Hi, so this is my first story for this pairing and I have to admit I am liking it so far so let's see where it goes! I hope you all enjoy this story and this chapter.
Leah is criminally underused and criminally treated. She's the Rosalie of the Wolf Pack. Seriously the shit that she goes through because she's not skipping at the idea of being Emily's maid of honour (and seriously what the fuck possessed Emily to ask that? Like seriously Stephanie). So this story is a love letter to Leah.
I also have a huge amount of respect for Embry's Mom. Not sorry. Also I know she has a different name in the books to here but here she is Layla and she was seventeen when she got pregnant.
Also on Embry's father...I know a lot people assume it is Joshua Uley but somehow that seems to nice and neat, I also think it's pretty ironic, that both Jacob and Quill end up being friends with a kid who might be their half brother. So my views on Embry's Dad is that is has to be one of them and I do tend to lead towards Billy just for reasons I can't name. The council bit deciding whose parents should know and who doesn't is my own and I know it does not correlate with the books but then again this whole story is AU so (shrugs), I just think it's a fun angle to explore that everyone is terrified with who Embry's father could be.
Again, all of this is my own design, the characters belong to someone else, I am just playing in my writers box.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review.
And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know.
Also I do not do Private Messaging anymore, any questions stick them in a review and I will get back to you next chapter note.
A First Time For Everything
Chapter 14-The Accidental Role Model
As the pack settles into new territory Layla Call decides to go to the father of her child for answers. Meanwhile there is a damaged girl and her son left on the couch to their own devices. What could possibly go wrong.
Four Hours after Embry Call's voice message to his mother.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
He rolled himself to the door and opened.
Layla Call stood there.
Oh fuck.
"Give me one good reason Billy Black why I shouldn't roll you off a cliff!"
Yeah.
"It's two thirty in the morning" he started but she had already pushed past him (which admittedly was a hard thing to do) and had stormed into his house and even though he didn't like Paul (well) he was suddenly relieved that Rachel had gone back to see him and was spending the night there.
Layla stood there in his living room breathing heavily watching him. she was wearing leggings, her old boots and a Demin shirt that was several years old and strained around the chest area (as shirts like these often were—Billy had two daughters after all a man learnt somethings along the way) and she turned to look at him dark hair flying down her back and her expression that of a woman and a mother primed to kill.
"Hello Layla"
"A werewolf" she breathed her voice seething with rage.
"Drink?"
He asked rolling to the kitchen.
"A FUCKING WEREWOLF?!" was the shout that followed him and Billy opened his fridge. Beer was his preferred drink of choice (he didn't touch anything harder since his wife) but he knew Layla. White wine was usually the preference and the fact that he kept a bottle in the fridge was something that he didn't want to think about.
He grabbed a glass and rolled back into the living room passing her the bottle and the glass placing it on the table. For a second she stared at him in disbelieve.
"You think a glass of pinot is going to stop me from killing you?"
"I was accounting for three glasses" he said and then before he could stop himself. "Didn't take more than three for you to take your clothes off the last time we drank together"
For a second he was sure that she was going to smash the bottle and ram it into his neck. If she was one of the tribe right now she would be a wolf he was sure. He had never really seen a woman vibrate with rage the way Layla was but it was not something he wanted to see again.
"You bastard" she breathed. "You want to go there? Okay Billy, how come you didn't tell me OUR SON WAS A WEREWOLF?!"
OUR SON.
Our son.
Fuck.
Because Embry was his son.
Look he wasn't…he wasn't proud of it okay. But he and Sarah had not been in a good place at the time. They had been the ideal young tribal couple. Married straight out of High School pregnant with twins before nineteen and collage had been a pipe dream even before that and look…he was not using that as an excuse for cheating but in his defence he thought that it was worth pointing out that when the twins were five they had both played away from home. He knew there had been a tourism student who had seen more than his wife's tribal landmarks—so to speak. They had been civil for the sake of the kids but neither one of them had, had their hearts in their marriage anymore. They had simply fallen out of love with each other. To be honest this was one of the issues that he had with marriage at a young age. This is why he had hated Rebecca doing the same thing. There were just so many pitfalls to the thing, and yet he had been unable to tell Rebecca that without the fear of telling her everything. He was not going to have his daughter follow in his footsteps.
He loved her too much for that.
And yet he had not told her what he and her mother had done.
He loved her too much for that too.
It had been one of the unspoken secrets in their marriage. He had gone to a bar one night and there had been Layla underage to drink nursing a vodka tonic and she had…
Listened.
She had listened, she had hung on his words like the moon, she had watched him as if he was interesting and God help him it might sound pathetic but he needed that. He needed that right about now. He needed to be looked at as if he was special again. It was pathetic, him a married man with two five year old girls but there had been something intoxicating about the way that Layla Call had looked at him. As if he was special.
And then they had tumbled into bed. He had been under no illusions that he was married, she had been under no illusions that she didn't care. She however had been young and he should have known better. She had barely been legal when he had first slept with her and he had known that he was in danger of breaking up his family. She had been a girl in a bar.
And then he had come home and Sarah had told him with eyes that said she knew everything that she was pregnant and that she knew it could only be his because her own entanglements had ended months ago.
He had driven his girls over to Harry's to spend the night with Leah and then he and Sarah had finally had the knockout drag out fight they had been denying themselves for years.
It had not been pretty.
But at the end of it there was a baby.
Jacob.
And that had been the end of that. They had patched it all up. The affair, the marriage, all of it. And when he had lost her…when he had lost her in that wreck he felt like he had lost a part of himself too.
And then Layla, her five year old son on her hip had come back. She had been painfully clear she was not expecting a hand out to give her credit, she had deftly handled any questions about her son's father. She had not on the other had been able to fool the Clearwaters. He had never confirmed to Harry who the other woman he'd had an affair with was but Harry had known. Harry who had known him since he was a child had taken one look at Embry and Jacob playing in the sandbox (because there was some fucking cruel irony there wasn't it) and he had raised an eyebrow at him.
Sue had known after that.
Layla had made it very clear she was not asking him to be involved either. It would have been easy back then he mused sometimes, to say that he was the boy's father, Sarah was dead and it wasn't…uncommon…after all when you had Joshua Uley and Conner Lahote walking around knocking up every woman in sight that was enough scandal for one tribe and that was before the Cullen's had descended back onto the tribe and so he had kept his head down. His children were young, her son was young. Embry and Jacob were friends and he got to have Embry round at his house, got to listen to his little lisp and tuck him at night when he had a sleepover and he got to watch him and Jacob mess around as teenagers. He got moments and he made enough to make them enough.
And then they had both transformed. He knew the second Embry had gone missing that it had happened. Known the second that Layla had mentioned in passing at the store when they had bumped into each other that he was running a little hot. He had wanted to tell her there and then but he had not.
Why.
Well…
He didn't want to think why.
Instead he turned his head back to look at the woman who was watching him.
Was it wrong to admit that even now when she was going to scalp him she was still undeniably beautiful. Layla had always been beautiful he thought. Even now.
"WELL?"
"I wanted to tell you" he said quietly. "I did Layla I just…it's a tribal secret—"
"What did you think I was going to do call the NEW YORK TIMES?"
"I DON'T KNOW" he shouted back. "I don't know" he said again this time in a more quieter tone. "Lay—"
"Do not—"
"La" he finished. "I don't know what I was going to do. I was the one who told Sam that you needed to know but Sam thought it was coming from a concerned parent and…Sam was so convinced Embry was his half brother, I never had the heart to tell him that he didn't have to worry about that. I just…I should have come to you and told you, I accept that but Layla…I didn't want to cause you anymore pain and worry and—"
"And you think thinking that he had joined a gang and was running drugs was a better scenario to not cause me any more pain did you?" she said clapping her hands sarcastically.
"Oh well done Billy, I can see now why none of your kids want to spend any time with you"
"That's a cheap shot and you know it" he said evenly and she threw herself into his sofa cracking the wine open and taking three gulps straight from the bottle.
"You bastard" she said quietly. "You let me think…you know what happened to my brother, you know, when were in bed together I told you he had a overdose on bad cocaine at sixteen, I told you that and you sat there and let me think that I was a bad mother because my own son was doing the same thing, you let me think that."
"I know"
"You are a damn coward Billy Black"
"I know that too" he said quietly because it was true. It shocked her into silence but it was true.
"I should have told Embry I was his father when this whole thing started, hell I should have done it years ago. I should have done it when you came back to the res. I wanted too. A couple of times I thought about it but…I don't know. I just didn't. And maybe if I had…if your boy had, had his father…I don't know if that would have made the difference"
"I didn't need you" she spat in his direction. "I did it Billy, I didn't come here for you or a handout, I wasn't pathetic stalker woman, I came here because my father made it very clear staying at home with him wasn't an option once my mother was dead in the ground. I didn't come here to be with you. You were good in bed I grant you but no man is that good believe you me"
"I wanted to tell you" he said again. "Layla I didn't want to cause you any pain. I know you hate me right now but I do care for you."
Here she snorted.
"I just…I was trying to be here for him. I was trying to give you a bit of ignorance. You know how hard a secret like this is? You know about vampires and werewolves and fucking…fucking…whatever else is out there and you sit and watch your son…your…sons walk out of Emily Young's kitchen and you don't know if you will ever see them again, I mean when Jacob got hurt fighting the newborn vampires—"
"I beg your pardon?"
Oh shit.
"You didn't know that?"
"No" she said in a tone that would freeze the sun. "No I didn't but you are damn well gonna tell me anything. I don't give a fuck what you thought you were doing, I don't give a fuck what you think your doing now. I don't want to hear about how you had hopes and dreams of being a father through your own son to mine. I want to know everything. Not the watered down piss that I got from Sam Uley, not the condolences that I got from Sue Clearwater who by the way if she so much as even implies that my son might have been better off I never came here, is going to be thrown into her car window and kicked until she is quite simply dead, I care about my boy and you are going to tell me everything and If I find out you have left so much as one single shred of evidence out of this I will make that car accident that put you in this chair look like child's play!"
"You want me to order you another bottle of wine"
She cracked open the top again.
"Start talking Billy, before I decided to kill you with my bare hands"
It had been a long night that night between the two of them. He had told her about the tribe, about the legends, the Third Wife, the entire thing. He told her about the spirit warriors, about the Cullens, about the newborns.
Here she had gone to the bathroom and thrown up when he had told her about Jacob's injuries but he didn't know if that was the wine or the injuries. He had put on a pot of coffee then and she had stirred sugar into hers with shaking hands.
"Fuck" she said finally. "And he kept all this from me?"
"After Harry I think a lot of the boys were worried" he said softly. "I…you should have seen the amount of times Jake was asking me about my health and weather or not I could cope with it—"
"I am not Harry fucking Clearwater" she said adding another sugar cube. "No offense Billy but I do not eat my weight in fish fry, I actually do exercise other than hunting in the woods and I don't have a wife who allows me to drown in butter three times a day"
That was technically not true but Billy was not going into that now.
"Embry told you?"
"He…he left me a fucking voicemail"
Billy choked on his coffee.
"He did what?"
"I went right round to Sam Uley's and the fucker had the audacity to tell me that it was not a good time so I played him the message and then told him that unless he wanted me to shove Emily's knife collection where the sun didn't shine he was going to give me one right now. Never seen a load of teenagers look so scared in my life. Apart from Quill. I genuinely think he wanted to applaud me"
Billy considered that for a second and surmised that she was probably not wrong.
"I got a big picture of that" he said finally. "So Sam told you."
"Told me the bare bones of it. I knew I had to speak to you when he said that the Council knew. But I called Doctor Cullen first"
This time he really did spit in his coffee.
"I'm sorry you did what?"
"I called Doctor Cullen"
"How did you—"
"I called Chief Swan and asked for the good Doctor's number"
"You called Charlie?"
"Oh stop clutching your pearls, I told Charlie that I had a delicate medical emergency with one of my girls at the local health clinic and that it wasn't appropriate to speak to the Doctor during work hours and Charlie heard that to mean abortion and so he didn't ask questions"
Huh.
"Okay"
"I spoke to Doctor Cullen about what was going to happen and was my son in danger and would he be alright over there and he assured me that Embry's safety was paramount to him and his wife and how they never wanted this to happen and that he had six of his own so he understood, it was a very nice conversation. We arranged for Embry to call me at a specific time during the day as he didn't think it was prudent for me to turn up at the house—also because if one of the boys had tried to stop me they'd have been road kill and that was that"
For a second Billy stared at her in complete disbelief.
"I don't…fuck me woman are you mad?"
She levelled him a look. "You want to start with me right now?"
"No but…"
"Then good. And I have to say he did more to assure me than your lot did"
Billy's initial response was rather childish. I bet he did. He wanted to say.
"Okay" he said finally. "Okay"
"Is he going to survive this" she asked finally.
"I don't…"
"Don't lie Billy, I'm not going to collapse, I just need to know"
"I don't know" he said finally. "I don't…I don't know if any of them will survive this."
"Can we poison Sam's pack?"
"Layla!"
"Well…if it keeps them from attacking what's a couple of dopamine drips?"
And suddenly he was laughing. She caught his eye and flashed him a quick smile and her hand under the table found his. He found he was gripping it back just as tight. There was nothing to laugh about except the knowledge that despite the love he held for his wife he really did fucking love this woman too.
Pity it only took him until know to realise it.
"Billy?"
"Hmm?"
"If Embry asks me I am not going to lie to him. The tipping point was the gag order for me. I won't go through this again, if he comes back and wants to know who his father is then he is going to find out"
He nodded.
"I appreciate you telling me" he said quietly. "Can I ask that you give me an hour's heads up so I can tell my kids?"
She shrugged.
For Layla that was as good as a yes.
They stayed like that until dawn peeked through his kitchen windows and he knew that Rachel would soon be dragging her ass home.
Girl was as subtle as a freight train.
After the birth of Baby Nessie.
"Still can't get over that name" came a voice from behind him and he turned to see Layla clad in jeans a stripy shirt watching as Jake and Embry and Leah and Seth sat at the bonfire.
It was another story telling one, this time Layla was here and so was Paul's mother. Paul had cracked and told her and judging from the look on her face she was not too impressed with Sam either. Jared's Dad was here too.
It was time this was out in the open. Parents needed to know.
So he had said to Colins mum and dad both of whom wanted to stick him on a stick and roast him over a fire by the looks they were shooting him.
"Nessie?"
"All of it"
"Says the woman who calls her kid Embry"
"After my brother as you damn well know" she said. "Don't make me kick your wheelchair old man"
"Old man! I am what? Four years older than you?"
She grinned at him and he smiled back and suddenly he was hyper aware that both of his sons were watching them.
"He hasn't asked" Layla said quietly. "But he will"
"I know"
"Leah on the couch doesn't help, it's quite sweet in a way. It's more than puppy love"
"You encourage this?"
"Why not? He's home, you've told me she can't get pregnant? Everyone is safe and it pisses off Sue. All in all it's an arrangement that works well. Plus I like her. She needs someone in her corner. You can only fight for so long alone before you feel like you are being dragged under"
She flashed him another smile and walked over to her son and Billy watched and felt strangely melancholy. He had never regretted his decision to stick with his wife and his children until now when he looked at Layla and saw the unlived life, the life he could have lived.
Maybe it was selfish.
But then again.
Billy Black had never said he was a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination.
Had he?
And there you go I hope you enjoy.
So when I thought about this chapter, actually when I thought about Embry's Dad in general in my head books or film or fanfiction it was always Billy that was his Dad. I kinda thought it was obviously Billy, it made sense to me that it was Billy, that Jacob and Embry were half brothers. I don't know if that is just me but that's just what we have. I just...It never made sense that he was Quil's half brother (considering we never met Quil's Dad) or that he was Sam's (considering Sam doesn't seem to care either way. So to me it was always Billy who was the Dad and he encouraged Jake and Embry's friendship so he could be close to his son.
As to why he didn't come forwards as his wife was dead? I explain that here, he had three grieving children and to me coming forwards about his own affair would have meant coming forwards about his wife's and I genuinely don't think in my head Billy was ever going to do that.
Can I also say I don't condone cheating. I have tried to justify it for the sake of this story as both Billy and Sarah having affairs (though let me assure you Jake is defo Billy's) but it's hard. I think Billy and Layla had an emotional affair before they had a physical one as I try to portray here. For Layla please bare in mind she is seventeen in this story when she meets Billy and her decision making process is a bit skewered. Any kind of invention of a brother is entirely my own. Again there is no excuse I just don't like to think of any character as perfect and Billy is no exception.
Any questions on this little headcannon of mine then please drop a review and I will try to answer them in the next chapter notes.
Next Chapter-Leah and Embry are in a lovely undefined thing that she doesn't want to define (and he does), Embry decideds to ask the question just as Jacob gets some news from the Cullen's.