fifty feet away. He'd transformed back into his human form, and stood naked, embarrassed, almost shy as he attempted to cover himself. Rolling her eyes, she darted back into the house, up to Edward's room, and was back down in the span of a second with a pair of his jeans. She threw them at Jacob, who grimaced, but put them on.
"Thanks," he said, coarsely.
"You're welcome, I guess," she replied, folding her arms in front of her. "I should be thanking you, though. For . . . for helping them."
"Didn't do much good," he quipped, dragging his fingers through his hair. "I was too late."
"You were?" she asked, and he nodded. "What happened, Jake?"
Jacob shook his head. "When Dad realized that Charlie had gone to the Cullen's to change you, he was furious. He said Charlie had betrayed him, betrayed the Quileute's, but mostly betrayed him. He said Charlie and Renee had started the end of the world and that it was up to us to stop . . . to stop it before. . ."
"Before what?" she asked, walking down the front steps. Jacob moved away from her, though. "Jake, I'm still me. I'm still Bella?"
"You're not," he disagreed. "You stopped being Bella when they made the decision to change you."
"Wow," she murmured. "So it would have been better if I were dead? Is that what you're saying?" And when he didn't reply, she sighed and said, "I was in pain all the time, Jake. My head felt like . . . like it was being torn apart. My parents had to tiptoe around me because any little noise had me crying in agony. I had to lock myself in the closet, because the light hurt me, and even then, my head still hurt all the fucking time. I was dying, Jake. I could feel myself slipping away, and I was scared, so fucking scared, all the time!"
Jacob frowned.
"All they wanted was me to live. That's all, and you're making it seem like they . . . like they were wrong for wanting me to live, Jake."
Jacob shook his head. "I didn't want you dead, Bella. I didn't, but I didn't want you to become one of them, either. You have no idea what your change means."
"Then tell me," she said, tilting her head to the side. "Sam said something about writings. What did he mean?"
Jacob hesitated before saying, "You know the legends behind . . . behind our change, right? The cold ones trigger the wolf gene when they are close for a long period of time, like the five years the Cullen family spent in Forks," he spat, gesturing toward the house. "Sam was the first one to change, then Paul, Jared, and then me. There are others, too. Some barely thirteen years old," he murmured. "Our job is to protect our people from you, for your kind. But what you don't know is that we have writings that date back centuries that . . . that forecasted your change."
Bella felt her eyes widen. "Mine?"
He nodded. "I've only seen pictures of them, but . . . but, Bella, they say that your change will cause the end of humanity, that your power will kill us all."
She stared at him for a moment before she shook her head, unable to accept that. "No, no, that's not . . . There's no way I'm . . ."
"You have the mark," Jacob stated, his shoulders tensing when the door to the house opened, and when she looked back, she saw Carlisle, Garrett, Emmett, Jasper, and Edward step out onto the porch. "I should leave."
"No, you can't!" Bella exclaimed, taking a step toward him, but stopping when both Garrett and Emmett grabbed her arms, pulling her back. She yanked her arms out of their grip, glaring at them. "Don't fucking touch me!"
"Sorry," they muttered together, both taking a step backward, throwing each other a look.
Bella blew out a heavy breath before she turned and looked back at Jacob. "What kind of mark?"
He shrugged his shoulders, which just pissed her off even more, and he wasn't expecting her to rush at him, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the ground, causing the sound of his body hitting to echo around them.
"You have a birth mark," he choked out, his hands coming up to cover hers. He tried to pry her fingers from around his throat, but he couldn't, and he cried out, "On your hip of a crescent moon!"
Bella released him, scooting several feet backward. "How do you know that?"
Jacob scurried away, crouching in a protective stance. "Because I saw it when we were little, when you'd come to the reservation. After you got sick, Billy showed me the pictures of the writing. I . . . I couldn't really read it, because it's in old Quileute dialect that's been long forgotten by my people, but Billy had managed to translate it. It was his life's work, he said. He told me that he knew you were the cold one from the writings, that he had known since you were born and he saw the mark. He thought . . . After you got sick, he thought that the cancer would stop you from ever being changed, from accessing your powers. That's why he pushed Charlie to always go to Phoenix when . . . when it got hard for you to come back to Forks, but then . . ."
"But then Charlie came to me," Carlisle said, drawing everyone's attention to him. "And because we agreed, because we changed her, we've set off the events that will end the world. That's what Billy thinks?"
Jacob hesitated, but nodded. "He and Sam thought if they lured you back, by taking your parents, that they could . . . kill you. He ordered the evacuation of the reservation, which was a task in and of itself, but . . . but I couldn't sit by and let your parents die, Bella. Charlie had always been good to me, and well, I don't know Renee very well, but it seemed to me that they didn't deserve to die . . . because of you."
"This is absurd," Bella argued, but before she could say anything else, the door to the house opened everyone turned as Eleazar led Kate, Carmon, Irina, and finally Tanya out of the house. Eleazar opened his mouth to speak, but like all weird, unnatural events of late, Tanya threw her hand up and walked past them, down the front steps. Bella threw a glance at Edward before she rolled her eyes and looked back at Jacob, only to find him staring at the strawberry blond vampire with a look that could only be called awe-inspiring, like he had never seen someone as beautiful as her.
Bella took a step backward as Jacob and Tanya walked up to each other, their eyes locked on the other. They each raised a hand, their fingers intertwining with each other, and in a move that seemed to surprise them all, they leaned toward each other, and kissed.
Thank you for all the AMAZING reviews!