Who was this girl? I was supposed to be waiting for someone special not getting hooked up for the rest of my life! Who did she think she was taking away my free will?

Okay, it wasn't her fault that imprinting existed but I needed someone to blame. I had a good plan for where the rest of my life was going and now I was tied down to someone whose name I didn't even know yet. How was I going to be able to leave La Push and get a good career now?

That's why I hated the whole stupid concept of imprinting! Did the wise ancestors think that we were incapable of choosing a suitable partner? Did they mistrust our judgment? Sounds like great ancestors to have.

Stupid noble ancestors! All sorts of other places in the world cope with vampires without the help of protectors. Are we supposed to try and kill every single vampire on the face of the earth? That would be the only possible way to stop them and it was something that you can bet I won't be doing anytime soon, even with the help of my brothers.

Ugh, I hated that word. Most of my fellow pack members where the sort of people who I would not be hanging out with if I wasn't a wolf so why should I be calling them my brothers and pretending that we were inseparable. It makes me sick when I see Collin and Brady and some of the others following Sam around like he's some sort of prophet. Maybe I was like that at the beginning but I'm older now and I can see what fools they are.

There is absolutely nothing that I can gain in the long term from being a werewolf. That truth was something that hit me in the face a long time ago and the only way I could think of dealing with it was by making myself a plan of how I would get out of the cycle everyone around me was stuck in. My plan was simple yet, I hoped, effective. I would finish school, (unlike most of the other pack members) go to Dartmouth, (my grades were good enough and I had a job which was getting me money for a college fund) graduate, get a stable job in something like journalism (I like creative writing in English) and finally meet someone I like and have kids far away from La Push.

I guess my inspiration for the plan came from Leah. She was really broken after Sam but eventually she got over it and moved out. She's doing really well and when she comes home to visit she seems to be as happy as I've seen her since Sam. Maybe even happier.

Unfortunately my plan seemed to be destroyed. If only I hadn't decided to go to Port Angeles. Then I wouldn't have been on that street facing her and feeling everything change.

So much went through my head at that moment. She seemed like a nice girl and the first thing I did was try to guess what she was like. When I realized how pathetic I sounded I turned around and walked down a street corner before I could do something stupid like talk to her and fall into the bottomless spiral of imprinting.

I had to find a way to break it. No one had ever done it before but had anyone ever tried? There had to be a way to do it. Even though that brief image I had of her kept surfacing that had to only be because it was new. In a few minutes I would be back to normal.

I realized that she obviously hadn't noticed me and was probably far away. That helped because if I tried to find her I would probably fail ad never be able to talk to her and strengthen the imprint.

What I had now was all I could ever have. I was never to find out more about her. As my mind started to put down these rules another part of me was screaming. It wanted to run down that street, find her and do things I was ashamed to think about. That part of me had to be destroyed. The imprinted part. The part that would destroy my plan forever.

Who cares about the plan it begged. You'll be happy with her!

I pushed the tantalizing thoughts far away as I tried to compose myself. What should I do next?

Get out of here, go home and never think about it again. That was what I had to do. The pack, especially the imprinted ones, would think it silly of me to leave her like this and would try to force me to find her. For that reason I should never think of this again.

Maybe it would be a good idea to lie low for a bit, think of an excuse to not phase for a few days. That way I could gather my thoughts before they were subjected to the rest of the pack's scrutiny. But what would I say? Werewolves never got sick so that was out of the window. I did have a paper coming up and I was sure that Sam would let me get off patrolling to work on that if I begged hard enough.

Yes, that's what I would do. It would only take a few days to clear my mind and then I could go back to everyday life.

Without ever imprinting again

The thought came out of nowhere with its simplicity. If I could break this imprint I would never imprint again and was free to live my life as I wanted. It felt as if a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders. Ever since I made the plan the doubts about not imprinting were there. I had always been secretly afraid that someone would catch my eye and my free will would be gone. Now that I had already imprinted and was trying to break the bond I never had to worry about ever having it happen to me again.

This optimistic thought was enough to get me moving again, out of the alleyway and to my car. I sat in the front seat and as I started it up I was filled with a sense of exhilarating hope. Imprints could be broken! No one had tried until now and I was the first one to prove it.

Of course some people could never know. If Leah was to find out her mind would automatically be filled with thoughts of Sam leaving Emily. I doubted that this would be possible since the only reason I broke my imprint was by never making any contact with her.

There were still so many wonderful possibilities. This one discovery meant that the fear in us non-imprinted wolves hearts could be gone. We were free to live our lives as we chose and never be tied down to someone we had never met!

The future was ours again.