Chapter Eleven - Marie Caito

MPOV

I watched as both Ares shot down the girls, and also crumbled Bella's heart in the process. I could easily see through her lie when she said that she had a tutorial with her teacher. I let it slide. I wasn't going to tell Ares of his mistake, he can figure that out for himself. I liked Bella, she looked like she had backbone. Not to mention she was pretty, and looked like she had a sensible brain. I could see the pain she had been through. We all could. We could never be able to relate to her, or the understand the pain that she went through. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her. I smiled and carried on to my next class.

Ares spent most of the weekend pacing, waiting for a call from Bella. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn't want to call her. Not to mention that she had been ignoring him since Tuesday. Ares was on edge, he wanted Bella, but he didn't want to scare her off. To late for that. Ares eventually bit the bullet and called Bella's house. Her father, Charlie, answered the phone, but Bella wasn't home, she was over at her friends house.

Ares stormed off to his room and we all heard the door slam. It was a wonder that the door didn't break. He was my brother and I hated to see him like this. I wanted him to realise his mistake on his own and repair his relationship with Bella before it was too late. I started the ascend up to Ares' room. I wasn't sure what I would find in his room. I couldn't hear anything. It was dead quiet. He was probably quietly fuming to himself. As I got closer to his room I could hear Ares' soft paces on his carpeted floors. I walked into his room. He was pacing in his room. He had his elbow resting in his right hand and his chin resting in his left hand. He paced with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"You're going to ware out the carpet at your pace." I pointed out.

"Centuries have past and you still haven't mastered the art of knocking." Ares replied sarcastically. I snorted.

"Centuries have past and you're still stupid." I bit back.

Ares sighed and sat down on his bed. He looked like he was going to cry. His eyes glazed over with unshedable tears. He looked absolutely torn with himself.

"Do you know why Bella is acting like this?" He looked at me. I wanted to tell him the problem then and there, but he wouldn't learn to recognise his own mistakes otherwise.

"Like what? A normal teenager girl of the 21st Century?" I took a seat next to Ares and smiled sadly at him. "I can say that she isn't impressed with you at the moment."

"But now she is hanging out with those shapeshifter." Ares said.

"The what?"

"Shapeshifters. They are the natives of this area, they can change into wolves at will." Ares explained to me.

"You know of this because?"

"The friend that she's with is Jacob Black. And he is involved with the shapeshifters. Ambrogio and I looked into them all before we came here."

"You just need to talk to her."

"That is quite the impossible task when she doesn't want to talk to you."

True to Ares' words, Bella didn't talk or come close to us for the next week and half. On Monday, she smelt faintly of wet dog, it was slightly offencive to the nose. Ares was now on edge. He would often follow her around. Too many times I've seen him standing in the forest that bordered Bella's house. He earned to be with her. He would feel like he needed her.

I can't say that I had much experience with mates and such. But when we stayed in Volterra, I had access to their library, they had many books that were written about vampires and our lives. The book that I read about mates was actually written by Marcus. I learnt all I knew about mates from the book. I knew if a person was away from their mate for a long amount of time, you start to feel a little twinge at your heart (providing you have met your mate in person).

I had contemplated a lot in the past week whether or not I should approach Bella on the matter. I would like to say, the thought of confronting Bella kept me up most nights, unable to sleep, but that would be a lie. It was on the foreground of my mind often though.

I had talked to Julia about this, she agreed with me. She thought that Ares needed to learn this all for himself. Viktor remained passive on the whole situation. He would however try and drop hints to Ares of why Bella wasn't talking to him, but he didn't catch on. We remained quiet on the matter.

By the end of the week I was sick of Ares mopping around like he has nothing to live for many more, so I decided to approach Bella. It was one day after school that I decided to see her. I had followed her home and she had walked into her house. I walked up and knocked on the door. Bella came to the door and opened it. I was hit with the overwhelming smell of wet dog.

"Maire!" She said in surprise. "I wasn't expecting you to come around."

"I just thought that I might pop on by to see how you are doing." I didn't even wait for her to invite me in, I just walked into her house. Rude, probably. After you have been around for a few centuries, you quickly learn that manners are not the most important thing in the world. I could just imagine my mother rolling in her grave at my thought. I had been trained to be a princess with impeccable manners.

"Yeah, why don't you just c'mon in!" I hear Bella mutter sarcastically under her breath.

I walked into her living room where the smell of the wet dog was most predominant. It was like it was embedded into her couch or something. "Come, sit. I want to talk to you."

"Would have never guessed that." I hear Bella mutter sarcastically once again. She still came and sat next to me on the couch. "What did you want to talk about." She turned to face me.

"I wanted to talk about Ares."

"Oh," Bella looked sad at the mention of Ares' name. "I don't really want to talk about that." Bella quickly became more interested in the floor below her feet.

"Look, I know my brother is a little dense at times, but you need to talk to him." I pressed on.

"I really don't want to be around him." Bella said seriously.

"I can understand that. But for both of you sake, you might want to talk to him."

"I can't just have someone kiss me then decide he doesn't want a relationship. I'm not going through that pain again." Bella turned to look at me.

"No one wants you to be hurt Bella." I said to her. "Like I said, my brother isn't the sharpest knife in the block. One would think that he would be smarter after living for a couple of centuries, but I think he got dumber. He probably doesn't know that his comment hurt you." I tried to reason with Bella. Ares would fall into despair if Bella doesn't start to talk to him soon. In the book that Marcus had written, he had said once your known mate is separated from you, the vampire would start to feel mild pain, like a dull headache. But that would soon intensify into something else and cause great pain to the vampire. Separation and rejection can cause some tremendous pain to a vampire, not enough to kill us, but enough to leave the strongest of us weak. It doesn't really work with humans, their minds don't recognise the mate bond. And are therefore almost immune to the pain and suffering which comes with separation and rejection, or so I have read.

"But what if he doesn't really want me and he is having a temper tantrum because I don't want to talk to him."

"I can assure that he really does want you. More than you would ever know." I tried once again to reason with Bella.

"If I talk to him at school tomorrow, what would happen?"

"He would probably apologise for what he said without a doubt."

I left soon after. I left Bella was she promised to talk to Ares tomorrow at school. I gave her a quick hug and left to go home. I had homework to do anyways. I parked my car in the driveway, when I opened my door, it hit the side of Ares' Porsche. I looked to see if there was any marks, there were none. I shrugged my shoulders and carried on into the house. I walked into the dining room where I saw Ares typing on his laptop. He looked up at me.

"Where were you." I asked me.

"You owe me." I threw my jacket on the backs of one of the seats and plonked myself in the chair next to Ares.

"What do you mean?" He looked up from his laptop and turned to face me.

"Your 'relationship' problems." I made quotation marks with my fingers when I said relationship. "You'll should find out what I mean at school tomorrow."

Ares growled at me and turned to face his work. "The relationship between Bella and I does not concern you."

"She is my soon-to-be sister-in-law," I smiled at him. "I want to have a good relationship with her.

Ares said nothing to me. He turned to face his work once again. "Can you help me."

"Sure," I instantly presumed that I had something to do with his and Bella's relationship.

"Why did the French Revolution start?" He asked me seriously.

"What?" He should know this. That was the very reason why our mother died and we are what we are today.

"I'm writing a report about the French Revolution for history."

Afterschool the next day, Ares came home a little later than normal. He didn't follow us home like normal anyways. I was hit with a familiar, sweet-smelling scent. A scent that I knew to be Bella's. I smiled as I knew that he and Bella must have talked through everything. They walked into the kitchen holding hands. My smile only grew as I realised that they were now a thing, and I was very happy for my brother.

Another day, another chapter. Sorry for the late update, I have been working all of the past week at work because we are short staffed and my bosses went away for holiday. With how much I'm working, updates will probably be limited to once a week.

I decided to write in Marie's POV (Ares' younger sister). It was quite fun to do so. It was my plan for her to help them get together in the end. Kinda like Alice, kinda.

In this chapter I talked more about the mate bonds. It's not so intense as the wolf mate bonds that are described in the Wattpad stories, but it's still there. The main reason in a vampire-human mate bond that the only the vampire feels the mate bond is because almost everything about a vampire is heightened (speed, smell, eyesight etc.) so I presume that the bond that are felt between people would be heightened as well. And this is also were I believe the vampire 'powers' or 'gifts' come from. That is why Ares' gift is compulsion, as a prince he would have told people what to do, and it manifested into a gift. The reason why Marcus also 'wrote' the book in this story is that he can see the bonds between people and probably has a deeper understanding of it.

Completely off topic, does anyone have some cosplay ideas? I have a convention that I'm going to and all my friends has there cosplay sorted and I'm still struggling to find someone to cosplay as. I was going to go as someone from Attack on Titan, but if anyone has any better ideas please tell me.

I'm still looking for a beta reader, so if you know anyone or want to beta read for me, please message me or leave a review!

On that note, I'm loving all the feedback that I have been getting. So please leave feedback, reviews, favourites, follows. :)