The Outcome

I don’t know what I expected by breaking my ties, by breaking my blood. I got up, took a breath, and found my way the bathroom. I stood there in the dark for a moment and braced myself against the sink, feeling the emptiness, the silence, and the void where my pack used to be. Finally I turned on the light and, without even thinking about it, looked into the mirror. I was taken away into an outcome.

~*~

I remember watching this movie about Marie Antoinette, a more recent film. Everything was ornate and elaborate, glimmering with gold and candy painted marble. It was like a fairy tale world of splendor, backed with greed, deceit, and murder. That’s the first thing that came to my mind at the trigger of my surroundings.

I also saw myself. Hair wild and eyes sad, my clothes looked like I had been trekking through the woods for miles. I was torn and ripped at, I was also alone. The realization struck me that I wasn’t looking at myself from another perspective, but that I was looking to a mirror. A mirror so large it took the entire space of one of the walls of the room I was in, which wasn’t any smaller in that respect.

It felt like I was in a temple of sorts. Ages old, time chipping away at the work of a civilization long dead and forgotten. But the mirror…the mirror looked as though it was finished just the day before, not a chip on it’s frame, not one vine taking it’s time to grow over the glass.

It was then I took more notice to my refection again, the fact that I wasn’t alone in it. All around my body were inky figures, stood up like men but not yet fully developed. I couldn’t look behind me, but somehow I knew that I was the only person looking into the mirror. Whatever those things, were looking out.

I’d watched my fair share of horror movies, but still I watched myself move closer and closer to the glass. The images inside didn’t become any clearer, but seemed to gravitate to my reflection. I wasn’t afraid, not even really curious, I just watched myself inch closer and closer. I laid my palm against it, expecting a cool surface, but instead I felt a heartbeat. Or maybe it was more like the presence of something thousands and thousands years old, something locked away against its will, a thousand restless souls at the same time….

I knife appeared in between my hand and the glass, and I gripped its sharp edge on reflex. It sliced me clean and by blood splashed against the mirror. A giant gust of air blew me back and a thousand shades of inky black was let out.

~*~

“You bitch! Get the fuck out of the bathroom!”

Leah’s voice yanked me out of whatever I was seeing and back into reality. The door kicked open and slammed into the wall. It wasn’t until she stormed in that I realized that I was on my back against the cold tile floor.

“Oh my God, are you okay? What the hell were you doing in here?” She shouted before picking my up under my arms, toddler style, and placing me back on my feet.

I still felt a little wobbly, so I placed myself down on the edge of the tub. “I saw an ending…a vision…I don’t know. I thought that they would stop after I…” I paused, not really knowing how to phrase the words aloud.

“Oh shit…Seth! Come here!” Leah called.

“It’s okay, I’m okay, I swear.” I tried to reason with her.

Seth came barreling around the corner and quickly shifted his eyes between the two of us. “What’s wrong?”

“Ask her!”

“I’m okay, Seth, I just had a vision while I was in here, it was kind of intense. That’s all. Sorry for the scare guys.” I sighed.

“Oh, okay then.” He replied and with that, returned to what I assumed to be his room.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I swear I’m okay. Super okay.” I told Leah.

She looked at me for a moment longer before replying. “Okay then. And still get the fuck out of the bathroom. The rest of the pack is coming over soon and I need to shower.”

“Why is your pack coming over?” I asked alarmed at the thought of Jake.

“We’re not stupid; we know when a wolf goes rogue.”

~*~

“Macie, I want you to understand that this is just a formality. We know you won’t go crazy but we still have to be sure.” Sam explained to me.

His whole pack was gathered around Leah and Seth’s small living room. Hulking bodies all staring at me, their thoughts easy to read from their faces. She doesn't shift; she broke her bond on her own, yada yada yada. It was the same old song I’d heard time and times again.

“Why would I go crazy?” I asked him, eyeing as he brought out a knife and bowl full of water.

“When wolves break the bond with their packs and go rogue, they tend to lose the humanity they were born with. Still, if they remain in shifted from, they don’t act like a natural wolf; they become more vicious and dangerous until they need to be put down. But, since you don’t shift…”

“Oh, I get it. What’s with the knife?”

“It’s an old ritual that’s been past down for hundreds of years on the reservation. Depending on how your blood behaves in the water, we’ll know if you mean any ill will towards us, or that of your former pack.”

In my head I saw this as some crazy voodoo shit, but Jacob plopped down next to me on the couch and threw an arm around my shoulders in comfort. “Hey, Mace, don’t even worry about it. The cut’ll be the worst part.” He grinned.

I couldn’t help but smile back at him, leaning my body back into his arm. I guessed the events of our last time together were forgotten and forgiving. Leah gagged somewhere from behind me, but I ignored her, turning to Sam instead.

“Okay, let’s get this over with then.” I told him.

Taking a towel he placed it under my hand and tilted my palm downwards towards the wooden bowl. Very carefully, Sam took the tip of the knife and sliced a thin line from one end of my palm to the other. I jumped slightly from the burn and watched as a few droplets fell down into the water. Sam immediately took the towel and wrapped in around my hand, pushing it back towards me so I could apply the pressure to it myself.

All at once, everyone leaned forward a bit, trying to see what happened. It didn’t look like anything special to me. The blood sank past the surface of the water, before spreading itself out evenly, turning the water a slightly pink color.

“Did I pass?” I asked him.

“You passed.” Sam ginned back at me. My shoulder sagged a little in relief and the cut on my palm had mostly sealed itself back together.

Everyone else in the place began to file out, going back off to do whatever they had planned for the day. Jacob shifted his arm around me while I turned to face him.

“So, wanna get out here? Maybe go to the beach to hang out?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Waving goodbye to Leah and Seth, one returning and the other rolling their eyes, Jake and I set off.

~*~

“A lone wolf, huh?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged my shoulders. We were sitting on a washed up log, watching the sun reflect off the water. “They pushed me away, so what else was there to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine not being with my pack.”

“I couldn’t either at first, but things have always been different with me. I've always been a little bit out casted, even if that was never the intention.”

“If it counts for anything, I think you fit right in here…with me…” His voice trailed off at the end, had his skin not been so tan I was sure a blush would have risen there instead of just the heat. I melted.

“Thank you. I really do like it here, here with you. Everywhere else I've been; all those places I've lived, I felt like I've been chasing something I could never have. Y’know what I mean?”

Jacob was quiet for a minute, before grabbing me hand without looking at me. “Yeah, I know exactly how it feels to want something you can’t have.”

Thoughts of that brown haired girl filtered past my mind and I felt another stab of jealously, so deep I couldn’t help but ask a question I didn’t really want the answer to.

“Was it that girl, the one with the vampires? Bella?”

“Yeah, for a while. I don’t want to talk anymore though.” He replied his sentence blunt and voice hard.

“I’m sorry, Jake. I didn’t mean to bring up something bad between us, especially when we've just made up.” I pleaded tightening the grip on his fingers.

Still, he pulled his palm from mine, turning to me and threading them through my hair. He didn’t give me a chance to confirm his anger in me, just tilted my head towards me and covered my mouth with his own. My hands found purchase on his forearms, pulling myself closer to his body as his tongue traced my bottom lip.

I let him inside and let myself get taken away in his kiss. This is what was always missing with anyone else, there was no sense of duty with being together, and it was natural, almost fated. His kisses were sweet and sizzling at the same time. It made me want to melt into puddle of adolescent adoration and let him melt into me, taking me to a place much more mature than anything I’d ever done before.

I was in his lap again, but this time there was no Billy to catch us, no one on the beach but ourselves and the push and pull of the tide. Never disconnecting out lips, he lifted us up off of the log and laid himself down on the sand, fitting my body square on top of his. I slide my hands down from his arms and over to his chest, the heat almost burning my finger tips, but I couldn’t get enough of his heat, of his skin.

I was practically sweating; I could feel it gathering in my hair line, threatening to drop down on the beautiful boy blow me. I was sure that the drop would evaporate on contact with his skin. He rolled us over, moving his lips down to my jaw, then to my neck. The sand was a cool contrast to the heat above me and I let it distract me for a moment. But then there were lips moving down my neck, hands pulling the collar of my shirt down to plant kisses to the valley of my breasts…

Jacob brought his head back up before I lost my mind and laid a kiss to my ear. “I don’t know where you came from, Macie…please don’t leave.”

With his weight on top of me and those lips brushing my ear with every word he spoke I couldn’t help the shudder that ran through me or the promises I could never possibly keep.

“I promise, Jacob. I promise.”