She followed her nose to the woven little path outside of Jared's house, covered by brush and trees, save a horse-sized clearing in the middle. It was like her senses were on hyper-alert; she could almost taste the confusion, anger, and lingering remnants of terror in the air.

She'd asked Jake not to go too hard on him.

Taking a deep breath to settle herself, she pushed her way through the wet moss and broken yew branches. She was only a few feet through when she saw them both: first the mammoth-size, regal russet and reddish brown animal with eyes of golden yellow, seated so calmly it nearly reminded her of the stillness of the undead creatures she'd aligned herself with months ago. Despite its stoicism, every fiber of its being was trained on the quivering deep chocolate mass in front of it.

Quil was about the size of a panther with none of the grace. He reminded her of a skittish alleycat.

She watched him continue to pace the length of the circular clearing, Jacob's yellow eyes following his form like a pendulum. She guessed they were having a silent conversation.

The big russet brown animal turned its great head her way and she stopped in her advance. Realizing this was the first time since he'd imprinted that she had seen him like this, she slowly closed the distance between them both and decided to savor the moment, running her pale fingers through his baby soft mane and enjoying the lick of warmth that ran through her body at the touch.

"Jacob." she finally said.

He sat a little straighter.

"I just want to talk to him." The great beast paused. Finally, it cocked its head to the side, acquiescing.

The other wolf was still wild-eyed and pacing as if she wasn't there.

"I know its hard to wrap your head around this. And I don't know….I don't know what they said to you. Before."

She inched a little closer to Quil, and Jacob whimpered in protest. She ignored him.

"I could come out here and tell you that none of it was true, that they just said it to rile you up...

"But we both know I'd be lying."

Quil stopped in his tracks. Ignoring the action, she bent down and picked at a stray muddy pinecone, taking her time with what came next.

"Words said in anger… there's always a bit of truth, laced with the venom. But you know what parts were important, and what parts weren't. What parts were real truth.

"They need you, and that's as true as it gets. Not just for fighting. And, me...well, it'll be nice to have you back in my face making corny jokes and coming on to me, because turning you down is pretty fun." She grinned at him, even though he still wasn't looking at her face. Jake did a wolfish version of rolling his eyes.

"I'll let you and Jake finish this, but I just wanted to come out and say don't make us wait too long. There's muffins in the oven tonight, and I'm pretty sure they'll be stewed chicken at Charlie's house tomorrow." She bit her lip, unsure what to say next. "Well, then."

"I'll just head back." She turned back towards to the house, when she felt a gentle little nudge at the small of her back that went through her like wildfire. She whipped around and Jake rubbed his massive head into her stomach gently and lazily. She felt almost drugged with the sensation, and when he finally pulled away, the jolt back to reality was unwelcome.

After she trudged back towards the house, she only made it through the friendly banter for a few more minutes before she politely excused herself, hopped in the old red cab, and gunned it for home.

When she heard the gentle rapping at her window hours after she'd pulled the covers over her head, she threw it open without a second thought and watched him swing up into the room, those worn cutoffs hanging off of his wet frame. She watched the raindrops drip from his bare chest onto her floor for a split second before he launched himself at her. Nuzzling his nose into her hair and gently pushing her back onto the bed, he wrapped his arms wrapped tightly around her middle and pulled her down comforter over them both. Taking several inhales into her shoulder, he finally spoke.

"What Em and Sam said to him, it wasn't that bad."

"Really?"

"No. Not compared to what I had to say."

She wasn't surprised that Quil could smell Embry's bullshit a mile away. People you've known your whole life didn't just switch up on you – and Quil was more perceptive then he let on.

"He would have gone on thinking it was the drugs talking, that Em and I had gotten swooped up in a gang. He wouldn't have gotten it, Bella." She'd known they'd said messed up things to him before, to get him off their tail after they'd phased. He'd probably just thought it was more of the same.

She nodded into his cheek. "So...you had to say things that were true, but not really."

"I told him that the real reason why Embry hates him now is because he can't hate Quil's dad, the asshole that never claimed him as his own son...Bells, I told him Embry's his brother."

She froze, then she tilted his face up so their eyes met. Her heart ached at the shame in his face.

"But you can't know that for sure. And you told him that after, right?"

He shook his head mutely.

"Jake?"

"They look like they're related, Bella, more than any of us do. And would make sense that no one's said anything about it. Because there's nothing to say."

She opened her mouth in protest, but then snapped it closed when she thought it through. A dead man's past was filled with secrets, and half-truths and accusations only brought shame on those who dared disrespect his memory. "So...is that what Embry thinks?'

"He told me once that he suspected, but never that he resented Quil. I know Embry well enough to know it would never be like that. But... he wonders why he was never wanted, and sometimes these little...comparisons, I guess you'd call them, come up in conversation."

A half-lie, then, sprinkled with just enough of the truth to make it plausible. He'd played on Quil's greatest weakness: in his eyes, his deceased dad could do no wrong.

"But the fucked up part about it? It still didn't work. And before I knew it, I'd gone all feral on him, and the wolf just reached down and pulled it out out of him. That's the only way I can describe it. And when he finally phased, I could see it.. He was so fucking loyal to us that right up until he realized he was all paws, he was still gunning for Sam."

To her shock, his voice shook with his next words.

"He doesn't deserve this, any of it."

She clasped her hand in his. "None of you do," she offered quietly.

Especially not him. Her Jake shouldn't have to carry this burden alone… she didn't even wince at the possessiveness that reared up, fierce and ugly in her mind. There was no question that she would help him whenever she could, and she realized that she'd done just that tonight without even thinking about it. That she'd been doing it, without realizing it, for a while now. "How did...how did he do, you know, after?"

"When you came out, he was still trying to wrap his head around it. I think seeing you, still being you, despite all this bullshit, helped. I mean, I can be me around him, but I've also got to be his Alpha. It's not the same me he's used to."

They were both quiet for a moment, listening to the rain pelt the ground outside.

"You know, a week ago you would have ended that sentence with, 'it's not the same me I'm used to, either.' Getting used to the whole Alpha thing quicker than you thought?" she finally said with a grin.

He chuckled, and the sound made her stomach flip.

"Eh, well. It's not so bad. There's this girl...she makes it a lot better." She laughed, then found her gaze resting on his lips. Moving forward almost unconsciously, she kissed his cheek. Then, the corner of his mouth. Then, full on, on the lips.

Their tongues danced lazily, and she felt the tiredness in his bones, which compounded with her own. When he pulled away from her, he just looked at her with a contented smile, and she drowned a little in that stare.

She didn't remember how long they stayed thay way, foreheads pressed together and shamelessly breathing the others' scent. But when Charlie gave his routine holler up the stairs to tell her he was headed out, her eyes snapped open to the first rays of morning streaming through the still open window and Jake's arms still wrapped securely around her.

She flicked her eyes back to his face to find lips curled up in a sexy smirk that belied the intensity of his black eyes on hers. She felt like a dessert he was about to devour, his oldest and most valued posession, and the eighth world wonder he had just discovered all at once. A tiny shiver ran down her spine.

She could get used to this.

He dipped his head and slowly sniffed the length of her collarbone, which turned her shiver up a considerable notch. The side of her jaw was next, his nose rubbing back and forth into her cheek in a rhythm. Something wet and hot then slid in the space behind her ear, and her eyes rolled to the back of her head before she eased them closed.

The rubbing and touching was admittedly confusing, but the sensations it produced? Oh, so welcome.

She felt like she was drowning and dancing on a cloud all at once, particularly when his tongue moved to the spot on her neck just above her artery. She felt her blood pulsing under his tongue, and before she could stop herself, she unwillingly thought back to a prom night that felt like forever ago, the last time a cooler mouth had teasingly mashed against that spot, leaving her both thrilled and terrified beyond belief.

As if the man pressed there now heard her musing, he gave her a punishing little nip in that spot, not hard enough to leave a mark but just enough to get her attention. Her eyes snapped open. "Mine," his muffled voice barked out almost angrily, putting his teeth down again to drive the point home.

"Yours," she agreed breathlessly, inwardly chastising herself for subconsciously equating the ice cold touch of his worst enemy with his expert hands, which always left her hot all over.

"All yours," she added, as he moved his nose to her left shoulder, then moved his cheek in a rhythm back and forth, like he'd done with the jaw earlier. Because she got it now...he was scenting her but also leaving his scent behind, as best he could without giving into the mating instinct and leaving it buried deep within her. Waking up in the morning next to her must have triggered the never-far-from-the-surface urge, and he, ever-respectful of her wishes and trying to keep his own in mind, needed this - and she couldn't deny that need.

She leaned forward, giving him as much access as she could.

He began to make a contented little humming noise, so low it sounded like vibrations and was strangely soothing.

He passed over one of the straps of her thin camisole and gently nudged it off with his chin, then did the same thing with the other side. Her breasts now hung loosely, the hardened nipples visible through the flimsy fabric and nearly peaking out of the cami's top.

His nuzzling ran lower, and she shifted in place, thighs pressing together futilely to mask her arousal. Unable to bite it back, she let out a moan, and he chuckled, then ran his tongue swiftly and directly down the valley of her breasts, causing the top to promptly crash down to her midriff and the two soft globes to spring free.

The way he stared at them, like a man seeing a freshwater lake after spending weeks in a desert, made her core pulse.

He laid gentle kisses to her mounds, alternating between kissing, licking and just pressing his face into the breasts. Her legs opened wider - again, of their own accord - while his earthy scent surrounded and consumed her like dried moss set aflame.

Accepting the unconscious invitation, he nestled between her legs even more securely, his erection making itself known against her inner thigh. "Jake," she whispered, almost like a prayer.

"Bells," he murmured reverently in response. His breath hovered over the peak of one of her nipples torturously, tongue still pressed cruelly behind his teeth instead of in its rightful spot on her skin.

She began to feel his anticipation, wrapped all up in her own and coursing through every inch of both of their bodies. Another moan tumbled from her lips, and a similar whimper fell unbidden from his own before his tongue grazed the bud.

The feeling was exquisite, and a fresh pool dampened her panties. In that moment, she realized: it wasn't about comfort or scent. It was about need, just as it had always been, from that fateful moment in the forest when he imprinted.

From the moment they both took their first breaths, and through each pass, in and out of this world, for thousands of years.

And, then, she fucking lost it.

His tongue had barely made a second sweep across her bud before she was unzipping his pants so his erect penis could stand proud. Cut and weeping at its tip, it was huge and mushroomy and more beautiful then she'd ever imagined it would be erect. If she had to guess, she'd say it was easily 10 inches long and probably more, seeing as she had no prior experience when it came to sizing these things.

His shock and her own was only amplified when she collected the tip's fluid and brought it to her lips, savoring it like the sweetest wine.

The tangy taste was foreign, yet gut wrenchingly familiar. In a voice she barely recognized as her own, she whispered, "If you get to taste me, it's only fair..."

God, she wanted more.

She watched more pre-cum pool, almost in direct response to her desire. Hell, who was she kidding. It probably was in direct response to what she wanted.

"You're right. Except, I haven't really tasted you. Not yet," he bit back, and then he ripped off her shorts and panties in one swoop.

Fuck.

She couldn't even think any more. All she knew was that his bare dick was inches away from her open legs and he was talking about putting his mouth on her vagina and oh-my-god-fuck-yes. He oozed sex, all the fucking time, and she was tired of wanting and wanting and never having.

And then he dipped his head down and lapped at her vagina like it was candy.

She was pretty sure she was seeing stars at this point.

"Ohh, god Bells. So, so fucking sweet..." He ran his tongue along her clit, then dipped it back down into her entrance and dutifully collected the fluid there, then brought it back up to her clit again.

"Not as good as yours," she argued, running her hand through his hair. He shook his head.

"Taste for yourself," he protested, and leaned up and pressed his mouth against hers.

Why that turned her on beyond belief, she didn't know. She ran her tongue along his lips and his mouth, collecting every part of herself from him.

She was pretty good.

When he pulled back, his eyes were a curious honey brown, rather than their usual inky black or bright gold. He pried her legs open wider. "Bells," he started, "that shit was so hot. And I want you to tell me if you feel uncomfortable, and if you want to stop, ok? Because we don't have to go any further than this," he said firmly.

She nodded, then bit her lip again.

"What's wrong, baby?"

"I want to go as far as you want to go. But I want to go there with you, ok?" She touched his brow, right over his eyes.

"I want to go there with you, too. But they've both waited so long..."

She furrowed her brow in confusion, and he smiled. When he got up, she whimpered in protest, but then he picked her up and carried her, bridal style, to her mirror.

She gasped at the light hazel eyes she saw staring back at her. His matching ones twinkled before he bent and kissed her hair gently.

"So, maybe... we can all go there together?"

She couldn't work her mouth to respond, so she just nodded.

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