Chapter Five

All of a sudden there was a knock at the door and I slightly jumped from the sound of it. I was able to get out of his grip and move around him.

"Master Caius, I apologize for interrupting but..." someone from the other side of the door was starting to address him.

So, his name was Caius. Wait, what else was said?

He dropped his head a little bit and stood back tall before moving towards the door while I collected myself. Instantly, he opened the door and the atmosphere changed and he was a completely different person from a few seconds ago. I couldn't really hear the conversation that was happening just a few feet away from me.

Suddenly a heard a voice that I would recognize anywhere yelling for me "Bella!"

"Bella, where are you!?"

"Get your hands off me. I demand you take me to Bella right now!"

I heard Ashleigh yelling at someone outside of the room and decided to push past Caius and the teenage looking girl that was speaking with him who looked at me like I was the dirt at the bottom of her shoes and walked out to the hallway and saw my friend getting pushed into another room on the far end. Before I could process everything, I just saw the door get closed by two gentlemen and they looked over to our end of the hallway and bowed their heads a bit and disappeared.

I heard her scream from inside the room. Before I knew what I was doing I started to run towards that door to save her. I wasn't exactly sure how I would save her against vampires but I couldn't just let her die.

The door was locked.

I turned around to look at Caius to open up the door but he was gone. In fact, I was completely alone in the hallway.

I started to bang on the door and after a few minutes it swung open and Ashleigh was there and she was alive and okay.

"They are all dead," she automatically said to me as soon as she recognized that it was me and I saw tears running down her face. Wait, what? She was shaking and I went to hug her and close the door behind me so we were alone in the room.

"What are you talking about?" I asked her.

"They...they killed them all...no one...is left but...but ...us. Why!? All the blood."

I wanted to explain who and what we were dealing with but didn't want to put her in any more danger than she already was in and if I was being completely honest, I have no idea why we were still alive. We sat in silence for a few minutes just trying to process what has happened up until now. It was like we were living in a small limbo while we wait for whatever would come next.

There was a knock at the door that brought us both out of our thoughts.

"Don't open the door" Ashleigh whispered to me but I shook my head and stood up to go open it.

It was the teenage girl that I saw Caius speaking to earlier.

"Both of you are required to go down to the throne room immediately," she stated.

I turned around to look at my friend and I knew without a doubt that she was scared shitless. It didn't take long for me to convenience her that it would be in our best interest to go ahead and follow the girl back to the throne room.

As we almost made it back to the entrance of the throne room I looked over at Ashleigh and whispered to her "It will be okay. Trust me."

Yeah, now if I can believe what I just told her as we slowly walked back into the throne room for the second time in less than two hours. My mind was racing at a million miles per minute that before I knew it we were back in the middle of the room and it was exactly the same as before just without the group we originally came with.

Just Ashleigh and I. Plus vampires.

I am not the best at math but I would say our odds are not in our favor right now.

I looked up and all three kings were sitting on their thrones and I glanced over at Caius but he would not look at me even though it was very obvious I was looking at him for answers. I am not exactly sure why I thought he would give them to me by just looking at him. Something was very wrong with this whole situation but there was a small part of me that trusted him in some ways. I felt safe in a very unsafe situation.

"We need to discuss a few things but we are just waiting for a few others to join us before we begin," the one who addressed himself as Aro said with a big knowing smile on his face. I am not sure who else we could be waiting for. If what Ashleigh told me was true and we are the only ones left from our group who else would we be waiting on.

The doors began to open again which caught my attention and I turned around to see who these mystery guests are. It was like a blur at first as they started to enter into the room and it slowly started to go into focus.

"Bella!?"

No!

It couldn't be.

Seriously.

Wait.

How?

Hold up!

This is a joke, right?

"Bella, is that really you?"

Hell no.

Okay.

All I could do was stare at the group that just walked in and I was in complete shock. I couldn't speak. All of the memories came back in a rush and I honestly thought I would never see them again.

Finally, I snapped out it.

And before I could say anything Aro clapped and it brought everyone's attention back to him including mine.

"Don't you just love happy endings?" he said and looked directly at me and continued to say.

"Oh, how rude of me. Bella and Ashleigh let me introduce you to The Cullen's."

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Until the next chapter...