Timeframe: late Eclipse, weeks before the wedding. Sam is Alpha. Cullens are in Forks.
I died once.
Hospital light. Lemon cleaner. My mother trying to smile with the bottom half of her face. Then black.
When it ends, it doesn't end. I'm on wet ground with trees leaning over me and a sound in my bones like a hive. Heat rips through my chest. My teeth ache like they want to outgrow me.
"Breathe," I tell myself. It comes out as a hiss.
My hands are gone. Not gone, changed. White fur, shock-bright, ash at the tips. The smell of cedar, ocean salt, oil from a far-off road. A thread of human fear.
I turn and see a man half in shadow between cedars. Big shoulders. Jacket with Tribal Security stitched over the chest. He doesn't grab for a gun. He holds still like he's seen this before.
"White," he says, under his breath. Then, louder, steady: "Easy."
I don't know if he means me or himself. Fear rolls off him but it's clean fear of doing this wrong, not of me. That helps.
"Stay small," I remind myself. I put a paw back. He nods like that was the right answer.
"Name?" he asks. His voice has that La Push flatness. No dress-up.
I can't give it like this. The heat tightens, then breaks. Bones grind. The world flips. When I'm on my knees in the mud, the man is already shrugging out of his jacket and holding it out without staring.
"Jacket," he says. "You decent?"
"Thanks," I manage. My voice is sandpaper. I pull the jacket around me and sit very still until the shake in my arms turns to a small shiver. "I'm… Ana." It fits. Close enough to the girl in the hospital. Far enough from her, too.
He nods once. "Robert." He taps his radio. "Got one. She's… white." A pause while the person on the other end answers. His mouth tightens. "Yeah. Branch. I'm bringing her to the hall."
He points to the trail. "Walk with me."
I stand slow. My legs do what they're told. Gravel bites my feet. Rain starts up again—thin, steady. We don't talk. I'm glad for that. Talking would make this more real than it already is.
At the road, an old truck idles. The bench seat smells bit oder and wet. Robert puts the heater on and stares through the windshield. I watch the wipers scrape rain into clean arcs and try not to think about how easy the change was. Too easy, for a first time. Like I didn't fight it at all.
"Breathe," I remind myself. "Be kind." The reminders are for me, not them.
La Push is smaller than I remember from… reading? Watching? It doesn't matter. It's real now. Houses crouch against the weather. People look up and then away in that small-town way counting, filing. The truck turns into the lot behind the council hall.
Two women wait at the door. One is older, hair pulled back in a tight gray braid, rain jacket creaking at the elbows. The other is younger by a decade, jaw set, arms crossed. The older one's eyes soften when she sees I'm shaking. The younger one's don't.
"Bring her in," the older woman says to Robert. "Sam's on patrol. He'll come."
Inside is heat and the smell of coffee gone bitter. Folding chairs, a long table. A folded sweat suit sits on the metal chair like someone thought ahead. I dress quick with my back turned. The pants are too short. Fine.
"Sit," the older woman says. I do. She sits across, hands flat on the table so I can see she's not hiding anything. The younger woman takes a place by the door like a guard.
"I'm Sue," the older one says. "This is Rina." Rina gives me the kind of nod you give a storm front respect without welcome.
"Ana," I say. I keep my voice small. It fits.
Sue's eyes flick over me, then settle. "You shifted without a guide. That happens. It's not a mark on you." Her gaze moves to my damp hair, to the hospital band ghost on my wrist. "You live with your mother?"
"Not here," I say. "She..." My mouth keeps the rest. The hospital. The lemon cleaner. The black. "It's just me."
"Mother's name?" Rina asks, clipped.
I give it. Rina's mouth tightens in a new way this time. She taps a short rhythm against her elbow. "Branch, then."
"Branch," Sue repeats, not like an insult, more like a note to file. "Your father?"
"Gone," I say. "A long time."
Rina snorts. "Dead. He was trouble. He brought trouble."
"Rina," Sue says, warning-soft.
"It's fine," I say. I make my hands unclench. "He was a bad man. People got hurt. He died how he lived."
Rina watches me like she's looking for the flinch. I don't give her one. I'm not special. I'm not an omen. I'm a girl who died and got up again and turned into a wolf in the rain. That's plenty.
The door opens. The room shifts. Sam Uley fills a doorway even when he's just standing in it. He could be twenty-five or thirty. Dark eyes. Quiet. He looks at me like a carpenter looks at wood strong enough? Straight enough? Worth the work?
"White?" he asks, to the room, not to me.
Sue nods. "White."
Sam's jaw moves once. Not approval, not anger. A set. He steps inside, closes the door, leans his hand against it.
"Name," he says.
"Ana."
He listens to the way it sits on me. He hears the lie, or the new truth, and lets it pass. "You shifted alone."
"Yes." Keep it short. Don't try to be charming. He won't trust charming.
"You find the line?"
"I didn't cross."
"Good." He's not generous, but he respects an answer that does what it should. "You're branch. You know our law?"
"I know enough to stay quiet," I say. "To listen."
Rina's mouth pulls, almost a smile. Almost.
Sam nods once. "You'll do that. For a while. You'll stay on our land unless you're with someone. You'll not go near other territory." He doesn't spit the name. He doesn't like it either. "We keep order. That's the job."
"I can do that," I say.
He studies me another few seconds. "You're bigger than most females," he says. He doesn't sound happy about it. "White throws people. Don't make it worse."
"I won't," I say. "I don't want attention."
Rina snorts again. "You got it."
"Rina," Sue says, soft but sharp. "Enough."
Sam pulls a chair out with a scrape and sits, forearms on the table. "You got a place to sleep?"
"I can make one."
"Don't." He turns to Rina. "Set her up in the old smokehouse for now. We'll talk to Sue about something better if this goes clean."
Rina nods. "Keys are on the hook. I'll bring blankets."
Sue looks me over again. "You hungry?"
I'm starving. The wolf part is loud about it. "A little."
"Rina," Sue says without looking at her, "grab a plate from the kitchen."
Rina goes, muttering something under her breath. When she's gone, Sue lets out a breath and looks more like a person and less like a position.
"You scared?" she asks.
"Yes," I say. "But I'm here."
"That puts you ahead of a lot of folks." Her mouth tilts. "You keep your answers short. That's smart."
"Talking fast never helped me," I say. Too honest. I let it land.
The door opens again and a cup of coffee smell arrives before Rina does, along with a paper plate of frybread and a small bowl of stew. She sets it down. I say "thank you," because I mean it. She gives me a look like she doesn't know what to do with that.
Sam's radio crackles. He lifts it, listens, grunts. "The Cullens are home," he says to the room. "Wedding is still on. Folks are loud." He looks at me again. "You keep clear of their line unless I say otherwise."
"I will," I say. I don't tell him I already knew about the engagement, not from gossip here, but from the other life: pages, scenes. That knowledge sits and I won't spend it.
Sue stands. "Eat." It's not a suggestion. "Then Rina will walk you."
I eat slow even though every part of me wants to shovel. The stew is salt and hot. I expect questions to start while I chew, How much control do you have? When did it start? What have you done? but they don't. The quiet stretches. It's not kind, but it's not cruel either. It's the quiet of people watching to see if you're going to mess up.
When the bowl is empty, I set the spoon on the plate and fold my hands in my lap to keep them from fidgeting.
"Rules," Sam says. "You report any change. Any weird. You don't run alone at night for a while. You don't talk to humans about anything but weather and work. If someone from our side tells you to stop, you stop. Understood?"
"Understood," I say. "I won't make trouble."
"You won't try," he says. "Sometimes trouble doesn't care what you want."
"Then I'll fix what I can," I say. "And leave the rest."
He hears something in that and studies me again. Not impressed, just filing it. He stands. "Rina."
Rina grabs a ring of keys from a peg by the door and jerks her chin at me. "Let's go."
Outside, the rain is thicker. Rina walks fast, hands in her jacket pockets, shoulders hunched. I keep half a step behind. Don't crowd. Don't lag. Be easy to have around.
"You knew to keep your mouth shut," she says after a block.
"Seemed smart," I say.
"Sam doesn't like white." She says it like a fact. "He doesn't like surprises. He really doesn't like both at once."
"I'll try not to be either," I say.
She barks a short laugh. "Good luck."
We pass a house with a garage door halfway up and a bike under a tarp. Oil smell. A familiar shape under canvas. A laugh from inside, too loud to be real; the kind meant to keep a room from asking questions. My chest tightens without permission.
"Don't stare," Rina says.
"I wasn't," I say, and don't add that I know that laugh from another life. He's not mine to know here. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The old smokehouse sits near the trees, raised on a cement pad, wood gone gray with weather. Rina unlocks it, flicks on a string light. The room is clean enough. Cot. Blanket stack. Space heater. A small table with a chipped mug on it. It's more than I expected; less than warm.
"You stay put," she says. "If you shift, you call. If you can't call, you stay inside until you can."
"Okay."
She nods at the cot. "You can sleep?"
"I'll try."
She turns to go, then hesitates. "Your mother," she says, not looking at me. "She left our side a long time ago. Folks don't forget that kind of thing."
"I know."
"Doesn't make you a curse." Her voice is flat, like she's trying the idea on. "Folks forget that, too."
"Thank you," I say. She shrugs like it didn't cost her anything and leaves.
When the door shuts, I stand in the middle of the room until the silence makes my ears ring. I put the jacket on the chair back, fold the extra blanket over the cot, sit. My hands won't stop their small shake. I curl them under my thighs again and lean forward until my forehead touches my knees.
"Breathe," I tell myself. "Don't steer people. Be kind. Stay small."
Through the thin wall comes the sound of rain and faint voices from the road. Somewhere, a truck door slams. Somewhere closer, a man laughs too loud and then goes quiet.
I lie back and stare at the plank ceiling until the light bulbs hum becomes a steady line. I don't move when I hear footsteps outside. They pass. They come back. They pass again. Watchers, or just people with places to be. I don't look through the window to check.
I'm not welcome. Not yet. But no one dragged me back into the woods either. No one called me a monster to my face. I got a cot, a heater, and a plate of stew.
That counts.
When I finally close my eyes, the last thing I think is a small thing: Tolerated. Watched. It's not warm. It's not nothing.
For tonight, it's enough.
[
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