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: Once again thank you to everyone who reviewed, giddiness abounds. Also, thanks to those who have added this story to their favorites and such. Though I would still enjoy hearing what you think, good or constructively bad. Also, there is no Jake/Nessie imprint in this story. I find the kiddie imprints morally repugnant and can only deal with one of them in a story, so I went with Quil/Claire. There is also no Paul/Rachel imprint. The only remaining cannon imprints are Sam/Emily and Jared/Kim.

Chapter Four:

One Week Later

Seth was at the longhouse, he usually didn't spend much time here. There were too many memories, too many times he had run down the halls with Leah as they looked for their father. Too many times that his father had sat him in his lap as he explained the culture and history of their people. The Clearwaters had always been involved with the tribe. Either on the elders council or in some other fashion, so the memories were fairly washing over him as he sat down in Billy Black's office and waited. Ingrid was dropping off her final photos for the brochures the council wanted to publish and was picking up her payment. He hated the idea of ambushing her like this but it had been a week and she refused to answer the door for him when he knocked and she wouldn't return his phone calls. All of that might not have been so bad if the constant awareness of her that the imprint gave him wasn't screaming at him that she was mired in a wash of emotional turbulence and none of it was good.

When he smelled her outside the longhouse and heard her footsteps come down the hall, he visibly relaxed somewhat. Like all the rest of the imprinted wolves in his pack, the presence of his imprint had a certain calming effect on him. Though he had noticed that it was less for him than the others. Sam had told him that that was probably due to the fact that Ingrid wanted nothing to do with him. Lucky him, he had gotten the imprint who hated his guts. Seth had had just about all the irony that he could take from fate and was contemplating if it was possible to flip off a metaphor, when Ingrid walked in the door... and stared at him... and frowned. Great.

Ingrid took a deep breath and turned to Billy Black, handing him a large manila envelope. "I developed them in both color and in black and white. I've sorted them with labels of the exact locations that I took the shots. I hope that you like them."

Billy took the photos and looked through them. "These are fantastic, you did a wonderful job." He handed her a cheque. "Here's payment in the amount we agreed upon."

Ingrid took the cheque, thanked Billy, frowned at Seth again and then quickly walked back out and down the hall to the front door. It seemed like she was trying to get to her car as fast as she could without actually running there. Seth drooped, she was that desperate to get away from him.

Billy threw a pencil at Seth and it bounced off his forehead. "Get out of my office and talk to her! Faint heart never won fair maiden."

Nodding Seth got up and rushed after her. He caught up with her just as she was about to get in her car and drive away. "Look, can we just talk? Just us, without everyone else crowding us?"

Ingrid sighed and closed the door to her car. "What do you think we could possibly have to say to each other? You imprinted on me and I have no desire to be anyone's imprint. I hate imprinting and everything it stands for, you obviously don't. So enlighten me... what the hell do we have to talk about?"

"Can you forget about the damn imprint for five seconds? Please?" Seth's tone was verging on irritated, all he wanted to do was talk to her... and as usual, she just wanted him to shut up and go away.

Ingrid huffed and then nodded. "Fine. Let's talk, what do you want to know?"

Seth gestured towards the road. "Walk and talk?" he asked.

She nodded again and they began to take a walk down one of the two main roads on the reservation. Seth at first said little and mostly watched her, reading her body language. Ingrid was aware, more aware then most humans he knew. She seemed to know where everything was around her, where his feet were every time they hit the ground. It made him think back to how he had seen her behave around the pack. She played to the dominant wolves instincts, but never enough so that they could say that she accepted submission to them. All her actions, everything that she did and said seemed to say 'I'm dominant.'. It confused Seth because, as far as he knew, that as she was human, there was no way she could be dominant. His imprint seemed to be full of contradictions.

"Let's start with the basics." he said. "What's your full name, how old are you? Favorite color, hobbies?"

Ingrid raised that ever sardonic eyebrow of hers. "Seriously? Okay, I'm twenty two and my full name is Ingrid Noomi Jarlsdottir. My favorite color is purple and my hobbies include hiking, skating as fast as I can and I mix a pretty good drink. Before you even ask... no they do not include long walks on the beach and romantic evenings by candlelight."

She ended with a small sarcastic laugh, Seth mentally grabbed onto that laugh like it was the greatest of victories. Hey, she wasn't running, attacking people or throwing him out of her house to get away from him. He was going to take whatever victories that he could find.

"Good" he said. "I'm not a fan of candlelight dinners myself, you can't see the damn food." Then he paused. "Your last name is Jarlsdottir?"

"Yes." she replied. "My brother is Magnus Jarlsson, my father is Gunnar Jarlsson. It's a Scandinavian thing, a lot of the surnames where I'm from tell you who so and so's father was."

As they walked Seth kept asking her little questions, just small stuff. He had no intention of frightening her off right now, not when he had finally gotten her to talk to him. He even joked with her about how he was two years younger than she was. He'd gotten another small laugh out of her when he called her the older woman. Seth was pretty sure that she might have been the only female he'd ever met who thought that was funny, but he wasn't going to tell her that.

When they reached the intersection, Ingrid stopped and turned around, going back to the car. She was clearly confused when Seth followed her. "Uh... you can leave. I know my way back, it's just up the road."

Seth smiled at her "I know, doesn't mean that I won't still walk with you."

As they walked back Ingrid suddenly stopped and turned to him "Look, I'm sorry." she said. "But you have to know that I'm never going to be happy about this. That I'm never going to be happy to have been imprinted on. I'm sorry that fate screwed you, but I'm never going to see imprinting as anything other than something that ruins people's lives. It's not your fault, it's just what is."

He took a deep breath and hoped he said this right. "I understand. I completely understand why you would hate imprinting and if I had been in your position, I would too. I get that you went to the other side of the planet to get away from wolves and our issues and instead got imprinted on."

Seth kept staring at her face and hands, he wanted to touch her so damn badly... but knew she wouldn't let him. He felt like he was trying to soothe a wild animal into letting it be petted. "But, it can't be undone and I just want to get to know you, that's all. I just wish you would believe me."

She laughed mirthlessly. "I believe you, I do. But you have no mate to distract you from me, no other love. So you focus everything on me and it's uncomfortable. I refuse to be the center of your universe, I'm not interested in the job and it's too much pressure anyway."

Ingrid went to her car and drove away. Seth watched her go and once again was hit with the realization that his imprint would rather be shot than spend time with him. He turned quickly and punched a tree. It cracked and splintered, though thankfully that was the extent of the damage. Then he sprinted into the forest to take over for Collin on patrol. Thus leaving the tree wondering just what it had done to deserve getting punched by an overly large man with romantic troubles.

XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX

Four days later there was a knock on Ingrid's front door. When she answered it, there stood Jacob Black. She let him in and led him to the sofa.

"Alpha Black, you knocked this time." she said.

Jake nodded a bit shamefaced. "I'm sorry about that. This is your territory and we shouldn't have just burst into it without asking."

Ingrid replied "Apology accepted. What can I do for you?"

Jake was never one to beat around the bush, especially now that he was the alpha and this was no exception. "You can explain to me why you avoid Seth continuously."

She flopped down onto one of the chairs. "I would have thought that was obvious. Can you imagine that you're six years old and you wake up as the oldest child in a happy and complete family, and then by suppertime it's all gone? That your father loved your mother with all he had and then in an instant, he doesn't anymore. That suddenly you're something to be ashamed of, to be hidden away someplace where no one will see you. Because that's what happened to my family."

Jake watched her as she talked, he could hear her breath get shallower when she spoke of this, like it was still an open wound decades later. He could smell both sadness and aggression as well. Whatever had happened to his pack's newest imprint years ago, it was still alive and kicking for her emotionally.

"He just tossed us aside like we were nothing. He imprinted on a woman so gripped with insecurity and mewling weakness that she continued to compete with the memory of my mother even after she had died." Ingrid wasn't even looking at Jake anymore, just picking at her nails.

"My mother told me that my father died the day he imprinted and you know what? She was right. My father ceased to be the man who loved me and my brother, the man who took care of his family. He became something else, a harsh man who was brutally strict with everyone around him. He stopped truly caring about me or Magnus and definitely my mother, the day he looked into Dagmar's eyes."

Her voice got determined then. "Before all that though, my mother and father loved each other and what they had was real. I've watched people in my pack have real love and real lives with others and that's what I want out of life and I won't settle for anything less. In my eyes, imprinting is less. Because if were so great than it wouldn't have done what it did to my father, to my family. It couldn't."

Jake moved to the edge of the sofa closest to her. Whether or not Ingrid acknowledged it, she was part of his pack, or she would be. So as the one who led that pack, he felt the need to help her with what troubled her. He was the alpha, taking care of his pack was as natural as breathing the air.

"Thankfully, I have no idea what that feels like, however Seth understands a lot more than you give him credit for. You remember his sister Leah don't you?" he asked.

Ingrid nodded. "Your sole female wolf."

"That's her. She used to be engaged to the beta of my pack, Sam. They were together all through junior high and high school. After they graduated, the summer before college, he proposed to her and she accepted. They would be married right now and maybe have their first kid. Unfortunately Sam phased, he was the first of the new pack and it took him two weeks wandering around the woods to shift back."

She winced in sympathy. "Shifting alone is rough, it doesn't happen often among my people, but I can see how it would happen more often among yours."

Jake continued. "When he came back he wasn't allowed to tell Leah anything about what was happening to him. All Leah knew was that her fiance had vanished for two weeks and was now not going to college. But they were working everything out, it wasn't easy but it was working."

"Why couldn't he tell Leah what had happened?" she interrupted.

"The tribal rules state that the only ones who are allowed to know about the pack are the elders council and the imprints. It's exceedingly rare for an exception to be granted." he replied.

The look on Ingrid's face telegraphed what she thought about the wisdom of that rule. Which is to say that she looked like she thought that whoever who had made that decision was a bit soft in the head.

"Anyway, everything was going fine until Leah invited her cousin Emily down for a visit." he continued his narrative. "Sam took one look at her and imprinted. Within, I think, two weeks he had left Leah and moved Emily into his house. He couldn't even tell Leah why and she fell into a severe depression. Eventually she phased for the first time, and after the dust settled from that, she was able to know why Sam had left her. Not that it's helped much what with the pack mind and all. She's better than she was but she's not over it and I think that a part of her never will be."

While Jake was the alpha, he was young and still had a lot to learn about people, so he didn't quite realize that telling Ingrid this story wasn't the best of ideas. He truly thought that it would make her feel more comfortable around Seth. However, it just made her think more about her father, mother and Dagmar. There was a completely expressionless look on her face.

"I see." she said in a tight voice. "Is there anything else that I can do for you Alpha Black?"

When Ingrid was angry or upset she used formal address to wolves that were dominant to her, which was most of them. Truth was, she was starting to get full up on the amount of stress and pressure that she could handle right now.

Jake smiled at her. "Actually there is. We're having a pack meeting today and I want for you to come. You need to meet the whole pack and they need to meet you."

"I'd really rather not." she said.

Jake's tone became a bit harder. "I would prefer if you did."

Ingrid slumped her shoulders and head down slightly, but did not bare her neck. It was a clear signal that although she was submitting to Jake's will, that she was doing so under duress and wasn't happy about it.

"Fine." she sighed. "What time do I need to leave?"

Jake replied "Now, I ran over here, but the meeting is in about twenty minutes. Just enough time for you to get there and not be late."

She nodded and stiffly got her keys and walked to her car. She was so mad right now she could skin Jacob Black and the rest of his damn pack. However she swallowed her anger like the good wolf blooded that she was and drove to the meeting place, which she was told was Sam and Emily's house. Ingrid muttered in Norwegian as she drove. Fenris was going out of his way to fuck with her and she really wasn't very appreciative of his efforts and really wished he would just stop.

When she arrived, everyone looked at her in surprise. No one had expected her to come, figuring that she would flat out refuse Jake regardless of his rank. Seth however looked overjoyed to see her, in his typical enthusiastic way, he was grinning widely. Emily, on the other hand, immediately went to Sam's side and held onto his arm, she looked afraid of Ingrid.

"I'm not going to hurt you." Ingrid said. "What I did almost two weeks ago was purely a tactical decision. Even if I had planned to hurt you again, which I wasn't, I gave a binding promise to your alpha not to harm any of this pack's imprints."

Emily nodded but made no move to leave the protection of her wolf. As Ingrid watched her, she realized that Emily was deliberately playing to the protective instincts of her mate. There was another woman here who also didn't leave what was obviously her mate's side either. From this behavior Ingrid quickly surmised that the imprints and mates of this pack's wolves were not required to earn their own status, that they relied upon their wolf's status as theirs instead. Something which among the Fenrir was considered shameful and only done by the very weak.

Ingrid shrugged mentally and decided to chalk it up to cultural differences and just leave it alone. Not her pack, not her rules, not her problem. As she looked around for a place to sit, she saw Leah sitting by herself in the back of the room. Ingrid couldn't help but draw parallels between the she-wolf and her mother. Besides, she had an almost instinctive and unearned trust for she-wolves and took a kitchen chair, placed it next to Leah and sat down.

Leah looked at her, surprised. This girl didn't know her very well and Leah had no idea why she wanted to sit with her either, but her brother seemed... pleased. Almost as if he was happy that if she wasn't sitting with him, that at least she was sitting with his sister. The look Ingrid gave was that she was here but didn't particularly want to be and that she had no intention of leaving her spot.

Still smiling, Seth came over to her with a glass of iced tea, when he handed it to her, their fingers brushed against each other. For Seth, who had been waiting for almost two weeks to touch her again, it was a more meaningful thing than the brushing of fingers would have been to anyone else. For Ingrid, it increased the sensation of being pulled to him, if only a little. They both had equal and opposite reactions, Seth smiled at her softly, wanting to brush the red hair that fell a bit into her eyes, away. He liked how it felt to touch her, he wished he could do it more.

Ingrid on the other hand went still and looked a little bit scared, then absolutely everything about her facial features rearranged themselves into a blank mask. She sat stiffly and when he let her fingers go, she immediately sat on them, like she was trying to hide them. Seth gave her a sad look and then sat down.

Jake and Sam immediately began to talk about pack business, patrolling and keeping everyone abreast of tribal business. In the middle of the meeting, Paul and Leah began fighting about... something. Truth be told no one really knew what it was about, since they did it so often no one kept track anymore and the entire pack just stared off into space waiting for the long pause that meant that the two pack hot heads were done. When they finished, Leah's eyes bored a hole in Paul's neck and he slightly ducked his head.

Ingrid stared. "Did they just switch places in rank right now?"

Seth laughed. "Yeah, they go back and forth practically every other week. Look's like Leah's third ranked again. This has been going on for years."

Ingrid stared at Leah and Paul some more, to her, that was just... weird.

Paul was also looking at her oddly. "How the hell can you tell that?"

She shrugged. "If you know what to look for, and I do, it's easy to figure out rank structure. Before you ask, no... I haven't spent the day or two with you that I would need to figure it out. I'm not that cool."

Jake wrapped up the meeting with some important information. "Charlie and Carlisle have both talked to me about some activity going on a little north of our borders. Seems like a group of back to the land, crystal hugging hippies have moved into the old logging camp that used to be there. Both of them have some suspicions about the group and wanted us to keep our ears to the ground. So whoever has patrol up in that area, pay extra attention when you swing through. It could be nothing, but it could be something also."

Everyone nodded and then got up to begin socializing. The pack had very few social outlets save for each other, so pack meetings tended to end in dinner, movies and just hanging around. Embry and Quil headed out to patrol while most everyone else moved into the living room.

Ingrid hung back, not sure if she could leave yet. Sam came up to her and jutted his chin towards the living room. "You can hang out with us in the living room or you can help Emily and Kim in the kitchen, they could use the help and it might be good for you to spend some time getting to know the other imprints."

Years later, when the pack talked about this, they would all agree that this was not Sam's finest conversational moment. In fact in the following months Sam would rack up a few less than stellar conversational moments when it came to Ingrid. He was just lucky that way.

Ingrid cast her eyes to the side, not down, a key difference, she could feel herself growing more tense. "I'm a shitty cook, good bartender but a shitty cook. Anyway, I finished my meet and greet, so I'm going to head on back to Forks, buy a few drinks, play some pool.

Now in Sam's defense, currently there was little about Ingrid that he was fond of. She had attacked Emily, though had he had thought about it critically, if Ingrid was as trained as she'd made herself out to be, she could have done much worse than a mere cut on the arm. She openly wanted nothing to do with Seth and he was the happiest of the pack, so much so that Sam secretly wondered what the hell he was doing being one of them. She acted like a wolf but wasn't one, in short she was everything that they had been told imprints weren't and a bag of chips besides. Ingrid rubbed him the wrong way and after he had heard her story from Jacob and Seth, he was sure that he and Emily rubbed her the wrong way too. However, he was the beta and his imprint was happy being an imprint and enjoyed being a helpmeet so perhaps someone just needed to show Ingrid how things would be so much easier if she just... well... could be more like Emily and Kim.

"I don't think that's such a good idea. You shouldn't go out to the bars around here by yourself." he replied.

Ingrid pointedly began looking at Sam and then looking back at herself, like she was comparing. Now normally she was not this abysmally stupid when it came to high ranked wolves, especially not betas, but she was stressed and quickly reaching her limit. An imprint was playing a dominance game with the pack's beta... and it got everyone's attention.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam asked.

Ingrid looked him directly in the eyes and smirked, showing teeth. "I'm trying to see the family resemblance. Because you obviously think that you're my father. Funny though, I thought that I had left my father back in Norway. Dad... you look so different, so changed."

Sam growled warningly at her. If she wanted to play pack dominance games, then fine. If she was strong enough to play them she could be strong enough to lose them too.

Ingrid shrugged and stepped sideways around Sam, never once giving him her back. She picked up her bag and walked right out the door. No one was sure if she was submitting to the fact that Sam was too dominant to play around with like that or if she had just declared him unimportant enough to even complete the challenge. Either way you sliced it though... she had pretty much given Sam the finger and told him to fuck off and she had done it with a shitty sing song nonchalance to it as well.

Leah was amused as hell.

Paul was irritated, but who knew if that was because he had just been knocked down in rank by Leah or not.

Collin and Brady were finding themselves intrigued, this was new and lately very little that was new had wandered into their lives.

Jared was upset on Sam's behalf and considering how close their imprints and they were, that surprised not a soul.

Emily and Kim were wide eyed.

Sam was angry as fuck but was controlled enough to not go running after her slathering at the mouth and exploding into a pile of canine fur.

Jacob felt the omnipresent headache he had had for two week start to grow to migraine proportions.

And Seth? Well Seth found himself wanting to kick Sam in balls for pissing off his imprint.

While everyone was trying to figure out what to do, Ingrid had gotten into her car and was driving back to Forks. She was angry, no forget that, she was enraged. She was going to go to Churchill's and play pool and drink the anger off. It wasn't her best plan but right now anything that didn't involve poisoning the La Push pack's beta in his sleep was probably a good plan.

Back at the Uley house Jacob was actually massaging his temples, trying to figure out a way that this might actually work out for Seth but as of yet all he could think of was that this imprint was an epic fail and that the ancestors either actively hated Seth or they had the crappiest sense of humor in two planes of existence.

Finally he looked up. "Sam, Seth, Brady... follow her and make sure she doesn't get into any trouble. Just don't let her know that you're following her."

Sam looked affronted.

"Don't give me that look Sam." Jake admonished him. "You were both egging each other on and you can get a late dinner as a result."

Sam just walked out the door with Seth and Brady. "Seth, I really don't like your imprint."

"No offense Sam." Seth replied. "But she doesn't even like me, why should you be special?"

XXXXXX XXXXXX

When Ingrid got to Churchill's she was greeted warmly by the bartender. She liked this place and had become somewhat of a regular. They had pool, darts, curry fries and hard cider... what wasn't to like? She hadn't been by in a while so Joe raised his eyebrow before getting her the usual, a plate of curry fries and an Ace hard cider.

"Where've you been? Haven't seen you in about two weeks." Joe asked.

Ingrid... cackled. Her laughter had a slight edge of hysteria to it and she ate her curry fries with the air of a woman who was instead imaging crushing her enemies between her teeth. "La Push, I've been in La Push, dealing with the self important and shirtless."

Joe looked a little astonished. "Jacob Black and Sam Uley's gang? They've latched onto you?"

"Like the clap." she replied.

"That's... odd. They have very little to do with us in Forks. I heard that they head up some Native purity group. You're the wrong color for them sweetheart." Joe told her.

Outside Churchill's where the customers couldn't see them, but where the three wolves could see and hear the customers, Seth looked like he wanted to kill someone.

"Did that asshole just compare us to some sort of Indian version of the KKK?" he exclaimed, clearly offended.

Brady nodded. "Hey." he said. "At least they've moved on from the drugs angle and went with some hot spicy racism. It's inventive, the folks on La Push are still working the druggie theory."

Back in the bar Ingrid shrugged. "Well whatever their deal is I'm not letting it control my life."

"Good luck with that." Joe snorted. "They keep their women pretty close to home. There are three of them and you barely see 'em. When you do, whatever guy they belong to is all over 'em. I won't lie... it's a bit creepy."

Ingrid grit her teeth hard enough that it was audible, her hand was holding the cider bottle too tightly and she forced herself to let it go. Piece by piece she tucked her temper down into the box it lived in. She was doing well and taking a deep breath she said. "I have no intention of living my life that way."

That is most likely where it would have ended, but every bar has a group of drunken fools who ruin it all for everyone else. Churchill's was no exception and a burly looking logger fellow next to her laughed at her.

"Lady you can think whatever you want, but those boys are gonna have you doing what they tell you to do and begging for the same. You ain't special."

Ingrid began to shake and that shaking looked like something very specific to the werewolves outside. It looked exactly the same as when they were about to phase.

"Jesus Christ! Is she gonna fucking phase?" Brady sounded a bit panicked. All three of them couldn't think of a worse place than a full bar for a first phase.

In the bar Ingrid looked at the man laugh at her again and she lost it. Wolf blooded were aggressive, too aggressive, it took years to learn control and it didn't come easy. All the anger and rage that allowed someone to shift; a lot of it got burned off when phasing occurred. Wolf blooded couldn't shift... it had nowhere to go but out and at a target.

Ingrid punched the man in the face and he dropped like a rock. In a normal bar fight with such a clear winner it would have ended there but Ingrid moved to hit him again. His two friends got up to grab her and she elbowed one in the sternum, knocking the breath out of him, the other she brutally kicked in the balls. With them both down, she straddled the first man and began hitting him again and not stopping... she was going to kill him.

By this time Sam, Seth and Brady had come running into the bar. Brady reached her first and pulled her off of him but she wrenched herself, screaming, out of his grasp. It took all three of them to get her off the man and out of the bar. As soon as they were out of sight they began to haul ass back to La Push, Ingrid thrashing and fighting them almost the entire way.

When she finally went limp they were back on La Push, so they put her down and let her rest against a tree. She was panting and there were tears trailing down her face. She was mumbling in Norwegian so they couldn't understand what she was saying but they all could tell that she was deeply ashamed of herself.

Seth was almost out of his mind with worry, in his mind it looked like she had totally lost her sanity. What he had just seen freaked him out and badly. He sat next to her and reached out for her hand and for the first time she did not fight him, instead she just clung to his hand both hating and not caring about the fact that doing so helped calm her.

It took Seth a few minutes to realize that her phone had been ringing off the hook since this had all begun. So he picked it up and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Put my sister on the phone." Magnus wasted no time. His twin was losing her mind and he had no time to deal with pleasantries.

Seth balked at having this man, whom he did not know, talk to his imprint. He wasn't thinking clearly, his imprint was in extreme distress and all he wanted to do was protect her.

"Look, I don't think she's really in any condition to talk to anyone right now. Can I have her call you back when she's ready?" he asked.

Magnus growled at Seth. "Listen puppy, I do not have time for this shit. My sister has just lost control for the first time in five years. How do I know that, because I'm both her twin and her beta. Five years and now, two weeks with your pack and she's falling apart. So... Put. Her. On. The. Phone." Magnus sounded every inch the excessively dominant wolf that he was. "If you don't, so help me G-d, I will take my pack and you will not be prepared for the retaliation."

Seth couldn't help but react to that dominance, he was no where near high enough ranked to meet Magnus in any sort of challenge, so he handed the phone to Ingrid without another word. She grabbed onto the phone and had a long tearful conversation with her brother. It was a conversation that she had total privacy for because it wasn't in English.

While they talked Sam found himself bristling. A foreign wolf had just ordered Seth like he was a fly and Seth had obeyed. It pissed off the beta, not at Seth but at Magnus. He didn't like anyone else ordering his wolves around, he had no idea who this man was nor anything about his intentions. However, even a blind man could have seen how close the two siblings were. Sam was no fool, even if Ingrid accepted the imprint, which, as of yet, seemed unlikely, they would still need to deal with her family. If Ingrid and Seth became a mated pair, it would tie the two packs together from then on and Sam for one, wasn't sure if his pack was ready for that.

Eventually Ingrid calmed down. When she did, Magnus switched to English. He did not want to do this, but he knew that the others would hear him clearly though the cell phone and they needed to.

"Ingrid, you're a wolf blooded and you know the law. If you lose control again you will have to place yourself under a pack. You can either choose the La Push pack or come back home to Norway and our pack. Either way, if it happens again, you can't live independently." His voice left no room for argument.

Ingrid reeked of submission when she replied. "Yes beta."

In fact she was being extremely submissive to the three wolves in front of her as well. For Sam it was a normal enough thing for him and so he thought nothing of it. For Brady it was new, since he was one of the lowest ranking pack members, not many people bared their throat to him in such a fashion. Seth however did not like it, he did not want her this submissive to him. Sure, his inner wolf expected a certain amount of submission in his mate...but not this much. This much felt deeply wrong.

She hung up the phone and then just leaned back against the tree holding Seth's hand. Sam crouched in front of her. "What the hell happened back there?" he asked.

Ingrid kept her eyes closed. "When you grow that angry you phase, it burns it off, you can channel it, we can't. The more dominant your wolf parent is the more control a wolf blooded has, I have an enormous amount of control, though I understand if you don't believe me about that right now."

Seth pulled her a little closer to him. "It looked like you weren't even really there Ingrid."

"In a lot of ways, I wasn't." Then she asked "Have you ever heard of the myth of the Norse beserkers?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I was into mythology when I was younger."

"Well" she continued. "The myths of the beserkers are based on the Fenrir wolf blooded. When we lose control like that we can't stop until it either peters out on it's own, or a more dominant pack member stops us."

Seth wrinkled his nose. Ingrid smelled like too many things and they were all bad and her body language telegraphed how exhausted she was. So he did the first thing that came to his mind. He picked her up and began to walk towards her house, his beta let him go. Sam deciding that it was more important for he and Brady to get this latest wrinkle back to Jake.

As Seth carried her home and Ingrid fell asleep in his arms, he wondered if she would trust him more after this. He hoped so, he needed her to.