Chapter Text
Prologue
“Bella, it’s too late.”
That beautiful voice held all the sorrow of a mournful angel.
My blood was burning in my veins as I shook the tears off of my face, violently, hands clenched so tight I felt like they might shatter.
No
No
It couldn’t end like this.
“No, no you’re wrong! JAKE!”
And from every direction the wolves howled.
Chapter 1
Edward
Running.
Running.
Not thinking of anything. Not thinking of the mistakes I’d made; not thinking of what we’d find.
I don’t know what happened Edward, I’m so sorry.
But hearing their thoughts, of course, my family, running beside me once again. It was the images flashing through Alice’s thoughts that hurt the most. They were unclear now, her visions, none of us knew why. But Victoria laughing, and Bella’s pallid face and staring eyes were clear enough that it was no question. We’d had to come.
What was the point of it all if we were just gonna come back?
Bella, Bella, my love I’m so sorry. I meant it for the best. I wanted you to be safe. But I’d already cursed you.
The worst part was that part of me, beneath all the worry, was excited and even happy, for the first time in so long. Because I was speeding toward her.
Decades had passed before I’d met her, and they had felt shorter and less painful than the year I’d spent away from her.
Alice shared my feelings to some degree, both a comfort and an extra pain, seeing my worry, sorrow, fear, and love mirrored, doubled back to me.
She was flicking through bits of remembered visions, trying to figure out how Bella had gotten so hazy. Was it because she’d been trying not to look? The visions she did have, were stabs of pain and terror for both of us.
Bella, curled up motionless on her bed staring at nothing. Tearing her radio out of her car with bleeding fingers. Sitting alone, face blank and pale. Looking out on a cliff over the sea. Running through the forest looking terrified. Hugging her father, tearful. Falling down down down into the sea, face serene.
What had I really done in the end? I’d hurt her, over and over, the one person I loved more than any other.
And it hadn’t even saved her.
Edward. Do you smell that? Something isn’t right.
Jasper, discreet, and purposefully unemotional. I had never been more grateful for my brother.
What the fuck is that? Emmett was less subtle
I knew the smell.
Jasper had never smelled anything quite like it, and I felt a ripple of confused revulsion flicker through him. But I remembered.
Werewolf? He wondered.
Something close, the Native American shape-shifters we’d discovered more than 50 years ago.
Violent, impulsive, dangerous if out of control.
I knew Jasper felt the spike of my self-loathing.
What IS that shit?
Oh my God…. Rosalie sounded surprisingly horrified in my head.
Of course, we should have known that the line might reassert itself. Most likely related to our return. I was sure I smelled them before we left…I assumed it was just the descendants, carriers….of the genes not…
Oh dear. But perhaps that means -
They aren’t necessarily connected to her .
This is your fault, Edward.
But of course, of course , Jacob Black, who’d befriended Bella last year, who I saw a dozen times paired with a pained and sickly Bella in Alice’s mind coaxing her back to health before disappearing from my sister’s ken. Whose eyes glowed with such a familiar light as he gazed at my beloved. The same as the one I was sure had been in my own.
Of course, she would get caught up with them.
“Vampire.” I heard the growled voice in the distance, strange and inhuman. It had heard us. I’d forgotten how keen their senses were.
Then a shriek and a howling wolf.
But I barely heard them over the cacophony of noise that hit my mind.
Shit, fuck Sam—
I’m coming! Oh holy—
How many?
Kim, Rach, and Em are at the new-
shit—
-house, Mom’s there.
Get Bella the fuck out of there you dumb—
We’re coming!
—fuck
Where’s —
I couldn’t make out lines of thought, as if they were all coming from the same person, it was utter chaos, with images and emotions, smell impressions and half thoughts weaving in and out of what seemed like a dozen voices, until it drowned out everything else.
I flew through the trees, and - finally- saw Bella, ducking for cover, tripping over herself, her face pale and fearful, then I’d hit the beast and sent it flying through the trees.
Bella—
!!!
No!
We’re almost—, shit is that—?!
And I met her eyes. I swore I felt my heart move. It was her - paling rapidly now but looking healthy and beautiful. Radiant, even terrified and shocked.
The dog burst out of the forest again and I snarled, feeling feral and raw from the sight of her after so long. Possessive.
She looked back, screamed.
“NO! JACOB” and she leapt at the charging wolf, arms outstretched.
~ Bella ~
Edward.
It was Edward.
So beautiful, more than I remembered, looking murderous and concerned. It was absurd, and obviously an hallucination. The vision in front of me was swimming. My brain stalled out, spinning uselessly.
Because it couldn’t be possible. It must be an hallucination caused by my no doubt fast approaching death. Never mind that I hadn’t had one in months. The alternative was simply impossible.
But I could feel him. The overpowering sense of his presence, his beauty, his impossibility.
But heavy paws were launching Jacob out of the forest, unevenly, and with less grace than usual. He was hurt.
Something was wrong…but it was moving too fast and too surprising for me to follow. Something bad.
Edward snarled and Jacob lunged.
A flash of my recurring nightmare.
No! JACOB!” And I threw myself between them.
Jacob skidded to a halt even as I collided with him, still growling.
Edward tensed and I could see at the edges of my tunnel vision the others, all of them , ranging themselves around him.
I grabbed Jacob more firmly reaching my arms up to rest on his neck, and clung to him.
“We’re okay, we’re safe, we’re okay. It’s…it’s them ... Jacob, they won’t hurt us.”
I couldn’t process Edward being here. Just couldn’t and if he was here, they were all here. And if they were all here…
So I hung on to Jake’s warm neck, and kept him alive, kept that old nightmare in my head at bay, the images of Jake and Edward fighting to the death flickering through my mind in time to the pounding of my heart. Jacob was real and that was what mattered.
“Bella” A beautiful angel’s voice called to me gently. I shook my head, as if I could banish that once coveted sound.
“Bella, he isn't safe like that.” He was wrong. And that was confusing. Why would Jacob not be safe? I was always always safe with Jake. Was it really him then? Or another illusion? Perhaps some sort of trap; one of Victoria’s vampires. It couldn’t be him. That made more sense.
Edward made an angry, pained sound I couldn’t interpret.
“Bella” a higher pitched voice, also angelic, perfect, beloved.
I didn’t turn, but the frantic spinning in my mind paused, “Alice?”
“Yes, Bella, it’s me.” Jacob was still snarling over my head but it felt comforting, feeling the vibration in his throat, feeling him breathe.
Everything else was too much…too much.
“ It’s the reason you couldn’t see clearly, Alice, it must be.”
“Edward what is it?” Jasper’s serious voice, a hint of danger curling around it.
“How does Bella end up hooking up with new monsters?” Emmett, sounding impressed.
“They’re shape-shifters, we’ve met them before, they are powerful, but not a threat, human, really, just - enhanced.” Carlisle, with his calmest, most peaceful tones.
“It doesn’t smell human,”
“Is it dangerous to her? She seems to know it. She doesn’t seem frightened, just…poor girl” Esme, calm, trusting Carlisle’s judgement completely.
He wasn’t an it, that was important. He was important. He was a person.
“Jacob, he’s Jacob.”
“Jacob Black.” He spoke. My mind went blank.
He was speaking with Jacob, chiding him, but I had trouble focusing.
“-really aren’t helping the situation, you must know that I wouldn’t hurt her. Yes, I can hear you, to some extent, though…it’s— loud . How do you not all go mad?”
He could read his mind, of course.
He could read everyone’s mind, but not mine.
A thousand memories, a thousand forgotten and abandoned pains. Too much.
Then the world narrowed and rushed toward me. I felt myself fall away from Jacob.
Then blackness.
I came to to rumbling growls and bristling vampires.
This seemed like a bad sign
“Jacob? I asked the warm, human body which seemed wrapped around mine. I wasn’t ready to open my eyes. There was something…
“I’m here, Bells,” he said in a soft voice, too gently. I gasped and remembered.
The Cullens had come back to Forks.
With a great shudder I pushed my face into Jacob’s shoulder and began to sob. Unfortunately, even a shoulder as large and sturdy as Jake’s couldn’t muffle my crying from the supernatural group surrounding me. It went quiet.
Alice’s beautiful bird’s voice piped, “I think she is having hysterics.” She had a point, I couldn’t seem to pinpoint why exactly I was crying. All I knew was that something so incredible had happened that it had sent my entire life spinning.
“Alice?” I whimpered, “You came back?” I couldn’t face him.
“Yes Bella.” She replied softly, “We were worried about you.”
“You’re back? You’re…ALL… staying?”
“Yes Bella,” this voice was one that had pulled me once from the brink of death, had once wrapped me in love. Had broken me, I’d thought, beyond repair.
“As long as you want us.”
I could feel Jacob’s growl rumbling deep in his chest and I instinctively hugged him a little tighter, and felt better. That pull I’d always felt to him, to comfort, to protect. His comfort was my comfort. The thought centered me.
“Well, I would hardly take your word for it” Edward said, mildly, but with an edge to his voice.
I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t think about what it might mean that he’d come back.
To me?
“Victoria—”
“We’ll have to take care of her, yes” he replied, grave but dismissive. I glanced at all of them, just for a moment. They were so remote, so stunning in their beauty. All I’d wanted, once. I couldn’t look. It was like staring into a blinding light.
“It isn’t that simple. She’s made more. She sends them in groups, testing us, mostly,” a tense sounding Sam bit out - and how much he’d put into that one word, mostly . Peeking again out of the cocoon of Jacob’s arms I saw Sam, also in human form, surrounded by the pack. Leah looked at me a long moment then stepped toward Jake and I, growling in chiding displeasure.
I couldn’t face him.
I felt something uneasy ripple through the vampires as Leah approached.
The Cullens.
Leah turned and barred her teeth, more of a display than a true threat, as she grumbled her way over to sit beside Jake and I.
A show of support.
“We want to work with you.” Carlisle’s gentle voice, attempting to sooth the threat of violence seething across the meadow.
“You’ll stay off our land, we’ll stay off yours. I know the treaty.”
“We can work together.” Carlisle countered mildly
“A truce.”
“The Swan house, we protect Bella, and Charlie.” Jacob rumbled.
“We can protect Bella now,” protested Alice. And part of me loved her still, my first beloved friend. And yet.
“Bella Swan is under the pack’s protection. She’s part of us.” Sam said in a final tone. “If we need to renegotiate the treaty further the Council should be involved.”
I couldn’t face him.
It felt good to be claimed by the pack when I felt so at sea, so unable to cope with what had happened. I was feeling very tired suddenly. Very lost.
I couldn’t do this.
“Jacob, Jacob I want to go home .” My plaintive voice sounded weak and mewling to my own ears. Jake looked down at me tenderly.
“Okay sweetie,” a glance at Sam, who nodded “Okay, let’s get you home”
“We have clothing for you, Quil dropped it near the tree line.”
He stood smoothly, my body cradled in his arms but when he began to lower me to my feet I tightened my grip on his neck and curled my legs up into him.
Distantly, I registered a quiet snarl. I pretended I couldn’t hear.
I needed the warm solidity of Jake and his love.
“All right,” he said, “All right.” He turned and strode off to where we’d left the car. Only distantly did I remember he’d burst out of his clothes and was naked.
“Bella, it’ll be alright.”
But he was tense. He didn’t know what this meant either.
----
“Bella! Bella! Jacob Black, what happened to my daughter?!” Charlie thundered as we pulled up the driveway.
“She’s fine, Charlie.” But I knew Charlie could see I wasn’t. I felt at the blank mask of my face, knew there were tear tracks drying on my cheeks.
“No, damn it, she is not all right! She looks—Jacob if you hurt her—”
“Cool down Charlie, you should know I wouldn’t.” Jake spat back testily. He came around to my side of the car and scooped me up and out.
“Well, I want an explanation.”
“They’re back.” I mumbled
“What was that, honey?” Charlie rarely used pet names, I must look really bad.
“The Cullens,” Jake ground out, sounding disgusted. “The Cullens came back to town.”
Charlie cursed, I thought, softly under his breath, then fell silent
Leaving Charlie speechless, Jake carried me up to my room.
“This is crap Bella, all this time and not a word.” Jacob began pacing furiously around the room as I watched bemusedly from the bed. “Then they just come back and suddenly we’re supposed to let them take care of you?” he said several very rude things. “He can’t—I won’t let him. Won’t let you—”
Now, wait a minute, “Won’t let me do what?”
He spun on me furiously as if I’d said something he’d been waiting for.
“He left you! Left you lost in the woods. I saw it Bells, in Sam’s head” he pointed at his own. “You can’t just forgive him—after everything that’s happened— I love you Bella, I—”
“Jacob? What on earth are you talking about?”
“ Edward .” He snarled, “He comes back just assuming you‘ll go back to him. Of all the self-centered, egotistical…”
“He came back…for me?” this came as a surprise. One which seemed strangely abstract, like an unfamiliar equation. Jacob scowled, chest heaving with emotion.
“Of course he did, running in to play the hero, never mind that’s he’s the one who, who—“ Jacob’s chest heaved, “Woohoo, everything is just fine, just fucking fine.”
“Jake…”
“Goddamn it!” he spun, looking like he’d like to hit something. This would be bad for anything that happened to be in my room. I snagged his arm. There was no way I could ever actually hope to physically stop him, but he stilled at my touch.
“Jacob. I love you too.” I was lost, but that much I knew. “Even if it’s true what you say, you didn’t hear any declarations of love did you? They are just here to help with Victoria, then they’ll probably be gone again. It’s you and me Jake, it’s still you and me.”
“You love me?”
“You should know I do,” I chided him gently, feeling better as I said it, reassured by my own certainty. “More than anything, Jacob.” He kissed me hard and I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him toward me. We were both desperate, not knowing what this meant, could mean. I wanted to pull his hard, heavy, sure heat down onto me, into me. Mine .
Charlie was downstairs.
I pulled away gasping as Jacob growled into my neck. As he lifted me and we tumbled, feather light into my bed.
“Charlie…murder….you…” he nipped my throat and I clutched at him, running my hands over his arms, so warm and strong around me.
“Fine, no Charlie heart attacks today Bella.” He sighed and collapsed onto me. I gasped.
He rolled over pulling me to sit perched on his stomach. I looked down at him, still feeling that desperate mix of fear, confusion, and love.
“It’s gonna be okay, right Jake?” I asked, leaning down to rest my face against his neck
“It’s gonna be okay.” But I could hear the worry in his voice.
-------