The pack was a brave bunch.
They were protectors, werewolves and family.
They protected the tribe and the inhabitants of Forks without question and without hesitation. They’d gone to war with newborn vampires without even batting an eyelash.
Braving storms? No problem.
Rescue mission? Point the way.
Vampires? Let me at ‘em.
There was nothing that they couldn’t handle…
…but when Bella reached over the kitchen counter and smacked Emily’s hand, making her drop the wooden spoon she was holding, then in a very sharp, unBella-like tone ordered Emily to sit down, the werewolves froze.
Their eyes and mouths wide open, the brave and fearless werewolves inched away from Emily’s kitchen, an area of the house where—they had learned under threat of pain and death—Emily reigned supreme. No one messed with Emily in her kitchen, not unless they wanted to die of hunger and humiliation, especially since she’d gotten pregnant.
Hormones and all that.
They watched in suspense as Emily looked at Bella, half expecting she would shoot death rays from her eyes and pulverize Bella on the spot. But no, to the Pack’s amazement, Emily merely nodded and sat down, her body language as meek as they had ever seen.
“Amazing.” Paul whispered from the corner of his mouth to the others.
“I need to learn how to do that.“ Sam breathed back, making Jared snicker. Careful not to make any sudden moves—just in case Emily had changed her mind on the ‘no violence in the house’ rule—Sam called out from the corner they’d all been banished to. “Emily, you OK?”
Emily nodded sharply, but it was Bella who speared him with a look. Jacob, who had spent several afternoons dealing with Bella’s rare but impressive bouts of crazy temper, swallowed a grin. Things were about to get interesting.
“Of course she’s not all right. She’s not impaired, but she’s not all right.” Jacob watched as Bella spread a contemptuous gaze at the pack, her feet planted firmly and her hand wielding the spatula like a weapon.
She looked fierce, strong, and due to the ruffles of the pink apron tied around her waist, deliciously cute.
Nonetheless, when she snapped her fingers, everybody moved into action. “Seth, rub her feet. Sam, rub her back. Paul, get her something to drink, juice preferably. Emily, drink your vitamins and no making icky faces.”
Emily made the icky faces, but she drank her vitamins, something the whole pack had been struggling to talk her into doing for three days without success.
Bella marched across the kitchen, barking out orders for mops and cleaning rags and had Colin and Brady cleaning the living room and hanging out the laundry while she stirred the pot that was filling the house with fragrant smells of something spicy and sweet.
Jared leaned into Jacob and whispered. “We should keep her. At least until Emily has the baby.”
“Don’t think I didn't hear that.” Bella yelled as she dived into the fridge, “Jared, mow the lawn.”
“Jawol!” Jared snapped off a salute and smirked when Bella rolled her eyes.
“Don’t just stand there, Jake. Take out the big bowl that Emily uses for spaghetti.”
Several snickers rang out when Jacob mockingly scrabbled to his feet. “Yes, honey. Right away, honey.” She almost looked embarrassed and gave him an aggravated look.
“What is that, Bella? It smells delicious, but it doesn’t look like much.” Emily asked from where she was being waited on hand and foot by Sam, Paul and Seth. She had been ready to sulk and throw a tantrum when they crowded her, but decided to enjoy it instead. She curled her toes when Seth pressed two fingers on the arch of her feet and almost purred when Sam knuckled a knot on her lower back, the cool lemonade slid down her parched throat and tasted like ambrosia. She could get the hang of this.
“Oh, one of my roommates back in Phoenix was Indonesian, and her part of Indonesia has this traditional cuisine named Rendang, it’s mostly beef and mini potatoes boiled with spices and coconut milk. It takes a long time, because you have to wait for the coconut milk to thicken, but it’s worth it. It tastes sweet and spicy and you eat it with rice.” Bella smiled over her shoulder. “Whenever she makes it, the whole apartment would know it by the scent alone, and the lot of them would suddenly have some sort of business with us.”
Emily grinned. “It certainly has my mouth watering.”
Bella smiled back, happy to be cooking for people that she knew. She turned back to her cooking, but caught Jacob and Sam exchanging looks of relief that confirmed her suspicions.
When she saw Emily running the kitchen, she had looked exhausted. She greeted her and Jacob amiably enough, but Sam kept looking at her with worried glances, and the overall mood of the pack was somber. They were worried about her, but Emily seemed to be stubbornly ignoring them.
The scene reminded her of how she used to be.
“You didn’t stay with your family in Phoenix?”
Bella shrugged. “Not really. The apartment wasn't much and I had to share it with my roommates, but it was mine, you know?”
Emily nodded, understanding the sentiment. “You still keep in contact with your roommates?”
Bella laughed. “Distance doesn’t seem to matter for Dhee and Jules. They’re loud and obnoxious and…loud. Whether it’s a phone call or an email, I could basically hear them shouting from wherever they were.”
Jacob smiled. “Bet you had fun times.”
Bella shook her head as she mutilated carrots, but there was a soft smile on her face. “Crazy times. I miss them.”
“Yeah.” Emily sighed. “Girlfriends are special.”
Only the quick taptaptap of Bella’s knife filled the kitchen, but Emily knew all of them heard what she actually meant, ‘Leah was special’. Emily missed Leah. They had been cousins, more like sisters, after all. They had promised to be each other’s BFF, to be each other’s maid of honor, to be with each other when one of them gave birth. They were to live next to each other, and were to raise their kids together and grow old together.
Emily rubbed her bulging stomach. She needed Leah, especially now. She was afraid, terrified and she was just so damn tired all the time. She felt fat and stiff and fat and achy and fat and…well, you get the point. She needed her sister, her best friend back, but she knew asking that of Leah was just too much.
She tried, Emily gave her that, but the moment her belly had started to show, Leah had shied away. Rachel and Kim helped, but…they weren’t Leah.
She knew she’d been one hell of a shrew to the pack and to Sam. She just couldn’t help feeling resentful of their (and Sam’s) part in her and Leah’s separation. And to add insult to injury, the pack still had Leah in their lives. It was as if she was the only one getting punished.
She chased all the boys away one too many times, but they had always come back. But she didn’t want help, which of course only made her even more exhausted and crankier than ever.
It was a devious, malicious circle of evil.
Emily watched Bella and smiled when she jabbed a finger at a table as a response for Jacob’s question about what he should do with the salad. Jacob followed the voiceless order then walked back to her side, his eyes following her every gesture. Emily had broken Sam out of doing that, it made her nervous, but Bella seemed fine with it.
She sipped lemonade and watched Jacob’s face. His feelings for Bella were as clear as the living room window that Bella had obsessively cleaned earlier on. The light in his eyes when Bella had laughed at something he said warmed her heart. It was proof that Jacob’s feelings for the girl hadn’t changed – not that there was ever any doubt about it. It was good seeing Jacob happy…and Bella too. Emily knew how it was to be torn between two loves and having to make a choice. Although she was surprised to hear about Bella’s return, she hadn’t groaned aloud or grimaced like everyone else. She had smiled and hoped.
And watching Bella spoon black goop—it really did look like nothing she had ever seen before—into Jacob’s mouth, that simple everyday gesture and the look on Jacob’s face when she giggled and wiped a thumb over the smear on his chin made her glad that she had voted to welcome the girl rather than to oppose her.
Seeing them so at ease and comfortable with each other somehow made her feel optimistic and not so scared. If Bella and Jacob had managed to find and forgive each other after everything they had gone through, surely she could do this. She could be a mother and a wonderful wife at the same time. Suddenly, the world around the kitchen seemed a little brighter, friendlier.
She could almost ignore the way Colin and Brady splattered each other with dirty water as they mopped the floors. She laughed as they fell silent and appropriated solemn expressions when Bella turned and aimed stern brown eyes at them. Her heart simply turned to mush as she watched Jacob and Bella work silently but efficiently in the kitchen. When Bella held out a hand, he was there with a plate. When she spilled something, he was there with a cleaning rag. If Emily didn’t know any better, she’d think they were able to read each other’s minds. It was like a dance, she thought, that only they knew the steps to.
There was a loud crash, a curse and several thumping sounds from outside the house before the screen door snapped open and Quil entered with his usual flair. “Don’t worry. I’m here. Where’s the party?”
Everyone merely stared at him silently until Bella approached him. “Here.” She held out the garden shears in a stabbing motion that had Quil stepping back cautiously. “Cut some of Emily’s beautiful Cosmos and bring it to the table. And here.” She slapped two yellow rubber gloves on his chest. “Since you’re late, you can wash the dishes afterwards.”
Colin, Brady and Seth were still sniggering over Quil’s expression, even when their mouths were stuffed with food. Bella’s Rendang was a hit, but she pointed out that it was really complicated to make and was filled to the brim with cholesterol. The werewolves pointed out that they were superwolves and Bella’s cautions fell on deaf ears.
“Bella, these potatoes still have skins on them.” Colin eyed his plate.
Bella smiled. “It doesn’t matter, Colin, it’s OK to eat them.”
Paul snorted. “For someone who occasionally eats raw meat, you’re awfully picky, Colin.”
Colin merely stuff more rice in his mouth and made faces at Paul.
Jacob gestured to Bella. “Stop hovering and sit down.”
“I will.” She eyed the table from where she was washing her hands. “Do you think we should save some for your sister, Kim and Leah?”
Jacob scowled. “Let them get their own food.”
Bella paused, her eyes flickering back to Jacob before walking back to the table. “Here, Emily.” She stopped by Emily’s seat and tucked a warm bottle under Emily’s ankles that were propped on a stool.
Emily closed her eyes and sighed happily. “That feels great. Thanks. How did you know?”
Bella sat beside Jacob on the sofa and took her plate from him while the other wolves sat on the floor in front of the TV. “One of my roommates, Jules, got pregnant, but her boyfriend didn’t stand by her.”
Jacob and Sam scowled and muttered a low ‘Asshole’ before they continued eating.
Emily and Bella shared amused fond looks. “Jules decided to have the baby. and we helped her out.” Bella smiled. “So I know a thing or two about pregnancy.”
Emily tucked a hand over her stomach. “I helped around before and I baby-sat my nephews and nieces, but…”
“It’s different.”
Emily sighed. “Yeah.”
Bella caught the frown on Sam’s face, but turned her smile on Emily. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
Emily laughed softly. “No, we decided to make it a surprise.”
Bella nodded, then called out to Quil, who lifted an eyebrow. “What are the odds?”
Embry, who came seconds after Quil and was also recruited to wash dishes, smirked. “2 to 1. Boy.”
“You bet on my baby?” Emily tried to turn from her chair and almost toppled over, if not for Sam holding her. She blinked at Quil and Embry, who blinked back, then rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. Why should I be surprised?”
Quil grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Want in, Bella?”
Jacob laughed when Bella stared at Emily’s belly like she could see right into it. “Are you sure you want me in? I’m quite good as this, you know.”
“Betting?” Embry asked.
“Guessing the baby’s sex.”
Quil snorted. “No one’s good at that.”
“Mom is.” Seth said. “When she was pregnant with us, she knew exactly what we were.”
“What?” Paul asked. “She knew you were mutant legendary wolves?”
Seth gave a wicked grin. “Oh, no. That was a bit of a surprise.”
Colin and Brady sniggered.
Emily ignored them and aimed an interested look at Bella. “Really?”
“Yeah. Nine out of ten I usually guess right.”
Embry turned his usually somber eyes to her. “You’re serious.”
Bella swallowed her mouthful and nodded.
Jacob drank his lemonade and grinned. “This I have to see.”
She turned to him. “You don’t believe me?”
“No one could be that accurate.”
Her eyes narrowed at him before she turned back to Emily. “You’re not wearing any make-up are you?”
Emily looked amused, but shook her head.
“Perfume? Or any scents?”
Emily wrinkled her nose. “No, lately if I smell perfume all I want to do is throw up.”
“Do you have any particular color that you don’t like to see since you’ve gotten pregnant?”
“Purple.” She answered instantly and seemed surprise by her own answer.
Quil frowned. “What has that got to do with anything?”
Bella ignored him. “What about tastes? Anything you crave?”
“I like spicy things all of a sudden.”
“She seems to know what she’s doing.” Embry mused as he shoveled meat and potatoes into mouth, his dark eyes on Bella’s face.
Bella asked a few more questions that seemed benign to the others and nodded. “It’s a girl.”
The wolves made disbelieving noises.
“Come on.”
“You’re joking.”
“Care to put your money on that?”
Bella shrugged. “Sure. Twenty on a girl.”
Quil chortled and reached for the money she was waving in her hands. “Easy money.”
Bella raised an eyebrow when she noticed Jacob was watching her. “What?”
“You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
Jacob tilted his head before reaching back for his wallet. “Fifty on a girl.”
The wolves made impressed noises, and Emily, who’d been sour and cranky for the last month, laughed until she needed to make a quick trip to the bathroom.
---
Bella returned from her own trip to the bathroom to find Emily missing from her chair, while the wolves were sprawled sleepily in front of the TV. “Where’s Emily?”
Seth blinked at her. “She’s getting the laundry.”
She scowled. “And you let her?”
Paul waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t you know already, Bella? Since the pregnancy, we let her do whatever she wants. It’s safer for us that way.”
Bella hitched her fists to her hips and scowled even deeper at Jacob, who merely smiled sweetly at her.
“We were hoping you would help her out, she doesn’t seem to mind your company.”
Brown eyes narrowed, Bella arched a brow. He let his lips curve even deeper. She sighed and rolled her eyes.
Emily was almost done with the first laundry line that was mainly T-shirts and jeans, the cool wind flapping the sheets on the third line every time they whisked by, the gentle snapping motion went oddly in tune with the not-too-far sound of the ocean.
The sun was slowly dying at the horizon, casting shades of red and orange and pink across the sky as darkness started to blanket the world.
The call of nocturnal animals rose up and down from the scattering of trees that surrounded Sam and Emily’s house.
Bella set down the laundry basket and without saying a word started on pulling at the sheets and folding them in quick, efficient movements. They kept working in silence, until they reached the second line together.
“I was surprised to see you here.”
Bella blinked and folded a faded pillow case. “What do you mean?”
Emily’s dark eyes slanted towards her. “Kim came to me this morning, she was…worried.”
Bella flicked her eyes toward the house and Emily chuckled. “Don’t worry, they won’t hear us.” She pointed at the lines of laundry, blowing in the wind. “We’re downwind.”
Bella nodded slowly, saving that particular tidbit in her memory. “Why was she worried?”
“She was worried that she drove you away.”
Bella bit her lip at the little clutch she felt in her stomach. “Wasn’t that what…”
“No, God, no, Bella. That wasn't her intention at all.” Emily sighed. “She merely wanted to warn you, not warn you off.”
Bella realized she was wrinkling the shirt she was holding and fought to ease her grip. “So, it’s true then, what she said about imprinting?”
“Yes, it’s true.” Emily touched her stomach. “To the wolves, it’s like finding a missing piece of their soul that they didn’t know was lost in the first place, and when they find us, we complete them.”
Bella’s heart shuddered. She knew what that was like and she knew she couldn't beat that. She didn’t really want to hear this, she had already heard enough, but her eyes latched on to Emily’s ravaged face and couldn't look away.
Emily shrugged. “I have always found imprinting a little eerie in its absolutes.”
“You have?”
Emily nodded. “How would you feel if somebody came to you and explained that he supposedly fell in love with you because of some tribal legend hooey?”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, believe me, I have.” She dropped a folded shirt onto her stacks of laundry. “Jacob has.”
“I know that he’s against—“
Emily scoffed. “He hates it. And fears it, I guess.”
“Fears it?”
“At first he hates it because it takes away his choices. Jake has always been resistant to the old ways, resentful of how the council has so much say in our lives.”
Bella remembered him griping about how the council went into a frenzy when Rebecca turned down a partial scholarship and ran off to get married.
“Then, of course, he turned into a giant wolf because of some tribal magic, and to make things worse, he was forbidden to tell or see you of all people. Imprinting was just the last straw. He didn't want to fall in love with some girl just because his wolf felt frisky. He was already in love. With you.”
Bella dropped her eyes to the shirt she’d been gripping. “I don’t know why. All I brought to him was trouble, trouble and more trouble.” And pain. Don’t forget pain.
“Bella, I’m happy with Sam.”
Bella blinked, confused with the sudden change of topic. “Okay.”
“But when I look at you and Jacob, I… wonder.” Wonder how my life would be if I simply fell in love the normal way. Wonder if Sam would have been as loyal, as loving, and as protective if he had fallen in love with me like everyone else in the world.
Like Jacob did with you.
Bella kept her eyes on Emily’s and let their unvoiced conversation pass by without them acknowledging it. “This is how it’ll be, won’t it?”
Emily tilted her head and moved along the laundry line.
“If I decided to be with Jacob, if I stay, you’re all going to feel it’s your right to poke your nose in my business.”
Emily sniggered, Bella didn’t know she could. “There is no ‘my’ business in the pack, as with all secrets, sooner or later, everyone will know.” She arched a brow. “And I think that you’ve already made your decision by being here.”
Bella bit her bottom lip and tossed her heavy braid to her back, she really had to get it cut. “He stayed the rest of the night yesterday.”
“I’m thinking he’s stayed with you lots of nights before.”
Bella blushed. “I didn’t meant stay as in ‘stay’, we just—“ She groused when Emily sent her an amused look then dropped her eyes to her stomach. “I think I have an idea.”
Bella groaned. “We didn’t, we just sleep together sometimes.”
“Oh?”
Bella gritted her teeth and turned wary eyes to the house “We didn’t have sex.”
Emily snickered. “So you had a sleepover.”
“Yes.”
“I figured he’d had lots of sleepovers at your place before last night.” She continued.
Bella sighed. “That’s the thing. This morning I realized something.”
“What?”
“He was always gone before I woke up. It’s usually not a problem with me. Usually when I wake up and found him gone, it doesn’t…” Bella frowned and remembered the one night where she felt destroyed when she’d found him gone, but that was in another life and it had happened to another girl. “But this morning, it…hurt.” She tried to shrug the little pin pricks that bit her heart. “I knew he didn’t mean anything by it, and he was actually doing me a favor, because Charlie would go ballistic, but when I woke up and…” Bella paused. “…reached for him—I expected him to be there, as if…”
“It had always been that way.” Emily continued softly.
“That night, I just realized how I could have lost him and I was really upset. I’d fallen asleep to his heartbeat and I think I had expected to wake up to it, too. And when I didn’t, it hurt.” Bella raised her eyes to Emily’s. “It brought things to perspective.”
Emily smiled. “Perspective’s a good thing to have.”
They continued to work in silence, and when all the laundry was folded, Emily turned to her. “Just remember, Bella, Jacob loves you and that makes you pack, but you have to earn your place in the pack.”
Bella looked at Emily’s scarred face and nodded. “As long as I don’t have to fight someone to the death, I’m good with that.”
Emily chuckled. “Wolves don’t kill their own pack members, Bella. We only isolate them and leave them to die of hunger.”
“Unless I’m stuck in some far corner of the world where they have no pasta, water or fire, dying of hunger will never be my fate.”
Emily laughed, took her hand and squeezed, and together they walked home.
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