Chapter 3: Beautiful Scars

"Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones." ~Mignon McLaughlin

"The wolves," I said quietly. "They…returned?" This was extraordinary. None of us had expected the wolves to return. We thought that they had died out with Ephraim Black.

Cassie sighed and settled back into the couch, her stillness so unexpected and complete that I might have thought her a vampire if I did not know better. "The way Nana Bells explained it was that some members of the Quileute tribe carry this gene. And it just lays there, dormant, unless…" Her dark eyes flickered toward me. "Well, unless a vampire is close by."

"Like my family," I mused aloud.

"Yep," Cassie confirmed. "Only in this case, after your family left, it was Victoria." I was surprised to hear the note of disgust in Cassie's voice. After all, she would not have known Victoria.

"But I still don't understand," I said, going back to my initial confusion when Cassie had mentioned Victoria. "Why would Victoria have returned?" I asked, still puzzled and trying to connect the dots.

Rolling her eyes, Cassie shook her head. "And you're supposed to be so smart…" she mocked. Then she waited, letting me sift through what she had told me and put it together with what I knew of Victoria.

"Oh…" I breathed. "She came back for Bella."

Cassie nodded. "There's hope for you yet," she teased, her lips pulling up in a smile. "Anyway, first Laurent came back, and the wolves took care of him."

I felt the anger building up in me, though it was decades too late to appease it by ripping Laurent apart. A low growl rumbled in my chest as I imagined Laurent stalking Bella, waiting for his chance to strike. Why had he returned? I knew he had left the Denali clan not too long after he arrived, but I had no clue that he had returned to Forks. If I had known I would have –

A small, warm hand on my arm distracted me. "Don't," she said softly. "It was a long time ago." Then she grimaced. "Well, to my kind it was a long time ago," Cassie conceded. "Okay," she breathed. "Anyway, back to my story." She threw me a cautionary glance that made me smile, though I had no idea why it did so. "Laurent came back, tried to sink his teeth into Nana Bells, but got teeth sunk into his ass instead." She grinned at me. "Papa Jake said it was pretty damned sweet to take down the bloo-" Cassie made a face. "Well, you know."

"The bloodsucker," I finished wryly for her. It took no great imagination to complete the sentence.

"Exactly," she said breezily and continued on with her story. "So they took down Laurent, which made them all very happy young wolves, let me tell you." Cassie winked. "But it made Victoria one very unhappy vampire, so several months later she decided to give it a shot herself." Cassie clucked her tongue. "Not the wisest move with a very large pack of werewolves in the vicinity."

"Large?" I asked, suddenly distracted. Again. "How large?" This was curious. The last pack had been small, not that they needed numbers to take down a vampire, especially one alone.

"There were twelve by the time Victoria showed her ugly face," Cassie replied. "And even though she tried to play games with them, they finally got her cornered and the rest, as they say, is history."

"The wolves killed Laurent and Victoria?" I was more interested in the fact that they had returned to do Bella harm than their eventual fates. How had I missed that? Obviously, I had been too focused on James and his horrific plans for Bella to even consider what his coven members might do. I had not only abandoned Bella, I had exposed her to horrible danger.

Cassie snorted and once more I was pulled into the present. "That's what they were made to do, you know."

"Oh, I know," I acknowledged dryly and Cassie laughed, hitting me playfully on the arm. She pulled her hand away and shook it.

"Damn, you really are hard as a rock!" And then a priceless expression came over her and she looked at me, her eyes wide with horrified amusement. That light, almost imperceptible stain of blood kissed her cheeks and I smirked at her. "All righty then," she continued in a strained voice. "Now that I've made a complete ass out of myself in front of the vampire, let's continue. Shall we?"

"Yes," I agreed. "Let's. But I do have some questions."

"I imagined you would," Cassie replied with a smirk.

I rolled my eyes at her. "You say that Jake told you about killing Laurent. But I thought that Bella was the one who told you about…us."

"That's right," Cassie murmured. "As I got older, I became more and more interested in the Quileute legends, more interested in my history. Apparently, I was a bit of a pain about it and persistent as hell. I didn't think I was getting enough information and being me, I decided to snoop. I knew they were holding back on me and I didn't like it one little bit. And one day I found a book in the attic, and it had a bunch of Quileute legends in it. I read it, and I asked Papa Jake about the wolves."

"And he just told you?" I found this rather hard to believe.

"Not right away," Cassie said, shaking her head and laughing. "In fact, he was a little put out that I was asking in the first place." She sighed and sat back, an expression of sad affection crossing her face. "And then…"

"And then what?" My curiosity was almost painful.

"And then Nana got hold of him," Cassie answered with a grin. "And you've never seen anything funnier than a man who is more than six and a half feet tall backing away from a tiny little old woman with her finger poking him in the chest and giving him hell."

I let the image rise up in my mind, I appreciated the humor in it, and then I felt the pang of loss. Would it always be so?

"So Papa Jake spilled the beans about the wolves and the Cold Ones," Cassie continued, her dark eyes alight with wicked amusement. "But nary a word about the Cullens, of course." She glanced at me from beneath long lashes. "Odd, but I don't think he cared that much for you." Her lips twitched, the laughter close beneath the surface as it always seemed to be with her.

I had to laugh and Cassie joined me. "No, I imagine he didn't."

"But no, he didn't tell me about you or your family," Cassie said softly, the note of sadness returning. "I think now that he and Nana came to an agreement of sorts. She wanted him to tell me about the wolves, because it was part of me." Cassie tilted her head and smiled and for once, she looked like Bella. "But you…you were hers." I felt a jolt run through me. "Your story wasn't Papa Jake's to tell. I think she knew that one day she'd tell me all about you and your family."

"And she did."

"Not right away, not until Papa passed away," Cassie reminded me gently. "I think she just didn't want to hurt him, or it seemed like the right time, or she just needed to tell me." Cassie shrugged. "In any case, I learned about the wolves, and once I did Papa Jake and Uncle Seth couldn't wait to tell me all about some of their more glorious exploits." She laughed. "Of course, I think they were a little disappointed they only got to take down two vampires."

"I imagine that was rather frustrating for them," I agreed with a rueful smile.

"But after Papa was gone, and I had my heart broken, Nana slowly started telling me your story – and hers." Cassie's face glowed with Bella's memory.

We both are silent for a long moment, each of us caught up in our own memories of Bella Swan. Bella Swan Black, a small voice reminds me. And I embrace that pain as well. It is penance, the price I agreed to pay long ago. I was not surprised to find her hand over mine, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"You know she was okay…eventually, right?"

I met Cassie's dark eyes and I swallowed hard. "Do you think that's really true?"

She smiled and nodded. "I'm not saying she ever stopped missing you – or loving you, for that matter. But she was okay, and she lived her life just as you wanted her to. She got married and had a child, and that child had a child…the whole 'circle of life' thing you were so anxious for her to have. It was a very human existence and she had it, all of it. There was bad stuff in there, sure, but you can't have the good without the bad."

"Did she ever forgive me?"

I wanted her quick reassurance, but instead Cassie sat back and studied me carefully. "Do you want the easy answer or the truth?"

If I had a heart it would have stopped.

"The truth." I paused. "I think," I added more honestly.

"Yes, I think she forgave you," Cassie answered. "But it didn't happen quickly. I think that once she figured it all out in her own head, the forgiveness part came easier. I don't think she ever understood it, not really, but she forgave." Cassie shrugged. "That's who she was."

I knew that much for myself. Bella's heart had always been generous.

"But the thing you have to realize is that for years, she didn't know the real reason you left."

I looked at Cassie warily. "What do you mean?"

"For a long time, she believed the lie you told her," Cassie murmured. "And for a long time that hurt."

"I-"

"No," Cassie interrupted. "Let me finish." She sighed deeply and twisted her hands together. "Part of what hurt her so much was the feeling that she wasn't good enough. We talked about that so many times…" Cassie's smile trembled on her lips. "Thinking that you had stopped loving her, that's what hurt the most – even more than you leaving."

Agony.

"Then she had what she called an epiphany," Cassie continued with a grin. "She never said what triggered it, but she said that she finally figured out that you did love her, but that you didn't want her to lead the life you do. So you left. And she was forced to make a life for herself, a real human life that came with all the baggage that entails."

"It was for the best," I muttered, but my words lacked conviction. I knew that.

Cassie's eyes narrowed. "Well, I guess that was for you two to judge," she answered neutrally. "But we talked about it a lot, Nana and me. We talked about your feelings about your soul, how you saw yourself, what you thought of the existence you led." She paused.

"And?"

"And the more we talked, the more I came to the conclusion that…" Her words trailed off and that light dusting of color came to her cheeks once more.

"You concluded what?" My curiosity was a living thing with claws, ripping at me.

She blew out a breath and then looked me in the eyes. "I think you need to get over it, Edward. You can't change it. This is it, your only shot. You're doing the best with the cards you were dealt, and that's the only fucking thing any of us can do." Cassie cradled my face gently in her capable hands. "You need to get over yourself, pretty boy, and deal with your own shit as it comes, because really, when you get down to it, there are no other options. You are what you are, just like everybody else."

Once more, Hurricane Cassie was getting the last word.

Then she leaned over and pressed a swift, chaste kiss against my cold cheek. "Now, I've got something for you," she said as she rose to her feet. A few moments later, she returned and settled back on the couch, three large notebooks in her arms.

She extended them to me. "Here," Cassie said. "These are yours."

I stared at her for a moment, confused. Again. What a surprise. I quirked one brow at her in question.

A slightly smug expression came over her face and she gave a soft, throaty chuckle. "They're Nana Bells' journals," she explained. "And she wrote them for you." She paused. "She wanted me to give them to you if I ever got the chance."

Oh. I wasn't sure I was ready for this, but one look at Cassie's face told me that I didn't have much choice. She tilted her head and leveled her narrowed eyes at me.

And I wondered if somehow she was related to Rose.

A terrifying notion.