XI. Upshot

When they arrived at Sam and Emily's, Nina moved as though to ascend the front steps, but Jared carried on towards the treeline beside the house. With a raised eyebrow, Nina followed, her small feet hopping in the snowy imprints of his large sneakers. She watched as he continued to scratch at the back of his head, flexing the muscles of his shoulders, shaking his head ever-so-slightly.

He was nervous.

He finally slowed in a small clearing just beyond the treeline, Emily's house visible through the snowy branches. Nina sucked her lips in as he faced her, his eyes squinted slightly as they danced to either side of her before meeting hers.

"You're kinda scaring me, not gonna lie," Nina chuckled nervously, her nose crinkling.

Jared's eyebrows furrowed, and he frowned.

The silence seemed deafening.

"Remember…" he finally began, pursing his lips to the side, "you need to be open-minded here, and I need to tell you everything."

"Okay, yeah," she shrugged her shoulders, nodding. Though her heart was tumbling within her ribcage, she felt calm- strange, but calm.

Jared sighed, blowing the remainder of air out between his lips, his eyes falling to his feet for just a moment. "Remember all the stuff Billy and Old Quil talked about at the bonfire?"

Nina nodded, crossing one ankle over the other, "The legends?"

He pursed his lips once more, and a sliver of a grin crossed his face. His eyes were ever-intense as he stared at her. "Yeah…" he offered, tipping his head from side to side, "we can call them legends."

Nina raised an eyebrow.

"What if I told you that they weren't just legends?"

The eyebrow remained raised, and Nina felt her own head tilt to one side. She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering where such a statement could possibly be leading.

"I guess I don't understand," she finally admitted, shaking her head slightly.

Jared inhaled deeply, his eyes softening as they remained on her face, "If I told you that all the legends you heard the other night were true, would you believe me?"

While Nina understood the question itself, she failed to understand what he could possibly be trying to say. She racked her mind for glimpses of the legends, pieces that might be tangible. She recalled the concept of spirit warriors, of the men of the tribe transforming into great wolves to defend their people, of the third wife and her sacrifice during the attack of the cold woman.

Her eyes focused on Jared once more, and her eyebrows creased with thought.

"Are you trying to say…" she paused, her lips pursing with concentration, every rational bone in her body screeching, "are you trying to say that they are?"

And while she stood there and waited for Jared to burst into laughter, his cackles shaking the snow from the pine branches around them, perhaps even for Paul to join them and carry on the joke, she was sobered by the gravity of Jared's expression. He was not laughing- or even grinning, for that matter. There was no crease beside his eyes, no glimmer of a smirk on his full lips.

She swallowed hard.

"I…" Jared inhaled deeply, "I'm saying they're real, Nina."

Her mind simply refused to entertain such an absurd thought, and she struggled to find the reasoning behind Jared saying such a thing. She was still waiting for him to crack a smile at her expense, and yet his face was painfully serious.

Jared took her silence as an opportunity to keep talking, his eyes remaining on her face, his feet moving him a step closer to her. "I know it sounds crazy," he babbled, "and believe me, I know it seems totally impossible, but it's true. It's all true, Nina, and I'm one of them. I'm… I'm one of the tribe members that can do it, that can…" his voice was losing its luster, "that can phase into a wolf."

A wolf.

Nina couldn't help the way that her face twisted in confusion, her lips parting slightly as she searched for any appropriate words. She had long lost the hope of him laughing and revealing the joke. Her mind was at a war with itself- the half that had grown so fond of Jared in their time together begging her to believe that what he was saying could somehow be true, and every other inch of her being concluding that he had simply lost his mind.

She took a deep breath, wiggling her boots in the snow and meeting Jared's eyes.

"If that's true," she began, her lips pursing, "then why are you telling me?"

Something in the strain of his face softened, and a flutter in her chest reminded her that crazy or not, it was Jared she was speaking to. He inhaled deeply again and took another step closer to her. She felt her muscles tense for a moment, but she held his eye-contact.

"Everything is true, Nina…" she had never heard him use her name so much in a conversation. "The story of the third wife? How she was Taha's true spirit wife? She was his imprint."

Nina's eyebrows were a straight line across her forehead, her face scrunched slightly- though from cold or confusion even she wasn't sure.

"You're my imprint."

"I'm your what?" Nina frowned. She no longer worried about whether or not Kim would ever forgive her for growing feelings for Jared, but instead how Kim might react when Jared was checked-in to a psychiatric facility. She took a step backwards, opening her mouth to speak.

In one swift motion, Jared was standing up straighter, his chest forward, face lifting to the wind. He was painfully still for a moment, and Nina's face scrunched even more with confusion. The woods around them began to vibrate, and Jared's face twisted in- disgust? And then he was vibrating too, and the ground beneath Nina's feet seemed to rumble as though an earthquake was shaking them.

"No, no!" Jared yelled. Faster than she had ever seen him move, he was grabbing her around the waist, moving them through the thin woods and back towards Emily's house. But then the trees behind them began to tumble and shatter like the icicles that hung from their branches, and Nina watched in horror as a streak of orange blew through the clearing where they had just been and left in its wake only splinters of once great trees and that same quaking as before.

Jared had stopped moving, though his grip on her was as strong as ever.

And then she saw it.

A beast flew behind the streak of orange, larger than anything she had seen in real life, silver like the sand at First Beach beneath the moonlight, fur dusted with snow and branches and dirt.

"A wolf."

The word slipped between her lips in an awestruck whisper, her eyes fixated on the destruction left in its path, the forest suddenly eerily quiet despite what she had just seen. Perhaps she had stopped breathing, maybe even her heart had stopped beating. Her mind reeled for reasonable explanations for what she had just bore witness to, though the words of the council members swirled like smoke, clouding any reason that may attempt to ignite.

"Nina," Jared's voice lulled her from her stupor, the strength of his arm around her abdomen grounding her back to the moment, "I need to get you inside- I have to go help. I'll explain everything later, I promise."

"It was a wolf," she spoke with more certainty, allowing Jared to pull her along into Emily's yard. Though her heart was pounding wildly, the smoke of her thoughts was clearing.

"That was a wolf-" she stopped moving, staring at the back of Jared's head. His hand was impatient as it clutched hers.

"Who was that?"

Jared turned to meet her stare, his eyes a mess of emotions, his pull on her arm steady.

"Paul. And I need to go help-" he eased the tension between their arms, stepping closer to her, "I will tell you everything when I get back, I promise, but I have to go."

She nodded, doing her best to pretend that what was happening was even remotely believable.

Emily was waiting at the top of the steps, her lips simply a memory, her cheeks sucked in with them. Jared spared only a second more to hurry Nina up the stairs, squeezing at her hand for dear-life before taking off in a sprint to the treeline they had just emerged from.

For a moment, Nina could only stare at the place he had just disappeared to, her lips slightly parted, her heart racing. She swallowed hard and tried to breath in the brisk air, the haze continuing to recede from her thoughts. In silence, she followed Emily into the house, shutting the door firmly behind them.

They landed at the counter, one across from another- as they had so many times before. Nina focussed on Emily's face, allowing her eyes to carelessly roam about Emily's scars, the fleshy, pink skin signifying their healing. She bit her lip as she looked to meet Emily's eyes.

"Was that Paul? The," she shook her head slightly, "the wolf?"

Emily nodded, her lips still a thin line.

"It's…" Nina's eyes fluttered about the cabin, the words seeming wrong as they sat in her throat, "it's all real?"

Emily breathed sharply out of her nose, the good corner of her mouth jutting upwards in a smirk. Though they still held some strain, her eyes twinkled with amusement.

"As real as you and me, I'm afraid," she shook her head, her eyebrows raising as she spoke, "I can't believe he let her get that close to the house." Emily began to busy herself, pouring water into a kettle and flicking on the burner beneath it.

"Her?" Nina raised an eyebrow.

The older girl paused for a moment, her lips pursing slightly in thought, her eyes lingering on the kettle. As if coming to a decision, she nodded slightly before turning back to Nina.

"The redhead… she's," she tilted her head from side to side, "she's been a problem for a while now."

"She's…" Nina struggled, again, with the words, "not human?"

Emily smiled rather sadly, shaking her head, "no, she's not human."

"And…" Nina stopped abruptly, pressing her lips together, her eyes unfocussing on a particular pattern on the countertop. While the thought seemed simply absurd, she couldn't pretend she hadn't seen what she had in the forest.

"Neither is Jared? Or Paul?"

Her eyes came back into focus on Emily's face.

"Or Sam?"

"They're…" Emily chuckled, "they're a little bit of both, I guess you could say. You heard the stories, though," she offered, leaning forwards on her elbows.

"Yeah, that was when that's all they were- stories," Nina cocked her head, unable to stop the way her eyes widened. The scene from the woods kept playing in her head, the inhuman flash of orange- the redhead, as Emily had called her; the silvery beast- no, Paul, the wolf, chasing behind her; the carnage they left behind.

"It's a lot," Emily nodded, her face relaxing where it could, "but I'm sure Jared is itching to tell you the rest himself."

Nina nodded in agreement, bringing her chin to rest in her palm, held up by her elbow as it pressed harshly into the countertop. She was trying her best not to lose any details from it, trying to engrain them into her brain the way she had done so with details about Jared's bone structure.

"Wait, Emily," the thought leapt out at her like a flashing light, "Jared said something… about why he was telling me everything to begin with."

Emily was already nodding her head as she extracted two mugs from a cabinet, taking the kettle from the burner and pouring water into them.

"He said I was his imprint. What is that?"

Her eyebrows were furrowed as she spoke. She had only heard such a term with regards to a young animal imprinting on their mother or occasionally a human rescuer, and she doubted that was anywhere near the correct context. Perhaps Kim would understand it better- she paid attention in all of their classes.

Nina's thoughts came to a screeching halt.

How might Kim ever react to the knowledge that her long-term crush was a wolf? She couldn't even begin to fathom what sort of response she may have, though Nina assumed it would resemble her reaction to knowing that her best friend had developed feelings for that same long-term crush. Perhaps the wolf intel would be less detrimental. Though Nina quickly realized that that was something Kim could most likely never know.

Emily's eyes were on her when she finally met them, ever-patient.

"I think that's a question that'd be better for Jared to answer."

Nina nodded silently, taking the mug of tea from Emily as she slid it in her direction.

It wasn't long before he returned, his shoulders held tightly and his eyes intense as he entered the house.

Nina allowed herself to ogle at his appearance, his sudden change over a month ago suddenly beginning to make sense- everything, somehow, beginning to make sense, despite the pure insanity of it all.

"Hey," he breathed, his eyes scanning over her almost frantically.

"Are we going to talk now?" Nina raised an eyebrow.

"I think we should," Jared nodding, his voice cracking slightly.

"I'm gonna…" Emily allowed her voice to trail off, jerking her thumb in the direction of the hall, grabbing her mug and a magazine from the countertop as she backed towards it. When she was gone and her bedroom door had clicked shut, Jared finally approached Nina.

Feeling rather uncomfortable at the gravity of their impending conversation, she stood, leaning her back against the counter to face him.

"I…" he began, his mouth opening and closing, a hand reaching up to scratch at the back of his head. His words failed, and Nina realized it was one of the few times, albeit just earlier than afternoon, that she had seen him genuinely nervous about something. Though given what had transpired in just those few hours after school, she couldn't disagree.

"... can turn into a wolf," Nina supplied, raising her chin, "let's start with that."

A ghost of a smile appeared on his face, and he nodded, "yeah, that's a good place to start," he released a nervous chuckle. "I guess… it all starts with the legends you heard the other night. They're true," he shrugged a shoulder, "nobody had a real clue until Sam phased for the first time. He was the first, he was a wreck. The elders found him eventually and realized that their crazy legends were, in-fact, true."

Nina nodded as he spoke, remaining painfully still as she attempted to make it all sink in. If she hadn't seen it flash before her eyes, and nearly take her out in the process, she would've never dreamed of such a truth.

"It turns out that some of us lucky members of the tribe have the gene, and when a cold one comes around," he shrugged again, eyes falling to the floor for a second, "we start phasing."

"A cold one?"

Jared's face twitched slightly, and he nodded, "a vampire," his lips twisted with distaste as he spoke the word.

Nina allowed her own expression to mirror his, and he continued.

"Sam was first, then me, then Paul. That's why-"

"Why you were out of school," Nina finished his sentence, another piece of the puzzle fitting. "And why you came back like…" her words ended, but a brief gesture of her hands at his stature was all he needed to understand. Jared nodded again.

"And you're okay with this?"

Jared raised an eyebrow that time. When he finally understood, his lips twisted again for a moment. "It's got its ups and downs." Something in his eyes twinkled.

"And you can just do it whenever? Turn into a wolf?"

Nina doubted those words would ever seem normal coming from her mouth.

"Once you get control of it, yeah," he nodded, "the first couple times are rough, but you can catch on pretty quick if you can keep your head- Paul struggled," he chuckled. Nina grinned back.

"And…" she felt rather insecure as she spoke the word, her uncertainty of its meaning proving to be quite upsetting, "an imprint?"

Jared visibly swallowed, his eyes becoming pools of stress and emotion, and he nodded slightly as though just to himself.

"Imprinting is…" he ran a hand through the top of his hair, a soft expression coming over his features. Nina's heart fluttered, and the corner of his lips tilted upwards. "Imprinting is when you see her, for the first time after you've phased, and everything is different. And it makes absolutely no sense, but it makes all the sense in the world- everything suddenly makes sense, stuff you didn't even know didn't make sense before. She's suddenly everything, she's the very thing that holds you to the earth, that gravity shit goes right out the window," he chuckled lightheartedly.

Nina felt herself blushing as he spoke, his eyes melting into hers.

"It's something that goes back as far as the legends themselves. It's how wolves can find their soulmates, you might say. Being with them is all you want, and being of any significance in their life is," he shrugged, inhaling, "it's everything."

The air around them had somehow grown very thick, and Jared's words played like a lullaby in Nina's mind, her fingertips tingling, her throat going dry.

"You're everything," he shrugged a shoulder, the words breezing past his lips like the easiest thing he had ever said, the look of his reserved just for her smoldering against her face.

And while she had been floating on his words and the look on his face and the warmth she felt circulating to even her toes, the impossibility of it all came crashing onto her shoulders as though the roof above them had caved in.

"No," she muttered, dropping her eyes from his, her throat turning to sandpaper, "no, I can't be."

Jared raised an eyebrow.

Nina struggled to bring her eyes back towards his face, her lips coming into a thin line as she shook her head, "no, it's gotta be Kim."

Jared's head cocked to the side, his mouth opening and shutting slightly, his eyebrows furrowing.

"What're you talking about?" His disbelief was evident as he spoke, his eyes narrowing.

"It's supposed to be Kim," she spoke with painful certainty, "she's been in love with you since we were kids, you're supposed to want to be with her," she shook her head. She couldn't bear the thought of meeting his eyes in that moment, the raw feeling of her throat already betraying her.

He took a step closer to her, his head tilting down in an attempt for eye-contact.

"Nina," he spoke softly, "I want to be with you- you're the only one it could be."

"Don't say that," her voice was higher than she anticipated. She breathed in deeply, the weight of her impending words already daring to squeeze at her lungs. "No, it has to be Kim. It's supposed to be her, that's why we became friends in the first place."

"We became friends in the first place because we're meant to be together, Nina, me and you!"

For a moment, a million images flashed through Nina's mind- Jared's smile at the top of the mountain during that first hangout, the way his warmth danced along her skin whether it be just in passing or a firm connection, laughing with him on the beach with only the stars to know her feelings for him. And then Kim's face- her kind, soft face. Her eyes, dark like Jared's, twinkling with giddiness at just the sound of his name, each and every night spent in her room whispering plans of their future wedding and all the sweet names he'd call her between then and the undecided date, the pure joy glowing red in her cheeks each moment he spent near her in that last month.

"No, no, no!" She shrieked, "you're supposed to be with Kim, it's Kim who wants to be with you!"

He stared at her with warm eyes, but there was an edge within them, an unhappiness so great that she could feel it in her chest. She couldn't begin to fathom how one seemingly impossible phenomenon could somehow rip apart her world at the seams.

He took a step towards her.

"You want to be with me, Nina. And I want to be with you."

Nina took a deep breath, allowing herself to return the stare into his eyes. She wanted to scream- again. Once at herself for allowing herself to feel that way and not allowing herself to indulge in the perfection of it on account of someone else's feelings, and once at fate itself for bringing her to that moment and facing her with something so unbelievable.

Jared's chuckle broke the silence, shaking his head before tipping it back to the ceiling. Nina's eyebrows creased.

"You just find out me and my friends can turn into wolves and you're upset because it's you I'm meant to be with and not your friend," he spoke incredulously, "you're nuts," he chuckled again.

Nina couldn't help the grin that snaked its way across her lips. She took the opportunity to run her own hands through her hair, reclaiming her seat at the counter and turning her chair to face Jared. He was closer than before. She didn't object as he took her hands into his, his thumbs pressing firmly against her wrists, drowning her in his warmth.

"Don't do this again," he murmured, shaking his head slowly. His eyes were fixated on their skin, his shoulders no longer held high as before.

"Don't do what?"

"Shut me out because of Kim."

She sucked her cheeks in, biting at the insides. She didn't know what to say- or do, for that matter. It was something that crossed her mind, though she doubted she'd be able to successfully do that. For that matter, she doubted she could face Kim if she chose the alternative route. It was officially the weekend, and she'd be expected to be with her that night, though she supposed she didn't have to.

"I just don't get it," she finally muttered, bringing her forehead down and resting it against Jared's abdomen. The rumbling of his chest vibrated through her cranium, and he brought a tender hand to her spine.

It felt like an eternity passed as they rested like that, Nina's mind buzzing with possible outcomes- some simply perfect and others absolutely devastating. And just as she would've expected him to, Jared stood faithfully, his hand on her back as she thought.

The sun had long disappeared when Nina decided to face the world, inhaling and bringing her face up to meet Jared's. His features were soft, his lips pursed slightly to the side.

"What am I supposed to tell her?"

"That you're madly in love with me and can't fight those feelings anymore?"

She snorted with a laugh, tipping her head back and groaning.

"I don't think that'll go over well."

Jared stared until she brought her face back to meet him, pursed lips and narrowed eyes facing one another.

A thought flickered in Nina's mind, a genuine grin appearing. Jared raised an eyebrow.

"So if that was Paul earlier… what do you look like as a wolf?"

GUYS I was so excited to write this chapter! I re-wrote it what felt like a million times, trying to figure out the most probable response for Nina and how best to 'break the news.' I am even more excited to dive into deeper into this now that Nina knows and we have Kim to take care of! Thank you for all the love!