SEPTEMBER

Mid-September seemed to be a turning point for a lot of things in Forks, Washington. Kiara had watched with bated breath as Sam, Paul and Jared had finally emerged from the tree-line three hours into their search for Bella Swan. Emily had driven herself and the girl straight over to the Swan residence upon hearing the news, meeting her father and brother there as Sam, Jared and Paul got to work on hunting down the teenager using their knowledge of the woods. 

"I'll try the Cullen's again," Charlie told them all as he pressed heavily against the keypad of his phone. Kiara nodded in agreement, having been considering phoning Rosalie but knowing that if her father noticed it would be the end of whatever their secret relationship was - not that it really would matter, because the words that fell from her father's lips did that anyway.

"The Cullens left town, Charlie."

Kiara looked up at Jacob, almost feeling like her chest was being crushed in two. He had to be lying, she was with Rosalie just the night before as they'd discussed how sneaking around behind her father's back for the next year would be hard but it was something they were willing to do. Jacob's eyes held a look of knowledge, and Kiara almost felt herself recoil from the boy as she realised that he had already known the Cullen's had packed up and left without any word.

Kiara wasn't mad that Jacob hadn't told her, she was mad that he either didn't want her to know or - on the train of thought that he assumed she already did know - didn't even consider checking on her to see if she was okay. He knew about the secret bond forming between the blonde icy Cullen and his sister. Kiara suddenly felt alone, even though she was surrounded by half the town. Jacob opened his mouth to almost say something to his sister, before crossing his arms and closing it. There was nothing he could say right now that would make anything better for anyone.

"Good riddance," Harry Clearwater replied, sharing a look of agreement with the older elders. Emily rubbed her shoulder, aware that Kiara had been close to Rosalie - but even she agreed with the older men. The vampires were bad news for the tribe, they always had been.

"Where'd they go?" Kiara and Charlie asked at the same time, everyone's eyes flickering between them for a moment before Harry continued with breaking the news. He was aware that Kiara went to school with the Cullens and after hearing Bella Swan's involvement he had shared his concern at one of their own also falling into an entanglement with them.

"Hospital said the Doc got offered a big job elsewhere," Harry replied although it was clear to Emily and Billy that he didn't believe that for one second. "Immediate start. Don't worry, we'll find her Charlie."

Kiara turned away from them all as she walked a little father away from the group. She typed frantically against her phone, her heartbeat loud in her ears as she hammered at the keyboard. Just as she ran a frantic hand through her hair and tried to think about what to even start with, a familiar name popped up in her messages tab.

Rosalie Hale: i'm sorry. i'll explain everything later.

Her fingers paused as they began to type out a reply. It was a mix of anger and sadness and betrayal that the blonde would just ghost her all day and then leave without saying anything. She took a deep breath as she tried to compose herself, knowing that she couldn't break down here without having to suffer through the questions. She couldn't expose herself and Rosalie in front of her dad and his disapproving friends.

"CHARLIE!"

Her head snapped up as she finally caught a glimpse of Sam and the boys walking towards them, having gotten so used to seeing them wander around in the cold weather without shirts on that she barely noticed he wasn't wearing one. Bella Swan was wrapped up in his arms, her bright yellow jacket stained with mud and her weary eyes barely focusing on anything as they rejoined the search party.

Kiara watched as Sam passed the almost comatose girl into Charlie's arms, before he almost immediately glided over to Emily and wrapped his fiancée in his arms. He spoke in hushed murmurs with her for a moment before he looked up, his eyes meeting Kiara's as he nodded in understanding at the girl. She nodded back, a silent thank you passed between them as she looked to where Charlie was rushing the girl inside.

She nodded back, slowly putting her phone in her pocket as she allowed Jacob's arm to wrap around her shoulders and direct her back to their truck. She sure as hell hoped that Rosalie had a perfectly good explanation for not even giving her a heads up.

____

"I wanted to tell you," Rosalie had told her, her voice ringing out from the other end of the line as Kiara paced outside of the Swan residence later on that morning. She'd stayed over at Charlie's request, not wanting Bella to be left alone while he had to go back to work that weekend. "It just all happened so quickly. One minute I was listening to Carlisle on the phone and the next we were packing our stuff and covering the furniture with dust sheets."

Kiara had never been much of an overthinker but when it came to the Cullen's, all she seemed to find herself doing was doubting every word that left their mouths. She was stupid to tell herself that she was okay to trust Rosalie, especially when she didn't trust a word that had came out of any of their mouths after Bella had supposedly fallen out of a hotel window. She should have known that she was setting herself up for a heartbreak.

The Black hadn't listened to much more of her excuse after that. Maybe she was being petty, but it almost felt like they had been doomed from the start. She wanted to hate Rosalie for abandoning her like that, but did the blonde even owe her an explanation to begin with? They weren't even a real couple - and as much as that realisation hurt Kiara, she also couldn't help but realise that she didn't even know much about the blonde.

She'd never been to their house. She'd never heard about any of their lives before being adopted by the Cullen matriarch, let alone when it even happened. She didn't even know what Rosalie's go to karaoke song was and usually that was one of the first things Kiara would learn about a person. It was almost like she had been cruising through the past few months with blinkers on.

"If you wanted to you should have," Kiara had replied, her voice strained as her finger hovered over the button on the phone. She had already explained to the blonde that there would be no bad blood between them, and Rosalie had promised they'd be able to stay in touch via text if she ever needed anything. "Goodbye, Rose."

Mid September was rough for Kiara, but for Bella? It was the start of a slump that not even the Black twins could pull her out of.

______

OCTOBER

"Any luck with Bella?" 

Kiara shrugged as she ate her cereal, looking up as Jacob entered the kitchen. He had seemed to grow even taller - something that even Sam, Jared and Paul had picked up on. It was almost as if they had been watching her brother sometimes by the way they spoke but she just put it down to them having been keeping an eye out for others on the reservation. The animal attacks had all suddenly stopped since the start of summer and she was sure the wilderness rangers were getting bored.

"Same as last week and the week before that," Kiara replied as Billy rolled into the cramped space too. "She's like... comatose. Even in school she avoids all of us and won't even sit at our lunch table anymore. I've tried but there's no getting through to her. Edward leaving really did a number on her."

Jacob sighed as he left without saying anything, his short temper causing him to slam the door as he went. Kiara looked up for a moment before rolling her eyes and continuing to eat her breakfast in silence. She tried to ignore the heavy silence from her father but eventually her spoon clattered against the bowl as she slammed her hands on the table and looked up in irritation. Her trust for people might have gone since the departure of the Cullen family, but her short temper remained.

"What?"

Billy almost chuckled for a moment as he looked at his youngest. She was so much like her mother that it almost hurt, yet she had his and Jacob's temper. All of his kids had inherited traits of the short temper that he had been born with, but it was certainly Kiara who got most of it in her genes. Billy was just glad that women couldn't phase, or Kiara would have had worse control issues than Paul Lahote.

"Your brother has it bad for that girl," Billy joked, causing a small smile to twitch at the corners of Kiara's mouth. His face turned sour for a second. "Better him than those pale faces."

And just like that, Kiara had lost her appetite.

_____

NOVEMBER

"How is she, Alice?"

The smallest vampire shrugged, rubbing her head a little as she looked at Rosalie with sympathetic eyes. Despite exchanging the occasional text message with Kiara Black, almost all communication had ceased between them after the Cullen's had been forced to leave at such short notice.

"She's okay," Alice replied as Jasper placed a hand on his wife's shoulder, shooting Rosalie a look of pleading - a secret plea for her to drop this extra pressure that had fallen on to Alice's shoulders.

Rosalie maybe wouldn't have even been so infuriated if Edward had stayed around to live with the mistake he had caused but her adoptive brother had split off from the Olympic coven, choosing instead to take time away from the family as he soaked in self-depreciation and disgust at himself for bringing Bella into harms way. Rosalie wanted nothing more than to cause Edward to suffer for taking her away from the brief chance she had with Kiara, but he wasn't around.

She had begged Alice to keep an eye on Kiara and make sure that she was okay, but Alice had already made a promise to Edward that she would do the same for Bella Swan. As much as it infuriated Rosalie that Alice paid more attention to Bella's choices and actions than she did Kiara, she understood it deep down. Only Rosalie had really gotten to spent time with Kiara and even then, the girl didn't know any of the family secrets in the way that Bella did.

Rosalie knew that watching Bella was a safety precaution for them all, while watching Kiara was a selfish request from the blonde. Besides, Alice had been getting more and more headaches from trying to watch both of the girls and while Rosalie wanted more than nothing to make sure Kiara was okay, she would just have to trust the teenager to stay away from vampires and other life changing events.

Because Rosalie swore that was the difference between herself and Edward: he was selfish and ruined their family, so she wasn't about to let her own selfishness do the same. Kiara Black would be fine without Rosalie, and soon the blonde would be nothing more than a secret fling that she would look at with a fondness.

_____

DECEMBER

Paul waved at Kiara as she hopped on her bike, the chain glistening in the winter sun as she hurried back home. The nights were darker earlier and she wanted to be back before it got too dark for her to see the bumps in the tracks. Jacob had finally fixed her bike after almost an entire year and she was just glad that she was no longer having to trek from her house to Sam's. Thankfully, the boys were still giving her a lift to school so she wasn't having to suffer the long cycle but on warmer days she would occasionally still go herself.

It wasn't like Bella was offering her a lift anymore since the girl had basically shut herself off. She barely went to school and when she did she still wouldn't sit with Kiara and her friends, although she had fully accepted now that she was only really friends with Mike and the rest of them during school. She was still an outsider to them, and she wasn't really bothered since she had mended her friendship with the La Push boys (even if she did think there was something they weren't telling her about their... job).

"I think she deserves to know," Paul broke the laughter between Emily, Jared, Sam and Kim as he re-entered the pack house. Sam's eyebrows furrowed a little as he placed his muffin back down on to the plate as he turned to look at Paul. They'd gone over why they couldn't tell Kiara Black before and usually Paul wouldn't continue to press after Sam said no.

"I do too," Jared admitted, backing Paul up. The boys nodded at each other in approval, Paul trying to hide the look of surprise that crossed his face at Jared actually siding with him instead of Sam. Since Jared was the second in command, he usually always took Sam's viewpoint of things rather than Paul's despite the boys having grown up like brothers.

Sam sighed as he looked at Emily and Kim, seeing how the two girls were looking at him with expressions that told him they also wanted Kiara to be allowed into the loop. Sam rubbed his face with his hand, looking between them all with a conflicted look on his face. Telling Kiara about them would mean bringing another person into the line of fire and even though they hadn't had many more vampire sightings since the Cullen's had left, he didn't want to put her in harms way. The only reason Emily and Kim were allowed to know was because they were imprints - Kiara wasn't.

"Not yet," Sam disagreed, knowing that what he said went. "Soon, I promise. But I promised Billy she'd only find out if absolutely necessary or if Jacob ended up phasing, and I intend to keep that promise."

______

JANUARY

Things changed in the new year for Kiara Black.

She'd slowly started to lose the urge to text Rosalie about everything that happened in her life. Their last few conversations had been getting shorter and shorter and Kiara couldn't help but feel like it was almost time to let the blonde go. It wasn't healthy for either of them to keep on pretending that this would somehow work out, especially when Kiara had promised Rosalie that she wouldn't tell Bella they were still in contact.

Apparently, Bella had been trying to reach Edward and Alice regularly but neither replied. Rosalie had told Kiara that Edward was off travelling to get over the break up and that Alice didn't want Bella to be strung along by the family. Kiara didn't understand how the break up had happened or how it had all gone so sour so quickly but she had no intentions of asking either Rosalie or Bella for she knew that would just be an unnecessarily uncomfortable conversation to have.

So when Bella Swan pulled up outside her and Jacob's house in the middle of January, it was safe to say that Kiara was very surprised. She hadn't even phoned ahead to let the twins know that she was coming over and the white sheet that covered the back of her truck told Kiara that she was here for more than just a little catch up over a soda.

"Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca?" Jacob exclaimed as he brushed past Kiara and wrapped his arms around the brunette girl, hoisting her into the air and spinning her around. Kiara raised an eyebrow as she sniggered slightly at the phrase that just left his mouth, thinking it sounded a little weird to come from him.

"Yeah," Kiara replied as Bella finally looked at the girl, not having realised that she was also standing with Jacob when her truck had pulled up. "It's about time you came by. I think Jake was going to lose his mind if he asked me once more how you were doing."

Jacob turned to look at her with a scowl on his face as she tried to embarrass him, his eyes narrowing before he turned his attention back to Bella and hoped the Swan wouldn't think too much into Kiara hinting at his crush on her. Bella, however, was perfectly aware of Jacob's crush and had flushed a little red in embarrassment at Kiara's comment. She hated the attention.

"I brought you something," Bella replied, breaking the awkward tension that Kiara had just created. She motioned to the back of her truck, pulling back a large tarp sheet that Kiara hadn't even noticed was lying across the back. 

"Scrap metal. You shouldn't have," Jacob teased her, looking at two rusting old motorbikes that Bella had somehow managed to lift into the bed of the truck by herself. Kiara instantly was looking for ways to get out of whatever suggestion Bella was about to make, having no intention of getting on one of those bikes. She knew that they were deathtraps just by looking at them.

"I rescued them from the dump. They'd cost more than they're worth to fix... unless one had a mechanic-type friend."

"Me, being the mechanic-type friend?" Jacob joked back before laughing a little as he looked back tot the motorbikes. "Since when are you into motorcycles?"

Just as Kiara went to make a snarky remark about the new and improved Bella Swan, she felt her phone vibrate frantically in her pocket. She excused herself as she walked slightly away from the duo for a moment, her hand grasping at her pocket as she tugged the device out of her jeans with little effort.

Her thumb hovered over the screen as she looked at the name that was flashing across the screen. She hadn't had a proper conversation with Rosalie in a while and she didn't really know how to react to the blonde girl's name pulsing across the device. She wanted to pick up, she wanted to open her heart out just like she wanted to do every time they had spoken, she wanted to scream down the phone and tell Rosalie just how much she missed her - but it didn't matter.

There was nothing she could say that would bring Rosalie and her family back, because at the end of the day, Kiara Black believed that they had moved town because Carlisle got a better job. She couldn't be angry at the man for choosing what was best for his family, although Bella suspected that Kiara would have been furious just like she was if she had ever known the real reason behind the Cullen's sudden disappearance.

Kiara knew she couldn't really be too heartbroken about Rosalie, especially after months since they had left the rainy, remote town of Forks. She was never even in an official relationship with Rosalie, they had never really discussed what would become of themselves and their small... situationship. Kiara knew one thing; she had somewhere along the way fallen hard, fast and brutally for Rosalie Hale.

Just as her finger went to swipe to accept the call, she noted how Bella and Jake turned to look at the edge of the tree line. Bella looked rather confused while Jacob looked angry, his eyes narrowing into slits as his head turned back to look at his sister who had just noticed what they had. His fists clenched a little at his side as he noticed how a smile fell across her face, the phone in her hand being rammed back into her jeans as she took off towards the tree line.

Bella watched Kiara go in amusement, having been aware of her mended relationships with Paul Lahote and his friends but not having realised how strange it looked from the outside. The three boys at the tree line were all wearing nothing but shorts and battered tennis shoes, yet Kiara was trotting across the yard as if it was nothing new. Bella maybe wouldn't have thought twice about it had it been the warm summer months, but it was January and the girl was wearing at least three layers to stay warm.

"Who is that?" Bella asked, although she was very aware of what the answer she was about to recieve from Jacob was.

"That's Sam Uley and his hall-monitor gang," Jacob snorted, feeling uneased by the way the three men cast a glance at him before they embraced Kiara. It was almost as if the girl had forgotten she was hanging out with her brother and Bella as soon as her eyes laid sight on the three men. "Which Kie seems to have became a part of."

Bella watched the four turn and head into the tree line, a sinking feeling in her stomach. A chill swept over her for a moment as she looked at the space where they disappeared, something nagging at the back of her mind that she couldn't quite figure out. Danger seemed to scream from the men but she couldn't quite figure out what the vibe she was getting from them was.

Not that it mattered anyway, because while Bella Swan had spent her school year hanging out with vampires, Kiara Black was about to get a whole lot more familiar with a pack of ridiculously oversized wolves.