The forest at La Push breathed with that deceptive stillness that existed only in the early morning, when the fog still clung to the tree trunks and the sound of the ocean reached her muffled, like a distant echo. Leah moved through the trees with steady, almost mechanical movements, her boots sinking slightly into the damp earth as every crunch beneath her feet seemed amplified by her own irritation. It wasn’t the surroundings that made her tense. It was the noise that didn’t belong in the forest.

It wasn’t silence; it never was.

Voices, thoughts, other people’s emotions seeping in without permission, overlapping one another as if her mind were open territory. Laughter that wasn’t hers, worries she didn’t care about, images she didn’t ask to see. She clenched her jaw as she kept walking, focusing on the tangible: the cold air filling her lungs, the scent of pine, the dampness on her skin—anything but them.

“Shut up…” she muttered under her breath, more to herself than to anyone in particular, though she knew it didn’t matter. They’d hear her anyway.

A pulse of irritation crossed the bond almost immediately, followed by a curiosity that needed no name. Leah rolled her eyes, pausing for a second to shift her weight to one leg, gazing into the thicket as if the forest could offer her a barrier that the pack could not.

She couldn’t shut it off, not entirely, but she could push it aside, she could make room.

She couldn't shut it off, not completely, but he could push it aside; he could make room.

Shee exhaled slowly, forcing his mind to harden, to build walls where there were none. No images, no memories, nothing they could use to get in. Just white noise, emptiness. Something of his own, something he didn’t share.

“A night without you… that would be peace,” She thought, with a bitter taste in his mouth.