Warning
Mention of suicide
Paul.
The skin of my shoulder rests against the door frame of Mari's room, my hair beginning to air dry from the shower as I take a breath in, swimming in the comfort of her scent that's got her room saturated.
My eyes go to the bed, thinking of the time I told her I cared for her, and how relieved she looked when I said it, how content, and how she finally opened up about what exactly had been bothering her so much.
As far as I can tell she's gotten a better hold on things.
I can still see her struggle with certain things from time to time, she gets frustrated and cries, now, as opposed to getting frustrated and taking it out on others.
As fucked up as it is, I think I preferred her picking fights more than seeing her cry. But I also know that not putting her emotions onto other people has significantly improved her relationship with Emily and Sam, and that's helped her quite a bit, so it's worth it.
Now, I've just got to work on getting my dad to like her...
"...You did what?" Dad stops chewing his food, his eyes looking at me as if cautiously examining my face to try to piece together what I just said again.
I take a breath and casual repeat, "I imprinted on Mari."
"Do I even wanna know what the hell that is?" His face scrunches up as if he's taking it to mean something it doesn't.
"No, dad, it's not like that." I shake my head, seeing his face actually turning a shade of green.
"What does it mean?" He asks me, his brows pinching together, a confused look on his face.
"It just means I really like her." I try to downplay it, but it doesn't help because he knows no matter what way I slice it, I'm just about to inform him I'm involving myself with her, and I know he doesn't want that by the way he drops his silverware and it clambers against his plate, an completely unamused look on his face.
"You really like her?" He asks, flatly.
"Yeah." I stand my ground.
"Do you think that's the safest thing for her given the circumstances?"
"I'd never hurt her." I practically spit it out, defensively.
"If Sam, of all people, got pissed at Emily, of all people, and wigged out on her, I can guarantee at some point you're gonna your cool with Mari." He bites back, my brows furrowing in confusion. "Oh, don't look surprised, Paul, I know a hell of a lot more than I let on."
"Sam and Emily's situation was different." I say tightly, my teeth clamping together.
"You're right. Sam's level headed. Emily's level headed. It makes perfect sense as to how he snapped and screwed her up, yet you can't wrap your hard head around the possibility that your explosive temper mixed with her sporadic tantrums might just cause you to do the same, or—"
"—Tantrums?!" What he says about me rolls off my back, my attention only snagging on what he's said of her.
"Tantrums, Paul! Loose screws! She's gonna make you miserable!" He loses his patience.
"I'm happy with her, dad, bitchy little attitude at times, or not—and it doesn't even matter anymore because she's worked it out with Emily—I'm happy with her, I really like her! Why can't you just leave it at that?!"
"Because I left it at that with Tom, damnit!" He's had enough, standing to his feet, his eyes glossy with tears."I left it at that and he ended up dead. I've already had to bury my friend, and his boy, I'll be damned if I have to bury my son over the same craziness, too."
I can see on his face that he feels as if this is history repeating itself.
"She's not her mom." I say, my skin vibrating as heat pins at it.
"It starts as a 'bitchy little attitude,' then it turns into her not wanting you around your family, her not wanting your kids around your family, her wanting to get you away from your family, and then nine years later you're found in the back yard with your head blown to bits because she's so crazy you knew the only way to get free from her is death." He warns me in the same low tone that anger intertwines with, "I'm not burying you. Stay the hell away from her."
He's bracing himself against the counter when four paws hit against the floor after tearing through the table, fur curling around sharp teeth, and I'm mowing through the front door, leaping over the newly built porch and sprinting for the trees.
I haven't spoken to him in a few days.
I won't go back home.
My bare feet thump down the stairs of Emily's house, the smell of dinner cooking wafting throughout the space of the kitchen and den as Emily's picking up where Mari left off with Sue as Jared and Sam are sitting at the table, patiently waiting.
"Where's Mari?" I ask her cousin, leaning against the counter, my arms crossing.
"She's gone to pick up Seth and run to the store to get some more drinks for me." Emily replies, before teases, "Gonna die of heartache that she didn't take you with her?"
"No." I scoff, despite missing her, which bleeds into my next question concerning the inevitable, "So, when is she supposed to go back home?"
Emily makes a humming noise and scoffs, exhaling before she says, "actually, about that..." Her eyes go to Sam. "I meant to tell you this morning when she called me, but apparently Belinda wants to extend Mari's stay."
Sam's face remains neutral.
"For how long?" He asks her and she takes in a breath, hesitating, before she finally says, "...Possibly December."
"What?" I ask.
"Why?" Jared questions next.
"You know why." Sue mumbles, seemingly not surprised, not bothering to look at any of us as she opens the oven and puts the biscuits in.
"We don't know that." Emily says next, calmly, Sam and Jared apparently knowing what she's talking about whereas I'm confused as ever.
"What?" I ask them.
"So her mother can live however she wants and not have to risk her finding out." Sue says it, passively.
I furrow my brows, looking to Jared and Sam, still having no idea what she's talking about.
"...Um?" I'm still lost and Sue looks at me.
"She's gotten too comfortable not having to hide in her own house. It'd be hard to have to go back to pretending she isn't a man-eating cold one so suddenly." Sue adds.
"Sue." Sam says as Emily's face drops.
"We don't know that." Emily repeats it.
"I know that. The council knows that. Tommy surely knew that—if it weren't for her he wouldn't have ever phased in the first place."
Their conversation takes longer to sink in than it should, and I feel as if I'm completely blind sided, stuttering for words and all I can repeat is, "what?"
"Her mom's a freaking leech, dude." Jared informs me, her voice fleeting as if he's been holding that in. "You couldn't smell it on her when she got here?"
"No." I confess, confused as to how I could've possibly missed it, my head spinning before I look at Sue once again, my eyes darting from her to Sam. "You knew about this."
"She's here, now. She's safe." He states.
"For now." Jared pipes, Sam glaring at him. "What? It's true. What happens when she wants her to come back home and we're in the way of that?"
"She's not going to hurt anybody, especially not Marisela. She's had years to do so and she hasn't." Emily's stern voice cuts.
Hearing her defend one of them makes my stomach turn, a defeated look in her eyes.
I wonder if Sam's imprint has known all this time, too, but has been in denial of it.
"You think Mari even knows?" Jared asks next. "I mean, she's got to. Especially since her dad was like us. There's no way they could've kept any of that under wraps." He answers his own question.
My mind is still reeling.
"She's always been good at hiding it. Maybe she would've gotten away with it if we hadn't already known about her kind." Sue states and Emily looks at her.
"I'm gonna go lay down for a few minutes. Call me when the biscuits are done." She's had enough of the conversation, clearly uncomfortable, dismissing herself and Sam is on her heels to make sure she's alright.
Once they're gone, Sue lowers her voice.
"We never knew the circumstances of it, how it happened, why it happened, but Stevie was four, and Mari was a baby, so neither of them really knew much different. She told us she had developed 'chronic Hypotension'. She starved herself to keep her eyes dark, closest to their natural color, that's why she never came around the family when they lived here." She explains. "They moved because she was afraid we were going to find out. Tom shifted soon after they left." She confirms it. "His death..." Her voice sheds its steadiness for a split second, a small waver in tone before it becomes solid one more as she's shaking it off, and exhaling, "...I think it was the fact that he couldn't live without her because he loved her, but he couldn't live with her because of what she was. No doubt it drove him crazy."
All the puzzle pieces are fitting into place.
It all makes sense, and I feel guilty for past comments at Mari's parent's expense, then it occurs to me that there was a wolf between Billy Black's grandfather's generation, and ours...and the council knew this, and didn't tell us.
"Why the hell didn't anybody say anything? That's something we should've known when we first shifted." I harshly hiss out.
"It was terrible circumstances, Paul. There wouldn't have been any good in telling you boys about it, now. It's not like Tom would've been here to walk you through it."
There's a valid point in her stern words.
"And as for Belinda...she's not here. She's not a threat, not to us."
"No, just her own daughter." I think about what Jared had mentioned, and she breathes out. "Not to mention how torn up Mari's been for years, thinking her mom drove Tom to suicide because 'she was just that crazy'."
"She was before she turned, and it merely amplified it." She raises her brows. "And Mari knows what she needs to know, for now. It's not our place to tell her the truth. That's for her mother." She tells me.
"We're lying to her." I argue.
"Sometimes that's necessary to protect the people we care about, Paul. You know that or else you would've already told her you turn into a horse-sized wolf."
Another point.
"She doesn't even know about you, yet you want to risk bombarding her—"
"—I want her to know the truth about her parents. I want her to know that it had nothing to do with her, or her brother, or even how her mother treated her father."
"She'll know when the right time comes. When she's mentally equipped to better understand it." Her voice shakes again.
I can see it on her face, in her eyes, her worry, and concern...her guilt...members of our tribe painting out a story that makes the most sense as a cover up for the horrid events that have struck Marisela's immediate family in the past.
A part of me feels bad for how I treated dad the last time I saw him. He may know more than what he lets on, but I know he doesn't know the truth.
Tom was his friend, like a brother to him, and he's been told all this time his friend died so horribly in an effort to just get some peace from his batshit wife.
Sue's done what she's thought was best—what they all thought was best—to protect her niece.
They all have a role, and have managed to play it flawlessly, and her mother has made no move to fight against it.
I wonder if it's because she also wants to protect Mari from the truth. It has to be. She could've killed Mari and Stevie, especially if she'd been starving herself.
The self-control she's had to have carried for the past eighteen years is something that's hard for me to fathom.
I can't help the sinking feeling in my chest at the thought of Emily. I don't know the exact ins and outs of her closeness with Belinda, I don't know how she grew to be like another child to her, but I can't imagine how hard it must've been to learn the truth.
One last look at Sue before I glance at Jared who's sitting with his mouth deliberately closed tight.
I'm the first to move to the door, the scrape of the chair moving away from the table signals that he's on the same page as me, the two of us getting outside, getting some space.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me?" I rip into him harsher than I mean to.
"I figured you knew, you just weren't saying anything about it because she's..." He trails off. "...Sam was gonna tell you, eventually. Whenever you decided to tell her about us. I didn't realize you were so dopey over the whole imprint thing that it had completely gone over your head."
"It didn't go over my head." I argue.
"She freaking reeked of it the first few days she was here, dude, and you didn't even know." He points out, doubt beginning to close in on me.
Why hadn't I noticed it?
I wasn't that out of it, I couldn't have been. Imprinting or not, that wouldn't have distracted me from picking up on the scent, if anything I should've been hyper aware of it.
"I wanna tell her the truth." I state as if my mind is already made up and dead-set on confessing everything to her all at once.
"She'd lose her shit." He warns me, shaking his head. "Just listen to Sue and ease her into it. She doesn't need all this shit sprung on her at one—"
"Emily?!" He stops speaking upon hearing Sue's distressed voice, the two of us looking at one another before heading back inside.
Sue's now upstairs, my ears focusing on her voice to hear what's wrong, able to capture Emily's shaking response to what Sue's just told her.
"What?"
"They're both unresponsive, Charlie said they're being taken to Forks Community Hospital."
Jared and I look at one another once more, furrowing our brows in confusion.
The three of them are tearing down the stairs, Emily yanking on her shoes in the process, frantically while Sam pulls on a shirt.
"What happened?" He asks, furrowing his brows, and Sue looks at me while Sam and Em grab their wallets, my Alpha stopping to look at me, his expression worried.
"Seth and Mari got into a bad accident, Charlie Swan called and said they're both unresponsive."
My stomach becomes a pit for my heart to sink into me, a physical pain washes over me as if I'm having a heart attack, tears toppling over my lash line before I even realize it, confusion pulling at my mouth and I try to stutter out what happened but I'm unable to, heat beginning to prickle at my skin like tiny needles as I try to catch my breath.
"We gotta go, Paul." Sue says to me, my eyes going back to Sam, and he gives me a single, encouraging nod of his head.
Perhaps it's easier to control because I'm not angry, but I'm able to pull from the overwhelming emotion of concern to focus on Mari, and Seth, and the fact I can't get to them if I'm a wolf.
"Okay." I keep my eyes on Sam as if he has all the answers, when in reality he knows just as much as I do right now.
XXX
Sterile air mixed with the nauseatingly sweet, burning smell of a vampire mixes together and stings my lungs, my shoe impatiently tapping at the tile floor where I'm sitting in the waiting room next to Jared, Sam, and Emily, while Sue speaks to the receptionist to try to figure out what the hell is going on.
"...Seth Clearwater and Marisela Clearwater, they were in an accident a couple hours ago." She says lowly as the receptionist types before she replies, "Ma'am, someone will be out to talk to you once they're able to, alright?"
I can see Sue shut her mouth, probably having to, to keep from being rude.
"Okay." She walks back over here, defeated, sitting in a chair, putting her face in her hands.
The doors leading outside open up, Leah stepping inside, a panicked look on her face as her hand braces her mother's back, sitting down beside her as Sue looks up, tears rolling down her cheeks.
I glance out the window, seeing Charlie Swan in his uniform, speaking to Harry and Billy.
"What happened?" Jared asks Leah, hoping Charlie told her.
She takes in a breath as if weary of speaking it, looking at Sue as she says, "A semi truck t-boned them. Charlie said Seth's gotten a concussion and he's banged up, but he's okay."
A relieved sigh flushes from Sue's lungs, her hand clinging to her daughter's as she lets out a breathy, "good."
"What about Mari?" Emily lashes the moment of relief back into dust, her scarred face twisting when Leah looks at her and opens her mouth that contain no words before she finally speaks.
"Charlie can explain it better than me." She states, confirming it's not just as cut and dry as Seth's is. Sam's hand wraps around Emily's tightly and my lungs flatten out once again as the breath is forced out of them.
Jared's reassuring hand pats at my back a couple times when I lean over, my elbows on my knees, my hands raking down my face as the doors open again.
My attention snaps toward it, Harry and Billy coming inside, followed by Charlie.
Emily's wiping her face, her focus shifting towards him, pulling from Sam and standing up to meet him.
"What happened to her?" She questions, clearing her throat, her arms crossing as if she's cold.
Charlie looks at all of us, exhaling, all of us looking toward him as Harry sits beside Sue and Billy looks at me for a moment before putting his attention on Sam briefly.
"A semi-truck ran right through the red light, and hit them as they were crossing." He tells her. "Seth's got a concussion and some whiplash, but nothing he won't recover from." He explains.
"I asked about Mari, Charlie." She says calmly, and he glances at us once again before answering her.
"She's in surgery, now." He informs us.
"What?" Sue asks, her voice shaking.
"She was on the steering wheel when we got to her, pushed up to it." He states. "We believe the impact of her seat hitting the wheel around the same time the airbag deployed, snapped her sternum in half."
Emily's legs are shaking as if she's struggling to stay up, and I don't even try to stop the trail of tears running down my face and neck, wetting the start of my t-shirt.
"According to the EMT, the silver lining in this is that if her seat were any further back, even by an inch, at the angle the car was hit, she would've gotten squished by the truck, and would've died instantly."
"Shit." Jared breathes out under his breath.
"We just can't pinpoint what exactly moved her seat so far up, but it was probably the impact of the hit." He adds.
"That's the worst of it, though, right?" Emily asks him, raising her brows.
"As of now, yes. Dr. Cullen's trying to patch her back up, and he'll be out to speak to you, I'm sure. He's been sending someone out to update me on the two of them every now and then."
His assurance falls on deaf ears, all of us eyeing him, my throat going dry, my fists balling up as my tears of worry turn to tears of rage at the idea of a leech wrist-deep in Marisela's blood, her life quite literally in his cold, dead hands, at his mercy, and she doesn't even realize it.
"Dr. Cullen?" I force it out harshly, standing up, Jared grabbing my wrist, keeping me where I'm at, and Charlie looks at me.
"He's a damn good doctor, especially trauma. If anyone can fix her, it's him." He tells me, probably thinking I've drunk the same kool-aid as Harry and Billy, and just don't like him for the hell of it.
"Thank you, Charlie." Harry says to him, ignoring me.
"We really appreciate it." Billy adds, looking to me. "All of us."
"I'm about to head down to the station and see if I can't get to the bottom of how this happened to begin with. I'll come back to talk to Seth and Mari and get their statement when they're able to. Just keep me updated." He says calmly, and Billy nods.
Once he's gone, I'm snatching from Jared.
"Paul," Sam says to me in warning, glaring at me.
I merely do as I'm being silently told to do, sitting back down, stewing in my own anger.
Emily rubs her lips together, looking at Sue, and throwing yet another wrench into the clusterfuck of the situation.
"I need to call Belinda and let her know what's happened."