Innocent

VALERIE:

"Walk faster."

Tyler faltered his step just to annoy me. "Excuse me?"

I picked up my own pace, pronouncing each word. "I said walk faster." It was challenging enough for me to navigate through the forest with rocks and roots and branches. He could practically float over it all, yet he was the one falling behind.

"In a hurry?" He wondered, catching up to me easily.

I gave him a long spell of silence.

"I'm just surprised that you're so excited."

"I'm not excited." I said firmly. "I just want this over with." I knew we still weren't far enough away for the pack to come up with some crazy plan, which meant that they would just act. I didn't want them to act.

It was the second time I shut them out, and I knew they would feel betrayed. I knew Seth would be the most affected. I wasn't really sure if I was doing the right thing anymore, but no one else could get hurt if Tyler got what he wanted.

Tyler's feet completely stopped in a muddy set of leaves. "Are you sure you don't want to explain yourself to your wolf boys?"

I turned angrily in his direction, shouting at the top of my lungs. "No, I don't!"

I thought I was seeing things, because I expected to find Tyler behind me. Instead, he was off to the side, forcing my violent outburst in the direction of the stupid boy that loved me.

His fragile eyes bounced off of Tyler, then to me, and back and forth until he understood what was happening.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him emotionlessly.

He was soon flanked by Embry and Jared, each of them following the same routine in order to understand what was wrong.

"I don't get it." Seth's voice was deep, and authoritative. "I don't understand, and I don't know if I want to."

I watched Embry and Jared, clearly holding themselves back from lunging at Tyler. "You don't have to understand. You just have to accept it."

"How am I supposed to accept this?" He started shouting at me in a tone that I'd never imagine could come out of his sweet personality. "This is ridiculous!"

Jared lost control and burst out of his clothes, crounching on the ground as a werewolf. Embry followed right behind. All you could see of them was their yellow eyes. The target was Tyler.

Seth held his ground as human. I wasn't sure how he was doing it.

Tyler was suddenly cropping my neck at a convenient angle, posing a threat to the wolves. They dropped their massive shoulders back. I was being used as a hostage.

"I will kill her." Tyler said to Seth. "I can do it right now. She means nothing to me. And if you attack, I won't hesitate."

Seth barely reacted, still furious with me like I was the enemy. "What the hell do you want me to do now, huh?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" I tried to pull Tyler's arm away from my throat.

"You're sorry? That's all?"

I huffed, annoyed by everything about the situation. I turned my head towards the vampire hovering over my neck. "Can you please just let me talk to him?"

Tyler copied my annoyed huff. "He's a pain in the ass, make it quick." He released me.

I kept my eyes on my shoes as I walked a few slow steps forward. I waited until there was a pair of feet in front of mine.

"You're angry, and you have a right to be angry. But it's in the best interest of both of us if you just -"

"I'm not going to just watch you walk away." His voice returned to the way I remembered it, which made it so much harder to say goodbye. He knew it, too. "But it seems like you don't have a problem with it."

"You need to let me go." I spit it out to make it less painful. "I'll be fine, you'll see."

He was quiet for a second. "Would you at least look at me?"

My eyes were so heavy as I lifted them to see his face. I dropped them instantly. "I can't."

"Valerie, we're supposed to stay together. I'm supposed to protect you -''

"Yeah, you always protect me and save me and change your whole life for me, right?" I found the courage to look him in the eye. "It's about time that I do something for you. So let me go, and then you can go back to worshiping me, okay?"

He didn't know how to percieve my attitude, and honestly, neither did I.

I checked on Tyler over my shoulder. He was comfortably leaning against a pine tree, glaring across the wood at the two wolves baring their teeth.

"You have to be realistic." I said. "A problem won't go away until you confront it."

"It's not your problem." He retorted. "So why are you the one confronting it?"

I sighed, knowing in the back of my mind that he would never give up so easy. It was just frustrating, and I found that I was fighting more with myself now.

Seth lowered his voice to a whisper, not that it mattered. "You heard Jake. He doesn't stand a chance against us. We can end this right now, and nothing will happen to you."

"You heard Tyler." I reminded him. "He'll kill me if you try."

"She's right." Tyler began to approach us. "Just let me have my way with her, and then she'll come running back home when I'm finished."

Seth busted past my shoulder and headed straight for Tyler.

"Seth, stop!"

His head flew sideways as Tyler's fist connected with the middle of his face. Seth stumbled backwards, holding his hand to his nose.

The wolves kneaded their paws into the dirt, seconds away from striking.

Tyler grabbed my shoulders and fixed me infront of him, flaunting me like a trophy. Embry and Jared growled and snarled in frustration, but did not attack.

"You didn't have to do that." I said to Tyler, blinking away the wetness forming in my eyes. "He wouldn't have done anything to you."

"I know." He said smugly, proud of the blood dripping from Seth's nose. "But we'd better get going, unless he decides to stop bleeding."

I had to do it quick. "I love you." I mouthed the words with my lips. He pressed his mouth into a line, wiping his lip with the back of his hand.

Then I turned my back on him, and Jared and Embry. On everyone.

"Shall we?" Tyler winced at the smell that filled his nose. "Before this get's messy?"

I started in the same direction we were headed. "Just keep walking."

. . . . . . . .

NIKKI:

I seperated a chunk of Beth's silky red hair and started braiding it. I asked Paul to bring me here in the morning to check on her.

It was freaking me out, how she was so pale and becoming so flawless. It honestly looked like she was dead, the way someone would look in a coffin. But she's still in there, and it's only a matter of time before she wakes up.

Or so they tell me.

Paul entered the room from the Cullen's kitchen with half a sandwich in his hands. I assumed he ate the other half on the way in here.

"Are you sure you don't want one of these?" He mumbled through sandwich.

I smiled, but shook my head.

"Esme literally makes the best sandwiches in the world - wait, no, Emily does. But this is a damn good sandwich."

"Maybe later." I said.

He watched me braid Beth's hair. "What are you doing?"

"When Beth's doing something distracting, like when she's on her computer or has her big nose in a book, I braid a random piece of her hair."

His forehead got all wrinkly. "Why?"

I shrugged one shoulder. "She never notices me doing it, so I see how long it takes for her to find it. Then she yells at me for making her hair knotty. It pisses her off."

Paul snorted. "Maybe it's not the best idea to piss her off when she wakes up."

"Oh." I ran my fingers back through her hair to release it.

Paul turned his head in the direction of the front door. "What..."

Someone burst through the front door like they owned the place. I guessed by the voice that it was Seth, calling for Jacob.

We heard him barrel up the staircase. Jared was the one to walk sullenly into the room and explain.

"What is he so excited about?" Paul was teasing, but I sensed a problem.

Jared's eyes were sleepy, and dull. He shook his head slowly, finding a seat next to me.

"Jared, what happened?" I asked softly.

He sort of blew me off, speaking to Paul. "Have you and Jake been here all night?"

Paul caught on quickly. "I brought Nikki home with me, but we've been in the area."

Jared sighed, but I couldn't tell if he was relieved.

"Why?" Paul pressed.

"Valerie left with Tyler last night."

I said the only think on my mind. "No."

"What do you mean she left with Tyler?" Paul asked through his teeth.

"I mean that she got up and walked away with him at two in the morning when our backs were turned."

I felt like somebody punched me in the gut. "No..."

"And who's the idiot who let that happen?"

"She didn't want us to help her!" Jared grumbled, frustrated. "And he threatened to kill her if we tried."

"Well you could have done something!" Paul yelled.

"Like what?"

We heard Seth coming back down the stairs. He rounded the corner, and I cringed at his crooked nose.

"What the hell happened to you?" Paul questioned.

"Where's Jake?" Seth's voice was raspy.

"How should I know?"

"I think I saw him leave with Nessie earlier." I told him.

Jared got up to offer his seat to him. "Seth, just sit down for a sec - "

"No way." He said instantly. "I have to find Jacob, and then we have to talk to Sam to see what we can -"

"Seth, running around like a chicken with its head cut off isn't going to fix anything." Paul grabbed onto Seth's shoulder.

"I'm fine! We're running out of time, I can't sit down." He shrugged Paul's hand away.

Jared intervened. "Listen, there isn't anything else we can do right now."

"You wouldn't be saying that if it was Kim following around a bloodsucker!" Seth shouted.

Jared didn't argue with that.

Seth excused himself for obvious reasons and abruptly left the house.

"Is there really nothing else you can do?" I asked quietly, remembering Beth between us. I fixed her hair over her shoulder.

"We've been looking all night." Jared held his face in his hands. "He probably took her into the city. There's no way we'll ever find them in time. I just wish Seth would..." He sighed again.

"It isn't fair." Paul muttered. "Val shouldn't have to go through that..."

I knew it was my fault, although I blamed it on them before. Now Valerie was sacrificing herself to end up like Beth, because...why?

My fingers were being crushed by a steel-llike grip. I gasped at the sudden pain, but widened my eyes when I saw that Beth's stone hands had moved, squeezing mine with her new inhuman strength.

Paul and Jared noticed this as well, as Edward read my mind from wherever he had been and told the entirety of his family.

We all huddled over her, waiting impactiently for her to wake up.

"Beth?" I tried to coax her out of unconsciousness.

I barely blinked, and the first thing I noticed about vampire Beth was how perfectly her new eyes matched our hair color.