Hello! I have been playing with this chapter for a while. It didn't want to be finished.

But now it did :) I hope you like it!

PACK SOULS

CHAPTER 11: Withdrawal final part.

"She's not yours." Jake spat.

Quill shook his head sadly. He couldn't bare seeing his two best friends fighting. Jake knew Embry had had no choice in the matter. Sometimes the wolf takes over and takes control.

Embry saw red at that. "She's no one's!" He yelled back. Emily smiled proudly, but the rest of the pack remained silent. "She's her own person. And it's her choice. Even if she chooses him." It would kill him, hopefully only figuratively and not literally. But it would have been her choice. And that's all he cared about for now. Did he like her? Yes. Did he like her before the imprint? Yes. Was he happy about it? Kind of.

Jacob seethed and was about to say something else when Sam intervened.

"Stop." He ordered. "Neither of you will contact her until she contacts you first. This is not about only you. She has a say in the matter, and you will let her think everything at her own pace." Emily nodded in agreement.

…

…

…

"I'm sorry, we did everything we could, but the injuries were too traumatic for her body. She didn't make it."

He woke up sweating and looking desperately for his fiancé. She was sitting next to him, holding a book on her lap, looking worriedly at him.

"Another one?" She asked softly.

He shook his head. "It's always the same one."

The same fucking nightmare he's been having for months now. He'd thought they'd stopped. He hadn't had this nightmare in weeks. It was always the same one. It started with Sam laying the alpha order to him and Jacob not to speak to her until she reached out. Embry had been so angry at Sam and Jacob that he'd left Sam's house that day and showed up only for the meetings that required his mandatory presence.

Jacob had tried to apologize many times, but he was still angry. He had to accept that he had been the one to imprint on her, and it was for a reason. Bella had seemed responsive to the imprint. She hadn't run away when he told her, and he was upset. Jacob had to accept that Em was the one destined for her. He had felt guilty about imprinting on her when Jacob had feelings for her, but she had made it pretty clear she didn't want anything romantic with him. And imprinting was something entirely out of his hands, out of his control.

Then, the nightmare changed to the waiting room in the hospital. In real life, he'd been with Charlie and Emily, but in the nightmare, he was alone. The doctor came out and told him that Bella had died from her injuries. That's when he usually woke up.

The real Bella beside him smiled sadly and put her book away. She scooted down and put her head on his chest. He enveloped her and pulled her closer to him. She felt his heart beating faster than usual.

"Em, I'm fine. I'm here with you." She whispered against his chest.

"I know, honey. But you have no idea how hard it was to stay away from you those months. I was so mad at Jacob for not accepting that it was something I hadn't done on purpose. I couldn't help it. But I didn't regret it either. Then Sam forbids us to speak to you, and we didn't speak for months. I was worried you hated me or something or that you didn't want anything to do with me because you were with the leech. I spent months trying not to go to Forks, to be obedient to my alpha, to give you space. And you almost got killed."

Bella had never heard Embry so upset or so worked up over anything. It was the first time he was telling her all of this.

She sat up. "Why didn't you say anything sooner?"

"You're here, with me. It felt stupid. I don't know." He sighed tiredly.

Bella pecked his lips.

"I love you." He smiled brightly at her. "Tell me why you're still having this nightmare."

He sat up as well, keeping quiet for a few minutes to organize his ideas before speaking them.

"I fell in love with you in the months you stayed here after the accident. But you were my imprint before that and my friend as well. I wanted to see why the spirits chose you for me or me for you. I knew you had a good heart and saw good in people. You saw people, not mythical creatures. The more time away I spent, the more anxious I got. And when I heard you screaming, it was like my blood had frozen in my body. Then when you were in the hospital, unconscious, you looked so fragile it was even scarier than hearing you scream. I didn't speak with Jacob the whole time you were there."

Bella opened her eyes widely. None of them had ever said anything about that. "I didn't know that!"

"Why do you think I was never here when he came? He was your friend as well, and I wasn't going to get in the middle of that because I was angry at him. It was my fight, not yours."

There was the difference between Embry and Edward. Edward would have made his fight so personal that he would have made Bella stay away from Jacob as well. Embry had retreated from his own place to allow Bella time with her friend, putting aside his feelings and letting her enjoy her friendship with him. More proof that she had made the right decision.

"That's very sweet of you, Em. But next time, I want to know. You stayed away from your own house. That seems unfair to me." Embry shook his head in disagreement. "Ok, we'll agree to disagree there." Bella added with a giggle. "But you made up with him eventually. I mean, it's been almost eight months now since then. Surely you speak to each other now, right?"

"We do. But it took Quil's intervention to manage that. He felt like he was in the middle, and both Jake and I hated that. We spoke, we fought, I yelled, he listened, and we made up." He shrugged.

"Is that all that's bothering you? The months we didn't speak with each other, the attack, and my stay in the hospital?"

Embry nodded. "Pretty much. I can't control it, I look at the scars it left you, and I feel guilty sometimes for being so damn obedient. I should have broken the order, approached you sooner, or at least guarded you from afar. I knew she was out there, seeking revenge, but I never thought she would get you or that she would bait us her newborns and attack elsewhere."

Bella moved to straddle his hips. She then grabbed his face and forced him to maintain eye contact. "No guilt trips. That's forbidden. It was no one's fault. It sucked, it was awful, but no one knew she would do that. We thought we had the upper hand. It's over."

Embry kissed her thoroughly, enjoying the feeling of her warm body pressed to his. She broke the kiss with a smile.

"What's that smile for?" He asked, putting a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Are you done telling me about your nightmare?" She asked, ensuring he had let go of everything he was bottling up.

"I am. Why? Do you have other ideas of what we should be doing now?" He kissed her neck seductively. She squirmed, giggling.

"I have a little confession to make of my own."

"Oh, yeah?" she nodded. "What's that?" Was she finally going to come clean?

"You're going to be a daddy sometime in the next eight or so months."

He smiled brightly at her. She did come clean about it. He'd been waiting for her to catch up with the changes in her body. She smelled differently and had been sleeping more than she usually did. The baby was still too small for him to hear the heartbeat, but he knew immediately that the change in scent had to do with that.

"Finally!" He exclaimed, taking her mouth prisoner once more.