Fever

The local fire department removed the tree from my roof and deemed the damage to be minimal. They helped clean and patch up the kitchen ceiling and remove the fallen trees from the yard. When I got home, I barely made it through dinner before I excused myself to my room and fell asleep. A fatigue I had not known I had had erupted and I fell into a deep dream filled with wolves and darkness. This time, the dream held no fever. This time, the dream held no foreshadowing of love and Jacob. This time, the dream was made of blood and agony.

I watched as my own life drained from me as Jacob’s face turned from sorrow to amusement. He watched me from the shadows of the trees as the ice-blue eyes sank its teeth deep into my flesh. I couldn’t feel the pain of death, only the pain of Jacob’s smile and flickering eyes. My ears were full of his laughter and as the only light in the forest faded, I sank into nothingness.

But that sense of being out of body disappeared and I felt the bed under my body and the pillow under my head. I felt the warm cotton and feathers of my blankets as they covered my figure, and strangely, I felt the edge of my bed sink low under some immense weight. I opened my eyes, blinking away the strangled sleep, before I saw Jacob smiling from the darkness. My dream flashed before my eyes and I imagined the same, terrifying man to be laughing at me, but instead it was the tenderness and the love that could only be seen and felt.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, thinking immediately of my parents.

“I had to come and see you,” he grinned, reaching to tuck a hair away.

“Aren’t you supposed to be-“

“Nope,” he cut me off. “Sam’s still outside, keeping an eye on the perimeter. I only have a few minutes before I need to cover Paul’s post.”

I watched him for a moment before an apology spilled from my lips, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have gone into the woods. I-“

“I wouldn’t have recommended it, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you’re safe and alive.”

I pulled myself up into a sitting position, tucking the blankets beneath my legs. His hand gently tugged one of my own from my lap and held it gently, securing it in the warmth of his palm. At the touch, a warm sensation began to engulf my body and I felt all of the fear and terror from earlier start to shrink into the shadows. I smiled at Jacob through the darkness, but his face was not drawn into bliss or delight. His face had turned solemn.

“Sam thinks that it’s becoming a lot harder to protect the mates when they keep moving around,” he said quietly. “There are so many holes between houses and between the schools, and when they move from street to town to house – its only stretching our defences.”

“What are you going to do?”

“They’ve discovered how to puncture our line. They gang up on one wolf and wait for openings,” he paused to shake his head, “just like I gave them yesterday. It’s hard not to act stupid when it comes to you.”

I searched for another apology, but the look on his face broke apart any line I had planned on saying. He kept his eyes glued to our hands, a lone finger tracing the contours of mine, as it lay delicately in his own. I sat quietly and watched as he ran his finger over my knuckles, over the outline of my fingers, and along the ridges of my skin.

“Sam’s trying to think up a plan,” Jacob said quietly. “He’s trying to find a way to save us all.”

I felt my chest tighten at his words, his voice so soft and unsure. It seemed as if he was trying to convince even himself that there was hope for them all. But there had to be. There had to be some kind of notion that everyone would be okay. That Jacob and I would both be okay.

“Everything will work out,” I said slowly, trying not to give away my own doubts.

He looked up from our hands, “I would never let anything happen to you, you know that?”

I nodded.

“I’m not going to give up everything that I’ve been waiting my whole life for.”

His voice was a murmur and I instinctively leaned forward to place a soft, comforting kiss on his lips. He answered back with a more demanding one, one that I could feel was full of worry and need for reassurance. He kissed me as if it were possibly the last kiss we would ever share, as if the world was already falling apart around us. But there was no reassurance I could give and when we broke apart, he searched my eyes for something unknown.

“I love you,” he declared, his voice rising only slightly so that his statement could be heard more clearly. “I’m not going to lose you.”

I bit my lip, nodding my head. I could feel a surge of emotion creeping towards my eyes, wet tears that were begging to burst. But I held them at bay, reaching forward to touch the side of his face delicately. I couldn’t open my mouth to reply, but he must have found what he was looking for, because he rose to his feet.

“You should go back to bed,” he muttered, placing a chaste kiss on my forehead. “I’ll try to come back again.”

He gently pushed me back down towards the mattress and then swept out of my room, so quiet that I wondered if he had even been there in the first place. But my lips still tingled and I could still feel his lingering warmth on the tips of my fingers. But none of that felt reassuring as I took one last glance at the covered window and shut my eyes tightly, praying for everyone’s safety.

I saw nothing of Jacob for the next few days. I refrained from searching or calling for any of the boys, even when I wanted nothing more than reassurance from either Jacob or Sam. I kept a close eye on the trees, searching for a something that would ease my worry. I watched for a pair of eyes, a lone wolf, or even the slightest movement of the giant branches that guarded the perimeter. I was desperate for a sign, but at the same time I wanted to fall back into my ignorance and pretend that I really was still slightly normal.

Jasmine would have noticed my strange actions if she had not been so engrossed with Kennedy. She reminded me a little of myself, blushing savagely when he would flatter her or whisper sweet things into her ear. They were attached by the hand and her happiness blinded her from the anxiety that had replaced her best friend. But I was happy for her; so much more happy for her not to realise why I have been so distant, so closed off. Her ignorance saved me from answering questions I couldn’t.

The only time she ever noticed me was when she received a C- on her Biology quiz, a letter grade she had been so desperate to surpass. But when she turned to look at me, her eyes weren’t really looking at me. She was still so distracted by love that I was just a shape sitting next to her.

“Mom’s going to kill me,” she groaned, pushing the paper dramatically to the edge of the desk. “I promised her I’d get at least a B.”

I tucked my own C paper into the folds of my binder, even though she would never have noticed the giant red letter if I had stuck it under her nose. “Better luck next time?”

“This just means that I’m going to fail the next test, then the exam!”

She threw her test down in frustration, bringing her hands to the sides of her face, staring at the giant letter grade. I had nothing to ease her simple worry, nor any help to offer her in exchange. I merely sat there, my tongue lax, waiting.

“Maybe I’m spending too much time with Kennedy,” she said weakly, “I haven’t really been keeping up with our study sessions.”

I shrugged slowly, although she did not turn to look at me. Or even relatively near me. She kept her gaze at her paper, as if hoping the C would turn into a B the longer she stared at it.

“Maybe Kennedy can help me,” she muttered to herself, “or maybe I should ask his mother for help! She’s smart and Kennedy always says that she is a living textbook.”

The bell rang, but Jasmine didn’t hear it, “Yeah, that’ll work. Thanks for your help Kay.”

She smiled at me, the worry gone from her face and for a mere moment I had hoped she had sensed that I wasn’t altogether there. I hoped she would stop and see through her distraction that I needed comfort, even if it wouldn’t work. But she didn’t try to catch onto the worry lying beneath my eyes or the weak smile I attempted to produce. She just beamed like the sun had come out and then left in a rush of blonde hair and giggles.

It was better that she didn’t know, in the end. Jasmine could never know about what Jacob really was, and what was out there beyond her naivete. Jacob had already warned me that no one else should know. Sam had forbidden anyone to know aside from descendants of the Quileute line. But Jasmine would never have believed me if I told her that my boyfriend was a werewolf and there was a pack of giant wolves that were trying to kill me. Jasmine wouldn’t have even registered that I was even talking to her, now that I thought about it. Her head was stuck in the clouds where mine had just been temporarily sitting. Now, I didn’t know where it was.

There was blue sky peeking out from the clouds, the grey and charcoal seeping towards the horizon opposed to their looming position earlier. The surrounding snow had turned hard from the cold, and giant cubes of salt littered the roads and walkways. From what sun that could sneak through the holes, the hard snow glistened, daring to drag you down. I kept to the crunching salt, feeling the cubes sink into the treads of my boots. I let the sound of the crunching carry me homeward bound, trying to focus more on the sound than the dread that filled my stomach.

I had made it a few blocks from school, escaping the throng of people who chose to litter the courtyard, when that familiar rustling in the trees dragged me from my distraction. I stopped, looking to my left at the trees that seemed to bend away from the russet man who appeared as a shape at first, and then filled out into Jacob as he reached the edge. He looked tired with dark circles under his eyes and his face was hard and serious. It was the same look he had shared with me the night before.

“What’s wrong?” came from my mouth before he could even reach me.

His face didn’t light up when he saw me, and my heart tightened in my chest, “They got to Lily.”

I tried not to freak out, “Is she okay?”

“She’s in bad shape,” he said in a voice that seemed almost distant and very unlike Jacob, “but her heart’s still beating. We dropped her off at the hospital a few hours ago.”

“How is Paul? Is-“ I paused, hoping that it meant he was still Paul.

“The link wasn’t broken, so he’s still with us. He’s with her now, we can’t get him to leave.”

I knew what this attack meant, it meant that I couldn’t stay at home and go to school, pretending. I was vulnerable. I was out in the open. It meant I had to leave my mother and father with an explanation that they would never believe and never allow, just to save all of us.

“Can I at least go home and leave a note or something? So they know I’m okay?” I asked, my mouth suddenly becoming dry.

He nodded, “One note, grab some clothes, and we’re going to stay with Sam.”

I watched him act just like Jasmine, looking through me, acting as if I were just an object placed across from him. It caused my lungs to squeeze and choke my heart, and I reached forward to bring him back to me. My touch, gentle and cold against the side of his warm neck caused his eyes to snap towards me, as if looking at me for the first time in months.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

He let out a small smile, one that was only a fraction of what the real Jacob was capable of and then as he opened his mouth, another voice filled it, one that turned my body to ice.

“Kayla Marie Harris,” my mother’s voice screeched, “you are in big trouble.”