Pairing: Embry/Bella

Genre: Angst/Drama

Rating: M, for language and theme

Origin: Tricky Raven's Weekly Drabble Challenge, Prompt #7

Prompt: A dark graveyard scene under a layer of light snow or possibly frost. It is available to view in my short story omnibus, Every Dog Has Its Day on Tricky Raven.

A/N: Yes! I did two flashfics this week for the same prompt! Twice the agonies!

Blue Bells

"Jake…" Embry's eyes were wild as he hissed his Alpha's name and dropped to his knees in despair, hands clutching his head as if to mute his agony. "Where…?"

The red wolf tilted his head, pity etched on lupine features, because he couldn't say. He just didn't know. She'd been reported missing for more than five hours, leaving a note that said she was going out for a walk.

Her scent was lost in the rain.

They had nothing to go on.

Nothing.

As if she had simply vanished.

"Don't… Don't look at me like that! Like you don't fucking know! Find her!" Embry bellowed at his Alpha, begging, pleading. His heart-rending desperation was more than anyone should have to bear.

The wolf, sitting sentry with his pack brother, searched the minds of the others, but he had no new information to offer. He whimpered, his paws shuffling as he tried to comfort his pack brother.

But Embry wasn't fucking having that.

He grabbed his Alpha's head, fingers sinking into the dense fur on either side of his muzzle, his face purpling with rage as he shook him, risking the Alpha's wrath to stare him mutinously in the eyes and scream, "WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!"

The warrior growled, trying to choke down his anger at the blatant insubordination because he felt his brother's pain. He was terrified. The whole pack felt it, but he couldn't let Embry phase in.

The terror, the disorder it would cause in the pack mind would cripple them all.

Inside, the Alpha wolf wept for his brother because he knew—deep down, he knew—something was very wrong with his brother's mate.

On the far side of Forks, Quil and Paul had their noses to the ground, desperately searching for some sign, any whiff of her distinctive honey and cream scent that could point the way.

The storm had ended. The air was thick with petrichor.

One of her favorite scents, Quil thought.

It was the same scent, she swore, that they gave off when they phased.

They watched through the pack mind as Embry slowly unraveled in her backyard, roaring futilely at Jake, his hands buried in his hair, pulling until streams of red trickled down the sides of his face, soaking his skin.

Jake was at a loss.

The whoomph of the phase was loud in the quiet stillness of the yard, the scent lingering for several moments after he phased human.

Quickly pulling on his shorts, he dropped to his knees in front of Embry, barely brushing his knuckles as he murmured quietly, the order laced with both compassion and the gentlest of compulsion, "Stop. Don't do this to yourself. Think. Did she mention errands she had to run today? Things she planned to do? Is there anything special about today?"

Embry shook his head in denial, unable to think clearly.

"Embry, think," another velvety ribbon of compassionate compulsion wove around them and Embry's chaotic thoughts cleared.

"What's today's date?" he rasped, swiping a bloody hand over his eyes, leaving streaks in its wake.

"Uh… April 18th, I think. Why?" Embry had Jake's full attention now.

"Tell them. Tell them to go to Forks Cemetery."

Jake didn't waste a second, phasing out of his cut-offs to relay the new information to the pack.

Quil's ears perked up, "We're not far-"

Embry's human voice cut him off, "Tell them, the left side of the old part of the cemetery, beyond the loop, under the old-growth spruce. It's not obvious. There's a little knoll. It blocks it from view from the loop."

"On it," Paul assured Jake, paws pounding the earth side-by-side with Quil as they crested the ridge behind the cemetery from the forest side.

Embry continued on in a voice so quiet, they nearly missed it, "She was growing these little flowers for her Gran. Her favorite flowers. She was going to plant them for their anniversary…"

"Phase out if you have to," Jake ordered the others, "but find her."

Not knowing what they were walking into and hoping to spare the pack mind if it was really bad, Quil and Paul phased out at the same time by unspoken agreement as they caught the first faint whiff of honey and cream.

Running full out, dodging ferns and huge, old rose bushes planted a century earlier, they picked up another scent.

Quil cringed at the bitter, coppery tang of it as it burned his nostrils, overcoming the honey and cream scent they'd longed to find.

His heart ached.

He had no idea what they were about to stumble across.

And then they did.

Frost from the chill that swept through overnight lingered on the blades of grass surrounding her body. A thin film of ice coated the broken, old flagstones she lay sprawled across with a broken pot of little bell-shaped blue flowers.

Her lips and skin a faint shade of blue, mahogany locks—stained red and crusted with ice—lay fanned out across the ground, nearly obscuring the point of impact on the headstone stained with blood. One ankle lay turned at an odd angle.

Paul kneeled beside her—careful—not wanting to jar her if she was still…

He shook his head to clear it of negative thoughts, glancing up at the tombstone carved with the names Horatio and Isabelle Swan.

"Christ, Swan," he muttered, "leave it to you to crack your fucking melon on a grave with your own name on it."

Quil hissed at him, "Shut the fuck up and check her pulse, asshole. Embry's gonna lose his shit and the last thing we need is for him to phase and find her like this because we took too goddamn long."

Paul listened, but he couldn't hear anything over the thunderous drub of Quil's heartbeat and his own racing heart. Touching two fingers gently to her throat, his body sagged and Quil nearly phased on the spot.

"Call Jake," Paul said as his eyes burned with tears.

"No.. Oh, god…" Quil sobbed.

Paul shook his head, meeting his pack brother's tortured gaze with a glimmer of relief as he breathed…

"She's alive."

Endnote: I have a special treat for reviewers this time, too! I have an even happier ending for this flashfic—a little drabble that I wrote off the cuff in response to a review on Tricky Raven that suggested this ending needed fixing. :GASP!: 'Fixing?' I thought to myself. I liked it just fine as it ended, but far be it from me to deny my readers. ; ) Leave me a review and I'll send you my response to the reader's request for a little more of Embry and Bella's HEA after Paul discovers she's alive at the end of "Blue Bells".

If you haven't seen it yet, the one-shot that I previewed in the previous chapter of Every Dog Has Its Day (Chapter 16) is now available on my profile page. Its title is "21". Enjoy!