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Honeymoon Suite

Chapter 12: Paradise Lost

Climbing aboard the boat, I had one single, driving, pulsing thought: I needed to hold Bella.

The swim that left my clothes dripping had cleansed me of the blood that conveyed my irrefutable violent nature, but there was no evading the monkey on my back. For the unforeseeable future, as long as Bella chose to stay human at least, I would have to straddle two worlds.

My hunt left me feeling more in control of one aspect of myself, yet anxiety took possession another. Leaving Bella alone on the island was gnawing at my every last nerve. The engines roared to life and I pushed them to the max, training my eyes on the tiny island in the distance.

The sun was making a glorious birth from the ocean. Rays stretched like the make-shift arms of an artist, painting the sky in various hues of oranges and pinks. Dolphins broke the sparkling water surface in celebration of the new day of hunting that lie ahead.

As I neared the island, the sun reached me warming my frigid skin and welcoming me home. The thought of another day with Bella warmed me from the inside.

Securing the craft to the dock, I felt the pull of her. Breaking into a run, I was driven to be in her arms again. That was the one true home I was being called to.

When the house came into view, alarm stuck in the pit of my gut. Light streamed from every window. Again I cursed my nature -- the reason I had to leave her alone. Why had she woken while I was gone? The lit house indicated she was afraid. Had the nightmares returned? If so, the note explaining my absence would be of no comfort to her.

Would she have left the house in search of me?

Why had I brought her so far from home? Her strange onset of symptoms still nagged at my brain. Bella was not well-traveled. Maybe this trip had upset her balance and her symptoms were just a result of home sickness? Whether the symptoms were psychological or physical in origin, it didn't really matter; I had concluded it was time for us to leave our insulated tropical paradise.

As panic continued to push my thoughts and my legs faster, I burst through front door, bending the hinges in the process.

Shedding the tattered shirt that would only complicate her troubled emotional state, I tossed it in the trash bin as I moved through the kitchen. The pungent smell of hot oil and cooked meat permeated the house despite the wide open windows.

Just as her fragrance hit me, I saw her. My feet stopped and relief washed over me.

She was sleeping on the couch, covered in a sheen of perspiration that reflected the flickering light of the movie credits scrolling across the TV screen. The camisole and boy shorts clinging to her damp skin reminded me of how humid the island was. The full-length negligee must have been torture for her to wear in this heat!

Slowly I slid onto the couch to surround her with my coolness.

I placed my nose to her hair and drew in the drug of her scent. Like an addict suffering from withdrawal, the edge I had been experiencing eased and calmness blanketed me. Gloriously she filled and sated my need, but there was something else in its essence. Something unfamiliar…changed.

Closing my eyes and focusing all of my concentration, I again breathed her in to tease apart the smells.

But that was a mistake.

The extra large dose of her singing blood hit my brain like a charge of dynamite. Venom rolled down my throat as it sought to extinguish the burning. My skin buzzed with electricity and my focus blurred. I snapped my eyes open in attempt to break the bewitching spell.

Too much input, you idiot!

Swallowing, I made another attempt, but with a smaller sample. And then analyzed...

Ah, my Bella. Sweet strawberries and freesia, salty sweat and sea water, the siren call of her blood -- I ticked off the recognized scents.

But the next recognition struck me below the belt. My scent -- still clinging to her skin, evaporating into the air with her perspiration.

It marked her as mine. My mate.

This threw my thoughts on another tangent…

While Bella continued to evoke humanness from forgotten crevices in my being, I had underestimated the depth of my innate responses -- the responsesfrom my true, albeit motionless, heart.

Mate. A word a thousand times more meaningful than husband.

Yes, Bella was my wife. In the human world it meant she had legally bound herself to me, took my name, and stood before her God and made a promise.

But in my world, she did so much more than that. She answered the call from deep within me to be my eternal mate.

Love was often transient in the human realm. Couples fell in and out of love at the drop of a hat. And quite frankly, anyone could be a spouse.

What Bella accepted when she married me was an eternal commitment that could never be reversed by legal decree or severed by religious annulment. Mating was a bond that lasted forever in our eternal domain. So much so that even if a mate is somehow lost to final death, a once-mated vampire never took another mate. The union was timeless and beyond most humans' comprehension -- only similar to what I had come to understand about imprinting.

Upon reflection of Bella's inconceivable commitment to me, a bond that had her likewise straddling two worlds, feelings of overwhelming gratefulness enveloped me and I folded my arms firmly around my slumbering Bella, wishing I could physically pull her into me so that we could truly become one.

The rhythm of her breathing changed -- I had inadvertently woken her in my ardor. Forgetting the investigation into her altered scent, I spoke to her.

"I'm sorry," I whispered into her ear, not wanting to frighten her by my sudden presence. Easing my hold on her, I wiped the perspiration from her brow. "So much for thoroughness. I didn't think about how hot you would be with me gone. I'll have an air conditioner installed before I leave again."

With her back against my chest, I could not read the emotions that played across her face, but I felt every muscle in her body tense like a compressed metal spring.

"Excuse me," she blurted out before bolting from my lax embrace.

"Bella?" What the ...

At first I thought to wait and see her destination to know if I should follow, but then thought better of it. Catching up to her, I swooped in to support her around the waist a split second before she vomited.

"Bella? What's wrong?"

It was actually a desperate question I was asking myself more than I was asking it of her. The list of unusual symptoms was progressively getting longer and more perplexing.

"Damn rancid chicken," she spat out in disgust as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Are you all right?" Stupid question upon further consideration. Obviously she was not. I just hoped she didn't say f --"

"Fine. It's just food poisoning. You don't need to see this. Go away."

"Not likely Bella." Why couldn't she predict that by now?

"Go away," she groaned in embarrassment, attempting to push me away as she lurched to the sink.

But I had to do something. Wrapping my arms around her, I completed a basic assessment. Heart rate and breathing had slowed, muscle tension reduced, no fever. I scooped her up in my arms, noting her lack of protest and carried her to the bed, careful to keep her head elevated.

"Food poisoning?" I brought the topic up as she noticeably relaxed into me.

"Yeah. I made some chicken last night. It tasted off, so I threw it out. But I ate a few bites first."

Was this a separate symptom with its own etiology or part of the ongoing syndrome?

"How do you feel now?"

"Pretty normal. A little hungry, actually."

I was tempted to believe this statement since it was more than the usual response of 'fine'. Still something tugged at my brain. I was missing a piece to the puzzle that I could feel it was fully within my reach, yet too close to be seen. Bella would surely nap after this episode of illness -- a call to Carlisle was warranted. At least I could take solace in the fact that if there was anything...serious...going on, I would have heard from Alice already.

Bella abruptly got out of the bed and again I trailed behind her. Halting in front of the refrigerator, she pulled open the door and peered inside.

"I think I'd like some --"

"Eggs, yes, but maybe we should let your stomach recover first. How about a glass of water and rest first?" I placated her.

After keeping water down, I cooked for her and had her rest again. I held Bella's head in my lap as CNN droned on about whether Pluto qualified as a planet. But I was too sidetracked by how I was going to convince Bella we needed to leave for her health -- and my sanity.

While I had expected her to sleep, she actually began fidgeting, eventually looking up at me with...that look.

But as I began to acquiesce to her unspoken request, she tensed and dread widened her eyes. Faster than I had ever seen her move before, Bella launched herself into the kitchen and vomited in the sink. I swept up behind her and again braced her with one arm around her waist and one bundling her hair at the nape of her clammy neck.

That's it! We were leaving. I calculated that it would take me twenty minutes to pack, prep the boat and load our belongings.

Boat. Sea sickness.

Damn!

Seaplane -- better idea. I could hire one out of Rio.

"Maybe we should go back to Rio, see a doctor?" I posed, deciding on a gentle tone as not to upset her more.

Rinsing her mouth, Bella moved stiffly toward the hallway mumbling that word I'd grown to detest. She stepped into the bedroom and shut the door on my face. I hung back and listened from the other side of the door. She brushed her teeth and unzipped her carry-on.

Then silence. No movement...nothing.

Puzzled and concerned, I knocked.

"Are you well? Did you get sick again?"

Though I would have heard her getting sick, I had to do something to get her to talk to me. I was grasping at straws now -- my medical background had failed to produce an answer to her symptoms and my experience with human sickness was nonexistent.

"Yes and no."

She sounded terrified.

"Bella? Can I please come in?" I begged, my hand already crushing the doorknob.

"O…kay..." she responded hesitantly.

Her appearance was pathetic. Sitting on the floor, folded upon herself -- so small and frail looking, utter disbelief showing on her face.

Dashing to her side, the words tumbled out, "What's wrong?"

I placed my hands reassuringly on her shoulders. She appeared to be having a mental breakdown.

"How many days has it been since the wedding?"

"Seventeen. Bella what is it?"

Her lips moved and she motioned for me to wait, but I couldn't stand it -- what the hell was going on?

"Bella! I'm losing my mind over here."

Without verbal response, she reached into her bag, producing a box of tampons as if this package was the answer to my question.

"What? Are you trying to pass this illness off as PMS?"

'No, no Edward. I'm trying to tell you that my period is five days late."

Late? Late?

Explanation – there had to be another explanation!

Stress. Definitely a contributing factor...

Recent change in diet could cause changes in the body...

Think, Edward....

Another reason for a delayed period!

In the background Bella was thinking out loud. Her analysis pushing me in the direction I refused to go and I only heard her in broken spurts.

"...the dreams...sleeping so much...the crying...all that food..."

My brain quickly continued the litany of symptoms: ...the nausea, the vertigo, the cravings...

What I had been missing became painfully clear. I just hadn't consider it because I thought it --

"Impossible," Bella whispered, finishing my thought.

With the full force of my vampiric brain, everything I knew medically about reproduction, conception, pregnancy, fetal development, vampire anatomy, and genetics pushed like a tidal wave from one side of my brain. The wave roared headlong toward the wave of thoughts traveling from the opposite side of my mind. It contained all my knowledge of the incubus and the undeniable lack of evidence of their existence -- no living mothers to tell the tale, no living children as proof.

When the two walls of water collided, there was total annihilation. My mind blanked. I saw nothing, heard nothing, and moved nothing. There was complete devastation within me.

In my mind, I walked amid the rubble of everything that been, but was no more. Gone. It was all gone. Happiness, laughter, trust, hope, future… Bella.

As if broadcast on a loud speaker, the words blared in my head -- NO MOTHERS, NO CHILDREN.

The words grew louder and louder booming over and over until they crushed me to the littered, wet ground of my mind. Curling into a ball, I begged for it to stop. But the words only took on a pounding quality that pummeled me physically. They left nothing but crumbling ruins of my stone body scattered among the devastated landscape.

Here I would remain -- in shatters.

Hope had been my undoing. Pretending I could be something I was not. I was and would always be the perfect killing machine. Even in love, I wrought havoc.

No children. No mothers.

I was a God-damned incubus!

As lost as I was in my own self-destruction, Bella's words reached out to strike me like the punch of a prize fighter --

"...something moved inside me just now."

Moved? Moved!

No baby developed that quickly. Unless...it wasn't a baby at all.

Pull yourself together! Bella's in danger. You did this to her -- you fix it!

Blinking once, I snapped my head up to see Bella's frightened look. She needs to you fix this!

She held my cell phone in her hand and I could hear Carlisle's anxious voice, "Bella? Are you still there?"

Carlisle. He'd fix this! If ever I needed his skills, it was now. I reached for my savior.

Gripping the phone too tightly, I pressed it to my ear, asking the one question I needed to know, "Is it possible?"

"Edward. I didn't think it was possible. I'm...I'm not sure what to say. The genetics...they are just not compatible. You and Bella are genetically too different -- the chromosomes would not pair up evenly at meiosis. There should be no viable product from mating."

I could almost feel the mental anguish he was experiencing as he tried to comprehend how he left us vulnerable to this atrocity.

"There are the myths, the stories, but never in all my centuries have I ever, ever had an ounce of proof. But from the symptoms, she sounds pregnant, Edward. I'm just....the movement. That shouldn't be perceived by the mother before eighteen weeks of pregnancy -- this doesn't bode well for the child's makeup."

"And Bella?" My arm moved protectively around her as I braced for the final blow.

"Edward, I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but I don't know what we are dealing with except that it is growing at a much accelerated rate. Because of that, it may pose a danger to Bella. I'll prepare here. I don't think I need to explain the options, and time is working against us. Get her home as soon as possible."

"Yes. Yes, I will," I said with conviction. All my focus would be on this singular goal -- a goal that had to keep me moving forward. Carlisle was my only hope right now.

Immediately following his edict, I called the airport in Rio.

"What did Carlisle say?" Bella asked quietly.

Emotion had already been shoved into another placed for now. It would only cloud my ability to complete my task. Get Bella home. I barely glanced at her as I responded, "He thinks you're pregnant."

"Who are you calling now?"

"The airport. We're going home," I said flatly.

In the back of my mind, I felt it. Gathering strength in the gloom, my personal tormentor stirred. The barrier had been destroyed, a causality of the calamity that I brought upon my love. But I had to hold it at bay. I had to be strong, at least until Bella was safe. Then doubt would punish me, devour me. This time though, I deserved it. I would not fight.


AN: Ugh. Well there it is -- the shit hits the fan! It took a while to get inside of Edward's head -- to know what he was thinking when he went all catatonic on Bella. Did you agree with my interpretation?

I have had some wonderful input on what readers would like to read in upcoming chapters, considering at this point, BD shifts to Jacob's POV. I was going to write exclusively from Edward's POV, but had some requests to include what Bella was also thinking. Right now I have some conversations with Carlisle and Esme snaking their way through my mind. C&E are my favorite couple, so they had to make an appearance sooner or later!

Thank you so much to those who have read this story -- your opinions/comments/reactions are appreciated. You can also stop by the thread at http://www(dot)twilighted(dot)?f=52&t=6768

Finally, thank you to RoseBella75/IslandWoman221 for pre-reading and being a wonderful source of support. Check out her juicy AH/AU Bella/Edward-centric fanfic, set in a Roman-esque setting titled Forbidden Desire. Complete summary and link is posted on my profile.