Blood and instinct
1858 Words
She didn’t sleep. Not in any way that counted. She lay flat on her back, eyes open, tracking the faint cracks in the ceiling as the dark shifted into something thinner, greyer. The word kept turning over in her head, again and again, refusing to settle.
Vampires.
It didn’t sound real that was the problem. By morning, she had almost convinced herself it wasn’t just folklore layered over coincidence. Pattern-seeking where there was nothing to find. A brain that had spent too long alone, trying to make meaning out of silence.
She brushed her teeth. The mint tasted too sharp. She ate half a piece of toast and had to force it down. Normal day, she told herself, go to school. She repeated it until it sounded like instruction instead of a lie.
She almost believed it.
---
La Push wasn’t her idea.
A girl from her English class, Maya, loud, genuinely warm, the kind of person who adopted strays without noticing — had basically pulled Bella into the car on Friday afternoon with three other people she barely knew and driven twenty minutes to the coast before anyone asked if she was okay with it.
She was surprisingly.
The air hit her first.
The beach hit different than Forks. The sky was still grey but here it felt intentional, like the weather belonged. Cold salt air, black rocks slick at the waterline, waves that came in heavy and honest. No trees pressing in, no forest full of things she'd been trying not to think about. The beach stretched out in dark lines: black rock, restless water, driftwood tangled like bones.
Her shoulders dropped an inch without permission.
She exhaled slow, unsteady and realized it was the first full breath she’d taken in days.
And then....
She saw him.
---
Jacob Black was already laughing before he reached them—head tipped back, voice carrying, something loose and unguarded in the way his whole body moved with it. Sixteen, broad-shouldered, copper-toned skin, dark hair pushed back by the wind like he’d stopped trying to control it.
He fit here.
That was the first thing she noticed. Like the beach had made space for him and not the other way around. He dropped down beside Maya, then looked at Bella with easy familiarity.
“You’re the new girl.”
“I’m a person,” Bella said.
He laughed again. "Yeah, you are." Not defensive about it just amused. "Jacob."
“Bella.”
“You cold?”
“Always.”
He pulled his jacket off and held it out without making it a thing. She didn't take it. He shrugged and dropped it between them anyway, like it was available if she changed her mind.
She lasted ten minutes before reaching for it.
The inside was still warm.
She didn’t thank him, he didn’t mention it.
---
They drifted away from the others without deciding to- walking the waterline while the others stayed back near the driftwood. One moment the group was there, the next it wasn’t just the sound of waves and the narrow strip of wet sand under their feet.
Jacob talked easily. Not too much, not to fill space just enough that silence didn’t feel like something to manage. Bella found herself answering, matching him, letting the conversation move instead of calculating every response.
It felt… unfamiliar.
She liked him.
That was the simple version.
The complicated version sat lower, quieter something about how easy it was. How little it cost her.
“You go to Forks High,” he said.
“Unfortunately.”
“How is it.”
Grey. She glanced at the horizon, like everything here.
He smiled slightly. You get used to it or you stop noticing. I’m not sure which. A wave surged closer than expected. They both stepped back at the same time shoulders almost brushing.
Her body registered it before her mind did. A quick, sharp awareness. Then gone.
“You know anyone there yet?” he asked.
“A few people". She hesitated just long enough to feel it. “The Cullens family.”
Everything shifted.
Not visibly. Not enough for anyone else to call it out.
But she felt it.
The change was immediate.
Not dramatic — he didn't flinch or step away. It was subtler than that. His jaw set, his eyes moved off the water and went somewhere inward. The easy warmth in his face didn't disappear exactly. It just got complicated
“The Cullens family,” he repeated.
“Edward, mostly. We have Biology together.”
Silence.
Not empty, measured.
Three seconds long enough for her pulse to tick up once, twice.
“How well do you know him?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t, not really.”
“Good.”
The word landed flat, immediate, too quick.
Then he caught it, softened around the edges. “They keep to themselves, that’s all.”
It wasn’t all.
She could hear the rest of it sitting behind his teeth.
“Jacob.”
He picked up a rock, turning it slowly in his palm not looking at her now. There are stories, he said. Old ones, my grandfather told them like they were history. A pause. “I used to think he was exaggerating.”
His thumb pressed into the stone, harder than necessary.
“I’m less sure now.”
“What kind of stories?”
He glanced behind them quick, instinctive. Not checking for anything specific just checking.
“The cold ones,” he said, quieter now. “That’s what they’re called In the old language.”
The wind shifted, the air felt thinner.
People who look human, he continued, but aren’t. They made a deal with us, our tribe a long time ago. They stay off our land. They don’t touch anyone under our protection.”
Bella’s fingers curled slightly inside the sleeves of his jacket.
The Cullen family, Jacob added. My grandfather named them.
A slow, careful breath.
“Named them what.”
Jacob finally looked at her.
“By what they are.”
The ocean moved in and out, steady, unbothered.
He said they don’t feed on people, Jacob went on. That they chose differently. His jaw tightened, but he also said....
He stopped.
“What.”
A flicker of hesitation. Then: “He said choosing different doesn’t change what something is.” His voice dropped. “It just means they’re fighting it harder than you think.”
The cold didn’t hit her all at once.
It moved through her slowly under her skin, along her spine settling somewhere behind her ribs.
Alive.
“I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” Jacob said.
“Why did you?”
He looked toward the tree line above the beach.
Dense, dark, too still.
“Because you said his name like someone who’s already part of it,” he said. “And I’d rather you know before it gets worse.”
Bella followed his gaze.
Nothing there.
That was exactly the problem.
---
The weekend didn’t leave her.
It sat in the back of her mind quiet, persistent threading through everything. Jacob’s voice, the word cold ones, the way Edward had looked at her through the glass.
By Monday, it wasn’t doubt anymore. It was something closer to expectation.
---
Biology.
Edward was already there.
Same seat, same stillness but now she saw it differently. Not as distance, not as indifference.
Control.
She sat down, slower than usual. Her fingers felt slightly unsteady as she opened her notebook. Wrote the date, stopped.
Her heartbeat was louder than it should have been.
She tore off a corner of the page.
Wrote four words.
Folded it once, then again.
Slid it across.
He didn’t touch it immediately.
He looked at it without touching it for a moment. Then he picked it up, unfolded it, read it.
What are you?
The room didn’t change. The teacher kept talking, chairs scraped, someone laughed in the back.
Normal.
Edward didn’t move.
Then he looked up.
Something shifted.
The mask carefully held, deliberately constructed didn’t break. Not fully.
But it slipped.
A thin fracture. Just enough for something underneath to show through.
Old.
Tired.
Dangerous in a way that didn’t need to prove it.
It was gone in a second.
He picked up his pen.
Wrote one word.
Folded the paper.
Pushed it back.
Bella unfolded it with fingers that didn’t feel entirely steady.
Curious?
Her pulse jumped—sharp, uneven. One word. She turned it over in her head, not an answer. A deflection so precise it functioned like a door: sealed but visible.
The bell rang.
She was still staring at the paper when she realized she hadn't moved. She looked up. He was standing at the door one hand braced against the frame.
Waiting.
Not blocking.
Just there.
Her body reacted before her mind did something low and instinctive tightening in her chest. She walked toward him and stopped two feet short.
Up close, without the buffer of other people and noise and the ordinary school day between them — he was harder to look at. Not because of how he looked because of what looking at him did. Something pulled low in her chest, uncomfortable and involuntary, like a response. Her pulse sped, her breath shallowed. Something in her body leaned forward while something else pulled back hard.
She hated it.
“That's not an answer,” she said.
“No,” he agreed.
“Then what is it.”
His gaze moved over her face slowly. Not casually, not curiously. Deliberately like he was committing something to memory.
“It’s the only honest thing I can give you right now,” he said quietly.
Her chest tightened.
Why?
He held her gaze.
“Because the real answer...” He stopped. Something flickered behind his eyes. “The real answer changes things.”
A beat.
“And I haven’t decided if I’m willing to do that to you.”
The hallway blurred at the edges—voices, movement, all of it distant and irrelevant.
Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.
“Maybe it’s not your decision,” she said.
Silence.
Then:
“No,” he said. “Maybe it isn’t.”
He stepped back.
Lowered his arm.
Walked away.
Bella stood there, the echo of Jacob’s voice threading through her thoughts:
They’re fighting it harder than you think.
---
That night, she dreamed she was running.
Not from something with something.
The forest moved around her dark, fast, alive. The ground gave under her feet but she didn’t stumble. The air cut cold into her lungs, sharp, clean and right.
She was moving too fast, faster than she should have been.
And it felt..
Good.
She turned her head. Edward ran beside her, perfectly even, perfectly silent, keeping her exact pace without effort. His eyes weren't gold.
They were red.
She woke up gasping, her hand pressed hard against her chest like she could hold her heart in place.
The room was dark, the house was quiet.
Outside, a single branch scraped the window..
Not the wind.
Not entirely.
She didn’t move.
Not for a long time.
- Writer
