A/N: This story is set during Eclipse, before the graduation. Leah isn't a wolf, but the rest of the story happened.
I want to thank my two amazing betas, Karamelkat and Lolabean, for accepting the huge task of helping me through the English grammar and for the amazing job they'd done so far!

Enjoy!

As she spotted La Push's welcome sign, Leah Clearwater found herself traveling down memory lane. It had been two years since she had set foot on the Reservation that had seen her growing up and she wasn't too happy to come back there. As much as she loved the place, she couldn't forget the last six months she spent in la Push before leaving for Seattle.

She was happier now. She didn't have to witness the evolving relationship between her ex and her cousin,who ripped her heart apart as if it was nothing. She didn't have to hear her father telling her every day that her love for Sam Uley was just a tiny crush and that they weren't meant to be. She knew he meant well saying that, because he was worried about her and couldn't stand to see her so depressed, but that didn't make his words less hurtful. She still resented him for the way he approved of Sam's behavior towards her.

Back then, everything around her had been falling apart when Sam returned and she knew it wasn't normal. The dynamic in the Reservation had changed. The Elders were more agitated and the council had imposed insane rules upon the tribe. They were forbidden to go to Forks to get medical treatment and somehow they relied on Sam to make sure that their "ordinances" were obeyed.

When La Push became Sam Uley's full territory, Leah knew that she had to get out of there. She had to fight against her father to have the right to leave the reservation. Sam didn't think it was a good idea. He was worried for her safety. She knew he was stalking her every night; she could feel his eyes on her every time she got out of her house. Sometimes she could hear him talking to her father about what she did during the day, and Harry would come to her room and scold her about her behavior. It was pissing her off and she felt like she would lose her mind if she didn't leave. So she left. She still didn't know how, but she did. And she was determined to stay out of La Push until the end of her days.

But fate had other plans for her than the ones she'd made and she was forced to come back home.

Home. It was strange to think about La Push like that. The last moments she spent in that place had made her feel like she was an outsider. It wasn't with a light heart that she was back to square one. She'd found a job in Seattle after her studies. It was a very good job, one which she didn't want to lose. And it was because of her job that Leah found herself in such close proximity to her hometown.

The Seattle Daily's editor, Leah's boss, believed in her. He kept her after her student training course and she worked hard to prove him that he did a good choice. She overstepped her functions, correcting the articles she was supposed to type for other writers without their consent and pointing out their mistakes bluntly. Her overzealousness gave her a few enemies among her colleagues who didn't appreciate her manners, but it also put her under a new light. The editor, impressed by the way she didn't beat around the bushes, decided to give her a chance to prove herself by allowing her to follow her instincts. She was working on a case from the beginning of her internship and she always thought it would have made an interesting subject, so she asked for the permission to push her investigation further.

As soon as she got the editor's approval, she felt the need to go to Forks. She had asked Charlie Swan, a dear friend of her father and an essential element of her plan to get a promotion, if he couldn't house her. She didn't know his daughter had moved in with him and he was pretty upset about the fact that he couldn't help her, but she was okay with that. When he suggested her to go back to La Push, she refused explicitly.

What she didn't expect was a phone call from her mother pleading her to let her family help her.

Leah wasn't sure if she could stay at the same place as Harry, but she couldn't say no to Sue Clearwater. Her mother was here to back her up when she felt that her world was crumbling down. She was the only one, with Leah's brother, to stand up for her when she needed to leave, and she was the only one to have stayed in touch with Leah after all.

So there she was, pulling up at the Clearwater's alley and hoping that something had changed for the better in the Quileute Reservation. But as she spotted the gigantic copycat of Sam Uley near her sobbing mother and recognized his smile as being her brother's, she knew that it was worse than she'd ever imagined. She just didn't know at what extent she would be affected by all the changes that happened in la Push.