During the run back to Fork, Bella decided to try her hand at hunting the 'vegetarian' way.
She'd only had to feed once since she'd been changed, but Bella knew she would have to keep herself sated as much as possible to avoid any incidents. She didn't want to go into some kind of newborn frenzy and hurt an innocent, or, god forbid, somebody she cared about, so she let her instincts take over and opened her senses to the area around her as she ran.
The first thing that hit her was the overwhelming smell of almonds and vanilla.
Bella had been so caught up in the absurdity of the situation, that she hadn't really had time to take in the scent of that little girl. It was incredibly enticing – the smell calling to something inside of her that Bella struggled to keep at bay – but she pushed past the scent, moving beyond her sense of smell to try and lookout for any wildlife in the area to sate her newly reinvigorated hunger.
There, in the distance, Bella heard the heavy breathing of a large animal, and she zoomed toward it. Coming upon a small herd of elk, Bella crouched low to the floor behind a patch of bushes just out of sight and downwind of the animals.
A bull led the group, his antlers branching from his skull and reaching toward the sky an in impressive fashion. After this was over, and she returned home, she could let Charlie know that she had managed to gain an interest in hunting. They might even be able to bond over it.
Bella tensed her legs, her calf muscles bunching as she pounced upon the large animal, grabbing it by the antlers with one hand and by the fur of its neck with her other. The quick attack stunned the other elk around her, but they sprang into action, fleeing the sight before the predator took them down as well.
She sank her teeth into the wild beast, and the loud sound of the frightened animal echoed in her ears. The gush of hot blood into her mouth wasn't nearly as satisfying as those attackers that had chased that woman had been, but Bella forced herself to swallow mouthful after mouthful of the foul tasting liquid.
The dying sounds of the creature were pitiful, and Bella tried to soothe it, even while her teeth stayed in its neck, by petting the coarse hairs on his neck.
After the bull had been drained, Bella lowered it to the ground gently, her face a mask of sorrow. That had been worse than killing those men. At least the men had been trying to hurt someone, the bull was just minding its own business. If anything, it was leading its herd, and that's not anything to be killed over.
She knelt to the ground beside it, her hand hovering over the wound on its neck before resting softly on it.
"I'm sorry." She whispered to the open air – and apology for the innocent life lost.
She didn't know how the Cullens could do it. Bella had always been a selfless person. She had left Phoenix so her mother could be happy with Phil without the chains of a child to hold her down. She had snuck away from Alice and Jasper when James was hunting her, so that they could be spared the fate that she had no doubt awaited her.
Bella had always known the value of an innocent life, and even if they were animals, they were innocent.
She didn't know what she was supposed to do with this revelation. She had witnessed the reckless bloodthirst of a human drinking coven in the form of James, Victori, and Laurent. She had been told horror stories by the Cullens about the ruthlessness of the Volturi, luring helpless tourists away from the herd so they could be dined upon, their screams echoing through the halls.
Bella didn't want to be like that, but she couldn't knowingly kill an innocent animal either, so that left her with very few choices in the way of her dietary choices.
She didn't know what she would do, but Bella resolved right there and then that she wouldn't take an innocent life. Sam had said himself that those men who had attacked the innocent were monsters. Maybe, Bella thought, she could just hunt monsters.
She shook her head to clear that morbid line of thought. Now wasn't the time to have an existential crisis.
She took a final, parting glance at the life she had ended, and pulled away, taking off into the woods, headed for home.
OOOOOO
The light in the living room was on when she got home.
She knew that the new vampires and the wolves weren't at her house, their scent had led off in the direction of the Cullens house, but she wanted to check in with Charlie before she ran head first into a potentially deadly situation. While Irina may have grieved for Laurent, and the relationship they had, that doesn't mean she's ready to forgive and forget.
When she swung the door open, Charlie leapt off his chair, the shotgun in his hand aimed at the door with a fierce look in his eyes. Bella stopped in her tracks, hand raised in an awkward wave, while Charlie quickly pointed the gun back to the floor.
"Sorry Bells." He rubbed the back of his neck as he sank back into his chair. "I've just been a little on edge recently."
"I don't blame you." She responded, more amused than anything. "Though, that gun wouldn't have done much good against a vampire."
He looked up from the ground in confusion. "I'm pretty sure that if you shot something's head off, no matter the species, that they die, Bella." He gasped. "Wait…can you live without a head? Like…like a chicken?"
Bella threw her head back with a laugh. "No, dad, I'm not like a chicken. I'm just bullet-proof." Charlie stared at Bella incredulously, but she was already off in her own world on another tangent. "Actually, I have no idea if I can live with my head separated from my body. Now that I think about it, the Cullens did say you had to take a vampire apart and burn all the pieces if you wanted to kill it, so does that mean that if someone burned my body, but left my head, I'd regrow it? Or if they burned my head, could I grow that back? What if they burned everything but my finger…"
At this point, Charlie was looking a little pale, so Bella stopped her disturbing musings.
"Kid, it's one thing to know you're all…" He gestured at her with a wave of his hand. "But I don't need that kind of image in my head. You're still my kid."
Bella smiled warmly, "I know. Thanks dad."
"For what?" Charlie asked, his face scrunched in confusion.
"Just…for everything. For not looking at me the way Billy Black does. For being so cool with this. I mean, when I first found out about all this stuff it was kind of overwhelming, so I understand how hard it is, but you aren't giving up on me. So, thank you."
He gave a small chuckle, his face flushing with embarrassment. "You don't have to thank me for being your dad, Bells. And I'd always be there for—wait. How exactly does Billy look at you?" His face turned serious.
"Uh…" Bella remembered years upon years of friendship between the two men. Billy had been there for Charlie when Renée had taken Bella and left Forks behind. Even if the man got on her nerves with the looks he was giving her, she couldn't destroy that friendship. "It's nothing, really. I'm just being weird about—"
"Isabella Marie Swan." Bella flinched. "How has Billy been looking at you?" he repeated.
"Like I'm dead." She let out a sigh when Charlie's face turned red, the vein in his forehead highlighting his rising anger. "Dad, it's not his fault." He stared at her skeptically. "Really! A group of vampires attacked their tribe a long time ago. His whole tribe has been raised on the idea that the 'Cold Ones' were these evil creatures who lost their souls. Being raised around that kind of prejudice colors your opinion on things, whether you want it to or not. You are not losing your best friend just because he was raised by bigots." She paused. "Bigots who were king of right at the time."
The anger dropped from his face, and Charlie leaned back into chair in a more comfortable position, rubbing a hand down his face. He looked exhausted now that Bella got a good look at him.
"How long have you been awake, dad?"
He glanced up at her. "I don't know, Bells, a couple days? Things have been a bit hectic lately, and I haven't exactly gotten a lot of down time."
Bella schooled her expression into the one she gave her mother when she'd been up on another Netflix binge and forgot that human beings needed sleep.
"Charlie Swan, you go to bed right now." She spoke seriously.
He cracked a grin at her demeanor. "Yes, ma'am."
Bella rolled her eyes. "Ha ha. Now shoo." She waved him up the stairs and didn't leave the bottom of the staircase until she heard him settle down into the mattress. Then she turned and headed for the door, picking up her 'disguise kit' on the way, and shutting it as softly as humanly – or vampirely – possible.
OOOOOO
The house was exactly as she remembered it, minus the ridiculously expensive cars in the driveway. The only difference that Bella could discern was that it was occupied by a different set of vampires.
Bella walked up to the house with trepidation before realizing that the sounds of life she heard weren't coming from inside it, but rather behind the house, and she ran around the perimeter towards the back.
On either side of the enormous grassy yard stood what looked like two factions of a war. The wolves, minus Sam, were all shifted and baring their teeth on one side, and on the other the five vampires were in a v-formation with Tanya at the front. All of their eyes were still gold, even Irina. Although hers were a bit darker than the rest.
Tanya and Sam stood right in front of each other, just looking at the other in some kind of weird staring contest. Whatever negotiations had been going on, they'd been going poorly.
Before Bella could so much as speak, one of the wolves snarled and lunged forward. Bella blurred in front of the wolf, grabbing it by its throat in the air and throwing it to the ground past the wolves and almost reaching the trees.
The wolf, Paul because of fucking course it's him again, let out a pitiful whimper, but the other wolves didn't suddenly attack Bella, so she took that as a sign that he'd been acting on his own for that little stunt.
"Oh, shut up Paul, I didn't throw you that hard." She turned to Sam. "Hasn't he learned yet not to randomly attack vampires." Sam shook his head, his laughter only showing in his eyes.
"We're working on it." He said.
"Nice of you to finally show up." The blond who hadn't been introduced yet said with a joking grin on her face, betraying her amusement. "That was a neat trick you pulled earlier."
Bella replied with a smile of her own. "Thanks. I needed a little something extra if I wanted to compete with all the real magicians out there if my magic show was ever going to go anywhere."
The vampire laughed. "You got a show? What's it called, 'How to Pull a Houdini'?"
"That's actually better than the one I had in mind. Mind if I use it? All I had so far was something about magic fingers and fangs." Bella replied.
The blonde's grin grew wicked. "Magic fingers? You got that magic touch?"
"Kate." Tanya interjected, her tone sharp and reprimanding, but when she turned her eyes away from the wolves to look at the two of them, her eyes were crinkling at the corners from trying to hold back her laughter.
"Right, sorry." Kate replied, looking about as far from sorry as one could as she winked at Bella.
The coven leader let out a huffed breath before looking at Bella. "We can discuss what exactly what happened in Alaska was later. We were hoping that now you could explain exactly what's happened before Laurent showed up here and after. Mr. Uley told us enough to help us understand that they were not at fault for killing Laurent unprovoked, but he has left much unanswered."
All eyes turned to Bella expectantly, and she bit her lip as she contemplated telling the truth. She could tell them about the time traveling theory, or she could cut that part out of the explanation of what happened. Either way, she was going to be telling some uncomfortable secrets, she just didn't know how in depth she should go.
She released her lip as she decided to just explain the story with the idea that she could just teleport. She didn't know these vampires too well, and while she does want closure for Irina, and the assurance of safety for the pack, she wasn't going to be showing her whole hand just yet.
"It started on my birthday," Bella began, "or maybe even before that, when the Cullens took me out to watch them play baseball…"
OOOOOO
The story lasted about an hour to get all the way through. She glossed over a few things, like the time travel and where exactly she'd gone during each trip, as well as the exact way the Cullens left. They didn't need to know the ugly truth about her abandonment. She knew she needed to be thorough and explain everything that had happened with James' coven in order for the whole truth to be exposed, but by the end of the tale, Bella was regretting her candor.
Irina had been listening with rapt attention, and with each mention of her 'mate' her eyes had grown darker and more closed off. By the end, with Bella's recounting of the events that happened in the meadow, and how Laurent had bitten her with the intent to kill, she was clutching at herself desperately, her eyes squeezed shut as she let the final word bring about a silence through the yard.
The silence didn't last long however.
Her eyes snapped open, pitch black, and Bella saw a fury there that worried her for the current strained peace that had been set over the wolves as vampires. She reached up with her right hand and yanked on a silver necklace that had been gleaming on her throat, breaking the chain. She gazed down at the jewelry with disgust for a moment before slowly closing her fist over the pendant that had been resting there. When she reopened her fist, there was nothing but a twisted and gnarled piece of metal left.
"That lying bastard." The words were so quiet that even with her new hearing, Bella had to strain to catch them. She let the metal fall to the ground with a soft 'thud' before letting out a heavy sigh and turning her gaze to Bella. "I'm truly sorry for this. For…for everything that's happened to you. If I'd known the kind of person he truly was…" She trailed off.
"I'm sorry as well." More than one vampire looked at her in confusion, forcing her to elaborate. "If it weren't for me, you'd have never met him and had to deal with any of this in the first place."
Irina gaped at her, but she wasn't the one who spoke next. "That's your reaction to all of this?" Tanya surprised her by asking the question. "You are apologizing? After everything?" The coven leader looked shocked.
Bella gave her a shrug, her smile sad. "I know what it's like to be lied to by someone who claimed to love you."
The silence that followed her statement was more out of bewilderment than anything, but Tanya spoke again, once more the serious coven leader. "I think there is a bit more to the story about the Cullens that you haven't told us, but maybe now isn't the time for it." She gave Bella a meaningful look, and Bella sighed. They were going to have to have a talk later.
"For now," Tanya continued, "I'd like to set up a treaty with the shifters." She nodded to Sam. "It seems like we may be in town for a while, and we heard you had a treaty with the Cullens. Is it possible to extend that to us as well?"
"I'd have to talk with the Council." Sam paused. "But from what I've seen, I think it will work out. Where will you be staying? There are more shifters in La Push that haven't gone through their first shift yet, and if you get too close it might cause some discomfort."
Tanya let her gaze wander over the empty house. "We can stay here until our cousins get back. I'm sure they wont mind."
Sam was nodding in agreement, but Bella's head had snapped up at her words. "Get back?" she questioned, her tone strained. "Are they… are they coming back?"
Tanya looked at her, taking in her tense posture and her hands clutching at her arms and clothes and anything that could ground her. "Not that I know of. I was thinking of the long-term. We haven't heard from our cousins since Edward came to visit almost a year ago."
Bella swallowed, her throat bobbing around the knot that stuck there. "Right. Sorry. Nevermind."
The blond nodded slowly, letting the subject go for now, but Bella knew there was no way she'd be able to get out of that talk now.
"If that's all," Sam spoke, "We should get back and report to the Council. They'll want to know everything that's happened."
With a parting glance, he headed out into the woods, most of the pack following behind him. One large russet-brown wolf lingered a moment, brushing against Bella as it went by like a friendly cat, causing her to let out a startled laugh when the weight of the thing nearly knocked her over.
"Go, Jake. I'll see you later." Bella said.
The wolf huffed before following after it's pack, and Bella was left alone with the vampires.
OOOOOO
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