A/N: I have another story that I started writing to help me cope with the angst in this one. It is a crackfic comedy. Check it out if you feel like you need some light relief.

Suggested Listening: "Snow" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers , "Do you remember?" by Jarryd James and "Wicked Games" by Chris Isaak.

4. Love Child

Leah's eyes were locked in a fierce staring match with the Alpha of La Push. She couldn't believe what he was telling her – or that he had the audacity to direct her to have any type of conversation with Jacob.

"What the fuck happened to you?" she whispered hoarsely.

He didn't say anything, he didn't even blink as he returned her gaze – which only added to Leah's annoyance.

"Charlie and Mom are on board," Seth's voice cut across the battle of wills taking place in his kitchen.

"Huh?" Leah mumbled, vaguely aware of a strange thudding underfoot.

"Daddy!" a little girl cried.

Just like that, the spell was broken and Leah watched as Embry reached down to scoop up the toddler, his face transformed from hard and business-like to the warm kindness she remembered from her teenage years.

"Are you being naughty?" he teased.

The little girl giggled as she climbed up her father's chest. "Nooo! Me good!" she shrieked as he tipped her upside down.

"Yeah?" Embry asked. "Whatchya being doin' outside?" he tickled her belly before upending her and placing her squarely on his lap.

"Playin wit' Levi!" Victoria exclaimed, looking very proud of herself.

"Is Levi your boyfriend?" Quil jumped in. Leah looked at the three men in the kitchen – all of them built like the incredible hulk and every single one transfixed by the small girl in Embry's arms.

"Yeah!" Victoria answered, clapping her hands.

"She doesn't even know what a boyfriend is!" Seth objected.

"What did I tell you?" Embry eyed his daughter with mock seriousness. "No boyfriend until you're married." Victoria beamed as Embry repeated himself and she tried to say the words along with him.

"No boy 'til marry!" she squeaked as he tickled her again and everyone in the room burst into laughter – Leah included.

She felt an ache settle in her chest as she watched Embry with Victoria. There was a light in his eyes, a happiness that she understood she would never personally know - and yet suited him so well that she couldn't begrudge it.

Maybe it was for the best, she thought to herself. Embry was thriving and she never would have been able to give him that kind of joy.

Leah sank back into herself as the chatter continued. The little girl slithered off her father's lap and made a dash for the door. "LEVIIIIII," she yelled as she made her way outside.

"No more boyfriend crap," Embry growled at Quil.

Quil grinned. "The heart wants what it wants dude."

"So," Seth began, looking just as annoyed as Embry. "As I was saying, Mom and Charlie won't say anything to the Cullens about any wolf stuff, including you being here, so you can visit them as soon as they get back."

"Back?" Leah repeated.

"They're in Seattle this weekend. Charlie 's part of some task force that's trying to catch the gang that's been operating across the state and they're having some meeting there. Mom went with him for the week. It was a good chance for her to have a bit of a getaway."

"Gang?"

Seth waved his hands. "Some group of punks that like to roofie women at frat parties. A few girls from Forks have been attacked while in Port A and other places, so the Police are trying to coordinate their investigations. It's not important Lee. What is important is that you don't have to worry about Charlie telling Bella you've come home. I rang them this morning. Mom almost doubled back as soon as I said you'd arrived, but I convinced her you wouldn't go anywhere without seeing her first."

Leah tried to squish the uncomfortable guilt rising inside of her. She'd been back for almost twenty-four hours and the idea of seeing her mother hadn't crossed her mind even once. She loved her Mom, and Charlie Swan was okay for a cop, but she'd never quite gotten her head around their relationship. Nobody seemed right next to her mother other than her father. Being a long distance daughter made the situation easier. She wanted Sue to be happy, but preferred not to have Charlie rubbed in her face.

"Swell," she mumbled, realising that even her mother was in on all the mysterious happenings at the Rez – and was yet another person who had kept secrets from her. "How does that fit in with Charlie only being informed on a 'need to know' basis?" Bella had been horrified when Jacob had told the Police Chief his wolfy secrets- even though he had done it so that Bella and her family wouldn't have to go anywhere in a hurry.

Embry raised an eyebrow. "Isabella Swan doesn't call the shots around here." His voice radiated power and Leah heard the unspoken part of his sentence loud and clear.

The only person who called the shots on the rez was Embry Call.

~~~TAC~~~

"Weird party," Leah muttered. She and Quil waved at the hosts from the truck window as they made their way down the drive. Georgia was tucked under Embry's shoulder while he held a squirming Victoria at his other side. Seth and Georgia were laughing about something and she was pinching his cheek.

"I guess you're used to more fancy stuff after so many years with the Cullens," Quil suggested.

"That really wasn't what I meant." It had actually been fun to be at a simple barbeque rather than one of Renesmee's non-annual birthdays where Alice and Esmee made vol-au-vents and other fancy hors d'oeuvres. What she hadn't expected was for Embry to be engaged with a kid, his girlfriend to be a binge-drinking nutter who was in the middle of some sort of grudge match with Emily, Seth being the new man-whore of La Push and Embry confessing to being a homicidal maniac.

"What's the deal with Georgia and Emily?" Leah asked.

Quil made a face as he checked his blind spot. "They're cool. They practically have a crèche going so they can both work. Raising the kids together, you know?"

Leah wrinkled her nose. "Sure. They seem like real pals. I call all the people I love 'bitch' and 'cunt'."

Quil snickered. "You do, kind of."

She almost growled in response, but she swallowed the sound, instead releasing a frustrated hiss.

Quil sighed. "I dunno Leah. They're both usually quite agreeable people, but when it comes to imprinting, Rachel and Georgia have a very different view to Emily and Kim and each camp is convinced that they're right and that the other is totally wrong."

"Huh," Leah marvelled that there were differences of opinion at all on the subject. "What are the different views?"

"For Emily and Kim, imprinting is immediate and all-consuming. While it can be other things if people are not yet at maturity, it is fundamentally romantic in terms of where it ends up."

"And Georgia and Rachel?"

Quil shot her a quick glance, chewing on his lower lip before he continued. "They've often said they're on your side."

"My side?" Leah wondered how – given her extended absence – she was relevant to the debate at all.

"Yep. They say that imprinting is an impulse that can be challenged or resisted. It's not necessarily romantic. They point to the fact that Jacob has been with you for so many years despite his imprint on Renesmee as an example, and because of this, they have some very firm views on how Emily and Sam behaved when they first got together."

"But Renesmee was just a baby when the imprint happened," Leah protested. In her observation, the closer Renesmee got to maturity, the less platonic he relationship with Jacob became.

"Georgia and Rachel would say that only proves their point. If Jacob could be with someone else despite him imprinting on Renesmee, then it all comes down to what the imprintee actually wants or needs, right?"

Leah's mouth fell open. She'd always felt aggrieved by the fact that Emily had jumped so quickly into bed with Sam – and the suggestion that they'd done everything they could to fight it had never really washed with her.

Maybe that was because it wasn't a very logical argument to begin with.

"Who do you think is right?" Leah asked Quil. After all, he had an imprint of his own. "Have you dated anyone over the years?"

"A few people," he said. "Nothing ever really took though... and I don't know who's right. Maybe they both are."

Leah snorted. "They're making opposing arguments Quil. They can't both be right."

"They can if imprinting is different from what everyone thinks it is. You make your argument on the basis that there's a line running from left to right and one view is at the far end of each part of that line... but maybe the line joins in a circle. Then what seems worlds apart is actually identical."

They were outside Quil's apartment now but Leah remained fixed in her seat. "Explain," she directed in her most authoritative voice.

Quil turned to her. "Most of the discussions everyone has about imprinting are about the imprintee. What does she need or want? Very rarely does anyone consider the imprinter, but they're one half of the equation. What do they need and want? If imprinting is a perfect match, then the wolf needs something about the imprint from the very beginning. I needed Claire, Leah. Not because I'm some kiddy-fiddler or anything, but because I needed to grow up as quickly as possible and because I needed to learn how to look after another human being."

"What do you mean?" Quil's seriousness was unnerving.

"I had to have a trial run at adulthood before my grandfather died."

Leah reeled from the news. "Old Quil is dead?"

Quil nodded. "A few years back... and it was bad Leah. He needed a lot of care and it was just me and my Mom. Luckily, I'd done potty training and feeding with Claire and none of the stuff I ended up doing for Gramps was that different."

"I'm so, so sorry, Quil." Leah didn't know what else to say. She still ached from the loss of her father. Quil had also lost his Dad at a very young age and now another one of the most important people in his life was gone.

"It happens," Quil replied. "He had a good innings and he made sure he passed on every single lesson he could... I'm on his seat on the council now."

"Really?" Leah asked. She couldn't imagine Quil at meetings of tribal elders. Then again, until two minutes ago she couldn't have imagined him carefully nursing a dying man. She'd underestimated him greatly.

"Seth took Harry's seat," Quil continued. "But we hardly attend those meetings. We sort of do our own council, seeing as Embry's technically the chief of the tribe, but he can't stand Billy and Billy's still the official chief. It's a bit of a mess."

"They don't talk?" Leah couldn't imagine not speaking to her father if he was still around.

Quil cocked his head. "How would you feel if you grew up within spitting distance of your father, and he never once acknowledged you? Even after you became best friends with his son and he knew- because he saw first-hand – just how lonely and rejected you felt? If he stood by while people mocked you and your mother?"

Leah gulped. "I'd hate him. I'd want him to suffer."

Quil nodded. "Me too."

~~~TAC~~~

This time when she slept she was less exhausted, less remote.

The voice called to her, stretching into her subconscious: "Leah."

She stirred faintly, her eyelids fluttering. "Leah, answer me."

She rolled over, burying her head in her pillow. Her fatigue had diminished but she was still unmoved, unreachable.

"Come to me, Leah. Hear my call."

She remembered nothing when she woke, save for the unsettled feeling that her dreams had involved horns and battle-cries.

~~~TAC~~~

It was mid-morning by the time that Leah made her way out of Quil's apartment.

He had left her a note, saying that he had gone to work as well as half a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a block of chocolate.

Leah was starting to suspect that she'd never seen the real Quil. She'd always written him off as a big goof, but if the past day or so was anything to go by, he was one of the most mature and decent people she'd ever met.

Quil Ateara the fifth was good people – just like Quil Ateara the third had been before him, and it was for that older Quil that Leah found herself visiting the Quileute Cemetery.

She stopped her Dad's grave first, sitting with him in the sunshine while she silently updated him on the last four years of her life. She missed him so much and the ache in her heart had numbed but not faded over the years. She farewelled him wordlessly before moving towards the Ateara family plots, pausing briefly at Sarah Black's headstone to acknowledge the lady who had looked after her as a child when her mother was working late night shifts at the hospital.

It seemed like every member of the pack had lost someone much too young and much too soon.

Leah wandered through the sacred site, feeling the trees move in the breeze and listening to birds singing. It was such a peaceful place, its beauty only enhanced by the history that lived within it. She was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn't notice the small figure huddled over the granite engraved with the words "Quil Ateara III". By the time Leah realised she was not alone, Tiffany Call was starting right back at her.

"H-Hi," Leah stammered awkwardly.

"Hello Leah," Embry's mother replied. Leah remembered Tiffany as being breathtakingly beautiful. She was younger than most of the other mothers on the Rez and had always carried herself with impressive grace (despite the less than favourable things that were often whispered behind her back). It seemed, however, that time had not been kind to her. The lines around her eyes had deepened and her cheeks had hollowed. Her eyes – Embry's eyes – were filled with sadness. "I didn't realise you were back. Welcome home," the older woman continued.

"Thanks." Leah shifted her weight, unsure of what the protocol was for interrupting grieving. "I'm sorry to intrude."

Tiffany's lips curved upwards. "Nonsense. You have every right to be here. More than me actually. I'm just an authorised visitor – not a tribe member."

Leah frowned. When she took her recent absence into account, Tiffany Call had spent more years living on the reservation that she had. It seemed odd that the woman considered herself an outsider.

"I didn't know he was gone," she offered, settling down in the grass. "Quil told me yesterday."

"Two summers back," Tiffany answered, voice quivering. "He went peacefully, in his sleep. Still, I wasn't ready for him to leave."

"I'm sorry," Leah repeated. "I didn't know you were close."

Tiffany sighed, reaching out to trace her hands across Old Quil's tombstone. "He took me in when I first came here. Pregnant and penniless. He gave me food and helped me find a place to live... even though he didn't know what I was doing here or who Embry's father was."

Leah bit back a gasp. Had Billy Black really done nothing to help the mother of his child – and how could he be unfaithful to his wife in the first place? Her eyes unwittingly drifted back towards Sarah Black's final resting place.

"You do, though. Don't you?" Tiffany added, interrupting Leah's thoughts.

"What?" Leah struggled to understand what Tiffany was asking. "Oh." The penny dropped. "Yes. I know... I only found out very recently though."

Tiffany reached into her pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, her hands shaking as she lit up and took a long drag. "Here I was thinking that I had the biggest secret in town, when it turns out that my son and all his friends – who I thought were in some sort of gang, mind you – all turn into werewolves!"

Leah's mouth hung open and Tiffany snorted, causing smoke to come out of her nose.

"Don't act so surprised. It never escaped my attention that you were part of the gang, Leah. You're hard to miss."

"It's not that!" Leah protested. "I just wasn't expecting you to know."

Tiffany smirked. "Having your son explode into a giant dog in the lounge room, while confronting you about his discoveries about his lineage, kind of let the wolf out of the bag."

"Huh." Leah reached over and helped herself to one of Tiffany's cigarettes.

"Filthy habit," Tiffany mused while offering Leah a light. "I'd lecture you about it, but I figure you're immortal so it'll all land on deaf ears."

"And people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Leah commented, gesturing towards Tiffany's right hand.

The older woman laughed. "Haven't you learnt by now that almost everyone in this town is a hypocrite? Present company included." She sighed. "That was what was so good about Old Quil. He was unusually non-judgmental. Took it all in but rarely had a harsh word for anyone."

Leah paused, remembering all the wonderful things Old Quil had done for her: giving her free candy from the Ateara family store when she was a little kid; teaching her their language; standing by her side at her father's funeral. He'd hovered in the background of all of her best and worst childhood memories and it was unfathomable that there would be no more moments to add to those she was recalling. "He was special," she agreed.

"Wasn't too impressed with me when he found out about me and Billy though," Tiffany mused. "Not so much that it happened." Tiffany added, "But more that I never told anyone."

"Right." Leah took a long drag of her cigarette. "Why didn't you?"

"Don't pretend you want to hear my version," Tiffany answered bitterly. "I'm so sick of all of you looking at me like I'm a monster. I did the best I could!"

Leah side-eyed Tiffany. "I haven't looked at you like anything and I am a monster. Literally."

"Touche," Tiffany responded before lapsing into silence. "I'm sorry," she finally continued. "I don't have many friendly interactions with people these days."

"Me neither," Leah muttered.

"Have you met my granddaughter?" Tiffany asked. "She lives in your house with your brother, my son and that girl."

"Victoria? Yeah. I met her."

"I haven't." Tiffany's lower lip wobbled.

"What?" Leah couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Embry hasn't spoken to me since the night he became some sort of... Wolf mob boss. He came home, confronted me, turned into a huge wolf and then moved in with Seth."

A fat tear rolled down Tiffany's cheek and Leah cringed. She could see just how upset Tiffany was, but she couldn't help but understand Embry's anger. He'd been lied to his whole life, growing up with Jake as a best friend when he was really a brother. He'd been branded the town bastard when his father was in fact the Quileute chief.

"It's all very complicated." It was the only thing Leah could think to say.

"Yes. What's she like?"

"Who?"

"Victoria."

"Oh." Leah thought about the party yesterday. "She's very cute. She's got a lot of spunk."

Tiffany smiled. "I always wanted a little girl."

Leah reached for another cigarette. "Me too." It seemed that she and Tiffany Call were destined to have a lot of unrealised dreams in common. "Why didn't you?"

Another tear slipped down Tiffany's cheek. "I'm good at doing things alone, Leah, but baby-making is a decidedly two-people activity... and ... and ... I guess I never found anyone again."

Leah couldn't understand that. Tiffany Call was gorgeous. She always had been – and if their chat was anything to go by, she was okay company. "You could probably have anyone you wanted. I remember Embry once getting angry at Paul Lahote for calling you a MILF."

Tiffany snorted through her tears. "That's the thing, Leah. My whole life I only ever wanted one person, and he belonged to someone else."

Leah wasn't sure why Tiffany was being so candid – although if you couldn't spill your soul in a cemetery, where could you do it? "Everyone always belongs to someone else," she mused. It was the one thing that united her experiences with Sam, Jacob and Embry. In the end they had all found other, better choices.

"I was eighteen when I met Billy," Tiffany said softly. "He came up to Neah Bay for some sort of meeting and ended up staying a while... He said he had kids but that he was separating from his wife." She chuckled darkly. "Men always tell you they're separated or leaving their wives. I realise that now, but back then I was young and having the most magical summer of my life. I didn't consider the long history that he had with some other woman, or the fact that he was extremely unlikely to do anything that would separate him from his twin girls. I just lived for the moment."

Despite the tears, Tiffany's face lit up as she spoke. Leah watched as the woman relived the magic of first love in her mind. Leah knew what that felt like – and she knew just how much it hurt to lose it.

"To be fair to Billy, I think he really did believe that Sarah was done with him. She'd thrown him out after some row right before he came to the Makah rez... and I honestly don't see him as the type to knowingly mislead anyone."

Tiffany dabbed her eyes and Leah's stomach tightened. Tiffany Call loved Billy Black so much that even now she couldn't tell a story that painted him negatively.

"He went home and I assumed he'd come back to visit - but he didn't. He called and said... he said that he and Sarah were working things out. He said he was sorry and that he loved me, but he couldn't destroy his family. He told me he wanted to be responsible."

"Because leaving a teenager knocked up and alone is the height of responsibility," Leah quipped. She was tempted to egg Billy's house, but it seemed too small a response to such a huge offense.

"He didn't know... because I didn't tell him."

"Tiffany!"

"What? You try telling someone that says they love you - but not enough to pick you - that you're carrying their child. It doesn't roll easily off the tongue. I figured I'd make do... but then my parents found out - there's only so long you can hide a growing tummy under baggy jumpers, and when I wouldn't tell my Dad who the father was he kicked me out." Tiffany's voice shook and Leah reached out and squeezed her hand. "I didn't have savings or any way to look after a baby. I was a baby myself. I made my way here – thinking I would tell Billy – and at least get him to make a financial contribution..."

Tiffany trailed off. "And," Leah prompted.

Tiffany wiped her eyes. "And then I saw him. All of them. Two cute girls and a beautiful woman with a round stomach, smaller than my own, but still an obvious sign that they had well and truly mended fences... and he was happy – a different kind of happy from the wild enthusiasm I was used to in him, but happy all the same. He seemed peaceful. Content. I wasn't going to be the person that ruined that. I made my way back to the bus stop in the rain. That's when I met Old Quil. I have no idea why he decided to help me."

Leah thought about her own living situation. Who would have thought that helping homeless women was a hereditary thing for Atearas?

"I guess that's just the kind of guy he was." Leah twisted a blade of grass in her fingers. "Surely when you showed up ready to drop a baby, Billy did the maths and worked it out?

Tiffany ducked her head. "Well... ahh. I may have gotten a bit cranky when he came knocking and told him that he didn't need to worry and that my baby was someone else's problem."

Leah mulled this new information over. "He didn't know?"

"Not at first. He seemed to believe the story I concocted... and here's the thing Leah, I'd love to tell you that once I knew Billy was making a go of it with Sarah that I never did anything with him again... but that wasn't the truth. There were drunken fumbles over the years, moments where he'd find his way back into my bed and I'd wonder whether he would have chosen differently if he'd known. I kept up the charade though, despite the fact that the idea of me being with someone else seemed to drive him crazy."

"So how did he find out?"

"He didn't. Sarah did."

Leah inhaled sharply. The more she heard of this story the more it seemed like the messiest disaster possible.

"Embry and Jacob became friends, playmates. They were pushing each other on the swings one day and Sarah watched them when she came to collect Jacob from school. I don't know how, but she must have just seen all the little things, all the Billy things in Embry. Billy's nose, Billy's lips. She charged towards me - I had no idea what was going on - and hissed 'Does everyone know?' There was no point lying to her. She'd worked it out. I told her even Billy didn't know and she grabbed her kids and hightailed it out of there. That was the last time I saw her. She died that night."

Leah scoured her mind for details of Sarah Black's death. There had been a car accident on the highway. She had been ten years old at the time. Jacob was barely eight. "She told Billy before she died?"

Tiffany nodded. "They had an almighty argument about it and then she drove off. He's never forgiven me for the way she found out."

Leah chewed her lip. "But why didn't Billy acknowledge Embry in all the years after that?" It was one thing not to contribute because he was ignorant as to the truth, but that was more than a decade ago.

Tiffany hugged her knees to her chest. "I don't know for sure, but I'd guess he feels guilty. Sarah died terrified that everyone was going to find out Billy had been with another woman. Maybe keeping it a secret was the last thing he felt he could do for her?"

They sat in silence. Tiffany smoked another three cigarettes while Leah contemplated the story she had just been told. Their earlier camaraderie had made her want to identify with Tiffany, but she could see that her own experiences were closer to what had happened to Sarah. Sam had stuck his dick in Emily and her whole life turned into a car crash. Still, she felt an enormous amount of sympathy for the woman next to her, more than she had ever imagined possible.

"Thanks for telling me," Leah said finally. "I know it wasn't easy."

"I feel a little better though," Tiffany admitted. "It's been a long time since I've spoken so freely and I'm not sure I've ever told anyone the full story before. You're a good listener Leah."

"I don't know about that," Leah muttered. "But it's good to understand some of what's been happening. Ever since I came back everything feels like a huge mystery." Especially Embry, she thought.

"Coming home is hard." Tiffany agreed. "I went back to Neah Bay once and everyone looked at me like I was a whore."

"Imagine how they'd look at you if you were spotted half naked with a different guy in the forest every week," Leah suggested.

"You win, girl. Maybe you should come over to my place and we'll put my red lamp in the window. That'll really get tongues wagging."

Leah laughed. "It's a date."

Tiffany stood up. "I should get going. 'Sides you came to spend some time with Old Quil and I've monopolised you." She leaned towards Leah and then stopped. "I feel like I'd like to hug you. Is that okay?"

Leah considered the offer. She wasn't really into hugging strangers, but no other form of contact seemed appropriate after everything they'd discussed. "Yeah, it's okay."

She wrapped her arms around Tiffany's slender frame and winced as she felt the ribs in her back.

Tiffany pulled back. "You're a real nice girl, Leah. Embry was right about you."

Leah cocked her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

Tiffany looked sheepish. "I'm surprised you don't know. Quil told be about your wolfy mind stuff. Embry was quite taken with you when he was younger."

Leah blinked. How had Tiffany known about what had happened before she left?

"I still remember him coming home and showing me a beautiful sketch of you when he was about thirteen." Tiffany continued. "I asked him to tell me about why he'd drawn you and he told me that you were the 'coolest, most beautiful girl in the world' and that it would be silly to waste time drawing anyone else." Leah's mouth hung open, but Tiffany kept talking, oblivious to the impact of her words. "You should tease him about that when you see him next."

Tiffany snickered before giving the younger girl another squeeze goodbye, leaving a stunned female wolf in her wake as she made her way towards the cemetery exit.

~~~TAC~~~

When Leah dreamed that night, she found herself at the scene of her break-up with Sam. Normally in her dreams she saw things the way that she herself recalled them, but this moment was different because she had seen it inside Sam's head as well as living it herself. The combined memories fused together and she watched it as if it were a play.

She could see the agony in Sam's face, but also the duplicity that came from him not being able to tell her about wolves or imprints. She also saw her own crumpled features – desperate and devastated as he told her that he couldn't love her the way she needed to be loved.

"Leah," a voice whispered. Not Sam's and not her own.

"Leah," it repeated, louder and more immediate.

Leah turned in the direction of the noise and found herself staring directly into a pair of familiar green eyes.

"Leah," he greeted her. Realisation dawned on her and she identified his face.

"Gunnar."

/

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A/N: This may be my last update for a while. My sister who lives in London gave birth two months early and she and her baby have been in poor health since then. My Mum and I live in Sydney and care for my father who is quite unwell, but now that my Mum is flying to London to be with my sister we have made the difficult decision to place my father in a nursing home until the new year. As a result, I'm going to be doing nursing home visits in all my free time and won't be able to work on my stories. Please do review if you are reading my work – it will definitely provide me with some much needed joy.