Chapter 9

Bella

When we returned to the house with our unexpected guest, Carlisle, Esme, and the others were thrilled to see Nahuel. Esme jumped right to the task of setting him up in the spare bedroom where Renesmee usually slept when she had sleepovers with her grandparents.

While Nahuel was catching up with the rest of the family, I looped my arm through Renesmee's and leaned in to quietly ask her, "You must be thirsty after such a long flight. Want to go for a hunt?"

She cupped her hand around her throat as if to assess her thirst and wordlessly nodded.

Jake stood up from the armchair in the living room, where he and everyone else was gathered, meaning to join us for the hunt. I gave him a look that said, "Not this time." Jake whimpered, sounding very much like a dejected puppy.

"Girls' trip," I told him firmly.

Shoulders hunched in defeat, Jake pouted, "But she's already been away for six days."

"That's why I'm so confident you'll survive another couple of hours," I quipped, standing my ground. Jake heaved a heavy sigh, clearly seeing the futility of arguing the point any further.

"Count me in," Rosalie chimed in, leaving Emmett's side to join Renesmee and me. Alice flitted over to us, too. Gesturing broadly to Jake, Nahuel, and Renesmee, Alice joked, "I may not be able to predict the future around this bunch, but I can still tell when the tea's about to be spilled!"

"I don't think I understand what you mean," Nahuel admitted, his brow puckered with confusion.

Jacob helpfully (if not cheerfully) supplied, "It means they're going to go talk about us."

Nahuel's brows shot up at this explanation and he turned to look at Renesmee. With one side of his mouth curling into a teasing smile, he purred in a silken voice, "All good things, I hope, minha linda."

Thoroughly dazzled, Renesmee's doelike eyes now looked like a deer caught in headlights. Her porcelain skin turned flaming red at the attention.

Edward was seated along with Nahuel, Carlisle, Esme, Emmett, and Jasper in the modern collection of white leather sofas and armchairs. They were all staged around a sleek, white marble-topped coffee table that was square in shape and topped with a crystal vase of Esme's award-winning dahlias, scarlet in color–the kind that looked like bulbous balls of honeycomb atop stiff green stems.

Edward's breath hitched in his throat at the sight of our daughter whose cheeks were approaching the color of the flowers. He looked at me next with a tight-lipped smile, his butterscotch eyes were shiny with nostalgia. It wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking.

Edward

It wasn't as if I'd never seen Nessie blush before (she did have an Uncle Emmett after all, who lived to tease her), but never like that, at the flattering attention of a man. She looked so much like her mother in that moment, it took my breath away.

"Bag something tasty for me, my loves," I called over to Bella and Renesmee as they filed out of the room with my sisters, but it was Rosalie's voice that snarked back, though she was already outside. "Will do, Snookums."

With most of the ladies now absent, the size of our group had dwindled by half, leaving just the men and Mom.

Emmett sat with a scowl; he was disappointed. There were two men in this room who were obviously after the affection of his beloved niece. He'd had aspirations of being the big, scary uncle he swore he'd always be to any unworthy boy who came sniffing around Renesmee. And here were two men, and they were definitely sniffing, and for reasons of family politics, he couldn't put the fear of God into either one of them.

Jasper was taking the temperature of the room and was prepared to step in if needed in such a potentially volatile situation. Two men competing over the affection of a lady was a tale as old as time. And in this case, the lady in question had attracted Jacob, a shapeshifter with a powerful, unbreakable emotional bond, and then there was Nahuel, the only male of her own kind that we could be sure even existed. Emotions were running high, to say the least.

Carlisle and Esme shared the same feeling of uneasiness as Bella and I had when we first saw Nahuel standing with Nessie at the airport. This wouldn't end well for someone, and for whomever that was, it wouldn't be as simple as just finding another mate. Both men had a legitimate claim that Renesmee was literally the only woman for him. Despite that, Renesmee was fully within her right to reject both of them if neither man suited her. And frankly, I was fully in support of that option, not that I thought she'd take it, I inwardly grumbled.

"Nahuel, how good it is to see you again! And thankfully under much more pleasant circumstances, I might add," Carlisle greeted cordially, despite his inner misgivings.

"You mean without the distraction of imminent death?" Nahuel chuckled, thinking of the red-cloaked mob that had assembled to destroy us that day in the clearing six and half years ago.

"Quite!" Carlisle agreed, chuckling politely at Nahuel's macabre joke.

"Carlisle," I chimed in in a conversational tone, "Nahuel mentioned on the way here that he and Huilen merged covens with the Amazons. That's how he and Renesmee reconnected," I supplied, hearing the questions in my family's respective thoughts.

"Is that right?" Carlisle asked pleasantly, his eyebrows raised in surprise at this new bit of information.

"Well, I'm glad that something positive could come out of that regretful day." A faint smile pulled at the corner of my father figure's mouth, though his thoughts drifted to our lost cousin Irina's frightened face right before she was executed right in front of us. The memory vanished, replaced by Carlisle's mental voice apologizing for letting his thoughts get away from him.

In a move that would be barely noticeable to anybody else, I shook my head once to let him know that his apologies were hardly necessary.

"What a lovely surprise. We're so thrilled you could come to visit us!" Esme greeted warmly with her usual grace and charm.

"Likewise, madam. Thank you for your hospitality. I had always meant to get to know my golden-eyed friends better. I am so very curious about the lives you lead here, coexisting with humans. And Renesmee turning up in the jungle…well, it felt like a message from the gods.

"Speaking of the gods," Nahuel murmured and bent down to retrieve two small parcels from the messenger bag on the floor by his feet. "I have not come empty-handed" he grinned as he handed a small flat square package wrapped in simple brown paper to Carlisle and a small leather drawstring pouch to Esme.

Esme loosened the ties and slid a beaded necklace onto her palm. Upon closer inspection, the beads weren't beads at all, they were seeds– acai and Tagua seeds to be exact, polished, drilled, and dyed to make an attractive multi-stranded necklace that dangled delicately from Esme's fingers.

"Oh, Nahuel, it's beautiful," Esme gushed as she wordlessly handed the necklace to Carlisle sitting next to her so he could fasten it around her neck. It was a bit bolder and chunkier than the pieces she normally wore, but Esme could pull off anything, and the strands of what could've passed for black freshwater pearls were no exception.

"You are most welcome," he nodded his head respectfully. "It is so you may always keep a piece of our jungle close to your heart.

Carlisle carefully opened his gift next. "Carlisle, Renesmee tells me you're quite the art collector," Nahuel began.

When Carlisle pulled away the paper, he revealed a small, brightly colored canvas that depicted in brilliant strokes of yellow and orange what looked like a fire goddess casting her light and warmth over the earth, the trees, and the leaves. The long serpentine body of a boa constrictor stretched out around the base of the trees could almost be mistaken for tree roots snaking out of the ground.

"My good friend Nixiwaka Yawanawá painted this. He said it represents 'the very powerful Vana spirits. They are the guardian angels that protect us from bad things and as such are seen as the Spirit of our own shadow."

"It's exquisite," Carlisle told him as he admired the small, vibrant painting with its dancing shapes and colors that were somehow alive with movement though they remained still and unchanging as any other painting on the wall. "And I know just the spot for it. Thank you for this, Nahuel. Truly."

God, this guy is so obvious. Does no one else see it but me? He's not here to catch up with the Cullens, Jacob internally scoffed. He's here for Nessie! He wants to steal her away back to his jungle where they can swing from vine to vine into the sunset like bloodsucker Tarzan & Jane.

No matter what Edward may think of me, there's no freaking way he could be okay with that.

At the mention of my name, I glanced impassively in Jacob's direction. His dark, guarded eyes were watching me with a contemplative expression.

He was correct in his assertion, of course; there was indeed no freaking way I'd be "okay" with Renesmee leaving us to live half a world away with a coven of vampires who did not live according to our chosen lifestyle. But Jacob was overestimating the power I held in this situation.

Just like Chief Swan would have rather been skinned alive than marry off his teenage daughter to the likes of me, what choice did he really have? The same choice that was before me now. Support my daughter's choices or risk losing her—an intolerable notion.

Never one to shy away from addressing the elephant in the room, Emmett tactlessly blurted out, "So, Nahuel, is it your intention to court Nessie or what? Because I think we have what you might call a 'supply and demand problem,' he cracked in a tone that was impressively dry coming from Emmett.

"Emmett!" Esme scolded, glaring daggers at her youngest son for his lack of decorum.

"What?" He shrugged his mountainous shoulders unapologetically. "I just asked what everyone else was thinking."

"More or less," I muttered, in defense of my brother. Esme glared at me next, mentally reminding me that no child of hers would be rude to a guest in her house.

Squaring his shoulders and jutting out his chin a little bit, Nahuel answered in a clear and confident voice, "Yes, that is my intention. If she'll have me."

Jacob's teeth clenched audibly inside his jaw and he growled, "Don't you think you're a little old for her?"

Nahuel rolled his eyes at the question and snorted with unveiled contempt, "What is age to an immortal? Such a silly human concept."

"Not that silly, she's half-human!" Jacob argued hotly.

"And you are half dog, so shouldn't you be off chasing your tail somewhere?" Nahuel huffed impatiently.

Growling furiously, Jacob jumped to his feet. His hands were curled into fists at his side, vibrating with the restraint it took for him to not phase right then and there in the middle of the living room.

Nahuel stood up, too, more calmly though, and that's when Jasper put himself in between the two men, insisting they both "take it easy."

Fighting the calming effect that Jasper was blasting at him, Jacob roared, "Who the hell are you? You don't know anything about Renesmee! You don't care about her the way that I do! You're only interested because she's the only hybrid female who isn't your sister," Jacob spat, literally, with droplets of spittle flying out of his mouth at the accusation.

Nahuel made a show of disgustedly wiping the saliva off his cheek with a single finger, "No, you're the one that doesn't know anything about her. Or what she's capable of, human," he growled with superiority as if he was addressing a cockroach instead of a man.

"She deserves to be with someone of her own kind, someone who won't hold her back, physically ORintellectually," Nahuel answered calmly, though his insides were roiling with frustration and a concentrated dose of testosterone.

Jacob blanched but then quickly recovered. In a cold, hard voice, Jacob proclaimed, "It doesn't matter what you say. You're not what she wants. Nessie knows where she belongs."

The corners of my mouth twitched faintly upward as Jacob's thoughts revealed the statement to be a selfless one. He wasn't thinking solely of himself, but instead of her entire family in which he reluctantly included himself.

Bella

I knew Renesmee well enough to know that if we ambushed her with probing questions at the earliest opportunity, she would clam right up. She may have been more mature than your typical teenager in many ways, but she was still half-human. And even more importantly, she had half of my genes. So we kept the conversation pretty innocuous until after she'd fed, at which time her lips were likely to be loosened by the intoxicating aftereffects of the hunt.

"By the way you took down that bear, I'd think that this was the first time you've hunted since you left," I tossed out offhandedly as I flung the carcass of the elk bull I'd just drained into a shallow grave.

Just then, the limp, drained body of another elk seemed to fall from the sky, landing on top of the other one in a disturbing heap of fur, bone, and antlers. Rosalie, who, like a jaguar, preferred to take her prey to the treetops, leapt down after it, landing weightlessly on the balls of her feet. She snickered with amusement. "Seriously. Your Uncle Em would be so proud!"

Renesmee flushed but said nothing as she quickly buried the remains of her own kill. Her reaction confirmed my suspicions.

I clucked my tongue with disapproval. "Renesmee," I chided with my tone. "How come?"

She shrugged noncommittally. "I dunno. I guess I was kind of embarrassed."

"Embarrassed?" I mouthed the word. "Whatever for?"

Renesmee gave me a pointed look as if I was missing something obvious.

"Because the Amazons hunt humans and you do not," I finally deduced, saying the words as a statement of fact rather than a question as it was the only explanation that made sense.

"Did they say anything to you about it?" I asked, working hard to keep my tone neutral.

She shook her head. "No. It was nothing, really. Just a face Nahuel made when I caught the scent of a jaguar and my stomach growled," Renesmee admitted with an embarrassed roll of her eyes. "Ugh, I really hate my human side, sometimes," she muttered, hiding her heated face in her hands.

My expression softened instantly. "I may not be a hybrid, but I can certainly remember what that's like. I don't have enough fingers or toes to count the number of times I hated being human when I started dating your father," I chuckled.

"But Daddy loved that you were human," Renesmee replied uncomprehendingly, her nose scrunched up with confusion.

I snorted at that. "Do you think that mattered to me when I had gas or morning breath or pimples?" I asked incredulously and playfully ruffled her hair. "And don't even get me started on menstrual periods," I groaned, causing Alice and Rose to laugh, I'm sure, at their own recollections of my human frailties.

"Oh my God, oh my god, oh my god!" Alice bubbled over, practically bouncing out of her skin. Her words were spoken in such a rush that they collided with each other. "Did your mother ever tell you about the first time she got her period while dating your father?"

"Alice, shut up right now," I told my favorite sister in an unamused voice, feeling my own cheeks burn though I knew it was only phantom blushing because the only blood left in my body was from the elk I'd just put in the ground.

"Nooo!" Renesmee answered, dissolving into a fit of giggles. "What did she do?"

"She stayed home from school. Told him she didn't feel well, and how do you think your dad took it when he offered to come over and keep her company and she refused?"

"I'm guessing not well?" Renesmee asked through a broad, anticipatory smile.

"He had convinced himself that your mom was blowing him off, so he marched over to her house ready to make a big speech about how he was going to fight for her. And when he got there, he found her in her sweatpants, watching "The Notebook" for the hundredth time, and ugly-crying into a pint of rocky road," Alice was now laughing so hard she'd be in tears if it were somehow possible for her to shed them.

"That definitely sounds like Dad, alright," Renesmee laughed, "But that sounds like it would be more embarrassing for him than it was for you," she added with a thoughtful expression.

"You haven't heard the best part," Rosalie interjected with a coy smirk.

"Rose," I growled in warning, but typical of Rosalie, she paid me no heed.

Through a wide, Cheshire Cat grin, Rosalie recalled, "Your mom went back to school the next day, doubled up on maxi pads, presumably so Edward wouldn't be as affected by the smell of her blood. And…and–" Rosalie was cut off by forceful peals of laughter that left her unable to finish the story.

"And what?" Renesmee demanded, looking from Rosalie to Alice to me. Of the three of us, I was the only one who wasn't giggling uncontrollably.

I huffed out a sigh. "When I walked down the halls, the pads sort of…rubbed together and made like a swishing sound…" I admitted irritably, wishing for all the world that a hole would open up in the earth and swallow me whole. When I'd fantasized about recalling my youth to my child, this particular memory hadn't been one I wanted to share.

"It was more like a crinkly, diaper sound," Alice corrected, doing an impression of my clumsy human gait.

"NO!" Renesmee gasped, covering her mouth with her hands in vicarious mortification.

"It's true. She earned the nickname 'Swaddler Swan' that day," Rosalie crowed, truly enjoying herself now.

"Stop it, Rose, nobody called me that," I rolled my eyes with annoyance.

"Maybe not to your face," she coolly replied.

"Regardless," I said pointedly, trying to get back on track, "we're not talking about me right now. We're talking about you," I cupped my hand to the side of Renesmee's face. "And you should never feel embarrassed that you have no desire to kill humans, Sweetheart. It's who you are and you should be proud of that! I know I am."

"I know, I know. It was stupid not to feed. It was just the first time anybody ever made me feel strange or different for hunting the way we do," Renesmee shrugged uncomfortably.

Chiming in with all the subtlety of a hand grenade, Alice asked next, "Ok, but how else does Nahuel make you feel?"

"Confused," Renesmee moaned, sinking down onto the ground at the base of a cluster of Douglas fir trees where she tucked her knees against her chest and rested her chin on top of one knee.

Rosalie and I lowered ourselves to the ground on either side of her while Alice stood, probably preferring not to dirty her designer jeans.

"Confused about what?" I gently probed.

"I just never thought I'd have feelings for two people at the same time. How is that even possible? Isn't love supposed to be this all-consuming thing? The way it is with you and Daddy? Or you and Uncle Em? Or you and Uncle Jasper?" Renesmee asked, directing her plight to all three of us.

Rosalie, Alice, and I exchanged tense looks.

"Honey, sometimes it's not always that simple. Sometimes you have to do a little soul searching until you know your own heart…And sometimes," I sighed as I tucked a dew-dampened tendril of auburn hair behind her ear, "though it's the last thing you mean to do, you hurt the people you love while you're trying to figure it out."

"Was it ever like that for you?" she asked. Her wide brown eyes may have been mine but they were so agonized that she looked like the spitting image of her father.

I opened my mouth to answer, though I didn't immediately have the words to explain. I'd never lied to Renesmee before, but I knew I couldn't tell her the truth about this, not the whole truth anyway. And not because I was ashamed (even if I was), but because I didn't want her relationship with Jake to be in any way tainted by my history with him. I made that decision years ago when I came to the conclusion that there was no healthy way to maintain a close friendship with Renesmee's person, and that's who he was now and forevermore.

"Yes, actually," I answered hoarsely. "I've never told you this before, but before we got married, your dad and I…split up for a while."

Renesmee turned her head to the side to gape at me with wide-eyed astonishment. "Seriously? You broke up? Why?" she asked, her expression stricken with a mixture of curiosity and devastation.

"He broke up with me, actually. Not because he didn't want to be with me anymore but because he loved me and was worried that I would get killed if I continued to hang around vampires while I was still a fragile human. Though, I didn't know that at the time. He just told me he couldn't be with me anymore, and then he left. For a long time. I thought I'd never see him again."

I knew I was rewriting history a bit to make Edward and his family not seem so cruel, but I didn't want my husband's worst (albeit well-intentioned) moment to shape my daughter's opinions of her family.

Renesmee gasped. "What did you do?"

"I was depressed for a long time. Could barely function. But eventually, I had to start to pick up the pieces and try to move on. That's when I started to get pretty close to this other guy from my high school…Mike Newton," I lied convincingly.

"He was there for me like no one else was. He was my best friend even though I sort of knew he had a crush on me. He taught me how to ride my first motorcycle. And how to smile again when I thought I never would," I smiled faintly at the memories. "And if your dad had never come back, I might've found a way to be reasonably happy with him," I sighed. "But he did come back. And it was a really painful time for all three of us until I was able to find the strength to let Mike go."

"Did Mike ever forgive you?" Renesmee asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

"Yes. In the end, it all turned out for the best. I ended up with your dad and Mike moved on and later met his real true love. She's pretty perfect actually," I admitted with a tight smile. "So I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes a broken heart feels like it's the end of everything but it's really just the beginning of something else that might be even better. Does that make sense?"

Renesmee nodded mutely as I leaned toward her and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

"What is your heart telling you, sweetie?" Alice offered with an encouraging smile.

Renesmee's face fell. "So many things!" she exclaimed with a moan and placed her hand over her rapidly fluttering heart. "But I guess that makes sense, ya know, since my heart beats in double-time," she explained, one corner of her mouth curling into a crooked smile. Rosalie, Alice, and I were having a laugh over that but our titters quickly faded away as Renesmee began to open up.

"I know that I love Jacob. He's my person, ya know? I can't imagine my life without him. I don't want to imagine my life without him…" Renesmee began, but I could hear a note of hesitation in her voice, and apparently, I wasn't the only one.

"But?" Rosalie asked in the gentle voice she reserved only for my daughter.

"But…Nahuel, he makes me feel things that I have a difficult time explaining," she blushed.

"Girrrl, you don't have to tell us!" Alice crowed. "The sexy accent? Those dimples?" Alice purred suggestively, causing all three of us to throw her some side-eye.

"What?!" she huffed defensively. "I may be a happily married woman but I'm not blind! Nahuel's a stud. And I might even be able to say the same thing about Jacob if he didn't smell so god-awful," Alice admitted, wrinkling her nose with disgust.

Renesmee laughed and replied, "Yes, they're both very attractive. But that's not quite what I meant. Nahuel just gets me in a way that no one else does, because we're the same. And it certainly doesn't hurt that he doesn't think of me as the little kid he watched grow up very recently.

"And then there's Jake…he's my soulmate. I'm certain of it. I just wish…I don't know what I wish. That I hadn't met him so young, maybe? That he met me–and imprinted on me– when I was older and it wasn't weird or questionable for him to love me as a man loves a woman rather than an adult who loves a child.

"Or maybe that he hadn't imprinted on me at all. Not because I don't want him, but because there will always be some part of me that wonders if Jake would love me like he does if it wasn't for the wolfy love spell that he never wanted or asked for," Renesmee mused in a pained, hollow voice.

"Oh, sweetheart," I breathed, wrapping my arms around her in a tight hug from one side while Rosalie held her from the other. Even Alice knelt down and got in on the group hug, designer jeans be damned.

"That's not even the worst part…The worst part is that while I'm pretty dang sure that my forever is with Jake…I'm not sure if I'm ready for my forever with him to start right now. And I feel like the most awful, selfish person in the world admitting that especially knowing how much it would hurt Jake if I explored things with Nahuel, but there it is," she dejectedly sighed.

It was Alice who was first to respond.

"You listen here, little missy, " she demanded like one fired-up little pixie. "Nothing about the way you grew up is even remotely in the same atmosphere of what could be considered 'normal,'" she paused, using air quotes for emphasis, but really she was just building up steam.

"Not shapeshifters or vampires or imprint bonds or you yourself being on the critically endangered species list!" she blustered, her voice gaining volume and intensity with every word she spoke.

"You know what is normal? Wanting to date around a little before you settle down with the person you're meant to be with forever. Don't for one minute think that that makes you awful or selfish because, sweet child, it just isn't true! The only thing you owe Jacob Black, or Nahuel for that matter, is honesty."

"You're a tough act to follow, Alice," I laughed once a bit awkwardly. "And you're completely right, of course."

Rosalie nodded in agreement, before chipping in two cents of her own. "You never buy a car without test-driving a few other models first. Men are no different."

"Really, Rose?" Alice gave Rosalie an incredulous look. "Test drive a few other models? That's your advice?" she asked in a critical tone steeped with ridicule.

Gesturing to Renesmee with a sweep of her hand, Rosalie rebutted with her trademark snark, "How else is the girl going to decide between a hybrid and a convertible?"

Renesmee groaned at her Aunt Rose's terrible joke but nonetheless, it had the desired effect. All four of us, starting with my daughter, dissolved into raucous, side-splitting laughter.

Author's Note: Omg y'all, I'm sorry for making you wait so long for this update. Let this be your public service announcement to never neglect self-care or else your body will force you to care for it in the most agonizing of ways.

Case in point, I spent the last few weeks having difficulty standing up due to planter's fasciitis, having difficulty sitting down due to a sciatica flare-up, and TMJ caused the right side of my face to go numb. All at the same 👏damn 👏 time 👏. I have finally recovered enough to push this one out, but dang y'all, I'm 37 and I guess it's all downhill from here! 👵💀

Will be posting reference pics of Esme's necklace and Carlisle's painting on my Discord channel if anybody is interested. Thanks as always for reading and reviewing! Can't wait to hear what you think!