Bonded

Chapter 20

"So how did you do it?" my eyes popped open as Rosalie spoke. I was lying across the backseat of the Range Rover with my arms over my head, trying to suppress my nausea. After requests for Rosalie to pull over so I could throw up, Kaya felt it would be better for her to sit up in the front seat so I could focus more on channeling Jacob and less on my motion sickness. "I distinctly remember reading your obituary years ago."

"Ooh, you did? What did it say?" Kaya asked, a little too excited. Amused, I rolled my eyes before closing them to channel. "I never read it."

Rosalie just chuckled but didn't speak for a minute. "Times change so fast, it's actually nice to see an old face. I wished it was under different circumstances, of course."

"Oh, don't get all soft on me, Rose," I could hear the smirk in Kaya's voice. Rose? That felt so familiar. How strange was it to think that once upon a time, Kaya and Rosalie knew each other before I was even a blip on a map.

With Rosalie not needing to sleep and her also driving like a drag racer on cocaine, we had been on the road for a little over 24 hours and were quickly approaching Denali. The pack had gotten there in half that time; I told them to keep their distance. If Bella or Edward or even the Denali even got a whiff of wolf, this whole operation would go to shit. We needed to find Renesmee and Jacob as quickly and quietly as possible. We needed to get Bella and Edward back to Forks so Bella could be dealt with. Kaya, Ephraim, and I had been going back and forth on how to deal with her. Ephraim, being a true wolf leader, he was, was leaning toward destroying her, but I couldn't stomach that as an actual option until we understood how dangerous she was.

The thought of destroying Bella was really hard for me and I couldn't figure out why. I think it was because of Renesmee being so young. Even if Rosalie was the sole maternal figure in her life, nothing is more devastating than losing a parent. Your blood. Half of who you are. I didn't want to be the one to take that away from her. She was a kid, a baby. Kaya suggested that we leave Bella in the care of Carlisle, who was more capable than all of us to help her. Rosalie reluctantly accepted a call from Carlisle while we were driving. He let us know that he was brainstorming if there was a way for them to rehabilitate her. If they could somehow strip the hunter instincts in her, then we would reconsider letting them stay in Alaska unsupervised. As long as they stayed there forever and never contacted Jacob ever again.

God, I missed Jacob. I had never spent so much time trying to feel something—anything—that would connect me to him again. Other than the little poppy seed in my belly, it was like there was a huge part of me missing. My partner was out there, probably hurt, and I wasn't there. My eyes were stinging with tears again and that damn lump formed in my throat. Placing a hand over my ring, I let out a slow breath. Emotions were not going to help me figure this out.

"Little one?"

I lowered my other arm from over my eyes and looked up at the front seat. Kaya was wearing a concerned look on her face. Sitting up in my seat, I offered her a smile. "I'm alright," I reassured her.

"You don't have to lie, Leah," she said, softly. "I can feel you missing him."

"I'm just trying to figure out how to play this," I mumbled, distractedly buckling my seatbelt. "We can't just go into this, guns blazing. I wish we could all just sit and talk about this. We don't know where her head is at...we don't know what her plan is. I just want to know why she did this." I paused. "I just want to make sure he's safe."

Rosalie guffawed, "Do you really think we needed your whole pack and two dead people to have a sit-down conversation with Bella? That doesn't sound like your best plan, Leah."

"Well, I don't have anything else!" I snapped. "I-I'm not quite in a place to be physically fighting anyone and what I really want to do is punch her in her fucking face and I can't do that without..." I trailed off. Without her hauling off and potentially hurting the baby, of course.