Chapter 13 3rd POV

"You gonna bust."

A growl sounded in Bella's throat as her eyes shifted to look at Peter, who was seated two people down from her at the table. Like that was anything new. At this point, it wasn't about winning a hand. It was about losing as much of his money she could possible lose in a single hand. She was still a little salty with him, and this was the best she could come up with for revenge.

She didn't want to be there. She didn't feel comfortable around so many humans, but he didn't care to listen to her when she protested testing her control in a more concentrated setting. Sure, he stuffed her silly before they entered the tiny establishment, but that didn't make her feel any more in control when she sat next to a warm body and beating heart.

It had been just shy of a year since they met and ten months since he bit her. It was honestly not intended; she knew that. They were drunk -inexcusably so- and one thing leading to another, they ended up 'finally consummating their union', as Peter had put it. At some point in their drunken debauchery, Peter lost control of himself, his teeth sinking into her shoulder. By the time either one of them realized it happened, there was nothing they could about it.

She knew the specifics, but it didn't mean she was over it.

That said, he had spent everyday since then trying to make it up to her, but really, what could he do? It couldn't be taken back. She hadn't ever been pissed off about it, because somewhere in the back of her mind she knew it could happen. Even still, pissed or not, she was salty, and he didn't really blame her.

Now, it was the things she knew she had to do, but didn't want to do, that tended to lead to a fight. She didn't want to be where she was, yet he made her. She was coming up on her first year, and would eventually have to be able to be left on her own. The only way that could happen was if she proved she wouldn't slaughter the masses on the rare occasion she was left alone for more than a couple of days.

She was also being forced to hunt for herself, which was another point of contention between them. No, she wasn't into eating animals, though she did try once. It was more a mind fuck on her part because how do you decide who dies? Is it just the unlucky bastard that was in the wrong place at the wrong time? She knew Peter had actually broken into someone's house before because the dude pissed him off. Was that how she made her selection? They made her mad? Half of Forks would be on the menu if that was the case. Peter just told her to eat if she was hungry, but she was always hungry, so how was she supposed to know when to stop?

There were more questions than she had figured out the answers to, and though Peter tried to guide her to the answers, she just wanted him to give them to her. She didn't want the guess work. She didn't want to find out what happened if she was wrong. She certainly didn't want a child becoming an orphan because she just ate who was convenient. It was so frustrating, and he was so infuriating, Bella decided the best way to deal with him was to lose tens of thousands of dollars playing Blackjack.

Peter was not unaware of this.

When her cute little growl reached his ears, he chuckled and leaned back in his seat. It hadn't taken him long to catch on to her game. No one was this bad at cards. It seemed to take another level of skill to lose fifteen thousand dollars at a place whose gambling licence doesn't allow a single player to bet more than a grand a hand. Bella, however, had that skill.

It didn't matter though. It wasn't like her little game was going to ruin him or anything, or that money was all that important to him. It was the spark in her eyes when she knew she was going to lose big that made him snort or roll his eyes. It was at least once a month she did something like this, usually following an argument of some kind. She spent a few hours trying to bankrupt him, she felt better, then it was over until the next time.

He had to hand it to her, though; she took the change in a decent enough stride. She knew it was going to be in the cards for her eventually. He never hid that fact from her. However, it wasn't intended to happen how it did, or when it did.

The day he crippled the Volturi when they came for her, they had a talk when Jasper returned her to him at the rubble that was his house. He told her it would only be a matter of time before they came back. He used his favor with Demetri already, so when it happened again, it would very likely have a different outcome. She agreed then she wouldn't fight it when the time came, but they both thought it would be a little longer before it came to pass.

Alcohol was called Devil Juice for a reason, though.

When she woke up, there was the expected confusion, and the equally expected altercation. She put one hell of a fight, too. She had seen him play fight and spar enough times to have a somewhat decent idea of his fighting style. Those memories stayed with her through the change, and somehow, she was able to draw on them though the haze that affected every freshly woken vampires. She couldn't even see properly, yet she gave him an ass whoopin' like he hadn't gotten in decades.

That was the only time they ever got into a physical fight. Every other time, he had been able to stave her anger or get her to focus on something else to avoid a repeat of it. It took her six months, but there hadn't even been a near miss in the last four. Now, she hit him in the wallet, which he thought was cute as fuck.

Shifting his eyes to look at her, he smirked at her as he tapped a finger on the green felt of the card table, taking one last hit and scoring the magic number of 21. His smirk only grew as her eyes narrowed. He had effectively countered her little game; if the black eyes that were looking at him was any indication, she wasn't happy about it.

Too fucking bad.

Sure, they had some shit to keep working out, but eventually she would learn one very important lesson... she would never beat him. She could try, and he knew she would, but she would never win. What she was still over looking, though, was the simple fact that was still falling deeper into his trap that has been on going since the day she called him. The more she tried to best him, the further down the rabbit hole she was heading. Eventually, there would be nowhere to go. She would hit rock bottom, everyone does. When it happened, he would just sit back and watch as she lost her temper and painted the horizon red.