chapter eleven

Remy Cree was the scariest person that Embry had ever seen.

And that was before he imprinted on her.

There were rumors about her, and about her brother. About how she slammed her fists into the faces of people who disrespected her brother or her friend until her knuckles were bruised and bloodied. About how she accompanied her brother on his drug deals and carried a knife in her pocket in case anything went wrong. And couple that with the way she carried herself down the halls, with her eyes narrowed and hands balled into tight, bruised fists, Embry always thought it would be better to just avoid Remy Cree.

But when he saw her eyes for the first time, wide and wild, he fell to his knees, overwhelmed by the everything of Remy. He knew that his days of avoiding her were done, and that he'd do anything to see her again, even if she was about a million times scarier than she was before. Because how was he supposed to tell a girl with a tongue that sharp and a bite that was even sharper, that they were basically soulmates, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"With patience," Sam had told him the same night he imprinted, and Embry laughed humorlessly. It was annoying to hear that coming from Sam. God knows he had a hell of a time telling Emily, and she basically had the patience of a saint. He didn't know Remy. Remy was feral; she was sharp and snarling and he loved it but goddamn it was so fucking scary to him. How was he supposed to talk to her? Remy wasn't just a girl. She was his imprint; she was his everything and she looked at him like she was ready to bite his head off. The consequences of fucking up were unimaginable. He felt sick if he went a day without seeing her.

But when he jumped out of her bedroom window, he felt different. He knew it was different. Remy wanted him. And not just to use him as a distraction or an excuse to not talk to Kim. She wanted him in her most vulnerable moment, when she was weak and tired and shaken. It was like he could still feel the way her head felt resting against his shoulder. Her skin was cold and clammy and she was covered in the foul scent of her own vomit, and the first thing she did when she saw him the next morning was throw a pretty hard punch directly into his nose (which really surprised him, he wasn't expecting that hit to make him stumble, and it filled him with some weird sense of pride), but it was still the best night of his life.

Embry figured that was kind of pathetic.

Especially considering it was paired with the potentially gut-wrenching news that her brother, who was presumed to be dead, might have been turned. Embry didn't like the way that thought felt. It was unsettling and weighed down on him while he rushed away from Remy's house and into the woods, waiting until he was far enough away that his little transformation couldn't be seen.

It felt good, stretching out like that, and running between the trees. He was fast, faster than he thought possible. It was one of the best non-Remy related feelings he had ever experienced, falling second only to sinking his teeth into some ice cold marble monster.

What sucked though, was that his thoughts were immediately crowded by the often stupid and annoying thoughts of his pack mates. And he tried to keep his thoughts quiet, thinking only of the leaves on the ground in front of him en route to Emily's house. But he couldn't keep the quick images of Remy in his arms while he carried her up to her room from flashing through his brain, and that was the wrong thing to think of.

Ohhhhhh. Embry got fuckin' luckyyyyyy.

Man c'mon that's my cousin.

Quil's cousin got luckyyyyy.

Shut the fuck up.

Even though Paul's incessant teasing was irritating, it was just irritating at worst. There was nothing Paul would say that would make him boil with rage. Embry didn't want to think about how Jared would react to the images of Remy puking up alcohol. He didn't want Jared to think he was right about Remy. Even if she did punch him in the nose.

She punched you in the face? I love her.

I'm ignoring you.

Their taunts echoed in his head as he approached the woods surrounding Emily's house. They were harmless but he had bigger things on his mind. He phased back with ease, and tossed his clothes back on so quickly he didn't even realize he had put his shorts on backwards. He ran towards the front door with pine needles in his shoes and didn't bother announcing his arrival before entering.

Embry walked into the kitchen to see Sam standing at the counter and Jared at the kitchen with his legs kicked up and he was mad instantly. It was so amazing what Remy could do to him. Before, he and Jared were close. Jared was the one who supported him the most when he first phased, when he had to cut off his friends and his mother was constantly crying over his actions. And he knew the way Jared treated Remy was wrong before he imprinted, but now he couldn't even look at Jared without rage pulsing through his veins at the memory of what he said to Remy.

The feeling was almost mutual, and they hadn't had any interaction since Embry bit a chunk out of him for letting Kim ambush Remy the one night they got to spend together.

So Embry looked right past Jared, and said to Sam, "I need to talk to you."

Sam raised a brow. "So talk to me."

Embry sighed. "In private."

"Just say it Embry," Sam snapped, "I'm tried of your little feud. You're both brothers, so just spit it out. Alright?"

Embry's jaw locked. "Remy said she saw her brother in the woods last night."

And Jared opened his mouth to say something, and there was some sadistic glint in his eyes that put Embry on edge, but Sam, whose expression had drastically changed, put his hand in front of him to silence him. "Alright, let's go outside."

Embry gave a curt nod, and turned on his heel out into the yard. He leaned against the railing of Emily's porch and watched as Sam followed him out and closed the door behind him. "Okay," he said, standing straight over Embry, "what happened?"

"Remy went to a party last night and got pretty drunk. Quil called me and I went over to take care of her, make sure she went to bed safe and everything. And before she fell asleep she told me she saw Briah in the woods, alive. And she tried to chase after him, but he disappeared." Embry sighed, and rolled his head. "I asked her if she noticed anything different about him, like his eyes, but she said she wasn't close enough to notice."

And Sam gave him this look, this look of concern and disbelief that made Embry uneasy. "Embry," he said with a sigh, "you believe that she really saw her brother?"

"Yeah," he asserted, "I do. And you should too."

Sam shifted the weight between his feet and looked around. "Okay. We'll keep an eye out."

"That's it? You're just gonna keep an eye out?"

There was a tone of authority when Same said, "Yeah, that's it."

Embry couldn't stand it "So we're just gonna ignore the possible implications of what that could mean? And the potential danger it puts Remy in?"

"No," Sam replied, tone grave, "we're gonna keep an eye out for it."

"I'm sorry but you know that's bullshit," Embry snapped. "You have me go on extra patrols and drop out of school for a month so we can protect Bella fucking Swan. I mean, we have to turn our whole lives upside down for a girl who's not from our tribe and who isn't anyone's imprint. But when Remy, my imprint, whose a member of our tribe and has lived here her whole goddamn life is threatened, the best I get is a fucking we'll look out for it?"

"Bella Swan is facing a credible threat that we know is real."

"What are you implying here?"

And Embry knew what his alpha meant without him saying anything. But he wanted him to say it. He wanted Sam to say it so there was no denying that even he thought Remy and her safety was just a joke. That he thought Remy was just a drunk. "Look, there's always been problems with the Cree family. I had to scare her brother off for selling harsher things than weed more than once. And it's not a very big secret that Remy likes to drink. I mean no disrespect when I say this Embry, but Remy isn't a very credible source for this type of information when you know she was at least drinking."

"Her reputation precedes her."

The cockiness in Jared's tone sent trembles throughout Embry's entire body. "You shut your fucking mouth about her," Embry seethed at the same time Sam commanded, "Jared, stay out of it." The boy smirked before turning on his heel and walking back into house.

Embry snapped his attention back at Sam. "So what are you gonna say when you're wrong, and Remy gets hurt because you had me stationed outside of Bella fucking Swan's house all night, doing nothing and waiting for a threat that won't show up?" Embry was past a certain point now. It didn't matter that Sam could pull rank because the only thing that outranked his alpha was his imprint.

"It's not gonna come to that," Sam assured, voice softer than before, and Embry wondered if Sam would be this calm cool and collected if Emily was the point of discussion instead. "She'll be protected, you know that." But it wasn't enough for Embry, the first waves of rage were still running through him. "Listen, just calm down, alright? Remy's gonna be fine. Look, I'll get someone else to do your patrols tonight. You can watch over her."

"Yeah," Embry replied, "alright."

He left Sam's house, feeling defeated, and wondered if this was how Remy felt every time she was spoken to.

By the time Embry got home, his mother's eyes were bloodshot. She sat the kitchen table with her bony and skinny hands pressed hard against her face, kneading her knuckles deep into her eyes. She didn't flinch when the door shut behind Embry, and had no reaction to the wood that creaked under his feet. "Hey Mom," he said, voice soft and tired.

"Is there even a point?" she asked, voice shaking like she had been crying long before her son stepped through the door. She pulled her hands away and looked at Embry, and there was something about the unfiltered despair in her eyes that was so striking it made him want to break something. "Be honest with me, is there even a point in trying to ground you anymore?"

"I guess not."

His mother let out a shaky breath, leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. "You gonna tell me were you were, at least?"

"I was with a friend. She needed help," he defended weakly, and he knew that at a certain point, nothing he said to his mother would even matter anymore. She was always going to look at him as something defiant, determined to disregard and hurt her. Embry used to beg Sam to let him tell her, swearing it would be so much easier, for his family and for the pack. But Sam was so set in his ways that his mother was left in the dark.

Her mother scoffed. "I think I know the type of help she would need at one in the goddamn morning."

"Mom," he said, voice mixed with desperation and exhaustion, "it's not anything like that. Come one, you know me."

"Do I?" she snapped back, voice so cutting Embry took a step back. And she was right; his mother didn't know him anymore. There was nothing about his life she could begin to understand. So instead of arguing with her on that front, he dropped his shoulders and shuffled over to his room, closing the door gently behind him.

His bed was small but warm and the blankets were inviting. His body temperature was plenty to keep him warm but there was something about being swaddled up in the sheets that made him feel comfortable. He hadn't been getting much sleep; all of his time was either dedicated to finding that red-headed blooded sucker, or settled in a pile of leaves in the woods near Remy's house, ears perked in case there were any threats. He liked his bed, and though he wasn't about to complain about last night's sleeping conditions, it was a lot more comfortable than a plastic chair with wheels. And if he was going to spend all night by that pile of leaves again, he needed a good amount of rest.

Embry let his thoughts wander before his mind drifted off to sleep, landing on the promise he made Remy. And he realized how stupid of a promise it was. He couldn't even remember what Briah Cree looked like; it had been over a year since he went missing, and it's not like they were close back when he was alive. When he thought of the older Cree sibling, he thought of the way he would walk down the halls. He had this stride; his limbs were long and skinny and he swung them around with such confidence. He remembered people being afraid of Briah, sometimes even more so than they were of Remy.

There was just something about them, about the whole family.

Embry spent a lot of time listening to Quil describe the Cree's (only course, after Embry begged for every detail about them). Remy's mom was straight like a ruler, desperately clinging onto any structural sense of normalcy. She would burn down her own house just to cook for one dinner party. And her dad wasn't any better, retreating into his work and fishing trips and investing in everything but his kids. And Remy was too spaced out to notice that things might be wrong. Quil said when things were good, they were good. But they all had the capability to rip each other apart.

There was this overwhelming desire Embry felt just to hold Remy, and to tell her things would be okay. Even though he technically did, earlier in the day when he made the promise that he would help her find her brother. Fuck.

He just had to remember what he looked like first.

Embry drifted off into a dreamless, black sleep. The sun that lit his room dipped behind the horizon while he slept, and his room was still, save the sound of his soft snores. It was a peaceful sleep, the kind that he hadn't gotten in a long time, and it was interrupted by the shrill ringing of his phone. He groaned, eyes still closed while he reached around his bed until he found it in his pocket. "Hello?" he answered with a yawn.

"Hey, Embry."

The sound of Remy's voice made him shoot up out of bed. "Remy, hi. What are you, um, what's up?" he stumbled, and mentally kicked himself. He did that a lot when he was around Remy. She was really good at making him act like an idiot.

There was a brief silence. "Were you asleep?"

"No," he said quickly, too quickly, "no I woke up a while ago," he lied.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, muscles tense as he waiting for Remy's next words. It was like this every time they spoke; he was always waiting for her next words, rushing through his own just so he could hear her voice again that much quicker. It was nice, her voice. Low and raspy and it crackled when she laughed. "Alright," she said, voice trailer, and he but his lip waiting for her next words. "I, um, I'm sorry for calling it's just like," she hesitated again, "this was weird, I'm sorry."

"No, no, no, no, no," Embry blurred the words together and didn't even care if he sounded desperate, "it's not weird at all."

"Right, I just," he could hear her blow air out of her cheeks, "I just saw something pretty fucked up, and I dunno, I just needed to talk to someone about it. Thought you might be okay with that." Her words grew quieter as she spoke, and Embry almost couldn't hear it over the pounding of his heart in his ears.

He stood, stretching out his legs and looking out his window. "Yeah, of course I'm okay with that," Embry asserted, "I already told you can tell me anything, remember?"

"Right so, um, me and Bobby went up to Port Angeles to see a movie." Embry didn't like the idea of Bobby and Remy hanging out together; it was a combination of the way Bobby treated people and this weird gut feeling he got whenever Remy said her name, "and, um, after the movie, we were walking back to the car, and there was a dead body on a sidewalk."

Embry felt his heart sink deep into his gut. "Holy shit, Remy."

"And it was just so fucked up cause like, I could just see their hand and I'd never seen someone look so pale before," she said, rushing past his response, "and Bobby tried to play if off but I just, like I can't stop thinking about it."

"Well seeing a body is a pretty fucked up thing. The first time you see something like that, that's a hard thing to get out of your head," he said, and realized it might not be the most comforting thing to say in that moment, "I mean, it makes sense that you keep thinking about it. And, y'know, once people die, the paleness is just a normal thing. They lose color. It's still a hard thing to see, but it's not..." it was so difficult for him to find the words to say to her, "it's not unusual."

She was quiet again for a moment. "Have you ever, y'know, seen one?"

Images of a hard and cracked corpse under flames played in his head. "Yeah, I have."

Embry counted to three before she responded again. "Do you wanna come over tomorrow? I mean, if you really meant what you said about Bear. Cause I have a few working theories, and-"

"Yes! I mean, yeah, I'll come by tomorrow. Of course I meant it, yeah."

Remy chuckled a little. "Yeah, alright. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye, then."

"Bye," Embry said, long after she hung up.

Try as he may, Embry Call could not even began to understand Remy Cree.

He saw her room just a day ago. And it was neat enough, and kind of weird, covered with posters of bands Embry had never heard of with words in some eastern European language and anatomical diagrams of Bigfoot. There were dead and dried out plants Embry couldn't name and about six cacti, and most alarmingly, several small and shiny knives. That was the day before, and in the short time he was gone, the walls were now covered with lined paper, with Remy's straight and skinny handwriting all over it. There were a few more pictures of Briah and her, from varying ages, all over her desk, and along with crumbled up printed out photos of strange and creepy looking pictures.

And Remy was in the middle of it, sitting on her chair with a thick pair of reading glasses and stray hairs flying all over the place. "When did you have time to do all of this?" he asked, moving to sit on the edge of her bed.

"I didn't sleep last night," she replied, tapping her fingers on knee. "I would've gotten more done but I had work this morning."

Embry tried briefly to imagine Remy working in customer service, especially at someplace as bright as a bakery, but couldn't even begin to picture it. "So, what is all of this?"

Remy chewed the inside of her cheek. She did that a lot, whenever he said something that made her pause. It was easy to notice the stark concave in her face. "I don't want you to think that I'm like, insane or anything," she said after a moment, "but I know my brother, and unless something weird happened to him, he wouldn't be wandering around the woods like that. And he wouldn't look so, put together. So I've been, um, addressing some alternate theories."

He was well aware of the alternate theories Remy liked to explore. He hadn't forgotten all the time and effort she had put into to trying to figure out what was going on with him and the pack. And she got pretty damn close, borrowing from a Canadian tribe and labeling them worshipers of a breed of man-dogs. It was almost funny, reading through her journal and seeing all the cryptids she thought he was. The truth was right under her nose, too. It was almost funny, before he started feeling like shit for invading her privacy. "Like what?" he questioned.

"So I'm ignoring the idea that my brother might have been like, kidnapped by some hermit with a log cabin into the woods and tortured into submission, and I've been doing some research on human guises." Embry raised an eyebrow. "But before I explain, you need to swear on your goddamn life you won't try to padlock me to safe room or something."

Embry put his hand over his chest. "Scout's honor," he said with a smile, because he knew that there was almost nothing Remy could theorize that would be more outrageous than his own reality.

She stared at him, right in his eyes in a way that made him sweat. Her eyes were so dark and wide and there was something about them that was so intimidating. And even though Remy had cute freckles covering her face and a sweet, heart-shaped face, it was her eyes that were the most intense part of her. "Alright," she said, like she always did, and starting chewing on her cheek again, biting on it between her words. "A human guise is like, something inhuman pretending to be human. It can be like, a costume, or it can be like a form of possession," she paused, looking up at Embry to make sure that he was still following, "and if something happened to Bear, maybe he was feeling weak, and something took advantage of that."

And Embry was fucking overjoyed. He smiled like a dumbass, because he knew that if Remy was open to the idea of possession, maybe shapeshifting wouldn't be a concept she had too hard of a time grasping onto. "You think your brother was posessed?"

But Remy narrowed her eyes and pulled back her lip in almost a snarl. "If you're just gonna make fun of me then you can get the fuck out of my house."

"No! No, I'm not making fun of you," he sighed, and took a break to think. And in that moment, he made a decision. A bad one, but the best one he could think of in that moment. He was going to lie to Remy. "It's just that like," he stumbled, "I've always believed in this kind of thing, you know? Like, everything that happens on this reservation is weird, and I always thought there had to be some explanation for it. I just, I guess I didn't think you would too."

He felt like shit the second the words came out of his mouth. Because they weren't his words. They were Remy's. She had written something almost identical in her journal, her private journal, that he had read. And he was taking her words and using them to lie and for what? So she would trust him? So she wouldn't make him leave?

Remy eyed him skeptically, leaning back against her chair and still chewing on her goddamn cheek. When she looked at him, he felt like she was staring straight through him, through all of his bullshit. Embry thought be shaking. Not from rage, like he normally would, but nerves. He thought he fucked it up. Embry was so goddamn positive he fucked it up. "Okay," she said after an excruciatingly long time.

"Okay," he chirped, immediately feeling the relief.

"Anyways if you wanna help me like you said you would, you better start pulling your weight."

Embry chuckled. He wished she knew how valuable his skill set was, that if he could just get one whiff of Briah's scent, he wouldn't need that much time to track him down. "You worry about the theories, I'll be out there looking for him." Embry patted his chest in a playful show of dominance. "No one knows these woods better than me."

This earned a little half smile from Remy. "Yeah, sure thing bud." But her smile dropped and she looked out her window. "Be honest with me for a second, do you think he's actually alive out there?"

"Yeah," Embry assured her gently, "I really think he is."

It wasn't technically a lie, and it earned him a warm little glance from Remy. This was the closest he'd ever felt to her, and he didn't want to let it go.

do not worry y'all, bobby is not going anywhere. i love bobby. i want her to push me into lockers and call me a nerd. thank you all for reviewing, it really does make my heart swell every time i see it. im so happy you guys are enjoying this story as much as i am. i rlly do be lovin yall tho. anyways, here's an embry chapter! what do we THINK! how are we feelin ! i hope yall had fun reading. one review = one pet for my cat. lov u.