The fabric of my dress trailed behind us as I clung to Edward’s shoulders, my head tucked toward the nape of his neck to avoid the wind that threatened to destroy whatever miracle Alice had performed on my hair. I concentrated on the sweet smell of his skin, and tried not to think about my best friend being attacked by a strawberry blond blur. The wind was so loud in my ears that I barely heard Edward whispering something back to be in a firm tone.
“I need you to promise me that if something begins between Jacob and Tanya, that you will not do anything to put yourself in danger.” His eyes were focused on the forest around him, but I could see that his expression was fixed and determined.
“OK,” I said too quickly. It was taken away by the wind, but Edward seemed to hear it. He saw through it immediately.
“I mean it, Bella,” he said, and his tone left no doubt of that. “I will leave you right here and come back for you if I don’t think I can trust you. You are entirely too prone to self sacrifice, and I won’t have you losing your life while I’m trying to save your friend. Remember, you hold both our lives in your hands now.”
I didn’t have to respond. He could tell the effect that his words had by the racing of my heart against his shoulder. A satisfied grin crept onto his face as the forest rushed by around us.
“You don’t need to worry, Bella,” he tried to reassure me. “Jacob is strong. He’s practically immortal.”
“Practically,” I mocked. “And Tanya’s only got about a thousand years of experience on him.” My frustration suddenly seemed to get the better of me. “Don’t you see how pointless this all is? Jacob’s going to be killed because of the misconceptions of…”
“Don’t Bella,” Edward interrupted gravely. “That’s the kind of thought process that could lead to your death in this situation.”
I tried to glare at the side of his angelic face, but the wind brought tears to my eyes and took away the desired effect. “Alice didn’t see me dead,” I squeaked. He sighed, frustrated.
“Alice didn’t see what happened at all. She only saw you…” His lips curled into a frustrated snarl. “I hate doing this! It goes against every instinct I have!”
“Shouldn’t you be used to that by now?’ I grinned. It was meant to clear the tension, but Edward simply growled under his breath and stopped suddenly—smoothly. He pulled me off of his back and set me down in front of him. I could hear the low growling barks of the wolves very near, and then Tanya’s voice high, sweet—furious.
“Let me go, Kate! It was that one! I know it was!”
My eyes widened, and I started urgently toward the screaming without a second thought. Edward appeared in front of me, pushing me behind him with one arm, shielding me from view, and so I had to strain to see when we rounded the corner. Tanya and Kate were the closest to us. Kate was facing away from the three wolves trying to restrain Tanya as she lunged toward the protective circle of fur that seemed dangerously near to the two struggling vampires. I recognized the three wolves instantly. Quil, Embry, and Seth were bristling, set in a protective circle around a tall, fearless figure. My breath caught as I realized that it was Jacob, shirtless and glaring with disgust at Tanya. He hadn’t phased. Why hadn’t he phased?
Emmett, Alice, and Jasper were standing on the sidelines. The sense of calm that Jasper was submitting didn’t seem to have an effect on either vampire or wolf. Tanya noticed Edward’s arrival, but she did not acknowledge him as he joined his brothers and sister. My arrival seemed to have a greater effect on Jacob. He seemed instantly nervous, gazing in my direction with incredulity and then fixing Edward with an accusatory glare. Edward didn’t notice. He was lost in Tanya’s thoughts.
“It was you, you filthy animal!” Tanya screamed at Jacob. Her voice reached inhuman levels. “I know it was you! You’re the largest. I understand pack behavior!”
“You don’t know a thing about us, bloodsucker!” Jacob snapped back.
Edward turned toward me, gazing at me pleadingly—reminding me of my promise before turning his attention toward Tanya. “It wasn’t him, Tanya,” he said soothingly, his eyes coming to rest, unblinking, on hers. A flicker of jealousy ran through me, and I brushed it away, ashamed of such petty emotions at a time like this. “He was too young then. It couldn’t have been him.”
“Stay out of this, Edward!” Tanya snarled, passing him a look of disgust. “They killed Laurent! They killed one of us!”
I opened my mouth to protest—to explain to Tanya exactly why the wolves had gone after Laurent—but one deadly glance back from Edward closed my mouth.
Jacob let out a sarcastic yelp that could have been laughter. “And how many had he killed before we took him out! Who else would he have killed?”
I saw his eyes flicker to me again, but he said nothing of the reasons behind their hunt that fated day. I guessed that neither he nor Edward had any desire to bring me into range of Tanya’s temper.
“They were defending their lands, Tanya,” Edward said calmly. “They didn’t know that Laurent had joined your family.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Tanya snapped. “We didn’t sign your treaty! We have a right to avenge a member of our family!”
I flinched. Laurent hadn’t even been loyal to their family! He had cheated! His eyes had been just as red as Victoria’s when he had appeared in the clearing that afternoon. I shivered in spite of my anger at the memory of Edward’s cold, even, imagined voice finally advising me to beg as the predator moved nearer, his intentions all too clear. I said nothing to Tanya, remembering my promise to Edward.
I watched as Jacob’s body began to shake, his arms shimmering briefly and his form beginning to shift as he remembered the reasoning behind his first hunt as well. “We have a right to defend our lands from leeches!” he hissed. I rolled my eyes, thinking of how much easier mediation would be if we could just eliminate all of the derogatory terms.
Tanya strained against Kate again, who looked helplessly back at us. Alice moved forward swiftly to help, giving the wolves a wide berth.
“Which one killed him then, if it wasn’t you, child?” Her livid tone made her last word sound as if it she were spitting venom at him. Jacob sneered and shimmered again. Edward glanced quickly over at him and hissed under his breath. Neither party was going to make a peaceful resolution easy.
“They are all children,” Edward said solemnly, grabbing my hand in one of his and putting his other one calmly out toward Jacob in warning. His eyes didn’t move from Tanya. “Are you going to sacrifice years of control to kill a group of children?”
He glanced meaningfully over at Jasper and a fresh wave of calm spread over us. I saw Jasper moving silently toward us. My frustration disappeared entirely. The shaking that had taken over Jacob’s body suddenly left him, and the growling of the wolves around him became subdued, but did not disappear entirely. Tanya was not affected.
“Don’t play on my sympathy, Edward! I haven’t had sympathy for centuries!” Tanya yelled, and made another effort to lunge toward Jacob. This time, both Alice and Kate strained to hold her back. Tanya screeched in rage and lashed out at her sister. “Look at them, Kate! They’re no more children than Edward! They’re cold blooded murderers, and they know our weaknesses!”
Kate blanched, but her resolve remained…for the moment. I watched Edward’s jaw tense as he listened to her thoughts, and then he let go of my hand and began moving slowly toward the three struggling figures. I tried to follow, but Jasper was suddenly there, pushing himself in front of me. I frowned. It was so unbelievably frustrating sometimes, being the weakest link. Emmett moved closer to the wolves, ready to detain Jacob if it came to that.
“We don’t have weaknesses, Tanya,” Edward was saying. His voice was liquid smooth—hypnotizing. Jacob’s sarcastic sniff rang in the air behind him, but Edward did not acknowledge it. He was deathly pale now, his jaw tense and his face reflecting something very close to panic. I wondered exactly what he had read in Kate’s and Tanya’s thoughts. “We’re too powerful to trouble ourselves with half-breed children.” The wolves growled, but Edward put a hand out to silence them. Amazingly, they obeyed. “We’ve lived too long for petty grudges, don’t you think? Would killing a dog give you any satisfaction whatsoever?”
For the first time, Tanya’s eyes left Jacob. They turned to Edward, still livid, but there was a glint of reason in them. Edward took in a slow deep breath, and Tanya mimicked him ceasing to strain against her sister and Alice. The tension in the air continued to be palpable, but there was a faint hope there as well. Perhaps this could end without confrontation.
I felt myself relaxing behind Jasper, and turning my attention toward my best friend. I smiled complacently at him, hoping that Edward’s words would not be misconstrued as possible insults toward them. There were way too many volatile tempers in this clearing at the moment. I was only allowed a moment of relief before I recognized the challenge on Jacob’s face, and realized that he was about to react exactly as I had feared. There was one tiny minute of expectation before Jacob allowed what could possibly be the most stupid words that he had ever said to escape his mouth.
“I can see his point. Ripping your bloodsucker to pieces didn’t really give me the amount of satisfaction I’d expected either.”
Edward froze. Everyone stopped moving for a moment, waiting for the inevitable reaction. Strangely, I reacted first.
“Jacob, you moron!” I managed before Kate’s restraint waivered and she joined her sister. They passed a confused Alice in a blur and headed directly toward the circle of wolves. Edward, Jasper, and Emmett all disappeared suddenly from around me, appearing in between the wolves and the two enraged women, stopping them entirely too close to Jacob’s still unphased human form for comfort. Tanya and Kate were both beyond words now. Edward was furious.
“You idiot dog!” he shouted over the screaming of the Denali sisters. “Take your pack and go now before one of you dies!” He was straining visibly against his red-blond counterpart. “I can only fight against her will and mine for so long! Leave. NOW!”
Hate was the dominant emotion, and I saw Jasper struggling to overcome the desire to carry out ten separate fantasies that all ended in murder. Jacob looked around at Edward and his brothers. The strain of fighting against their own instinct was burned into each face. Finally, he glanced over at my desperate face, and his resolve broke. His shoulders slumped, and he began to back slowly away.
“Sorry, Bells,” he said in defeat as he turned toward the forest. His three companions followed, still bristling and vigilant. Tanya screamed.
“You killed a part of my family, mongrel! If you walk away from me now, it’s only a matter of time before I kill yours!”
It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to remember my promise to Edward, or even my own mortality. One moment, we were at the point of a very fragile stand-down between vampires and werewolves, and the next moment, the loose black sweats that Jacob had been wearing were floating around me in shredded pieces and he was headed toward Tanya as the largest, angriest wolf I had ever seen.
And Edward stood in between them.
“Jacob, no!”
There was time for my heart to slip into my stomach. There was time for my ears to register the desperation in Edward’s voice as he screamed after me.
“Bella, stop!”
But he was locked in the act of restraining Tanya, and he could do nothing more than yell as I lunged forward to place myself between my husband and my best friend. My wedding dress caught on a fallen branch, and I heard the fabric tear as if from a distance. I pushed in front of the furious russet-furred creature just as he leapt at Tanya…and Edward. The force behind his leap knocked me to the ground, and I was lost for a moment in a random chaos of fur and razor sharp teeth as the full weight of a werewolf came down on me.
“Please!” I managed before my breath was knocked out of me. There was time enough for the stupidity of what I had just done to occur to me, and then Jacob was off me. I waited for the sounds of battle, but nothing came to my ears. I opened my eyes, only then realizing that I had closed them in anticipation of my own death, and was surprised to see an extremely pale…extremely furious Edward glaring at me with his gloriously white teeth bared and still restraining Tanya while Jacob glowered down at me through his wolf eyes.
He did not advance again. I could sense a mixture of fear and shame and anger in his canine expression. I stood up, shocked, and unable to imagine the willpower it had taken a werewolf in full attack mode to stop. An image of Emily’s mangled face appeared out of nowhere. I shivered, and held out one hand to him.
“Thank you,” I whispered. It didn’t seem like near enough, suddenly. He growled threateningly.
Edward reacted to this. “Go. NOW, Jacob Black!”
I held my other hand out toward Edward, to silence him. There was no need. Everything around me was silence. Everyone seemed to be frozen, staring at me with identical expressions of disbelief. I didn’t care. Quil, Embry, and Seth ambled up behind Jacob, shocked. It was to them that I addressed my next request.
“Please make sure he’s safe until he’s out of her range,” I said. The smaller grey wolf seemed to nod. He nudged his infinitely larger companion, and they all turned to trot out of the clearing. Jacob gave me one last look—shocked and apologetic—before he disappeared.
"See," Alice said, her voice nothing more than an awed whisper as she continued to stare in my direction. "I told you she would be important."
