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The sky was a damp gray. Rain threatened to pour down at any moment. But Cecilia had to do this. In her hundreds of years on this earth, she’d never met anyone like Jacob, never wanted anyone like Jacob. Besides it was either she or Bella and Bella had gone through enough in the last year to last a lifetime.
The air was ominous and scary. Legend says that her moods could handle weather and it was true. The sky was this gray because that was how she felt. She felt lost, lonely, empty, and abandoned– that she was used to it.
Cecilia is the last of her kind. Human with extraordinary abilities thanks to the ancestors in her bloodline. There used to be cities in Mexico filled with her kind, but after the Spanish colonization, everything changed. The language was lost, and her people were scattered, imprisoned, and sirened. Her family was dead due to non-complicity towards their masters. It used to anger her, but after hundreds of years of survival, she was more depressed than angry. It was easy to get angry and live in anger, but anger made her powers uncontrollable and chaotic. If she lost control she would have to run again. She’d been tired of running.
The Cullens were her everything. They were the family she wished she had, bringing her in, protecting her, hiding her scent from other vampires that would want a siren attached to them to give them whatever they wanted. Cecilia was an Encantada. She didn’t know the proper name of her kind or the language they spoke since she had been born in secret three centuries after that invasion happened and did whatever she could to blend in with other normal humans. Which meant forgetting her language and leaving her people behind.
After searching for hundreds of years, she was the last one left in North America. There were two more of her kind in Europe but they had been sirened for hundreds of years when she found them about two centuries ago. They were on their last days. When an Encantado was sirened to their vampire it drained them of everything. Power, blood, and life. It killed them day by day until death finally took them to a safe place for rest. Cecilia debated on death every day. She considered releasing her soul to the ancestors, letting them know she was ready for a human death– only then would she truly begin to age, instead of being stuck at eighteen forever. Her powers would slowly leave her, making her painfully human in the end.
What were her powers? It was hard to describe them. Cecilia could manipulate the four elements of the earth. Since her mother and great grandmothers were curanderas, she was able to heal the body as if it was a natural-born reflex. She also had these visions that came whenever she touched someone, seeing parts of their futures, pasts, or even past lives. It depended on how she was feeling. Most of the time she could deny them, but other times they were too strong to avoid.
Just like how Jacob Black was avoiding her and Bella and she didn’t know why. She’d gone through everything that had happened. They had just gone to the movies on a rather terrible double date. He left abruptly after almost kissing her and that infuriated her.
So she sat outside his home on a rock hidden in the tree lines, waiting for him to get back. He’s been lying. Her hundreds of years let her easily know that. He was keeping something from her. It brought her more anger, causing thunder to rumble in the distance.
Voices flowed through the edge of the forest. Cecilia’s head snapped up as lightning struck down. She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself… and the weather. The second she stood Sam’s head snapped in her direction. His glare was obvious even from this distance. The others followed.
Jacob’s eyes met hers and she felt a part of her break. The warmth that usually resided in them was gone. She always said he was the sun to her moon and now she knows, looking into his eyes, that the sun has finally set after a long day of shining.
“I need to talk to you, Jacob,” she shouted. She looked at the other who showed no signs of leaving. “Alone.”
Jacob turned to Sam. He nodded in confirmation and that angered her enough to make thunder rumble the ground. He walked with long strides. The clumsiness he usually carried himself with was completely gone. She kept her breathing even to hide the fast pounding of her heart. She was sure that all of Washington could hear it.
“It’s not what you think, Cecilia.” His voice was lower and huskier than usual when he reached her. “It’s not what I imagined either.”
“What?” Her voice was desperate but angry. “What changed? What happened?” He said nothing. “I thought we were-”
“What we were doesn’t matter anymore,” he said through gritted teeth. “It never will again.”
She felt a pain she hadn't felt in a long time. For about three years now Jacob was her sun. The reason for hope in the long years to come.
“You don’t mean that,” she whispered. “Is Sam making you do this?”
He scoffed. “Sam is helping me. He actually cares.” His voice implied a thought that drove a knife through her heart. He was implying that she didn’t care.
The anger rose in her, so the thunder was loud and persistent in response. She didn’t care anymore. If she lost control, so be it. “Oh really? He cares? Last time I checked he wasn’t the one who stood by you these past three years. I can’t believe that you would trust him.”
His eyes darkened and the Jacob she’d come to want was no longer there. “And I can’t believe you trust those bloodsucking demons so much.”
All the blood drained from her face. Her mouth opened and closed once more before finding her voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a level voice.
He scoffed again, taking a step toward her. “You trust them so blindly. You disgust me, Cecilia.” His voice was like venom.
A bolt of lightning came down so hard that the ground shook. Cecilia’s knees buckled and she caught herself by grabbing onto Jacob.
The second her hand touched his chest she felt her eyes roll back. In flashes, she saw Jacob running too fast to match human strides. Then she saw him run behind a tree and come out as a wolf. The image flashed again. She saw a great pair of brown eyes that held the warmth Jacob’s once did. They were Jacob’s eyes– his wolf eyes. The image flashed again and she saw him standing with the other Quileutes.
She came back to her senses, her vision blurry. The rain was pouring down on them. She was on the ground? Her heart drummed in her ears, begging her to become alert.
Jacob Black was a wolf. She felt her body run cold. Wolves were mortal enemies of vampires and Encantados. Wolves hunted her kind down, murdering them in order to stop the vampires from becoming too powerful. It was their first sacred duty as a wolf. It had been since she could remember.
She felt hands on her arms. “Don’t touch me!” She shouted, getting to her feet and backing up several feet from Jacob. Her face was confused and startled. She took several deep breaths.
Jacob Black was a wolf and she could never be with him. Tears threatened to gather and spill.
“You’re right, Jacob.” Her voice was even, but it broke with the last syllable of his name. “It doesn’t matter what we had or what we could’ve had. It doesn’t matter that I wanted you anymore. Or that I lo–” She took another deep breath and felt the pain from the next words closing around her throat. “You will never hear from me ever again and I hope I never hear from you.”
Without another word, he turned toward the house and stalked away. Tears spilled from Cecilia’s eyes. Her heart shattered and it took everything in her to keep her knees from buckling again.
Cecilia turned and began her long walk back to Bella. Pain bubbled in her throat and clouded her mind. She lifted her hands up and knocked down the closet tree by wind. It didn’t make the pain go away. She made a stupid decision and looked back at his house.
Billy Black was sitting in the doorway, staring at her with a shocked expression. Without breaking their eye contact she pulled the tree back up and made it look like she never knocked it down in the first place. He closed the door then.
She felt truly alone, lost, and angry at herself.
Billy Black knows. Soon Sam will too. Then the rest of his pack.
Cecilia walked down the long winding road with a shattered heart, accepting that her days were now numbered.