This is a work of speculative fanfiction. No profit was made nor was intended to be made. All rights 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 rights nor to any intellectual property of Stephanie Meyer.
AN: Thank you to those who have read, reviewed and/or added this story to their favorites. I welcome all types of reviews, I want to hear your opinions on what I'm writing here, so don't be shy. Criticism is welcome, as long as it is constructive. The beginning of this chapter was very difficult to write and took a lot of time. Some characters come easily, others... not so much. Stares at Seth and Gunnar. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the latest offering.
Hefors: In response to your question, no not all the Fenrir are Sami. They are a nation of 14 packs spread throughout the countries of Norway and Sweden. The Jarl is the most dominant of the 14 alphas and functions as their overall alpha, the closest analogy would be to a king. Because he is the most dominant he controls the most dangerous territory, which happens to be populated by the Sami. While some Fenrir do happen to be Sami, not all of them are.
Chapter Seven:
In Seth's long life he would always be able to pinpoint the day it all shifted, the day he truly began the journey from being a cub to being a man. It wasn't, as most would incorrectly assume, the day he phased in a desperate attempt to keep his father safe from a raging and barely just phased Leah. No, instead it was the day he watched his imprint get yelled at over the phone by a deep voice thundering in a language he couldn't understand. He heard her breathe the words "Oh shit!" and then everything about her changed. Her eyes hit her feet, her upper body slumped into an almost abjectly submissive pose and her neck was utterly bared to an invisible presence that that voice represented. Seth was not stupid, it took him very little time to figure out who that voice belonged to, with her brother sounding like he was trying to appease the owner of the voice, it could only be one person. Ingrid's oft wondered about father: Gunnar Jarlsson.
He had no idea what they were talking about. The conversation was in Norwegian and the only thing he had managed to learn in Ingrid's native language was how to say good morning. However he didn't really need to know what was being said to get the gist of it. Gunnar was obviously furious with his daughter and was borderline yelling at her. Ingrid was barely getting a word in edgewise, and when she did it was in a small voice, a halting manner. It made him about 10 steps beyond angry and right into furious territory. Someone was pulling rank on his imprint. His wolf was practically slathering at the mouth. Someone was was dominating his mate.
When her father barked something at her that made Ingrid bare her neck to a degree that seemed totally unreasonable to Seth and then she went to her knees, the normally cheerful wolf was ready to pop a vein.
Jake watched the scene and it suddenly occurred to him that if this was any of the other imprints, he would be furious right now. He should feel like someone was threatening one of his own. The imprints were pack, maybe nowhere near as tightly bound to the pack structure as the wolves and maybe they were more like satellite members of the group, but the fact remained that they were pack. Watching Ingrid go totally submissive for another alpha should have made him livid, instead it merely made him uncomfortable.
It suddenly hit him, Ingrid Jarlsdottir was not a member of his pack. His connection to her was purely through Seth and it was a tenuous connection. He had a few protective instincts toward the odd redheaded woman but that was where it ended. And, as far as he knew, that was an absolute first.
While Jake was busy being a bit shell shocked by that revelation, Seth had had enough and was reaching over Ingrid and grabbing her phone. It was already on speaker mode so that was good, he was shaking enough so that he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to get it there in the first place. He snarled at a wolf so dominant that in comparison Seth was something akin to a flea.
"Talk in goddamned English! You're making me think that you're threatening my imprint and you DON'T want to be doing that!". His voice radiated a somewhat barely controlled rage.
Ingrid whined and sunk further to the floor. If Seth had been paying attention he would have realized that she was trying to give him a signal that his way of handling the situation wasn't exactly the best. However, each of the imprinted wolves seemed to be leaning in the direction of supporting their young packmate. Sam, Jared and Quil knew if it were their imprints on the floor right then... they might be halfway to Norway already.
There was an abrupt silence and then a heavily accented rumbling bass voice that oozed both dominance and strength spoke. "You must be Seth, yes?"
"I am and what the hell do you think you're doing making my mate grovel on the goddamn floor!" he spat back.
Gunnar chuckled and in the background they heard a woman huff and what sounded like Magnus snap his teeth at the sound.
"First of all, you low ranked puppy, I am her father... the man you should have contacted about this imprint as soon as it happened, regardless of what my rebellious daughter's wishes were." Quiet menace seemed to typify the Jarl right now. "Secondly, there are rules puppy, rules that I expect any man who wishes to mate my daughter to obey and you aren't following them. Now... I suppose I must make allowances for ignorance. However, those allowances have run out. What rank are you in your pack structure?"
Seth paused, not really understanding why in the hell his rank mattered, but he answered anyway. "Seventh, I'm seventh ranked in my pack. For all that it matters."
Gunnar laughed at him again. "Oh it matters puppy, it matters a great deal. Ingrid is the wolfblooded daughter of a Jarl, if she were a she-wolf it would be different. There are no rules on who a she-wolf can mate with, especially in deference to their heat cycle; but wolfblooded are different. Ingrid has no heat cycle, and as such there are rules. The lowest rank allowed to court a wolfblooded daughter of mine and mate her is third rank. This rule has been around almost as long as the Fenrir and it will not be ignored for YOU!"
Seth went rigid, Ingrid had said nothing, she had to have known and she said nothing. Perhaps she had been trying to avoid this whole confrontation, because as Seth suddenly realized, no matter how this played out... it would not be pleasant. It occurred to Seth for the first time that among her people Ingrid was akin to nobility; of course there were rules about courting her, mating her. How in G-d's name had he not thought of that? Her father was an alpha among alphas, some crazy mythological version of a wolf king, it was enough to make him reel a bit. Enough to wonder just why in the hell his wolf thought she was the perfect match for him, how this whole entire thing could end in anything but bad feelings and angry words.
Gunnar continued, obviously not caring if Seth had anything more to say to him. "If you were Fenrir and had imprinted on my daughter, you would have been expected to go your separate ways. You would have been allowed to be friends, but that would be the extent of your bond. If you had bothered to contact me, HER FATHER, you would have known this. But you chose not to. We live in a world bound by consequences puppy and now my daughter is about to learn that. I am finished talking with you."
Seth physically jerked toward the phone and Jake grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him backwards. Gunnar was dominant enough that his influence could be felt through a telephone, he had no wish to pit a low ranked wolf against that. Especially one of his own.
"Stand down Seth, if I have to, I'll make that an order. This requires a bit more delicate of a touch then you have right now." He passed Seth to Sam who held onto his younger packmate, the beta rumbling a comforting sound from his chest in an attempt to soothe Seth from doing anything stupid.
Gunnar, perhaps in a move to further humiliate his eldest child, continued to speak in English. "For your actions Ingrid, there are also consequences. You asked and received permission to live outside of the pack for one year's time. You were dominant and controlled enough to be trusted with that freedom. A decision that it would appear was premature on my part. I had originally planned on rescinding that permission and ordering you to return and that if you were not here in 48 hours, I would come find you myself, but your step-mother has come up with a punishment far better than that."
At the mere mention of Dagmar, Ingrid's fists clenched and her head snapped up, glaring at the phone like she was daring it to make her unhappy. Her heartbeat went into overdrive and Sam had to slam a hand on Seth's neck and demand that he not phase in Leah's kitchen to keep the shaking wolf from shifting forms.
"You are exiled Ingrid, for the span of three years. You will have no contact with any Fenrir, including your brother."
They heard Magnus begin shouting in Norwegian, the pack knew how tightly wolf twins were bound, Collin and Brady being an excellent example. They had no doubt in their minds that Magnus and Ingrid were similarly bound, regardless of the fact that Ingrid was not a wolf herself. They heard a fourth voice, a hushed female voice sound like it was trying to soothe the obviously upset beta. All of them found themselves wondering if the Jarl was purposely trying to tear what was left of his family apart at the seams, or more appropriately, if his imprint was.
"You are stripped of your pack rank and status for that time and will be considered packless, neither subject to our rules nor under our protection. It is a wide and hostile world my daughter and perhaps it is time you figured out how to navigate it on your own."
Ingrid let out a cry of absolute pain and crouched in a ball, her hands covering her face. She had been born a Fenrir, had always been pack her whole life. Even those four years of being removed with their mother had not changed the fact that she had always felt the Fenrir on the edges of her consciousness. Now, it was gone, with the words her father spoke her ties to them were severed and bleeding. Only one thread remained... the one that tied her to her twin. It would appear that not even the Jarl could sever that connection. She was still Fenrir, but only barely. And it was that single thread that kept her from being absorbed by the La Push pack, by Jake. Her soul clung to that thread, wrapped itself around it in a metaphor of the fetal position.
Seth broke away from Sam in a display of surprising strength and snarled at the phone. He helped Ingrid up and as he supported some of her weight as they walked to the other room he bit out what to him was the most damning accusation he could possibly make.
"You are the worst excuse for a father I have ever met!"
As they left the room Jake stepped forward. "Gunnar this is Jacob Black, the alpha of the La Push pack, Seth Clearwater is one of my wolves. Perhaps this punishment is a bit harsh. Your daughter has been extremely not forthcoming with information about the Fenrir, Seth had no way to know that he was expected to contact you nor that there were any rules regarding imprinting in your culture. Among my people the only rule is to except the imprint and what it brings to your life, whatever that may be. Ingrid has put up monumental resistance to the imprint bond and I can assure you, they are not a mated pair. She seems more angered that the imprint happened than anything else."
A female voice snorted. "Typical of her. She has always been bullheaded about the notion of imprinting, something I'm sure she learned at the feet of her mother."
Both Leah and Jake seemed astounded that the woman, who had to be Dagmar with that comment, would say something like that. It seemed somewhat self explanatory that Ingrid would hate imprinting with every fiber of her being, the mystical bond had destroyed her family. How in the hell did this woman expect her to feel?
Gunnar's voice sounded through the phone. "Be that as it may Jacob Black, the rules of the Fenrir exist for a reason and that reason is to keep our society running effectively. It is not my daughter's place to decide what rules are mandatory and what rules she can ignore at her own whim. The punishment will stand. You have no authority to demand otherwise."
Jake growled at the man's undiplomatic dig at Jake's rights over an imprint who was not a pack member, it made him want to throttle Gunnar through the telephone and see if that would solve a multitude of issues. Unfortunately, he had not yet learned how to dismiss the laws of physics so while the strangulation would have been extremely satisfying, it wasn't going to happen.
He sighed in complete frustration with the other alpha and then carefully judged his next words. Jake had never really needed to be a diplomat. Sam had handled most of the negotiations with the Cullens, by the time Jake had stepped into his role as alpha, there wasn't much negotiating left to do. When the packs had reunited a few years later, it was during a time of peace, except for the occasional nomad who hadn't gotten the memo that Forks and La Push were extremely dangerous ground for human drinkers, there had been no major altercations. Now, with the arrival of Ingrid the world had opened up, was larger than then their small slice of the Olympic Peninsula. In retrospect, he should have thought this day would happen, the vampires had a worldwide presence, why wouldn't shapeshifters as well? Jake was taking the first steps in making his pack a part of that worldwide presence, he could only hope that he didn't cock it up.
"Be that as it may, I need to ask a few questions about Ingrid's duties in your pack, her strengths and weaknesses. She has volunteered to do something for my pack that I need to know if she is capable of doing before I allow her to proceed."
Gunnar huffed and spoke in an almost bored tone. "My son, who is also my beta, can answer all your questions about Ingrid and the wolfblooded. He usually handles this for me anyway."
Jake's tone of voice was becoming more and more clipped and irritated. "Fine, can I speak to Magnus then?"
The sounds of two people exiting a room were heard and then a male voice that sounded utterly world weary came through the phone.
"This is Magnus, what can I do for you Alpha Black?"
Jake took a deep breath and then plunged on ahead in his first steps in foreign relations with another wolf pack that his tribe had ever taken.
"We have a somewhat delicate situation that possibly involves vampires. She has volunteered to infiltrate a cult that has set up very close to our borders and do some surveillance. Your sister insists that she's done this before and three of my pack witnessed her plow through three burly men at a bar some time ago and two of them seem to believe that she's capable. I'm unwilling to send her in there without some reassurances that she knows what she's doing. She's human for G-d's sake!"
"First of all" Magnus replied "She's not really human. Wolfblooded live a bit longer and physically age a bit slower than a human does. Don't you know this already? You should have wolfblooded of your own, no shapeshifter reproduces the gene perfectly 100 percent of the time."
Jake raised his eyes heavenward. That seemed to be the big question lately. "We don't currently have any wolfblooded, none of my pack has children and in the absence of a constant enemy like your people have, our pack goes dormant. The knowledge of who and what wolfblooded are somehow got lost in the ensuing years."
He had no intention of informing this man of the reservation system and the damage it did to the cultures that were forced into land unsuitable for their needs. The sheer amount of culture death that ensued afterwards. It wasn't his right to know about his people's pain.
"I understand." Magnus said. "Wolfblooded are stronger and more enduring than a human is, however they're weaker than we are. They can deal out a lot of damage and take a lot as well, but don't confuse that with them being just like us. They aren't and if you send them toe to toe against a vampire alone all they're going to do is get killed. The Fenrir train our wolfblooded to fight with us and certain ones that excel at it even patrol. Most of them do perimeter duty around our territories and all of them find some way to support the pack in a useful manner. The ones who are the best at it become full fledged members of a pack, as my sister is... was."
Jake nodded though he knew the other man couldn't see him. "She says you and your father used her for recon a lot. Is that actually true?"
"Yes." Magnus replied. "Ingrid was a fully integrated member of our pack. That's why she has the tattoo. Being a stealthy little bitch is her specialty. For whatever reason, vampires can't really tell the difference between a normal human and a wolfblooded unless they know what to look for, and just about none of them know what to look for. My people have used that to our advantage since as long as my sister's kind have existed."
Jake and Sam raised their eyebrows at each other, the world had just gotten very large indeed.
When Magnus spoke next he was almost completely devoid of emotion. "Thank's to my father's imprint, you've delayed meeting any of us for three years. My twin is your responsibility now. If something happens to her... I'm holding you personally responsible. No matter what my father or his imprint says."
With that the line went dead... and the phone got crushed by Jake.
"Well Sam, how do you think that went?" he asked dryly.
"It could have gone better to tell you the truth." the beta replied.
Collin huffed. "The only way it could have been worse was if that asshole and his wife had showed up personally!"
Sam leaned against Leah's fridge and swiped a banana from her counter top without looking. "So... she part of the pack yet?"
"You knew she wasn't pack?" Jake seemed more than a bit surprised.
"Yep." Sam was a little less than modest. "You forget... I used to do your job."
For the stoic man, he might as well have been making a crude joke. Sam never joked, he barely smiled anymore and truth be told, he had gotten old before his time. So the fact that he had somehow remembered that he was 25 years old for a split second and not 52 was something of an event.
"Nope, something's still keeping her Fenrir. Her tie to us is stronger now, but she's still not pack. I think it has to do with her brother.."
"Makes sense, they're twins." Sam replied.
Jared was looking very uncomfortable, like something was stuck in his throat and he couldn't get it out, no matter how hard he tried.
"What's up with you?" Paul asked.
Jared frowned. "That woman is an imprint, and she's... how can she do the things she's done? I mean she's totally made her wolf's childrens' lives a living hell. If what Ingrid says is true... she's pretty much responsible for their mother's death! And this... I mean... imprint's are supposed to be... well... not this."
The man looked utter at a loss to explain behavior that he didn't think was possible.
It was Sam who answered him, in a very odd way. "Were you under the impression that because a woman is imprinted on that it makes her a saint? They're human beings Jared and that makes them capable of anything any human being is capable of. The good... and the bad."
When he finished, he looked directly at Leah. Paul noticed and narrowed his eyes a bit, before wiping all expression off his face and acting like whatever connection that those two still shared didn't bother him at all.
Just then Seth poked his head in. "I'm taking Ingrid back home. She said to tell you that she'll meet you tomorrow, if you want to Jake, to discuss the cult."
Jake raised an eyebrow. "She can take all the time she needs Seth. She just got kicked out of her pack, the cult can wait."
Ingrid's voice floated in from where she was standing by the front door. "I need the distraction, I'll see you tomorrow."
Jake nodded at Seth. The younger wolf turned and then the two of them were gone. The rest of the pack looked at each other. The more they learned of the Fenrir, the more alien they seemed to be. Both cultures did things so differently that it was hard to imagine them having any common ground.
XXXXXX XXXXXX
Seth drove Ingrid home in complete silence. She just looked out the window like a robot. When they got to her house, she let them in and then sat on the couch and stared at the floor, her hands in her hair. Seth sat down beside her, worry etched on his face.
"I am so, so sorry." he said.
"For what?" she asked.
"You lost everything... because of me." Seth replied.
Ingrid took a deep breath and then not really looking at anything she flopped back against the sofa cushions. "You know... it would be really easy to blame you Seth. I mean... imprinting now is 0 for 2 in my life, but it's not your fault. I should have told him, I just wanted to keep my year away so badly. I knew telling him and what rank you were would be a giant shitstorm. Do you know why I did whatever it took to get my year away?"
"I'm guessing it had something to do with that shit-tastic family of yours. Well... your brother seems pretty cool." he said.
She smiled at that. "He is. It was because I really thought that I would kill Dagmar if I didn't get a break from her. Being around her made the thing that lives inside me crawl in my brain. I wanted her dead and I was going to do it if I didn't get away. I had to get away. So I did. I knew that if I told him that there was the real possibility that he would make me go back... and if that happened, I was going to kill his imprint. The day I do that... I might as well swallow a bullet, because it's suicide by wolf. My father WILL kill me. So I took my chances and I stayed. It was a gamble Seth, one that didn't pay off."
She looked at a picture on the mantle piece, it was the last family photo taken of Gunnar, Marit and the twins.
"It's not your fault I got kicked out of my pack. It's Dagmar's fault. She's always wanted me and Magnus gone. She's always hated that there was a life before her, a family before her. She was always pleased that my mother died. She never came out and said it, but it was obvious. If she had ever had children, Magnus and I would have been shipped off somewhere permanently. But then she got injured and no children for her. So she had to keep us around or the line would be broken. Magnus is the next Jarl, she can't get rid of him. But I'm just a wolfblooded, if I was a she wolf, I would be being groomed to be my brother's beta till his son was born and trained. But as I am now... I'm expendable and she knows it. She saw the opportunity to get rid of me and she took it, that's on her."
Seth frowned. "She sounds crazy Ingrid. I mean I get jealousy and all that, but she sounds really nuts."
"Maybe." Ingrid mused. "It would be nice to think so, that it's not her fault that she's a home wrecking whore and completely devoid of the things that make someone a good person. But as far as I know... she's not crazy. Dagmar is hoping that in three years time I'll either be dead from the stress of being packless or so intertwined with you that I won't ever want to go home. I don't think she understands how deeply tied wolf twins are. The only way I can stop being Fenrir is if Magnus somehow dies before me."
"How in the hell can she not know that?" Seth asked.
"She's not wolfblooded. She's a normal human and my father has kept her so coddled and insulated from the realities of Fenrir life that there's a lot of stuff that she doesn't know. I did her job for years Seth, the only reason that I don't have the bolverk's tattoo on my throat and the torque around my neck is because she claimed them for herself... not that she deserved them."
Seth sat closer to her and took her hand. Ingrid didn't pull away and Seth didn't bother trying to fool himself into reading anymore into that gesture than was there.
"You've mentioned that word before, the bolverk. What does it mean?"
"It's the alpha's left hand." she said. "If the beta is the alpha's right hand than the bolverk is the left. Usually, she's the mate of the alpha, but sometimes in the case of that mate dying, it's the oldest female child or most capable female relative. It's always female. When a bolverk speaks it's implicitly understood that the weight of the alpha and the beta are behind her words. In a healthy pack, the alpha the beta and the bolverk are sort of like this triumvirate. In an unhealthy pack... it's a big pile of steaming shit."
Seth huffed. "Let me guess... it's a big pile of steaming shit in your pack."
Ingrid just nodded. "The bolverk is always female because alpha's... except for one time in our entire history and as far as we know in the entire world, alpha's are always male and beta's are usually, though not always, male. The bolverk is a voice of female power and high rank to balance all that testosterone out, plus she gives the non-wolves a voice and an advocate. Though all Dagmar does is fuck up and blame everyone else but herself when someone needs to be held accountable."
Ingrid got up and began pacing around, her hands picking at her clothes. It was obvious that she was feeling the exclusion from her pack. Seth walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her. He hoped that for once the stubborn woman would lean on him. She was obviously in need of some support. Oddly enough, for a full two minutes... she did. Then she looked up at him and smiled sadly.
"Seth, I'm not going to spend the next three years avoiding you as much as humanly possible save for when I'm hanging out with your sister. When I was only going to be here for a year, that was one thing... but that's too damn difficult to keep up for three years. So... I'd like to try and be friends."
He brushed her hair back. "We could be whole lot more than friends you know."
"No." she replied. "We can't. I know better than anyone, what imprinting does to someone's free will. My father would never have left us, he loved and adored my mother. But an imprint gets what an imprint wants. When it comes to that bond, you have no free will of your own. You're a good guy Seth, funny, smart... damn good looking. And if you could choose me of your own free will, it would be different and I would be all over you. From what I understand, and I've done some asking, I'm not even your regular type. I won't be part of something that takes that much away from you. I'm not moveable on this point Seth, I refuse to do to you what Dagmar did to my father."
Seth growled. "But it's not the same Ingrid, I don't have a wife and children. If I did, then I would be thanking my lucky stars that you're my imprint instead of someone else who might not care."
Ingrid gave that smile again. "The worst of Dagmar's sins wasn't that she wrecked a happy home or that she selfishly took for herself what should have been my mother's. It was that she took away my father's free will to make his own decisions, and she didn't care. An imprint has such power over her wolf. It takes a very ethical woman to stand firm in the face of that temptation, I've known a few. I don't want to find out the hard way that I'm not one of them."
Seth actually laughed. "It figures... I got the ethically overwrought imprint."
Ingrid and Seth spent much of the day and into the night talking. Ingrid was a bit frenetic in her conversation, jumping from topic to topic. Pacing about like a caged animal, she was all over the place. It took hours, but finally, late in the evening, she finally fell asleep. Or more appropriately, passed out from sheer emotional exhaustion. As she lay sleeping in her bedroom, Seth was laying on the sofa. There was something that was bothering him, something that wouldn't let him go. Ingrid said that she only wanted to be friends, that that was as deep as she would ever allow the imprint to go. After spending as much time with her as he had, he believed her. There was just one problem... if that was what she truly wanted, than he should be content, and he wasn't. The bond shouldn't still be tugging at him, screaming at him that there was something else, something different that she needed. What the hell else could it be?
XXXXXX XXXXXX
The next day Ingrid was up early, out the door and shopping at Goodwill and the drugstore before Seth even woke up. When he finally woke up and looked at his imprint he blinked a lot to make sure he was still seeing things correctly. She looked completely different. She was dressed in total street clothes, like she was used to sleeping in a doorway and her hair was much longer than it had been... and was straight... and brown. It also looked like it had been hacked at with a razor blade in an attempt to cut it that had failed spectacularly.
"What the hell?" he mumbled.
"We need to go to Jake's and then I need to get to into the cult. There's nothing I can do about my pack situation, but this is something I can do instead. So... hurry up and get dressed, there's coffee on in the kitchen."
Seth blearily got ready and poured himself a travel mug of coffee. As they drove to Jake's house he was figiting in the seat.
"Are you sure that you know what you're doing?" His voice was tight with worry.
Ingrid turned the wheel to go down the road to La Push and smiled proudly. "I'm damn good at this. I might not be able to kill a vampire by myself, but this, this is my thing. If there are vampires up there I'll find them for you and everything else you need to know to rip the sons of bitches apart."
Her voice sounded exactly like the pack's did when they were about to go on patrol or a fight was coming. It was all pride and a certain amount of excitement in doing what you know you were born to do.
Seth still frowned. "But what if they figure it out? What if you need to fight? What if..."
Ingrid pulled to the side of the road. "Seth, my pack taught me to fight. I know how to fight vampires, I might not be able to kill one by myself... but three of my kind fighting in a group can, and do."
Seth was just a bit wide eyed at that. "You... you've killed vampires haven't you?"
"Yep, done it more than once. When the dark part of the year begins... I'm put out there like every other capable member of the Fenrir. If you were hoping for a damsel in distress... I'm sorry, fate screwed you in more ways than one."
Seth was having a moment. It was a pretty surreal moment too. One the one hand, his human side was about to have a stroke and on the other... his wolf was rumbling in happiness that it had found such a capable match. A thousand and five questions were flying around his brain at light speed. All of them leading to yet even more questions and at some point... he stopped breathing.
"SETH!"
He snapped out of it.
"How?" he asked. "How can you kill them, you guys don't have claws, no pointy teeth... NOTHING to tear them apart with. How the hell do you fight them? How do you kill them?"
Ingrid reached into her inner jacket pocket and pulled out a pale white knife. "Be careful with this, it will cut you."
Seth took it gingerly. "What is it?"
"Vampire bone-knife. All the weapons made for the wolfblooded are made out of vampire bones, so are the medical instruments meant to be used on you full blood types."
Seth looked poleaxed. "How do you get vampire bones? Jesus... your world is completely different than mine... and we're almost the same species."
Ingrid took back her small knife. "We keep a portion of the arms and legs of the vampires we kill, deflesh them and carve them into weapons and medical instruments. Whatever we don't use, we burn. Vampire bones are impossibly sharp when given an edge and impossibly hard and durable. They'll pierce a vampire's skin, kill them if used correctly. These weapons take away the advantage that their marble skin gives them. We're pretty sure that shapeshifter bones would do the same thing, but no one wants to defile any of our dead in this way to find out. Vampires though... vampires we don't care about."
Seth looked at her unblinking. "You do realize that what you just said was creepy as hell right? You're sitting here talking about chopping up the arms and legs of your enemies and using their bones for weapons. It's... creepy."
She merely shrugged and got back on the road. "The world is a tough place Seth, full of things that will kill you if you give them half a chance. So you don't give them that chance, you take any advantage you can and you run with it. Otherwise you end up dead."
He couldn't fault her her logic, it was true. Living the life that he had the past seven years had taught him that. He just wished that his own imprint didn't have to be the one saying it. When they pulled up in front of Jake red house, some of the pack were waiting for them. Seth looked at Ingrid as she stepped out of the car and walked toward his pack. For better or worse, he was going to find out some of what she was capable of very soon.
XXXXXX XXXXXX
Magnus stood outside looking over the wall into the wind and the snow. Autumn here did not bring pretty colors... it brought more snow. He stared out into the blinding white and ground his teeth hard enough to make them ache. The news about Ingrid and her punishment had been announced that morning, the pack had reacted with shock. Many of them had looked over to him to see how they should react. Enni had looked utterly guilt stricken. Dagonet, Hilde and Karolina looked angry. Yvanne had taken his hand in hers and murmured that three years time would pass. After the announcement he had come up here and he'd been here for over an hour.
Suddenly Dagonet and Hilde stood at either side of him. Hilde was the first to speak. "Yvanne told us what happened. She told a few people, people who aren't happy with this decision Magnus.
Dagonet's voice rumbled. "You have allies beta... if you need to make a decision, know that you have people that will stand with you. And not just in this pack."
Magnus nodded and continued to look out into the snow.
XXXXXX XXXXXX
Ingrid smiled as the man at the gate let her into the Fellowship of Self Actualization and Happiness. The pack had been impressed with her physical transformation and she had gone over with Jake every single last detail of what she hoped to accomplish. A wolf would always be nearby, but unseen and always down wind so that if there were vampires here, no one would smell them.
Her jerky eye movements and the way she picked at herself screamed junkie, which was the point. She no longer looked or sounded anything like the curly red haired Norwegian woman living in Forks. And if she did her job right, no one would ever know they were the same person.
"What can we do for you?" the man asked her.
When Ingrid spoke, her voice was perfect Washington American. "I just wanna get better. I was told I could get better here."
The man gestured for her to come through the gate. "You've come to the right place then. We've helped a lot of people like you."
Ingrid walked past him and the man shut the gate behind her and locked it. From the treeline Seth and Jake watched in wolf form. Both of them hoping fervently that this was just a cult of crazy humans and both of them having the suspicion that weren't that lucky.