No matter how many times my parents had told me the legends before bedtime or how noticeable the changes in La Push's boys had been, I never thought they could be real. Stories of ancestors, wolfs, imprints and cold ones were supposed to be legends. Tales to be told around fire or to children to help them fall asleep with the nice image that they were protected, that the good always win.
I always begged for more of those stories, desperately needing to lose myself in another world even at a young age. When I grew older, I still enjoyed hearing them every once in a while, rejoicing myself in the warmth they brought upon me. When my dad kindly made me question if they were real, I played along with him but in my head it was always a no. I just couldn't believe we humans were able to suddenly burst into hairy animals in order to protect our tribe. And given the case, just how human would those creatures be? I never thought that wolfs were more than just wild animals.
Not until I found myself running along them.
It wasn't easy to accept, but once it happened, the world seemed to make sense in the weirdest of ways. Unasked questions suddenly had answers and little lost pieces fell into their rightful place once we understood. We also understood that the good didn't always win in this life, unfortunately, and that we weren't protected -but we would make sure the tribe was.
I knew this life wasn't 'normal'. It shouldn't feel normal, but it did. It was our reality, our family, our pack...
Our imprint.
Some of the guys said our bond was broken. I preferred to say that our imprint was on hold, awaiting like a phone call. We just needed to wait for a miraculous voice letting us know that our bond was mended and ready. Ready to be used and not being tested at every waking second.
I understood that we were one of the most controversial imprints. And that this imprint -in most people's eyes- should have never happened... But it had.
It had and now they were desperately trying to make us understand just the gravity of it. Just how strong it was. The importance of it. How wrong it was. How right it would be. How we wouldn't be able to fight it. How we didn't want to fight it.
They understood, of course. I just wished we could.