CHAPTER THREE: The Past

ISABELLA

"Mama, I'm thirsty." Renesmee said.

"I know sweetie, I know. I'm thirsty too. But we can't leave to go hunting until Michel gets back alright." I said to my six month old daughter, who looked to be around two. I was worried about how fast she was growing, but it was slowing down. Maybe it would stop completely soon.

"Mama, you never told me why we can't go out without Michel. I want to know." I sighed. I knew this was coming soon. Renesmee had always been very inquisitive, but now she was older, it was even worse. Although I wouldn't use the word worse with Renesmee.

"Well, you know how you have your special ability?" I asked her and she nodded also telling me yes by placing her hand on my face. It was an unusual ability, to be able to project her thoughts and feelings, all she had to do was touch my face. Handy when trying to keep something from Michel. "Well, Michel also has a special ability. He has the power to...how do I put this...well, it's like he had invisible bonds around us. He can use these bonds to tie people to where he wants them to be. Sort of like a force field. He placed this force field around the house; we can only go on our property. When we all go out, he uses this too, it ties us to him, we can only move as far as he lets us from him. Do you understand?" I asked her.

She had a confused look on her face. "I think so. Basically he has a force field around the house to stop us leaving, and people entering?" She asked and I nodded, "And when he's around or we go out, it's like there's a rope tying us to him?"

"Yup, that's right." I said. "If you're really hungry you can have some human food. We have water, granola bars, cereal. You know what we have." I said to her, she made a gagging sound.

"Yeah I know. But you're lucky; I had to put up with eating that sort of stuff for 18 years. Although back then it wasn't disgusting to me, but now..." I trailed off. Then I realised I shouldn't have said that.

"Mama?" She asked hesitantly. I knew what was coming. I mean, I had to tell her someday, didn't I?

"Yeah sweetie?"

"Well, you said 'back then' and I was wondering if you could tell me about your life...before me...before you were a vampire..?" She asked quietly. I glanced up at the clock. Michel would just be leaving work.

"I'll tell you tomorrow sweetie. I don't want Michel to hear us okay?" I told her. She nodded. I picked her up and placed her on my lap, she snuggled her head into my shoulder. I played with her hair; it was just like his in colour. She had Charlie's curls. I smiled as I thought this.

At the moment we were living in Alberta in Canada. A town called-Edmonton- I struggled to say the name sometimes, it reminded me of him. I missed him all too much. Another bad thing about living in Edmonton, the place we sometimes went hunting, in the forest, was called Jasper National Park. We lived at the end of a road called Villeneuve Rd. To me it seemed appropriate.

A good thing about Michel was that I had been able to convince him to become 'vegetarian'. He had agreed, he was still struggling, but it wasn't too bad. I was a vampire with a breeze; I had never had trouble, which was strange. Emmett and Jasper were both not getting any money on how many people I killed.

Renesmee was drinking human blood (donated) when she was little, but now she can hunt with Michel and me, it is a lot easier. She likes human blood more but doesn't want to kill anybody, that little fact made me a proud mother.

I heard Michel's car pull into the driveway. I sucked in a breath and went to go put Renesmee in bed, she had fallen asleep. My sweet sunshine. I put her down and kissed her head. "Babe, I'm home!" Michel yelled from the hallway.

I walked out to him while plastering a fake smile on my face; I had become a lot better at lying. God must have been listening that day Michel captured me. "Hi, how was your day?" I asked convincingly. Like I cared.

"It sucked." He said. He chucked his stuff on the floor and I picked it up and put it away. I shook my head when he wasn't looking. He jumped onto the couch and turned on the TV. Unlike most vampires, he was amused by crappy shows that always have the same plot lines.

"Michel, Renesmee and I need to go hunting, I think you do too. I really like this place and don't want to move because you got to hungry and killed another fellow employee." I said looking him in the eyes. They were black. They had only just turned to the butterscotch colour. Mine had become that colour about two months ago.

Renesmee was lucky she had brown eyes. When I looked at them I realised that my eyes really weren't as boring as I had thought. I smiled at the thought. My thoughts are practically the only thing I smile at nowadays. I used to smile at real life. My real life smiles are reserved for my daughter. She makes me feel so happy.

I still have a gaping hole in my chest left by Edward, but Renesmee fills up a new section of my dead heart. No, it wasn't a dead heart, it was still alive in many ways, and it was filled with love for Renesmee and for Edward. As well as the rest of my vampire family, my human family, and my werewolf family. I had a lot of family now. Considering that I used to be an only child, well I still was an only child.

"Hmmm. I guess so. I like this place too. Let's head over to the national park, I feel like something illegal." He said. "I think we'll leave now. Go get Renesmee." He said. I nodded and went to fetch her. I shook her lightly.

"Sweetie, we're going hunting, you have to get up!" I said. As soon as I uttered the word 'hunting' she was up and out of bed. I changed her into jeans and a cotton t-shirt. I already had them on. When I find the Cullen's, I will have to get Alice and Rosalie to help me with clothes for Renesmee. They would love that, especially Alice, Renesmee would love it too.

I took a lot of photos of her, and bought her as many new clothes as I could. I made a photo album that seemed to span years, and not months. We all raced out of the house. I felt the familiar tether of Michel's bonds surround my waist. Renesmee felt it too. I hated the feeling.

We had come across other vampires in our travels and some of them had powers as well. All the powers that involved the mind, I could deflect. I could include Renesmee into my shield as well. Physical powers I couldn't defect. Things like Jasper and Alice's powers, and Michel's power.

We hunted and then headed home quickly. We never stayed out long. Never. I had a feeling it was because Michel's bonds wore off after a certain time. I didn't know and it wasn't like I was ready to ask.

I put Renesmee to bed again. "Mama, sing me a song." She asked me.

"What song?" I asked. She thought for a minute.

"I don't know. What's your favourite?" I knew that without even having to think about it. I started to hum the familiar melody, of all the things in my human memory that were fuzzy; I had kept the most important of them clear. I thought about them a lot, just like Rose had done.

All my memories with Edward were there. Some fun memories with Charlie and Renee, also my time with Jacob and the pack, well mainly Jacob. "Mama, I like...this one...it's my...favourite so far...what is it..?" She asked me with a sleepy voice.

"I'll tell you about him tomorrow, but somebody very special in my life wrote this for me. It's called Bella's lullaby." I said. She nodded and I kept on humming. She fell asleep quickly after that. I watched her sleep for a while until I heard Michel calling me.

"Oh Isabella!" He called quietly. I had never told him that anybody had called me Bella, he didn't even pick it up when Edward called me Bella on the phone that night he came to make me his mate. I didn't want him to. I headed downstairs and stood in front of where he was sitting on the lounge.

Michel was a really stupid vampire, I had said that Edward was my fiancé when he was on the phone that night, when Michel asked again I denied it, telling him it was a lie I'd made up to get him to leave me alone. I didn't want Edward to get hurt.

"You never told me somebody wrote you a lullaby. Why not? Who wrote it?" He demanded.

"It never came up, that's why I didn't tell you. A really good friend of mine wrote it for me. Well he wrote it, I inspired it." I said.

"He? Were you involved with this he?" He demanded again.

"No, we were just friends. He was like a brother to me; well he was related to me he was a half brother, sort of." I lied, I hated to diminish Edward's love for me like that, into a mere lie.

"Oh...well then...you can go now." He said and fell back into a relaxed position. I shook my head and went to go read my favourite novel. Wuthering Heights. It made me love it even more. Because I had read it so much, I knew it off by heart. Page by page. I don't even know why I bothered to read it. I smiled as I reached the end of the book.

I went into Renesmee's room and practiced expanding my shield to include her. I always practiced this after I had read a book. Once I had finished practicing I went back to thinking of ways I could escape Michel.

I had four possibilities, they were always the same, I thought about executing them rather than thinking of new ones.

I could con Michel into moving to Alaska and trying to find the Denali coven, maybe they could help me. I knew they knew who I was, I had met them once before. Irina probably wouldn't want to help me, but the others might.

Try and move back to Forks to see if the Cullen's were still there, if not, Charlie, although he couldn't help me. I would go to La Push and get Jacob to help me, even if I am a bloodsucker. As he liked to call them.

Evade Michel's bonds, hide in the back of his car when he went to work and escape the bonds that way. I knew he put them on just as he pulled out of the driveway. It was a good possibility but I didn't have the courage to do so.

This wasn't really a plan, it was hope, and maybe running into the Cullen's if we moved again. Hoping they would be looking for me. Maybe, just maybe.

Number one was out, Michel didn't want to move to Alaska he said he didn't like polar bears. It was a stupid plan anyway; I had no idea where the Denali's lived. Apart from the fact they lived in Denali.

I had tried to convince Michel that he didn't have to live off polar bears; they had Bison's, Black and Brown Bears, Caribou, Dall sheep, Moose, Mountain Goats, Elk, Reindeer and Deer. Along with others. That didn't work.

Two was a maybe. Michel said as much as he hated sun, he didn't like rain more. He also said that there was hardly anything to hunt and he had heard a rumour that there were werewolves living in La Push. I told him there was plenty to hunt and there were no wolves. The second part wasn't quite true there were wolves. When I had told him these facts he questioned how I knew so much about a tiny little town like Forks.

To that I had said that I had to study a small town in high school and create a better tourism market. He believed me and I could believe myself that I had made up something like that. Being a vampire had its bonus's: being able to lie, well.

Number three was still the best possibility. He would never guess. For a vampire he was pretty dumb. One day I had decided that Renesmee and I should run out the back when he walked out the front door. Turns out he put up the back blockade before the front. The sides were a no-no because there was only one side and that was where the garage was. We would have to say goodbye to him and then pretend to go up to Renesmee's room to read or something. Maybe even sit in the lounge room and watch TV.

He always walked slowly to the car because the neighbours were always out the front of the house. Renesmee and I could run around to the side door and quickly hide in the boot. (AN: For those of you who don't know, boot is what we Australians call the trunk of a car.) It was the best plan yet.

The fourth one was just a hope. Nothing spectacular. By the time I finished reminiscing Renesmee had woken up and I busied myself with her. I would dress her and then we would do whatever we felt like. Michel had just left. Too bad for plan three today.

"Mama are you going to tell me about when you were a human?" Renesmee asked me. I took in a breath and made my way to the living room. She sat next to me and I started to tell her the story.

"Well it all started after my mother Renee remarried and she wanted to spend time with her new husband Phil so I moved to Forks to live with my dad Charlie. That's where I met your daddy." I said. I waited for her reaction.

She got up and headed outside to lie on the grass. I followed and put myself next to her. "Really?" I nodded and continued.

"I met your daddy and I didn't know he was a vampire. I thought he hated me, it turned out that my blood just smelt so much better to him than anybody else's." She nodded.

"So, his family..." I described all of the Cullen's and then the Quileute's. I told her everything that happened up until I was kidnapped, she knew about that already. She laughed about some of the things I did with Jacob, and 'awed' when I told her about the lullaby and our meadow.

"Mama, I can't believe you never told me about this before. Do you still love daddy?" She asked me.

"Of course I do. I never stopped loving him, ever. You have the same colour hair as him, my eyes and blush, you have his nose too." I said. She smiled.

"Did he love you?"

"Yeah. He did. Even though I thought at times I thought he was stupid to want me. He could have any girl in the world, and he chose me." After we finished talking about my past and Renesmee was satisfied with what I told her we started to look at clouds.

"That one looks like a werewolf mama!" Renesmee said loudly. I smiled and looked at the cloud she was pointing at.

"Come with me, I'll show you something I don't wear because of Michel." She followed me into the house. It was the bracelet that Jacob had given me. I showed her the werewolf carving and the diamond that Edward had given me.

"You know what. You wear it." I said, I would tell Michel that I had bought it for her the last time we went out, I just hadn't made her wear it. He wouldn't know the difference. I tied it tight around her small wrist.

"I love it mama. Thank you."

"Don't worry sweetie, I want you to have it because it is something very special to me and so are you."

AN: Chapter three edited only slightly! Hope you all enjoyed!

Nickynoo!