I.

I was going to die.

But I am not afraid.

I have never been afraid of death.

Many times I have faced death in my short life, in only but a couple of years. The thing I was most scared of was the pain, but I knew it would end, as all things do. There are many religions in this world, so many gods, so many beliefs that told of how death of the natural body was not the end of your soul- meaning reincarnation. That was what I believed in, but not in the actual transformation of the soul.

More like the adding to the soul- the adding of the Beast.

~.O.~

My mother had been a very eccentric woman for as long as I can remember, and she had moved us around very much well into my teens before she had met Phil and decided to then follow him around the U.S. We had gone through much of Europe in my childhood, and one of my earliest childhood memories was picking the new place we would be going next. We had met so many people, lived so many different ways, and learned much of the cultures we encountered.

I had always believed in the act of the soul jumping from body to body after it's death, and the supernatural. It was one of the things many of these people we had lived with had in common, so I had to believe that you weren't stuck in the sky with a bunch of other souls who had only lived once and that was it. No one can know what happens after death, only the gods do.

Until you do.

Each religion had an individual tale, somewhat similar, somewhat different depending on what region you were in, but each had at least one. The ones that I had been stuck on had to do with vampires, and witches, and werewolves. Not the television franchised ones either that romanticized them, or turned them out to be scrupless killers and murders.

Mom didn't have many rules, but I had broken the most important one. The first time I had seen something that I would never forget, I wasn't supposed to be outside. That was the first rule, Don't go outside in a village when you hear howls during the full moon. The second was, Never invite someone inside your home. The third, Never trust witches, they only look out for themselves. And the most important, Never take someone at face value. The last rule always came back to the others.

I had been a young teenager at the time, and curious as to what they looked like. I knew they were wolves of course since their screams turned to howls as the moon rose, and in this particular village these werewolves were more in touch with their Beasts while in human form. I had always been a small quiet girl, so I had gotten away with sneaking around and listening to the village witches and healers talk and the herbs they used. They had made a tonic that allowed the wolves to become semi- conscious while in their Beast form, so I knew I could probably get away with it.

I watched them the whole night, feasting, mating, basking in the moonlight. They were vicious, and savage, and I loved the raw emotion they held within them. The next morning, I was cornered by the Alpha's son who was a few years my senior and had known I watched as they indulged their Beast, and I still think back to the little tryst we had that taught me that wolves had no qualms with claiming what they wanted with a smile.

My mother had never found out about that certain rule break, but she had about the next. This one prompting her to send me off to my father to keep me out of the danger she had unknowingly raised me in. This danger was unavoidable, seeing as it was myself, and one silver- tongued vampire that would change my world entirely.

The one who would bring me face to face with my own Beast.

II.

I looked down to my hand that held a vial of thick red liquid that I knew for a fact tasted like a piece of the finest chocolate and bourbon combination. It was only supposed to use for emergencies, and I guess this qualified as one. Or for when I was ready to take it.

I knocked it back, and moaned at the familiar taste; a smell accompanying it that brought back the image of glittering blue eyes twinkling with hidden secrets, and a pale mouth curled at the corners in a smirk.

~.O.~

I loved my Dad, even if mine and my mother's traveling came a very close second. I met the blue- eyed devil that would compromise everything I had been taught, and would validate everything I knew already to be true.

He had charmed me, and I let him even after I saw the ring on his finger. It was ironic in a way. My mother fought to keep me away from every one of their kind, but she unknowingly put me right into the path of him.

"Daddy!" I threw myself into the warm arms of my father, feeling the snow fall into the collar of my shirt, but not caring.

"Little Bells!" his deep laugh rumbled in my ear.

I couldn't see much then from where my face was buried into his shoulder, but I saw a flash of pale skin and dark hair that whet my curiosity. Pulling back, I had stared at the man standing behind my father, he staring back at me with his head cocked to the side.

"This is Damon Salvatore, Bells. Damon, this is my daughter Isabella."

"Hello, piccolo uccello. " He called me 'little bird' just as he grabbed my outstretched hand, kissing the back of it as a crow in up in the trees gave a loud caw.

I loved watching the way the snow added white to his hair, melting into the black and caused it to curl at the ends.

" Ciao, incantatore di corvi, " I smiled sweetly as his brief surprise at being called a raven charmer melted into a smirk that seemed right at home on his face.

He came into my life and turned it upside down with all his unpredictableness, and his healing blood. I can still feel the way his blood first mingled with mine, and the way it tasted like ambrosia on my tongue. My body burned with fever, my head delirious with visions of bloody teeth, and his voice whispering in my ear.

"I'm right here… "

"I'll make you all better… "

"I promised you we would see Italy together remember..."

I woke up in his strong arms, surrounded by his masculine smell that would never fail to soothe me.

III.

The definition of the word Beast is a four legged animal that will attack with, or without provocation. Anything that runs, crawls, flies, or slithers is considered misunderstood for nothing other than it doesn't walk on two legs. Many of these could be called a Beast.

But what if a Beast walked on two legs?

Would the world spin off it's axis?

Would the sun stop shining?

The answer's no. They wouldn't.

The definition of a Monster is an imaginary creature in a storybook that is large and frightening.

They are not only in children's stories.

They are here, walking on two feet. Living among the people of the world, hidden, breathing with two lungs, and sustaining their live source with sharpened canines.

~.O.~

The first time I saw his face, his true face of beasts and monster written upon the lines of dark veins crawling down his cheeks like spiders, I knew I was lost. I was his, irrevocably and eternally as his white fangs sank into the neck of the man who had followed me home in the dark of the night. The bodies of his friends growing cold on the ground with holes in their necks.

IV.

I learned long ago that I didn't fit in this world. I had always attracted the unnatural- human, animal or other.

I stood shivering in the cold, waiting for my death in the form of a pale skinned redhead. And I knew she would succeed this time. I shouldn't have waited this long. So many lives were on the line, and some would die, or be wounded. But I wasn't sure I really cared. That was another thing unnatural about my mind.

Edward, who stood by my side, had said that was what had drawn him to me in the first place. Maybe something was wrong with me to not care about someone who was willing to die for me.

Jacob stood on the other side of me, radiating warmth. He was another who was willing to risk his life for mine own.

They didn't understand. I was ready to die. I hoped for it.

And I got my wish in the form of death with the face of a woman, carved as if from stone framed in long tangled curls the color of thin blood. Snarls surrounded me, growls, and blurs, but I moved not from my spot.

A sharp prick in my neck, and a sharp twist brought darkness.

The word "NO!" the last I heard for a while.

~.O.~

It was as if anything supernatural that surrounded me was no longer a surprise, and nothing could phase me anymore. Desensitization is what it is called when you are no longer affected by something that could once try its hardest to make your heart beat right out of your chest, something like a certain vampire named Damon Salvatore.

But even if I did know pain all my life, I could never prepare for the day that Damon had said he was to leave the place I had found a home in. I understood completely why he had to go to his brother who he hadn't seen for years and years, but all that understanding could not smother the worry I had for him going back to a town that was completely bent on killing him. No one would protect him as fully as I would. If I were not human anyway.

My foray into the world of the Cold Ones was a reckless decision. Although, despite knowing that everyday spent with them was just as dangerous as spending my days with the children enslaved to the moon, Edward and his family were a way to pass the time that served as a reminder to myself that the world in which was now absent a certain vampire was still real. That it was still tangible and within reach even with hundreds of miles separating us from one another, and he was still out there waiting for us to be reunited once again.

I knew part of the reason Damon was so willing to leave was that he believed everything he came into contact was destroyed eventually. Be it a day, a year, or ten years, eventually he thought he would do something that would ostracized himself and he would be alone again. Just as he had done with Stefan. But even he couldn't leave his human mate indefinitely.

He said he would see me again one day, he would find me even at the edge of the world, although he did not know when. He was certainly right in that fact.

V.

I could hear whispers.

"We won. But we lost."

"Its was all for nothing."

Air was on either side of me, and I could feel hardness at my back.

"She should be cold by now. It's not normal."

I could feel every fiber of fabric from what covered my nakedness, my hands twined together resting on my stomach.

"What will we tell Charlie?"

I saw a man in the darkness of my mind, a young man with untidy dark brown hair, a beard on the chin. A warmth spread from my heart.

"My mate."

That's not right. I was confused. The voice was the wrong one. Another man replaced the pale skinned man. A man with no discernable age, wavy black hair falling across his forehead. The warmth spread to my extremities.

"Do you hear that?"

I could hear it. A heartbeat. My heartbeat.

A smile curled my lips as a tingling formed along my cheeks, under my eyes.

"She's alive!"

"Bella!"

~.O.~

His own father had killed him with a bullet to the torso he told her the day he had given her a beautiful lapis lazuli ring. His turning was all pain, and fire, and an indescribable blackness as if he were trapped in a dream as he was laid to be burned the next morning.

My own turning, or rebirth as I would call it, was as if I were underwater and all the air had been sucked from my lungs to redirect all systems to heal the burning sensation upon my neck. Blackness and indecipherable sounds filtering through my ears as the fire then concentrated in the area that was the gums around my teeth.

Soft as a butterfly's wings, black veins crept along my cheeks to signal the hunger that now gnawed at my core.

VI.

I stood in front of him. The love of my life that would now be significantly longer than before. Teenagers stood behind him, confused looks on their faces as he stared at me. Unblinking.

We had not seen each other in years. Had not heard each other's voices in years.

He approached me, lifting large hands to cup my cheeks.

Had not touched one another in years.

"La mia Isabella."

I smiled tentatively, only a quirk of my lips really as our foreheads touched and my hands rose to his forearms.

"Il mio Damon."

I closed my eyes and revealed in his peace.

I was home.

~.O.~

Finally kissing Damon after months apart relieved the tight feeling that had grown in my chest once my red eyes had first opened, a tingling upon my cheeks as we shared our first blood together.

I had spent much of my life contemplating what the meaning of a true monster was, and now I knew.