At the sound of Sam's voice, she turned her head to look at him. He was leaning against the doorframe, his right hand was holding the outer handle of the door and his left was probably holding the wall outside, in the hallway, as he poked his head into the room. It was a surprise to see him standing there, she was nothing but rude to him after all. She had assumed that she was the last person he wanted to talk to, especially as he was the last person she wanted to talk to, majority of the time. Callas sighed, leaning over to the taps to turn the water off before she sat back. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms resting weakly on top of them as the warm water seeped into the material, and she rested her back against the wall. She picked at the damp fabric, glancing at Zeus as he laid down in the bath, not minding that much. Sam walked in, closing the door behind himself before he sat down opposite her, with his back against the counter under the sink. His left leg was bent, resting on the ground, while his right mirrored hers. He leaned his left arm along the rim of the bath and watched her.
"Nothing makes much sense to me anymore," she admitted, scoffing quietly. "I don't know if it ever really will."
Sam stayed silent, noticing her bottom lip quiver just before she bit down on it harshly. Sam nodded his head, absentmindedly. "No one expects you to be alright with this," he told her. "It's okay to be upset."
"I'm not upset, I'm..."
"What?"
She shook her head. "I don't know what I am. I just don't know."
"You can take as much time as you need. We aren't expecting you to be automatically ready to deal with everything. We don't expect you to be anywhere near okay with this life. You're scared, we get that, any normal person would be. None of us expects you to handle this like it's nothing. None of us did when we found out about this life. I'm sure Reed had told you that."
"Great, because I'm not exactly Buffy the Vampire Slayer, am I?"
Sam nodded his head, for once being shocked that she wasn't being spiteful, only a teenager who was scared. "No. You're not."
Callas pulled her arms towards her body, feeling the—once—warm air from the steam being sucked out of the room, through the open window above the bath, and replaced with the icy chill from outside. Her dark grey, short-sleeved, band shirt wasn't doing much to keep her warm either, especially with water soaking into it from where the shower head left water along the rim of the bath, that she leaned against to wash Zeus. She, loosely, wrapped her arms around herself, looking at the laces of her boots. Sam breathed out deeply, still watching her closely as she brushed her hair back with her hand before running the same hand down her face in exhaustion. Zeus lifted his head up to the sound of Sam sighing and rested his head on the rim of the bath, staring at Sam. He stared back at Zeus, raising his hand to pet his head gently. Callas still stayed staring at her shoes, moving them an inch as she began to lose feeling from where her bent legs cut off circulation.
"Reed wants to talk to you, when you're ready, of course," he spoke up again, slowly taking his eyes away from Zeus.
She nodded. "Yeah, I know."
"But I also think you should talk to Embry at some point about all of this."
Callas moved her gaze from her boots to him, looking at Sam through her eyelashes. "My life just got a whole lot more complicated with the fact that I now know vampires are real, and my friends and very own brother are able to phase into wolves. So, I don't really want to confront Embry with the whole 'eternal damnation because of a soulmate link neither one of us asked for' thing."
"You aren't eternally damned, Callas."
"Feels like I am," she muttered.
"Take as much time as you need," he responded, pushing himself up from the floor and towards the door.
"Hey, Sam?" Callas called out to him lightly as he opened the bathroom door again.
"Yeah?" He paused, turning around to face her.
"Thanks... for the girl talk." She forced a smile.
Sam, with a sigh of her choice of words, nodded his head, knocking his fist on the wooden door lightly before he forced a smile back at her. "You're welcome."
He left the door ajar as he walked back down the stairs. Callas waited for a minute before she picked up one of the towels and helped pull Zeus out of the bath to dry him. A small squeak left her lips as he shook his body about, getting water on everything, including Callas. She placed the towel over him and began to dry him as best as she could with him wanting to walk out of the bathroom already. When she gave up, she placed the towel in the washing basket in the corner behind the open door, and picked up her jumper and jacket from the toilet and the sandwich, stick, collar, and lead from the sink, before she left the bathroom. Downstairs, she could hear the rest of them talking, including Leah. Zeus made his way down the stairs while Callas turned to walk into the spare bedroom, throwing her jumper and jacket on the desk chair while trying to pull her boots off to leave by her bag, while placing the other things on the ground.
"You okay?" Reed asked from the bed.
Callas jumped, looking at him, holding her right hand to her chest. "Jesus."
"No, just me. Sorry," he replied, holding a phone in his hand, the light from the screen illuminated half of his face.
She rolled her eyes, turning away from him again as she took off her left boot. "Thought you'd be downstairs," she told him, placing the boot next to the other one, trying to distract herself long enough where she didn't have to look at Reed.
"I was."
"But you're not anymore."
"Pretty much." He sighed, sitting up, turning the screen of his phone off. "Look, Cal," he started, "I get that you're pissed off at me, but if you understood why I did what I did, then maybe—"
"Maybe what?" She looked back at him, seeing the hurt expression on his face. She knew he only meant to protect her, but even that sometimes went too far. "I'm not pissed at you, Reed, I'm just overloaded and confused."
Reed nodded his head. "Can I help?"
"I don't know." She shrugged.
He patted the space next to him on the bed and waited until Callas crawled over and sat facing him with her legs crossed. "What do you want to know first?"
"Why do you hate Embry?"
"It's not that I hate him, per say—"
"Why do you act like you hate Embry?" She corrected herself.
"Cal, I'm going to dislike all the boys that show interest in you."
"You didn't seem to dislike Henry when you thought he liked me," she pointed out.
Reed opened his mouth. "Right."
"So, why Embry?"
He closed his eyes and leaned against the headboard before he reopened his eyes with a sigh. "When I first phased... and I was able to hear the rest of the packs thoughts... I learned about imprinting, and what it meant. I learned about Sam, and Emily, and Leah. I knew it was involuntary. I knew that it wasn't fair—not to Leah, not to Emily, and as difficult as it might be to believe this, but Sam too. Sam broke Leah's heart, he didn't want to, but, with the imprinting, there came a lot of pain and suffering. I never wanted that for you. I didn't like that you never got a choice, I still don't. I never wanted you to be forced into something that you couldn't control. So, when Embry imprinted on you... when I found out that you could no longer have free will over that part of your life, I resented him for it."
"Is Embry going to be the only one?"
Reed furrowed his eyebrows. "W-What'd you mean?"
"Is Embry the only person I can be with? You know, now that I'm his imprint."
With the shake of his head, Reed answered, "No. He doesn't have to be, but it won't be easy for you to feel, what it is that you'll feel with Embry, with someone else."
"So, I'm basically stuck with him?"
A small chuckle left his lips. "If you want to put it that way. But you have control over the relationship."
"Meaning?"
"If you only want him to be your friend, he'll be that. If you want him to be your brother, he won't like it, but he'll be that. He'll always be your protector, but he doesn't have to be anything more than that if you don't want him to," Reed explained.
"And if I did?"
"You barely know him!" Reed complained.
"Answer. The. Question."
"Like I said, he'll be whatever you want him to be."
"If I did," she started, looking up at him from the duvet cover, "if," she repeated with more emphasis, "could we take it slowly?"
"By slowly, how slow are we talk—?"
"Reed!"
"Right. Sorry." He held his hands up in defence. "However slow you need it to be, Cal," he answered truthfully. "Embry wouldn't push you to do anything. If any of the other boys had you as their imprint, none of them would push you to do something you didn't want to do."
"Okay," she said quietly as she nodded her head, accepting his answer.
"Now," Callas looked up at him as his voice rose slightly, "can you answer one of my questions?"
Callas furrowed her eyebrows, feeling her heart lodged itself in her throat as he lifted up her phone from his lap, showing her the messages that she had received from Will. Her heart began to thump wildly and her hands shook as she clenched them into fists tightly. He wasn't supposed to know. He wasn't supposed to find out this way. She could barely move her gaze from the screen to his face, although she doubted she would want to see the look he had as his eyes bored into hers. If everything was coming out now, Callas assumed that now would be a better time than any to tell Reed what really happened when he was away. After all, he already knew that she had encountered Will face-to-face, now he should probably know about everything else.