(A/N) So this is the first chapter of my new Imprint story. I've always been kind of morbidly curious about a wolf's reaction to the loss of an imprint and how they would function afterward. And I'm a sucker for Pack Kids Stories. This is sort of a mix of both. It'll jump from age to age as Erica grows older.
Thankyou very much for reading
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Twinkle.

Sweet Child Of Mine
Twinkle-Fingers
One

"...And the clouds above move closer
Looking so dissatisfied
And the ground below grew colder
As they put you down inside
But the heartless wind kept blowing, blowing
So now you're gone, and I was wrong
I never knew what it was like, to be alone
On a Valentine's Day..."
- Linkin Park

"Vera, come on, I need another push," the doctor pleaded with her and Embry could've torn his head off for trying to pressurize his wife. "She's crowning. I need another push Vera, come on."

The scene was hectic: a woman, no older than twenty five, was laying on the hospital bed, screaming while the doctors around her ankles egged her on. Other nurses around the room were checking monitors and machines and speaking too quickly for even Embry to understand.

It wasn't like it mattered. His Vera was in a hospital bed. And regardless of the fact that she had wanted it these past eight months, so so badly, the baby inside her was causing this pain. Embry just stood, brushing the hair away from her face which was sticky and shimmering with sweat. And she just kept screaming.

"I can't do it...I can't..." she whispered, helplessly. Her bright green eyes caught Embry's and he felt sick to his stomach at having done this to her. "I can't."

"Yes you can, come on baby, one more push," he murmured, gripping her hand. It was starting to turn purple with lack of oxygen from how hard she was grabbing it but he barely noticed. "It'll be over soon."

It was agony. Babies were meant to be beautiful and reasons of celebration. But as Vera lay there, screaming and moaning in obvious pain, he couldn't think of any reason to celebrate.

He had imprinted on Vera Summers almost eight years ago when he was eighteen and she was seventeen and Sam was pushing him to do study at high school, regardless of the fact that he was probably not going to college anyway. Embry always thought Emily pushed him to do it.

He'd walked in one day, messing around with his friends and he'd stopped, stiff as a board at the girl, with her long sandy blonde hair and almond shaped, forest green eyes, who was curiously eying the sign up board in the lobby, particularly the sheet about the La Push Soccer Team. It was pretty lousy- they normally played schools from Forks, Port Angeles and maybe Seattle if they got lucky but this girl didn't know because she was obviously new.

New and beautiful and the centre of everything good in the world.

It'd taken him days to work up to talking to her- weeks to ask her out. But Vera Summers was kind and funny and her sense of humour, though sarcastic was thankfully not cruel because she said yes and then everything went perfectly from there.

There were problems, things he had once thought were unsurmountable: Old boyfriends, her older brother, the fact that she didn't really want to stay in La Push. It always made him wonder why she bothered staying with him when she was bright enough and talented enough to take on the whole world if she wanted.

Vera had a thing for the outdoors, soccer and supernatural. When he told her about being a werewolf, she'd been excited and he'd been so glad. When he told her about having the Cullens as allies, she'd wanted to meet them and he'd been not so glad.

Embry had been so in love with Vera that he made her Mrs Vera Call on the 16th of March, a year after she graduated. The Pack loved her. The Cullens liked her. Embry adored her. And when she'd wanted to start trying to have kids, he didn't see how it could go wrong.

But it was so wrong now. Because since she'd met Embry, Vera had never been in pain. She'd never even had a bad accident in soccer because she knew how it freaked him out and she'd been careful.

Her screams were terrifying and horrible and awful and he couldn't stand them.

Sam had tried to draw him outside to wait, having gone through the same thing with Emily and he tried to tell him how bad it would be, having almost made himself sick. But nothing could take him away from his imprint, not now, not ever.

"Em." Her whispered call made him pay closer attention to her, so close she felt like she was being x-rayed. "Embry, I love you."

He tried not to show his grimace and kissed her forehead. "I love you too. You know I love you."

Vera winced, hissing. "Embry, whatever happens remember that okay?" her last words drew out into a scream and the doctors suddenly exchanged nervous looks. Before he could demand to know anything, Vera called him back to her. "Okay? And take care of our baby, please, tell her that I love her. That I love you."

"Vera, that sounds like a goodbye." He growled, sliding an arm around her back and gripping her to him like he could take some of the pain onto himself. She knew he would in a heartbeat but he couldn't. She took a deep breath and pushed and the doctors smiled, relieved.

"I know..." she whispered. His heart was beating fast, too fast. It was like it was trying to make up for the slowness of her own heart which he could hear, was slowing down, gradually. "I think Dr Montez might be right." Vera broke the news to him and he may as well have broken down into rubble.

"What? What? NO, Vera, Vera, you listen to me, you are going to be fine." He stressed, holding her tighter as she pushed again. He wanted time to freeze. He wanted it all to stop so he could think, so his brain might not explode with this information.

Dr Montez, the sweet mannered doctor who was handling their case, had informed Vera and Embry at her second trimester that Vera might not be strong enough to carry full term. Embry knew that well after the first three miscarriages but then she said something that almost made him phase right there in her fancy office. "Vera, you have to know that-" she had taken a very deep breath. "That you might not be able to survive through labour. Your body is delicate, fragile even now. I'm not certain it could last until the end of your third trimester."

But Vera had promise him. She'd promise him that she and their baby girl were going to be fine at the end of it all. That she'd come through it all.

She couldn't die.

"Vera, please, baby, please," Embry begged her. He'd get on his knees if he had to. He'd grovel at her feet. He'd do anything. "You gotta hold on."

Vera bit her lip and there were tears in her eyes as she screamed again, muffled. The doctors were almost yelling now, asking for one final push. "I d-d-don't know if I-I-I can..."

"You can't leave me. You can't leave me and Erica, not now. We need you. Our baby needs you. I- I'm going to die without you." With any other couple, in any other hospital, in any other country, this would've been melodramatic. But Embry couldn't survive without Vera in his world. He'd rather have her hate him for the rest of her life, to curse him and scream at him and never see him again than die and take his entire universe with her.

The blonde looked like she was going to answer but it died off in a scream and then it cut off abruptly as new cries filled the air. Erica. Their little baby girl. Vera panted, her eyes rolling in their socket, wildly. "Erica? Baby?" she murmured, faintly.

Embry looked at the squirming pink little baby in the nurse's arms as they cut the umbilical cord. She was his. She was hers. She was theirs, to raise and love together. "You can't do this Vera," he whispered. He could feel it. The world was dimming. The point that connected him here, that held him together, the central focus of his being was starting to drift away. He could feel her slipping away. "Please..."

Vera looked at him, tears in her eyes as she raised a weak, trembling hand and brushed his cheek. "Take care of her, Em." Her lips barely moved and he wanted to scream, to shout, to yell at her to stay with him. The nurses were starting to rush around, yelling things to each other and doctors flooded the room. He couldn't hear them. The only sound was Vera's heart.

Thuthump.

Thu-thump...

thu...thump...

thu...thump...

thu...

The beats got further and further apart, drifting away from each other as Vera's bright green eyes scanned his face, tracing over every piece of him one last time. The tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. "I love you. So much..."

And then she was gone, before the salty tears reached the pillow.

-''-''-''-

He didn't remember anything after that.

It was like a vacuum had sucked everything out of him, leaving only the last image he had of his wife to haunt him. The last whispered words. The doctors' last, defeated murmur: "Time of death: 3:08, 14th of February."

He wondered why she had been taken from him. Why she'd left him. Why they'd wanted children in the first place.

He couldn't remember.

In fact, he could barely remember anything.

He knew the others could feel his own pain but he didn't know if he had the strength or the will to change back. Humans had to brave the world, had to go and talk to others, had to get through each day no matter how painful.

But wolves didn't.

He thought he phased after he left the hospital because he'd been in wolf form for the last month or two. Vaguely, through the black, swarming haze that had settled over him like dust, he could recognize the thoughts of the pack. Worry, concern, heart ache, depression. That sort of thing.

He didn't even care.

Sometimes, he threw himself off the cliffs or the mountains. But werewolves were difficult to kill and he just woke up days later with a headache and healed bones. He knew the Cullens wouldn't kill him because he was part of the pack. And there had been no other leeches to take care of him since.

So eventually, he just sat, in the smallest, darkest corner of the forest, in the smallest, darkest corner of his mind, reliving those hours over and over and over again. Time of death: 3:08, fourteenth of February. At least he had a time for the moment his world had crumbled in on itself.

The only time he'd gone back near civilization was for the funeral. He'd stayed in the forest, watching as they lowered the dark, mahogany wooden casket into the ground. Putting his Vera down in the dirt, as if they could push away their memories of her. Embry didn't do that. He lived them over and over again. It was his punishment for not saving her. For letting her die.

A number of the pack had begged him to come back, waving the promise of food and warmth and help and love but he shunned them.

He just sat, howling sometimes, sobbing the next, wishing he could be in that casket with his wife, his imprint. Wishing he could die with Vera.

-''-''-''-

"Embry?"

The voice made him wince and want to crawl back into sleep. But he couldn't ignore Jacob as he made his way into the clearing he'd found for himself. So he just looked, impassively on at his former best friend whose face was agonized when he looked at him.

Jacob just stared at him for a long moment, his eyes tracing over the patches of dried blood and healing scratches and half broken bones. The remains of his best friend. "Embry, what have you been doing?"

A loose, half-hearted growl tore through his chest. Who was Jacob to judge him? But he couldn't even muster up proper anger. He couldn't dig up anything in this abyss of black existence. Jacob just shook his head, like it hurt to even look at him. Was the black hole so visible from the outside?

"It's been months, Em." Jacob stated after a while. Months? It felt like years. "You gotta come home. We miss you. We can't stand just sitting by while you're suffering like this man, it's not right."

But Jacob's voice was fading fast, like he was progressing down a long, long tunnel. They said there was always a light at the end of such tunnels but if there was, he couldn't see one. The universe had given up on him. They'd given him a reason for living and he'd failed, let her slip between his fingers and her frozen face, tears still trickling across her cheeks, was stuck, forever printed on his eyelids as a reminder of what he'd done.

It was all his fault.

He hated himself for it.

"...Erica misses you."

The words chilled him through the fur coat, right down to the bone. Erica? The name sounded familiar...

Jacob obviously saw the faintest twitch of life in his dead gaze because he carried on, averting his eyes to the ground and smiling, ruefully. "She cries every night. Emily's killing herself trying to calm her down but it's like she knows something's wrong. Adrian's good with it, thank god. Two screaming kids would make for a lot of sleepless nights."

Erica. Emily. Adrian. It was slowly trickling back to him, the blurred memories of the man he used to be, buried somewhere under the black hole. Emily Uley. Adrian's mother. Adrian. Sam's son. Sam's Pack. Sam the Alpha. He used to be a part of that. He used to be Embry. Erica. Erica, Erica, Erica.

"Emily hasn't got an unmotherly bone in her body but Erica knows she's not meant to be there. She just keeps screaming. Screaming for you." Jacob added, quietly. He stepped forward, slower than ever, like he was about to bite his head off or something.

He kneeled in front of the heap of fur and bones which had less life than a corpse at this point and looked him dead in the eye, flinching ever so slightly at the blankness. He'd never seen Embry like this. He'd never seen anyone look like this. So...broken. Torn up from the inside.

"I know you want to sit here under all of the pain Em." Jacob murmured. "We all know you've tried throwing yourself off cliffs, giving us fucking heart attacks but you can't do that Embry. Because there's a little girl who cries her eyes out every night because her dad isn't there to look after her."

Erica. Erica. Something sparked in the back of his brain, something that started rolling, picking up speed, forming something important he'd forgotten: Erica. His daughter. His baby. His little girl. Vera's little Kicker.

They'd been so proud when they found out the sex. They'd thought of so many names. Embry had been joking when he'd suggested they just keep the nickname they already had, Kicker, but Vera took it seriously. She said she'd been toying with Erica, which had the same kind of sound.

It'd sounded so perfect. It still did: Erica Vera Call.

For the first time in weeks, Embry raised his head slightly, some of the torment giving way to the thought of his baby girl. Jacob tried not to let himself whoop for joy at the movement but it was hard, so, so hard. He could see Embry emerging from behind the deadness. He just needed to pull him a little further out. "Erica needs you Embry Call. If you're gonna do it for anyone, do it for her."

-''-''-''-

Sam wasn't sure what he would find when he glanced out the window that night. It was 3 a.m. and Erica was screaming, the high pitched wails loud and unashamed as she cried.

Again.

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying desperately not to think about how Vera would've handled her. Because that was how it was meant to be. Embry was meant to be a dad. Vera was meant to be a mom. Erica was meant to have both her adoring parents curled around her little finger.

Embry wasn't supposed to be trying to kill himself, Vera wasn't supposed to have died in childbirth and Erica was definitely not meant to be keeping his wife up at all hours of the night with her screaming.

The Pack dynamic was a powerful thing. His wolves were his responsibility, he was meant to serve and protect alongside them, protect them if need be.

That protection extended to their other halves and their descendants and he felt almost as strongly about Erica, Daniel and Penny as he did about Adrian.

Three months ago, he'd failed his role. Vera Call, the bright, giggling, cheeky blonde that meant everything to one of his brothers, was dead and buried, her daughter without a mother before she'd even started life.

It was hard to believe sometimes. He kept expecting the pair of them to come barging through the door like everyone else did, Vera bent backwards with her enormous belly and Embry laughing with Quil and Jacob.

It had hit the pack hard. No one expected Vera to die. Sam had called off patrols to just three times a week and twice as many rotations because it was too hard to be in wolf form with Embry who refused to phase back. He considered forcing him to turn back as an Alpha order but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was too cruel.

It made them all physically sick because they could feel Embry's pain. They could clearly see the half of him that had been ripped away, leaving this gory, broken, crumpled mess behind.

"Shh...come on Erica, shhh..." He heard Emily murmuring in the nursery. He wanted to tear his hair out, to scream. Things were not meant to be like this.

Absently, he twisted the lace curtains Emily had strong up the living room around his fingers, grimacing at how fucking awful everything had turned out. He moved the curtain away slightly and a tiny movement of shadow caught his eye.

He narrowed in on the figures as they walked up to the front steps and his eyes widened as he took in their ragged cut off shorts. In a blink, Sam was at the door, flinging it open but Jacob put a hand out, cautioning. So he waited.

Embry could barely see his brother in arms, standing by the doorway, looking incredulous and worried and relieved all at the same time. He could only hear the screams. If possible, they were worse. His knees buckled, like they wanted to run away from them again but he stopped himself. Because it wasn't a lost cause like Vera had been. Because he had the power to stop these screams, he tried to convince himself.

His footsteps were heavy and clumsy, unused to being on just two. But he made it down the corridor and finally, he stepped into the room. And there she was.

Held in the arms of his pack mate's wife, Erica was screaming, tears running down her face. She looked exactly like Vera had in the old photos- soft, delicate features and perfectly formed rose bud lips. Her skin was dark though, like Embry's and she had dark black hair like his too. Emily whipped around when he gasped and she stood, frozen for more than a minute.

"Embry..." she whispered through unmoving lips. Erica was still crying and, slowly, Emily held the squirming footie pyjama clad baby out him. She held her out like a lifeguard held out a lifesaver to a drowning man. The baby hiccupped and sobbed endlessly. She was perfect, a little piece of Vera and him, preserved for his own sanity. Maybe the universe hadn't give up...not yet...

"Do you...want to hold her?"

Slower than an ice glacier, feeling as cold as one too, Embry held his arms out and Emily carefully slid Erica into his grasp, gently moving his forearm to support her head. She winced at how banged up he was, how thin he felt. It wasn't right.

But she changed her mind when she saw them together.

It was like Erica had been quiet the whole time- as if she'd just woken up from a dream and she stared at her father with an almost annoyed look. As if she was saying: Well, you took long enough. And Embry...god, Embry looked whole.

There was suddenly a light in his expression that she couldn't quite place: not quite an imprint look but not far off. She knew Erica had become the centre of his world, that he would do anything to make his precious daughter happy and safe.

Emily only realised she was crying when she made it outside, Sam immediately clutching her tightly and whispering words of comfort and assurance.

Inside, Embry was almost trembling but not with anger.

Embry found himself when Erica looked at him. Her eyes were Vera's eyes. Mirror images. He felt like she'd left part of her behind in this exquisite little girl and he could feel the air rushing through his lungs, not crawling as before. No, now he wanted to be alive. He needed to be alive.

Erica's bottom lip trembled slightly and he was immediately soothing her, like he'd been doing it for months. "Shh...baby, it's okay, I'm here...I'm here...Daddy's here..." he whispered and within minutes, she was quiet, sleeping soundly in her new, warm, safe, loving cradle.

He'd left her for the first three months of her life. He'd considered leaving her alone in the world without either one of her parents. As he stayed with his daughter, watching the sun creep up into the sky, he knew and he promised her, a silent unbreakable promise:

He'd never leave again.