This is a work of speculative fanfiction. No profit was made nor was intended to be made. All right to to Twilight and it's sequels and prequels belong to Stephanie Meyer and Little Brown Publishing company. I make no claim to ownership on any of those right nor to any intellectual property of Stephanie Meyer.
AN: Once again thank you to everyone who reviewed, giddiness abounds. In response to a pm I received. Yes, this takes place after 'Breaking Dawn', several years have gone by. Ingrid is 22 and Seth is 20. Otherwise this would be a creepy meditation on hebephilia and male jail bait. So everyone has been aged five years since 'Breaking Dawn'. Otherwise this fic would be SO wrong!
Chapter Three:
Magnus always knew when his twin was losing her battle for control; when it crawled underneath her skin and she wanted to either tear down the walls or sit in the corner and scream. Life wasn't easy when you had the rage of a wolf and no way to burn it off. However, she had fought for the right to live outside the pack, so he waited, she had the control, the ability to force herself to remain as calm as possible. He didn't know how he knew when she was this way, only that he always had. Magnus waited for three hours, then his phone rang. Which was a good thing because he had been about thirty minutes from buying a plane ticket to the States to find out what had happened to get her this upset.
He answered in a concerned tone of voice. "Ingrid, what the hell is going on?"
At first she didn't say anything and just breathed into the phone, when she spoke it was in defeated sort of fashion. "I'm in trouble Magnus, and... and I don't know what to do..." Her voice just trailed off.
At first Magnus thought that his sister had lost it and had killed someone. It wasn't unheard of for a wolf blooded to lose their control utterly and pick a fight and then not stop. It's why the packs kept them close and why so few of them were allowed to live on their own. He sat down on his bed. "Tell me everything Ingrid, I can't help you if you don't talk to me."
She took a deep breath and when she began it was like she was telling a story, like she was merely a narrator for someone else's life. His sister may as well have been giving him a report on vampire activity along their borders, more than anything, the clipped businesslike tone bothered him. When she finished her story, Magnus put his head in his hand. He hated imprinting, but knew it was unlikely to ever happen to him, so he viewed it with the removed distaste of someone who would never have to deal with it personally. Twins so rarely imprinted that it was a documented occasion the three times it had happened in his pack's long history. Ingrid on the other hand didn't just hate imprinting, she loathed it to a degree that perhaps might have been bit unhealthy. If for nothing else than the power she allowed that hatred to have over her.
"So what do I do Magnus?" she asked.
"If you want to leave you can come back here. If they won't let you leave... I'll bring a portion of the pack and get you. Imprint or not, they have no right to force you to stay somewhere you don't want to." he wasn't sure that's how this pack operated, but he wanted Ingrid to know that he was willing to force the issue if he had to.
She sighed. "I'm sure Father would just love that. You can't tell him Magnus, he's only going to react in one of two ways. Fury and demanding that I come back like good little girl or he'll force me to stay and accept the imprint."
Magnus huffed. "I won't tell him, not yet anyway. It's your life Ingrid, I've never stood in the way of you doing what you wanted with it."
"It feels like I'm betraying Mom. And before you even say it, yes I realize how stupid that sounds. She's dead and gone and can't be hurt or betrayed anymore. I still don't want this, but I don't want to have to run from the place I chose to be my home either." His sister sounded exhausted. Like she just wanted to sleep.
"That's not the only thing, they saw my tattoo, they know that I'm connected to other wolves. They're going to want answers. If you want me to lie, I'll do that. Or I can tell the truth. Either way, it's up to you." It was obvious that right now, she just wanted someone to tell her what to do.
Magnus considered for a few moments. "If you want to tell them, than I'm giving you permission to. If you want to lie, go ahead. But I think it would be better if you just told them the truth. They'll know you're lying, or at least the one who imprinted on you might, and it'll most likely backfire."
He listened to his sister agree, then she hung up the phone, pleading fatigue. As he laid back on the bed he thought back to when he was a kid. Remembered what it had been like, thought about the reason Ingrid had left. The thing was though, he had always figured that after a few years she would come back. He couldn't help but feel a small bit of anger towards the wolf who had imprinted on his twin. Now there was a decent chance, if she decided to stay and pursue a romantic relationship with the wolf, that she would never come back. While Magnus knew it was selfish, he didn't like the idea of that, of her never coming back.
On the other side of the globe, Ingrid tossed and turned all night. Finally morning came and she stumbled blearily to her bathroom and then to her kitchen. Before she had so much as looked in Leah's direction, the she-wolf had a mug of coffee thrust out at her. Ingrid wrapped her hands around it. Sitting down at her large farm table she sipped and looked into the fire Leah had started in the kitchen hearth.
With a wry half smile she said "Morning coffee and a fire already going in the hearth. Why couldn't you have imprinted on me instead of your brother? Because if this the treatment you give... then I need a wife!"
Leah almost choked on her coffee, then laughing she raised an eyebrow at Ingrid. "Yeah, because I need to make my life weirder than it already is. I can just see it, the tribe's only she-wolf... and she turns out to be gay."
Ingrid peered at her over her mug. "You're the only she-wolf in your pack? That's gotta suck."
Leah nodded and Ingrid got up and made them both some scrambled eggs for breakfast. As they sat there eating Ingrid flicked her eyes to the window and then back to her meal. She had heard a car pull up in driveway, the motor sounded like hers. It would appear that her interrogation would not be put off any further. Oh well, at least the eggs had been good.
As she collected both her and Leah's dishes she spoke out towards the living room. "I hope you ate breakfast before you came here. I don't have enough eggs to feed the rest of you, Leah already ate half of the eggs I have."
Leah shrugged as Jake, Seth, Billy Black and an old man who Ingrid did not know walked into her kitchen. She was going to have a talk with these people about walking into her house like they owned it. Knocking was appreciated in her book. She gestured towards the table.
"Have a seat." she said "I'll put some more coffee on. Leah, could you get the cream from the fridge please?"
After the coffee had been served, Ingrid sat at the opposite end of the table from everyone else, but still the end closer to the door. "So ask your questions, I know you have them, let's not delay the inevitable with small talk."
She noticed that Seth kept tracking her with his eyes and was displeased with her seating choice, but she made no move to give into his unspoken requests. The first several days of an imprint were the worst, when the wolf felt an almost uncontrollable pull to his supposed mate. The urge to touch was strong in general in wolf shifters, wolves being such a tactical species, but was multiplied almost fivefold in the first week or two of an imprint. She could tell that Seth wanted to be closer to her, to be able to touch if only in a friendly manner. That didn't mean that Ingrid was going to allow him to though.
He finally spoke "I can tell you're upset, it's how we found you yesterday. You were so unhappy that it was like it just drew me here. You're better today, I can kind of feel it, but you're still upset."
Ingrid nodded but still didn't talk to him.
After an uncomfortable silence, Jake took the lead. "I know that you've already met Billy Black, he's my father and is the head of our tribal council. This other man is Quil Atera Sr. he is also on our council. We've come here to ask you a few questions, normally my beta Sam Uley would be here as well, but you attacked his imprint and cut her arm yesterday and he's not ready to be near you right now."
"I figured she was human." she replied "It was nothing personal, I needed to create a diversion so that I could get away. She was the only one of you that that would have worked on."
Jake tilted his head at her words, then his gaze hardened. "Don't do it again. The only reason he didn't attack you is because Seth stopped him. If you weren't an imprint, that would have gone very badly for you."
Ingrid dropped her eyes and tilted her neck slightly to the side. It was enough to tell the alpha that she respected his position and dominance, but not enough to show that she acknowledged him as her alpha. However it was subservient enough to satisfy Jake.
"I understand, I took a great risk but felt that I had to at the time. I will not attack another of your pack's imprints. You have my word." Ingrid's voice was sincere.
Jake nodded and leaned forward on his elbows. "You aren't a wolf and yet you have a pack tattoo on you. You said that we weren't the only ones, so... tell us about where you're from and who these others are."
Ingrid leaned back into her chair. "I spoke to my brother, he's my pack's beta and he's allowed me to speak to you."
Immediately Seth grew tense, he didn't like the idea that a wolf he didn't know was in some sort of position of authority over her. He didn't hide it well either and a soft growl noise came from his throat. Ingrid met his eyes and raised her eyebrow before looking back at Jake and continuing.
"I'm from northern Norway, it's not precisely a pack I belong to, so much as a nation. We call ourselves the Fenrir and basically we're comprised of all the wolf packs in Norway and Sweden. All of the packs have contact with each other, some more than others. We have to with the conditions we live under."
For the first time Quil Sr. spoke. "What, precisely, are these conditions?"
"Norway and Sweden are close to the Arctic Circle and in fact parts of them lay inside of it. This has an odd effect on our seasons. In the summer, for three months the sun does not truly set and the darkest part of the night is like an overcast day. In spring, the days are long and the nights are very short. So for six months every year, there is very little vampire activity." Here she paused for a moment and then she continued on.
"That changes in the latter part of the year. In the autumn the nights are long and the days are very short, culminating in winter, where for three months... the sun never rises, it's dark all the time. So, for six months it's a vampire's playground. They come out of the woodwork and it's war. To them they deserve those lands as much as we do. Every year there are casualties in the packs and every spring and summer new people shift for the first time to replace them. It's a harsh life."
They all looked at her, but Seth's gaze was the most intense, his voice was whipcord tight when he spoke "You live in a yearly STATE OF WAR?"
Ingrid merely nodded and continued on. "With those conditions there needs to be one voice, one person who everyone else, even the other alphas have to listen to. Someone dominant enough to control them if he has to. That is the Jarl. The Jarl's pack is the most northern one because it is the most dangerous territory to hold and protect the people in it. The current Jarl is my father, I belong to his pack. The tattoo on my arm is his pack's tattoo."
And there it was, Seth looked like he had swallowed something foul. All he could think of was that he had imprinted on the daughter and sister of two very dominant wolves. Jake had a look of intense thought on his face. Seth imprinting had opened a whole new set of circumstances to his pack and made a whole new set of complications as well.
"That still doesn't explain how you have a tattoo. You aren't a wolf so how could you possibly be part of a pack?" Jake asked.
Ingrid frowned. "Because I'm wolf blooded." She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Forgive me for sounding ignorant." Billy said "But what is a wolf blooded?"
Ingrid looked shocked, how could they not know? She made a split second decision. They didn't know and she wasn't going to tell them everything either. This way she would still have some sort of advantage. Still have a bit of an ace in the hole.
"We're the children of one or two shifters who never shift themselves. We have too much of the blood in us though to not be affected. We're stronger and more enduring than your normal human, more aggressive as well. We support and assist the pack"
She said nothing about how deeply that aggression went, gave no specifics on what sort of assistance they rendered or even the other ways wolf blooded functioned in her society. Something told her that right now would be a bad time to unveil that information.
"We've never heard of this before. Perhaps our pack does not produce them?" Old Quil was in research mode. The man loved to find knots to untangle.
Ingrid shrugged. "Of course they do, it isn't magic that makes wolves, it's a genetic condition, subject to the same rules of genetic inheritance as any other condition. Wolf blooded are a side effect of that genetic condition. Your tribe has them but for some reason, you've just never recognized them as such. How, I have no idea."
Leah narrowed her eyes, then she spoke "I think I know."
Jake huffed "Well then share with the class."
"Their packs don't go dormant." she said. "Ours do. The vampires never go away long enough for the wolf gene to go inactive in their packs. For us it's different, we have generations at a time where there's no pack. Plus, we lost a lot of our culture when we got forced onto the reservation, there was a massive culture death after that. I'm willing to bet we once knew what wolf blooded are and just lost that knowledge."
Billy leaned forward. "This is all fascinating but doesn't answer the major question that I have. Why are you fighting so hard against the imprint? Why would you not want to be with your soul mate? Your father must have an imprint."
Ingrid's face went blank and she stood up abruptly. "He does and she wasn't his wife and the mother of his children and it went about as well as you would expect. That... woman... isn't my mother. I'm sure that you're smart enough to figure it out for yourself."
Seth's face fell, his imprint's family had been destroyed by imprinting. He wasn't stupid, he could figure that out for himself. He also wasn't stupid enough to think that getting her to talk to him would be easy, he just didn't think it would be damn near impossible. At the same time he just wanted to reach out and do something. To make it better because it was painfully obvious that her life hadn't been easy at all.
Later that night as the pack sat around Sam and Emily's kitchen table, everyone looked at Seth with sympathy. No one could figure out how he was going to be able to get through to her. They were also a little angry with fate. Seth had phased so young and had so much of his childhood flushed down the toilet due to being a wolf that he deserved an imprint who would want to be with him. Who would want to love him. However, they couldn't really bring themselves to blame Ingrid. The woman had reasons she was the way she was. As they sat and ate, they looked at Seth and wondered just where this was going to end up.