I will only post the first chapter of this new story here, the rest of the chapters will be posted on P atreon. Once the story is finished on P atreon, I will upload it here; I just don't know how long that will take. But P atreon has given me more time to write, hopefully it shouldn't take as long as some of my other stories to finish. I really appreciate all the support I've gotten here, I'm just branching out a little to P atreon.
Bella had been very excited to go to the baseball game. She had never had a chance to spend time with the entire family. She had only ever spent time with Alice when the shorter woman wanted to play dress-up with her, or occasionally the others if Edward wanted her to have lunch with all of them. She usually just spent her time with Edward and at first, it was great.
Edward had been a giant mystery that she wanted to figure out. She had known there was something different with the whole family; beyond just their good looks. They were so recluse and yet so popular that it practically confounded Bella. From her old school, any of the kids that were as popular and talked about as the Cullen's were, they were always surrounded by other kids and participating in every school even they could. But the Cullen's seemed to want nothing to do with the other kids. And Bella found she needed to know why.
The whole family was a giant mystery that she wanted to figure out. They were the complete opposite of how kids normally acted; they seemed more like adults than teenagers. So when Bella found out that they were basically adults, more like grandparents really, trapped in teenager bodies, it made a lot of sense.
But, in order to figure out the oddities that were the Cullen family, Bella had to get close to one of them. It was just her rotten luck that the only one she could get close to was the sulking Edward. It was even worse luck when Edward informed her that humans that knew about them were either killed or turned. Edward was adamant that she wasn't going to be turned because he didn't want to damn her soul; not that she really cared, Bella was just more for the whole not getting killed thing.
But then, once she was sure he wasn't going to kill her even though he wasn't going to kill her, he let one other piece of information slip. Well, not Edward, Alice had actually let it slip and then Bella had to corner Edward later in her room when he brought her home to get further information. Apparently the only reason they 'allowed' Bella to know about them was because Edward was sure she was his mate.
Bella was very proud of her ability to keep a poker face when that little fact was revealed to him. If she hadn't already known of his old school beliefs and how precarious her life seemed to be when she learned what they were, she would have laughed in his face and told him there was no way she could be his mate because she was gay. Luckily she had already heard quite a few remarks from several members of the family, including her apparent mate, that made it loud and clear that they were not very supportive of gays.
So, she kept her mouth shut.
But that put her in the awkward situation of Edward always wanting to spend time with her and 'being close'. Lucky for her, he was such a prude that he couldn't even bare to kiss her longer than just a peck on the lips before blurring away from her. Bella was sure that if he could do any more than that, she would need some sort of award for keep her stomach down and keeping Edward believing she enjoyed it. In fact, she couldn't even believe that the boy was constantly apologizing for pulling away; as if he couldn't actually tell she was just as thankful as he was.
As they started to spend more time together, as mates were apt to do apparently, she started to push to spend more time with the family. She figured if she could keep others around, she wouldn't have to be lovey-dovey with Edward. She also secretly hoped that if she could endear herself enough to the rest of the family, they would ignore Edward's wishes and turn her and then she could just run away from the boy and never have to touch him again and to worry about the vampire royalty being sent to kill her.
That desire led to Edward picking Bella up for a good old-fashioned game of baseball… on steroids.
When she was first told about it, all she could think about was Charlie taking her to the reservation to play with the other kids and all of them hitting a ball around pretending to play baseball. She thought it would be something similar since there weren't nearly as many Cullen's as was needed to play a real game. When she got there though, she was shocked to see they all even had matching uniforms. Well, in all reality, she shouldn't have been surprised because Alice was a part of the family and she definitely had a thing for fashion.
Edward had put his hat on her, rubbing the hat onto her head, making her feel like he was patronizing a little kid instead of being cute with his supposed mate, and had her sit on the sidelines to watch. Bella at first thought it would be interesting to watch a bunch of vampires play because everything would be a lot more intense. She may not be a fan of sports like her father, but she could enjoy a game well played at least.
Well, she could have enjoyed it if she could actually see what was going on. All the Cullen's were far too much into winning to go slow enough for her to see and instead went as fast as they could. Well, Bella wasn't so sure if Rosalie had intentionally ran as slow as she could when rounding the bases the first time of if the blonde was just trying to show off that they all knew Bella couldn't watch and Rosalie wanted to make sure she knew it. In the long run, all Bella got out of the game was that she was slow and it was a waste of time and made her really cold.
She was just about to tell Edward that she couldn't stay any longer because of how cold she was, but Alice paused the whole game after having a vision. Edward had flown to her, nearly making her fall backwards on her butt because of how close he had gotten to her.
"We have company coming." Alice said, making all the Cullen's surround Bella.
Just hearing the tone Alice used made Bella realize there could be some real trouble heading their way. None of them had been very quiet about how good she apparently smelled and if there were other vampires coming, what were the odds they were as nice as the Cullen's and wouldn't eat her?
With how her luck had been since she met Edward, she didn't think her chances of other golden eyed vampires were very good.
"Come on Bella, let's go." Edward said, causing Bella to shiver in disgust from having him talk so closely to her ear. It was like he thought she wouldn't be able to hear him or something unless he was invading her privacy. Thankfully she knew Edward would likely take Bella's shiver as a sign of lust of something similarly stupid that humans normally react when vampires whisper in their ear.
"It's too late, they've already heard us, they'll see you leaving." Alice warned, turning towards where these uninvited visitors were coming from.
"Which means they'll be able to smell her also." Carlisle said, for once making me think that he was going to be leader he supposedly was and tell them to do something. That thought lasted all of two seconds before Edward gave the commands again.
"Bella, stay behind me." He commanded like Bella was about to go out and hug the new vampires in greeting. He messed with her hair, having it shield her neck because apparently that was the best way to hide her smell, and then stood in front of the human, holding her hand just a shy too tightly for her comfort. She was starting to think he was more afraid of this encounter than she was.
Just slow enough for Bella to see, she could spot three figures appear in the fog. Slowly, she saw the middle figure first, a bare chested man with long blonde hair that was tied in a ponytail. Next to him was a dark skinned vampire with incredibly long dreadlocks and was tossing up and down the ball that had just been hit and ignored. The last figure on the other side of the blonde, that was who had all of Bella's attention at first glance.
The woman had vibrant red hair that reminded Bella of fire. She was wearing a coat lined with fur that Bella couldn't decide if it was real or not but just seemed to make the redhead look more elegant. Her face though, Bella could feel her teenage hormones kick into overdrive when she saw that face. Her eyes held a confidence that any teenager would dream of having, like there was nothing she couldn't do and nothing any could say to stop her from doing what she wanted. Her smirk, it was the sexiest smirk Bella had ever seen. She was sure the smirk could tell tales of mischievous remarks and sarcastic insults.
Bella could feel herself starting to fall into a gay panic for all the feelings this woman was making her feel. Not even Rosalie could make her fall into mush brain mode and the blonde was definitely a bombshell. This was the first time Bella was very thankful that Edward tended to do all the talking for her, whether or not he actually knew what he wanted to say, because she wasn't sure she would be able to come up with an English words while in the redheads presence.
"Hello there." The dark skinned, apparently very French, vampire greeted, barely managing to take Bella's eyes away from the redheads eyes. "Do you have room for three more? We haven't played this in quite a while." He asked with a smile, he certainly seemed kind enough.
"We were just leaving." Carlisle said, surprising me that it wasn't Edward answering instead.
"Come now, it's alright." The blonde said with a smile that screamed danger. "We just want to have a little fun."
"It's getting late Carlisle." Edward said through clenched teeth, pulling Bella further behind him, nearly causing her to stumble from the sudden jerkiness. "We should get going."
"Come on, how about just one game." The French vampire tried again, "In the name of friendship?"
"Well, one game wouldn't hurt." Carlisle said, but it sounded more like a question and made Bella wonder who he was talking to, the new vampires or Edward.
"The human can be on our team." The redhead demanded and the sound of her husky voice made Bella's knees buckle. Bella could die right then and wouldn't entirely happy with how her life had gone from just hearing that vampires voice.
"Oh, you brought a snack?" The blonde said and for just a moment, Bella was going to chuckle because something about the blondes look, while serious, told her that he had just made a joke. But Edwards' reaction made it seem like anything but.
Edward snarled at the tri and crouched in front of Bella as he hissed out a warning, "You'll have to get through me."
"Easy." The redhead promised and for just a moment, the gay haze she had fallen into broke and Bella found she was actually afraid of the redhead. It made Bella remember that the redhead was a vampire and Bella was very much her natural prey. That didn't mean she didn't think her threat was sexy as hell though, Bella just knew not too get to close.
"There's no need for rash behavior." The French vampire said while holding up his hands in a placating manner. "We don't mean any harm." He assured and his calming tone made Bella want to believe him.
"Like hell I don't." The woman hissed, making a move to get closer and effectively causing Bella to lose all sight of what was going on.
Before she could realize it, she was in Edwards' arms and he was racing away. She assumed he had given orders of some sort to the rest of the family, because there was no way the actual coven leader would give orders when there was a perfect Edward around, but she couldn't see anyone else much less talk to Edward while they were going so fast.
She knew he had made a plan to get her away from the trio of red-eyed vampires, but all Bella really wanted was to go back to the redhead and just bask her prettiness. Perhaps it was a good idea Edward was taking her away because surely nothing good would from the human being around vampires that wanted to eat her.