(Thomas POV)
It was the night before my wedding… again. No, I did not travel back in time. This would be my second wedding, and it would involve three people. Apparently, there's precedent in the Quileute tribe for it, polygyny.
Not to be confused with polyamory, though the end result for us looks pretty similar. Edythe would be the senior wife, and Leah would be the co-wife. It was an old practice that fell out of use around the time Christians arrived to inform the tribe they'd been doing everything wrong.
(Ba-dum!)
I can't really claim I'm shocked this is happening. We've been in a three-way relationship for a while now. The timing is faster than I expected, though. Bella's wedding (to Edward) doesn't even happen for another month, and here I am going through two weddings before they even reach their first.
Why, you might ask, the rush? (I just did.) Because after being unconscious for five days, while vampire venom tried to rewrite my system. I woke up to the exquisite face of my wife, Edythe. (Who looked terrible, I might add.)
My vision was clearer than anything I'd ever experienced. There were colors I didn't have names for, and… dust motes floating in the air. I could make out each weave of the shirt she was wearing.
It was a weird way to begin learning that I had gone through a significant change.
Lost in thought, I didn't register Edythe calling my name as I turned and met Leah's eyes.
What I saw there was… wrong. Not wrong like bad, wrong like my brain didn't have a category for it yet. This girl…this woman… I loved as much as I did Edythe, was looking at me with an expression I couldn't translate.
Even now, I don't have the right words for what was in her eyes. I'm not sure I ever will.
Some new part of my mind, one that hadn't existed before the venom, registered Edythe's sharp gasp at the exact moment she turned toward Leah and clutched her head. But most of my attention was focused on Leah.
Her eyes widened too an impossible degree. Her whole body jolted like she'd been struck by a live wire. She sucked in one fast breath…
…and then she just stopped for a moment.
Then her pupils snapped down to pinpoints. Her hand shot out and found mine, and in the same motion, she caught Edythe's hand too, like she couldn't not.
"Mine!"
She had imprinted.
The realization hit the back of my skull like a thrown brick, and my thoughts went into overdrive. Every conversation Leah and I had ever had about imprinting replayed at once, how some in the Pack called it destiny, and some called it theft. How Leah had admitted she feared it, especially now that she was finally happy with us. After having been set aside because of it, and then living inside Sam's devotion through the packmind, she'd worried what it would mean if it ever happened to her.
And now it had.
I let out a long breath I didn't remember taking in and stared past the porch into the trees, like the forest might offer me an instruction manual for this.
(Ba-dump.)
My hand, resting on the porch rail, clenched for half a second.
Wood gave way.
When I looked down, I was holding a fistful of splinters as if I'd reached into a wood-chipper pile. Not even a thought behind it, just an involuntary twitch, and this was the result.
I let out another long sigh.
Yet more consequence of the venom: I wasn't exactly a shifter anymore. I wasn't exactly a vampire either, somewhere in between… a hybrid stitched together by bad luck and stubborn biology.
Carlisle had tested it, because of course he did. Emmett, Jasper, and Carlisle himself had taken turns trying to move my arm, then all three at once, bracing and pulling like they were trying to uproot a tree.
I didn't budge.
Emmett had sulked for an entire hour afterward. He tried to console himself by saying the strength would fade after a year, and he'd win the rematch.
Carlisle destroyed that hope by pointing out something I hadn't considered.
My heart still beat… slow, wrong, once every few minutes, but it still beat. Which meant I wouldn't ever drain out the last of the living blood in my system the way a full vampire did. No full shutdown. No clean conversion.
All the strength of both worlds, none of the sparkling skin, none of the eye-color change.
I was to vampires what they were to humans.
Minus the need to feed on them… I hoped.
Behind me, I heard bare feet crossing the hardwood, light, familiar. The door opened, and Edythe stepped onto the porch.
I brushed the splinters off my palm just as her arms slid around my waist from behind.
"Are you okay, Thomas?" she asked softly.
I smiled at her touch, at how every sensation still felt so sharp, so vivid, like my nerves had been rewired, dialed up to a ten when I'd been living at a comfortable two.
"Yeah," I said. "Just going to need a new porch rail."
She chuckled. "Yeah, I heard that." Her chin tipped up, lips near my shoulder. "You nervous?"
I thought for a second, even as my body insisted on reminding me it still had a heartbeat.
(Ba-dump.)
"No," I said. "At least I don't think so. We're lucky we already know she loved us before the imprint. That takes a lot of the pressure off." I glanced back at her over my shoulder. "What about you? Ready to get married again tomorrow?"
I watched the smile take over her face when she answered.
"I'm… eager, honestly. The idea of being married to both of you isn't something I ever let myself imagine." Her tone shifted, the warmth sharpening at the edges. "But I hate that the Elders won't let it happen on tribal land. It feels like they're disrespecting Leah."
I nodded. It was still a point of contention between the tribe and me.
Letting Carlisle onto Quileute land to heal Jacob had been an emergency exception, one they were determined not to repeat. After that, they wanted the line drawn in stone again, over Billy's objections.
Leah, being Leah, had calmed all of us down. She was just… relieved the ceremony would happen at all. This way, she stayed Quileute, stayed herself, and was married to us at the same time.
Edythe couldn't cross the border. And my status…my existence, really, had become a question they didn't know what to do with. Not human. Not vampire. Not wolf.
There would be time to deal with that later.
For now, I needed to get used to the new body I was living in… and the heartbeat that came only once every few minutes. I couldn't wait until they faded into the background of my mind, maybe then I would stop counting them.
It just felt wrong.
Edythe asked, "What time will Leah come tomorrow? I know we aren't allowed to see her until the ceremony starts at Sun's Peak. But I want to make sure her and her mother have everything they need before they arrive."
I smiled at her need to control things, "I am sure that if they need something, Sue will be able to ask us. If not her, then Billy will tell us. After all, he will be here to perform the ceremony. Then by this time tomorrow, we will be on our way to the South American honeymoon you have been plotting."
"Planning," she corrected primly.
"Plotting," I repeated.
Her arms tightened once, affectionate and possessive all at once. "A month ago, when Leah didn't feel like she belonged there with us, it was plotting. Now that we'll all be married, and she's past that bout of insecurity… It's planning."
"That's what I said," I lied.
Edythe made a satisfied sound against my shoulder. "Mm-hmm."
The evening settled around us in small, ordinary motions, locking doors, checking bags, moving through the house like it was possible to prepare for a life change the way you prepared for a trip. Eventually, we ended up in the bedroom, and the routine carried us to the same place it had every night since I'd woken up:
Edythe got into bed. I got into bed.
And my body… didn't do what it used to do.
A month ago, the first time it happened, I'd sat there in the dark waiting for fatigue that never arrived. Now it was just another quiet irritation I carried around like an extra bone I hadn't asked for.
Sleep wasn't necessary anymore.
I could still do it if I chose to, like tonight, but my body didn't demand it. It didn't drag. It didn't dim. It just stayed ready, awake, steady, like the day never fully ended.
Edythe shifted beside me and slid a hand over my chest, directly over my slow, stubborn heartbeat.
(Ba-dump.)
"You're counting again," she murmured.
"I wasn't," I said automatically.
Her fingers pressed lightly, and I felt the next beat roll under her palm, heavy and delayed.
I sighed. "Okay. Maybe I was."
Edythe's lips brushed my shoulder, soft, amused, and a little tender. "It'll fade into the background eventually."
"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe I'm just going to be weird forever."
"You were already weird," she replied sweetly. "Now you're just more you."
That should've annoyed me.
Instead, it made something in my chest loosen, like my body remembered how to be comforted even if it didn't remember how to be tired.
Edythe tucked closer, fitting herself against my side like she had always belonged there, which she did. "If you want to sleep," she said, "then sleep. If you don't, then don't. Either way, I'm here."
Tomorrow.
The word sat in my mind like a weight and a promise at the same time.
I closed my eyes, not because I had to, but because I wanted to, and let myself lie there in the quiet with her, listening to a heartbeat that refused to be normal, and waiting for the day that would change all three of us again.