Leaning against a tree, Demetri actually allowed himself to enjoy his smoke while he waited for his cue. The last few hours had been extremely informative, and more than once over that time, he had had to readjust his plans on capturing the newborn.
He had her scent.
He knew where she was.
He still didn't move a muscle.
It was in everyone's best interest she didn't see him yet, and since his scent blended into the world around him, he wasn't at all worried she would pick it up as she continued to run the forest.
She turned out to be commendably talented in the way of evasiveness, and had even given him a lot of grief and taken him on one hell of a run, something less than a handful had ever been able to do. She hadn't seen him, only knew she was being chased, and her newborn instincts being in overdrive as they were, she didn't question the gut feeling to run; just did it. But, because she hadn't seen him worked well to his advantage. He wasn't an enemy to her just yet, and that was the only thing that would make catching her possible.
For the fact he knew she had been injured at some point by one wolf or another, he had to give her due credit for the way she just kept moving, trying to her best to avoid once again coming into contact with those claws. No matter how much of him wanted to blame the wolves for this, they were simply following their own instincts and keeping a very real threat away from the humans they were created to protect. He was still firm in his stance of what he said to Carlisle when it came to the fact he had actually called them in, but the truth was, they would have gotten involved anyway.
It was that involvement Demetri had hoped to use to find the girl, and in a way, that's exactly what happened; it just wasn't the way he would have liked. It was his plan to get close enough to scent one of the animals and pick up the scent he was looking for that way, but what happened instead was Felix came across a large splatters of venom and blood when the two had split up and gone in search of the wolves. Needless to say, Demetri was less than thrilled to get that particular phone call, but he was able to get the girl's scent, and that was when the hunt was on.
The site he had been called to was just under two miles from the outskirts of the town, and barely out of the range of newborn senses. Had she gotten any closer, there would have been a much different first encounter between this Bella and that wolf due to the fact she was starving and would have fought to the death to get to whatever human she picked up. Since there was blood found as well, the animal didn't get away unscalthed, but he was sure whatever injury it did get did little more than piss it off since there wasn't much.
Something Demetri never let leave his mind was, the girl wasn't actually running as blind as it seemed, and for several reasons. One was, she was on her home turf. Whether she knew the layout of the woods or not didn't matter. She absolutely knew where she was, and she knew there was a town in the area. Another was, she had been on her own way longer than the recommended amount of alone time for one her age, and she was learning by trial and error; which was probably the worst way to learn. She was discovering everything her new body was capable of by putting it through a gauntlet of failures. The only arguably good thing she was learning was how to avoid threats to her life, but with the only interactions she's had thus far being those that killed her sire, an animal that harmed her, and Felix, what she was actually learning was everything in this world fell into that particular category.
The first handful of weeks in a newborn's life are the most formative, and it was during that timeframe one had the best chance of getting in that newborn's good graces and earning their trust; two things that were slipping further away with every moment she was on her own. While the Cullen coven was adamant to the fact this girl was acting extremely out of character, as far as Demetri was able to tell, she wasn't acting anyway abnormal to any other underfed newborn. Her actions were still relatively predictable. She was just hungry, thus desperate; proven when Felix, who is easily three if not more times her size, nearly caught her, and she fought back; something she would have known better than to do if she was in her right mind.
However, and intentional on Felix's part, he cornered her. Under normal circumstances, and what he was expecting, she should have been the one to back down because his sheer size said she didn't stand a chance. Her level of hunger though, showed itself, changing the game and she reacted in an understandable fashion according to Felix. That was also when the level of her injury was discovered, and it was then the enforcer who backed off. Sure, he lost a hand and boasts a few new bite marks, but it wasn't something he didn't know was a possibility when he did so.
When Demetri learned the injury Bella sustained was to her face, chest, and shoulder, there was nearly no end to the expletives that came out of his mouth, but it sent his mind in a different direction. He didn't know if the clawing to her face would hinder her ability to bite, thus her ability to feed, but Felix made it very clear the ones to her shoulder greatly diminished her mobility of that arm. Those were not injuries that could be left unattended for long if they were going to be undone, so against his own desire to stay away from the dogs, he went straight to the one he knew where to find the moment he smelled the spilled blood.
It was a very short, very one sided conversation in which Demetri informed the silver wolf since he was the one that injured the infant, who had no idea what she was doing, so grievously, he would be the one to help put her into a situation where he could remove her from the area without further incident. As further incentive to work with him, Demetri also told the wolf that if he didn't, not only would he make sure that wolf and his pack were the infant's first meal, he would then help the changeling level the town the dogs were so dead set on defending. There was certainly a dare in his tone, and one the wolf thought better than to question. All Demetri told him was where to chase her, and he would take it from there.
He didn't, however, reveal what he had come up with in order to get possession of the newborn.
This was very much a work smart, not hard scenario; something the Cullens could have done days ago had they used the half of a brain they had between them. It's a simple conclusion to keep the ones she's terrified of away from her, and use the ones she doesn't know to lure her into a situation they could easily control, opposed to chasing her all over God's green Earth for days at a time... or nearly two weeks in this case. It should have been common sense when one thing didn't work to try something else, but neither they, nor the wolves, took the time to assess each individual aspect of the situation, and adjust their plans accordingly. All they did was make her scared of all of them, and leading her to believe she had no allies. They kept right on doing the same thing, hoping for a different result, which wasn't going to happen with a two week old newborn. It hardly happened with a century old vampire someone was trying to cage, and something every one of them should have realized. Then again, those who are insane don't usually know they're insane, so Demetri didn't expect them to conclude their continued tactic was the definition of insanity.
At the start, having no actual idea what they were up against, both of the Volturi guards did each take a separate opportunity that presented itself, but they both backed off their respective encounter the moment it was apparent it wasn't going to end with favorable results. They would both need to be able to work with her at some point, and her associating both of them to what is going to be the most traumatizing time of her life was the literal last thing they needed. It was going to be hard enough for Felix in the future because as the situation with him stood, she did technically best him in a fight. For Demetri, while scent-wise he was all but a ghost when in nature, he did have a somewhat sensible presence that was unique to him. Though he did know she never laid eyes on him, he couldn't be positive she didn't sense him.
All of that led him to where he was, in a very remote area of the woods, leaning against a tree with his arms crossed, just waiting. He was keeping very close tabs on the wolf, who was heading where he was told to chase the girl. All Demetri had to do now was wait, and hopefully, everything would fall into place.
It was far past the point this stand off with a child came to an end, so whether Demetri's plan worked as intended or not, he had no intention of getting that close without capturing the tiny pain in the ass. However, because of everything the girl had been put through since the moment she woke up, if this didn't work, Demetri was also resigned to the fact there could possibly be one Hell of a fight. He didn't have any desire to hurt her more than she was, but he also had no desire to continue to play this ridiculous game of hide and seek with her any longer, either.
A mile away from where Demetri stationed himself, Bella wasn't only running out of places to run, but the desire to do it. She couldn't understand why she was still being chased by the overgrown dog she had had a very painful encounter in the days prior. At this point she wasn't even trying to get to her house for new clothes. She was just trying to get past Forks, not into it, but they wouldn't listen to her.
She knew why that was. She wasn't human anymore, and clearly, they didn't like that.
It wasn't just the wolves, either. There was also the Cullens, though she hadn't seen them in a while. Hadn't crossed any of their scents in a while, either. It had rained that morning, so she figured that was why, but that wasn't the first rain-fall since they got back from Arizona; just the first one that washed away any trace of them. There was a voice in the back of her mind that told her to stay away from them, that they were dangerous, but how could that be? They were always so nice to her, even when they didn't have to be. How could they be a danger to her? She didn't understand it, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake either the paralyzing fear or heart numbing anger that came from thinking about them.
Then... there was the wolves.
Up to this point, they had only kept her from getting to close to town, but now they seemed to have run out of patience when it came to her presence, and decided it was time to either run her out, kill her, or die trying.
Run, run, run... that was all that was going through her mind as she closed the distance between herself and the gorge, but she had no idea what she was going to do when she got there. She knew it was too far to jump over, having learned that the hard way, and she also knew she wouldn't be safe from the dogs until she was on the other side. The bridge, or what she dubbed the bridge anyway, was a half mile east, and there was no way she was going to get to that before one of the three wolves got to her. She could feel the fact she wasn't as fast as she had been; something she actually noticed days ago. Every day that past, it seemed she was just a little slower, her reaction time was a little less sharp, her vision and hearing a little less defined. Everything was on the decline, and she already learned she couldn't defend herself against the claws on the dogs.
Well, everything was on the decline but the burning in her throat. That was prominent as ever, and growing every moment.
Along with learning that very painful lesson about those claws came the stark realization she wouldn't be able to defend herself at all against anyone, because that lesson about those claws resulted the loss of one of her arms. Oh, it was still there, but for all the good it did her, it might as well not be. She had absolutely no idea how she got past that behemoth of a man that she ran into, but she certainly didn't want to test whether or not she would get that lucky again.
She could see the end of the line fast approaching, and she could hear the growls and snarls as one of the wolves closed in behind her. She closed her eyes against the sun that started to break through the thinning trees, but that was done at the wrong moment. She caught her foot under a thick tree root and, though it was ripped out of the ground, it did take her by enough surprise for her to hit the ground hard on her face.
She left divots in the forest floor, leaving broken rocks and splintered branches in her wake as she tumbled several feet before she came to a sliding stop on her clawed shoulder. She had been under two very apparent misimpressions. The first being vampires were graceful creatures that tended to stay on their feet, and other was she wouldn't feel pain any longer, but son of a bitch, was she knocked for a loop or two along the way.
Her movements were slow as she blinked her vision clear. Shaking her head, she rolled from her stomach to her back, a whimper in her throat at the sight of the same wolf that nearly sliced her in half, crouched with his chest nearly touching the ground, his lips pulled back and exposing every last one of the razors he called teeth. She watched as he seemed to shift his weight from one paw to the next, his muscles coiling in preparation to pounce. She dug her heels into the ground, trying to put more distance between them, but with only one arm to help move her body, she was pretty sure she looked more like a flopping fish out of water than she did a vampire at that moment in time.
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth and snapped her head to the side when the wolf lunged at her, positive she was about to die, only to whip back around when she heard a high pitched yelp full of pain. Her onyx eyes were wide as she watched someone she had never seen before throw the creature by the scruff of its neck into the side of a tree. She heard something crack on impact, and her eyes followed the body as it dropped to the ground.
She watched with an unneeded, bated breath for it to get back up, but when it remained still, she moved her eyes to the man that was now standing between her and the silver wolf that she had been running from. His head was fully turned to look at her, his face blank of all emotions as he calmly fixed his sleeves.
His fault; he never should have trusted the boneheaded animal to follow a simple command. It wasn't really any matter to Demetri, however. It wasn't like the stupid beast was difficult to deal with. It was hardly more than a cub, and he knew when dealing with children of any race or breed, there always had to be some level of expectation they won't listen. He hadn't killed the prick, but while that injury healed, the pup was going to wish he did. Though, turnabout being fair play and all, the tracker was of the opinion the fucker deserved it for what he did to the infant vampire.
This was the first time he had gotten a look at the newborn from the front, and she was far worse off than he thought. Words rarely did visuals justice, so when he was told of the claw marks, he didn't expect them to be as deep as they were, or exactly where they were. It also confirmed his greatest fear; even given the opportunity to feed, there was no chance she was going to have an effective bite. It was going to take years to undo that kind of damage, possibly decades if ever at all, and even if the damage was able to be undone, she would spend the rest of her life carrying some very nasty scars.
Once he was done with his inspection, he turned to face her fully, sliding off his jacket as he slowly closed the distance between them. Her clothing was shredded and completely ineffective as covering, so when he was close enough, he crouched. After pulling his phone from the inner pocket and clipping it to the holder on his belt, he held it out for her take. He kept his face even and clear of his emotions, hopefully conveying he wasn't going to hurt her. He was pissed off like he had never been before, but his anger wasn't for her, and he didn't want to her to think otherwise.
She was clearly, fully, defenseless, but that didn't mean she wouldn't give it a shot if he didn't tread lightly. Looking her in the eyes, his suspicion about not having access to her mind was confirmed when there was a lack of the spark at the base of his skull that always accompanied making eye contact with someone for the first time. His voice was low and level when he spoke to her. "I've been looking for you, Néos."
Bella could feel her body vibrate she was shaking so hard in the face of this man that had no problem, at all, chucking one of those wolves into a tree like it was little more than it's smaller counterpart. There was no threat to his position, and there was no vibe coming from him that he was out to hurt her, but that didn't mean shit.
Shoving herself as far away from him as she could with one push of her foot, she swallowed hard, her voice giving away her nerves. "Who are you?" She saw his lips twitch, but she could see amusement light in his eyes.
All he did was let out a breath from his nose. "Demetri... and you really should put this on." To drive the point, he nodded towards her.
She didn't really want to take her eyes off this unknown man, but it was his tone and actions that caused her to glance down, letting out a gasped 'eep' at the fact she was all but flashing him the twins. Eyes shooting back up, she noticed he had averted his eyes, and she cleared her throat as she leaned toward him slightly, reaching out with her right arm. But, where he was, she had to reach over her body because she couldn't move her arm. She realized she would have to get closer, and she bit her lip. Was it really worth it? She had a much better rack these days. Was covering herself up really necessary?
After roughly a full minute of personal debate, she decided that yes, it was. So, so slowly it was like she wasn't moving, she inched herself closer to the guy that hadn't moved a muscle since he crouched, still holding out his offering. Bella didn't get a millimeter closer than was necessary, and when she got her fingers around the black canvas of his jacket, she just as slowly took it from his grasp with a quiet, "Thank you." She saw him nod, but he didn't say anything else for a long moment as she struggled to situate his jacket around her shoulders with her one arm.
From the corner of his eye, he watched the struggle she was having, and tsked. "Would you like some help?" He didn't move for the forty-seven seconds she remained silent, and didn't stand when she acquiesced, merely shifted into a better position, placing his knee on the ground to stabilize himself. He did, however, pause slightly when she flinched away from him, but when that was all she did, he went ahead and leaned toward her. Slowly and gently, he maneuvered the arm she couldn't move into the sleeve, pulling it up into place before slipping it around her back and holding it open so she could do the same with the arm she could.
While Demetri was helping her into his jacket, Bella looked at him, her bottom lip still between her teeth. It wasn't until he was buttoning it closed she finally released her lip and spoke to him again. "Why were you looking for me?"
Leaving the button at the top undone, Demetri returned to crouched position, draping his hands over his thighs, looking back at her face. "Because you're not allowed to run around by yourself. It's not just dangerous for you, but for everyone you come in contact with."
Biting into her inner cheek, Bella then nodded to the explanation. Seemed logical enough. She then swallowed another mouthful of venom. "How did you know I needed looked for?"
At that question, Demetri clicked his tongue. There was certainly no point in lying about it, but there was always the risk of her getting pissed off. In the end, he went ahead and told her exactly how he knew. "Carlisle." He saw her eyes ignite at the name, but pressed on. "He called my boss when his coven lost you. I happened to be very good at locating those others are incapable of finding, so I was sent to do just that." Tilting his head slightly to the side, he then hummed in the back of his throat. "While it is certainly impressive you've given seven vampires and three shifters the slip for as long as you have, I do believe you have spent enough time on your own."
Bella, completely convinced she knew what he was going to say, cut in before he could tell her he was there to take her back to the Cullens. She jumped to her feet and began to back away, preparing to run. "You're not taking me back there. I won't go, and you can't make me."
Demetri stood as well, fully planning on cutting her off before she got too far if she did run, but all he did for the moment was cross his arms. "I assure you there is very little in the department of what you can do to stop me from doing anything, but for curiosity's sake, what are you going on about?"
Retreating another half step, Bella actually hissed. "You're not taking me back to the Cullens. I refuse to have anything to do with them."
Demetri didn't even attempt to silence the snort. With a roll of his eyes, he then grinned. "No shit. I also happen to know exactly why that is. The question is..." he lifted a challenging brow, "do you?" He saw something flash through her eyes, and he reached up and rubbed his temple. "You have absolutely no idea why they invoke such a negative reaction in you, do you?"
Stopping in her retreat, Bella crossed her arms, looking down at her dirty feet. "No, I know why, I just don't understand the why." Leaving her head lowered, she lifted only her eyes, locker her's on Demetri's. "James was an asshole. He was trying to kill me. He lured me into a trap, using me as live bait. I don't care he's dead. Or, at least I don't want to. I honestly think the world is a better place for it. But..." pausing and shaking her head, "but even still, any time I see, or even think about Emmett, Alice and Jasper, I am just overcome with this... boiling rage that fills this endlessly empty void that has been there since I woke up. Nothing makes it go away but the thought of James, but all it does is make me... long for him."
Demetri remained silent while she spoke, nodding along as she did so. Also during her explanation, he leaned his shoulder on a tree, and kicked his foot up by the toes. When she finished, he nodded one more time. "Would you like to know why that is?" It took her a moment to do it, but she did eventually nod, and Demetri shrugged. "He's your sire, and you're in mourning."
Bella actually bulked at the overly simple statement. While she was only able to actually move the muscles on half her face, her disgust was still pretty clear. "I know he is, but I'm not..."
Demetri, completely disagreed, shaking his head and cutting her off. "Yes, you are. You are twelves days old, Néos, so there is no way you could possibly understand what you lost. You don't have to like your sire, and for obvious reasons, most of us don't. However, love him or hate him, that does not change what he is to you."
Even though she was mostly unable to open her jaw, that didn't stop Bella from raising her voice in an attempt to yell. "Stop talking about James like he's still alive! I watched him die, so he is nothing to me anymore; do you hear me? Nothing!""
If he were honest, Demetri just thought she looked pitiful. Sure, she could get loud, but that was about the full extent of any display of anger the poor girl could show. However, she needed to know that even though he was dead, he was still very much the ruling force in her life. Taking a moment to formulate how he was going to word what he was going to say, he ran the tip of his tongue along his teeth before he let out a harsh breath. "Your sire is still very much alive, and he is everything to you."
He saw her stance change, her nose wrinkle on one side, and her brows draw in her confusion, so he continued. "It is his venom that flows through your veins, not yours. It doesn't become yours until it destroys your blood. It is why newborns are so fucking strong. You still have blood in your veins and not just in your belly. That's the last thing that goes, because his venom needs it to flow to the rest of your body. It's too thick otherwise. Just like humans, we depend on our sire, or parent if you prefer, to teach us, to help us, and to raise us. It's why we call freshly woken vampires newborns. During that first year to fourteen months or so, the bond between sire and childe is the only thing that matters to the childe. All the resentment, all the red hot loathing you have for the ones that killed this James are because they took that away from you. Your feelings for the rest of them are because they did nothing to stop it."
A century from now Demetri would still not be able to articulate the feeling that shot through him at the site of the newborn when he was finished speaking. She didn't just deflate before his eyes; something in her shattered.
Her eyes closed and she wrapped the arm she could move across her middle, attempting to hold the fragments together as she cleared her throat. "So, nothing is going to make this hollow feeling go away?"
"Not anytime soon."
She was silent for a minute, and when she opened her eyes again, they were cast to the ground. "Would I still feel like this toward them if I didn't see it?"
At the question, Demetri hummed. "Not likely from the moment you woke up, no, but this whole situation is the dictionary definition of unavoidable. As they attempted to take over raising you, some things would have felt very wrong. Others, you wouldn't have been able to bring yourself to do, because it's not how your sire would have raised you. You would have eventually asked questions, and it would have ultimately depended on their answers. It would have come down to whether or not they told you the truth, and how old you were at the time. If they could have kept it hidden for a year? Not at all because your need of your sire would have come to an end. But it's more likely they couldn't have, because you would have tried to find him sooner or later. It would have taken you a month, maybe two if they tried hard enough, or kept you secluded enough, or sated enough, or distracted enough, but our need of our sire is so strong at the beginning of this life, it physically affects us to be away from them, even in the event of their death. Even a yearling will mourn their sire, though not to the same extent as an infant. The bottom line, Néos, is while your conscious mind might hate him, your much larger subconscious mind knows you need him."
Using Demetri's jacket that covered her hand, Bella wiped away the venom from her mouth and chin she couldn't swallow, her voice quivering when she was able to speak again. "I don't want to."
Turning his head and tilting it slightly to the side, Demetri curled his tongue behind his teeth. He did truly feel bad for her, and it showed in the way his voice changed when he spoke. It was softer, and carried a more soothing tenor then the more matter of fact way he had been talking to her. "That... unfortunately, isn't something you get to decide just yet. Until you're older, nothing is going to make you feel better. For that, you have my deepest and truest empathies and condolences, Néos."
Lowering her eyes again, Bella didn't even try to swallow the mouthful of venom, and instead just spat it out and wipe what remained on her lips away again with Demetri's jacket sleeve. "Did someone do this to you? Is that how you know all of this?"
Changing his position from having his arms crossed to instead clasping his hands behind his back, he shook his head. "No; it's why I can only empathize and not sympathise. My sire is alive and well, last I heard. However, when his life does come to an end, I won't even pause to whimper a farewell. His life, and his passing, are no care of mine. My connection to him died out more than two millennia ago. The reason I know what I do is because you are not the first vampire I've dealt with that lost their sire far too early in this life. They all reacted differently of course, all being different ages, but the basic driving forces are all the same. You're angry, and you have every right... to... be."
While he did finish his statement, the last two words were spoken with a questioning influx over his shoulder as he looked down at the matted brown hair on Bella's head as she took up a position behind him. He didn't move more than that, staying still but lifting a curious brow. Keeping his head faced back, he flicked only his eyes to the new addition, and his face lost its expression. He could feel the violent shaking of the vampiress at his back as she tried to become invisible, his spine straightening as a result. Clearly, his plan with the wolf worked. He gained enough of her trust to see him as a protector, but this would be his only chance to cement it.
Turning to face Felix fully, Demetri leveled him with a look, not moving or showing any noticeable sign he cared Felix was there. How this ended was going to come down to Felix and his ability to read a very precarious situation. Demetri was well aware, venomwise, he absolutely could not replace her sire. That was impossible. However, what he could do was shift her dependency from a dead vampire to a live one if Felix played his part right. If he fucked up though, all gained ground would be lost, and he would be left with no choice but to destroy the girl because there would be no coming back from that. He was also well aware that by facilitating that dependency shift, he would be legally seen as her sire in the eyes of Aro's laws, but sacrificing part of his life to raising a newborn was, in his mind, a far cry better than the aforementioned alternative.
He certainly had no aversion to murder when it came to a vampire that knew better and fucked up, but this was a different case altogether, and he didn't relish the idea of killing a changeling if he didn't absolutely have to. There were instances where that was the only option of course, but so far as he could tell, this wasn't one of them... at least not yet.
He needn't have worried, though. Felix had known Demetri for so long, and seen that look on his face so many time, he would have known what to do even if he somehow lost his sight. It was a cross of exasperation and annoyance, and the expression his boss used when he took shit too far back at home. It was a look that said 'back off' or 'knock it off' with a very clear threat of an ass whoopin' if he didn't. At seven foot, he noticeably towered over Demetri's 6'3 frame, not to mention he was also twice his size in muscle mass. However, having more than once been on the bad side of the hidden demon that resided within Demetri, Felix did exactly what he was supposed to; he submitted.
Be that as it may, Bella watched from around Demetri's arm as the larger vampire lowered himself, and the bodies he held, to the ground. Then, to her even greater shock, once he dropped the load he held, the larger vampire stayed lowed and backed up several feet, leaning his back against a tree, and fully sitting down, his head turning to the side and closing his eyes with his neck exposed and hands showing. What was so mind boggling was, he did it with nothing more than a look. Shifting her eyes from the prone vampire up to Demetri, who still hadn't so much as twitched, she bit her lip, unsure how she herself was supposed to react to the man that had now saved her twice.
Though he could smell the confusion and indecision coming from the vampire behind him, he kept his eyes on Felix a moment longer, just to make sure he was going to play his part long enough to finish what had been started. However, he did speak to her. "His name is Felix, and you have nothing to fear from him, Néos."
Once again, she was curious what that name meant, but as always when he said it, there was a more pressing thing to respond to. "That's not what it seemed like when I ran into him before."
A smirk Felix would know anywhere lifted the corner of Demetri's lip. "I wasn't between you two before. I dare him to try something now." In response to the audible gulp from Felix, Demetri chuckled deep in his throat before finally looking down at Bella, unsurprised to see venom leaking from the corners of her mouth at the scent of human blood on the air. The only thing that kept her where she was, was her fear of Felix. Unclasping his hands, he used one of them to force her out from behind him. Keeping that hand on her back, he drug her along next to him, dipped his head, and spoke directly to her. "Eat, Néos; I'm watching over you."
She didn't make a move toward the humans until Demetri placed himself between Felix and what was intended to be her first meal. As soon as he did, though, she pounced like the starving newborn vampire she was.
Demetri watched her, one arm crossed over his chest, his chin pinched between the fingers of the other, his ire rising once again. He knew she had limited movement of her jaw, he saw it when he got her talking. He was positive it would hamper her ability to eat, but until he saw it with his own eyes, he couldn't have known the know the full extent. Eyes shifting momentarily from the newborn that was attempting to feed to the still unmoving wolf that completely took away her ability to do so, he growled to himself before releasing his chin and moving toward the newborn with a 'stop'.
Bella, however, unable to help herself, whipped around and attempted to lunge at the perceived threat to her meal.
Demetri, on the other hand, wasn't having it. Ready for the attack, he caught her, and leaned back, getting his face out of her reach. Jerking her back around, her held her tight against him, her back to his chest. The hold was as protective as it was restraining since he was no longer between Bella and Felix, and she knew it. Crouching down with her positioned between his legs, he cocked a brow at her. While there was amusement in his eyes, they also clearly said not to do that again. His tone, however, was as soothing as it could be. "You have no ability to bite, therefore you cannot feed on your own."
Releasing the newborn, Demetri leaned to the side and grabbed the shirt of the closest human, using that to pull the unconscious boy to him. Adjusting his hold, he brought the human within the newborn's ability to reach, and used the nail on his thumb to slice into its neck. Once there was a cut large enough for her to feed from, he covered it with his thumb, put his lips next to Bella's ear, and speaking low and slow, attempted to guide her through being fed. "Easy, Néos. Seal the wound, and let his heart do the work for you. There is no need for you to try and bite. All you have to do is swallow."
This was the moment of truth. If he moved his thumb and she fed, he had her. If she didn't, well... the point was moot. Though it took her three tries to fully seal the slice he made in the human's neck, she handed over every ounce of her protection and wellbeing to him when her eyes slid closed as she swallowed her very first mouthful of blood. When what sounded like a purr reached his ears, Demetri praised her with a quiet 'good girl' as his eyes flicked to Felix, who was now sagging where he sat.
1200 years he's known him, and Felix was still amazed at how effective Demetri was at whatever he set his mind to. He had absolutely no idea when Demetri decided he was going to take on the newborn in such a way because there were very few vampires outside of coven mates that would take on the legal responsibility of someone else's childe, and even fewer that would do what basically amounted to adoption when the actual sire was an unknown variable since newborns did take on traits of said unknown sire. That number dropped even further when the vampire needed the additional time and care of one like her. That number became completely nonexistent when the adopter was like Demetri; someone who has never been an actual sire. His boss was indeed over two thousand years old but, to Felix's knowledge anyway, never turned a human. Yet, there he was, vigilantly surveying the area while hand feeding an infant he had no venomous connection to.
With every swallow, Demetri could feel the girl relax more into his chest. He kept one ear on the human's heartbeat and the other on the area. He guessed her to be just over half done and past the human's ability to overcome the blood loss when he heard the distant sound of footfalls heading their way. He gave the approach another few moments before he figured out why it sounded like so many, and lifted his head, turning it to look at Felix. His voice when speaking to him was much different than when he spoke to the newborn, and it carried a level of command with it. "Go deal with that."
Demetri's movement pulled Bella's attention from the blood in her mouth to the vampire against the tree. She did feel both safe and secure in Demetri's hold, but she was much closer to Felix this time when he moved, and in response, released the human's neck and turned, tucking herself into Demetri's chest with a whimper.
The tracker responded in kind, again pressing his thumb to the wound to slow the blood flow, while his head dipped back down, tucking her head under his chin, a deep growl in his chest. Like hell he was going to allow anyone to undo all he accomplished with the infant. He didn't care if shit came down to a dog fight against Felix, either. He wasn't giving up his gained ground, and he sure as fuck wasn't giving it up because someone wasn't using their brain. His face dark, his voice was darker. "Slowly, Dick. Scare her again, and I will fuck you up." He made no attempt to coach Bella out of his chest and back into eating until Felix was on his feet, but stopped him before he moved much more than that. "Incapacitate only. We got what we came for, and they will still have a job to do once we leave, so don't kill them outright."