11 - SunDay (112)
Bella woke up at 6:00, as if she had an internal alarm clock. She gently rubbed on Leah's back until she could see that Leah was waking up.
"Honey, it's 6:00."
"Oh, thank you." Leah rubbed her eyes, looking around the room. "Did I miss the alarm?"
"I'm the alarm clock," Bella whispered, kissing the top of Leah's head. "It's a wolf thing."
They went to the kitchen for breakfast first. "I got you vanilla soy milk. Emily showed me which kind."
"That's really sweet, Bella, thank you. So she told you about my problem?" Leah asked, not making eye contact as she poured her cereal.
"They told me not to make a big deal about it."
"Yeah, don't," Leah looked at her now, "but if you ever see me eating ice cream without taking my medication, don't hesitate to speak up. Sometimes I'm just sneaky but I still forget a few times a year and it's unpleasant."
"Does it hurt?" Bella didn't know anything about the symptoms of lactose intolerance. All she knew was that it meant no dairy.
"Not exactly. It's not sexy though. I wouldn't stay over if I forgot to take my medication. I'd have to go home."
Bella looked dead serious then. "You can count on me to remember. I want you here always."
Leah smiled and briefly kissed Bella's lips. "Thanks."
"I'm hopeful that you'll come tonight."
"I think I can, but it will be late, probably after 9:00."
"Ok, I plan to spend the day doing top secret work but I should be home around 6:00. If you come before I get back, please let yourself in. I have books and movies and ice cream and a bottle of lactaid in the bathroom."
"Thank you, Bella. I can't even promise that I'll be able to make it. Will you be ok if I can't?"
"Yeah, the bed smells way more like you than the log anyway so I won't be going back there at night anytime soon."
Leah drank the milk leftover from her cereal, then gave Bella the bowl. "You clean them with dish detergent too, right?"
Bella laughed then nodded, licking every last bit of the bowl. "Sam doesn't do this in front of Emily, so this is really intimate, me sharing this part of myself with you."
Leah smiled. "Zoe was never ashamed of who she was. You have the same vibe. Sam, he cares what people think of him, or he did. Is he still like that?"
"Yeah, he always wants me to be on my best behavior when we go to talk to elders and stuff."
"Hmmm. I see. And are you?" Leah asked.
"A wise alpha once told me, don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to."
Leah stared at her blankly before asking, "And Sam's the alpha?"
Oops. Bella didn't mean to talk about that. "Yes," she answered timidly.
Leah didn't want to dwell on Sam. "So what's the most embarrassing thing you said to an elder?" Leah was intrigued.
"I'm not embarrassed by anything I've said to Billy because he's my uncle so I probably got it from his side."
"Probably," Leah said with an amused smile.
"And Sam basically doesn't let me talk to Old Quil."
Leah tilted her head in thought. "Probably for the best."
"But with your dad, I did talk about the feeling of suffocating when you get choked out during sex."
"Oh! Why?" Leah was both amused and deeply embarrassed for Bella.
"It's top secret, Leah," Bella said, grinning. "It's something from the legends."
"At least you're not boring." Leah couldn't remember anything in the legends about being choked out during sex.
"Did Sam ever do that to you?" Bella asked. "Choke you, I mean."
"No," Leah said, shaking her head. "Is that a turn on for you or something?"
"No! Someone did it to me once in Phoenix. I took a self defense course before I hooked up with anyone new after that. I won't ever do that, or ask you to do that to me. But the memory is hard to shake. It was such a unique sensation, it was the only way to describe it."
"Describe what?" Leah asked.
"It's top secret!"
Leah stood and kissed Bella's neck. "I'm going to go take a shower now."
"Do you want company?"
Leah nodded.
~O~
Bella cleaned up the table while Leah got dressed after their shower. She didn't do the dishes. She'd wait until Leah left to do that.
Then she went to see Sam and Emily. Sam wasn't there, but all the imprints were.
"What was it like when you accepted the imprint?" Bella asked them, standing between the couch and the TV.
Kim explained, "I could feel the imprint too, for the first time, like the connection. I was drawn to him before, but the connection was almost tangible after that."
"That's exactly it, exactly like that." Emily said.
"Rachel?"
"I don't know," she sucked in a deep breath through her teeth. "I already felt really connected to Paul before, like almost right away. Why do you ask, Bella?"
"I think I fucked everything up!" Bella flopped onto the couch. "We were fucking and we came simultaneously which almost never happens and I could feel the imprint grow stronger and she said my eyes turned yellow."
"So she accepted it! That's awesome progress!" Emily exclaimed.
"Except she doesn't even know about imprinting," Bella said, shaking her head in despair. "We were doing the sex that is supposed to be safe, not genital to genital."
"Then how did you both come?" Kim asked.
"My hand was between us, but it was touching both of us."
"Bella, you were playing fast and loose with the rules that you made up!" Emily sounded a little mad.
"Paul made them up!" Bella defended herself. "And they make sense!"
"What rules did Paul make up?" Rachel asked.
"That completing the imprint happens with genital to genital sex, because you guys were doing all sorts of-"
"I remember, Bella." Rachel cut her off. "I love Paul like crazy but he doesn't know shit. I think you need to consider the idea that she has accepted the imprint before she knew what she was getting into. That might have been what happened with us too. And I have no regrets, none." Rachel sighed heavily. "But Leah and I are not the same people. She's one of a kind and she doesn't give up power easily. You need to be prepared for that."
"But if she's accepted it, what can she do? Can she leave me? Will she?" Bella asked with desperation.
Emily looked concerned. "Bella, it's not just about that. She's your life partner, your soulmate. You need to consider her choices and preferences in all things."
"Will she prefer to leave me?" Bella rephrased the question.
"She might, but she can't, right?" Kim asked, looking at the other girls. "And accepting the imprint isn't about the imprint's informed consent. It is about the nature of the relationship, you know, the stages? The nature of your relationship with Leah is sexual and romantic, which is the last stage of the imprint. The whole informed consent thing was a Sam and Emily thing. None of the legends talk about it."
"And that's kind of why it didn't bother me," Rachel explained. "An imprint is an honored position. Leah knows the legends as well as the rest of us. Why haven't you talked about the imprint yet?"
"She doesn't want to talk about wolf legend stuff. We have a code word: my top secret job."
"So she's being willfully ignorant," Rachel said, sounding unimpressed.
"I don't think it's just a Sam thing," Emily said, "informed consent. That's like the basics of human decency."
"They're not completely human," Kim pointed out.
"What does Jared say?" Bella asked her.
"You really want to know?" Kim asked.
"Of course!"
"He regrets advising you not to seduce her the first night."
"That's sweet of him." Bella knew things would have gone a lot differently if she did successfully seduce Leah that first night.
Emily spoke up. "It doesn't matter what we think or what our guys think. What matters is what Leah thinks. And you can't know until you tell her about the imprint."
Bella crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm not doing it unless she asks. I've given a bunch of hints about imprinting. She just has to ask about any of them, and I'll tell her."
"What hints, Bella?" Rachel asked.
"Let's see," she tapped her chin. "I told her that her dad knows about us, the two bedroom house is for her, that she is very significant to me, that I haven't been with anyone else since I met her, that I slept in the log because it smelled like her, I don't know what else but that seems like plenty of hints that would make her curious."
"You told her that the house was for her? That's so romantic!" Kim squeed.
"I told her that the day I met her. She thought I was on drugs."
Rachel nodded. "That does sound unhinged, Bella, but she's sleeping over, right? That's what Paul said, that her car has been there at night."
Bella narrowed her eyes. "I didn't know that he was spying on us, but yeah, she is."
"They're all spying," Emily said. "They care about you an awful lot."
"Hmm." Bella looked at Kim. Kim nodded. So Jared was spying too.
"Leah cares about you an awful lot, too," Kim said.
"She calls me Beautiful, because Bella means beautiful in Spanish. But I think she's attracted to me physically more than anything else, which is fine. I'm not complaining. I'll win her heart eventually."
"She's not like that, Bella," Emily said. "Sam said they only had sex one time in their whole relationship."
After a minute of processing that tidbit, Bella said, "So I've already beat him."
"But it took her a long time to trust Sam. A long time. Years."
"And then he left her for you, so maybe she was right not to trust him," Bella said to Emily. "Sorry, no offense."
"That's what I mean though," Emily says gently. "She doesn't trust easily. It should have taken way longer for her to trust you, way longer. Her feelings for you are not just lust. She wouldn't act on them if they were."
"Ok, thanks." Bella was ready for a change of scenery. "Where are the guys?" There hadn't been a whiff of them this whole time which was unusual.
"In the forest. Sam told me to tell you to phase in when you got here."
"Emily, why didn't you tell me?" Bella asked.
"We wanted to talk to you and he can't order me around. He's not my alpha," Emily said with a smirk.
Bella rolled her eyes. "I'm telling him you said that." She ran to the door, then ran back inside. "It's raining. I'm leaving my clothes inside, ok?" She was already naked and out the door before any of the girls could answer.
Bella phased in at the tree line. I'm back, boys!
Meet us here. Sam showed their location in the pack mind. And bring clothes.
Bella ran back into the house, butt naked. She grabbed one of Sam's shirts and put it in one of the ankle pouches that he had on his dresser.
She ran outside and phased. Hastily, she ran through the woods to meet her pack.
Along with her black, gray and brown brothers, a new wolf stood. It was the chocolate brown wolf that she had almost attacked.
Sorry, she said, timidly. It's just that Leah is mine and I'm very protective of her.
Phase out, Bella, Sam said. Let him see who you are.
Bella felt like the Scooby Doo villain unveiling herself. She phased out then bent at the waist to get Sam's shirt out of its pouch. Once it was over her head, she straightened her back and looked at the new wolf, eye to eye.
The new wolf took a step toward her, then started walking around her, sniffing her.
A couple things happened one after another that had Bella concerned.
First, Paul's lip curled up over his long canines. A deep threatening growl was coming from him. His posture was almost like an attack crouch.
Jared, peaceful, meditative Jared was the next to react. The fur on his back stood up from his neck to his tail. He was also lowering himself to an attack crouch.
Sam wasn't moving at all. He was eerily still. Of the three, he was somehow the most frightening in his stillness.
The new wolf started whimpering, moving away from Bella quickly. Quil's whole posture was submissive. He was cowering in fear.
Sam phased to human. "I'm sorry, Bella. I thought if he saw you, he wouldn't be afraid of you but it kind of backfired. Now he's afraid of all of us because we were protective of you."
"Why don't you all hang out in human form and I'll go in the pack mind with him?"
Sam nodded. "Eh, it's worth a shot."
Bella phased back in. Then Jared phased out.
"Paul!" Sam called. "Are you going to make me order it?"
Paul said, Bella, you can beat the shit out of him if he needs it. I can distract Sam.
Go, Paul!
He shimmered into his human form.
Hi. A timid voice said.
Hi Quil. I'm Bella. Bella sat.
Quil sort of sat too. His posture was so submissive he was almost lying down. I know.
You don't have to be afraid of me.
But you can hurt me?
We all can, Bella said, but you're our brother. We don't want to.
Will I be strong enough to best you guys someday?
It's possible, but Sam's alpha. He's huge. You saw that right?
Yeah. Of course Quil saw that. There was no way to ignore Sam's size.
How can we help you not be scared?
Make me strong?
Bella phased to human but didn't bother to get dressed. "Teach him how to fight. You need to build his confidence, not explain to him why we won't hurt him. Hurt him a little so he can see how he heals."
"Bella, please put your shirt on," Sam said, rubbing his forehead.
"Your shirt," Bella said, winking as she pulled it over her head.
"He was thinking nasty thoughts about you," Paul said, clearly still angry about it.
"You used to do that too, Paul," Bella teased.
"Not in the pack mind! Never in the pack mind! That's so fucking disrespectful."
"Is that what you were snarling at? You guys scared him over that?" That made Bella angry.
"Bella," Jared said patiently, "you're our sister. None of us have biological sisters, but you know we all love you."
"I love you guys too," Bella gushed.
"And we can't let someone disrespect you like that," Jared finished.
"You know that people think I'm hot everywhere I go, right?" Bella asked. "Because I am. What if more kids join the pack? This is a you-guys problem, not a him problem. Paul, you had a crush on me but kept me out of your thoughts in the pack mind. Teach him how to do the same."
"I wouldn't call it a crush," he said, blushing.
"Whatever. Teach him so that you aren't on his throat all the time. Then build his confidence by teaching him how to fight."
"Like martial arts?" Paul asked.
"No! Fight with him as a wolf. Show him how strong he is. I shouldn't be here for it because I think I'm agitating the situation. And I'm hoping for another visit tonight from Lady Leah."
They hooted and howled in support.
"Do you need anything else from me, Sam?"
"No, thank you, Bella. You can do whatever you were doing before."
"Orgy with the imprints," Bella said, then cackled to herself as she phased and ran away.
After a minute, Paul said, "I'm pretty sure she was kidding."
~O~
Back at Sam's, the girls had just put on a movie. Bella quickly got dressed, tossed Sam's shirt in the hamper and squished herself between Emily and Rachel.
Emily paused the DVD. "Let's make lunch, then restart the movie."
"Am I crashing imprint day or something?" Bella asked.
Rachel laughed. "Imprint day? That's not really a thing, is it?" She was looking back and forth between all the girls.
"I don't know," Bella said. "I'm not an imprint."
Emily smiled her half smile. "Even if there were such a thing, it would be way more fun if you did crash it."
"Definitely!" Kim said.
"Ok, ok, I get it, everything's better when I'm around. What's for lunch?"
"I have leftovers since Sam has been out there with the new kid almost non stop."
"They hunted without me!"
"Would you rather have been with them than Leah?" Emily asked.
"Fuck no! I'll make them do another trip with me. It's so satisfying, ladies, the kill, blood dripping in your mouth, then tearing it open like a pinata. It's really nice."
Emily felt nausea just picturing it. "We'll take your word for it. Anyway, I've been cooking like normal and Sam has barely been home, so please, everyone make a plate. Bella, you go first."
Emily had wanted to feed and nurture Bella since she hadn't been around for meals. She thought it might have been biological, the need to take care of the pack as the alpha's mate. She wanted to take care of the other imprints too, but that wasn't as strong.
"I can't make my plate first! I'll take all the best stuff!"
"Then I'll make a plate for you," Emily said decisively. "I'll be sure to leave plenty of the best stuff for everyone else."
"Yeah, ok."
While they were eating, Rachel asked, "How are things going with the new kid?"
"What does Paul say?" Bella asked her.
"He hasn't been home much, but mostly he's frustrated. He thinks the kid is an annoying coward. He doesn't like cowards."
"What's Jared saying, Kim?" Bella asked.
"He says it'll take a while to get him in shape."
Finally, Bella asked, "What about Sam?"
"He kind of sighs and changes the subject," Emily answered.
"Nice." Bella grinned. "So I did almost attack the kid. Did they mention that?"
"Why, Bella?" Emily asked. "And no, Sam didn't say anything about that."
Bella shrugged. "He was near Leah's house and I thought he was fucking her."
"Shit," Rachel said. "Of course he's a coward."
"And then out there, now, all the guys were aggressive toward him because he was having dirty thoughts about me."
"Yikes," Kim chimed in.
"Yep. I told them off for that though. They've got to teach him to control his thoughts and they need to calm the fuck down about protecting me."
"That can't be easy though, especially when they're all together," Emily said. "If one of them stands up for you, it'll become a pissing contest to prove their loyalty to you. None of them will back down if one of the other two is defending you."
"That's bullshit," Bella spat. "He's a teenage boy. I'm hot. What did they expect?"
"They probably thought he'd see you as a sister like they do," Emily said carefully.
Bella rolled her eyes. "What are they going to do when the kid meets you three hotties?"
"What will you do when you see him thinking of Leah?" Emily asked.
"Rip his throat out," Bella answered flatly, not noticing the double standard at all.
Rachel asked, "did you ever think about the imprints in the pack mind, Bella?"
"Not you, cuz. I did with Emily but only at first. By the time I got to know Kim, I had my thoughts under control all the time."
"And Sam didn't rip your throat out?" Emily asked.
"My thoughts of you weren't just sex, Emily. I thought you were wonderful. I still do. I think that made it so Sam gave me grace when I did think of you sexually."
"But this kid is different? Or are the guys just being jerks?" Rachel asked.
"I was a human and they were wolves when the incident happened," Bella explained, "but I'd guess it was just sex because I hadn't really talked to him yet. He doesn't know I'm wonderful. Not yet."
"They were justified," Kim said firmly. "And it's probably best that it happened with you first because it gives the kid a small taste of all of their wrath. If he crosses the line with an imprint, he'll get a totally different taste of their wrath."
They settled down to watch the movie after lunch. After, Bella left. She couldn't sit still any longer. She went for a walk on the beach, then to visit her old log.
It was occupied.
