I crossed over to the wrong side of the road to stop next to him. He looked up when the roar of my truck approached.

Quil's expression frightened me more than it surprised me. His face was bleak, brooding, his forehead creased with worry.

"Oh, hey, Bella," he greeted me dully.

"Hi, Quil… Are you okay?"

He stared at me morosely. "Fine."

"Can I give you a ride somewhere?" I offered.

"Sure, I guess," he mumbled. He shuffled around the front of the truck and opened the passenger door to climb in.

"Where to?"

"My house is on the north side, back behind the store," he told me.

"Have you seen Jacob today." The question burst from me almost before he'd finished speaking.

I looked at Quil eagerly, waiting for his answer. He stared out the windshield for a second before he spoke. "From a distance," he finally said.

"A distance?" I echoed.

"I tried to follow them – he was with Embry." His voice was low, hard to hear over the engine. I leaned closer. "I know they saw me. But they turned and just disappeared into the trees. I don't think they were alone – I think Sam and his crew might have been with them.

"I've been stumbling around in the forest for an hour, yelling for them. I just barely found the road again when you drove up."

"The poor boy," Esme said. "He must be so worried about his friends."

"So Sam did get to him." The words were a little distorted – my teeth were gritted together.

Quil stared at me. "You know about that?"

I nodded. "Jake told me…before."

"Before," Quil repeated, and sighed.

"Jacob's just as bad as the others now?"

"Never leaves Sam's side." Quil turned his head and spit out the open window.

"And before that – did he avoid everyone? Was he acting upset?"

His voice was low and rough. "Not for as long as the others. Maybe one day. Then Sam caught up with him."

"What do you think it is? Drugs or something?"

"No, it's genetics," Carlisle said. "I really wish I could learn more about them..."

"I can't see Jacob or Embry getting into anything like that… but what do I know? What else could it be? And why aren't the old people worried?" He shook his head, and the fear showed in his eyes now. "Jacob didn't want to be a part of this… cult. I don't understand what could change him." He stared at me, his face frightened. "I don't want to be next."

My eyes mirrored his fear. That was the second time I'd heard it described as a cult. I shivered. "Are your parents any help?"

He grimaced. "Right. My grandfather's on the council with Jacob's dad. Sam Uley is the best thing that ever happened to this place, as far as he's concerned."

"That really is unfair... they should tell them that this could happen," Esme said, looking concerned about this boy and the obvious pain and worry he was going as a result of his being kept in the dark.

"I don't think it's that simple," Carlisle frowned and grabbed her hand.

"Their community may be small, but there are still too many people to ensure that it remains a secret."

"They could just tell the boys that look like they're about to change," Esme sighed.

"Maybe they just want them to have as normal a life as they can before it's all taken away from them," Edward said. "I would think that if these pups weren't such good friends, they wouldn't have been so worried about the signs of the change."

"I guess," Esme sighed. "I just feel so bad for them."

"Well, we know better than anyone what a necessity it is to protect a secret like this," Carlisle reasoned.

"Yeah, but at least we don't have to worry about anyone spontaneously turning into a vampire. These poor boys don't even see it coming when they change," Emmett chuckled.

We stared at each other for a prolonged moment. We were in La Push now, and my truck was barely crawling along the empty road. I could see the village's only store not too far ahead.

"I'll get out now," Quil said. "My house is right over there." He gestured toward the small wooden rectangle behind the store. I pulled over to the shoulder, and he jumped out.

"I'm going to go wait for Jacob," I told him in a hard voice.

"Good luck." He slammed the door and shuffled forward along the road, his head bent forward, his shoulders slumped.

Quil's face haunted me as I made a wide U-turn and headed back toward the Blacks'. He was terrified of being next. What was happening here?

I stopped in front of Jacob's house, killing the motor and rolling down the windows. It was stuffy today, no breeze. I put my feet up on the dashboard and settled in to wait. A movement flashed in my peripheral vision – I turned and spotted Billy looking at me through the front window with a confused expression. I waved once and smiled a tight smile, but stayed where I was.

His eyes narrowed; he let the curtain fall across the glass.

"I wonder if he realizes how stubborn she is -" Edward smiled, "- and persistent."

"I don't think he does," Jasper said, "but he must be figuring that out now."

I was prepared to stay as long as it took, but I wished I had something to do. I dug up a pen out of the bottom of my backpack, and an old test. I started to doodle on the back of the scrap.

I'd only had time to scrawl one row of diamonds when there was a sharp tap against my door.

I jumped, looking up, expecting Billy.

"What are you doing here, Bella.'" Jacob growled.

I stared at him in blank astonishment.

Jacob had changed radically in the last weeks since I'd seen him. The first thing I noticed was his hair – his beautiful hair was all gone, cropped quite short, covering his head with an inky gloss like black satin. The planes of his face seemed to have hardened subtly, tightened…aged. His neck and his shoulders were different, too, thicker somehow. His hands, where they gripped the window frame, looked enormous, with the tendons and veins more prominent under the russet skin. But the physical changes were insignificant.

It was his expression that made him almost completely unrecognizable. The open, friendly smile was gone like the hair, the warmth in his dark eyes altered to a brooding resentment that was instantly disturbing. There was a darkness in Jacob now. Like my sun had imploded.

"Maybe she won't want to be near him then," Edward said, hoping that would be true, it would be the easiest and least painful way for her to be away from the pup. "It's not good for her to be this close."

"She's not going to let those thing keep her away," Alice said. "It's only going to make her try to get her old friend back."

"I know," Edward sighed, shaking his head.

"Jacob?" I whispered.

He just stared at me, his eyes tense and angry.

I realized we weren't alone. Behind him stood four others; all tall and russet-skinned, black hair chopped short just like Jacob's. They could have been brothers – I couldn't even pick Embry out of the group. The resemblance was only intensified by the strikingly similar hostility in every pair of eyes.

Every pair but one. The oldest by several years, Sam stood in the very back, his face serene and sure. I had to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat. I wanted to take a swing at him.

"I'd like to see that," Emmett laughed. "Punching a werewolf!"

No, I wanted to do more than that. More than anything, I wanted to be fierce and deadly, someone no one would dare mess with. Someone who would scare Sam Uley silly.

I wanted to be a vampire.

"No... and that's a horrible reason to want to be a vampire," Edward scowled.

The violent desire caught me off guard and knocked the wind out of me. It was the most forbidden of all wishes – even when I only wished it for a malicious reason like this, to gain an advantage over an enemy – because it was the most painful. That future was lost to me forever, had never really been within my grasp.

"She wants to be a vampire that much," Edward said angrily.

"I think it's the idea of forever with you that she wants," Esme said soothingly.

I scrambled to gain control of myself while the hole in my chest ached hollowly.

"What do you want?" Jacob demanded, his expression growing more resentful as he watched the play of emotion across my face.

"I want to talk to you," I said in a weak voice. I tried to focus, but I was still reeling against the escape of my taboo dream.

"Go ahead," he hissed through his teeth. His glare was vicious. I'd never seen him look at anyone like that, least of all me. It hurt with a surprising intensity – a physical pain, a stabbing in my head.

"Alone!" I hissed, and my voice was stronger.

He looked behind him, and I knew where his eyes would go. Every one of them was turned for Sam's reaction.

Sam nodded once, his face unperturbed. He made a brief comment in an unfamiliar, liquid language – I could only be positive that it wasn't French or Spanish, but I guessed that it was Quileute. He turned and walked into Jacob's house. The others, Paul, Jared, and Embry, I assumed, followed him in.

"Okay." Jacob seemed a bit less furious when the others were gone. His face was a little calmer, but also more hopeless. His mouth seemed permanently pulled down at the corners.

I took a deep breath. "You know what I want to know."

He didn't answer. He just stared at me bitterly.

I stared back and the silence stretched on. The pain in his face unnerved me. I felt a lump beginning to build in my throat.

"Can we walk?" I asked while I could still speak.

He didn't respond in any way; his face didn't change.

I got out of the car, feeling unseen eyes behind the windows on me, and started walking toward the trees to the north. My feet squished in the damp grass and mud beside the road, and, as that was the only sound, at first I thought he wasn't following me. But when I glanced around, he was right beside me, his feet having somehow found a less noisy path than mine.

I felt better in the fringe of trees, where Sam couldn't possibly be watching. As we walked, I struggled for the right thing to say, but nothing came. I just got more and more angry that Jacob had gotten sucked in…that Billy had allowed this…that Sam was able to stand there so assured and calm…

"It means that he's found control, which the others don't have yet," Carlisle said as he glanced towards Edward, obviously trying to reassure him. Edward seemed remarkably calm at the moment, or at least not as upset as everyone thought he would be.

"You know, I'm really surprised that you haven't overreacted about Bella being alone with Jacob by now," Jasper noted, looking at Edward.

"I am a bit worried," Edward sighed. "But I know how much he cares... he will do everything he can to avoid hurting her."

"But he's young..." Jasper argued.

"I know," Edward frowned, starting to tense. "If only you could hear my thoughts right now...but I'm trying my best to control them..."

Jacob suddenly picked up the pace, striding ahead of me easily with his long legs, and then swinging around to face me, planting himself in my path so I would have to stop too.

I was distracted by the overt grace of his movement. Jacob had been nearly as klutzy as me with his never-ending growth spurt. When did that change?

"As soon as he became a werewolf," Carlisle offered.

But Jacob didn't give me time to think about it.

"Let's get this over with," he said in a hard, husky voice.

I waited. He knew what I wanted.

"It's not what you think." His voice was abruptly weary. "It's not what I thought – I was way off."

"So what is it, then?"

He studied my face for a long moment, speculating. The anger never completely left his eyes.

"I can't tell you," he finally said.

My jaw tightened, and I spoke through my teeth. "I thought we were friends."

"We were." There was a slight emphasis on the past tense.

"But you don't need friends anymore," I said sourly. "You have Sam. Isn't that nice –you've always looked up to him so much."

"I didn't understand him before."

"And now you've seen the light. Hallelujah."

"It wasn't like I thought it was. This isn't Sam's fault. He's helping me as much as he can."

His voice turned brittle and he looked over my head, past me, rage burning out from his eyes.

"He's helping you," I repeated dubiously. "Naturally."

But Jacob didn't seem to be listening. He was taking deep, deliberate breaths, trying to calm himself. He was so mad that his hands were shaking.

Edward hissed and was starting to look really worried.

"Jacob, please," I whispered "Won't you tell me what happened? Maybe I can help."

"No one can help me now." The words were a low moan; his voice broke.

"What did he do to you?" I demanded, tears collecting in my eyes. I reached out to him, as I had once before, stepping forward with my arms wide.

This time he cringed away, holding his hands up defensively. "Don't touch me," he whispered.

"Is Sam catching?" I mumbled. The stupid tears had escaped the corners of my eyes. I wiped them away with the back of my hand, and folded my arms across my chest.

"Stop blaming Sam." The words came out fast, like a reflex. His hands reached up to twist around the hair that was no longer there, and then fell limply at his sides.

"Then who should I blame?" I retorted.

He halfway smiled; it was a bleak, twisted thing.

"You don't want to hear that."

"Why wouldn't she want to hear that?" Emmett asked and this time everyone looked just as confused as he did.

"The hell I don't!" I snapped. "I want to know, and I want to know now."

"You're wrong," he snapped back.

"Don't you dare tell me I'm wrong – I'm not the one who got brainwashed! Tell me now whose fault this all is, if it's not your precious Sam!"

"You asked for it," he growled at me, eyes glinting hard. "If you want to blame someone, why don't you point your finger at those filthy, reeking bloodsuckers that you love so much?"

"What?" Emmett exclaimed.

"How could we be to blame?" Carlisle asked.

"How dare he mention us so callously like that, knowing how much it would hurt her!" Edward growled, looking like he regretted putting any faith in the mutt.

"The werewolf gene is genetic," Carlisle went on. "I don't see how we could affect them at all... isn't it just what they do?"

Alice decided that the best way to figure this out was to keep reading.

My mouth fell open and my breath came out with a whooshing sound. I was frozen in place, stabbed through with his double-edged words. The pain twisted in familiar patterns through my body, the jagged hole ripping me open from the inside out, but it was second place, background music to the chaos of my thoughts. I couldn't believe that I'd heard him correctly. There was no trace of indecision in his face. Only fury.

My mouth still hung wide.

"I told you that you didn't want to hear it," he said.

"I don't understand who you mean," I whispered.

He raised one eyebrow in disbelief. "I think you understand exactly who I mean. You're not going to make me say it, are you? I don't like hurting you."

"I don't understand who you mean," I repeated mechanically.

"Bella," Edward moaned.

"I think she's trying to protect us again," Rosalie said. "Doesn't want to let him know that she knows everything."

"I know, but there's really no point now," Edward said, "and it's going to hurt her more."

"The Cullens," he said slowly, drawing out the word, scrutinizing my face as he spoke it. "I saw that – I can see in your eyes what it does to you when I say their name."

I shook my head back and forth in denial, trying to clear it at the same time. How did he know this? And how did it have anything to do with Sam's cult? Was it a gang of vampire -haters?

"Yeah, it sort of is," Emmett said.

What was the point of forming such a society when no vampires lived in Forks anymore? Why would Jacob start believing the stories about the Cullens now, when the evidence of them was long gone, never to return?

It took me too long to come up with the correct response. "Don't tell me you're listening to Billy's superstitious nonsense now," I said with a feeble attempt at mockery.

"He knows more than I gave him credit for."

"Be serious, Jacob."

He glared at me, his eyes critical.

"Superstitions aside," I said quickly. "I still don't see what you're accusing the... Cullens"–wince –"of. They left more than half a year ago. How can you blame them for what Sam is doing now?"

"Sam isn't doing anything, Bella. And I know they're gone. But sometimes…things are set in motion, and then it's too late."

"Set in motion," Carlisle repeated gravely. "So he's saying that by us returning here, the werewolf gene has been reactivated."

"We don't know if that's true," Edward countered.

"No, but it seems that it is," Carlisle said. He wouldn't want to be the cause of these boys being transformed. "Do you think it's already too late?"

"I'm not sure," Edward said warily. "What are you thinking?"

"If we leave now... maybe they wouldn't have to turn," Carlisle offered.

"We left then too," Edward reminded him. "We've been gone for at least five months and they are still changing..."

Carlisle took a deep breath and looked grim.

'You just don't want to leave because then you couldn't met Bella,' Alice thought smirking at Edward and there was the tiniest of nods there. 'Don't worry I won't say anything, I quite agree with that sentiment.'

"What's set in motion? What's too late? What are you blaming them for?"

He was suddenly right in my face, his fury glowing in his eyes. "For existing," he hissed.