Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"We don't have to have this talk again, do we?"
Elise gave Paul a double-take, the sharp blue piercing into his very soul as her features turned up into a face of anger and the way her eyebrow quirked was a trigger showing the sarcasm bullet would soon follow.
"I'm sure that you weren't directing that question to me because when we communicate, you do so without a tone and certainly not with you sounding like my father rather than my boyfriend."
Paul was very aware that he was being rude, he sounded like a jackass but he was driven on a series of events that only took place in his mind. Each time Seth brought up Elise fighting the only thing he could picture was Elise around vampires could equal Elise dead. "Just listen to me because I won't be able to say this twice. This conversation is already worn out and quite frankly it raises my blood pressure each time, you will not be fighting any vampires when they finally decide to attack. I do not want you anywhere near where this attack will be taking place because I don't want them anywhere near you. I have complete faith in your abilities, don't get me wrong but I don't want you there at all."
His lips were moving and she could clearly hear each word coming out of his mouth but, like Paul, she's grown immensely tired of the topic. "No need to go on and on about it, Paul. I get it, don't get your testicles in a twist."
"Why are you acting this way?"
All he wanted was answers but Elise couldn't properly give them without being overwhelmed with such emotion. "I am not useless, Paul. You telling me I won't be fighting because you fear my safety makes me feel useless. I am quite literally a grecian legend and not to beep my own horn but I'm pretty badass—you shed clothes and grow into a giant labrador and that's cute but I can literally kill someone with my mind." Pushing brown hair from her face, she stepped forward to make some sort of contact with the man before her, trying to explain without words that she wasn't belittling him, just trying to get her point across clearly. "I'm acting this way out of frustration not because of you in general."
Paul sighed in exhaustion, the impeding weight on his shoulders had never been more visible than in that moment. A large hand running down the length of his face, his silence deafening in the space of the home they stayed in together. "Baby, I don't know what to say."
"It's okay," Rubbing his shoulders with steady fingers, Elise exhaled a deep breath, her voice going soft. "Lay down with me."
A few beats of time passed before she finally spoke to him, her fingers beginning a steady rhythm kneading through his dark hair. "I already promised not to be apart of this fight but Paul, I will not sit out next time."
"El, can you please just stop talking? I just want to lay in silence with my girl pressed up to me and her fingers in my hair." He looked up at her with innocence in his eyes, silently begging her to listen and just grant him the peace he requested.
She couldn't buy the show he was selling though, the longer she was silenced the louder she wished to voice how she felt. "You don't think I can do it, do you?"
"God El, are you serious?"
"You've seen what I can do Paul, I'm just as strong as you and the boys."
"That's arguable and you haven't even been exposed to a high stress environment where you'd have to make a choice that wasn't laid out clearly for you."
A disgusted scoff came from her throat, the dirty look that had slowly been growing in her eye was focused on her boyfriend. The loving touch of her hands on him being snatched off. "That's a bullshit excuse, Sam throws the new boys in the fights without so much as telling them which direction is left and right."
"You aren't one of the new boys, Elise!" Paul Lahore had finally snapped, his hands balled in fists of rage towards the woman he loved more than anything. "You are my imprint, you don't phase into a giant wolf with sharp teeth and claws. Your concealed form is a useless human and unless you can flip your switch from useless to all-powerful-Grecian-goddess as easy as breathing, then no I won't even entertain the idea of allowing you to come with us in this fight or the next one or the next one until your gifts are so well managed and I don't have a damn thing to say about it."
His chest was heaving from lack of oxygen, fire-lit brown eyes completely locked on the woman before him who was simply staring. It was hard to read her expression until she seemed to snap out of her daze. "You know what Paul, you're right."
"I'm what?"
"You're right."
Skeptical of Elise's sudden change of heart, Paul stepped back, one large hand moving to hold his weight against a desk. "I'm right?"
"I won't repeat it twice and we won't be having this conversation again." Moving around him to get off the couch, Elise felt determined. She never backed down easily and this time would be no different.
Once upstairs in her shared room, she sent a text to a friend, going over her plan and somehow getting them to agree to her terms. Paul had come to bed less than twenty minutes later, his sleepy head perched on her chest with his arm wrapped around her torso. "I love you."
"I know love, go to sleep."
Deep into the night, the sky blue-black and a thick overcoat of gray clouds, Elise's eyes shot open with a glow. Her limbs moved mechanically yet graceful when untangling herself from her imprint without waking him and leaving the house without so much as a peep. Not sure of where she was going, the raven haired woman ended up in her past.
The old one level home with the three creaky front steps that led to the bright white door. It was always unlocked, burglary not much of an issue in Forks. Walking her way into her grandmothers home—whom she hadn't seen in months—was oddly familiar, her feet leading until her hands reached a door. Old coats and shoes were usually shoved in there but after shuffling them around a small latch was revealed, a built-in cubby held what she was searching for.
A bow and arrow built elegantly with golden accents and engraved with grecian symbols. Peeking through the crack in her door, Elise's grandmother watches in awe as she sees the glow in her granddaughters eyes, power radiating off her form in waves, the bow and arrow coming to life in her hands. Sleuthing her weapon around her body, her form seemed to straighten as her ranking of high superiority was instilled in her very bones—her soul finally accepting that one final piece and completing a puzzle.
Elise left like a whisper, barely seen and completely unheard, her retreating figure disappearing in the trees but the power she'd come to have was anything but silent.
