Don't own anything except OC's.

Chapter 16: Broken trust

Quil's POV.

Every cell in my body froze at her words and time seemed to come to a screeching halt. How did she know? Had someone told her? Claire continued to smack my chest with brutal force and I started to feel sick as tears dripped down her beautiful cheeks. She was hurt and I had been the one to inflict it.

"Claire—"

"NO!" she screamed heatedly, ripping her arms from my soft grasp. She glowered fiercely at me, it felt like a million knifes stabbing me at once. "You don't get to speak unless I want you to!" she continued furiously. "Is it true? Are you really a wolf?"

I took a shaky breath. "Yes, but Claire—"

"You bastard! You've lied to me my entire life!" she shrieked. "I trusted you and you've completely fucked me over!" she reached up to wipe her eyes, smearing mascara across her face. "I can't believe you. I can't believe everyone. You've all looked me in the eye and easily lied like I wasn't even worth knowing the truth! Don't you—don't you love me at all?" she whimpered, her tears increasing in speed.

I felt sick from guilt. God, I hated seeing her sad about anything, and it was even worse when I knew I was the source of it. Claire meant everything to me. She was my world and because of my stupid secret and white-lies she thought I didn't love her.

"Claire," I stepped forward only for her to take a step back. I grimaced and tried to hide the agonizing pain that electrocuted through me at her rejection. "Claire, you have to know I love you. You mean everything to me and more, for God's sake!"

"So why didn't you tell me?" she bellowed, hair flying around her gorgeous, tear-streaked face. "Why have you lied to me my entire life? You—you—God, Quil, you're so stupid! I've never been so angry in my life!"

"I know," I whispered. "Please, Claire, I never meant to hurt you, I swear. I'm so—"

"If you say you're sorry, I'm going to beat you with a stick," she snapped hatefully. "You're clearly not sorry enough, are you? If you were sorry you would have told me from the start about you being—being a...you know. You wouldn't have lied to me almost every day of my life! You wouldn't have let me trust you and love you and then totally crush everything I thought was true! You wouldn't—you wouldn't have hurt me, Quil."

I wanted to throw myself under a bus just to make her feel slightly better.

"I wouldn't have kept it from you if I knew it would have hurt you this much," I pleaded shamelessly. She shook her head disdainfully at me and cleared her streaming tears. "I would have told you from the moment I met you. Claire," I reached out for her. She glanced at my open arms, sniffed and looked down to the floor. "Claire, please," I begged on the verge of a breakdown. "You mean so fucking much to me. I never told you because I didn't want to get you into trouble. I didn't want you to feel like you constantly had to hide away from people just because you knew the tribes secret. I wanted you to live a normal life and not be messed up by the pack before you even had a chance to live properly."

"The pack?" she murmured gruffly, still not looking me in the eyes. "How many of you are there?"

"There's seventeen."

"So I was right," she whispered. "They're all wolves? Every guy that I've grew up with are wolves? Embry? Jake? Uncle Sam? Brady?"

"Yes," I replied honestly and quickly.

"Does my Aunt know about it?"

"Yes."

She paused. "Does everyone know about it?" she cried silently.

"Yes."

She gasped for breath, looked up at me and then broke down into sobs. Every sound made my heart clench in excruciating pain. I would have done anything to take her pain away. How had I been so stupid? All I wanted in life was for Claire to be happy and yet I had been the one to make her this upset. All I could feel was pain and guilt. Would she walk away from me? I felt panic start to rise from my core. If Claire left me...I didn't know what I would do. I couldn't even imagine a life without her.

"I'm sorry." I said disregarding her warning. I cautiously stepped forward until I was stood beside her. She didn't flinch away nor did she grab hold of me. After a minute I carefully wrapped my arms around her smaller frame. Her lilac and kiwi scent engulfed me in an intoxicating bubble that I never wanted to escape from. I wanted to hold her in my arms for the rest of our lives.

"Are you?" she sobbed.

"Incredibly. I'll do anything to prove it to you, Claire."

She sniffled and pushed me away from her body. My stomach and heart dropped as she walked away from me, her back turned. Should I drop down on my knees and beg? I would if it got her to look and smile at me again. I would drop down on my knees everyday for her.

"When did you turn into a wolf?" she asked after a tense silence. She softly grazed her fingers along the back of the couch, all the while refusing to turn to me.

"When I was fifteen," I answered.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why do you phase? There must be a reason, right? So what is it?" she demanded hotly.

I hesitated. Should I tell her about vampires? I didn't want to upset her more than I already had. But, then again, the reason I was in this mess was because of my lies. "To protect people from vampires," I said.

She whipped around, her eyes widening and her face paling considerably. "V-v-vampires?" she stuttered.

"Yeah. We have a gene that runs through our veins that gives us the shape-shifting ability. Not every person that has the gene phases, but when vampires are around they trigger the gene to life and we phase."

"Do—do I know any vampires?"

"The Cullen's are vampires," I responded slowly. "And—and Aurora."

"Oh my God!" she bawled. "No, no, no! Nessie and Aurora are vampires? The Cullen's? And you let me hang out with them?"

"They don't kill humans," I hastily shouted. "They're vegetarians. They only eat animals. Plus, Nessie and Aurora are only half-vampires. I would have never let them around you if they hurt humans, Claire. Human killing vampires are what I spend my whole life protecting people from and I'd rather die than let a vampire even touch you."

"But—but—they're vampires! Won't their instinct be to eat humans?"

"They'd never hurt a human," I defended my Alpha's family. "They're all for human life and stuff. That's why they're a family and only eat animals. The last thing they want to do is hurt humans. Nessie and Aurora aren't even attracted to humans. They only like animal blood and human food."

She stopped breathing for a long time and I started to worry until she let out a long, haggard pant. "This is messed up," she declared. "This—my whole life you've all just lied to me without a second thought. Did you even feel bad about it? Did you ever think about telling me?"

"Everyday," I replied to both. "I didn't want you to be burdened with the secret you're whole life. I thought about telling you all the time I could just never find the right time."

"Anytime would have been right!" she screeched.

"I know. Well, I know that now," I cried desperately. "I didn't think it would affect you this much—"

"How could it not? Everyone I trusted had lied to me about everything, Quil! Everything I thought was real has been completely turned upside down! It just—it's fucked up!" she stopped screaming to take several deep breaths and then her blazing eyes zoned on me. Her fuming glare sent a hundred burning needles into my heart. "God, Quil! You fucking asshole!" she flew forward to slam her clenched fists into my chest as hard as she could. Gently, I snatched her wrists in my hands to stop her from getting hurt. From experience, hitting wolves usually ended up in a broken bone and I didn't want to hurt Claire anymore than I already had.

"Claire," I whispered as her erratic breathing slowed. Tears still ran down her flushed cheeks and I painfully watched as they dripped onto her chest. "Claire, you have to know I would never intentionally hurt you. I thought I was doing what was best for us—you."

"I know," she admitted softly, still not meeting my eyes. She carefully pulled her wrists out of my grasp and wiped her wet cheeks. I smiled slightly at her, maybe we could sort this out after all. She looked into my eyes, her stunning hazel orbs glowing with a fierceness that I had never seen in her before. "I just don't know if I can trust you again, Quil."

That sentence broke my heart. Actually, it broke me. I would have rather of been ran over by a ten tonne truck than have her say those words to me. All I ever wanted in life was for Claire to be happy and for her to know I was always there for her...for her to know she can always trust me. I'd broken everything I had built up in the past fifteen years in the space of ten minutes. She didn't trust me anymore, I had failed her as her best friend, her protector, her imprint. The pain was so bad I felt like I couldn't stand up properly. The only thing that stopped me from falling to my knees was Claire's hard stare that I knew I owed to her to hold. I tried to plead with my eyes, begging her to understand why I had not told her. I wanted to protect her and in doing that I had lost her.

She opened her mouth to speak again but snapped it shut. Before I could even blink she was running out the door and down the stairs. I was so shocked by her sudden movement I didn't follow her until thirty seconds later. I concentrated on the imprint pull until it led me to Sam and Emily's house. Claire was climbing into her car, the car I had worked my ass off for her to have, and slammed the door shut with extra vigour. She didn't so much as glance my way as she pulled out the drive and rushed off down the road.

She had walked away from the pack, from her Aunt and Uncle...from me.

"Quil?" a soft voice called out, forcing its way through my ringing brain. "Quil? Was that Claire? Where did she go?"

Emily was stood by the doorframe, her eyes half closed from sleep. Sam stood slightly behind her looking confused and irritated to be up so early in the morning when he didn't need to be.

"She—she left," I mumbled numbly.

"Why?"

"Because of me."

Sam raised is eyebrows at my broken tone and Emily cocked her head to the side like a confused puppy. "What did you do to make her so angry?" Sam asked in an Alpha-like voice.

"She found out about the pack," I sniffled, close to breaking down at this point. "And we got into a massive argument. God, she hates me—"

"She found out? How?" Emily gasped.

I realized then that due to my desperate feelings of not wanting Claire to leave me I had forgotten to ask how she had found out about us. No one had told her, I knew that. The pack knew I didn't want her to know and they respected my wish. Had she seen me in some way? I would have seen her if she was watching me, right?

"I don't know," I confessed when I saw Emily's expectant face.

"What exactly happened?"

"I spent the night consoling Embry about Elle—"

"What happened with them two?"

I ignored Emily's question because I knew it would open up another can of worms that I needed more time to explain when I wasn't freaking out about the possibility of Claire walking out of my life. "And then I went home and saw her on my sofa asleep. I woke her up but she started screaming about me being a liar and being a bastard. I begged her to forgive me, but she wouldn't. Then she said—she said that she can't trust me anymore and ran off."

Emily groaned. "I knew we should have told her from the start."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" I burst.

Sam growled sternly and I backed down. "I understand that you're upset but there is no need to shout at my wife, Quil," he snapped. "It sounds to me that she's feeling betrayed right now and you need to give her some space—"

"But—"

"No buts. She'll probably kill you if you go after her tonight," he told me. "You need to let her calm down enough to not hate you and then go and talk to her."

There was a stretch of silence that seemed to last weeks rather than minutes.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," I felt the need to defend myself from their accusing looks. "I really thought I was doing the right thing."

Emily's scarred face broke into a small smile. "They always do, Quil," she walked over to wrap her arms around my middle for a tender, motherly hug. "Imprinters over think things far too much sometimes and think they're doing what's best when they're actually doing the worst thing possible," she pulled me into her house and pushed me onto a dining seat. "No matter how much she denies it, Claire loves you, Quil. It's hard to deny the imprint pull. She'll forgive you eventually, you just need to grovel and beg a lot in the process."

I nodded but didn't entirely believe her. The furious and betrayed look Claire had burning in her eyes would haunt me forever. Based on that look and her strong words, Claire was never going to speak to me again. I was never going to get to hold her again, to smell her intoxicating lilac and kiwi scent that could sooth me with one waft. I was never going to see her beautiful smile, hear her bell-like, carefree laugh, or watch as she morphed into the successful woman I knew she was going to be.

I had loved and cherished her all her life to my maximum ability to make myself feel worthy of having her as an imprint. She was my life, my sunshine on a shitty day...not that it mattered anymore, I'd lost her.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the reviews, favourites and alerts! You guys are the best! And thank you for being so patient while I do my course! I know I said this one would be out earlier, but you wouldn't believe how busy I was! Long story short, we had a dying horse and my boss and I pretty much watched it 24/7 and nursed him back to health again! It was hard, but totally worth it!

Pictures are on my profile!

-Laylax