A/N: Ryan Wakeh, to me is an amazing character with a lot more depth than the others credit him with. He has had a slightly darker beginning, without a lot of the happy memories that the other wolves might take for granted. This has given him a little more of a realistic outlook on life. His imprinting on Michelle is proof that opposites attract. He is a quiet, serious boy; and she helps to cancel out his shy demeanor, without having to push him too hard.

Enjoy!

Fire & Ice

David Wakeh took a deep breath and leaned back against the cold tiles. The cold, white floors, and the vaguely harsh antiseptic smell of hospitals had always bothered him. Even the fact that he was here for what should have been a happy occasion didn't penetrate his grim thoughts.

He was a father.

He looked across the corridor, to the large nursery window, and picked out the small squashed face of his son. His son! Words that should have delighted any new father. But words that struck an icy chill in his own heart. He knew what he was, had always known. Since he was a child.

Having lost his own parents, he had been sent to live with his paternal grand-uncle, Levi Uley. Levi had been an old man by then, in mind if not in body. He had been 65, but looked about 40. Once he had arrived at his home, he had slowly been inducted into the ways of life on the La Push reservation. His parents had moved away just after he was born, to live in the city; with its bigger opportunities, and wider horizons for their son.
Seattle, the city that had offered them so much had also taken much more. It had killed them both; a mugging gone bad on a normal evening. Husband and wife had gone out for a walk after dinner, their young son asleep in his bed at home. They had never returned, the sleepy eyed child opening the door to a sympathetic police officer.

The weeks that followed were a blur to the young boy,ending with him going to his uncle's in La Push. The family had been determined to keep the boy, making sure that he didn't slip into the morass of foster care. He smiled, remembering how his uncle had stormed into the office of whichever faceless official was deciding the boy's fate, and stated in no uncertain terms, that he was leaving and taking the child with him. He had clung to his uncle, his last remaining link to his parents. He had moved back to the place of his birth, and been absorbed by his grand-uncle's family like the much loved member he was.

For a few years, everything had been perfect, and then he remembered being taken to a campfire as a teenager, along with a few other boys of his age. His uncle (he had considered him more his uncle than his father's uncle by this point) had seemed strangely solemn this time. He and a few other boys had sat around the fire, listening as the elders told them the legends again, but this time there was a hint of something else.
It was like they were telling them the history of the tribe, fact instead of legend. He had looked across the fire at his cousin Joshua Uley, and noticed the same confusion in his eyes. Billy Black next to him seemed to tense when Ephraim, his own grandfather had risen and taken his place at the head of the circle. That was when he explained to the boys their heritage and the possibility of what they might become. The possibility that at some time in the future they would be called upon to protect their tribe, their families.

The silence that had followed had stretched until Levi and Ephraim had nodded to each other and then at Quil Ateara, before rising and walking into the trees. The boys had heard a strange snapping sound, like twigs breaking, and then 2 gigantic wolves had rejoined the gathering.
The boys were too dumbstruck to panic, and Quil simply looked around at each of them before pointing out which wolf was which man. Both their muzzles were grizzled with age, and there was a slowness with which they walked. There was power, that was unmistakeable; but it was tempered by an unwillingness to unleash it.

Rubbing his hands over his eyes, David dragged his mind back to the present as he gazed at his son. Ryan. That was the name his mother had insisted he have. Wrinkling his forehead, David wondered how he could have gotten involved with a woman who was so far from everything he had ever wanted. He put it down to momentary insanity. Once they had realized that their one-time tryst had caused far-reaching consequences, David had insisted they marry.
He had to protect his child.
At all costs.
Mary couldn't have cared less. She had kept her maiden name, something unheard of among their circles, but she had allowed their child to carry his father's name, but only if she got to call him whatever she wanted for a first name. His lips quirked in a smile as he watched the tiny mouth twitch in a small yawn.

The little arms struggled against the binding for a second, before settling down, shiny black eyes blinking open momentarily. A small wiggle later, the little boy seemed content to fall back to sleep.

David sighed, and pushed himself off the wall, striding back down the corridor, back to the room where the woman he called wife, was lying. Recovering. He wished things had been different, that he had known what she would be like when he wasn't looking at her in a an alcohol fuelled haze. He would stick by her though, make sure that his son had everything he could ever want. He was only 6 hours old, but he felt like he had loved that little boy for much longer than that. He wondered what he would say to him when it was time to tell him all about his past, his history; his heritage. Whatever he said, he knew his son would be as proud of his inheritance as he had been. He would hear the stories from the time he was old enough to understand; he would hear them from his father.

Finally, a huge grin split his face. He was a father!

The joy that usually accompanied the birth of one's first offspring finally flooded through him.

It stayed with him as he left the hospital, got in his car to drive away. He never saw the oil-slick on the road ahead; he never saw the truck that hit him. When David Wakeh died, he was happy, still basking in the joy of his son, and how much he loved him.

Ryan Wakeh would long wonder how different his life would have been if his father had lived.

As it was, the tiny child in the nursery bassinet disturbed and let out a loud wail, powerful for someone so small. It took the nurse more than the usual amount of time to calm the infant, who cried himself to sleep in a stranger's arms.

He grew up in La Push, living with his mother, in the house his father had left them, and where he learned from an early age, that taking care of himself would be better than asking his mother for anything. She loved him, he knew, but not in the way his friend's parents loved their sons. She took care of him, made sure he had meals to eat and things he needed, but he couldn't remember sitting down at the kitchen table to eat, like Sue Clearwater insisted when he was there around dinner time. She didn't fuss over him if he picked up the sniffles, like Hannah Jameson did, much to Collin and Brady's exasperation.

He had friends, Seth Clearwater and the Jameson boys were even in his class at the Reservation school. But he held himself a little further away from the rest of the children, he always had. It was just the way he was.

All his life, he had felt that something was missing, like there was something he should remember. He thought that the feeling would leave when he phased, but it still lingered, a small kernel of knowledge in the back of his head. Time went by and although he had been absorbed into the pack, found a family, he still felt isolated. The unmentioned rift between him and his mother had only grown with the years, and once she had come to realize that her son was eminently capable of taking care of himself, she seemed to retreat further into her own world.
There were times when he didn't see her for days. He knew she didn't mean to be cold to him; that was just the way it was, the way she was made. On some level she loved her son, but she had never been meant for motherhood.

He remembered the night Seth had imprinted, and he sometimes laughed to himself at his expression when he had watched her jump off the cliff. It had become a great source of amusement to the twins, who enjoyed laughing about it whenever they could. He grew fond of Kaia Reynolds, saw her as someone who was as interested in school as he was. Someone who could talk to him about their home-work without cringing or begging to borrow notes.

She seemed to drag him out of the isolation he sometimes slipped into. Growing up without his father around had prevented him from forming a close enough bond with the rest of his family; he had no one to confide in, no one he could really turn to for advice. Sam was his alpha as well as some kind of distant cousin, but he would have felt uncomfortable asking him for personal advice. Imprinting was something he had never really fully understood. He got that it meant an instant connection, but he couldn't understand how the imprints themselves could feel something when a wolf imprinted on them.
All of it seemed to confuse him, but at the moment he let it slide.

The twin's and Kaia's birthday was coming up and most of the pack's energies were devoted to avoiding Rachel Black in case she gave them things to do in preparation. As the days counted down, Ryan seemed to feel that small kernel in his brain get closer to popping than ever before. More perceptive than the others, he knew it meant something was coming.
Something big.
He didn't know what, but it would be soon.

Ryan Wakeh's life was about to change drastically.

Again.

A/N: And there you have it folks, Chapter 1 of Fire & Ice. Let me know what you think !

Loves

Niamh