WHEN THE STARS FORGET US - EMBRY CALL

34. alice's return

( when the stars forget us! )
↳ chapter thirty-four ↲

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
❝ ALICE? AS IN CULLEN? ❞
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

EMBRY SLAMMED THE brakes, gravel spitting beneath the tires as the truck screeched to a stop in front of Bella's house. The sky was dark, shadows stretching long across the driveway.

Talia didn't wait. She yanked her seatbelt off and flung the door open, heart pounding from the storm of worry Jacob had just left her with—Bella. The cliffs. The ocean.

But before her foot even hit the ground, Embry reached over and slammed the door shut with one hand, his entire body surging forward like a damn shield.

"What the hell, man?" she snapped, wide-eyed, rattled and furious all at once.

"There's a vampire," he growled, voice low, vibrating with warning. His eyes were locked ahead, nostrils flaring. "It's close. I think it's inside."

Her breath caught.

Inside?

"Bella and Jacob are in there," she said, already reaching for the door again. "Wouldn't she be safe with him? You're here now too—between the two of you, nothing's getting past—"

"No," Embry cut her off, his voice sharp, strained. "That house sits exactly on the treaty line. Cullen land starts the second you hit the porch. If I cross that border, even by a few inches, and something goes wrong—it's war. I could jeopardize everything."

Talia's hand froze on the door handle. Her pulse throbbed in her ears.

"But I'm your imprint," she said, turning to him slowly. "You said it yourself—you're supposed to protect me. If a Cullen hurts me... that breaks the treaty, doesn't it?"

His jaw clenched. "Technically, yeah. But we don't know it's a Cullen."

"Then the treaty doesn't even apply!" she fired back. "If it's something else—something worse—what, we're just supposed to sit in the truck and hope Bella isn't bleeding out inside?"

Embry's eyes flashed. "You don't understand, Talia. If I lose control and it's a false alarm—"

"I don't care," she hissed, yanking the door open. "Bella is inside. She needs me."

"Talia, don't fucking—"

But she was already running

The wind whipped past her as she ran up the porch steps, lungs burning, panic surging. Embry's footsteps pounded behind her, and he stiffened for a heartbeat as he could smell the vampire inside the house but he could also smell Jacob inside.