AN: Hello and welcome to my new story in which my OC takes no shit from anyone. I think this will be fun. For me. No guarantees for you, sorry, but hey, you never know!

The first day Embry doesn't show up at school, I text him again to see what's up. The second day I try calling at lunch. The third day I knock on his door and am greeted by his shocked mother, who apparently thought Embry was at my house (impromptu one night sleepovers have been known to happen, but even my aunt, June 'Number One Fetish Writer in North America' Abrahamson would draw the line at three school nights in a row.

Obviously this is troubling, and I make Alison some tea while I furiously call Jake.

'Have you seen Embry since Sunday?'

'I'm actually looking at him right now.'

'You what? WHERE?'

'Me and Quil were just walking on the beach, we saw him with Sam Uley and his hall monitors on steroids.'

'He's at the beach right now?'

'Yeah.'

'Don't let him out of your sight, I'm on my way.' I hang up and turn to Alison. She is staring at the cup of tea in front of her.

'Alison, I'm going to talk to him now, I'll be back as soon as I can, with him, alright?' She nods and I text June to come over for her before I leave.

'I specifically told you not to let him out of your sight. I meant that you should FOLLOW him, Black!' Jake scratches the back of his head guiltily as I glare at him.

'They drove, Ed, we couldn't've followed them.' Quil withers away when I glance at him.

'I'll fix this in the morning. Go home and think about what you've done, both of you.'

The next morning, I slide onto the homeroom desk of a huge man. Paul Lahote looks down at me.

'Eddie Abrahamson.'

'I know your name.' He doesn't seem even a little bit scared, which pisses me off.

'I'm gonna cut straight to the chase here. You are going to tell Embry Call to go home to his mother. He is going to be there for dinner tonight.'

'And if he's not?'

'Then I will find him and I will torture him. I've seen Zero Dark Thirty four times, I know how to do it. I'm going to water board that son of a bitch, and any other son of a bitch who doesn't do as I ask, until I am satisfied that they have learned their lesson. Got it?'

'Not really.'

'If he's not there, I'll make all of your lives miserable. That's pretty much it. Toodles, Buttercup.' I launch myself off the desk and waltz out humming the Power puff girls theme song under my breath.

Embry himself is sitting on my porch when I get home.

'I can't believe you threatened to water board Paul.' I stare at him blankly for a full minute while he sits on his hands nervously.

'Go the fuck home, your mom is worried about you.'

'I already saw her earlier.' I brush past him towards the door.

'Oh. And you're going back tonight?'

'Yeah.' I am about to close the door behind me, but I pause and leave it ajar.

'And you're okay?'

'Yeah.' We fall into silence as he follows me inside. I make myself a sandwich and watch him across the table as I eat it. He has grown maybe six inches and cut his hair off since I last saw him, and judging from the bulges in his shirt, he's as muscled up as the rest Sam Uley's gang. If we were on better terms, I would have made a joke about him getting hot. I push that thought to the back of my mind and swallow my last mouthful.

'So are you going to tell me what's going on?'

'I suppose, yes, but you can't tell anyone, it has to stay between us.'

'Like that time you found a lump in your nutsack and thought you had ball cancer?'

'It's more serious than that.'

'You don't actually have ball cancer this time, right?'

'No. I'm not sick.'

'And it's nothing to do with your balls?'

'Do you actually want to know or are you just going to keep going with this?'

'Right, sorry. Go for it.'

'Is June home?'

'No, she's in Port Angeles shopping today.'

'Right.' Embry stops again and looks down at his hands. 'The legends are true.'

My face falls. 'If you're about to tell me you were kidnapped by Slenderman I'm going to end you.'

'No, Eddie,' he says through his smirk, 'the tribal legends. Spirit wolves.' I burst into hysteric laughing, letting myself fall onto the floor to lay there until I'm done, as I usually do, but I am caught. I laugh into Embry's shoulder instead, until I stop suddenly.

'Why are you so warm?'

'It's a wolf thing.' I sit up properly and look at him in shock.

'You're being serious, aren't you?'

'Yes.'

'Good lord.'

'I expected much worse language.'

'I'll get there. Just rip the bandaid off, tell me the whole thing.' And sitting on the kitchen floor, my best friend told me about werewolves and vampires, the pack mind, the strength and speed, heat, healing, not ageing, imprinting, and the rest of the pack. The cursing started around the point when he told me that one of the doctors in Forks is a mother fucking vampire.

'Wait,' I say, interrupting him halfway through a sentence about patrols, 'Are you telling me this because I'm going to be a werewolf too?'

'No. Well, probably not.'

'Probably? That's all I get? I'm as much Quileute as you, and we're the same age, and it's not like you live closer to vampires than me, and —' I stop talking when Embry wraps his arms around me and hugs me tightly.

'You're not a werewolf, okay?'

'Still no. And if I'm not, then why do I get to know all this super-secret information?'

'Well, there's one bit I haven't told you about yet. I imprinted on you, when you came to the beach yesterday.'

'I've been super cool about all this werewolf stuff but I think this is where I draw the line.'

'It's true, Eddie.'

'Bullshit.'

'It really isn't.'

'Sure thing Oz.' I wrestle myself from his grip and stand up, offering him my hand and dragging him outside. 'Let's see, then.'

'See?'

'Well I'm not going to just believe you can turn into a fucking wolf unless you prove it.'

'God no. That's dangerous. Did I not just tell you what happened to Emily?'

'If you aren't going to prove all this shit, I'm going to stop giving you the benefit of the doubt, and I'm going to go inside and watch some fucking Buffy, because in Buffy, you aren't just expected to believe any old shit, you are goddamn shown it.' I look at him expectantly and then there is rustling and a giant bear thing emerges from the tree line. I freeze.

'Hi Jared.' And then, in front of my very eyes, the bear-wolf shrinks, and the fur disappears, until a very naked Jared Cameron standing in my back yard. I stare at him in horror as he pulls on his cutoffs.

'I still don't think imprinting is a thing.'

'For now,' Embry says smugly as Jared waves at me and takes of running back into the woods.

By the time June gets home from Port Angeles, Embry and I are watching Buffy while I fume silently. She makes a joke about us making Quil happy (Quil has always shipped us, because he is a fucking nerd) and hangs around as long as possible, not because she's suspicious or anything like that, but because she wants to put off working for as long as is possible.

If you ask June what she does, she'll say she's a fantasy writer, but her money comes from the huge amount of fetish erotica she writes under a collection of pseudonyms. Right now she's working on the fourth book in a series of horseplay novels that annoy her so much she rolls down the car windows to curse at actual horses when she drives past them. This series paid for our last three vacations, and I get to look at my legal guardian and suggest plotlines for fictional people who pretend to be horses and jockeys for sex reasons, so I'd say I'm pretty happy with the arrangement. A few months after she moved to the Res to look after me, there were all kinds of rumours going around about what the new white person did for a living, and all of the suggestions are, and this is a direct quote, 'the fucking dream. I wish I was a dominatrix.'

When June finally does leave, Embry and I split the take out she brought for me, still in complete silence. We don't really talk at all until I yawn and stretch, and want to go to bed, and that conversation is minimal.

As the door closes behind Embry, a string of curses falls out of my mouth. I curse in and out of the bathroom, as I strip down and pull on my pyjamas, and staring at the ceiling before I turn my lamp off. The last thing I think before I slip off is what the fuck have I gotten into?

And then I am being shaken and someone is calling my name. Embry. He's straddling me, shirtless again, in my bed. I blink painfully and mumble.

'Are you okay?' His eyes are the size of baseballs and practically glow in the dark as he hold my upright by the shoulders.

'What? Yeah, why?' He breaths deeply and softens his grip on me, letting me slump back against the headboard.

'You were crying, in your sleep.' He rolls off me and sits up next to me. We both look at the wall opposite.

'And you are here because -?'

'I heard you crying. I was, uh…'

'That's really creepy.'

'Thanks.'

'Welcome. Anyway, are you okay?'

'I… I think so. I don't remember if I was dreaming, so no harm done, I suppose.' Then I look at him. 'Were you just lurking around outside?'

'Kind of, yeah.'

'You could have just come up.'

'I didn't think you'd want me here, after everything I told you today.'

'Friends are always welcome to crash in my room, regardless of whether they recently had a psychotic break or not.'

'Oh great.' His voice drips with sarcasm. I grin and roll over to face him.

'So can sleep happen now?'

'Sure.' I close my eyes without another word. I feel him throw an arm around me and wiggle closer to me, and I don't even think about the consequences of this familiar action in the light of today before I fall asleep.