This is a work of speculative fanfiction. No profit was made nor was intended to be made. All right to to Twilight and it's sequels and prequels belong to Stephanie Meyer and Little Brown Publishing company. I make no claim to ownership on any of those right nor to any intellectual property of Stephanie Meyer.
AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed, it makes me all giddy! I got a PM from someone asking about the Fenrir. Yes we will see more of them and hear more about them.
Chapter Two:
Seth had been having a good day. It wasn't raining, Leah had made waffles for breakfast, he hadn't had to patrol with Paul, it was a good day. He had spent most of it in the woods and at Sam's house. It hadn't been unusual in any fashion, but for once no one was angry, no one was on edge, no one was anything other than even keeled. Everything was fine... except that because it was in fact a good day, that meant, of course, that it couldn't possibly last. When Sam called him out to help some person with their things he hadn't exactly been expecting his reality to go upside down, but it did.
When he first saw her, she was wearing jeans and hiking boots, a green tank top and her red hair was up in a bun. She looked quite pale and pretty athletic. Seth hadn't thought much more beyond that till she looked up and gave him and Sam her name. Then he felt himself get pulled into her. That's what it felt like, like one minute he was standing on his own two feet and the next he was being pulled to her. Sam, Jared and Quil weren't kidding when they said it was like gravity. But instead of feeling like she held him to the earth, he felt like she was the sun and he was a planet in orbit around it. He felt happy, complete... and a bit confused because his imprint seemed like she was scared out of her mind!
Seth could hear her heart hammering in her chest and saw her eyes go wide, her scent reacted to her emotional state and smelled slightly bitter. Controlled fear, that's what she smelled like. He was almost tempted to look behind him to see if there was a vampire or something. Then she opened her mouth and the pack's reality shifted a bit, shifted permanently.
"No! No... no. You did not just imprint on me!" Her voice shook a bit with fear but more, it seemed, with anger.
She kept backing away from him, from all of them, holding the long metal object she had in front of her like it would keep her safe from him, from them.
The pack was staring at her. She knew, she had to know, to say what she had just said... she had to know. The question was how? Their own tribe wasn't allowed to know unless they were pack, elders, an imprint or a family member for whom a special exemption had been made. So if almost everyone on La Push didn't know, how in the name of all that is holy, and a few things that aren't, did a white foreigner know?
Seth walked towards her in as nonthreatening a posture as he possibly could. He needed her to stop backing away from him. Sam on the other hand was looking at Ingrid. She knew, she wasn't supposed to know and imprint or not, in his mind that made her a possible threat. So he advanced towards her as well. In retrospect it was a stupid move. The old adage that cornered animals are dangerous works with humans as well.
Ingrid shifted her grip on the camera stand and bared her teeth at them. Seth stopped. "We won't hurt you, I promise."
Sam huffed "Besides, that piece of metal wouldn't hurt us anyway."
Ingrid bared her teeth further. "Well I guess that I'm lucky that you aren't all wolves."
She didn't even look at Emily, when she shifted her grip again, she just knew that the scarred woman was the only other human in the yard at the moment and she only needed one. She slid sideways, then feinted and snapped the metal stand out and let it go. It flew to Emily, it slashed threw her upper arm and drew blood. Not that Ingrid stayed to watch, as soon as the metal left her hands she turned and ran flat out back into the woods, dropping everything besides her camera bag...everything else would weigh her down.
As she entered the trees she knew she had guessed right. With those scars, that woman was not a wolf. She had been betting on the fact that she was the child, the mate or the imprint of one of those wolves and that as soon as Ingrid had drawn her blood the woman's wolf would feel compelled to attack her. Once she was in danger the wolf that had on imprinted on Ingrid would feel compelled to protect her... and Ingrid would be able to escape. As she ran she remembered, Dagonet had taught the wolfblooded well and she remembered.
"You run with the pack, but you are not as strong as we are, not as fast, far more vulnerable. More than the rest of us... safety is in numbers." Dagonet was the oldest wolf in the pack, because of this he had taught the wolfblooded for generations. Ingrid and Magnus listened carefully, being the Jarl's children, they would most likely phase but there were no guarantees.
"In battle the enemy will try to isolate you. If they succeed you run, as fast as you can. You do your best to confuse them. Leave your scent EVERYWHERE. Do whatever it takes to muddy your trail. You are trying to buy yourself time, time to get back to the pack. It won't be a question of IF they find you, it's a question of WHEN. When that happens, they will take you and they will interrogate you. Everyone wants to believe that they won't break, that they can't break. That is complete and utter bullshit. EVERYONE on this earth has a breaking point and if given enough time they will find yours. So from the very beginning, you lie, you lie all the time, tell them so many lies that when they DO break you and you tell them the truth... they won't recognize it."
So Ingrid ran in circles and doubled back, rubbing against trees, then she took her knife out and cut her arm and left a blood trail that would lead them nowhere. Eventually she field bandaged her arm up and ran till she hit a street. As she hid and looked out, she saw a car that looked like it was in good condition. She couldn't go back to her own car, they knew where it was, they would look for her there. So Ingrid crept into the driveway, popped the lock and hot wired the car. As she drove off La Push, she threw her shoes out the window. Less things on her that would carry her scent. Two streets away from her house she dumped the car and wiped it down. Then she got her cell phone, called the police and affected an American accident and reported a dumped car. This way the person she had stolen the car from would get it back. Then she pulled her cell phone apart and crushed the components.
When she entered her house, she locked the door behind her and then went to each window, locking it and drawing the shades. Then she stripped down to her underwear and took the clothes into the kitchen. She started a fire in the hearth and when it was blazing, she threw her clothes into it and watched them burn. She knew she should be packing and getting the hell out of town, but instead she sat on the floor in her bra and panties, put her chin on her knees, watched the flames and remembered things she tried hard to not think about anymore.
Dagonet bringing a radio set to the cabin on his weekly Friday night visits. Ingrid and Magnus lived in the back of beyond now and could only attend school via the radio.
Their mother's merciless laugh when Dagonet brought news of the training accident that had rendered Dagmar unable to have children. Marit had laughed and then snarled "Karma." as she finished cooking supper for everyone.
The fear when the three months of winter darkness fell on them. The fear that without the pack's support that this would be the year they died. The provisioning for the three months before that as the days were incredibly short.
The day in January when it all went wrong. When their mother hid her and Magnus in the house,took a knife, cut a deep furrow down each arm and ran out into the snow. She drew the vampires away from her children and they fed on her instead. Two days later Dagonet had come for Friday night dinner and found the two terrified ten year olds. It took him a few hours to find Marit's body, then he bundled it and the twins and took them home. Where, he INSISTED, they had always belonged.
Her mother's funeral. The pack had mourned a beloved member and her father's imprint never forgot that they loved Marit more than her. Gunnar seemed to care very little as he watched the whole affair with disinterested eyes. The true division in the Jarl's household was born that day and it never died.
Dagmar always calling them "Marit's children". Never acknowledging the fact that they were Gunnar's children unless forced to. Their father going along with it. Anything to make her happy. Ingrid always wondered what would have happened if Dagmar had mentioned that she wanted the twins dead. She wondered if her father was truly that weak in the face of his imprint's wishes, she was always thankful that she and Magnus never had to find out.
Dagonet training them, Magnus phasing for the first time. Dagonet stepping down as the beta so that Magnus could take his rightful place, taking the third ranked position instead. Magnus becoming a powerful beta, filling the position better than Dagonet had.
Ingrid getting older, getting her first kill at sixteen years old, getting her tattoo, realizing that Dagmar was utterly incompetent as the bolverk. So Ingrid, before she had even completed her education, took over those duties. Ingrid hadn't been carefree since she was six years old.
Ingrid packing her bags and saying goodbye to Magnus. She couldn't stay anymore, she was too angry. It crawled inside her skin, wrapped around her brain and it wouldn't let her be free of it. All it made her want was Dagmar dead, usually by her hand. She had to get out of there before she committed murder and her father killed her in retaliation. She had to get away, she had to get out. Magnus had understood, had let her go.
Now she was getting dragged back in.
As Ingrid sat there and stared and thought, she finally noticed that a man was sitting in front of her. It was the wolf who had imprinted on her. She should have kept running and now she was trapped. Seth reached out tentatively and touched her chin and tilted her face up so that he could see her eyes again.
"Hey." Seth kept his voice low and soft.
Ingrid looked around and saw two more wolves in her kitchen, the she-wolf she had seen before and another one whose air of dominance marked him as the alpha.
"You have to have broken in. You people owe me a new door." Ingrid said, very deadpan.
The alpha nodded. "I'm Jacob Black, the pack's alpha. This is Leah, today she's our fourth ranked. How, HOW, do you know about us, how do you know about shape shifters?"
Ingrid kept her eyes lowered, so as not to challenge an unknown alpha. Then she ran her fingers over the tattoo on her shoulder and turned it to the alpha's view. "Did you really think you were the only ones?"
Seth looked at his imprint, she had made Emily bleed, had made herself bleed to try and make it impossible for them to find her. Had stolen a car and burned her clothes to try and get away from them. He had the awareness to realize that thus far, the only person in the entire pack who had an imprint that wasn't shit-tastic was Jared.
"Why did you run from me? I'm not going to hurt you." Seth wasn't sure exactly how he felt about this woman, but he knew for a fact that he wasn't going to hurt her. That she didn't need to be this afraid of him.
Ingrid yanked her chin out of his grasp. "Well isn't that sweet. Now get out of my house!"
Seth made to protest but Jake and Leah grasped his shoulders, forcing him to move back from her.
Jake left no room for argument. "Seth, we need to leave. Ingrid, we'll talk later but right now I think you need to have some space from Seth. This is his sister Leah. She will stay with you tonight."
Jake and Seth left Ingrid's house, leaving Leah sitting cross legged in front of her.
"I don't suppose that I can make you leave can I?" Ingrid asked.
"Nope." Leah was never one for over verbalizing things.
Ingrid got up and gestured to the fridge. "Help yourself. I'm going to get dressed."
She went back into her bedroom and put on some pajama pants and another tank top. Staring at herself in the mirror she kept fingering her pack tattoo. She had run to other side of the globe to get away. It wasn't fair and just what in the HELL was she going to do?