petrichor [rosalie hale]

xix. imprint

Kiara and Leah sat in silence as they listened to Sam, her father and the pack elders argue inside the house. The rest of the boys had been sent home by Sam, except from Jared and Embry who had taken over on patrol. They didn't think the red head would be returning any time soon, especially as they'd chased her out of their territory only an hour prior.

"It'll be okay, right?" Kiara asked the older girl, knowing that neither of them knew what wound happen next. They were both unforeseen factors in the pack, and Kiara's imprinting just seemed to make her seem even more unnatural. She couldn't help but wish she'd just left La Push without waiting for graduation, because she knew that she'd never have been around enough vampires to cause her to shift.

Leah didn't say anything. What could she say? Only minutes ago she had been overwhelmed with disgust at the girl sitting beside her, appalled that she could have imprinted on one of their kind - one of the kind that killed her father. A vampire had caused her father to have a heart attack, and Leah didn't care what type of diet it ate. She didn't want to learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers, not when they'd taken her dad from her.

Now here she was, Kiara Black clinging to her side like her life depended on it. Maybe it did, Leah thought, because who knew how the elders would react to this. She could hear various voices arguing over the imprint, her mother and Kiara's father amongst the midst. Sue Clearwater loved Kiara Black with all her heart and this wasn't going to change that - but it appeared that some of the other elders disagreed with her presence in the pack now.

Paul was inside. 

Kiara had begged him to go home, to stay out of whatever happened in there. Sam had taken one look at his beta and opened the door wider, ignoring Kiara's begs for Sam to tell Paul to go home. Paul was her closest friend since she'd learned about the wolves and she didn't want whatever the elders and her father said to cloud his thoughts about her.

Then, Paul was outside.

A loud snarl and four paws sped away from the packhouse, the two girls watching him go with sinking feelings in their stomachs. Paul was a hothead but it was clear that he wasn't angry with Kiara but rather the elders. They were calling her things that Sam wished she wasn't listening to. Things that no-one should hear their father call them.

"I'll reject it," Kiara told Leah, the girl beside her tensing up a little as she turned to look at her in shock. She knew that Kiara had feelings for Rosalie, and she also knew that there was a ridiculous amount of willpower required to even try and stay away from an imprint. They didn't even know if you could reject an imprint - never in the history of the pack had any wolf done so. The elders believed that an imprint was for eternity, not like a childhood relationship.

"Kie," Leah warned her, her eyes full of emotions as she looked at the girl that she'd began to associate as a sister. "You don't know what that will do to you."

"I'll do it," Kiara said, her voice more rash and less calm than before. "I'll fucking do it."

Leah didn't know what to say. She was conflicted. She hated the Cullens, she hated vampires and she hated that Kiara was now linked to one. But she didn't want her best friend to go through whatever rejecting an imprint entailed. She just wished they'd never been forced to enter this life.

The door opened, the dark haired woman storming down the steps towards them.

"Kiara, you're staying at ours tonight," Sue said, a coldness to her tone that Kie had never heard from the woman before. She nodded, rising slowly to her feet as Leah gave her shoulder one last squeeze. She didn't want to hear the reasoning, because the look on her father's face as he rolled out of the house told her why she wasn't going home tonight. He didn't want to be around her right now.