chapter one
March 2, 2011
"She's here again."
Paul doesn't budge at Leah's words, his eyes drifting across the page of a book he's read too many times to count. He can feel her standing behind him, knows without looking that her arms are crossed and her face is pulled into a frown, an expression that will deepen when he doesn't react.
And he never does.
"I know you can hear me, Lahote."
Still, he doesn't move, the familiarity of the words floating through his mind soothing the nausea twisting in his gut. He swallows the bile that rises in his throat, ignoring the insistent tapping of Leah's foot as he tries (and fails) to focus on the passage in front of him.
Most of his interactions with the others had gone this way the last week: he would read his book, or eat his breakfast, or sit on the couch and stare blankly into the TV, and either Leah or Jacob (and less frequently, other members of the pack) would burst into his home—uninvited, always uninvited—and repeat the same sentence.
She's here again.
And though they'd try to convince him ("You have to do something.") and reason with him ("She'll only listen to you.") and console him ("I'm sorry, Paul, I'm so, so sorry this is happening.") and promise him that they wouldn't leave his side ("You won't be alone, you won't ever be alone."), he'd sit with his back turned, never acknowledging them, never moving.
He feels a hand on his shoulder now—gentle, cautious, as if he'll crumble beneath its weight—and his vision blurs with unwelcome tears.
"Paul," Leah murmurs softly, "I know this is hard for you, and I won't ever be able to understand what you're feeling, but we can't have a—" she pauses, clearing her throat as she chooses her next words carefully, "we can't have one of them near our land. It's dangerous."
He knows it's dangerous. He can feel it in the incessant itch of his skin and the painful ache of his bones as his wolf—which writhes in protest at his apathy and salivates at the thought of tearing into the cold flesh of the thing it was meant to destroy—begs to be released, but he refuses to give in because she's nothing to him.
She's a monster, he tells himself. A monster, and she doesn't matter. Not anymore.
"You take care of it, then."
Leah's sigh of frustration doesn't surprise him—it was always a sigh or a groan, both of which he was used to, both of which didn't hurt any less—and after pulling her hand away from him, she storms from his bedroom and toward the front door.
"You can say it, you know," he mutters, his words catching her just before she can walk outside. His voice is barely above a whisper, but heavy with the bitterness, the disgust, the overwhelming despair that consumed him every single day that she—the girl he once loved, whose disappearance punctured a hole in his heart, whose reappearance made the festering wound much deeper—had been back. "You can say bloodsucker, leech. That's what she is now."
He hears Leah lingering by the open door, knowing she has more to say to him (because she always has more to say), but after several heartbeats and a prolonged pause, he hears it close.
Paul listens to her retreating footsteps, and once she's far enough away, he exhales a staggered breath, the wooden arm rests of his chair creaking beneath his white-knuckled grip. Through hazy vision, he gazes down at the dog-eared page in front of him, struggling to fight the trembling of his body and the anguished sob clawing its way out of his throat.
Breathe in and out, he tells himself, struggling to stay afloat when all he wants to do is drown. Breathe in and out.
a/n: I'd love to hear any thoughts/predictions you have!