Seth Clearwater Imprinted With Trouble

Chap. 10

We all heard the loud crack of a bone. Saw Seth’s eyes widen. Saw his body flail wildly for a brief second. Heard him draw in a harsh, pain-ridden breath. Felt as his strong, sinewy wolf body hit the ground.

But not before the child yanked his neck another almost 180 degrees, this time to the other side.

Clarianna slid off his neck just before Seth collapsed and she gently laid his head on the ground near her feet. She daintily stroked the peppery fur on his snout and looked up at the rest of us.

I think we were all too stunned and shocked by this development to actually think. I had to wince in sympathy for poor Jasper. This whole thing’s got to just as bad for him as it is for me—if not worse.

Clarianna looked at me and gave me a small, almost polite smile.

“No-o-o… v-vowry now, si?” she stuttered innocently. I blinked and realized that Seth’s heart was still beating; he was still breathing.

Clarianna hadn’t broken his neck, she’d dislocated it. The temporary shock of it had rendered Seth unconscious. Even now, as we were all staring at the unlikeliest of assault culprits, Seth was slowly transforming back into his normal, human self.

I blinked again. And then stared at the little girl. I heard Carlisle shake his head in bemusement. “Err, yes, Clarianna. It seems we no longer need to worry. But… how did you know what to do to save Seth?” he asked, fascinated and confused.

She looked over at Carlisle and smiled at him. She even giggled. “I knew how to because the monster inside him was hiding the truth,” she said. She even clapped her little hands, like this was all a game. And from what I could see from inside her head, most of it was. Oh, don’t get me wrong; she was genuinely worried about Seth during the entire… episode. But she knew she could fix it. At least, she did after she touched him.

Which still left Carlisle’s original question. How could she have done it?

Clarianna sat down next to Seth and placed one of her tiny, slightly dimpled hands in the palm of his own large, muscled hands. They looked amazingly incongruous together. An innocent, pale little angel next to a large, tanned, mountain of a man. Who was naked.

I shot a look at Emmett and he, correctly interpreting my signal, sighed and disappeared for a brief moment. He appeared again with a change of his own clothes for Seth. Whenever one of the shifters’ lose their cool in our house, it’s always Emmett who has to donate his clothing, seeing as how he was the only one large and bulky enough to come anywhere near the size of the average Quileute. Jasper walked behind the couch and pulled a decorative blanket out of an ornate basket. He walked over to the pair on the floor and let the blanket fall on top of Seth. Clarianna smiled at him, too.

“Monster?” I repeatedly dumbly. “What monster? Why was it hiding a truth? And how did you know that that was what it was doing?”

Clarianna looked back down at Seth, indecision written clearly upon her face. She glanced up at me and said, “I will tell you all that you wish to know, but first, could we get him off the floor? He might get sick.” She bit her lip, obviously anxious to get Seth away from the imagined danger of disease.

“He will not get sick. He cannot,” I told her impatiently. She sighed and smiled almost ruefully.

“No? Well, he could very well get upset enough to invite the monster back in—and I’m not sure I can oust him a second time.”

That single sentence got Carlisle and I moving as fast as we could. We each picked up either end of the shaggy-headed boy asleep on the floor and lifted him up. We settled him down on the couch just a few feet away. As we let his body droop onto the cushions, I heard Clarianna sigh. I saw her picture a room and a bed in her mind. She’d obviously been expecting a place a little more private for him when he woke up, so that he wouldn’t be frightened back into a state of unrest, but the Seth I knew would much rather be in the middle of things when he woke up. He’d much rather know what’s going on, especially with his own mate, instead of being left in the dark.