{Chapter Six}

Within seconds of realizing I'm unconscious, I am up on my feet. My every thought is in high definition as I take a second to gather my senses. Stumbling my way to the bathroom, I splash cool water on my face. Staring at myself in the mirror, I try to remember what happened when I was last conscious...Carlisle and the others hadn't come home. Jasper was pacing the length of the living room, worried that something had gone wrong. I guess at some point I must have passed out and Jasper brought me upstairs. I dry my face off and toss the towel into the laundry basket before flopping back down on my bed. A loud knock interrupts my thoughts as my door burst open. Emmett stands in the doorway with a giant smile on his face.
"I knocked this time," he says.
"It defeats the purpose if you're just going to open the door anyway," I say.
He shrugs, "at least I knocked. Anyway, it's not like you were doing something important."
"I could have been and that's not the point, the point is..."
Then it kicks in that I'm talking to Emmett. I fly across the room and tackle him into a hug. He laughs before hugging me back. After a few seconds, he pretends to cough as if he can't breathe.
"Can't breathe," he gasps.
I look up at him with one eyebrow raised.
"You don't breathe. You're kind of undead."
"That is beside the point. If I could breathe, I wouldn't be able to."
"Whatever," I laugh.
I sit down on my bed, "so, what happened? Is everyone okay? Is the pack okay? Do they still want to kill me?"
Emmett holds up his hand, "one question at a time, Wolfe. Carlisle will explain everything once we're downstairs and you have stopped your boyfriend from eating us out of house and home."
"My...Seth came back?" I ask.
"Yeah, guy refuses to go home. Said that he wasn't sure he could go home even if he wanted to."
I run my fingers through my long hair and sigh. This is all because of me. Seth can't go home because of me, the Cullens are risking their lives and their treaty because of me.
"Hey, you okay?" Emmett asks.
"I don't even know what okay is anymore. The people who were once like family to me now want me dead, Seth may never get to go home again, you guys are risking your life for me."
"We aren't risking our lives, we're saving yours. Everyone downstairs knows exactly what they're risking. We don't care as long as it means you're safe."
"I know, but..."
Emmett pulls me into a hug.
"You're a part of our family now, Wolfe. Carlisle hasn't spent his entire existence fighting off rouge vampires and the Volturi to let some bent out of shape wolves tear apart his family."
"The Volturi?" I ask.
Emmett shakes his head and chuckles, "I forgot that you don't know Carlisle's story."
"He has a story other than he got bit and turned."
"Yeah. I'm actually surprised that he hasn't told you yet, especially since you guys share a similar struggle to accept who you are."
"Carlisle Cullen struggled with the fact that he's a vampire?" I ask, one eyebrow raised in disbelief.
"Yeah, he did but..."
Emmett pauses and nods towards the door.
"Come on."
"Where are we going?" I ask, following him out.
"To ask Carlisle to tell you his story. I would tell you, but Carlisle just tells it better."

I follow Emmett downstairs to Carlisle's office and wait to be told to enter. Carlisle looks up as Emmett and I walk into the room.

"Mia, Emmett I was just getting ready to call a family meeting."

"We know, but Mia here wanted to know if you would tell her your story. I would tell her, but it has always sounded better coming from you."

Carlisle nods and stands up before walking to a painting hanging on the wall. The painting looks like it is a picture of 17th century London. Carlisle clears his throat.
"I was born in London, sometimes in the 1640s. 17th-century people didn't keep accurate records of time, especially not for those that were of common background. My mother died during childbirth and my father lived his life as an Anglican pastor. He along with several other pastors hunted the supernatural. Their claim was that they were ridding the world of evil and sin, yet their actions often left innocent civilians as the prey of their hunts. Once my father got too old to leave the raids, I took his place. I soon discovered a vampire coven deep within the sewers of London. It was there that I was attacked by an old vampire that was starved. It was in that sewer that I was left for dead.
"Did the others come back for you? Did your father find you?"
"No, but I know that if he did then he would kill me. So, I hid in a nearby potato cellar for three days and waited for the transformation to end. When I finally emerged, I was horrified by what I had become. It led me to attempt to end my own life in many different ways, none of them a success. Eventually, my bloodlust drove me and while hiding in a cave I attacked a herd of deer. I then learned that I could sustain myself on animal blood and I found hope in the fact that I would not have to harm any humans. Over the course of two centuries, I perfected my ability to resist my bloodlust for humans. I spent the next several centuries studying and became a 'patron of the arts."
"So, you spent centuries alone? You had to deal with the fact that you were a vampire by yourself?" I ask.
Carlisle smiles at me, "it's not as bad as it seemed. I did soon meet another vampire by the name of Alistar. Alistar, however, wasn't the type to enjoy company so we soon parted on old terms. After that my studies soon brought me to Italy, where I stumbled across the Volturi."
He leads me to another picture, this one with three shockingly pale people. Each one is different, but they all give off a creepy aura.
"The Volturi?" I ask.
Carlisle nods, "Aro, Marcus, and Caius. They were much more educated and refined than the vampires I was used to. I soon found myself living amongst them, trying to convince them to switch from their human blood diet to one of animal blood. br /I spent nearly two decades arguing with them about it before I left to come to the new world."
"He leads me to another picture, this one with the entire family in it.
"Then you meet everyone and become a kickass family?" I ask.
Carlisle and Emmett laugh, "not exactly. I longed for companionship, but I refused to curse someone else with the same life that I had to live. However, in 1918 that changed. I worked night shifts in a Chicago hospital during Spanish influenza. It was here that I first encountered Edward."
I hold up a hand to halt his progress in the story.
"Wait a minute. Are you saying that Edward is one hundred and seventeen years old?"
I look back and forth between Emmett and Carlisle. Emmett nods his head and I blow out a breath.
"Whoa. So, what made you turn Edward?"
"Edward's mother. She and Edward were sick with the Spanish flu and she knew what I was. She begged me to do whatever I had to do in order to save her son. I wrestled with the decision for hours, could I condemn someone else to the hell I was living? Only out of loneliness and my own selfish needs did I turn him. Edward and I spent many years together, just the two of us. We told everyone that he was the younger brother of my late wife. Eventually, Edward and I settled in Wisconsin. It was here that I was called to the bedside of a young woman who had attempted suicide due to the miscarriage of her child. I changed her to save her life or at least that is what I told myself. We soon fell in love and married shortly after."
"Esme."
"Carlisle nods, "Rosalie joined us after I found her half dead. Alice and Jasper came to us from a vision she had, and Emmett joined us after Rosalie found him mauled by a bear."
I look over at Emmett.
"No wonder you always want to hunt bears. It's not because you're hungry, it's just a revenge plot on the bear that mauled you half to death."
Emmett holds ups his hands, "guilty as charged."
I shake my head as Carlisle laughs and gestures to the picture of the family.
"We will have to update it soon with you and Bella joining our family."
I can feel the heat rushing to my cheeks.
"You don't have to..."
Carlisle holds up at his hand to stop me, "you're family now. It cannot be a family picture if the whole family is not in it. Now, shall we head to the living room to discuss what happened with the pack? I believe your father should be here by now."

I follow Emmet and Carlisle out of his office and into the living room.

Author's Note: Sorry guys for the long update wait. For some reason whenever I type or copy the story into the little text box in doc manager it puts it all into html mode. So I have to manually delete all the code for it and stuff. Anyway, hope you guys are enjoying the story so far! Happy reading-Jess