Chapter Text
Bella doesn’t think it’s even the tiniest bit dramatic to say that this is the worst birthday she’s ever had. She thought nothing would ever top lying in bed with food poisoning during a power outage, too sick to concentrate on anything or sleep and no TV to numb her brain, but this really does. Bleeding all over Esme’s lush cream carpet, turning into a massive dog that probably would have torn Jasper’s arm off if it weren’t for Rosalie—and no, no she’s not even going to touch whatever that was. That is for future Bella to deal with if she lives through this absolute travesty of an evening. That she’s now just sitting on the floor with nothing but Edward’s jacket keeping her from being bare-ass naked is really just the icing on the proverbial cake. Hm… speaking of cake—
“Sweetheart, you’ve been groaning into Edward’s jacket for a while now—”
“8 minutes!” Emmett chimes in, helpful as always.
“Are you alright?” Esme gently touches her shoulder and if she had thought the Cullens had been cold before, the gentle touch was arctic now. It makes her jump, but Esme’s soothing voice takes the bite out of it and she sighs, peeking up at the motherly vampire.
“Is the cake okay?” Her voice comes out muffled, still buried from the nose down in Edward’s jacket.
Bella must have seriously been worrying her because at first Esme only blinks, seems to process Bella’s entire lack of priorities, then finally smiles, kind and very, very concerned. “The cake’s fine, dear.” Emmett chokes on a laugh, booming at first then smothered to a crinkling snicker.
Bella sighs, nodding with equal parts relief and detachment, then actually answers. “I’m not having a panic attack, but I think that’s about all I’ve got going for me right now, Esme.” As a side note, her nose has gone numb. She can’t tell if she’s broken it or if her senses are so oversaturated in something they deem repulsive—overly sweet and disgustingly chemical, viscous and burning, what can only be the smell of vampire—that they’ve quit on her.
“That’s certainly a step in the right direction.” Esme’s smile softens. “How about I go get you some clothes?”
“Yes, please.”
She can actually track Esme flitting upstairs and coming back down with her eyes, just a smear of color more than anything but significantly more than she’d been able to see before. That’s. pretty cool, honestly.
She takes the soft bundle of clothes, lowering her modesty shield to smile gratefully, and is immediately bombarded by lilies so strong her breath catches, grip tightening on the soft clothing as she fights off the urge to bury her nose in them or drop them as if they’ve burned her. Her eyes involuntarily flicker to Rosalie, chest tightening when she finds the blonde’s dark eyes intently staring back.
Bella yanks her eyes away, realizes that she forgot to breathe for way too long, exhales slowly.
“Uh,” is that Bella’s voice? When did she decide to talk? “these are Rosalie’s?” She tries to snap her teeth down on the words before they make it out, but the lilies distract her for too long and she only manages to sound concussed.
“Problem, dog breath?” Rosalie could only look more offended if Bella spit on her car, eyes narrowed to smoldering slits, lip curled, divine wrath personified—okay, Bella, we need to have a talk.
“Nope, no no, just uh, showing off my new. Nose.” Cancel the talk. Death could not come fast enough. Bella winces, which (un)fortunately means she isn’t looking at Rosalie and therefore can’t see her reaction. The way her entire body locks up in shame is painful, shoulders hunched to a degree that shouldn’t be possible if she weren’t so used to embarrassing herself.
Emmett is laughing like he’d cry for her if he could, shooting straight past his normal booming into wheezing sobs of overwhelmed joy.
Bella would like to live in the timeline where she just took the clothes and left to get changed.
With a sigh that scrapes out of her throat, rough and borderline growling, she says, “I’m going to get changed! Emmett, no looking.” Jumps to her feet—ignoring Emmett’s yelp that sounds more flattered than offended—and marches into the guest bathroom before she can convince herself to somehow phase entirely out of existence.
The door closes behind her and she locks it, falls back against it and slides to the floor with boneless relief.
She just. Needs a fucking minute. Without everyone looking at her while she is naked and/or making a monumental ass of herself (in front of Rosalie a distant, new-but-not part of her mind hisses, because it is somehow exponentially worse to embarrass herself in front of Rosalie than it is in front of her actual boyfriend of several months) and that! She’s already sick of it!!!
Bella is sick of this new, intense awareness of Rosalie and her opinions. She hasn’t given a single fuck about Edward since everything went off the rails! What is that?! Edward is her boyfriend but she can’t remember looking at him once since she shapeshifted into a snarling mess of fur and-and--!
She snarls in frustration, too pissed off to startle at the animal sound that tears itself from her chest, trembling. She buries her face in her hands—the clothes in her hands and an involuntary deep breath drags her roiling emotions into settling, anger present but simmering underneath the sudden contentment that makes her head fuzzy.
Rosalie smells really, really nice. Like running through a nighttime garden that blooms even in the winter.
No!
She chucks the bundle of clothes across the room, scowling because they have, in fact, offended her. It’s just a little bathroom—a toilet that the Cullens have absolutely no use for, an incredibly ornate sink, and a little linen cabinet—but her point stands! She presses herself against the bathroom door and glares at them with enough vitriol that they might catch fire—with the way her night has been going, it’s a 50/50 shot.
Bella whines, high and panicked, fit to tear her hair out; she would really like this night to be over, but she has a feeling that it’s going to wear out far, far past its welcome. She sighs with a weariness soul deep—exhaustion-limp and strung out at the same time—and shoves onto her feet. She lets the cool tile under her toes ground her.
Staring into her reflection, she doesn’t look any different. Her hair and eyes are exactly the same, no longer or sharper or wilder than they had been when she’d arrived for the party. No claws or fangs. She expected something, but the same old Bella stares back—wait. No. She’s taller. It’s not by much—half an inch at the most but it’s enough.
Did supernatural powers really make her more awkward looking?
Her limbs are suddenly too long, her hair not long enough to mask the sudden disparity or the new broadness in her shoulders.
Actually… For a moment, she twists and flexes in the mirror.
Her shoulders look damn good, that can stay. And there’s not so much as a blemish on them. She traces her left arm, brushing where nasty gashes should be and only finding tender skin and dried blood. Carlisle was right, it all really healed when she transformed.
She starts washing off the blood with a sigh, watching the pink swirl down the porcelain drain. The soap doesn’t help much with the vampire smell, considering it’s pouring from everything, but she supposes it’s better than nothing. Visiting will be more uncomfortable for a while, until she gets used to it.
Frowning, she takes a big lungful of air, then coughs it out, eyes watering. “God that’s bad.” It’s definitely going to take a while to get used to that. Her sinuses throb like she has a head cold, like her nose is actively trying to close itself off from the abuse.
Emmett’s laugh nearly shakes the walls. “You’re no bed of roses either!” Right. Super-hearing.
“No offense!” She hears the others chuckle and smiles.
Then there’s nothing left to do but get dressed. Her eyes settle on the clothes on the floor. It’s just a lavender hoodie and some sweatpants. It doesn’t matter that they’re Rosalie’s—unless she ruins them, fuck what if she stains them or something Rosalie would kill her—no, no it’s fine. They’re just clothes and this is not weird. Why is Bella making this so weird?
Bella has one leg in before she has the realization that she’s…gonna have to go commando. She can’t even finish thinking through the alternative without feeling like her face is going to burn off, so she just growls and pulls the pants on before she can freak herself out more.
Stop making this weird!!!
Feeling just the tiniest bit hysterical, she yanks the hoodie over her head, and she can’t tell if the smell of lilies enveloping her makes her feel better or worse. It doesn’t hit her quite so hard this time, but something inside of her uncoils, stretches out like a lazy cat in the sun. It’s nice? But honestly way weirder than turning into a giant dog, and she’s too tired to think about it right now.
At least her nose isn’t hurting so much anymore.
Finally coming out of the bathroom, she runs straight into an icy wall that could only be Emmett. She tries to force some of her exhaustion onto him through her eyes, but the delight in his face doesn’t so much as flicker.
“There you are, Bells! We thought you fell in!” His grin is in full force, dimpled mischief so pure that it cajoles a wry smirk out of her.
“I’m glad someone is enjoying my party.”
“Well DUH, Hell Bells, you’re a party animal!”
“Oh shut up, Em!” Laughing—fuck him that was funny and she’s mad about it—she tries to push him out of her way and he lets her pass. Emmett laughs and she grins up at him only to see that his jaw has dropped a little, eyes bright and surprised and it takes her a moment to realize that Emmet hadn't let her do anything—Bella had actually moved him!
Then he lets out a whoop and slings her over his shoulder, quick enough that all she can do is let the air get knocked out of her. He prances around, spinning and chanting—"No longer a noodle, now a poodle!" with a lilting, Puck-ish voice that he does annoyingly well—and while she's definitely stronger now she can't squirm her way out, so she just laughs and beats at his back. It's hard to say whether she feels like a champion or a trophy.
As Emmett parades her around the living room, she notices that Jasper and Alice are missing from the group. It makes sense when she thinks about it. Jasper probably needed to hunt after the whole debacle and was no doubt upset, so Alice went with him.
Bella accidentally lets her eyes land on Rosalie. The blonde is watching them with her arms crossed, her beautiful face unreadable. Then her eyes, on the border between syrup and umber, lock with Bella's. The intensity of it makes her breath catch. Just as she can almost taste the emotion hidden in the blonde's face, Rosalie scowls, breaks the eye contact, and flits out to the garage.
Bella tries to wrestle her disappointment into submission, frustrated that it's suddenly come back. Even if a part of her will probably always be upset that the blonde never even gave her a chance, she'd made her peace with the fact that Rosalie would never like her a long time ago. But something inside her cracks as she watches Rosalie leave and it’s insanely annoying to realize it still hurts.
It’s probably for the best Jasper and Alice aren’t here right now, actually.
She buries her face in Emmett’s shoulder to hide her frown, choking on what was going to be a steadying breath because Rosalie’s clothes had let her forget for a moment that vampires now smell like candy and bleach. Emmett sets her down, smirking as she covers her nose with her hand and tries to violently expel the smell from her lungs with a hacking cough.
“Hey, at least I don’t smell like a pack of wet dogs!”
Bella tries to focus on the other scents in the house, even the faint smell of the forest beyond the windows, lets her nose distract her from her thoughts, and pouts for the fun of it. “Am I at least a pretty dog?”
“Weeeeeeell, more wolf than dog. Like the forest threw up.”
Bella frowns, something scratching at the back of her brain, demanding her attention.
Carlisle cuts in then, thoughtful and almost talking over himself in apparent interest. “You had a rather interesting piebald patterning, though I’m curious as to why your coat didn’t seem to be fully grown out.”
There’s more, but the gnawing sensation in her mind intensifies, to the point that she couldn’t pay attention to Carlisle’s musings if she tried. She tries to physically scratch at the feeling, agitated, and wracks her brain for the source.
Billy’s voice echoes in her ears, crackling with hypnotic fervor over a dozen summer’s worth of campfires.
“….oh fuck I am such a moron.” She drops into a crouch, curling in on herself to contain the frustration that tears through her and to cope with the sudden vertigo that accompanies her realization.
“Bella! Language!” It’s adorable, almost comforting, that Esme is scolding her as if this was normal and Bella wasn’t having a breakthrough/breakdown.
“But Esme!!! I’m so, so stupid!! Of course if the part of the legends about the Cold Ones—you guys!!”—she sweeps her hands out at them emphatically, nearly whopping Edward in the shin as he hovers uncertainly beside her—"is true, why wouldn’t the part about people shapeshifting into giant wolves also be true!?”
“Bella, you need to calm down or you’re going to shift again.” Carlisle’s cold hand on her shoulder makes her realize she’s shivering. She can’t tell if her teeth are actually shifting in her mouth, snapping to form a new jaw, or if the whirlwind of emotions is simply making her grit her teeth hard enough to crack.
“The revelation of vampires being real was overwhelming enough on its own. It’s perfectly understandable that you hadn’t thought about the existence of the wolves before.” Edward was always so reasonable, steady despite his flair for dramatics, and the familiarity of it helps her to focus through the haze of her whirling mind. She takes thick gasps of air, feeling the room sway as she sits fully on the floor, digs her fingers into the plush carpet.
The urge to run and tear ebbs but the tremble in her hands remains. She runs her tongue through her mouth, checking for fangs, and lets a sigh of relief rush past her blunt teeth. “I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“I want to reassure you that this is entirely normal, Bella.” Knelt beside her, Carlisle’s face conveys nothing but sincerity and sympathy and it’s comforting, but close enough to pity that she doesn’t quite want it. “Shifters have heightened, often volatile emotions. It will get better with practice and time, but you will need to be careful. Just remember to breathe, ground yourself."
She nods along, takes another deep breath and releases it slowly. Her hands loosen their grip on the carpet, opting to fidget with the strands. “Do you have a lot of experience with uh, Shifters?”
“Somewhat. The Quileute pack isn’t very fond of us, but we’ve also encountered other groups over our travels, so I have some general knowledge.”
“There are others?”
“Quite a few, although their presence can be rather sporadic, many are nomads, and they aren’t just wolves. We’ve encountered Shifters that turn into bears, tigers, foxes, deer. And all of them have a wide variety of circumstances for their shifting, not just as means to defend against vampires.” His smile takes a wry edge and she laughs weakly.
“So, what are the uh, basics?” As much as she wants all of the lore, she can feel her energy flagging and an ache in her entire body that makes her tempted to just spread out on the floor and let it all drag her into unconsciousness.
Her stomach lets out an unholy snarl before Carlisle can speak, drawing a chuckle from the good doctor. Esme has a massive plate of cake in front of her before the sound settles—Bella’s certain Esme’s gift is knowing when someone needs something—and the decadent chocolate and buttercream frosting makes this entire mess worth it.
Carlisle talks while she eats—“Man, Bella, you’re really wolfing it down!” She chokes trying to swallow and tell Emmett he’s lame at the same time and the giant meets her glaring, watering eyes with glimmering victory.
She gets the gist of it, although the more she tries to focus on what Carlisle’s saying, the more she feels her brain going to mush. Heightened emotions. Heightened senses. Increased strength and agility. Accelerated healing. Radical growth spurt. Mental group chat. Turning into a giant wolf. None of it is overly complicated, although explaining to Charlie why Bella grew six inches and packed on 20 pounds of muscle in the next week might be.
Carlisle pauses for a moment, considering something. “You weren’t experiencing any odd changes lately, were you?”
She thinks over the last couple of weeks, shakes her head uncertainly. “I’ve been having migraines lately, but nothing like you described. No fevers or suddenly being taller.” She pauses to swipe up a glob of icing with her finger, popping it into her mouth without an ounce of shame, then shrugs. “Well, not until after I shifted. I think I’m a little taller now, maybe a half-inch.”
There’s a shout somewhere else in the house from Emmett, the echo of it muddling whatever dig he was making about her still being short. She absently wonders when he had wandered away. There’s a low hiss that follows his shouting, easily identifiable—although there’s only one person left that it could be.
She rubs at her eyes, coming out of her thoughts of the garage to find Carlisle and Edward sharing a look. Before Bella can even frown, the moment ends and Carlisle nods. “Well, we’ll keep an eye on things. Make sure to let us know if you start to feel nauseous or experience any discomfort. You may have shifted before your body was fully prepared, so you might have more difficulty adjusting.”
She nods with a yawn that cracks her jaw. Edward brushes a hand against her shoulder, chuckling. “Bedtime for the human.”
She smiles, ignores the wry urge to correct him, and climbs to her feet, wobbling as the exhaustion tries to drag her back down. When did she even get this tired?
Esme tuts as Bella tries to take her plate to the kitchen, gesturing to Edward and lifting the plate from unsuspecting hands with a fleeting kiss to her forehead that leaves the half-asleep girl flustered, sputtering as Edward gently ushers her out to the car. Feeling teamed up on, Bella looks to Carlisle for some kind of defense, but he only shrugs helplessly, “You know Esme runs things, Bella,” smiling as if he’s proud of how his wife and son are babying her.
She pouts stubbornly, leaning deadweight against Edward’s hands on her shoulders, growling when her feet just slide over the floor.
“You might want to carry her, Edward,” lilts Esme’s deceptively sweet voice and before Bella can finish gasping in offense and betrayal, Edward has literally swept her off her feet. The Cullen matriarch has the audacity to shrug, the glow of her eyes compromising the innocence of her concerned frown, “You don’t have any shoes, dear.”
Bella graciously resigns to the undignified treatment, going limp in Edward’s arms.
“Oh, Bella,” she lets her head list toward Carlisle as Edward pauses, “It likely goes without saying, but the La Push pack will be able to answer the questions I can’t. I would recommend giving them a call in the morning.”
The brunette nods, hoping the little twist of anxiety in her stomach doesn’t show on her face. “Yeah, I’ll call Uncle Billy first thing.” She hopes this doesn’t turn into a big deal.
---
As Edward pulls away from the glowing glass mansion, Bella swears she sees a slender silhouette standing at the mouth of the garage, but it’s gone when she blinks.