Chapter Text
Alice twirls in her getup, covered from top-to-bottom in Bella’s clothes. “These smell,” she says with a drunken sigh, “delicious.”
Jacob scowls at her and Alice gives an equally deadly look back. “We’re trying to tempt Victoria, remember? I’m not about to bite Bella.”
Jacob ignores this and looks back to Bella. His eyes haven’t strayed away from her for more than five seconds all day. Even when Bella can’t see him, she can feel his eyes on her.
“You ready?” he asks, and before she’s even finished nodding, Alice scoops her up and starts to run at full vampire speed. Bella quickly closes her eyes, nausea already starting to boil in her stomach. By the time they’re done, Bella is sweaty and off-kilter, and though Alice puts her down gracefully Bella sits on the ground immediately.
“You okay?” Alice asks, crouching down and brushing a sweaty piece of Bella’s hair off her face.
Bella nods, not ready for speaking yet. Alice sits next to her and rubs against her like a cat. For the plan to work, Victoria has to smell Bella, the real Bella, as late as possible. If the plan works at all. And so, Bella regains her composure while her friend rubs her short hair against Bella’s back.
“Okay,” Bella says finally, moving to stand. At the edge of the clearing she’s in, Bella can see Jacob and Leah waiting with two bundles of clothes in their arms.
Alice is back on her feet immediately and pulls Bella up the rest of the way.
“Still okay?” Alice asks again, softer this time. “Because we don’t have to do this.”
Bella shakes her head. “We really do.” She knows this. It doesn’t make her any less nauseous, but at least right now she can blame that on running in circles.
Alice peers at her. Her mouth pops open once and then closes again. Bella is about to demand she just spit it out when Alice finally says, “He wouldn’t want you to do this.”
Bella pauses, her hand mid-gesture. She was, for once, not thinking about Edward at all. Alice was probably right, but did Bella care? Maybe. Surely, part of her thought, if Edward knew she was in real, true danger he would have come back for her. But he’d left her in the woods in the first place, so maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t there.
“I know,” Bella finally says, because that is probably true. He probably wouldn’t want her using herself as bait or kissing werewolves. Fair enough. That’s all Bella says, though, before she walks to the edge of the clearing where Jacob and Leah are waiting for her.
“You okay?” Jacob asks, and Bella could spit.
“I need people to stop asking me that,” she says, sharper than she meant. She deflates almost instantly. “Yes. Sorry. I’m okay.”
All three of them are a bundle of nerves. Bella can tell from the way her stomach roils and the way Jacob’s unblinking eyes stare at her and the way Leah pulls her hands through her hair over and over again.
Still, they have to keep going. Bella grabs the two plastic bags from their hands and disappears behind a tree to get changed. She doesn’t know why she pretends at this modesty; Leah doesn’t care, and Jacob has seen more than his share of her. But there’s still something too shy in her to let someone else see her strip bare.
“That’s quite a look on you,” Leah says when Bella emerges from the woods.
Bella is sweating. This next smell-driven part of the plan means hiding the real Bella for as long as possible, and that means she’s wearing Jacob’s clothes. This includes a winter hat and scarf pulled up to her nose, though it’s the end of August. And so, Bella is covered in Jacob’s dirty laundry and seasonal gear that’s been untouched for months.
Unlike Alice, Bella definitely does not smell delicious. She smells like a sweaty teenage boy.
“I can barely move in all this,” Bella says, the long sleeves of Jacob’s sweatshirt flopping past her wrist.
“Thankfully,” Jacob says, stepping up to her and pushing the sleeves up to her wrists, “this is not an outfit you’re supposed to be moving in.”
Bella watches his hands against the fabric of the sweatshirt, the warm tone of his skin against hers. His fingers whisper over the underside of her wrist as he finishes, but he doesn’t step back.
“Okay,” Leah says after a long beat. “Finally, Jesus.”
Bella starts. “Finally what?” she asks, but her voice is tight and Leah is already laughing at her.
“Let’s go, lovebirds,” Leah says, pulling off her clothes and leaving them in a small pile next to a tree. Unlike Bella, Leah seems ever-brazen and fearless, standing naked under the canopy of tree limbs. Bella averts her eyes, but Leah doesn’t seem to mind any of it. And suddenly, she’s a wolf. Bella will never get used to watching it happen.
“She’s not as cocky as she seems,” Jacob says as he moves to take his shirt off, and then his pants. He does gesture for Leah to turn around before he takes off his boxers. Bella swears Leah does some sort of half-laugh, even in wolf form, before turning around.
“I know,” Bella says, looking at Leah. Leah gives her what might be an irritated look back—it’s hard to tell, obviously—but by the time Leah has looked behind her Jacob has transformed too. Bella stands between them and can feel the warmth of their now-large bodies against her cheeks.
Jacob gestures toward her, and Bella awkwardly clambers onto his back. She wraps her arms around his neck while he lumbers forward. It’s not as sea sickening as being in Alice’s arms, but it’s also infinitely less stable. But Jacob is gentle and moves with quick but smooth movements until they get to their destination, a small, woodsy area covered in moss and thick with trees.
Under the trees, there’s a tent just big enough for two. Jacob, still in wolf form, nudges her toward it, and she heads toward it while she can hear the shuffling transformation of Leah and Jacob behind her. By the time she’s reached the tent flap, she can hear Jacob catching up to her. She doesn’t even have time to open it before he’s there, his hand on top of hers, and unzips the tent instead of her own shaking fingers.
“Thanks,” she says, short and a little embarrassed, before ducking inside the tent. When she looks back behind her, it’s Leah’s face that’s suddenly within her view.
“Out of my way,” Leah is saying. She pushes Jacob away from the tent with a light shove. “Jesus, Jacob, I’ll give her back, give me a second.”
Bella laughs. It’s shaky, but it’s real. At the sound, Leah looks back at her. Crouched in front of the tent opening, she says, “So, how’s it going?”
Bella laughs again, both louder and shakier this time. “Oh, fine. Great day for a hike.”
“We’ve had better,” Leah says, with a softness Bella knows is just for her. “I’ll see you on the other side, okay? Don’t do anything brave or stupid.”
Bella half shrugs. “I think we’re past the Rubicon on that one.”
Leah sighs. “Fair enough. Well, nothing more brave or more stupid than you’ve already done.”
“You got it boss,” Bella says, and Leah gives her another half-smile before standing and disappearing from view. Bella can hear her and Jacob whisper-fighting about something outside the tent, but then Jacob’s whole frame takes up the entire tent entrance. In the split second before he makes it inside, his body is large enough to block out all the light from the outside. That’s the point, of course, to keep her surrounded in Jacob’s scent for as long as possible.
The tent may be big enough for two, but Jacob is larger than the usual one. He starts to zip the tent closed behind him when Bella stops him with a hand on his arm. “I’m not going to be able to breathe if you do that.”
Jacob hesitates, his knuckles pale against the zipper, but he nods, letting in the fresh air from the woods outside. It smells like rain, Bella thinks, and then watches a leaf shudder with the impact of a raindrop.
“She’s here,” Jacob says, and Bella feels vacuumed back into herself. The scarf might be choking her, or maybe that’s the air.
“What?” Bella asks, though she’s not sure why she sounds surprised. They knew Victoria was coming. If it wasn’t today, it would be tomorrow. Better to get it all over with now and not have to do this entire song and dance again tomorrow.
Over with, Bella thinks.
“Paul’s the furthest east and he’s spotted them. He’s almost back here to join the rest of the pack. Leah and I saw when we shifted.”
“And Victoria?”
Jacob holds steady when he looks at her. “She’s just behind Paul. She seems to be taking the bait, and they’ll hold her off for as long as they can.”
Bella nods. It’s a tight thing, and her throat feels wrung out and sour. “You should phase, then. So you know what’s going on.”
“I will,” Jacob says, taking her hands. He stares at their entangled fingers for a long time without speaking. Then, he says, “I just want to be here, with you, for as long as I can. The real me.”
Outside, Bella hears the rain begin to fall in earnest. She hopes Victoria arrives soon. Bella’s scent won’t last long on Alice if the rain washes it away. Bella wants to be sick.
She pulls one hand out of his grasp and runs it along his hairline, his jaw. Jacob tilts his face into her touch, but his eyes are still locked on her. She can see the way he loves her in that look. She’s seen it before and every time, including this time, it feels like a sucker punch. She never thought she’d see something like it again.
The wind outside whistles, picking up speed between the trees. Bella closes her eyes to listen to it.
“Tell me you love me,” she says, squeezing her eyelids so tight she sees stars.
“I love you,” Jacob says without a pause. He says it in a way that threatens to knock her over, far stronger than the gusts outside. She could die. She knows it. He knows it. He’ll never see anyone else. “Bella, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do,” she says, opening her eyes, at last, to look at him, to let the fire in her stoke under his gaze. “I’m tired. And I’m angry. And I want this to be done. I am not going to sit and hide anymore.”
Bella does not feel brave when she says it. She deserves something better and different than this. She deserves to go home. She feels terrified she won’t. She feels so many things, all at the same time. And it’s with this cacophony inside of her that she decides to climb out of the tent.
“Bella,” he says, a hand on her elbow to try and stop her. “You can’t go out there yet.”
It’s too late, though. Jacob is too large and bulky in the tent to get a good grip on her, and then Bella is back outside, the fresh air cool and relieving in her lungs. She takes these breaths, the ones that could be some of her last, with her eyes closed and the light fall of rain on her face. The scarf, the sweater, the winter hat all fall into the dirt at her feet.
“Bella,” Jacob calls from behind her. It’s a plea, but she doesn’t even know what he has left to plead for. Her life? That’s not in her hands anymore.
She turns back to him anyway. “Jacob,” she says, pressing the tips of her fingertips to his cheek. “I love you. But stop.”
She doesn’t even realize she’s said it, actually. It just tumbles out of her, anticlimactic, fine, simple. Easy as breathing. She only realizes it because of the way his hands start to shake.
“What?” he says. Bella looks up at those eyes of his, weighing if she means it. Yes. She knows. Knows it in a way that makes her knees shake, in a way that makes the howl of the wind dull. She’s known for a long time. Not like Jacob knew. But she knew. She knows now. But that doesn’t matter.
“I’ve got to go,” she says, taking a step away from him to head toward her third and final stop in this hell of a day. The spot they’ve chosen to draw Victoria to is specific, strategic. Bella wasn’t really listening. Something about being able to stave off any approach and avoid being attacked from behind. The only thing she could hear at the time was her heartbeat in her ears.
She’s barely made it two feet before he has his hand around her wrist, his fingers tighter around her skin than they have ever been.
“No fucking way,” he says, a break in his throat when he speaks. “Did you mean that? Or are you just saying that because you could die, and you just want to give me a total fucking mental breakdown if you do?”
“Language, Jacob,” she mumbles, but she doesn’t protest when he takes her face between his hands. In truth, she doesn’t want to look at him. She’s not sure she’ll be able to do this if she does. There are all kinds of love in the world and never the same love twice and Bella Swan never thought it would happen to her, never again. If that makes Jacob Black proof of the impossible once again, then, well, Bella is used to impossible by now.
“Not now, Bella,” he says in a tone she’s never heard before. “Did you mean that?”
God, she wishes he wouldn’t look at her like this. He will tear her apart. “Yes,” she says. It’s barely a sound.
“Christ,” he says, taking a step back from her she’s grateful for, as though even the small distance between them invites air back into her lungs. “You can’t just tell me this and—”
“Jacob,” she says, and it’s amazing how it feels like she’s never said his name out loud before. She wants to say it a thousand times. “Jacob. You know I have to do this. You trust me?”
“Bells,” he says with an untimely eye roll and a hand running through his hair, “my total faith in you as a person has exactly nothing to do with why I’m freaking out right now.”
“It’s a good plan,” she says trying to sound like a reasonable, sane person, not like someone who just realized she’s in love with someone but is still going off to die. “I’m going to be okay,” she continues, trying to reassure herself more than anyone else, if she’s honest.
Jacob crushes her against him before she can even think about it. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him move so fast in human form before. His breath is hot against her cheek as his forehead leans against her head.
“Promise me,” he says, his lips just brushing past her skin. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
Bella turns her head until she can press a kiss to the center of his palm. “I promise you,” she says, taking a step back. “I will come back.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. Just a promise, for whatever that’s worth.
Jacob nods. “And then we are going to have a really serious discussion about your shitty timing.”
Bella might even smile. “No problem.”
Bella has barely turned her back before Jacob is somehow right in front of her again. She hardly has a moment to register that he’s in front of her before he has his mouth against her in an instant. He slides his hands under her thighs and lifts her up to meet him, and she lets her body wrap around his back, his neck, as he kisses her so hard that she gets to forget, for a second, where she is and why she’s there.
She pulls away first but he’s the one who speaks.
“I couldn’t let you walk out there without—”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she says, near breathless. Her lips are still near his jaw. She kisses him there, and his fingers tighten on her shoulders for just a moment.
“Jacob,” she says again, wiggling a little until he lets her down and takes a step away from her.
He nods, his eyes closed. “Got it. Love you, Bells.”
Victoria finds her. Based on how long it takes, it certainly seems like the Pack did a number on her and her newborns. In fact, there’s not a newborn to be seen. That doesn’t mean they’re not there; after all, Jacob himself is hidden in these woods, waiting.
Still, Bella can tell Victoria has been damaged. The rain is coming down in earnest now, but that can’t explain the tears in her clothes, the slow limp Bella can see in her left leg. It’s a little spark of hope, though that vanishes in an instant.
Of course, Victoria was always going to find her. Bella knows this. This was the plan. But it doesn’t stop her heart from pounding out a migraine in her head. Jacob is going to miss her if she dies. She knows what it’s like, to never see anyone else and then go blind.
But it’s not just that she cannot bear the thought of him living without her. It’s that Bella Swan wants to live too. She wants to see Jacob again. She wants to see Emily, Leah, her father, her mother, her life. She wants to stand on her own two feet.
It's a strange thing to see Victoria in front of her. She’s spent so long dreaming of this moment, even before she knew it was coming. Now that she’s here, Bella’s mind is having trouble understanding any of this is real.
Even with her army decimated, Victoria speaks with the swagger of a queen. She says her newborns have killed all of Bella’s friends. That there is no one left to save her. She promises to make Bella’s death as slow as possible. She says it might even take months, if they do it right. She says she will send the Cullens Bella’s heart in a box. See how they like it.
Bella doesn’t beg. Doesn’t say a word. Tries to keep her chin up and her spine straight.
And then the wolves attack.
Victoria was lying. Bella can’t keep track of the blurs to count how many wolves are there, but certainly most of her friends are not dead. Bella feels a relief overwhelm her even as she stays rooted to the spot, unable to move or breathe.
Victoria takes another shot at her, then another. Wolves fend her off again and again. At one point, Bella thinks she sees Jacob paw Victoria to the ground. Another time, Leah and her brother have their jaws around Victoria’s ankles, pulling her further and further away and into the woods. She might even see Paul try to protect her once, but she’s not entirely sure.
And then the Pack surrounds Victoria. From what Bella can see, which isn’t much, Victoria looks collapsed on the ground. And when the wolves wrap their teeth around her head, her shins, Bella has to look away. There’s a scream, and then nothing. It’s so quiet that Bella’s ears ring as she falls to her knees in the mud, dizzy and wretched and alive in the earth.
“Hey,” Jacob says from somewhere, practically colliding with her in a rush to meet her on the ground. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”
She can’t look at him. It’s just too much, all of it, the ground beneath her and the man before her and the blood in her skin. Jacob doesn’t even wait for an answer, just kisses her again and again in the storm with everyone staring and Bella doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care. She can barely feel the rain.
She has to say goodbye to Alice. Again.
“I wish I could keep an eye out for you,” Alice says as she closes her trunk with a loud thud, “but I suspect you will be difficult to see for a while.”
They’re by the treaty line. Alice and Bella are on one side while Jacob leans against his truck on the other. He’s feigning a stance of nonchalance, but even from this distance Bella can see the way he’s picking at his fingernails.
“You can come back and visit,” she offers, turning back to Alice with a little plea in her voice.
Alice smiles at her with an unbearable softness. “I don’t think I should,” she says. “I think that’s why these wolves keep happening, because we keep coming back. But if you ever decide to go on a vacation by yourself, I’ll try and see you there.”
“I can’t have your number?” Bella asks. The number Alice used her during their earlier planning meeting on is gone now; Alice has made that very clear. Bella is back to having no way to contact them at all.
“Sorry, Bella,” Alice says with that same kindness. “Rules are rules.”
Bella nods and wipes at her eyes. “Well, send me a postcard sometime.”
“You got it,” Alice says, and pulls Bella into a hug. It might be their final hug for the rest of her life, Bella thinks. The thought makes her feel torn open, though at least this time Bella has gotten a goodbye at all.
“I still think wolves are dangerous,” Alice says when she finally steps out of Bella’s arms. “I really don’t understand why—”
Bella’s voice is sharp when she cuts Alice off. She loves Alice Cullen, but some things are not for her anymore. “You don’t have to understand it,” Bella says.
“Fair.” Alice says, her hands up in surrender. “But a little insight would be helpful.”
Bella sighs. She can hardly explain it to herself; how is she supposed to explain it to Alice. It just is.
“We’re—connected somehow,” she tries. “When he’s happy I’m happy and when he’s sad I’m sad. He, he makes me laugh, and he keeps his promises, and I would have died without him after you left. He’s the best person I’ve ever known, living anyway, and when I’m around him I feel—”
Bella raises her hand to her heart, suddenly not feeling for the hole there. Just looking for the thump of her blood in her chest.
Alice peers at her. Then, she offers, “Alive?”
“Yes,” Bella says, a thread of surprise in her voice. “Alive.”
Alice looks at Bella for a long moment. Then, she nods with what might be a smile. She gives Bella’s hand one more squeeze before turning and getting into the driver’s seat of her car.
“One more thing,” Alice says as she turns over the engine and rolls down the window. “What do you want me to tell him? If he asks?”
Right, Bella thinks. Him.
Bella doesn’t look at Jacob. She looks at her hands, her wrists, her knees. She says, “Tell him I’m okay.”
It is months later.
Bella leans against Jacob, tucked between his knees, her eyes closed in the warming first sun of spring. Some of the wolves have already talked about stopping their phasing. Jacob says he will when he can, but he wants to be sure there’s nothing coming their way. To be safe.
She wants him to stop, of course. Jacob hates being a wolf. She doesn’t want there to be an inch of himself he doesn’t love as much as she does. But he insists. Besides, he says, these days it’s not so bad with her around.
Still, monsters are monsters. They show up and haunt the two of them all the time, even, or especially, when they’re not looking.
“If he came back,” Jacob says, staring out onto the water this April day, “would you go back to him?”
Bella isn’t surprised he asks it, if she’s honest. She’s just surprised it took him so long. She had started to hope he never would, but Jacob is still human. Humans worry about all sorts of things, both real and imagined.
She stares at her hands, thinking about it. She’s thought about it before too, with no clear answer. Maybe. Maybe not. She thinks that maybe it’s not the right question. Maybe the question is if she would be able to break away from Jacob, teach herself to never touch him. She would never be able to look at him again. If she did, she would forget how to look away.
To that question, then, the answer is a certain no. He is inextricable. But would she be able to say no to Edward? It has never happened before.
“I don’t know,” she confesses, and Jacob flinches. Bella has never been kind enough to lie to him. “I don’t think I could. But does it matter? He’s not here.”
“I don’t know,” he says, pulling his hand out from hers. She stares at her abandoned fingers as though she’s never seen them before. “I suspect I might be the jealous type. Especially now that we—”
He doesn’t finish. Of this, Bella is deeply appreciative. Her and Jacob and now could fill the ocean. Now that she kisses him, now that she has a whole life and friends and family with him. Now that she’s in love with him. Now that there’s no going back. Edward wouldn’t even recognize her.
“I’m just saying,” she says, her voice even, “that we don’t know what’s going to happen. Edward could come back or I could get hit by a car—” Jacob rolls his eyes “—or you could imprint or a million other things could get in the way.”
“I’m not going to imprint,” he insists for the hundredth time.
“You don’t know that,” she says, hoping she sounds as kind as she feels. “We don’t know. So, can we just not think about it?”
Jacob grins at her. “Are you, Bella Swan, asking me to live in the moment?”
She laughs. “I’m working on the personal growth thing.”
“It’s cute,” he observes, slinging an arm around her.
She presses her lips to his. “I try.”