Chapter 2

Embry's POV

If I could get away with killing a member of the pack then I would kill Quil right where he stood. I wanted to answer her question but I had absolutely no clue where to start.

'Ok hun here's the thing. We're all a bunch of shape shifters that can change into wolves when we get mad or if there is a vampire around thanks to our ancestors. And if that isn't enough for you we also have this thing called imprinting, and it's where our wolf meets it's other half or it's soul mate and you just happen to be mine.' Yea definitely not going that route.

"Umm well…you see…it's uh…God will someone please help me out here." I had no explanation for her at all and I could barely wrap my head around the whole imprinting thing let alone explain it to someone else. Especially my imprint that doesn't even know that werewolves exist.

"Bells what if we talk about that when you get back. You really need to get your hand looked at." Thank you Jacob Black for stepping up to the plate. Bella gave a little bit of a pout but finally let me take her back to her truck so we could get her to the hospital.

As soon as I got her in the cab of the truck I regretted not letting Jake take her. We had never been alone together and I had no clue how to act. I've never been alone with a girl who wasn't a part of my family actually. After we got a little farther down the road things were going smoothly. We were settled into a comfortable silence but then I heard this clicking noise. It wasn't until I looked over at Bella to realize that it was her teeth chattering.

I turned on the heater and waited. Nothing happened. "It's bbbbroken. Jake is ggggoing to fix it soon." I take back thinking nicely of Jake. He was a dick. I didn't know how long she had been there shivering and now I really was starting to think that fate was severly fucking with me when they made Bella my imprint, I was fucking everything up royally.

"Come sit next to me so you can get warm. Sorry I didn't think to grab you a blanket or something. Me and the guys never really get cold." I said lamely.

"No I'll bbbbe fine. I ppppromise". Then she gave me her Bella smile. The one that fully reached her eyes. The smile that could make anyone's heart melt and that could make even Paul smile. Well maybe not Paul, but any other normal human being. Her smile was infectious. You just couldn't help yourself. I gently put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her into me. The smell of strawberries attacked my nose and I want to curl up beside this girl and never leave. She had me fawning over her in a matter of hours. I had it bad.

"Geez Em you're really hot."

"Thanks Bella, you're not too bad yourself." Where the hell did that come from? Embry Call doesn't flirt, well not with anyone but his imprint that is.

"Em I didn't mean it that way…well I mean you are very attractive…not that I'm trying to make a pass at you or anything…not that I wouldn't but I just….oh shit."

I couldn't help but laugh. She was completely adorable. Totally flustered, drenched head to toe and a broken hand and I still wanted to wrap her up in my arms and keep her forever. I had always felt an attraction to Bella since I first met her in Jake's garage. She didn't say much but I could just tell that her and I would click really well. We were both kind of the stand offish type and liked to sit on the sidelines. Being around all the guys all the time it was nice to have another shy person in the group. Then all that shit happened with everyone phasing and Bella got pushed to the back of my thoughts. Still always there just in the back. I couldn't have Jake seeing in my head and have him see my crush for his girl. Well I guess she was my girl now. God my wolf loved hearing that, he was clawing at a chance to get his paws on her. Now that we were alone he wanted to claim her, in every sense of the word.

The more that Bella snuggled up to the me, the harder it was to drive. I had a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel and was fighting every instinct I had to put my hands all over her. She wouldn't understand at all if I were to just pull over and jump on top of her. Hell she would probably break her other hand giving me the same treatment she did Jake. Ok couldn't let my thought travel back to that because my wolf was still pissed I didn't beat Jake's ass for laying his hands on my mate, let alone kissing her. She was mine, period.

"Thanks Em. I really appreciate you doing this for me." Her light voice thankfully jarred me out of my own thoughts. She looked so at ease curled up beside me. She had her head leaning against my shoulder and was completely curled into my side. It was damn near perfect.

"Uh no big thing Bells. I'm just happy I could help." We were just pulling up at the hospital so I parked her truck in the parking lot and helped her up to the front desk. I sat in the waiting room while Bella got wrapped up. It only took a few minutes because Bella as right about the hospital having everything on file since she was a regular. I doubt this was really a place she wanted to be a regular though, we were definitely going to have to work on her coordination skills.

The doctor walked her back out to where I was sitting and asked if we were together. She picked the perfect time to throw her arms around my waist and snuggle up to me. "My Emmy so comfy."

"I take it that's a yes then. Here are Miss Swan's discharge papers. She managed to keep from breaking anything but she does have a sprained wrist and 2 dislocated fingers so she will need to keep the brace on for a couple weeks. I gave her a prescription for some pain killers and she can take them as needed. She has already had a few so we could get her fingers back in place so she's going to be a little out of it for a couple hours. Her best bet is to get into bed and rest for awhile, it's going to help with the healing process."

"Ok thanks Doc." I turned to Bella once the doctor had walked away and asked her how she was feeling. All I got was an inaudible mumble from her and took that as a good sign. I helped her walk, well in her case it was more of a stumble, and got her situated in the cab then went around to the drivers seat. Literally as soon as I got in the truck she laid her head down in my lap and I was in heaven. The smell of strawberries was attacking my nose and I knew it was from the beauty that was now spread across the bench seat of the truck. She then placed her hand on my thigh and I forgot how to breath. 'Ok Em, get a hold of yourself. You can do this. You need to get her home and tell her about everything. Oh dear God she's rubbing my thigh.'

I looked back down and she had fallen asleep in no time. She was just unconsciously rubbing her hand over the top of my thigh like it was natural to her. That had to be a good sign. She acted like we had done this our whole life. Now I needed to figure out if it was because of the imprint or if it was her actually liking me. Well now I know that I need to wait to tell her about imprinting. I needed to know if she liked me for me or if it was just the damn imprint pushing her my way. Now that Quil had opened his mouth though how was I supposed to tell her about us shifting and not tell her about imprinting. I can't tell her yet. That's my only option. I won't tell her about any of it yet, I just need to get the rest of the pack to keep their mouths shut. That was going to be a lot harder than I needed it to be though.

We made it back to La Push in no time and Bella was still asleep so I decided to just let her sleep. That's what the doc said so I was sticking with it. We pulled up at Jake's house and I knew he would have no problem letting her sleep in his bed for a couple hours. As soon as we pulled up I could see the rest of the pack sitting on the front porch. Jake was the first one up to the truck.

"So how did it go? Is she alright?"

"Yea, nothing is broken but she had 2 fingers pop out of socket so doc said she had some pain meds that would knock her on her ass. She was out before we left the parking lot. I figured we could let her sleep for a bit before we threw everything at her."

"Oh yea man that's fine. I feel like shit that she got hurt because of me. And I'm really sorry dude. I know that you can't help who you imprint on but it just hurts. I've loved her forever but I know that you'll take good care of her."

"No worries I understand Jake. I will take good care of her. Well assuming that she doesn't deny me."

"You know Bella. She would never do that man. Just tell her about the imprint and she'll definitely chose you Em."

"I don't want her to chose me for the imprint though Jake. I want her to chose me because I'm who she wants."

"That makes sense and all but how do you plan on dating her and seeing her and not telling her about the imprint? When she meets the other mates it's all going to click with her eventually. She's not stupid."

"Well I'm not going to tell her about any of it yet. Not the imprint and not the shifting. None of it."

"Embry, dude this is totally going to backfire on you. I hope you know that."

"I have to try though."

I knew that Jake had a point but I had to try something. Jake carried Bella into the house and I'm assuming to his room so she could get some uninterrupted sleep. It sucks these are the circumstances I have to deal with for my first real relationship but I guess I don't really have a say in it now.

I met the rest of the pack out on the porch and gave them a run down of what happened at the hospital but leave it to Sam to ruin my chance at almost forgetting about imprinting on my best friends girl.

"So Embry when do you want to plan the bonfire so Bella can hear the tribal stories?" he asked with absolutely no sympathy might I add.

"What's the rush? I mean we can get to it whenever." That's when everyone started to look at me like I had grown a second head. I get that it seemed strange that I wasn't overly excited to tell my imprint about me turning into a giant wolf and that she was the only girl that I could spend that rest of my life with and if she denied me that I would die alone, ok so it really didn't seem that strange to me when I put it that way.

Quil looked at me with the most confused face and said, "Man you really couldn't ask for a better imprint. I mean Bells is already really good with weird so you know that she's totally going to be cool with everything."

He had a good point. She knew of the leeches and didn't take off running and screaming or get herself put in an asylum so this might not be that bad. I just had to have a little time with her by myself before I started throwing everything at her.

"I will tell her I just need to talk to her a little bit more. I can't just throw all of this supernatural crap at her and then tell her that she's stuck with me for life. Well if she'll have me that is." I hated trying to explain this all to them because the only ones that would come close to understanding would be Sam and Jared cause they were the only ones that had imprinted in the pack.

"Don't worry so much about it Em. You know Bells could never hurt a fly let alone a person she actually likes." Quil just topped it off right there. I love how everyone believes that Bella would stay with me simply because she didn't want to hurt me. Not that she would ever want to be with me without the imprint. Fuck this. I wasn't telling her anything until she was falling for me. I needed to know that I could win the girl and it not just be because the fates saw fit to put her as my wolf's mate.

"Ok well it's my decision and we're not telling her until I want to. So nothing about imprinting or patrols or phasing or any of it. She is just going to think that we were all assholes for a few weeks and we're really sorry about it and now we want her to hangout with us more."

Everyone nodded along even though I heard Sam saying something about it biting me in the ass. I decided to ignore that for the time being, probably not the best idea to pick a fight with my Alpha right now. Jake met us all on the porch and had a strange look on his face. Now what? I really couldn't take anymore today.

"Is Bella asleep?" I asked.

"Well…yea…I mean kind of. She was asleep and when I tried to leave she started crying and she was saying your name. You might want to go check on her or something."

I was walking in the front door before he even had a chance to finish the sentence. True to his word Jake was right. She was saying my name and as great as it was that she was thinking about me, I was more worried because she sounded terrified. I opened the door and there was my imprint laying on Jake's bed; thrashing around like she was trying to fight something off of her. I couldn't take seeing her upset. I was laying in bed next to her and wrapping my arms around her before my mind even had a chance to comprehend what my body was doing. Damn wolf was doing a happy dance though, being this close to his mate was heaven for him.

She instantly stilled in my arms once I got her situated. I figured that she had woken up and was freaked that I was in bed with her but instead she just snuggled up closer to me, took a deep breath and fell back into a restful sleep. The sound of her breathing evened out and in no time I found myself falling asleep to the deep lull of her heartbeat next to mine. I had to make her fall in love with me because I'd be damned if she didn't. She already had me wrapped around her little finger. I was a whipped pup and she didn't have the slightest idea.