Author's Note

This story was inspired by the character of Mandy that fanfic author Wingtear created in her story Doing What They Shouldn't Be, a sequel to Nessie & Jacob Sitting in a Tree. Mandy Call is Embry's younger sister, Collin's imprint, and the youngest member of the wolf pack. In chapter eleven of Wingtear's story, Nessie finds Mandy crying in the woods. Collin joins them and it all culminates with Mandy slapping him. I was so intrigued by this scene and by Mandy and Collin as characters that I wrote my own fanfic for them.

I am very appreciative to Wingtear for setting up that scene. I have used the dialogue from her Chapter Eleven, reproducing it from Mandy's perspective for the scene with Nessie and Collin in what is my Chapter Two. The three essential plot elements I changed from Wingtear's stories are: 1) the wolf pack is not much bigger than the pack we read about in the clearing at the end of Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn, 2) Embry has not imprinted, and 3) Mandy hides her thoughts through her love of science and her ability to be governed completely by her wolf senses.

As for Collin, the Cullens, and the world of werewolves and vampires living in and around La Push, WA, I gratefully acknowledge Stephenie Meyer. All of the back-story she created, I have freely trespassed upon in writing my own.

Chapter 1

When Rachel came bounding into the kitchen this morning to see if I wanted to go play at the park with our friends, I didn't even think before quickly downing the rest of my cereal, pulling my hair back in a ponytail, and chasing after her out of the house. Now hiding in the tunnel slide during a game of sardine tag, I cannot help but think I should have been a bit more thoughtful about my decision to come.

Tag used to be my favorite game at the playground. Desperately swinging from bar to bar, catching my breath between shrieks of laughter, scaling the outside of the slide, and squeezing between banisters; all in an effort to follow the "you can't touch the ground" rule while evading dangerous fingertips threatening to make me "It," tag had always been my reminder that I was still a kid.

But childhood seemed a million miles away right now. No longer was it effortless to squeeze between banisters with my hips busting out in obnoxious curves. No longer did I feel the freedom of soaring from bar to bar; instead I felt the obstacle of my expanding chest rubbing against the inside of my arms. No longer was it even a challenge with my supernatural strength to evade reaching fingertips. I had to pretend for my friends that it was difficult for me to climb, to run, and to dodge. Although I was still technically twelve-years-old, soon to be thirteen in a month, my body had shoved me right into adulthood, alienating me from the games and acquaintances that used to fit so well.

But the truth was I had never fit in. Tag gave me that semblance of normalcy to other kids my age but that was about where our similarities ended. Unlike most kids in La Push, I had traveled for extended stays up and down the western seaboard with my restless mother and responsible brother. "Restless" was mom's word for being unable to distract herself from her life. Heartbroken would have been a better way to describe her, a better way to describe all of us. Even though I did not know many of the details, her heartbreak had not only defined but determined my life.

From the stories my brother Embry told me through the years, she had been involved with someone in La Push since she was a teenager. I didn't think anyone realized how long and involved the affair had been, except for Embry and me who felt its daily effects. Growing up in Makah, she had been invited to a school dance in La Push during her sophomore year in high school. After that she began hanging out with the La Push crowd with some regularity but no one thought anything of it until she moved here, an infant Embry in tow, no husband, and with apparent severed ties to Makah and her parents. I always wondered why she had stuck around so long with the gossip that followed her move; but I guess some ties are too hard to sever, no matter the cost of staying near. There were some ties that couldn't be cut or you would risk losing yourself too.

After a decade went by, the whispers stopped. Those who smelled scandal got bored. And even though she stayed away from the other women in La Push, the Call home still had many visitors for Embry in those days. Friends of his from school would come over and my mom would chat here and there with their parents. It had been me, her second pregnancy that destroyed the delicate balance my mom had created to coexist with the tribe.

By the end of her pregnancy she was an emotional mess, finally having lost hope after fifteen years that she could ever really have or be with the man she loved, the father of now two of her children. So she left with a twelve-year-old Embry and they moved to California. I was born there four weeks later.

Embry told me that when they finally came back to La Push after two years away, no one really suspected her of anything more than having had an accidental pregnancy. No one would have guessed it was an affair, and especially not the same affair that had brought her to La Push in the first place. But now that I had started shape shifting, the other wolves knew. They were shocked and embarrassed to understand the truth that my mom had been involved with one of the Quileute elders all of this time. It meant that Embry and I had at least one half-sibling in the pack.

When my mom, Embry, and I moved back to La Push, my mom was finished with even trying to be normal. She worked odd jobs usually in Port Angeles, talked to no one except for the sitters she found for me during the day, and rented a house on the edge of town, only to leave again with a few hours notice. Embry, either by nature or forced into it by circumstance, was always independent and handled being taken in and out of high school in stride, working out projects with teachers that he could do on the road. He could have stayed. His best friends Quil and Jake often invited him to stay and live with their families but he was too worried about me to leave.

In some ways becoming part of the shape-shifting that has sustained the tribe was a relief. It meant that my brother was really my full-blooded brother, that we were bonded by more than just our emotionally absent mother, that his parent-like care for me through the years could somehow now be understood. If I was honest, it was also comforting to have an explanation for why my first memories were of abandonment by Embry and not my mother.

After all of his close care, Embry forgot to pick me up from daycare when I was three-years-old. It was the day he phased for the first time. He couldn't possibly have come to get me. Nonetheless it is my first memory and it stuck with me because it was the first time Embry did not pick me up. I remember all the other kids going home from the daycare some lady in La Push ran out of her house and there I was left to take a nap and stare at the light creeping around the darkening shades in a bedroom that I could not settle down in. It was the first time I ever felt alone.

He was actually protecting me by staying away, not trusting his ability to hold his human form together. Being around my mother, this is an understandable worry. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for him to watch her emotionally ignore me and blame him whenever some form of neglect was evident. So he kept as far away from me and mom as possible. Mom got so mad at his absences, his lack of care as she called it, that she stayed away too. For over five years, she took me and wandered.

Embry eventually found us in San Juan, California, earning our keep on an organic farm that was part of a large artist's collective. I was helping to build a cob oven with some of the older kids on the farm, when this hulking shadow came bounding across the field singing at the top of his lungs, "Dee Dee, didalee dee. Jumps up high, my Maaannndy. Spins around, touches the ground, that's my didalee dee."

It was Embry. I couldn't help from shouting it; half to convince myself that this stranger I saw coming across the field was in fact my brother and half because my heart couldn't possibly contain the joy that overwhelmed me. I remember seeing out of the corner of my eye my fellow cob builders just gape at me, more surprised by my reaction than by the giant Embry. It had taken a long time to convince them that I could even talk. I had been so shy when we first arrived, and here I was shouting.

But their reaction is something I can only remember now. Because as soon as I heard this silly song which took me back to some vague feeling of toddlerhood before everything changed with him, I was being jumped up in the air, spun around, and briefly hung upside down to brush the ground with my hair, then spun back upright for a kiss as if I still was two.

Embry spent several days with us there learning about my life with these artists and praising my own budding artistic abilities. At nine years old, I was introduced to charcoal drawing and I think it's safe to say that Embry and charcoal have been my saving grace in this very short life of mine. It has given me a way to express and understand feelings that I never could in words.

Embry was anxious to get me home to La Push though, which meant reconciling with mom. They talked about different scenarios of him and me just living together but without a confident source of income, Embry was forced to try and convince mom to come back too and they would make a go together of giving me the most normal life they could.

I have to hand it to mom. She has been surprisingly stable since then. For three years now, she's had the same job, we've lived in the same house, and while none of her personal demons have gone away, she has held up her end of the bargain she made with Embry, and my life has been if nothing else, stable.

But familial stability was not enough, not enough to keep my body together. I phased for the first time six months ago when I was on the Makah reservation for an exchange program with school. Finally getting a more traditional classroom learning experience, my teachers and I soon realized I had an aptitude for science, and I quickly immersed myself in every opportunity I could get my hands on to begin real lab experiments.

When I saw a flyer on my Earth Science teacher's desk for a program for gifted junior high students to study at Makah High School, I didn't think twice about applying. It meant living in Makah for a semester, taking specially arranged physics, math, chemistry, and English classes at the high school. This sounded like my idea of heaven: away from home, studying science. Makah is the only high school in the area with an advanced Chemistry lab since their science teacher Mr. Yuel has a Ph.D. in everything it seems and could have taught anywhere but is from Makah and wanted to be near his home.

I stayed with this really wonderful family who thankfully knew nothing of my mother and our past and it was the first time I could just be me, Mandy, without my mother's baggage. Embry would come to visit almost everyday so really I was lacking nothing and would have been happy to stay, maybe even trying to transfer to the Makah school district.

But happiness was not meant for me. Mr. Yuel had begun showing me some of the research he had done in genetics, when Embry became insistent that I come home soon. Apparently mom wasn't doing well with my absence so rather than extending my stay, I would have to come home early. Falling asleep that night after talking to Embry, all I could think about was how much I hated my mom, how she ruined my life and how I didn't care if she "wasn't doing well" because I had found something I was good at and enjoyed and people who actually showed an interest in me.

When I woke up I was still seething but didn't realize how seriously wrong I felt until I was almost at school. I thought I was about to throw up, so ducked into the woods near the school and tried to heave. Instead, I found myself shaking uncontrollably. The ground was spinning or I was spinning, it was all confused and everything started to go blurry. And then it stopped just as suddenly and I wasn't Mandy anymore. Or I was but buried, lost in layers of fur, four wolf-looking legs, and a million new sensations. The most forceful was the smell that had meant nothing to me a few seconds before but now was my lifeline. It was Embry. He was nearby. I never realized he had a smell but now the trees and soil were full of him. I tried calling out but of course had no voice. Then I stopped dead in my tracks too startled to keep going. He was there. Embry was there in my head calling back, telling me to calm down. I heard him shouting to somebody else in my head telling them exactly where I was and to hurry and meet me and then telling me to stay in the woods but try to head toward La Push.

Head toward La Push? Fear, panic, my human self was beginning to resurface in a hurry. I had no idea how to get back. But then Embry's smell caught my attention again. I was a wolf. My instincts told me what to do: follow his scent home. Of course, I realize now why his scent was so strong on the route back and forth from La Push to Makah. He had been coming and watching me everyday, probably most of everyday, from these woods, knowing that I was close to phasing. We had all witnessed the growth spurt over the last six months but it must have been the sudden temperature spikes that really alarmed him. My mom needing me back had just been an excuse to get me home so he could keep a better eye on me.

My nose followed Embry's scent easily, which left me to figure out the jumble of voices I kept hearing in my head. Embry was berating himself and cursing Jacob for being on patrol today so far from Makah. It was a bit disorienting to say the least to hear every thought he was having. I didn't think I wanted to be this close inside my brother's head. So instead I began listening with my wolf ears to the steady rhythm of my paws hitting the ground, branches being stretched and snapped out of place as I passed by, and then suddenly the thudding of another set of paws coming toward me.

I came around a corner and stopped utterly shocked at the size of the wolf Embry had sent to come and meet me. Was that what I looked like now too? I glanced down to see whether or not my legs and paws looked as big as what I had just seen. Then I heard what I assumed was his voice in my head, relief mixed with introduction.

"Mandy, I'm Collin. Embry sent me to find you and bring you home. There—"

But he stopped because at that moment I looked up from the ground and met his eyes. A whine escaped my throat as my head was bombarded with feelings, commitments, changes, that were more overwhelming than the foreign paws connected to the furry legs I had been looking at a moment ago. The world held absolutely still for one moment as we stared and I saw my wolf reflection for the first time in his eyes. My past, my human self, all of it disappeared. The charcoal wolf before me was all that I saw.

A buzz started on the edge of this perfect moment, threatening to break in. The buzzing got louder and I realized it was a myriad of voices all mixed together, yelling with various tones of joy, amusement, even anger but I couldn't understand any of them. I wanted to stay unbothered, absorbed by the wolf in the woods, and consumed with wonder. But a louder, firmer voice suddenly cut in and stopped the noise with one command: "Bring her home Collin."

The next thing I knew we were on our way home. My charcoal wolf was leading the way next to me slowly, every once in a while shaking his head. I wasn't sure what to say and never having spent a lot of time talking in human form, I just let my mind wander content to just have him near, no matter what else was happening.

I thought about Embry and how I heard him in my head and concluded he must be a wolf as well and that the wolves could all hear each other. That made me pause for a moment and Collin answered the unformed question.

"Yes, as wolves, we hear all of each other's thoughts all the time."

And then again before I could connect the words in my mind,

"Yes, Embry can hear you. If you focus on him, you'll hear his mind too."

Pulling my mind away from our conversation, I tried focusing on Embry. Before it had seemed easy to locate him in the jumble of voices. Now I had to almost mentally call to him to pull my mind away from the wolf next to me. But instead of the brother I had always known, I heard an irate stranger.

"I'm waiting near home. Hurry."

Confused by his anger and sudden silence, and needing reassurance, I listened for Collin who seemed to know my questions as soon as I felt them.

But he wasn't listening to me. "Control yourself. She cannot hear this right now." He was hurt, a little angry, but mostly just scared.

Listening to him, I realized the fears were surrounding me. Confused, I stopped, ready to ask him what that was about. But he shook his head and kept on going.

"Now's not the time. I'm sorry you heard any of that."

Shocked. Hurt. I was locked in emotions so enormous, even my huge wolf self couldn't contain them. It was heartbreak and it overwhelmed me with a vice grip on my chest. Pain shooting out from my heart into every corner of my body made me stop and gasp to catch my breath.

Strangely, my mind became intently focused on the way the ferns bent under my paws, refusing to think about the emotions my body couldn't control. My paws were aching, I needed to howl but my feelings were mixed with his and the confusion and panic in his thoughts were coming to the fore.

"I don't know. Nothing happened. What can I do? No, she's collapsed. I can't hear her either."

My mind was waking up. I broke my focus on the crushed fern under me. What happened? Timidly, I met Collin's gaze who had come up right next to me, beseechingly.

"I can stand up," I told him.

It took me another few seconds to act on that thought but finally I rose and began to walk away in the direction we were heading before this devastation had overwhelmed me.

His thoughts were racing in an effort to discover what was wrong with me, to discover what had happened.

"You're…hopeless?"

He was struggling to think of the right word to describe the tenor of my thoughts. And again my mind, a little more slowly this time, thought about his fears to be near me right now and my realization that whatever my wolf self seemed to think about him as mine, he was not.

"I'm yours. Please I—" he broke into my thoughts and then stopped just as suddenly.

It was strange. His mind suddenly went completely blank, as if a television had just been switched off. Searching for his signal, looking right at him as he slowed his gait, I finally heard him switch back on.

"There is a lot to explain," he began mysteriously. Later on I would find out about Jacob's alpha-command to bring me home before explaining about the moment though Collin continued as if nothing had happened. "First things first, you need to meet the rest of the pack and figure out how to phase back to human."

I was stunned. I had to figure out how to be human again? "But I don't even know how I turned into a wolf in the first place?"

He found this thought hilarious and let out a cough-like bark, which I supposed was the best he could do to laugh in wolf form. It was in this light-hearted mood we came near the edge of the forest, and I could see my house not far away.

I caught two scents then. One was a pile of clothes waiting for me nearby, which I assumed Embry must have brought, and the other was a mix of other wolves approaching. Collin angled closer to me as the five wolves appeared.

"Welcome to the pack Mandy. I know you have a lot of questions and there are many things we need to explain to you as well but right now we are going to get you human and in your house so you can rest. Embry's inside and will take care of you, especially since the one thing you should know is that we must keep this secret even from the members of our tribe for their protection. This means your mother does not know about Embry and will not know about you either. Anything you need, Embry will help you."

There was such authority in Jacob's voice, one of Embry's best friends for as long as I could remember. It was so strange to see him like this. He always seemed like such a goofball. Then again, so had Embry.

I heard several wolves bark laughs and Jacob smiled in his thoughts but I glanced at Collin wondering if he would be there with Embry to help me too?

"I'll stay close. I promise."

Then I felt Jacob guide me through the change in his head, showing me how he harnessed the heat at the tips of his paws, as if he were drawing strength right out of the ground and pushing it inwards, then using that power to stand up and walk forward as a man. He was sort of chanting in Quileute, I am wolf. I am man.

I could feel the energy he showed me begin in my own paws, the ground almost felt elastic like it was building up in my legs propelling me upwards. I couldn't help but take a step forward because the energy felt like it might burst inside me, and then I was Mandy again. And I was naked! Thankfully realizing all the wolves had quickly disappeared during Jacob's mental phasing presentation, I grabbed my clothes and got dressed. All I could think about then was getting inside. It was the most disoriented I had ever felt. I needed to lie down, get to my bed. What was I going to tell mom about me being back early from Makah?

The back door opened and Embry came to meet me. I gave a weak smile and nearly tripped but a hand caught my elbow. It took me a minute to realize who it was. His eyes were the same but who was the rest of this man? This man who now looked at me like he adored me. I involuntarily jerked away from his hand mumbling I was fine.

Embry caught me around the shoulders instead and steered me the rest of the way inside. Before going through the door, I looked back at Collin who was still standing where I had left him, pain distorting his eyes. But I was too tired to process anything. All I wanted was my bed, where I instantly fell asleep for the rest of the day and following night.