AN: Thanks for the lovely reviews and Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!
Jacob crouched in wolf form and watched, only his sharp eyes moving over the dark shadows. When he'd first phased, he would burn through his wolf's limited patience like he burned through calories. But failure had taught them both that hunting was more than sheer muscle against muscle. Hunting was a game. His mind was as powerful a tool as his body and bones, and when he used both, he always won. Tonight he needed to win.
He would wait until the leech grew impatient. He knew it scented him, growing overconfident because he was alone. They'd danced back and forth for weeks, exchanging moves like a long game of chess, each decision a calculated step towards survival or death. If his wolf could smile, it would've. This hunt, this game, was everything he was built to do. Without it, he would've been lost. A wolf without a pack or a purpose is nothing. He didn't have a pack, so he'd carved out a purpose for himself in the Canadian wilderness. Hunting vampires alone was risky or stupid or both, but he didn't have a choice.
"You always have a choice," Billy had yelled at him, the day before everything fell apart with Bella. His father threw a rolled up newspaper at his head with alarming accuracy. "You'll hate yourself if you don't give this everything you've got."
"I'm trying, you ass," Jacob had growled. "I've tried everything. You don't understand—"
"You're still alive." Billy picked up his shoe, "You're still breathing, son. So try harder."
"If this is what she wants,"
"Is it, Jacob?" His father had demanded. "Is this really what she wants?"
"She said—"
"Today?"
"I'm trying to let her go!" Jacob snatched the shoe his dad threw at him from the air. "I'm trying to be the better man here."
"How? By giving up and letting those monsters turn her into one of them?"
"Why the hell do you even care?"
"Because you care." His father's face had turned more serious than he'd ever seen it. "And that's enough for me." It was the closest his father had ever come to saying 'I love you' since Sarah Black had died, and Jacob winced as if he'd hit him. "You can let her die or you can fight like hell."
Billy was right and they both knew it. His wolf would rather fight and die, than to let them take her.
Jake.
Tonight, the wolf and the man both needed a fight they had a chance of winning. His wolf lay perfectly still, ready. Waiting. The slinking shadow slid down the trunk of a large pine. There was no sound when it landed on the ground, not even to his sensitive wolf ears. If he hadn't been looking for it, the movement would've been lost in the soft shadows of the night. But the night world belonged to him.
black responds.
The wolf shifted his hind legs, just enough to let the wind catch his scent and carry it towards his quarry. The cold figure's head snapped towards the wolf's cover. The night seemed to sink into a growing silence, as if the forest took a collective breath and held it, before the wolf exploded forward, at the same moment the vampire shot off into the darkness like a bullet from a gun.