Chapter17

In some ways Edward had not felt this good in years, he was walking beside Bella and in other ways he had never hurt so much in his existence because her husband was on her other side holding her hand. As they passed into the family wing of the castle Edward took in his surroundings. None of the Cullen's had been in this wing yet. While the rest of the castle was businesslike and almost clinical, here was obviously were they lived. There were signs of children of different ages, a game room and lots of pictures but what drew his attention was the life size portrait on the wall. It was of Isabelle and Gabriel on their wedding day and she looked stunning. For a split second he imagined himself in Gabriel's place and what he saw almost made him smile until he remembered the reality standing beside him.

The family balcony was actually more of an indoor greenhouse, in was full of hanging plants and cactus. Edward looked around and thought Bella had done a good job of combining the 2 places she had spent time as a human into a place she could enjoy in eternity. There was a small sitting area with 2 chairs a table and a loveseat. Edward sat in one of the chairs and was surprised when Bella sat in the other chair next to him. Gabriel walked to her kissed her on the head and told her he would be in the greenhouse if she needed him.

Edward started to speak. "Please let me go first," Isabelle interrupted. "Gabriel will not interrupt us unless I feel threatened at any time. We really are trying to make this easier on you Edward and I knew you would want the most privacy we could have." Edward nodded, "I understand and deeply appreciate the privacy given us. The last two weeks it has been hard to process everything and that is with a vampire mind. I am trying to keep my distance and not upset your family and believe me I understand their adoration of and loyalty to you. I do have questions but even when I have the answers I am not sure that will change the way I feel for you. Can you understand that?"

"I do understand Edward. Why don't I just tell you what happened and what my thinking was and then you can ask your questions?" Edward nodded for her to continue. "When you left Edward, I ceased to exist. I literally curled up in a ball and waited to die because my mind couldn't process a life without you. Everything that made me Bella you took with you when you left."

"After I met my guardians in the meadow and they explained everything to me including the prophecy. I came to realize that you lied in the forest that day. And that you were the one who would reject me but regret it. I know you did it to protect me but to be honest my first reaction was an unbelievable amount of anger. I was mad at myself for believing you and I was angry at you for not trusting me enough to stay. I spent the months before leaving mainly deciding if I would look for you first, where to do that and if not you where else do I go first. I also spent quite some time thinking about when we were together. I never doubted that you loved me but I did come to realize that you doubted my love for you. To my thinking you doubted almost everything about me because I was human and you couldn't read my mind to see if I was telling the truth and to be honest when I realized that, I was extremely hurt. Faith and trust are a large part of any relationship and I had that in you. I had faith in and trusted you to love me, keep me safe despite myself and to never hurt me intentionally. I always recognized the potential to harm me by accident but until the forest I never would have thought you could do it on purpose. You however never had enough faith in me, because of my humanity I think you thought what I felt could be fleeting. Because of how others think and your ability to see the thoughts behind the actions, you saw how petty and flighty humans can be and just assumed I was the same. You never came close to giving me enough credit."

"No, it wasn't like that," Edward started. "Please let me get through this," Isabelle said. "I am going to give you a lot to think about before this conversation is over. So please, let me finish everything I need to say and then I would honestly like you to think about everything before you say anything. OK?" Edward nodded once again, "I'll try."

"Anyway, you didn't trust me to know what I was giving up. You thought I couldn't see passed the fact that I wanted to be with you forever. I understand I often put others before myself and that you always saw that as a weakness. Knowing that about me, on some level you should have realized that I would have thought long and hard about what I was giving up. I was giving up my friends and family permanently. I would never see my mother or father again. I was giving up my friendship with Jake and any dreams of what I wanted to be and do when I got older. Of course I weighed the pros and cons and I made a conscious informed decision to be with you."

"You made the decision to ignore not only what you knew about me but also what I wanted. That fact is what made me decide to not actively search for you. I went with the assumption that while you didn't know what your leaving would do to me, you did know what it would be like for you. I decided to abide by your decision. I would not actively seek you out. If we were meant to be then fate would put us together again in my search for my mate. If in my search I found you again then we could put everything else behind us and move on from that moment knowing it was right."

"The odd thing is there were several times I was sure you were close. In Brazil I was positive I came across your scent a couple of times and I allowed myself to think of us together again. But then I never actually saw you so I let it go. I did see you in Vancouver once and I know you saw me. You were walking towards me and I saw the moment you recognized me. Then you crossed the street to avoid me and that is when I started to give up hope that you could want me too. Seeing you in Heathrow and having you walk away again was just the last nail in the coffin so to speak. That was when I decided to fully give my heart over to the search and realized that sometimes love alone is not enough."

"It was a few weeks later that I found Gabriel. He truly is my missing piece. I am sure you don't want to hear this but I do love him with everything I have and everything I am. He accepted me as I was a clumsy human even though he was not human. He immediately put his faith and trust in me as I did him and we never looked back. We have always been equals in his mind, even before we heard about the prophecy. Once we had heard about it he could have turned me out, that was his right until the mating ceremony. He accepted the challenge of the prophecy and I put my trust in him to know what he was getting himself into and to stand beside me no matter what comes after us. He has never let me down Edward."

"I do not regret the way things happened with us Edward. In some ways you taught how to really love and when you left I realized I was stronger than I ever thought. That strength and perseverance have gotten me through some dark times and brought me home to my family. I do care about you Edward, as I do your family, but I am unsure as to what exactly you want to happen from here. I LOVE Gabriel. The bond we have is unbreakable. As much as it hurt when you left me, to be without him would kill me literally. Because of our berserker bond if something were to happen to him when his soul left his body it would take part of mine with it, that is how intertwined we are. It is impossible to explain. You need to know I will never leave him, never."

"I am beginning to understand that," Edward murmured. "You will also need to get use to the fact that I can now hear things that I couldn't as a human" Isabelle laughed. "Perhaps I should also warn you that as a druid I have the ability to know what you are thinking."

"You can read my mind" Edward yelled, he didn't like that one bit. "Not exactly, it is what we call deep listening. I can do it when I want, it isn't a constant thing like yours is. It is a learned skill, not all druids can do it but my druid sons can and you will need to remember that also." Isabelle explained.

"My family has been telling me that I have to live with the consequences of my actions 5 years ago and I am finally starting to realize that." Edward explained. "I am sorry for the pain I caused you. I never expected you to believe me so easily and it hurt me that you did. I will have to think about the other things you said about our relationship. Some things I recognize but others I just don't know about yet. I also see that fate tried several times to bring us together and at every turn my actions kept us apart. You are right that I didn't think you understood what you were asking for and if I had approached you any of times I saw you things could be different for us. That I think may turn out to be very hard to swallow in the future."

Slowly Edward lowered himself to kneel in front of Isabelle, "I understand what your husband and family mean to you and I would never ask you to give them up. I can see the love pouring out of you when you look at him. I would be lying if I said I didn't wish it was me, I do. But because I love you like I do, first I want you to be safe and second I want your happiness. I am not blind I see that you are very happy in your life and in the end that is what I want for you."

As Edward reached for her hand he noticed Gabriel walk back into the room eyeing him carefully. Taking her hand but keeping an eye on Gabriel he said, "Now that I have found you I can't completely walk out of your life again. Please tell me that we can at least be friends after this is over? Please tell me I can contact you in some way?"

Gabriel was now standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder; his eyes had turned ice blue. Edward knew Gabriel would not be happy with his request but he also suspected that if she agreed to it Gabriel would have a hard time saying no and making her unhappy. "Edward," Isabelle started as she put her hand on top of Gabriel's, she was deep listening to Edward to show Gabriel his sincerity. "After this is over and you have had a chance to think about everything that has happened we can talk about remaining friends. Gabriel and I will also discuss it and find out what he would be able to tolerate. You will have to accept that this is extremely hard for him and goes against his nature. Allowing this will not be him trusting in you but in me. If you ask for any type of face to face contact Gabriel must be present, I insist on that. OK?"

"Yes, Bel- I mean Isabelle" Edward agreed with relief. Isabelle smiled and said, "Getting my name right is a start. Now, the others should almost be done with their medical tests and it is your turn. Do you want me to call Anthony to take you or do you want to find your own way?"

"I'll find it myself" Edward said, standing and walking out of the room. "I think that went as well as could be expected. Don't you?" Isabelle ask Gabriel. "It was OK" Gabriel replied. "I wish he had not touched you and I wanted to remove his hand. And by that I mean from his body but I think I did fine. We will have to talk about him wanting to stay in your life after this is done. I love and trust you and I can see he will respect your boundaries but his scent changes when he is near you and it puts me very much on edge. It makes me feel threatened and I know how that sounds but it is how I feel."

"Thank you for telling me your feelings. I know they are primal and hard to control. I would like to remain on friendly terms with the entire coven, but we will talk about it after this is done." Isabelle said standing to embrace her husband.

"Let's go then. All of the boys have returned including Thorne and Thunder. We need to see what they have to report." With that said Gabriel picked his wife so she could wrap her legs around his waist, kissed her soundly and carried her out of the room. With any luck their theories would be confirmed and they could go on the offensive.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or its characters.

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