Hi, all! I know it's been a few days longer than normal, but I think I've now got my timing figured out. Chances are, from now on, Saturday and Sunday will be my update days since those are the times that I'm not working/have free time with my computer. After this, I only have one more prewritten chapter, so I'll try to storm ahead a little get a few more written over the weekend. Until then, enjoy a Paul chapter!
Chapter Eleven
Waking to a howl, Paul groaned and sat up, letting the sheets fall from his otherwise nude body. They still faintly smelled of River, though he knew that the time to wash them had long since been due. Still, he couldn't. He worried that, without her scent trapped in there, he'd go mad. After all, there was so little of it left, holding him together as he threatened to fall apart.
He felt the presence of one of his brothers approaching. He didn't know who, but the howl hadn't been too urgent. Of course, he knew what day it was. They all did. It wasn't as if Baby Alpha had let them forget for even a damn second.
That, in and of itself, was enough to make his want to bury his head in the pillow that still held pieces of her scent. It made him want to sink away and hold close what little he had left of her, but he couldn't. Being away from her for this long was an entirely singular torture that he definitely hadn't expected. Sure, he'd seen in the pack mind that being away from imprints was rough and fighting with them was rougher, but this? Well, it took everything in him not to just go and see her. Only, he couldn't bring himself to.
He wasn't sure why the stupid video had hurt him so much, but it had. Perhaps it was the fact that she'd said she barely ever knew him, or maybe it was the fact that he completely understood why she was apprehensive to let anyone know about whatever relationship they had. After all, they'd been nothing short of foul to one another for years. Still, all he wanted was to see her. His nightly runs by her home on his patrols just weren't enough. He needed to see her properly again, to touch her and to breathe her in.
Instead, he threw the rest of the sheet from his legs and stood, staggering through the doorframe to his living room, grabbing a pair of shorts on the way and wrestling them on, trying to not think about letting his feet carry him to her. He was just thankful to have woken from his few hours of sleep without morning wood for the first time in a long time.
As aware as he was that he didn't have River, his subconscious seemed much less aware. In fact, he struggled to think about much other than her.
He knew, of course, that that's what an imprint was, but that didn't make it even a tiny bit easier on him and his hopeful, longing thoughts. They took up your entire mind. They were, for better or for worse, your entire world. So, why couldn't he work things out with his? The pizza parlour being the latest run-in. Hell, even her sister had given him a piece of her mind. Had it been anyone else, he'd have been fuming, two seconds from phasing, but she'd been there. She'd been there, hurting, so he hadn't had time for anything other than wanting to hold her.
Upon leaving the house, grabbing only a tin of breath mints on the way, popping a few, he found Seth standing outside. Even in his wolf form, the kid was just plain excitable. If he wasn't proving that he could catch his tail, then he was skipping from foot to foot, yapping away about something or other, waiting to tell his brothers.
Today it was the latter. Paul almost didn't want to phase and be drawn in by his infectiously happy mind, but upon kicking off his shorts, making him wonder why he even put them on in the first place, he phased and found himself bombarded immediately by thoughts of River. His mind, not with his permission, snarled that she was his, not for the thoughts of others, but he managed to keep it in long enough to see exactly what Seth was trying to show him.
The kid really was sweet.
All it was, was that he'd run alongside River's truck for a couple of miles the night before in the treeline, just hidden from sight, and wanted for Paul to see what he'd seen. What he'd seen, of course, was just the young woman tapping along to some music with her fingers, not even singing along, but he felt himself melt into Seth's offered memory all the same, feeling the breeze in his fur as his limbs moved, feeling her scent as it drifted closer. God, he wanted to run closer to the road, to dart ahead and phase back, to climb into her truck as she stopped for him and kiss her, to feel the length of his naked body pressed against-
"Paul." Seth groaned, laughing as the older wolf was snapped from the memory that wasn't even his.
Shit. With wide eyes, he apologised to the pup, swearing to keep his mind as PG-13 as possible as they trotted off together.
He had to focus. Today was the day. It was time to fight alongside the stupid bloodsuckers.
His nose curled up at the thought, even more so as he remembered that they'd all be put through whatever the hell was going on in Jacob's mind when he phased.
Seth told him not to be bitter, but as they reached Sam and Em's, he just rolled his eyes and phased back, happy to have his mind back to himself, letting thoughts of River find him once more. Her scent didn't cling to the walls here, but the memory of her having been there once was enough. Just enough to stop him from running off and knocking on her window. Just.
At Sam's, all the others had already gathered. They were all in their human forms, discussing something or another, but he paid them no mind. Instead, he slipped back into his shorts and found himself a seat at the breakfast table.
Em, ever looking after them all, was quick to lay a plate in front of him, placing a sweet hand on his shoulder, smiling down at him. He knew that Sam must have told her about the depths of his tortured mind, but he didn't care. "I'm good." He told her. "Not hungry." He added, smiling his thanks.
She smiled sadly back down at him. "You need to eat, Paul." She told him, though they both knew why his appetite was low. He was missing his imprint. "Come on, you boys have got a big day ahead of you. Please eat something, you'll need your strength. All of you will."
He knew that she was right, but dammit, he wasn't hungry. Still, he couldn't help but think, if it was River asking one of his brother's to eat, he hoped they do so to placate her. He ate for Sam, wanting, in a way, to please his imprint while he couldn't please his own. So, he ate. He ate everything on his plate, making sure to thank Emily for all of it, hugging her briefly when he realised that she must have been stressing about today. "We'll be okay." He told her confidently, reaching out and gripping her shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.
The rest of the morning scraped by little by little, second by second, leaving them all with far too much time to think about everything that could go wrong. Paul's only saving grace was that Jacob wasn't there to whine about his strange little not-girlfriend. Paul knew that he couldn't exactly talk about much of anything given the state that he'd allowed his own relationship with his imprint to get into, but Bella wasn't even Jake's damn imprint. How did the twerp not get that? It was like he just saw this pretty girl, crushed on her, felt entitled to her, then was an ass when she didn't want him back.
Truthfully, Paul's main issue with Bella was that she didn't freaking stand up for herself. He wondered how she'd survived around vampires for this long, but he remembered with a cold, sharp shiver that she wanted to be one of them. Hell, she'd probably already told Eddie Dearest that turning her would be an ideal way to stop this fight. It wasn't exactly that Paul even disagreed, he just hated vampires. After all, they were the reason he was going to spend the rest of his damn life stuck on the res. If they hadn't come back, he would have been free to go off and live, not be stuck here with his "duty".
By the time it was time to phase and take their positions, Paul was more than ready to bust some heads. More than anything else, he just wanted to get this over with.
He'd made up his mind. Once this fight was done, he was going to talk to River. He had to tell her everything. He needed to be in her life, to be holding her, to be there when she woke and there when she slept. He needed to be with his imprint.
He thought of her as they ran. He knew that the others could feel what he felt, see what he saw, even smell her scent through his mind, but he didn't care. Just as he knew that Jared and Sam, as they thought of Kim and Emily, simply didn't care. He was vaguely aware of Seth wishing them all luck as he split ways and run up to meet Dracula and his bride, but still he thought of River.
When the army was but a mile away, he could hear them. He could feel their feet shaking the ground. He could smell their putrid scent on the air as the wind worked in the wolves' favour, masking them. It took everything in him not to bare his teeth and snarl as he began to taste them on the air, but he kept his cool. Instead, he remembered the taste of River's skin, ever so slightly salty with sweat, earthy and divine. He did Leah and his brothers the favour of not remembering how the rest of her tasted, knowing that this was absolutely not the time for that.
It wasn't until they heard the first sounds of smashing and grating, like crates upon crates of porcelain dolls crashing from a height all at once, that they sprung into action.
Through it all, he thought of River.
Every step that he took, every leech that he got his teeth into, it was all for her. He would have done anything to get back to her.
He was sure, as he jumped and snarled, grabbed and ripped, that nothing could have stopped him in that moment. It wasn't until Seth, the only one of them who was meant to be safe, yelped, kicking in the face by the red head, that he stopped dead in his tracks. Quickly, he was tanked from the side. He spun, desperately digging his teeth into anything that he could grab, remembering the blonde's words warning them to never find themselves trapped in a newborn's arms.
Just as he was about to panic, about to scream into the pack mind for help, a freight train ploughed into him. A mess of hands, tearing, punching, grabbing, throwing. As quickly as he'd been grabbed, he was firmly on his feet again, steadying himself as the largest of the Cullens, the very one he'd run into not too long ago, threw the clinging vampire from him with a brief nod. Paul returned his nod, turning then to the leech. They took that one out together.
It was almost fun, working together. Almost.
He wasn't entirely sure how much longer they all fought for, but when a final vampire ran from the bushes, eyes locked on a now present Bella, he watched, horrified, as Leah charged alone. "Leah!" He barked, hearing Edward shout the same.
She was fast though. Too fast. She hit the thing head on, ploughing into it before it had even seen her coming.
Paul would be the first to admit that Leah was a force to be reckoned with, but dammit, these vamps were strong. She managed to sink her teeth into it, cracking shards from one of its shoulders like splinters of glass. Paul could taste the blood in her mouth as it dug into her gums. They all could.
Jake was the first over to it, leaping over it and catching it by the other shoulder, yanking it from Leah's grasp.
They all watched, horrified, as it spun in his jaw, using his own momentum against him and wrapping its arms around his back. Shouts of "Jacob!" filled the pack mind as they saw his eyes go wide. Leah was back in the fight, catching a kicking leg as the leech began to constrict.
It had all taken no more than two seconds given the speed they all moved at, but it ended with mouths full of limbs and Jacob, their future leader, broken and writhing on the ground.
His pain, so very intense, rang out like a siren. The sudden severity of it threw Paul for a loop as he phased back against his will, desperate to get away from the pain and falling to his knees with a yelp. He saw a couple of the others do it, too, save for Sam. Ever their strong leader, Sam raced over to the still undead torso, ripping the head from the body with a mighty roar, taking care of any possible remaining threat before racing to Jacob's side, as they all did.
None of them stopped the vampire doctor as he raced to them. Paul, briefly, was floored at his willingness to put himself among them so quickly with no thought for his own wellbeing, but said nothing.
They all listened as the doctor gave instructions, but it was all just a blind haze. The warning though, was clear. They needed to move him if they wanted to survive. The vampire royalty were coming and, while they wouldn't hunt them down, they wouldn't let them live if they saw them.
All the way home, all they could hear was Jacob's panting and whining. Part of Paul wanted to say that it served him right. No one would say it, but Leah was one of the best of them. She could have handled another second alone while they all closed in, but Jake just had to be first. He just had to play the hero and try to prove himself. After all, if he'd gotten to it and helped Leah to tear at it then this wouldn't have happened, but no, instead he had to pull the whole damn leech away from her.
Of all of the things that made Paul angry, Jake ranked pretty high on the list. He was just annoying. The fact that, while they were all fighting, the dork was thinking about kissing Bella? Well, that just didn't sit with Paul. He may have been an asshole, but even he knew that a kiss didn't count as anything other than assault if you had to threaten to kill yourself just to get it.
Sam explained everything to Billy while Jared, Embry and Quil helped to lay Jake down as comfortably as they could, Leah called Emily, Seth called his mom, but Paul? Paul just stood in the Blacks' living room, wishing he could leave to see River.
He understood that Jacob was in a huge amount of pain, maybe that was why he so desperately needed to see her, but he knew that he had a duty to his brother. He had to stay and make sure that-
"Paul." Sam's voice, loud and commanding, broke him from his thoughts.
Quickly, wanting to help however he could, he perked up. "Yeah." He shook the fog from his head.
"Go to the border." Sam told him, a hand placed on a broken Billy Black's shoulder as he began to cry for his son. "Get the doctor. Bring him across."
Finally, something to do. A mission of sorts. "On it." He all but ran from the house, kicking his shorts off and phasing mid stride, sprinting the second his paws hit the ground.
It wasn't long before he found the scent of the Cullens. As it moved, he moved with it, eventually running alongside them, the blonde, the doctor and the pixie, nodding to the doctor before peeling back off again. He may have just fought beside them, but running beside them made his skin crawl.
He was back with the doctor in few short minutes, slightly amused at how willing he'd been to run away from his family with a wolf. Sure, he knew they were different or whatever, but did they just have no survival instinct at all? All the same, when they reached the house, the doctor wasted little time with pleasantries, instead speeding inside, past Billy, straight to Jacob's side. Paul hadn't even noticed the little medical bag he'd been carrying until he phased back and walked, naked, into the house, accepting a pair of shorts from Jake's room when Jared threw them at him, not caring to find the pair he'd kicked off not so long ago.
For what felt like hours, they waited outside. The doctor had advised that, at the very least, the humans needed to be outside in case Jake couldn't hold off his phasing. No one else, bar Sam, wanted to be around for the rest. No one wanted to stand and watch as a vampire broke their brother's bones. Paul even saw Seth shaking as it was happening. The kindest among them, at hearing his brother's cries, wanted to attack. Leah held her brother close, guilt swimming in her eyes.
"It's not your fault." Paul told her over Jacob's screams of agony.
Angry eyes brimming with tears looked back at him. "How could it not be." She spat, clenching her jaw.
He dropped her gaze, feeling the disagreement from his brothers, particularly Quil and Embry. "It's not your fault. It's not anyone's." He wasn't sure who his words were for, but they got no response back from anyone.
Finally, when it was done, Bella and Edward arrived. Count Asshole at least had the decency to wait outside, standing a few feet from the others when his father came out. Paul listened as he told Billy that Jake, in spite of his pain, should be absolutely fine. He then listened as Jake and Bella, both full of entirely different feelings, spoke in hushed tones, as if that would do them any good.
All the same, when it was all said and done, Paul simply didn't want to be there. He and his wolf were on the same page about one thing, they needed to see River.
Not a super long one, I know, but more than anything I'm trying to show you guys where I'm seeing all of this happening, timewise etc. I'll give a warning right now that there will be some kind of NSFW/content warning for the next chapter, so feel free to either skip the chapter or whatnot as it's not my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or anything like that. Further than that, have a great day and please let me know your thoughts!