Chapter Five: First Love

Late Sunday morning saw Mollie sitting on the rickety, old swinging bench just off the front walk of the Ember house. The hated plastic crutches leaned lazily against the old wood siding. Swinging her unbroken foot carelessly and letting the injured one drag through the muddy snow, she puffed her cheeks out as wide as they would go, then exhaled in a rush. Her nose and cheeks were red from the cold; the sun reflected sharply off the snow, blinding her eyes.

Embry was supposed to pick her up at eleven; it was just past a quarter to. Mollie felt a bit silly waiting outside for him, but she was very excited, and maybe a bit anxious. This was her first date. He'd called her the day before to ask her out, and she'd said yes, of course.

Then the worrying had set in. Mollie wasn't very good with social situations; being with other people drained her energy. She never knew what to say or do in an extended interaction. What if he kissed her again? What if he didn't? Then Mollie told herself to shut up, because she was definitely overthinking it.

It was only a casual date to an ice cream shop. Low-key and easy. Mollie hadn't even dressed up; she was wearing a soft, royal blue sweater and dark jeans, with her usual French braid.

Mollie hummed lightly under her breath as she waited. Although she wasn't a particularly good singer, she was on pitch at least most of the time. Her mumbled song cut off abruptly as a familiar truck rumbled into view.

Grinning and waving, Embry parked the car underneath the bare Oregon ash near the driveway. Mollie lifted herself off the bench.

He rushed out of the car and was at her side in an instant, steadying her as she found her crutches and walked down to the car.

They left the windows down as they drove to the ice cream parlor. Both of them loved feeling the cold wind rushing in on their faces.

The ice cream parlor was the only one in Forks. It was a 'Ye Olde Candy Shoppe' type place which sold coffee, hot chocolate, and sweets as well as ice cream. They both ordered giant, fudge-covered sundaes, then bickered about who got to pay. Mollie almost conceded when Embry pointed out that, chauvinism aside, he had asked her, not the other way around. She declared defeat when he picked her up by the waist, carried her, squirming, over to the soda fountain, left her there and then returned to the bemused cashier with his wallet and a smug smile.

"Bastard," Mollie said, laughing and leaning against the plastic counter.

"You and me both," Embry agreed with a grin. "We're practically poster children."

They found a corner booth with window panels on both sides and sat down to eat. The window was partly shaded by a set of candy cane striped blinds, but outside they could see snow lightly falling and the occasional passing car. A bell chimed every time the door opened, which wasn't frequently. There were maybe three couples and a few small families in the shop. It was pleasantly quiet.

They ate their ice cream without talking. Mollie peeked shyly at Embry every now and again, sometimes meeting his eyes and holding the stare, sometimes ducking away instantly. He was always looking at her with the strangest look in his eyes. It was partly bemused, partly adoring, and partly possessive.

"Oh, hey," Embry said suddenly. "I had orders to tell you first thing but I forgot. Kim wants you to hang out with her and Emily down at Em's place Tuesday afternoon."

"I don't really understand Kim," Mollie said, stirring the remains of her sundae around in the glass dish, the spoon clattering around the sides. "I like her, I really do, but she makes absolutely no sense. She just decided we were going to be friends—and now we are? Why does she like me so much?"

"Hasn't anyone ever told you that you're just a likeable person?" Embry asked. When Mollie said nothing, he sighed and continued. "Kim doesn't have a lot of close friends. Yeah, she's got Em, and then the rest of the pa—our crowd, you know, everyone you met at the bonfire, and of course Jared, but what she really wants is girlfriends."

"Why doesn't she have any? She's so cheerful and happy."

Embry sighed again. "Yeah, but she's isolated. She graduated a year and a half ago, and all her school friends went off to college. She wanted to go to art school, but she wasn't able to for various reasons. And then, she doesn't get off the rez much."

"Why not? And why couldn't she go to art school?"

"Kim will have to tell you that," Embry said. "I really can't answer for her."

Mollie nodded. "Ok. So, she likes me because she's lonely. And here I thought it was just my sparkling personality."

Embry laughed. "She does like that, too."

"And there are other reasons as well," Mollie said, remembering the encounter in the emergency room. "Aren't there?"

"Yes," Embry said quietly.

"But you can't explain them."

"Not yet."

"I won't wait forever," Mollie said, leaning in over the table.

"I know," Embry murmured. "I wouldn't ask you to."

Mollie abruptly switched back to the original topic. "Well, I'm glad Kim did decide to be friends with me."

"I'm glad you're glad," said Embry, relieved by the change. "Once Kim latches onto people, she doesn't let go."

"I hope she latches onto the right people, then."

"She does. Jared's a good guy, you know. And Kim's very good at reading people. You and she probably could be really good friends," Embry said. He smiled at Mollie. They were done with their ice cream now, just sitting and enjoying being together.

"It's a little funny," Mollie said with a small smile. "A week ago I didn't know your name, and now here we are. We move fast, don't we?"

"I guess so!"

"Maybe too fast," she mused.

"There's no such thing as too fast when you're in love," he said, his chocolate brown eyes boring into hers.

"Love? That's definitely a bit too . . ."

"It's not too soon, not with you."

Mollie laughed nervously. "Well, now you're scaring me!"

Embry grinned, thinking she was joking. She let it drop.

They cleared the ice cream dishes. Embry ordered two coffees to go, and then they headed back out to the truck. An hour or two had passed, so Mollie assumed that the sun, although it was now covered by a heather gray cloud bank, must be nearly overhead. The air was still delightfully chilly, and Mollie was glad she'd brought a scarf and gloves. "What next?" she asked expectantly.

"I thought maybe we'd go to the park and hang out," Embry said.

"Sounds good." Mollie smiled at him. "Are we walking?" The park was only a block or two north and east.

"Mollie, your ankle," Embry said gently.

"Yeah, I know," she grumbled, awkwardly swinging herself into the car. "It's such a pain."

"At least it's not for that long," Embry said placatingly, but with an amused twitch in the corner of his mouth.

"Six weeks," Mollie answered. "But I'll be out of the cast by Christmas."

"That's good."

"And then I'll be able to go hiking again!" Mollie said cheerfully.

"Not at two AM, please," Embry said. "I don't think I'll ever forget that."

Mollie shivered. "I'm not sure I will either. That wolf—I dreamed about him last night. I'm sure I saw him. I know it."

"And if you did?" Embry murmured, almost too low for Mollie to hear. "What then?"

"Then nothing," Mollie shrugged. "He's a wolf. They're wild. I don't know why that one was alone, or so near town, but I doubt I'll see it again." She filed away the strangled expression on Embry's face for later reference.

The truck pulled up in the small gravel lot of the park. Like everything in Forks, it was green in the summer, and green and white in the winter. There was a small, empty playground with metal slides, a teeter-totter, and two swings. Just south of that was a grassy area with tall evergreen trees and wet wooden benches. Mollie didn't have any memories of coming here as a child, but it reminded her of childhood nonetheless.

They sat in the swings, laying Mollie's crutches across the snowy wood chip ground.

"So, you said you like hiking," Embry said awkwardly.

"Yeah," Mollie answered, picking up the conversation thread. They would only work together if she tried, too. "I love hiking. I've never gone backpacking, but my mom and I always go camping for a week every spring break and two weeks every summer. She's a counselor at the middle school, so she gets school vacations off. We drove down to Point Reyes in California last summer and camped just off the beach."

"You're the outdoors type?"

"To some degree. I love plants. I think if I don't become a doctor I'll go into plant biology instead. There's just so much green out here in Washington. You're surrounded by it all the time, so you learn to recognize the different types of green and appreciate the splashes of color. There's so much life in the forests, if you bother to look for it."

"Sometimes it comes looking for you even if you're not looking for it," Embry said ruefully. "I can't count the number of times I've gotten poison oak or eaten a poisonous plant from your wonderful forests."

Mollie shook her head and laughed. "You're supposed to look at the rainforest, not eat it! What, did Jake dare you?"

"Quil, actually," said Embry, grinning. "He bet me twenty bucks once, a couple years ago, that I couldn't eat an ounce of Columbian monkshood."

"Monkshood?" gasped Mollie. "Was he trying to murder you?"

"Nah," said Embry, shaking his head. "He didn't know. He's kind of a moron. Me too, because, idiot that I am, I ate it."

"And what happened?" Mollie asked, wide-eyed.

"Well, obviously I'm ok," he said, gesturing at himself. "Seth was there, and he told his mom a couple days later. Sue's a nurse, so she freaked out and rushed me to the hospital."

"Doesn't monkshood poisoning usually happen only a few hours after consumption, though? You could have been dead at that point!"

"Well, yeah," Embry said, his brow furrowing in confusion. "But I guess I have really strong immune system. Or constitution. Or . . . stomach, or whatever. Because when I got to the hospital and they stuffed me full of charcoal and pumped my stomach, they found that my body'd already gotten rid of the poison. There were traces of the monkshood, but neutralized. It was really weird."

"Lucky, too. So what happened to Quil?"

"Oh, he laughed his ass off, we beat each other up a bit, and he gave me the twenty bucks."

"Wow. Must be a guy thing," Molly said, shaking her head. "Why'd he bet you in the first place if he didn't know it was poisonous?"

"He thought it was funny. He's, uh, pretty fascinated with werewolves—you know, full moon and all that crap. So he was reading all these books about them and he decided that, out of all his friends, I was most like your stereotypical werewolf, so he decided to test his 'theory'."

"And back to wolves again," said Mollie.

"Sorry?" asked Embry.

"Nothing. You and your friends just always seem to be associated with wolves. I'm probably imagining it," Mollie said lightly.

"Imagining? I doubt that. It's coincidence, maybe," said Embry uncomfortably.

"Sure," said Mollie. They talked about unimportant things for a while, swinging carelessly and laughing loudly into the cold November air. It was Mollie's first date. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it came pretty close.

Embry heard the howls just as he was dropping Mollie off, but he forced himself to ignore them for just a few minutes more, while he said goodbye and promised to call soon. Then he gritted his teeth, drove the truck just around the corner and down a side street where Mollie wouldn't be able to see it, stripped as he ran into the woods, and phased.

The packmind was in an uproar. The chaos was so awful, it took Embry several minutes to figure out what was happening. A new brother had phased.

And he was really, really upset. His terrified voice wouldn't shut up for long enough for anyone to explain what had happened, and no one had managed to make him calm down.

Seth phased in a second after Embry. Immediately, he calmed the packmind with a beta-command. Shut up and listen!

The new brother quieted, whimpering into the sudden silence. Seth explained gently. Werewolf. The new brother understood.

Slowly, Seth coaxed information out of him. His name was Jace. He lived in Seattle. His parents were Quileute, but they moved away from the reservation before he was born. He didn't know where La Push was; he'd never been there.

Where are you? asked the packmind. If he couldn't come to them, they would go to him.

A picture of Jace's location tumbled through. Embry stifled a growl, but he couldn't stop his growing horror from spreading through the packmind. It was an alley in South Park, the Seattle neighborhood where he, Leah, and Nick found the vampire ashes. Seth, we have to get him out of there. Seth. Seth! Help him! Help him help him help him now!

They were too late.

Jace smelled a sickeningly sweet stink. It burns, he cried. Oh, God, what is that?

"The stench is awful," said a musical voice, filtering through Jace's mind to his horrified brothers and sisters racing from La Push.

Jace swung his head to face the speaker. She was deathly white, Asian, tall. Enemy. She moved like a ghost, and she smelled dead.

"Why, it's a dog," she crooned. "A big, oversized, stinking dog."

Enemy.

No! cried the packmind, but they couldn't hold Jace back. He lunged at the vampire. Dancing away, she evaded him easily. The pack watched in horror as she attacked him, drawing blood. Then, two more vampires, males, rushed in from either side, pouncing on the wolf. No!

The packmind screamed in ungodly pain, seeing red, smelling blood, and it was all over. Their youngest brother was dead.

Then all hell broke loose.