Before the Storm

As Edward and Althea wound their night down with him helping her with homework, rain continued to pelt the windows. The night hopefully wasn't a sign of things to come. As Edward tried to explain the concept of sine, cosine, and tangent graphs to Althea, he stopped abruptly. He narrowed his shoulders and straightened up from where he had been sitting.

"What's wrong?" Althea jumped and tried to see what Edward was looking at. His nose wrinkled in disgust as he started for the front door, "Edward! What's going on?"

"Nothing important, I'm sure," he sighed as he quickly went downstairs, Althea tried to keep up with his swift pace. She marveled at how easy vampires had it with walking...and well, everything else too. By the time she had caught up with him, he was already at the front and pulling it open.

"Where are you going now?!" He didn't answer but proceeded to walk into the rain without even looking back. Althea sighed and zipped her sweater up higher and followed him into the rain. As she scanned the horizon, she made out two sets of eyes in the distance. It took her brain a few minutes to process what was going on, but as soon as she did, she realized it was the wolves. Two of them, anyway. She started running and, surprisingly, caught up with Edward, "what are they doing here?"

"Apparently Sam had heard about what happened to you," he sighed and the wolves retreated into the woods, "they're coming back in human form because they think I'll twist what they say."

"You wouldn't do that,"

"Try telling them that,"

"They should know by now that you aren't bad! If-if you were, I'd be hurt by now or...dead," she whispered the last word as though it was the word curse ever. Edward smiled down at her and nodded as they heard twigs snapping, signaling the approach of the two wolves.

Althea looked closer and saw that it was Jacob and Paul. When she saw Paul she ran over to him and threw her arms around him. She felt the familiarness of his warm body and immediately smiled, "what are you doing here?"

Paul was reluctant to let her go as she looked down at her face, "Sam sent us."

Her face turned into a frown, "so you wouldn't have bothered coming if it hadn't been for Sam?"

"Maybe, maybe not, Thea. Circumstances-"

"Circumstances? There are no circumstances, Paul! It's just you being stupid about the Cullens! Maybe if you put your big ego aside, you'd get over the fact that they're vampires...they're good people and have been nothing but nice to any of us,"

"Have you ever thought that maybe you don't know everything?"

"I, ugh, what?"

"You want to know the whole story?"

"Of course,"

"Then come on," Paul beckoned to her and Althea glanced up at Edward. His face was glum, but he nodded regardless, and she followed Paul. He lead her into a nearby clearing, where the rain wasn't hitting him....not that it made much of a difference since they were already soaking wet.

"Tell me what's up then," she faced him and crossed her arms over her chest. He nodded and decided that It was best to tell her what was had happened to him.

"Have-have you ever left so attracted to something or someone that...you never thought you could live without them?"

"I don't know...probably not. Why?"

"There's this thing...with us...it's called imprinting,"

"Imprinting?"

"It's like....when you meet the one and you know they're the one, and you couldn't leave them if you wanted to. You'd do anything for them, no matter what," he felt a little weird explaining the concept of imprinting to her, but, he hoped, she would get the picture.

"Like Emily and Sam?"

"How did you know?"

"It just seems obvious after what you've said,"

"Do you know what else I'm trying to say?"

"Should I?"

"You're so daft sometimes, Thea!" Paul chuckled a bit and saw Althea's frown melt.

"Just tell me then!"

"Maybe I won't then!"

"Come on, then," she tugged on Paul's arm, relishing the heat.

"Fine, fine. I've-"

"Paul! Thea!" Jacob's voice interrupted what was going to be Paul's big revelation. He gritted his teeth and turned to face him.

"What?"

"She's coming!"

"Who?!"

"The vampire," he said in a rush as Edward entered the clearing.

"We've got to get Althea out of here,"