Early Imprint [Book 3] ✔️

8 • Other Man

QUIL'S POV

"Quil, I have a favor to ask?" Stacy said through the phone line.

"Shoot," I replied.

"Nick fell at school today and hurt his arm. I'm taking him to the hospital right now. I was supposed to go to the Olympic Skate Center in Port Angeles with Claire and her classmates. They're spending the afternoon roller skating, and I had volunteered to help keep an eye on the kids. Would you be able to fill in for me?"

"Absolutely," I didn't even hesitate, "When are they going to get there?"

"They should be arriving there by bus in about an hour."

"Ok, I'm on my way," I told her before we said our goodbyes.

I went into the garage of the shop. Jake and another mechanic we had hired, Mike, were huddled around the engine of a car they were working on. Embry was standing nearby looking at something on a clipboard. He had his usual scowl on his face which he seemed to permanently have nowadays.

"Embry, I'm going to cut out early," I let him know.

"Fine," Embry said, not looking up.

Embry had become a former shell of himself since he had imprinted on Rebecca. He had always been quiet. Now he seemed to be dead inside. When he wasn't working at the shop, he was by himself. He stopped hanging out with Jake and me. When he phased, he patrolled by himself. It was too painful for the rest of the pack to be inside his head.

The only relief he seemed to have in imprinting was that the mystery of who his father was, was down to two candidates. We had all figured that Embry's dad had to be either Billy Black, my dad, or Sam's dad. With Embry imprinting on Rebecca, that eliminated Billy as a candidate. My parents had always been disgustingly happy together, so there was a good change that Sam's dad was his father.

Although Embry spent a lot of time alone, he wasn't always by himself. He had begun to sleep around with a lot of women because it caused him physical pain. Physical pain was much better to him than the emotional hell he was living in. It seemed like he was determined to punish himself for imprinting on a married woman.

Sighing I turned away from Embry and headed out the garage. At least Sam handled Ryan imprinting on his daughter a lot better then Embry had handled his imprinting. After Sam had calmed down about his little girl finding her soulmate at three-years-old, he welcomed Ryan back into the fold with open arms.

When Ryan wasn't attending classes at the local community college or patrolling, he was hanging out with Gracie at Sam's house. I don't think Sam realized yet that there might come a day when he wouldn't want to patrol anymore with Ryan. Especially when Gracie matured and she and Ryan started dating. I could just imagine how uncomfortable that would be for Sam and Ryan being in each others' heads during that time.

As I headed towards my car, Ness and the twins pulled up. Jacob followed me out of the building and went over to the car to kiss Nessie through the open window. It was their one year wedding anniversary this weekend.

I waved at the twins and both waved back. Ness's labor hadn't been pretty. Her pregnancy had progressed slower than her mother's had. She went into labor when she was five months along. Because she had finally reached maturity, her skin had been too hard to cut open with a scalpel, so Carlisle had had to cut her open with his teeth. Luckily, the human part of her accepted morphine pills pretty well and she was knocked out for the delivery. The vampire part of her helped her recover rather quickly and she was back on her feet after a few days.