PROLOGUE

In my family, there's my infinitely perfect older sister Bella, then there's me.. I'm the kid who gets ignored or written off. I'm the one who's constantly screwing up, always in some kind of trouble or another. Bella can do no wrong. Everything I've ever done is wrong. She's always had good grades, she looks gorgeous and everyone falls at her feet to worship, it seems like.

I guess that's one of the reasons I'm in the fix I'm in that got me moved back to Forks.. See, I'm being forced to move in with our father now because I'm supposedly heading straight down a path that my mother seems to think is going to screw up my whole life totally. And I don't want to admit it, but she's kinda right about it. And it scares me.. But not as much as going back to Forks does.. In Forks, I'll be buried so far beneath my older sister's perfect shadow I'll never dig my way out. It's why I stopped going to Forks when we were kids. Everybody loved her.. And when I say everybody, I mean literally everybody.

Like I said before, when Bella stopped going to visit our father, I stopped too. Figured he wouldn't want the black sheep kid underfoot. I haven't been back to Forks since I was probably about 9 or so.. And the last time I was there, I told myself I'd never go back.

But I was told once by a wise person, never say you won't do something.. because usually, when you say you won't do it, that's the very thing you wind up doing.. So, here I am, moving back to Forks... And that's where the adventure all begins...


The drive in from the bus station Charlie picked her up from had been filled with tense silence. Neither father nor his youngest, Carlie, spoke much. If they did, they probably would've fought. Carlie, of course, was your typical rebellious free spirited 16 year old teenager, and she had a notoriously short fuse temper wise, that her father and her older sister liked to say came from Renee, not either of them, they were much calmer than that.

"I'm still having a hard time understanding why in the heck you'd go to a party that you knew there would be no adult supervision at, and drinking, and how you wound up coming back to Renee's in the back of the cop car in the first place, Carlie." her father finally said, his warm brown eyes fixed on her intently, full of parental concern.

It wasn't uncommon.. Carlie knew that she was the family screw up for lack of a better term. She often found herself on the receiving end of concerned and confused looks, or a lecture. Or being grounded.

This kinda stuff never happened to her perfect older sister, Bella, of course. The thought made Carlie scowl as she bit her lower lip and said through gritted teeth while staring straight out the windshield at the road leading into the small town of Forks, "I'd really rather not talk about it.. Okay?"

"That kind of thing will not be tolerated here. I mean it." Charlie said firmly as he added under his breath "I've already got my hands full with your older sister Bella and this new boyfriend of hers."

Just the mention of Edward fucking Cullen made a shiver trail slowly down her spine. She'd met the guy once exactly, when she and her mother, her mother's new husband Phil had still been living in Phoenix, before he switched minor league baseball teams and wound up in Florida.

The guy gave her the creeps.

The guy, if you asked her, was a fucking creep.

But the mental image of holier than thou, perfect, innocent little Bella in deep shit for once made her laugh and remark dryly, "Funny, Charlie.. But we both know she's practically perfect."

Charlie looked at his daughter for a moment, trying to figure out when she started to think of the remaining three members of her own family as 'the enemy' and just where he and Renee went wrong as parents that would explain her escapades as of late.

Between his oldest daughter's bad boy fetish and his youngest's outlaw tendencies, he had the distinct feeling he'd have a thick head of white hair by the time all this was sorted out and the girls were grown, their teenage years safely behind them.

That is, if Bella didn't throw her life away on this Cullen kid and Carlie didn't wind up in jail or in a grave or something.

"So... What'd she do?"

"He moved and now she refuses to leave her room.. I've even had to resort to forcing her to go out with her friends and have a life.. This was after we found her in the woods after she'd been missing overnight, of course. It's like this guy has some kind of hold on her." Charlie said, noting that Carlie seemed to be practically gloating at the moment, enjoying this news about her older sister entirely too much.

"It's not a good thing." Charlie stated firmly, tense as he drove them through the small and almost immaculate main strip of Forks Washington. Carlie rolled her eyes when he wasn't looking and slid out a piece of spearmint chewing gum, unwrapping it, slipping it into her mouth.

She'd kill for a smoke right now.

She'd be doing even better if she were back in Florida, soaking up the sun on the beach or riding her best friend Mary's jet ski or something.

But, alas, she was here.. In rainy and gloomy Washington. She could feel the air thickening already, she could feel herself disappearing and fading into obscurity even now. She raked a hand through her dyed dark blonde and caramel brown highlighted long hair and sighed in contempt.

She hadn't wanted to move to her dad's. That had been her mother's decision after one too many 'wake up calls' failed to reach her uncaring and unlistening ears. She knew this, she wasn't an idiot. It didn't mean, however, that she had to just go along with it and be happy, smile all the time about it. Because frankly, she wasn't happy about it at all.

"And your mother said you got a tattoo? You know how I feel about those."

"And I told her, Charlie, it's not a big deal. I got a friend to do mine, it has a meaning. I'm not just doing it to do it, this tattoo really means something to me."

"What?" Charlie asked as she sighed and looked out the passenger window then said "You wouldn't get it, okay? Let's just not talk, sir. We always wind up fighting and I'm sick and damn tired of arguing. It does nobody any good."

"Good idea." Charlie muttered as she jammed the earbuds into her ears and cranked up the sound on her Iphone so loudly that she thought her ears would bleed from the heavy metal blasting into them. She tapped her faded red Converse against the floorboard of her father's police cruiser and let her eyes dart around, take in the limited sights of small town Forks Washington.


Meanwhile, Bella sat in her room going back over everything that had happened to her lately, what was about to happen now with the arrival of her little sister. They hadn't ever actually gotten along for more than ten minutes tops. She was quiet, solemn and studious, Carlie was wild, daring and outgoing. And truth be told, Bella resented her baby sister for that.

No matter what stupid thing she got herself into, Carlie always managed to get out of it on her own.. Bella, on the other hand, had to rely on everyone else to get her out. And this pissed Bella off greatly. She wished she were as independent and feisty as her baby sister was known for being.

Just not as good at getting into and making trouble and chaos. God only knew she had enough of that in her life currently.

She stared at the cell phone in her lap and bit her lower lip, debated on leaving Jacob yet another text message. He hadn't been coming around much lately.

It bothered her.

He was her best friend, she depended on him for everything lately. Jessica, Angela and the others at Forks High had turned their backs on her when she had her post breakup freakout.

The slamming of a car door in the driveway below her window and the filtering in of loud arguing had her sighing in a resigned way. She was going to hate this situation already, she could just sense it. Her sister being around was going to be an absolute pain in her ass.

She stood and tiptoed to the window, peering out the curtain and down into the yard below, watching her father and her baby sister unloading the remainder of her baby sister's things.

"Great.. Now I'll have to deal with her crap constantly. "

Just as she stepped away from the window, she heard the faintest howl of a lone wolf near the woods that surrounded the back of the house.

"Well I know he's on patrol most likely. Avoiding me but on patrol." Bella thought to herself as she flopped back down into the chair at her desk.


In the woods nearby, Embry Call ran in wolf form, alone. It was his turn to patrol and he'd caught the scent hanging on the air, cherries.. They had his mouth watering, which when you considered he didn't actually eat cherries often, that was saying something. He swore as a branch caught him in the side, poking, but he didn't stop his determined run, his nose leading the way by now.

Behind him he could hear the howls of his pack but he paid them no mind for now. He'd heard all the stories about imprinting, about how great it was, and how badly it could go, and he was almost the only one left in their pack currently that actually hadn't imprinted on anyone other than Leah.

So he had to know, at least, if that was what happened to him.

The white fence that seperated the Swan's yard from the woods approached closer and closer and he stopped in his tracks.

No, it couldn't be Bella, not that leech loving bimbo.

He could hear Jacob's thought on that, and he knew that if a double imprint were to happen, there would be a fight to the death almost... Or the girl would have to make the choice.

And he knew that if it were Bella, he'd be on the losing end of that choice.

Something nagged at him, though and he thought about something Bella had said in an earlier voicemail to Jacob, something about Carlie being forced to move to Forks because she'd gotten into a lot of trouble in Florida, how Bella needed Jacob to come over right this second, she needed her best friend with her.

Jacob, of course, had ignored the call and deleted the voicemail after listening to it and rolling his eyes. It wasn't a secret among the pack that Jacob was fed up with coming in second to Edward Cullen even though he was still gone for the moment.

Long story short, Jacob was pretty much done with Bella at this point and Embry doubted that their friendship would ever be fixed. He cleared his mind of any and all thoughts Bella related, just so he wouldn't get his ass kicked by Jacob when back in human form, and then peered curiously through the large bushes running along the fence that kept the yard and the woods seperate.

As soon as she stepped out of the police cruiser, scowling in anger, eyes darting around warily, he couldn't take his eyes off of her. A slow burning white hot heat rushed through his veins and his heart rate sped up almost to the point that he thought he'd have to sit down for a minute. Everything that bound him to reality vanished.. All there was left was her. His eyes darted around, then roamed slowly and almost possessively over this petite female that was pretty much the the only really good thing in his world now.

She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, even angry as she was presently, having an argument with her father about something. 'Wow.. I.. So that's her.. Carlie.. ' he thought to himself dumbly, not bothering to censor his personal thoughts for the pack that remained behind him, still closer to the La Push side of the woods.

He howled before he even realized it and his eyes followed her around the yard as she moved around, carrying her things into the house from Charlie's police cruiser. As soon as he realized what he'd done, and the full weight of what had just happened between them, he had to sit down on a root of a nearby tree after changing back into his human form while he waited for the others to hurry their asses up and bring him his clothing.

"That bitch can eat her heart out. Love bites but so do I." Carlie sang along with her current favorite Halestorm song as she worked on getting the remainder of her things from her father's cruiser before the rain started up again.

The popping of a twig in the bushes nearby had her head snapping up, her eyes darting around. She'd heard a wolf howling earlier, and she'd been tempted to abandon unpacking and moving herself in in favor of going to find the wolf that howled, but her father quickly ended that when he said she wasn't going into the woods when it was about to be dark out, all alone.

She rubbed the back of her neck and bit her lower lip. She felt this sensation, a prickling on the fine hairs on the back of her neck as if someone were watching her intently. She counted backwards from 3 to 1 and then she spun around slowly, eyes darting around.

The flash of something as it ran at almost lightning speed through the woods had her raking her fingers slowly through her long hair a few moments as she ultimately shrugged it off. "Just get this finished so Charlie's not riding my ass all night." she muttered as she walked towards the house's open door with the last of her boxes in her arms.

In the woods, Embry sat on the trunk of a fallen tree as questions came at him from the left and the right, Jacob's main concern being that he hadn't imprinted on precious Bella, of course.

"All of you.. Shut up."

"Well? Happy now? It happened." Paul asked as Embry nodded and managed a slight grin. Now, of course, the hard part was getting the balls to approach the girl...

And doing it without Sam's knowledge, of course... But he'd figure it out soon enough he hoped.


"So there's wolves here." Carlie said as she flopped down on the bed opposite her sister's bed. She definitely was not looking forward to sharing a room with her older sister. Bella had this thing about telling on her.. For everything.

She'd always been a bit of a melodramatic whiner, in Carlie's opinion, afraid that every fun thing Carlie did was going to somehow wind up getting her hurt and into trouble.

So what if it did? At least she was living her life.

Not retreating into her room because some dipshit creep ass guy abandoned her.

Bella didn't answer her. For now, the silence was a comfort. It was awkward, but it was a comfort. At least if Bella wasn't talking, Bella wasn't butting in or running back to tell mommmy and daddy when Carlie tried to have a life.

Or making everyone love her with her 'perfection'.

If she wasn't talking, nobody was paying her any more attention than they'd pay Carlie to begin with.. So Carlie wasn't having the fact that Bella was the favorite child to their parents rubbed in her face.

At least that's how she saw things.

"I noticed." Bella finally said in a hoarse voice as she looked at her baby sister who was now sitting at their bedroom's desk, legs propped up on it's surface, staring out the window angrily. "Look.. I get that you don't want to be here.. But Charlie's had a tough time lately, with me."

Carlie only gave her a thumbs up as a reply and went back to staring out the window in silent hostility.

Forks was the absolute last place she wanted to be right now.

Back in her sister's perfect shiny shadow.

Would she ever find anybody who'd just accept her for the fuck up she was?

Sometimes she wondered.. Because her immediate family didn't seem to and the few friends she had were only friends when she had something or could get something they all wanted.

They scattered like wildfire usually, when she was in trouble or needed them.

Bella's cell phone lit up and her eyes scanned the text. She raised a brow and stole a brief glance at her little sister as she went over what had apparently happened earlier when the wolf howled.

Apparently, her little sister was the imprint of Embry Call.

This was about to get interesting because the two were polar opposites, as different as night and day. She texted back saying she'd keep the secret.

And Carlie continued to stare quietly out the window, almost as if she were watching for something. Around 10 she stood and stretched then said aloud "I thought maybe I'd actually see the damn thing."

"What?"

"Earlier, in the yard.. I think I caught a glimpse of the wolf as it ran through the woods. Kinda wanted to see it.. You know how I am about that stuff, sis."

Bella nodded and then said "Just go to sleep. You'll probably see it sooner or later."

Carlie however, was intently working on wiggling the bedroom window open as quietly as possible. Bella groaned, she'd known her baby sister wasn't going to just go to sleep like any other normal teenage girl.. No, she was intent on seeing this werewolf (Embry's wolf form, of course) up close and personal.

"The hell are you doing?"

"What's it look like, Bella? I'm gonna go outside."

"But Charlie said.."

"And he's asleep, okay? It's not like he's gonna know. I'll be back ten minutes, tops." Carlie said as she flashed a smirk at her sister and then began her descent out the bedroom window. She laughed as quietly as she could as she sprinted across the yard, careful not to let her heavy soled boots make too much noise.

A few moments later, she emerged through the other side of the trees and was standing in the forest. She raked her hand through her hair and muttered "Now if I were a wolf..." as she wandered slowly around, using only the dim light of her cell phone as a flashlight to guide her.

Her older sister, she thought to herself, would never dare do something like this. She ran through the forest when she heard the wolves cries starting up in the general vicinity. But as she rounded the corner, she crashed headlong into a pale skinned man with bright red eyes who leaned in and sniffed her.

She stiffened her spine and glared up at him. "The fuck man? Did you really just sniff me?"

He chuckled. Silly girl.. She obviously didn't know how sweet her blood smelled to him or how he could dine on her blood in a matter of seconds. His eyes roamed slowly over the petite and curvy teenage girl who was alone in the woods at night.

She'd come from Cullen's mate's home... He wondered a moment if the girl knew about vampires and werewolves and how they actually did in fact exist. But he digressed.. he had a job to do.. He was here to see if it were true, if the Cullens had actually left Forks and the girl who'd caused such an uproar among the Volturi behind.

Because a vampire never actually left their true mate. Not to this vampire's knowledge.

And the girl being human was a bit of a problem for them.. Especially considering just how much Aro wanted the girl's mental shield.

He tried to pry around in this one's pretty little head.

He chuckled at the darkness in it, the hostility, the fact that she wasn't actually afraid of the man standing in front of her. And that when he'd smelt her just now, he'd sort of pissed her off. But what really made him laugh was the fact that she was in the woods, alone, at night, just to find one of the damn dogs that patrolled the area for the nearby Indian reservation.

He had a passing wonder about that, but he kept it silent.

"Are you hearing me, sir? I asked what the fuck you're looking at me like that for. " Carlie asked as she backed away a little. She'd seen way too many horror movies that started out like this. Gulping, she backed away a little more when the man stepped closer.

"So the girl.. She's your older sister.. tell me, Carlie, does she know just how much you resent that?" he asked, trying to hypnotize and charm her with his gaze. He liked using hypnosis, even if he didn't do it often. He'd gotten quite good at it, too, over his centuries long life span.

She tried to blink, to keep backing away, but she couldn't actually do it. And then out of nowhere, a wolf's low and throaty growl broke the silence between them as a wolf lunged, taking down the vampire, who was one of Aro's many assistants.

"Fucking hell." Carlie muttered as she quickly started to back away, wondering just how in the hell she was so good at finding these kinds of situations to get herself into.

Would it really have killed her to just stay home tonight?

She groaned and bit her lower lip, afraid now, very afraid.. She hid her face in her hands and peeking through her fingers, she winced as the fight came to a violent and bloody (and definite in the case of the man who'd probably been about to skin her alive, make a pie out of her vital organs and a windchime out of her vertebrae or maybe even kidnap her and sell her into a prostitution ring in a foreign country for all she knew.. Eithe rway, he was dead now, the bastard actually died laughing, so she figured he must have been truly sick..) end and the wolf walked over, tired, nudging her hand with his cold wet snout.

She screamed a little in fright when she looked up and the wolf stood there, watching her with these curiousity filled and oddly enough almost human looking eyes.

"Don't eat me.. This is clearly not how I meant to see you up close and in person.. Naturally, I do something, go off half cocked and now I'm gonna get eaten."

The wolf shook it's furry head and nuzzled it's snout against her face. She winced a little in fear.. But a closer look into the eyes of the wolf sort of calmed her down a little.

If he were going to eat her, he'd clearly have done it already. Obviously, the wolf was saving her life. Which was odd when you considered that wolves were normally known as being predatory themselves. Wolves were one of her favorite animals, she knew a lot of trivial things about them.

Cautiously her fingers reached out while it was standing still enough and then her hand slowly moved over the sleek fur of the wolf's head. "Good boy. You might have just kept me from dying before I actually lost my v card, big guy."

'Mine.' Embry thought to himself as he continued to nuzzle against her, letting his nose fill with the strong scent, letting her fingers trail lazily through his fur.

If he'd been a human, he'd have died laughing when she spoke up moments later and asked his wolf form, "So.. any oppositions to being called Elvis?"

'As long as you're mine I don't care.. I do wonder why in hell you want to name my wolf form Elvis though..' he thought to himself as she momentarily leaned her face against his furry face.. "Truthfully, Elvis, I came out here tonight to see you up close and in person.. I've kinda always had this thing for wolves. And dogs.. My sister's never liked them so I couldn't actually own one.. Or at least that's the excuses I got when I'd ask Phil and Renee or even Charlie for one for my birthday or something when I was a kid.."

'So I'm what? Your secret pet for now? How would that work?' he wondered as he whined to attempt communicating with her.

She giggled a little and standing said quietly, "Thanks.. For saving me from that creep." as she took one last wary look at the large wolf and took off at a run on very shaky legs.

She'd just watched someone get ripped apart limb from limb by a giant wolf.. Of course she wasn't okay currently.

And she found herself wondering why the wolf didn't turn and attack her too...

And now, the kicker was that she couldn't tell anyone. Or they'd all think she was nuts or lying. Or something.. Because unless Bella said it, in their household at least, nobody believed it.

She slid into bed after changing into her pajamas and Bella hissed in the darkness, "That was more like an hour and thirty minutes."

"Shut the fuck up and go to sleep, Bella. I'm not in the mood, okay?"

"I was worried. You're lucky dad didn't come in and find you gone." Bella said solemnly as Carlie lie there and rolled her eyes before shoving her head underneath the pillow. She highly doubted that anybody would've actually missed her.

After all, she wasn't their precious, perfect, pretty little Bella, now was she?

"Did you find the wolf at least?" Bella asked, trying to make conversation with her little sister. It hurt sometimes that they were so far apart now. That there was this anger and tension surrounding them. That they couldn't talk for more than five minutes without a loud and bitter argument.

Carlie sighed and then said quietly, "Yeah, I found him. Sorry about just now.. I'm just jumpy, okay? Maybe tomorrow we can try to hang out or something.." feeling guilty for all the tension and hostility towards Bella on her part.

Maybe she should try a little bit.

After all, you only had one family, even if at times you wished like hell you could've picked your own. Or that you could strangle some of them. And Bella was her only sister and soon Bella would be gone, off living her own life.

And they hadn't been very close the past f ew years.

"Yeah.. Hey, remember Jacob? I was actually going to go to La Push and hang out with him tomorrow, if he still wants me to.. Maybe you can come too."

"Those are your friends, I'd just be in the way."

"Not really.. Jacob's pretty much the only one who likes me."

"So why go?"

Bella didn't answer and about ten minutes later, Carlie heard her sister's faint snoring.

She got the feeling that there was more to her sister's invite than she knew.. And more to her sister's statement about Jacob being the only one who liked her there.

And somehow, god help her, she got the feeling that that creepy psycho looking ex of her sisters was involved.. And maybe what happened to her tonight was too.

Something was bugging her about what she'd almost had happen to her earlier.. She'd only seen eyes that red one time.. And that one time was at their old dance studio in Phoenix.. When she'd watched her sister's boyfriend rip some guy up after that guy tried to attack her sister.

She never told either of them she'd seen it all happen, but it gave her even more cause to dislike Edward Cullen.. She'd watched him kill and burn another human being.

Even if she didn't exactly like her older sister most of the time.. What if he did that to her one day?

She finally fell asleep. Her first day in Forks had been an eventful one, alright, but tomorrow might hold even more adventure. She was excited for some reason, that she was or might be going to La Push with her big sister.. She wasn't sure why, exactly...