Chapter's Song: "Nesting Dolls" - Circa Survive

I ended up hiding away in the woods for a few days, much to Ma's dismay and probably the rest of the pack. I'd skipped Christmas, but to be fair I wasn't really in the celebrating mood... so not only had I worried her to the Nth degree, but I probably pissed her off like I'd never done before in the process.

As for the pack? It wasn't like I really knew what was going on with them since I'd avoided phasing when the sun started to set. I knew they'd be waiting for that to pry my mind open and hunt me down like a lost puppy.

But I wasn't lost.

I was purposefully going where I knew I wouldn't be found. Having the pack's patrol schedule meant that I could strategically avoid the places they checked – making my job of 'laying low' fairly easy.

Besides, if Jake and Quil knew better, they'd leave me the hell alone. I could only hope that all our time as friends had taught them I always came back on my own time. All I wanted was some alone time to organize my thoughts and figure out what in the world I was going to do next.

First, there was Ma.

I didn't want to have to break everything to her about the shapeshifting thing. Frankly, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't want me to have to tell her because it's not the kind of thing you want to hear from your son. "Hey Ma, just so you know, I'm not actually going through a rebellious phase. The only phase I'm going through is that I phase into a giant wolf in my spare time and, you know, kill vampires when it's necessary so they don't destroy the entire town as we know it. No biggie."

Yeah.
I'm pretty sure she'd rather me be getting into more... human trouble.
At least then she could send me off to a treatment center or I could go to jail or something and fix my ways.

But there's really no 'fixing' what I am. Even if I stopped phasing, the gene is still in my blood, and I guess that kinda makes me a freak- a real monster. My Ma has a monster for a son.

After three days of being on the lam, it was time to go home and face the not-so-literal monster that was my mother who was undoubtedly afraid her one and only son had ran away never to return.

Or even worse, that I'd died altogether.

Against my better judgment, I slowly trudged my way through the snow and walked past the trees that went sparse at our property line. Ma was quick to spot me through the front window. Knowing her, she'd probably sat there waiting the entire time I was gone.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and Ma ran towards me without a coat on. Once she was close enough, she enveloped me in a tight hug that nearly knocked me over. Trapped in her arms, she sobbed loudly into the crook of my neck.

"Embry!" She managed through muffled cries into my warm skin. "How could you do that to me? I was worried sick!"

Sighing deeply, I reached up a lone hand to pat her back a couple of times. "I know, Ma. I'm... I'm sorry."

After a few minutes she finally tore herself away from me and looked me dead in the eye with a serious look while wiping at her tear-stained cheeks. "You didn't even bring your cellphone Embry, what is wrong with you?" She was scolding me now, and I simply broke eye contact with her to look down at my feet in shame.

"I didn't mean to worry you I just needed some...time," I muttered but she wasn't letting me off easy. That wasn't really Ma's parenting style.

In one fowl swoop, she grabbed me by my upper arm and pointed behind her towards the house. "You get inside and go up to your room. You're- You're..." realizing the word 'grounded' held no power over me these days, Ma let go of my arm and dropped her pointed finger. Relaxing slightly, her tone of voice calmed, and she shook her head. "Just get inside, it's freezing out here."

So inside we went without so much as another word between us. She bypassed me once we were inside to make her way into the kitchen where it looked as though she'd been in the process of making tea, something she often did in the early afternoons of her days off. Ignoring the way she flitted around the kitchen, my eyes drifted towards our Christmas tree.

At its base, delicately placed on the ornate apron of the tree, a few stray presents sat unopened; a glum reminder of my Ma's favorite holiday which I'd ruined with my dramatic exit. I could only imagine the worry I'd caused along with endless nights of staying up to fall asleep on the couch with the television on.

I could practically hear the ghostly echoes of her sobbing from where I stood.

With a heavy sigh, I turned from the tree to begin dragging my feet up the steps in the direction of my messy habitat – otherwise known as my room. Once I'd made it through the doorway, I instantly flopped down on the bed which was still unkempt from the last time I'd slept there. Amid a lazy groan, I tossed to lay on my back where my eyes fixated above me at the raised dots of the ceiling. The pattern of the bumps mimicked braille and I tried to make pictures out of them like an old connect the dots worksheet from an activity book designed for kids.

As I concentrated on drawing imaginary pictures on the ceiling, I faintly heard Ma's voice wafting through the house and up to my room. Her disjointed sentences floated through the air, and I strained myself to discern exactly what it was she was saying...and to whom.

"Hey yeah...me...No he just...in...Yeah..." My eyes shifted to look over at the entrance of my room as if by looking in that direction it would somehow help me hear better. I focused on controlling my breathing to silent, quick breaths so I could really hone in on the words she was saying into the telephone's receiver. "Right, right...Well, thanks for the concern, Joshua...I'm sure it...fine...I'll do that. Sure...Goodbye."

Softly I shut my eyes and huffed out the breath I didn't realize I'd been holding since I'd heard her speak his name. By instinct alone, my fingers found their way to press hard on the top of my eyelids before pulling them down slowly as if I could rip the skin clear from my skull. All it really did was force my eyes open and probably make my face look really funny if anyone were to watch me.

I heard the familiar buzzing of my phone, and I dropped my hands from my face to the bed in dismay. Turning my head to look at the nightstand, my phone lay undisturbed on the table's surface; a long black cord connecting it to the nearby outlet. With a heavy sigh, I reached my arm out to grab and yank out the charger only to see a parade of notifications staring back at me from the screen.

"48 missed calls," I read to myself as I unlocked the phone and smirked. "I'm impressed. Let's see who gets the gold star for most persistent..." Swiping slowly, I skimmed the recent calls screen while shaking my head. It didn't take me long to see the pattern of listed contacts was mostly from one person and I dropped my arm, phone still in hand, to rest on the bed at my side.

"Figures it'd be you, Ma," I said to the ceiling before closing my eyes with the silent hope I could skip the clean-up process of the giant mess I'd managed to create for myself.

I really felt bad for worrying her like I had.
It really wasn't what I meant to do.

If I hadn't felt like I was going to explode into a furry nightmare there on the doorstep, I would have thought to bring along my damn phone but in the midst of all that hubub, my only concern had been keeping Ma safe from the world's weirdest family secret. But in true Embry fashion, I'd screwed it all up and hurt Ma in the process.

Maybe I was more like Joshua than I'd like to admit.

My body shot up from the bed into a seated position at my accidental thought.

Absolutely not, my thoughts shouted back immediately. I wouldn't allow myself to think I had anything in common with that jerk other than DNA. He may have provided the sperm, but that was all I was going to accept in terms of fatherhood.

Joshua Uley hadn't been a father to me.

Joshua Uley hadn't raised me.

Joshua Uley hadn't offered me anything in almost thirty years.

Everything I was, everything I had become was thanks to only one person and that person was my Ma.

He hadn't been there when we barely had anything to eat or money for gas to fill the car. He didn't offer us help when I had to borrow school supplies from my friends because Ma didn't make enough money at the souvenir store.

As far as I was concerned, Joshua Uley hadn't helped us with anything of importance – not once.

Ma changed all my diapers. She screamed by herself when giving birth to me alone in the delivery room and she had dealt with all my issues – including my phasing – with a grace that was enviable by the Queen of England herself. From the beginning she's done it all alone. There was nobody stronger than my Ma, nobody even close.

Thinking about him staking claim in any part of our lives started an itch inside of me that I couldn't scratch. It crept under my skin with a familiar heat that made my blood start to boil. Like a snake in the grass, it slithered inside of me, making its way through my veins as though egging me on to phase, completely unprovoked.

Needless to say, it was a good thing my phone buzzed again while still in my grip. The vibrations yanked me from my increasingly angrey thoughts and forced me to pay attention to the text message blinking at me from beyond the screen.

Jake: Hello? U better not be ignoring ur best friend in the entire world who is 100% better than Quil or I'll come over there n kick ur ass. That's a Jacob Black guarantee

Quickly, I clicked back into my messages screen to see what he had sent previously and opened that message too.

Jake: A little birdie named Embry's mom texted me that ur back safe n sound

I rolled my eyes and hit 'reply,' my fingers tapping away on the screen to craft my message in response to him before he thought I was genuinely ignoring him.

Me: First off, you sound like an infomercial with your guarantee. Second, Embry's mom has a name you know. And third, yeah, I'm fine. Lucky me.

It didn't take Jake long to answer me back. Whatever it was he was trying to get at, it must be important to sit around and wait for me to respond.

Jake: Damn right ur lucky. I called the wolf cavalry off n practically begged mama Tiff not to call the cops so... UR WELCOME. ;)

I rolled my eyes at his usage of the winky-face emoji, and I could tell he had been waiting to tease me about my little escapade since the moment I took off. I had to face it- Jake knew me too well and part of that meant that he knew I'd be back.

Me: OK sure, thank you.

I hit send and waited for a second before quickly typing another message and hitting send once more.

Me: I know you're trying to get at something so what is it?

I watched as the chat message dots lit up at the bottom of the screen signaling that Jake was busy typing a long message. Knowing him, he'd have to rewrite it twenty times before even hitting 'send.'

Of course, there was the other option that he'd written this out ahead of time to get the wording just right, in which case I wouldn't be surprised if the message was a block of text I'd receive in a matter of seconds.

While I waited for him to send me the thoughts he'd been waiting to say, my gaze drifted to the wall ahead that was littered with pictures from way back when. Carefully, I studied each picture as the young faces stared back at me perpetually frozen in a time I could never return to.

As I inspected the pictures, the life they depicted felt further away than when they'd been taken. I remembered putting them up like a sappy teen with scotch tape that ruined the cheap wallpaper beneath. Every snapshot, no matter how blurry, represented a time when my life wasn't surrounded by secrets. Captured by the camera's lens, I could almost remember that time of innocence, laughter, and endless adventures. Daily activities were commonplace but hinged on friendship not immenent imprinting or alphas or vampires or even death itself.

Those boys making mud pies and sandcastles, those teens with faraway gazes atop homemade motorized bikes were just kids living their lives. Making memories. Hoping that the future would be bright once we'd grown up and –

My phone buzzed, disrupting my thoughts, and I blinked rapidly to pull myself away from the faded pictures curling against the bedroom walls. I glanced down at the phone, now alight in my hand, and opened the two messages from Jake I hadn't read or responded to yet.

Jake: Ur right, I won't lie. I've been worried, ok? We ALL have. Come to 1st beach tonite, k? 7pm. I know it's winter, but we need a place to meet. We can get a bonfire going like old times, right?

Jake: Srsly, Embry? U can't possibly be busy right now. I'm sure ur mom has you on a pretty short leash

My face deadpanned the words he'd sent as if they were Jake himself. Moments later, like he'd read my mind from miles away in human-form, another message popped up on the screen.

Jake: ...no pun intended

I frowned knowing that even if I said no to him, Jake was sure to make an appearance at my house and find a way to get me out of the house. Especially if Ma was around. She adored Jacob like he was the other son she'd never had. I always assumed it was because she'd been so close to his mom Sarah before she died.

Guess Ma though Jake would be a good influence on me.

Jacob Black. A good influence. I stifled a laugh.

Tapping on my screen aimlessly for a few moments, I finally gathered enough courage to reply to his offer with a single word as my response.

Me: Fine.

With that, I set my alarm for the appropriate time and tossed my phone onto the floor beside my bed. If it was one thing I needed in preparation for Jake's impromptu gathering, it was a long, hearty nap on my nice, soft mattress.

By the time I started my trek towards First Beach it was already dead cold throughout the entire reservation. Most of the wind had subsided and the flat air surrounded me in an eerie sort of silence that remained at my side with every large stride I took down the beach front. Dancing towards the darkened sky, a large bonfire raged onward, the heat beckoning my already-warm body.

There was something inviting about a bonfire, especially on the shores of First Beach. Maybe it was my nostalgia coming in from years of parties at this very spot, but a smile twitched at my lip as I stuffed my hands further into the pockets of my maroon hoodie that Ma had practically forced on my body before I sweet talked my way out the door.

I knew she meant well. In her eyes, I was a normal guy who could catch his death of cold.
How was she to know that I had as much of a chance freezing to death in Florida as I did during a Washington State Winter?

Either way, I walked up to the group of shadowed people whose facial features became clearer the closer I reached. There were way more people than I'd anticipated from the way Jake had set the stage of this little 'gathering'. When he'd described it, I pictured me, him, and Q, maybe a couple others.

Not this many.

It wasn't until I saw one face in particular that my eyes widened, and my head began to shake by impulse alone. Ready to retreat, I pivoted on my foot to make a 180 turn and started walking the opposite way while my feet fumbled in the frozen sand beneath me.

"Nope," I said, though Jake was hot on my trail. The sounds of his heavy footsteps drew closer as he jogged my way, but I merely continued with my rhetoric. "Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Jake- NO," I argued, but he grabbed my arm and yanked me to his side with ease.

"C'mon, Bry, this is a good idea," he encouraged, "you know, get out the animosity and talk things out."

I looked at him with a sarcastic sort of smile and widened my eyes to display mock interest. "Mmhm, mmhm," I hummed while nodding my head for a moment before swiping my arm out of his grasp. In an instant, my expression morphed into one of utter betrayal and irritation. "And I'm telling you that this is a completely horrible idea. Might be your worst."

"Bry..." he said as if scolding me in true 'Mama Tiff' fashion. Giving it a beat, he slung an arm over my shoulder and started dragging me towards the circle of eyes watching us, "Just give it a shot? Sam's agreed to give it a shot, haven't you? I mean, he's here, right?"

I looked over to Sam who sat with a less-than-thrilled look on his face; his arms crossed tightly over his chest. As angry as he looked, he hadn't tried to attack me yet, which seemed encouraging.

"Alright," I dragged out the word as I glanced around the circle at the lucky folks that had been gathered a la intervention style. The whole vibe of their seating arrangement made me uncomfortable, but I had already made it this far, so I might as well stay. Eager to get this show on the road, I managed to say, "What's everyone doing here? Isn't this just some sort of... weird therapy thing between Sam and I? The whole party you've got here feels... kinda unnecessary."

"What an astute observation, Embry," Leah noted, her tone wreaking of sarcasm. Extending her arms out as if presenting the group to an even larger group, she soon dropped them to her sides and pushed herself up to stand. "In fact, it was the very same observation I made when we all started showing up."

"Leah..." Seth groaned, but there was no stopping his sister once she'd started on a worthy tangent.

"But Jake here has it in his head that we should all be here for support while you two sort through your daddy issues. Honestly, I could think of about a million things I'd rather do than waste my evening on your off-brand Maury Povich show, but hey. That's just me." Both Sam and I glared in her direction, but Leah remained clueless to our irritation and continued anyway.

Seth looked up at his sister with wide eyes before forcing out the most awkward laugh I've ever heard in my entire life. Through his laugh, he reached an arm up to grab Leah and yank her down to resume her spot at his side on the log. Ever the rebel, Leah easily shook him off, her face remaining blank as Seth whispered to her, "What is with you tonight?"

"Look Leah," Jake started, his voice thick with exhaustion at having to have this discussion for what I could only imagine was a repeat of the one he'd apparently had before, "Like I told you the last time we talked about this, the circumstances surrounding Joshua are... complicated - "

"Well, that's an understatement," a lone voice murmured, but Jake merely reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose before taking a deep breath and starting over to address the entire group as a whole. "Sam and Embry are family - "

Sam's glare cut Jacob's sentence short, and I dropped my head back with a purse of my lips; my eyes fixating up towards the blackened night sky.

"Sorry," he muttered. "That was probably a poor choice of words given the situation, but-"

"But?" Sam repeated.

"Oh, this'll be good," Leah commented with a slight smirk.

Noting the disaster that was about to strike, Quil began dramatically pointing in Leah's direction and chimed in to help. "It will be good because what Jake is trying to say is that we are, in a more hypothetical sense, although not quite as directly as Sam and Embry, a family. Right Jake?" Quil's signature cheesy grin took over his face as he managed to say the word 'segue' through clenched teeth.

I rolled my eyes and literally facepalmed. As if to shield myself from the secondhand embarrassment this ordeal was causing me, I kept my hand firmly in place on my forehead.

"Quil?" Jake exclaimed but in a more questioning sort of way. "I got this, okay?" Our friend held his hands up as if to surrender.

Standing his ground, Jake put his hands on his hips while his voice took on a more serious tone. "Look. We're working this out, okay? I'm not about to have this pack divided again just when we got it all back together and..." he sighed, his voice growing softer, "...and... just when I'm about to leave."

At that moment, the group began talking over one another in an eruption of indistinguishable words and sounds. A flurry of questions overlapped amid gasps and other verbal outcries of dismay.

Poor Quil and I merely looked at each other, silenced by shock from our best friend's announcement. I could feel Jake's eyes lingering on me sympathetically, but I refused to meet his gaze. After a minute had passed, Jacob returned to his rightful place as alpha and shouted over the ruckus, "GUYS! Everyone, just... just SHUT IT! SERIOUSLY!"

In an instant, the sound of the crackling fire was all that could be heard – a relaxing score that played over the tense situation we'd all found ourselves in.

Resuming his regular volume, Jacob continued apologetically. "I wasn't going to tell you guys like this, but I guess now is as good a time as any," He looked down at his feet and reached a hand up to run through his hair nervously. "The Cullens are moving again. I guess they've stayed here for their length of time or something and I'm-I'm going with them. You guys know why."

"You don't have to go though," Quil argued, his voice almost reaching a level of desperation I'd never heard him use before. "It isn't like you can't travel to see them or, or... or use facetime to talk. Just because you imprinted doesn't mean you can't choose to - "

"I have chosen and I'm choosing to go to Alaska."

His statement reignited the spark of concern throughout the group but Jake was quick to reel everybody in before he lost control.

"Can you all just listen for a second? Jesus Christ..." He was tired, wearing thin from a discussion he wasn't intending to have tonight.

As angry as I was that he was ditching us for frozen tundra, I spoke up to try and give him the chance to explain. "I'm sure Jake has a good reason to leave... let's just hear him out."

Nodding once in my direction, a nod that was both thankful and sad for what I'd said, Jacob tried once more. "Honestly, this doesn't even have to do so much with imprinting as it does... just being a friend. Bella's never been particularly good at starting over... I'm sure you all know that about her by now. I just think that it might be... nice to have another familiar face around – one that isn't a bloodsucker and reminds her of home."

Nobody responded, all of us taking in his words and the sincerity behind them.

"I think it'll also help Charlie with the whole... suddenness of it all. He's pretty bummed about her leaving, Ness included, and if I'm with them..." he shrugged his shoulders. "I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense when I say it out loud, but I kind of want to try something new. Meet other people. See what else the world has to offer, you know? Maybe meet a nice girl and...and..."

"And what?" Leah remarked. "Ditch your imprint?"

His eyes locked with hers from where she sat opposite the fire. "Choose happiness. For both of us. Whatever that ends up being."

I could understand where Jake was coming from. Unlike the rest of the pack, I knew Jacob Black in a way that even mind-reading couldn't match. Growing up, he talked a lot about the few memories he did have of his mom... how happy she made Billy and what it was like growing up with parents that really, truly loved each other.

It was something I was always jealous of, even though he'd lost that environment at a young age.

I knew that he had once wanted that with Bella, but when he imprinted... that string tying him to her was cut. In a weird, sort of backwards kind of way, imprinting freed him from everything. It allowed him to have a future that could be with anyone he wanted – not just the silly crush he'd been hung up on for years.

"I get it," I acknowledged, much to his surprise. "It's a fresh start for you. Away from La Push... from the pack. Away from bloodlines and all the other mess that comes from who and what we are."

"But," Seth interjected, "what about us?" His voice was soft, just barely above a whisper.

Jake shrugged. "My beta will take over. You guys will be fine. And, I imagine without any more vampires around, there won't be a need for our kind to phase as often."

"Wait, wait, wait," Leah halted him while shaking her head rapidly and trying to put everything together. "Your beta? As in...me? You're giving the pack...to me? You're kidding."

"Damn right he's kidding," Paul flat out answered and Leah responded with a deadly glare in his direction.

"Shut your mouth, Paul. I wasn't talking to you." Leah retorted, but he merely leaned into the circle while gesturing towards her as he looked at Jake.

"You can't give her control of the pack, Jacob. Listen to her! She doesn't even want it! She'll run us into the ground."

Leah narrowed her eyes in Paul's direction. "Who said I didn't want it? Did I say those words? Did I say those exact words or did you shove them into my mouth, pretty boy?"

"It's my decision, Paul," Jake finalized while ignoring Leah's comment. "She's not only my beta but she's the best for the job."

"Best for the job?" Paul was laughing while saying the words and I couldn't help but feel anger at the way he was reacting to the idea of Leah being alpha. "She's a woman! She won't be able to run this pack the way-"

I cut him off before he could even think about which words to use to finish his bound-to-be sexist comment. "Leah can run the pack just as well as anybody, woman or not, okay Paul? And I know you, we all know you. You aren't even a sexist guy; you're just pissed off that Jake didn't pick you or literally anyone else besides Leah. Quit being butthurt and accept his decision because guess what? Jake is STILL the alpha right now." I was on a roll with my sudden streak of saying what I'd been thinking for ages, so I continued with my thought process.

"And while you're at it," I went on, "How about you stop treating Leah like she's less than human just because you don't like her? The fact that you're still angry she dared to have feelings about what went down literal years ago with her and Sam is really pathetic at this point. How about we let the past be the past and move on with our lives? Nobody deserves to have trauma from their past brought up every second of every day so just... Just stop."

The group grew quiet and Leah stared at me for a long while without making a single comment. I knew she had to been irritated I'd stuck my neck out for her like she wasn't able to defend herself, but I also guessed that my reaction wasn't about Leah alone.

She was just a convenient way of expressing how I felt about my own shit with Sam.

After a minute, Jake decided to finish what he had been trying to say in the first place. "So anyway," he said, "we're leaving sometime in the new year and this wasn't where I wanted to announce this, but... there it is. And now that that's out of the way, can I finish my speech about our ancestors and how we aren't their mistakes?" he stopped and sighed before taking a seat on a nearby log. "Honestly... Embry's right. Whether it's been Sam and Leah or Sam and Embry, we're better than this. Life happens. So how about you two stop blaming each other for what your father did to the other?" He asked the two of us and I scoffed.

"Dude, I'm not blaming anyone," I stated, my eyes glancing to my half-brother as he sat with a grimace cloaking his face. "Honestly, Sam was ready to kill his own dad- you were there- you heard his thoughts."

Seth chimed in at my statement as if trying to rear the conversation in another direction, "Yeah, Quil told me that you guys were able to hear Joshua's thoughts... is that true?"

Jake nodded his head while furrowing his brow. "Mmhm. We were."

"But why?" Seth asked again and Jake looked to Quil who shrugged his shoulders, but Seth was hot on the case. "Do you think it's the kind of thing where, he made the conscious choice to join your pack or something like Leah and I did and so he just went into your brains?"

"Honestly, Seth I don't-" Jake tried, but Seth just continued with his thought process out loud.

"Or do you think that because he didn't have an alpha or anything it was like when Sam stepped down as alpha and everyone was sucked into the same pack so we all heard each other's thoughts again?" He waited for confirmation of his theories and Jake sighed while shrugging his shoulders.

"Seth, really, I have no idea how the whole thought thing works. I don't think there's an actual science behind it. It just sort of just...happened."

"Does that mean that he's like... part of our pack now?" Seth asked quietly for fear of Sam's reaction which he was right to be afraid of.

"He is not one of us," Sam snapped and Seth curled into himself as Leah turned her head to face her ex with narrowed eyes.

"And frankly," Sam added, ignoring Leah's glare from across the fire, "What does any of this have to do with anything?" He exclaimed and I turned to face him from where I stood. "I'm actually more interested in why Embry had to bring up the fact that I was going to kill Joshua. Why should you care what I was going to do with that traitor?"

"Did you ever think that maybe I'm a little pissed off too, Sam?" I asked. "Don't you think I'm pretty fucking angry about all the things he's done, the people he's hurt, only for him to show back up and play dad to both you AND me? Like he has some right to us or something? Don't you think I want to hurt him too? But you didn't see me attacking you or ready to literally kill him because, oh, I don't know, IT'S WRONG."

Sam began to laugh outright as everyone in the entire group looked on in horror as if they were watching a soap opera unfold in front of their eyes. "Wrong? Wrong, Embry? You want to tell me what's right and wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong, Embry. Wrong is abandoning your family and running off to God knows where without so much as a goodbye or a single phone call home so anyone even knows if you are still alive!" He smiled an evil sort of smile because he knew what he was doing when he said that. "That's right, I'm not just talking about my father, I'm talking about that stunt you pulled over Christmas, Bry. We practically had to wrap your own mother in swaddling clothes and rock her to sleep from she was so worried about you." He laughed at his own joke and shook his head. "We may share a father, but at least I didn't turn out like him, pulling the same moves he pulled."

I clenched my jaw and narrowed my eyes while taking a step towards him. "You take that back," I practically growled in his direction.

"Embry..." Jake cautioned, but I wasn't listening to him, I was focused on Sam who was focused on me.

"You sure you don't feel like attacking me, Embry? Or is that beneath you?" He was egging me on, and I pursed my lips as if the action itself would hold me together. An outburst was what he wanted, anyway.

"No, Sam. I'm not going to attack you. Afterall, I know that's what you want so you can have a reason to fight back. Clearly, you're looking for another round after that first one. I mean, I guess I did deserve it and all after I DARED to have the audacity of being born, right?" Jake knew I was treading in rough waters, and, in hindsight, I did too but I didn't care.

Sam piped up at my comment and shook his head while countering, "Maybe it's because you're the reason my father left me and my mother, so yeah Embry. Maybe it is because you were born."

"Sam, c'mon man," someone else from the circle called out to him but I wasn't even paying attention to who was trying to stop the inevitable fight about to break between the two of us.

I couldn't help but take another step closer to him, my hands buried in the pockets of my sweatshirt to hide the balled-up fists my hands had become. Every word I spoke made them grow tighter as though I were pressing coal into a diamond from my palm. "Is that why, Sam? Did you ask him? Cause I'm curious to know. Tell us all, please, because I'm sure everybody is just dying to know about this conversation the two of you had."

Sam stood up from his spot on the log by the fire to face me. "Did you talk to him, Embry? What other possible reason is there other than that my father went out and had a bastard son with your mother?"

I felt my jaw clench at the word he used and I thanked his lucky stars he didn't decide to use some less-than-kind descriptive words about my Ma. Even so, my body's reaction was to take steps towards him, my large strides making it so I was mere inches away from his face within seconds. "What did you say?" I practically dared him to repeat the words and he raised his brows as if to intimidate me.

Quil was fast to jump up from his spot opposite of where we were in each other's faces and rush to try and break us up before this turned into something physical. Meanwhile, Jake attempted to calm everyone else down as they talked about various things- what would happen with the pack when Jake was gone, whether or not Leah would make a good alpha, who would win in the fight: Sam or me.

All the while, I couldn't help but hear Leah in the background say, "You know what? I take back everything I said before. This was totally worth coming out for. In fact, I say we do this more often, what do you say, Sethy?"

To which Seth responded, "Leah...seriously?" And he jumped up from his spot to try and help Quil get between Sam and I. Sure, they meant well, but at that moment we weren't doing anything besides staring at one another, secretly hoping our counterpart would throw the first punch.

"For fuck's sake," Jake finally said after a few chaotic moments, "Embry, I owe you an apology because you were right! This was a total disaster in literally every way possible. You guys know that I hate to give alpha orders but you two-" he pointed at Sam and me. "-you are not to talk to each other until something is figured out about Joshua. Got it?"

"Gladly," Sam answered while turning away from me.

"Whatever," I agreed while turning away from him.

"And in the meantime, maybe you both, but probably not at the same time, should find Joshua and talk to him or something." Jake then suggested and we both looked at him like he was completely crazy because, let's be honest, he actually might be with a suggestion like that.

"Absolutely not!" Sam shouted in response.

"Yeah right!" I scoffed.

"And why not? How else are we going to figure out what he's doing here exactly?" Jake questioned me and I pulled my hood up over my head to prepare myself for the walk home.

I had no intentions of staying at this bonfire a single minute longer.

"I can tell you right now why Joshua Uley is in La Push and I don't have to talk to him to find out either," I stated while exchanging a look between Sam and Jake. "He's here to ruin my life." I then turned around to begin walking home; the wind picking up speed as I stormed off into the distance. Once I was sure my words couldn't be heard, I finished my initial sentence the way I'd wanted to before my departure.

"He's here to ruin my life," I repeated, this time adding, "And my Ma's. All over again." Sam may not see it now, but he and his mom hadn't been the only victims of Joshua Uley.