The rest of the story will not be told as an Omniscient POV like the prologue.

Chapter One

…

Just over four years later

...

"Stop fretting, Bella," Hailey exclaimed in exasperation. "I totally would have switched with Pogue so I could've ridden with Caleb, Kate, and Sarah if I'd known you were going to be freaking out like this."

Bella ignored her long-time friend's fiance as she once more twisted her lithe body so that she could see around the Ducati loaded in the bed of Tyler's Hummer H3T. She felt an absurd need to ensure that Caleb's Mustang was still keeping pace with Reid's manic driving.

It was.

She knew it would be. After all, Caleb's had years of practice at doing so. But she still had to look. Bella supposed she kept checking because she couldn't help but worry about her coven brothers getting lost when she knew from experience that the Olympic Peninsula tended to be a hot-spot for vampire activity.

With a relieved sigh she turned back around and looked out of her window at the forest lining the 101. Everything was still entirely too green in Washington. Over the years, a small part of her had begun to think the sheer greenness had just been a figment of her imagination. Apparently it wasn't. The green was still as never-ending as it had been when she'd moved to Forks nearly five years ago in lieu of Renee marrying Phil.

Bella hadn't been forced to leave her mom all those years ago. She'd just wanted the newlyweds to have some privacy. Nor had she been forced to move to Forks. No. She knew that she could have easily went back to Ipswitch, the town her however many greats grandmother had helped to found. But, at the time, it had seemed like a good idea to spend a little time getting to know the father she'd only ever spent a month with per year. So, two months after Bella's Ascention (better known as her eighteenth birthday which, of course, she and her mother celebrated in Ipswitch with the other members of the Covenant) she packed up her things and moved to Forks.

The months that followed…well those were interesting.

She encountered the Cullens who definitely piqued her curiosity. From the moment they'd walked into the cafeteria, she had known that they weren't human. Nothing that beautiful and that flawless could have been. It just took a few clues and a browse through the Book of Damnation to figure out that, of all things, she had encountered a coven of vampires. In the following weeks she did her best to ignore them and seem as boring as possible to discourage their obvious interest in her.

Sure, for blood sucking creatures, they didn't seem that bad. It didn't mean she wanted to be involved with them though.

But… her plan of obscurity pretty much went out the proverbial window after both the van and Port Angelas incidents. After the latter, Bella reluctantly conceded that she knew they were vampires in hopes that the threat of exposure would force the coven to move. Unfortunately, Edward claimed he couldn't leave Bella alone because her blood enticed him like no other had before. Then he professed his undying love for her after admitting to watching her sleep.

All in the span of five minutes…

It definitely added a creepy factor to the situation. Bella couldn't believe that in the first few months of her arrival, not only had she acquired a vampire stalker, but said stalker had deluded himself into believing that his love/lust for her blood was for her as a person.

Bella knew it wasn't. He knew nothing about her outside of the shy, innocent, and ordinary girl she purposefully portrayed to wield off suspicion. It was simple to her. Edward was a vampire and whether he recognized it or not... Bella had become his prey.

She knew this and tried to hold her ground via her natural shielding abilities. But whenever he got within fifteen feet of her, all he had to do was 'dazzle' her with his stupid prey hypnosis crap...and no matter how hard she tried to resist she'd be rendered pretty much helpless while in his presence. It had quickly become clear that she had no way of protecting herself from Edward or his family without full out 'Using'.

Unfortunately, it had been drilled into her since childhood that if it came down to a choice between death or exposure then she should proudly choose to protect the Covenant.

So Bella fell back on the old banality 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' If he loved her, then he was less likely to drain her. Therefore, in the following months she stopped using her shield to fight against his hypnosis. Doing so made her into the very malleable human puppet he expected. She also threw everything she had into becoming the quiet, shy, innocent girl he thought she was, thus making him fall in love with her while she did her best to make him believe she loved him too.

It felt like she had betrayed herself in the worst way to do so, but it was necessary to play along until she could find a legitimate way to escape. Lucky for Bella, that way to escape without exposing the Covenant came not even two months later in the form of three nomads. After she'd been hospitalized by James, Edward and the rest of the Cullens felt so guilty about the turn of events that she had no problem subtly convincing them that she didn't belong in their world.

They quickly left town and Bella spent the rest of her senior year at Forks High in relative peace.

Bella had changed very little physically in the years following high school. The nearly 23 year old witch still maintained her less than impressive, petite frame of five foot three and one quarter inches. Her doe eyes were still a deep, expressive brown. She still had soft mahagony curls that fell to her mid-back. Her skin hadn't gained a bit of color despite the numerous days she'd spent soaking up the sun's rays with Kate and Sarah. She also still possessed the silvery scar on her wrist from where the nomad vampire, James, had bitten her since none of the spells they had tried would get rid of it.

All in all, Bella was physically still the same girl that left Forks after graduation.

But mentally?

That was an entirely different story.

She felt much more mature now. So much had happened since that Summer morning when she'd sat on First Beach watching the sunrise. After leaving for Harvard she'd had to face her destiny as a witch rather quickly.

The first such instance happened halfway through her tenure at Harvard when Bella responded to a summons sent by her maternal grandmother. Upon her arrival, Grandma Eve explained that she could no longer bear to live any longer without her lost love. She claimed to have been living in unbearable emotional agony for the past five years and that she no longer had the will to go on. That same day, Bella had been willed her grandmother's power and became the official Scion of the Williams family.

Then, as if managing her families finances and various investments on top of University wasn't enough, Chase Collins showed up. He turned out to be a revenge seeking descendant of the banished sixth bloodline. His egotistical power trip had nearly managed to expose the entire Covenant. After he nearly killed Kate, Pogue, and Sarah, the five of them used their powers to kill him and end the Putnam bloodline. Doing that...well it forced all of the younger generation to lose their care-free innocence. Even wild child Reid Garwin started acting more like a man and less like a spoiled playboy.

Most of the time, anyways.

He could still be pretty immature at times. But then again, all of them could. Especially when they interacted with one another. They were only in their early twenties, though.

"Bells!"

The young witch jerked out of her thoughts at the sound of her name being shouted right next to her ear. A few choice curse words fell from her lips when she banged her head on the window. Rubbing the sore spot, Bella looked for the culprit. A smirking Reid leaning over the leather center console so that he was mere millimeters away from her person was obviously guilty.

"You rang, Asshole?" She snarked.

"Now don't go getting all pissy. We've been trying nicely to bring you back from La-La-Land for the past five minutes. We're here."

Bella's retort to Hailey's reprimand died on her lips as she finally realized two things. First. They were no longer moving. Second. Caleb, Kate, Pogue, Sarah were all outside of the Hummer laughing at her misfortune.

Blushing, she hopped out of the H3T so that she could get her first proper look at the Covenant's summer abode. Even in the growing darkness, she could tell that it was a nice place. The large wrap around porch and bay windows gave it quite a bit of character. She liked it even more in person than she had in the pictures e-mailed to her from the real estate agent. The older craftsman style brick home was built in the midst of a meadow and was nestled up against the dense forest on three sides. It offered the perfect amount of privacy for a home housing four warlocks and a witch that tended to get on each others nerves.

While the others gathered their luggage and/or walked around the clearing in front of the house, Bella took off at a run so that she'd have first dibs on the rooms. Her brown eyes bled to black with flames dancing in their depths as she 'Used' to unlock the front door. She then ran upstairs, opening all the doors and quickly glancing at the furnished bedrooms within. She repeated this process four times before she finally laid eyes on the room for her. It had been decorated in black and turquoise with a platform king-size bed, a walk in closet, a mounted flat-screen t.v., and a window seat.

Her assessment of the room came to a halt when she was shoved into the door-jamb by a bony elbow. Reid barreled around her and into the room she'd chosen. With a shout of frustration she teleported in front of him and roughly pushed him down. Instead of apologizing, she offered him a smug smile and then primly stepped over him towards the bed so that she could proclaim ownership.

"I don't think so, Swan!" Reid grunted as he grabbed her ankle and yanked.

"This is my room, Garwin! I saw it first!" Bella cried out as she fell on top of him in a graceless heap.

Before Bella knew what was happening, she and Reid were a flailing mass of pale arms and legs. The two of them became ruthless as they rolled around on the floor in an attempt to pin one another. In their frustration they began shouting at one another. Occasional phrases would be louder than others.

Reid's grunted, "Take that, Midget!"

Bella's indignant shout of, "Why you little!"

Reid's excited begging, "Oh, Swan, touch me there a little harder."

And after that was heard, a pained groan followed as Bella touched it 'a little harder.' It left the platinum blond warlock rolling off of Bella's tiny frame and clutching at his groin. Bella took advantage of his apparent agony by diving onto the bed.

"Oops! Did I touch it too hard, Garwin?" the young witch asked with wide open, doe eyes and an innocent pout.

A middle finger halfway covered by a leather glove being shoved in her direction was the only response Bella received. That just made the six others whom had gathered in the hallway when they heard all the commotion laugh harder.

Bella offered them a mock bow before looking at her left arm with a curled lip, "I think I'm going to have to bleach my hand."

"Probably," Kate, Sarah, and Hailey chorused in agreement.

With an exasperated shake of his head, no doubt at his friends childish actions, Tyler entered Bella's new room and helped Caleb to remove Reid.

Bella shut the door after everyone else had left to claim their own rooms and spent the rest of the night making the pre-furnished room her new home.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own or have any rights to the Twilight Saga or the characters from the Covenant.

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