SPOV

Leah and I both read one of Old Quil's alpha pair books. She got the one with ten kids and I got the one with seven. The love stores were similar. They married to avoid the imprint and they bit each other when she turned into a wolf. The stories continued with their life as alphas, family life, and their relationships with their imprints. They all had imprints. That came as a surprise to both of us, but their imprints became friends and extended family. They were important, but never mates.

We also read the five new pages of the Twana book. It told the story of Sarah Uley as a child. It told of her family, including her brother Levi, and her friends, including her dearest friend, Ephraim Black. It made me feel sick. It was well known that Ephraim Black married his imprint, Martha Young.

When we went to Old Quil's study, he had ten pages translated for us to email. "I've read the whole thing. Do you want me to summarize?"

"Please." I couldn't wait.

"The story was from Levi Uley's perspective but it focused on his sister's life. Sarah and Ephraim were in love. Ephraim ignored the imprinting threat, wanting to do a proper traditional Quileute wedding without being rushed. Ephraim imprinted two days before the ceremony and married Martha Black that day instead. Ephraim was alpha and chief so Sarah was a pariah. Sarah phased a year later. Ephraim rejected her place in the pack and she ran away."

Old Quil continued, "Sarah's brother Levi was in Ephraim's pack. He saw how angry Ephraim was that people doubted his relationship with his imprint. So Levi stole the alpha pair books, one at a time and hid them away, afraid that Ephraim would destroy them in his rage. Sarah and Levi kept in touch. They agreed to write and exchange their stories. Sarah imprinted on a man in the Skokomish rez. They married and she lived out their days there. That's why she wrote hers in Twana, further obscuring it from Quileute eyes.

"Oh God." I looked at Leah and she looked how I felt. Sucker punched. That could have been us.

"It didn't happen that way, baby. We're fixing it," I said to her. "We're going to make this right for future packs."

"The texts could have been lost. This is so messed up, Sam."

"I know. I know. I know. I have to believe that the spirits were preserving them."

Old Quil asked, "Can I read the translation that you have?"

I had brought the pages for him. I gave him a brief summary. We took photos of the pages he had translated.

We were in a daze at my mom's house. She either didn't notice or didn't want to bother us about it.

There were five more pages in our inbox. We sent the ten from Old Quil to Buck White. I added a note to the email.

Levi Uley is my great grandfather. Ephraim Black's grandson is chief of our tribe.

"I want to phase with you." Leah told me on our way home."

"Probably a good idea."

There was a heaviness in the pack mind. We both had a heavy burden from what we learned.

WE DON'T NEED TO GRIEVE FOR WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, I said.

THEN WHY ARE WE?

I DON'T KNOW. LET'S GO MAKE LOVE.

We ran home hand in hand. We were so needy for each other. I didn't know how to slow down.

"Let's just fuck each other's brains out and make love tomorrow." Leah suggested. She was already impaled on my cock and I was bouncing around the living room with her.

"We don't seem to have a choice." I said, slamming her into a wall. I was sucking on her neck mark. She was clenching down on me. I was nowhere near done with her.

I laid her down on the floor and thrust into her, holding her to me. Even though I was going hard, I could feel our emotions start to mingle.

I looked into her face and she was just as confused by this as I was. I kissed her and continued railing into her. I couldn't stop. I needed her. I needed her to know my passion, my love.

I lifted her onto my thighs as I sat up, then stood up. "I'm taking you to bed."

I kept my relentless pace in bed. I didn't know how I was lasting this long at this pace but it felt so good. I was holding her body tightly to mine. I just needed to feel her, that she was mine, that I didn't lose her. Our emotions were mingling again.

I could feel my climax finally coming. I reached between us and started rubbing her clit, slow at first so she could get used to my touch, then vigorously so she would climax before me.

She gasped and her arms around me tightened. I could feel her clenching muscles inside her. I pushed in hard and released, relaxing on top of her.

Suddenly I felt nauseous, so nauseated. I got up and ran to the kitchen sink. So much vomit came spewing from my face. The tuna pickle casserole tasted much worse coming up.

Leah was behind me, rubbing my back.

"I know." She said, surprisingly calm. "Now we have to be grateful that Emily died. Fucked up."

I looked at her, shocked. So the clarity had told her the same thing that it told me: Emily Young was my imprint. I spit into the sink again, then used water to rinse out my mouth.

"We weren't even warned." I said, "We didn't have a chance, Leah. If we had been warned, maybe the sunglasses trick might have saved us but no one even told us."

"I know."

"I guess we don't have to worry about how to fit my imprint into our lives," I said snarkily.

"Fuck. She would have made a great sister imprint, too."

I pulled Leah into a hug. "But that's not what would have happened, Lee-lee. I would have imprinted and we wouldn't be married and I would have left you for her!"

I let go of her and I was dry heaving into the sink again. Leah rubbed my back some more.

"She didn't even like you, Sam. I mean, she thought we were great together, but she never once commented on how hot you were or anything. I don't think she saw you that way at all."

"I'm not sure it works that way with imprinting. Ephraim and Martha were married two days after imprinting."

"Shit," Leah hissed.

"It's over now. Her death, tragic as it was, has given us the freedom to set things right with the pack and for packs to come. We can't dwell on it."

"Easier said than done." There were tears in her eyes. "If she had lived, I would have lost both of you."

I hugged her again. "Fuck! I hate this but I can't think about it. I just can't. It's too much. I hate it so much. I just want to shove this whole realization down somewhere deep in my brain so I don't have to think about it."

"But Sam-"

"Damnit, Leah, I don't want to think about it. Thinking of leaving you for another woman, your best friend. No! It's just fucked up. It's torture. And I don't want you torturing yourself over it."

"But Sam -"

"No. I don't want to talk about it. Not now. Not ever."

"Fine."

She started walking toward the door. I reached for her arm. "Where are you going?"

"You said I could go to my parents house if I needed to, that you wouldn't mind."

"You're leaving me over this?" I asked. "Because your cousin was supposed to be my imprint?"

"I need space because you won't talk or listen. I need space."

She rapidly yanked her arm away and was out the door before my next breath. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

LPOV

Tears were streaming down my face as I drove away. Why was he so angry? He wouldn't even talk to me. I was the one hurt by this, not him.

I pulled into my mom's driveway. Sam jumped into the passenger's seat.

"I'll do anything." He was pleading. "What do you want to talk about? I'm sorry. I was so upset. I shouldn't have shut down like that. What can I do? Please, Leah. What can I do?"

I closed my eyes and tried to stop crying. "Are you ready to talk about this?" I asked.

"No," he said flatly. "I'm not ready, but I'll do it. I can't be alone after that."

"I feel like we were allowed to know that for a reason."

"Uh huh, ok. What do you mean?"

"Like, everything we learn through those clarity meditation thing, they help us somehow."

"Yeah," he breathed out of his mouth slowly. "This one was different though. I'm not sure we were making love but we still had the emotional thing and the clarity. I'm not sure this was the same."

"Maybe, maybe not. But I feel like the spirits are involved somehow, in this too."

"It's definitely wolf magic," he agreed.

I turned my head to face him. "Yeah, so, how does knowing this help us?"

"I was afraid of imprinting," he confessed. "Even though we're married, I was afraid that you'd be jealous of an imprint and that it would hurt us. Now I don't have to have that fear."

That was surprising, almost the opposite of how I felt. I said, "Baby, I'm not afraid of that at all. I'm looking forward to imprinting."

"You are?"

"Yeah! I need a new best friend. I haven't been close to any friends since Emily. I think Paul is my closest friend other than you and Seth."

"Yeah, let's get Paul replaced," he said.

I laughed. "Happily. He's not even that funny. He's just one of the few people I actually talk to these days."

Sam looked a little offended. "I think he's pretty funny."

"Yeah, he's your best friend so you would." I paused, thinking. "Do you think we needed to feel all this, to know that this possibility was real?"

"But then did the spirits kill Emily to preserve the alpha pair? That sucks too!"

"Maybe? A plot device death, I hate those. Emily was a real person, my best friend. Why would they choose her as your imprint, kill her, and then tell us that's what they did?"

"Who are the spirits?" he asked.

"They're the spirits of our ancestors," I said. This was common knowledge.

"Right. And how do they decide things?"

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I rolled down the window of my sedan. "Hi Seth. We don't mean to be here. Does Mom need us to get out of the way so she can move the car?"

"No," he bent down to peer in at me and Sam. "I was just curious what you were up to."

"I pissed her off and she left me," Sam said.

"Sure," Seth grinned at him.

"It's true," Sam said. "But I chased her down. We're reconciling."

Seth looked at us like he wasn't sure what to believe.

"Thanks for checking on us, Seth," I said. "We'll be going home now."

"And don't tell the pack that she left me, ok?" Sam requested.

Seth nodded. "Sure thing." He went back into the house.

"Maybe we should drive home while we finish the conversation?" Sam suggested.

I turned the ignition then looked over at Sam. "You can't shut me out like that."

"I know. But you can't walk out on me like that either."

"How should I have dealt with it?" I asked while pulling out of my mom's driveway.

"I don't know. I was too stubborn, I'll admit that. It's just so fucked up, that this wolf magic would force me to hurt you like that. Like why? If it's best that we are the alpha pair, why is it even possible for imprints to tear us apart?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's some kind of test?"

"But we didn't have a chance! No one told us." He was getting angry again. He definitely wasn't angry at me, but he definitely was angry.

"Maybe that's why Emily died, because we weren't given a fair chance."

"None of this sits right with me, Leah."

I reached over and held his hand. He looked at me with the most genuine puppy dog eyes I had ever seen. He felt lost. I did not. "I'm coming around to your side of looking at things, Sam."

"That we shouldn't talk about it anymore?" He looked so hopeful and adorable.

"No," I said. "That we were fated to be together, that the imprint wasn't really a threat. That the spirits had a plan."

"A plan to kill Emily?" Sam sounded skeptical.

"Maybe that Emily was fated to die in a car crash, and that's why she was chosen as your imprint."

"That's fucked up… but also kind of poetic. I think I'm going to believe that. And then we don't have to talk about it anymore?"

"You're cute."

"Not an answer."

"I can't promise that," I said, shaking my head slowly. "I think this is an important part of our story, Sam."

He groaned. "It just makes me sick to think about."

"Maybe we should carry around sick bags for you to throw up in."

"Speaking of which, I'm starving. I completely emptied my stomach."

"What if you were sick from the tuna pickle casserole, not from the imprint story."

Sam didn't like that suggestion. "But you weren't sick."

"Maybe I have a stronger stomach."

"Definitely not," he said with absolute confidence. "My abs are way harder than yours."

"Or maybe my super speed applies to digestion too, so the food was already in my intestines, therefore I couldn't throw it up."

"That's a better theory," he conceded. "I'm really curious about your imprint now. I kind of hope that you get a real one."

I pulled into our driveway. "Yeah, we'll figure all that out later. What do you want to eat?"

He ran around the car and opened the door for me. "Thank you, Sam." I gave him a kiss.

He pulled me into a hug. "I love you, Leah."

"I love you too." I looked into his eyes. "Let's go in."

In the kitchen I asked again, "What do you want to eat?"

He was pulling out peanut butter and jelly and bread. He grinned at me. He made a sandwich and started eating it. I made a second sandwich for him and continued preparing sandwiches while he devoured them.