Forbidden Imprint [Book 5] ✔️

1 • Why Imprinting Sucks

PART I

Prelude

Let me tell you something about imprinting. It's not all hearts and flowers that people make it out to be. It's painful, destructive, and it can bring a grown man to his knees. I once envied my friends who'd imprinted. I was secretly jealous because they had found their soul mates...that special someone that they'd get to spend the rest of their lives with. As years went by and more friends imprinted, I began to feel like it was never going to happen to me. I didn't know that my other half did in fact exist. I didn't know that one day I'd come face to face with her and my world would be changed forever. I didn't know that the one person I was meant to be with would be forbidden to me...

EMBRY'S POV

I looked down at my watch and swore. 7:12 pm. I was supposed to be at Jacob and Renesmee's wedding rehearsal at 7:00 pm. Alice Cullen would have my ass if I screwed anything up for her niece.

I pushed my car to its limits as I raced towards the Cullen house where the wedding was going to take place. After we were done with the rehearsal tonight, we were going out for dinner at "The Lodge" in Forks. I was looking forward to tonight and tomorrow. I was happy for Jacob and Renesmee, not only for their upcoming marriage, but for the twins they were expecting as well.

The two people I was closest to in this world, Jacob Black and Quil Ateara, had found their imprints...their soul mates...though Quil's imprint, Claire, wasn't even nine yet. But they had found the girls they would some day marry and have children with. They had a sense of contentment about them that I lacked. I envied them that, but I loved them too much to not want the best for them.

Jake and Quil were my brothers growing up. Their families became my family. I could have just been Jake and Quil's fatherless friend, but both the Blacks and the Atearas had taken me into their homes and loved me as though I were their own flesh and blood.

My mother had told me my "father" had died shortly after I was born. They weren't even able to get married first, so I was born with my mother's maiden name, Call. We had moved to La Push when I was only a few months old. Because of my closeness to Jake and Quil, I looked at both of their fathers as though they were my own. I always had a father figure to look up to.

Of course, after I phased for the first time into a shape-shifting wolf, I knew that my father couldn't be who my mom said he was. My mother wasn't Quileute and neither was the man who supposedly sired me. For me to be a wolf meant that my father had to be Quileute. For me to be a wolf meant that my father had to be Quileute. That/Which meant that my father was either Jake's dad, Billy, Quil's dad, Quil II, or Sam Uley's dad, Joshua.

Joshua seemed the most likely candidate considering he was known for being a sleaze who left Sam and his mother, Dorothy, when Sam was a kid. I had asked my mother once right after I phased the first time if my "father" was my actual dad. Her response was to ground me for a week without explanation.

My mother was gone a lot while I was growing up. She had me when she was young, just 19, and I think she spent a lot of my youth enjoying her 20s to the fullest. Still, she did the best she could, given that she was a young, single parent. She was there for me when I needed her. She didn't even have to work a full time job, because she lived off some trust fund she had received. But I spent a lot of my younger years sleeping over at Quil or Jake's house.

And I was always welcome. I think that was why I bonded as closely to the Blacks and the Atearas as I did. Quil's grandfather, Quil Sr., and Billy Black, are Elders of our tribe. I think they took pity on my fatherless state and made sure I was included in everything on the reservation. In fact, when I first started phasing and my mother would ground me because she'd always find my bed empty in the middle of the night, it was Quil Sr. who'd talked to her on my behalf. After that conversation, I had been able to patrol without getting grounded. I loved both the Blacks and the Atearas for everything they had given me, though I had always felt a special closeness to Jake's family.