I Never Meant to Start a War

A week went by in peace. I couldn’t say the same about the day in mid-July where that all changed.

I wasn’t there to witness it, but I had heard numerous accounts of what had happened from calculating voices and enraged ones alike, so I interpreted it as I may. I had to imagine what happened the night that Jasper crossed the borderline and started the war.

Jasper would have planned it, of course. He wouldn’t have taken out his rage on the person he hated the most for stealing the one he loved in just a spontaneous act of ire. No, he would have planned enough to know when he would be running patrol in the select area. He knew enough to know when would be the absolute perfect time to strike.

So as Paul in wolf form ran by the line, Jasper kicked off from the ground and tackled him to the ground just as Paul was whipping around to face him. He let out a loud howl, frantically alerting the pack to the attack as the two tangoed, the two others on patrol running like hell to get there in time to help in some way. The snarls roared through the air. The wolves later told me that they were surprised I hadn’t been able to hear them from my home in Forks, where I had been sitting up at the midnight hour and wondering when Jasper was going to strike . . .

They fought. Oh, did they fight. Jasper hit Paul in strategic ways, having learned from the last fight, but Paul knew what was coming and would duck out of the way, dive the other way, do anything he could to escape the hold of the vampire, obviously hesitant.

“Fight back,” Jasper snarled and growled into the night, even as three wolves materialized out of the forest, one of them the alpha of the pack. He didn’t look to them and neither did Paul, but their words echoed in Paul’s head in thoughts that did not necessarily belong there. He shook his head, as if trying to get their voices out.

But Jasper’s words had confused the onlookers more than anything else had. Paul wasn’t fighting back.

Paul looked to Jasper from a long time from an animal’s point of view, significantly hurt to the point that he hunched to one side to put his weight onto his good side, facing him with a swollen cheek. They stared each other down for a long moment, measuring the competition as Jasper’s excitement pervaded through the air as it normally did.

And then, Paul turned and walked away.

Jasper stared at him in stunned amazement, watching him as he hobbled to the fringe of trees and disappeared into them, returning moments later in the form of a man. His eyes narrowed into a suspicious glare and Paul made his way back, completely defenseless and open to any attack.

It wasn’t fun if the prey wasn’t going to fight back.

“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Jasper demanded harshly, his fists clenching at his sides as he took in Paul’s calm demeanor. Slowly, the werewolf began to shake it head, a sigh, tired and heavy, slipping through his lips.

“Because,” he said, “it’s not worth it.”

“It’s not worth fighting for Marie?” The vampire had a smirk in his voice, and one teasing at the corners of his lips. “All that bravado for nothing?”

“No,” Paul responded.

Jasper’s eyebrows went up as he regarded him with cold black eyes, gesturing for him to take the floor and explain his ulterior motives if he dared. Three wolves watched with calculating eyes as Paul eyed him carefully, the funniest expression decorating his face—one of a kind of resolve, like he had finally faced the end of all his problems and this was it. His eyes didn’t leave Jasper as he spoke.

“Trust me, I want to fight you more than anything,” Paul confessed, “but this isn’t about you and me. It’s about Marie, and what she wants. What she wants means more to me than the world, and she personally came to me and asked me not to fight you, if the time came. She didn’t want either of us getting hurt because she has a big heart and a loving personality and she didn’t want this to happen the way it did. So I said I wouldn’t fight you. I told her that. This is about Marie. I’m not an idiot; I know she still loves you. Even if killing you would be a pleasure, I wouldn’t do it—not just because she asked me not to, but because her heart is everything, and I would never be able to hurt her like that. I will always put her happiness before my sense of vengeance, no matter how much I don’t want to.”

A pause, and then he started again, voice soft:

“That’s how we are different to her, leech. She chose the one that would always put her happiness first over the one that would let their emotions get in the way. And if you ask me, she picked the right one.”

Everyone witnessing this, including Jasper, who had thought he was ready for everything, was caught completely off guard. The wolves because they had never heard an enlightening side of Paul before, the one whose heart was bigger than they could have imagined; and Jasper because he was coming to the conclusion that Paul was completely right. That Paul was willing to get injured just to stand by what I wanted, just so he doesn’t hurt me. And it shocked him, so much that it finally moved away all of the influence that his emotions had taken control of and let him see the situation the way he should have seen it: the practical way.

The wolves all watched as Jasper’s face moved into an emotionless mask as it all hit him, and then slowly slid into a mask of pure sadness—a sadness so strong that they felt it without Jasper manipulating the emotion around him. He took a deep, shaky breath and looking to Paul, eyes dull and pained.

“Tell her—,” he started, and then cut himself off with a laugh-less smile that didn’t touch his heart as he shook his head. “Never mind. You wouldn’t say a word to her.”

The vampire began to back up until he was across the line that he had destroyed when he had leapt over in a fit of rage, looking thoughtfully at the invisible barrier between him and the wolves. Then, suddenly, he smiled.

“I hope for your sake,” he said to Paul slowly, “you make her happy.”

And then he was gone.