Alright, here is the latest story that just struck me today. I know that I have stopped updating TUCO, but no one reviews that one, and so I've gotten tired of working on it. I'm going to skip to the last chapter of that one the next time I load it up, and that will be the end.

For now, hopefully more people will read this story and like it.

Summary: Embry imprints on a four year old boy. NOT GAY/SLASH, ANYTHING LIKE THAT!!! This how I think that this could play out if a wolf imprinted on another guy. It will go through the boy's life, until the end, which I already have planned out.

Shattering Stories

Chapter 1

I Did What on Him?!

Embry POV

The trees streaked past me as I ran, keeping my nose in the air for any new scents. Ever since the conflict with the Italian vamps three years ago, nomads or small covens were almost constantly in the area. My nose was almost constantly burning with the scents that we all needed to familiarize ourselves with, as many of the vampires remained in the area for long periods of time. Amazingly, there had been no deaths within the La Push-Forks area, undoubtedly because they all knew that if the pack did not get to them first, for killing people on our turf, then the Cullens would destroy them before they were done feeding.

Yeah, I guess it's a good thing that there are so many of us, huh Embry? Seth spoke into my head, addressing my thoughts on the reason that there had been no deaths. I mean, between the four of us in Jake's pack, the eight left in Collin's pack, and the eight Cullens, there is practically no where in the Washington peninsula that a vampire could feed unnoticed!

Leah had left for Seattle, while Jared, Paul, and Sam had all stopped phasing; all three only months after the Volturi had left. Sam had put Collin in charge of his pack, with Brady as the Beta. All of the new recruits that had popped into our heads the month before the Volturi came were now old enough to not need babysitting.

I approached the edge of the woods opposite mine and Quil's house and phased, pulling on my shorts quickly. As I came to our driveway, I noticed this little kid, probably around four years old, slowly walking on the side-walk. He was wearing tan shorts, and a red t-shirt which revealed a series of small bruises on his upper arms. He was looking around like someone was going to jump him, his arms were both clutched tightly around his body, and his head was whipping from side to side every few steps; I couldn't see his face, as he was in desperate need of a haircut, or at least a proper combing.

I walked over to him slowly, so as not to scare him too badly, and crouched down a few feet away. "Hey, little guy, what's wrong?" I asked him softly. My attempts to keep him calm did not work at all, as he jumped up and nearly broke his nose trying to grab hold of a telephone pole. "Hey, chill dude, I won't hurt you." I held my hands up and stayed where I was, helping him to feel a little safer. I could hear him crying, his face mashed up into the pole in his frozen terror.

"Can you tell me your name, little dude?" I asked, just loud enough for him to hear me without needing to get closer. He turned his head the slightest inch towards me and muttered something that anyone without werewolf hearing would have missed entirely. "Adam." His tiny voice whispered into the pole, almost escaping my ears. "Adam," I said quietly, still trying to be nice and patient, "What are you doing out here all alone? Where are your parents?"

He turned his head towards me to answer, his hair sticking to the pole to reveal his face. My stomach dropped suddenly, like I had just been on a rollercoaster, and I could feel my eyes glazing over as I receded into my own consciousness. I felt as though gravity were being kicked into overdrive as a heavier weight than I was accustomed to settled over me, cementing me to this earth forever. Only one coherent thought ran through my head, but it was enough to pull out the stopper, opening the floodgate. What is this? The memories of others imprinting came flooding into my mind, but they were all different than what was happening to me at the moment. All of the others had felt gravity entirely snapping away, not building in strength until it felt like it could crush you. No, this is definitely not imprinting. What is it then?

I snapped back to reality as I heard Adam's tiny voice telling me the answers to my questions, which I had forgotten entirely about. "-said that I need a haircut and…then she…I leaved…And then I gotsted…lost." His tiny little voice mumbled as his hand left the telephone pole to curl up at his teeth, the standard sad-little-kid look. I chuckled at the fact that he needed a haircut; it was such a typical little-kid thing to hate. "You know, Adam, you shouldn't have left your house. It can be dangerous out here, without an adult." I warned him gently, not knowing why I cared so much.

"Let's take you back to your house, okay?" I said much more lightly, holding my hand out in invitation. I stayed in the same spot however, letting him choose to come to me instead. I've got candy. I suddenly thought, realizing what this would look like to anyone who saw it; it looked like I was kidnapping the boy.

His small hand slid into my massive one, disappearing in my grasp, and brought me back to reality again. "Do you want to walk, or should I carry you? I'll be able to get you home faster if I can carry you." I said, looking down at his sad, tear-filled eyes. He nodded and lifted his arms, which I took as permission to pick him up. I stood up as I lifted him, and he whimpered slightly at the height. "It's okay, I've got you." I said gently as I started walking, his legs on either side of my ribs while my right arm supported his back.

I felt his tiny fingers clutch at the bare skin of my shoulder, as I retraced his scent, grasping for something to hold onto. "You want to hold my other hand?" I asked as I lifted my left arm up to my shoulder; his fingers immediately grabbed my hand, and it felt as though he was squeezing them for all he was worth.

Holy cow, this kid made it pretty far! I thought as I walked up the driveway to his house, fifteen minutes later. It was a pretty typical house, dark cream sides, dark slate roofing, boring bark borders on the grass and…why was I noticing all of this stuff? I took a breath and found another trail of his scent, going the other direction from where we had just come from. I wonder if he came here first, but then decided not to go in, for some reason?

I set him down and knocked on the door. He was still wringing my hand with all his might as we waited and I wondered why he was so scared; he was home, and he was going to be back with his parents after probably an hour of wandering all alone.

The door swung open to reveal possibly the most repulsive man I had ever seen. Man, he's fat. Was the first thing to come to my mind, followed by the wife-beater that he was wearing which rode half-way up his stomach. He needed to shave badly, his unkempt beard looking more like the hedges than the hedges out front themselves did. He was wearing his boxer shorts, which did nothing to hide the rolls of fat that made up his legs. Do I really want to release Adam to this guy? I thought just before the…creature…in front of me began to talk.

"What are you doing with Adam? He was with his mother an hour ago, getting his haircut!" His scraggly beard matched his voice, which gave me the impression that you could start a friction fire just having him talk to the wood. Definitely a smoker… I thought as I saw his nicotine-stained teeth, and the smell of cigarette smoke wafted out of the house.

"I was taking a walk, and I saw Adam walking around on the side-walk, looking terrified. I managed to get him to tell-"

"I don't care what you were doing; I want to know what you are doing. Why is he with you, not his mother?" He cut me off in mid-sentence, interrupting the answer to the question that he cut me off with. I felt Adam move slightly, shuffling so that my arm was hiding most of his body. "I found him lost, nowhere near his mother. He told me that she did something to him, so he ran off. I found him about fifteen minutes ago, just wandering the street." I let my voice gain a hard edge, hopefully encouraging him to keep quiet while I was talking.

"Now, I didn't do anything, except for walk him back here. Now, clearly he is scared about something, and he chose to go wandering instead of coming back home after running from his mother." I told him rudely, inviting a question of why he did not want to be home.

"How would you know that?" He practically snarled at me, his voice making anything he said sound like a growl. Well, I can do a better growl than that. I thought, preparing to let out a growl that would make his socks curl. I then remembered Adam still clutching my hand, hiding behind my arm, and kept my growl silent. Instead, I answered his question, "He told me. He said that he hadn't wanted to go home, so he just kept walking. Now, what would be so bad that a four-year old kid walks home from the barber shop up in Forks, and then decides to keep walking instead of coming home?"

I could feel myself beginning to shake, my imagination bringing up scenes of abuse and torment. Adam's tiny hands squeezing my fingers as hard as they could and burying his face in my forearm halted all of my shaking.

"What am I, psychic?" He yelled sarcastically, before starting on his own little tirade. "I don't know what goes on in the head of a four-year old brat! He probably didn't want to be grounded for walking home without his mother! If I were you, I would leave right now, and leave this whole mess alone! Adam, get in the house. And you, go tinker with cars, or something! And put a shirt on for crying out loud, have you no decency?!" I nearly laughed at that part, his body required a bed sheet covering more than mine needed a shirt, but I was getting more and more angry at this despicable creature with every word out of his rotting hole of a mouth.

Adam cringed further into me at his…Father's-it hurt to call this man Adam's father-demand to go inside. Alright, I need to pull in the big guns. This family clearly has some issues that need to be sorted out with the law. I pulled out my cell phone from my shorts and dialed Jacob's number. "Hello?" The voice on the other line asked.

"Hey, Jake, it's Embry. Listen, I need you to call Edward and Chief Swan, and tell them both to come down to…42 East Main Street." I told him the address after looking up at the number on the house, and the street sign at the end of the road. "Just go straight from the main Forks-La Push road, and then take the third left after you cross the boundary line. I'll be standing out front. Make sure that Charlie brings all of his gear and stuff." I said into the phone, hanging up at Jacob's agreement, saying that they would be there within twenty minutes.

"What are you doing, boy?" Adam's father asked, his pudgy eyes –I didn't even know it was possible to have fat eyes-squinting at me, making them look even fatter. "I don't think that this is an appropriate home for Adam to be in." I replied coldly, daring him to contradict me. "I just called my friend, who is calling the Chief of Police down here, along with his own personal polygraph tester, just so you don't lie. They'll be here in twenty minutes, or so." I stated, staring straight into the slits that remained of his eyes; they had continued to shrink from the intensity of his squint as I spoke.

We stood in absolute silence for over fifteen minutes, the only time the silence was broken were the few times that Adam's dad tried to make him go into the house. Adam merely cringed further into my side, still holding my fingers in a death-grip.

I turned to look at the police cruiser with Charlie driving, Edward sitting in the passenger seat, and Bella in the back. Why'd you bring her, Ed? I asked him silently, quirking my eyebrow. He ignored me, his eyes immediately shooting to Adam. "Embry, what happened? He's absolutely terrified!"

"Who do you think you are, calling the police over to my house with no proof of anything whatsoever?" the fat man roared at me, attempting to intimidate me. I just turned to look back at him, flexing every muscle in my upper body; he shrank away pretty quickly. Adam was staring at Edward with his now-constant look of terror, his body reacting to its instincts of danger.

Charlie interrupted our little spat by addressing Adam's dad, "So, Sir, tell me what has happened?"

"Well, Officer, this hooligan came over to my house, pounding on my door, holding my son in his nasty hands, saying that my son had run away! When I tried to take Adam back, this boy was withholding him from me, saying that this was an unfit home! He had no basis whatsoever to claim that! I demand that you-"

"He has bruises on his arms, and is clearly terrified to take a single step into that house!" I shouted back, only moving my head so as not to scare Adam any more with violent movements. Edward was whispering quietly into Charlie's ear, undoubtedly telling the Chief exactly what had happened. I listened intently, and began to tremble again as Edward whispered, "He's planning on beating Adam, very badly, the minute he cannot see the cruiser after we leave. He believes that there is nothing to base a claim on here, and so assumes that we will leave quickly."

I felt an icy hand on my shoulder, which startled me enough to stop my shaking. "Calm down, Embry. Phasing here won't do any good." Bella told me gently, taking her hand off my shoulder to crouch in front of Adam. "Hello there, Adam. My name is Bella. Will you talk to me about why you left your mom at the store?" Her crystal-clear voice sang softly in his ear, causing the grip on my hand to relax slightly, but he still buried his face into my arm. "You can think about it, it's okay." She whispered into his ear, causing him to shiver at the cold.

I made sure that Adam was as comfortable as possible, his squishing into my stomach instead of my forearm. Edward's eyebrows closed together in anger as his head whipped towards Adam's father, at the boy's thoughts. He whispered briefly into Charlie's ear, who turned his head back towards the grotesque man. "Are you aware that your wife beats your child with a sting rod? Your son is saying that she keeps it in her pocket, and whenever she beats him, she keeps it hidden in her palm, and then presses on his arm. The sting rod then snaps another rod out against his arm, causing a welt and quite intense pain."

His eyebrows were raised, showing surprise at this knowledge, but Edward was shaking his head. "He's already lying, and he hasn't even said anything. He not only knew about it, he was the one who suggested it." The man's mouth dropped open at that claim, his gravelly voice stuttering over his shock at Edward's accuracy. "Sir, I would like to come inside and search the house. If I find anything concrete that would show an unfit home, I will be taking your son with me." Charlie strode past the stunned man, leaving Bella and I alone with Adam.

Bella began talking to me in a very low voice, so that a human would not hear her if she was right next to them; "So, what is your connection to Adam? You seem to care about him a lot, but his dad seems to think that you've never met him before. Care to explain?" I thought over what she had said, trying to find an answer, but nothing came up. Why do I care so much?

"How about you start by explaining what happened when you met him today?" She said quietly, gently stroking Adam's hair. "Well, I come out of the woods, see him crying, feel like helping him, and then he looks at me. Time kind of froze for a minute, and it felt like gravity was pushing down on me, keeping me immobile. Then, he was pulling me along. I can only describe it as a weight lifter pulling along a semi-truck, with no resistance to the pull. I was just, being pulled along by him while gravity was crushing me, making me subject to whatever would help him." I stared ahead and thought about what had happened.

"I think you're right, Bella." Edward called from the house in a normal voice, too quiet for the still stunned man in front of us to hear. "Embry…" Bella said gently before stopping. She stood up from Adam to stare into my eyes as she said, "Embry, I think that you imprinted on Adam."

Alright, so that's the first chapter. I have decided that I will not update the next chapter until I get at least 5 reviews for this chapter. How this is going to work for this story is, that for this first chapter, I would like anyone who reads it to review. Give me some input on what you thought, what you would change, what you would like to happen, etc. CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISISM IS EXTREMELY WELCOME!!! In future chapters (assuming I get enough reviews) I will set a review limit for the next chapter to come out. I don't care what the review says, as long as I get one to let me know that people are actually reading it. I've noticed that people who hold chapters for ransom (knock on wood) get more people to read their stories, so I'm trying it. I've already had 20 readers, but only 4 have reviewed. Please review, even if you didn't like it. let me know what you did/didn't like, so I can try to fix it up a bit. 5 reviews, people!