AN: Thanks for reading and reviewing!
Anastasia POV
"Alright Stacy, be honest with me. How fantastic do I look?" Sierra twirls for me in her living room, showing me her first day of school outfit from every angle. Her dark plaid miniskirt twirls around her body, making her look like a little girl in her birthday dress. The black t-shirt layered over a dark blue tank top blends in with her black hair, flowing down her back and in curls.
"You, my dear, look great. But we better get going, Paul's waiting outside and he'll throw a hissy fit if we make him sit out there too long." As if on cue, a loud angry horn blasts from the truck outside.
"Geez, doesn't your brother know that looking this good takes time?" she huffs out, grabbing her backpack off the couch. I can't help but laugh out loud as I follow her to the front door and into the cool morning air. "Wait a minute. I thought we were supposed to be wearing matching miniskirts today? Why are you wearing that? What the hell happened?"
"What do you think happened? Paul happened. He took one look at my miniskirt this morning and yelled at me to go change. When I said no, he called Dad who then ordered me to change. I'm so mad. Paul's such a brat sometimes." The events of this morning put me in a bad mood and recounting them to my best friend is doing nothing to dispel me from my displeasure. I decide to change the subject slightly as we near Paul. "Besides, if I didn't know any better I'd think you didn't like my outfit."
"Actually I love it," Sierra compliments as she scoots to the middle of the bench seat in the front of Paul's truck. "Those flat boots with the black skinny jeans and plaid green button up show off your butt and boobs nicely," she quips, shooting a glance to Paul to see his reaction. Without fail his knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel tightly. Good, it serves him right for calling Dad and making me change this morning.
"Oh thanks, that's exactly what I was going for," I shoot back at her. Over the radio a low crack can be heard coming from the steering wheel. Gosh, is Paul ever going to learn to take a joke?
We pull into the school parking lot and immediately Sierra looks like an owl, her head almost spinning completely around in order to check out every guy within sight. Paul glides smoothly into an open spot next to Jake's faded red Volkswagen Rabbit. We hop out and join Jake, Embry and Quil sitting on the hood of the Rabbit looking more like 25-year-old dark male models than 16-year-old high school sophomores.
"Well good morning ladies," Embry pipes up the moment we hop out of the truck. "Stacy, I heard about the miniskirt incident this morning. If it makes you feel any better I'm sure the miniskirt looks just as good on a bedroom floor as it does on you." He finishes with a smile while Quil hangs his head, failing to hide his chuckles. Jake's large body shakes with amusement and Sierra covers her round face with her notebook.
"Dude, it's too fucking early for that shit!" Paul punches Embry hard in the shoulder, causing him to wince.
"Alright, sorry man, calm down," Embry says, rubbing his left shoulder. "I'm sure it looks better on her than the floor but whatever."
Jake POV
It's barely the beginning of first period on the first day of school and already Paul is freaking out. Although now that I think about it, Embry's miniskirt joke this morning probably wasn't the best way to start the day — even if it was funny as hell. Well, at least he didn't almost phase like he did last week with the whipped cream joke.
From the moment Paul, Stacy and Sierra got out of the truck this morning, it was clear that Stacy was going to be gaining more attention than any of us anticipated. Immediately guys noticed her and they started whispering, trying to figure out if she was a new student or an incoming freshman. Thankfully Paul was too preoccupied with Embry's little joke to notice the way the guys in the parking lot watched her every move, biding their time until they'd get a chance to talk to her. As she and Sierra walked away from us in the parking lot, guys watched her hips sway with each step, following her like a tennis match: left, right, left, right. Poor Sweets almost had a heart attack when she dropped her notebook and bent down to pick it up, giving everyone in front of her a clear view of her chest and everyone behind her a glimpse of her ass. Some even started to approach her until Paul yelled at them to "back the fuck off" before he beat their faces in. Normally the rest of us would have laughed at Paul's ridiculous overreaction, but this time, even we weren't very pleased with the way guys rubbernecked her.
Sitting next to me, slowly banging his head against his desk, it's evident Sweets has a very tough year ahead of him.
"Dude, I said I was sorry about the joke," Embry whines for the hundredth time on the other side of Paul. "Quit moping about it already."
"I'm not moping about the joke. Well, yeah I mean you need to keep your mouth shut but did you see the way those guys were looking at her in the parking lot this morning?" Paul lifts his head from his desk and resorts to gripping the edges tightly. "It's like they'd never seen a girl before!"
"I swear I'm going to bust some skulls if I see one of those guys checking out her ass again!" Even Embry isn't too pleased about all the attention Stacy seems to be attracting; which is ironic considering about eighty percent of his jokes are some crude remark about her body.
"Yeah it looks like we're going to have to watch out for her a lot more than we initially thought." I'm not sure why but Quil being protective of Stacy has always cracked me up. Maybe it's because of her crush on him or because he's usually so damn quiet. "Did you see the way Sean Cowley was looking at her? I think he's found his first target for the year," Quil sighs, leaning back in his desk chair and causing it to groan under his weight.
"Yeah, well, he's also a senior this year and as soon as he finds out Stacy is Paul's sister, he's going to be pulling out all the stops to get her into bed," Embry points out.
Damn, I hadn't even thought of that and from the murderous look in Paul's eyes, neither did he. Sean Cowley is known for being the biggest man-whore in all of La Push High School. Every year on the first day of school he finds girls he wants to make his own so he can use them like a toy. He charms them, takes them on a few dates, sleeps with them and then drops them like a bad habit. After he's finished with a girl, he spends weeks bragging to all of his buddies about his conquest, making snide comments as she passes by, laughing at her retreating back in the hallways. Naturally she's left feeling embarrassed and extremely upset, dodging the sneers from girls who would fall into the same trap weeks later. Since he's a senior this year he'll probably want to make it extra worthwhile with a video camera and YouTube. I guess it's just our luck he would notice Stacy.
"I swear I'll rip his fucking face off if he even thinks of talking to her!" Paul growls, breaking small chunks off his desk with his bare fingers.
Sean has had it out for Sweets since last year when one of the girls wised up and ditched him for a shot at Paul. As a way to heal his bruised ego, Sean thought it would be a good idea to try to pick a fight with Sweets a few weeks into summer vacation. Even though he had no clue he was attempting to take on a werewolf, it was still highly stupid of him to think he could fight a guy twice his size and who hangs out with four other guys equally as big. The sight of stupid ass Cowley curled up on the ground in the fetal position, crying, with his arms wrapped around his broken ribs still brings a smile to my face. To make him even more pathetic, the sore loser still tries to act like he didn't cry when Paul punched him in the face. He claims Sweets cheated by throwing sand in his eyes. What a dick.
"Listen Sweets, we'll deal with the Cowley situation if he attempts anything alright? Until then, there's no point in shitting a brick over it." Our whole goal for today was to ease Paul into high school with his sister but seeing him grind little pieces of his desk together in a closed fist, I'm starting to think we're doing a pretty crappy job. "And would you please stop tearing the desk apart?" I continue in a volume only loud enough for Sweets, Embry and Quil to hear. "People are going to start to notice and in case you forgot, normal humans can't do that. Especially not without being on drugs or seriously injuring themselves."
He loosens his grip and resorts back to his normal posture: arms crossed, glaring at everyone. "Aaah, now there's the Sweets we know and love," Embry teases, effectively lightening the mood.
"Mr. Chehalis! Glad to see you haven't lost that sour mood I love so much. I'm looking forward to that scowl all trimester," the teacher says brightly as she walks into the room. The class laughs at her remarks to Paul. "Now, the rest of you: plaster a fake smile on those tanned faces and welcome to English 10."
Paul POV
Lunch has barely started and I've already had to stop myself from phasing four times. Or rather, Jake, Embry, Quil or Jared had been around to drag me away from some jackass four times. Things got especially close between second and third period when one of Cowley's stupid buddies tried to grab Anastasia's ass as she walked by. If it hadn't been for Kim's screams to Jared, I would have done a lot more damage than a black eye and a few bruises. I fully intended on bashing his skull in and I know Embry agreed with me. I've been mentally preparing myself for this specific day for the past few weeks, getting ready for the inevitable shaking, growling and the perverts checking out my sister's body. But I don't think any of the calming methods Sam and I worked on prepared me enough. I knew from the moment Anastasia stepped out of her room in that ridiculous miniskirt this morning that today was going to be especially hard. I guess I just never thought anybody would get ballsy enough to grab her like that. Well, if people didn't know Anastasia is my sister before, they sure as shit have a hunch now.
"Hey Sweets, how you holding up buddy?" Jared asks, pulling out a chair across from me for his imprint, Kim, before setting down their lunch trays.
One of the negatives (or bonuses, depending on which way it's looked at), of being a wolf is imprinting, a time when a wolf finds his other half, his reason for living and the strength he needs to fight leeches. For the first few weeks after we change we're told that all the stories we believed were just legends meant to lull children to sleep at night, are real. But the stories about imprinting all say it's rare and yet here our pack is with two imprints.
Our alpha, Sam Uley, met his imprint Emily Young when she came to visit her cousin and his then-girlfriend, Leah Clearwater. As for Jared, well he's been almost inseparable from Kim since the moment he turned around in his desk last year to borrow a pencil. Imprinting happens the first time after we phase and see that one special person who changes our lives forever. From what Sam and Jared say, the moment they laid eyes on Emily and Kim they felt a tugging in the center of their stomachs, forever connecting them. As Quileute warriors, our sole reason for phasing into wolves is to protect our loved ones from blood sucking vampires. But after one imprints, their whole center shifts and the only thing binding them to this earth becomes their imprint. The drive to protect our loved ones is still in us, but after we discover our other half, we find a more powerful surge to patrol and hunt because we know that if anything were to ever happen to our imprint, we would cease to exist and any will to fight we may have had will die.
But from the outside it's pretty sickening to watch one of the guys look at his imprint and vice versa. Their breathless "hellos," the way they get lost in their own personal world, and the dreamy, glazed-over look that gets in their eyes upon sight of each other is enough to make any single person gag.
Emily and Kim are Sam and Jared's entire world and, honestly, I don't know if I'll ever be ready for that type of thing. Right now, my sister is my entire world and I can't imagine putting anyone above her.
"Shitty," I respond while angrily stabbing my cafeteria mashed potatoes with a fork. "It's like all the guys in this school are a bunch of damn animals!" I look over to the door leading into the hallway and can't help the low growl that erupts from my chest.
"Hahaha nope, there's only five animals at this school," Kim jokes.
Normally I'm all laughs about a comment on how we're animals but I'm just not in the mood right now. Not when I have to sit in this damn school and watch as these little bastards blatantly check out my sister; I just feel like Kim is comparing me to them. Jared looks at Kim as if she just said the greatest thing in the world; her eyes glaze over as he kisses her on the temple. I bite back a snarl purely for Jared's sake.
"Good one Kim," I say a little too bitingly for Jared's taste. He gives me a death glare for being so rude to Kim. I change the subject. "Man I knew today was going to be hard but I didn't think it was going to be this hard! I don't know how I'm going to make it through the rest of the day, let alone the rest of high school. If it hadn't been for you last period, I'm pretty sure we would have ripped his arms off."
"Yeah, man that was definitely a little too close," Jared agrees between bites of his sandwich. "Oh and I heard Sean Cowley has his eyes set on Stacy. Do you know if he's tried anything yet? Cuz once he finds what he wants, he tends to work pretty fast."
"Actually you'll all be pleased to know that I just saw him trying to chat her up at her locker and she shoved right past him," Embry pipes up as him, Jake and Quil pull up seats around the table, leaving spots for Anastasia and Sierra to sit between us. I can't help the sigh of relief that blows from my mouth.
"Well that's good news," Jared nods his head, taking a drink of his soda. "I mean, the fact that she's denying him will only spur him on more but at least that'll give us more chances to break some bones," he laughs, cracking his knuckles in anticipation. The rest of us chuckle in agreement.
"Don't you dare do anything that will get you guys suspended from school!" Kim looks at us with a shocked look on her face. "If you guys get kicked out then who will look after her? It's not like I'd be able to really do anything if some guy tried anything with her. I'd probably just end up getting harassed too."
"Like hell you will! I'll kill anyone that tries to touch you." Even though Kim is only talking hypothetically, Jared can't help his anger and he roughly pulls her chair closer to his side as if to prove a point. His imprint is absolutely everything to him and he wants no one to ever touch her. She kisses his cheek, effectively calming him down.
"What I mean is that you guys miss enough school as it is with your nightly patrols," Kim continues. "And if you keep getting into fights, Sam will skin you all alive. You know he's already going to flip when he finds out about that little scuffle last period."
Kim has a point — about everything. Damn her logic!
In order to protect our people we run patrols almost 24 hours a day around the reservation, always on the lookout for vampires or anything else that could possibly endanger the people we love. We run for hours, switching patrol duty late at night and not finishing sometimes until five or six in the morning. As a result, we're often extremely tired and find it so hard to focus in school that we end up skipping. Sam offered to work the majority of the patrols during the school year but we all felt a little guilty putting even more stress and worry on our alpha's shoulders. The elders also offered to talk to the school administrators about our "situation" but, as a pack, we decided we wanted to keep our secret confined to as small a group as possible. In the end, it was settled that only immediate family members, council members and imprints would be let in on our secret world. Other than Embry's mom, Anastasia is the only immediate family member who doesn't know what we are and that's only at my discretion. As for the fighting, well, Sam has all but Alpha-commanded us to keep our tempers in check unless it is leech related. Mix in the annoying pack telepathy with the gossip mill on the reservation and it's almost impossible to hide secrets. There's no way we'll be able to keep last period's fight covered up.
Man, I am in so much shit when this gets back to him.
"Why would Sam Uley care what you do?" Anastasia asks as she and Sierra join our table, sitting between Jake and me. "And what was with you guys attacking that kid last period? It's like you all came out of nowhere!"
I decide to ignore her first question, hoping she'll drop it if I don't respond. "He was attempting to do something very inappropriate."
"Hahaha yeah. He wanted to grab them goodies!" Embry laughs loudly, slapping his knee at his own amusement. "Oh, is it still too early for those jokes?" He stops abruptly and looks around, noticing that no one else joined him.
"It's always too early for those jokes you jackass," I growl out. Anastasia reaches across the table and slaps Embry upside the head. I don't bother to hide my smile.
"Okay seriously Paul, Embry has been making dirty jokes about me since I hit puberty and knowing him, he's not going to stop anytime soon. So please just chill out." She pats me on the arm for good measure. "As for you Embry, I realize your pervy jokes are all a part of your charm, but could you please refrain from forcing my brother to rupture a blood vessel?"
She stares resolutely at Embry who, I'm pleased to see, looks down at the table and nods his head. For as much crap as they give me about folding so easily to my sister, it seems as though they forget they're exactly the same. At least I have the balls to admit I crumble like day old cheese.
"So, how has everyone's first day of school been so far?" Anastasia asks cheerfully, looking around the table.