It's Our Last Chance to Feel Again

It was raining. Raining hard, as it usually threatened to do here in La Push. The seemingly harmless drops of rain mercilessly pounded on the roof, one after the other, in hopes of finding their way into the house.

It was only the early afternoon, but the sky seemed more intent on mirroring my dampened mood than to provide La Push with the colour and light it needed. Even the brightly painted walls in my room were no match for the turmoil that was going on outside. Though the still-spoilt light would sometimes flicker on, the eerie glow that came with it didn't help in making me any less depressed.

I sat on the floor even though it made my body ache from the cold. I had been forced to shut the windows by both Uncle Jack and the harsh wind that blew the adamant raindrops into my room) so I had to find another way to make myself feel the bitter cold that I so dearly hated. All because I vainly hoped that a certain someone would open my door and hold me close, providing me with the heat I always figured was unnatural.

It was stupid of me. Anyone would know it was stupid. But I suppose when your heart still skipped a beat everytime you thought of the boy (who really, was more of an it) who had kept a very big piece of information from you, stupidity is a given.

"Katherine?" Uncle Jack called, but I ignored it. I didn't want to respond. Not when I was in so much pain. It wasn't so much the physical pain I felt from my body trying it's best to accommodate to the cold I had forced upon it, but the emotional pain that the whole 'finding-out-the-boy-I-really-liked-was-actually-a-monster' had caused.

Not to mention, my deprived of blood brain was just about ready to explode from the swarming of questions I had for both Jacob and my father. I don't know why it hadn't hit me harder before, but now that it had finally settled in, I had so many things to say to Jacob.

How on earth could Jacob be a werewolf? How on earth could anyone be a werewolf? Werewolves didn't exist. They belonged in the mythical creature section. Along with vampires, fairies and wizened old wizards. They belonged in books; Not in real life.

Yet I couldn't deny it. Jacob was a werewolf. Werewolves really did exist (as much as I refused to believe it). That eruption of fur that ran along his spine the other morning when he was with his two friends-- that was him threatening to turn into a werewolf. Even if my eyes had been playing tricks on me, the huge wolves in the forest were real. No ordinary wolf could have been that big. It just wasn't possible.

But then again, neither was the existence of werewolves.

Of course, it all made sense now. Or at least most of it did. All those huge guys that had been at the get together last night, they were all part of the pack (it still felt unnatural thinking it). They had all been in the woods the other day.

So they had been trying to murder me? The fact that I was still alive proved otherwise, but I had been so afraid that day, with my heart beating so fast, a death due to a heart attack wouldn't have been unlikely.

And those three flawless hikers. Did they know that those big wolves were actually werewolves? Or were they as fooled as I was, naively believing that the wolves here in La Push could really grow to that size?

Things in La Push really sucked. The answers I had so longed for only brought about more questions that only got more complicated.

I brought my knees up to my chest and hugged it as I leaned back so that my back was resting on the side of my bed. Uncle Jack's warning suddenly made so much sense.

"You don't so much as look at them. And I say this out of concern for your safety."

It was hard to imagine Jacob, or even Seth, to be capable of harming me. Yet, both Jacob and Seth, and every other member of the pack for that matter, had lied to me, and that already hurt. They had also scared the life out of me back in the woods, and that one wolf, that russet wolf I now knew to be Jacob, he had been the one that had startled me, and watched as I ran deeper into the woods. Did that count as harming? It was relative, I suppose.

But the existence of werewolves was another thing I couldn't possibly have fathomed. Who was to say that Jacob would never, ever harm me?

I heard a creak, and looked at the door. "Katherine, I'd really appreciate it if you answered me. I like knowing that my niece is still in the house and not in the horrible rain, out to prove her love or something as idiotic as that," Uncle Jack scolded.

"Sorry, my head hurts," I mumbled, looking back down on the floor. Maybe Jacob had anger issues, and Uncle Jack was probably aware of some abuse Jacob probably committed while I was still in Carbondale, far away from all of this.

"Of course it does! Katherine, get off the floor. I think I need to remind you that you have food poisoning," Uncle Jack fussed, taking five noisy steps into my room before attempting to hoist me up by my arms.

"I'll just get up myself, I'm perfectly capable of doing it," I laughed as Uncle Jack continued to struggle. It was times like those I wondered how Uncle Jack and my father could possibly have been brothers, much less related.

But now, now I had my answer. My dad used to be a werewolf. Werewolves existed. It still didn't make sense, and I still refused to believe it. There was no possibly way werewolves could exist.

Werewolves weren't part of reality. They just couldn't be.

I sighed as I pushed myself off the ground, "When do you think this storm will stop?"

Uncle Jack merely shrugged in response. "I don't know, a few hours?"

"Damn it. Can I use your phone again?" I asked him as I sat on my bed, pleading him with my eyes. After the phone call to my mother, Uncle Jack seemed a little more weary whenever I was near the phone.

"Of course you can. But before you do-- Why? I'd like to know what I'm willingly letting the people around me get involved with before letting you make random calls," Uncle Jack somewhat accused, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

I rolled my eyes. "I just want to call my dad. We have issues to sort out."

Uncle Jack continued to look at me suspiciously for a while before mumbling something under his breath and trudging noisily out the door.

He returned a while later, with a phone in his hands, and was about to pass the phone to me when I said, "Um, do you think you could help me dial his number? I don't exactly have it."

Uncle Jack huffed and with an angry pout on his face, once again trudged back out the room, only to return a while later with a phone in one hand and his phonebook in the other. He flipped the pages to 'R', and then dialed the number under the name "RYAN COX".

He passed me the ringing phone, and as I waited for my dad to pick up, a thought suddenly occurred to me. "You're Jack Cox."

Uncle Jack looked at me strangely, "Yes, I am."

"And your brother's Ryan Cox," I continued, the phone still ringing.

Uncle Jack frowned. "Yes, he is."

"Hello?" I heard my dad's voice on the other line, replacing the annoying rings.

"Hey dad. Hold on for a second," I started, and then looked up at Uncle Jack once more, "So you and my dad, you're Jack Ryan!"

Uncle Jack rolled his eyes and left the room. My dad, on the other hand, was in a fit of laughter. "Oh, Katherine! That's priceless!"

"Dad, it's not really that funny," I frowned, expecting my father's laughter to stop immediately, and for him to tell me how I should never try and crack a joke ever again.

"No, no it is! Katherine, I've never been more proud of you in my entire life. Ever. This moment... It just goes down in parenting history. You have made me the happiest father in the world."

How was it possible that Uncle Jack and I had more in common than my father and I?