𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐑. paul lahote ✓

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄

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HIGH TENSIONS

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE, AUGUSTINE STOOD IN EMMETT'S DOORWAY, TIMIDLY.

The buff vampire was never quiet— it wasn't in his nature to be the silent type. He had booming laughter and thunderous footsteps, and yet the minute Augustine and Carlisle showed up back at the house, you'd never even know he was home.

His back was turned to her, seated on a loveseat in his incredibly boyish room filled with video games and sports memorabilia. She knocked her fingers against the door, bottom lip pulled between her teeth. "Em?"

Amber met amber, his head craning in her direction despite his gaze quickly averting to the football he was leisurely fiddling with. "Can I... can I come in?"

He only nodded, so slightly that she would've missed it had she been human. Augustine ventured into his room on achingly silent feet, a habit she'd picked up in her youth where she learnt which floorboards made creaking noises and which did not.

She stared at him and the obvious tension in his shoulders, and nearly caved in on herself as she sputtered out an, "I'm sorry."

The wobble in her tone caught Emmett's attention, and though he watched as she rolled her shoulders back to try and relieve some of her own anxiousness, he could see the way her eyebrows were pinched.

She looked so small in front of him.

"Why're you saying sorry?" he asked, letting his confusion seep into his tone.

She blanched, nails pressing into the marble of her palms at her sides. "I'm sorry that I hurt your feelings," she responded, because she knew that she had, "I don't want you to be mad at me 'cause I—"

"Aug, I'm not mad at you," he interrupted her, but quickly saw her eyes narrow disbelievingly in his direction. "Okay, yeah, I was pissed; I was pissed at the situation. I mean, you stuck up for him!"

"I couldn't help it!" she snapped, but her body instantly recoiled at her own words. Emmett watched the way she took a small step back. "I don't know what happened but I just, I don't want you to hate me."

She hadn't seen Paul in months, but the moment she had, her instincts went into overdrive and not even the rational part of her brain (y'know, the part that still resented the shifter) seemed to work. Is this how Edward felt after being away from Bella for so long?

Emmett easily saw the conflicted look in her eyes and sighed, tossing the football aside. Her own eyes were trained at the floor when she felt arms wrap around her, and suddenly she felt the need to bite back a sob from escaping.

"You're my little sister, Augustine," he said with absolution, giving the girl a tentative squeeze when he felt her embrace him back.

"I'm not exactly thrilled," he added quickly, and it was fair enough; his first impressions of the wolf had been anything but ideal. "Especially since that dog's been nothing but an ass to you."

"—but I could never hate you. I think it'd kill me if I even tried to."

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