And the winner is…

Damon!

This chapter will take place directly after Bella has drifted off to sleep.

Enjoy!

After Bella went to sleep I was left alone to digest everything that she had told Stefan, Elena and I earlier. I just couldn't picture it. My baby sister, mi Sorellina, with those things. For the life of me I just couldn't imagine what she must've been thinking. She's always been the smartest of the three of us, yet she managed to find and befriend the most volatile creatures on the planet.

Cold Ones. Even after all of the stories we'd been told about their kind she still cared for them. With the way she had spoken about them it would be easy for one to believe that she maybe even…loved them. The thought alone made me want to vomit. And when I thought about how she was attacked not once, but twice, I couldn't even remember the last time I'd felt so awful.

She had been in danger. And what had I been doing while she was risking her life? I'd been pining after my brother's girlfriend. A girl who hated me ever since I'd tried to kill her brother in a fit of rage and jealousy. I'd practically raised Bella, she was my little girl, and I'd done nothing. Now, she was hurting even more and I had no idea what to do.

My guilt was quickly replaced by fury though when I thought of the entire reason she was hurting. She fell in love with one of them. Then the little bastard had the nerve to tell her that she wasn't good enough for him. He broke her. My beautiful little angel was broken and miserable. When she had told us about the nightmares she had that involved waking up screaming and crying in the middle of the night, it took everything in me not to start demanding his name so I could rip him limb from limb.

It wasn't only rage that consumed me though. Beneath it all there was something else. I was jealous. She told us she thought of them as family. She thought them as her parents and siblings. And that thought had me reeling. They weren't her family. They didn't raise her.

Most of my anger was directed toward the males of the family. First, and most obvious was the little shit who broke my sister. Next, were the ones she thought of as 'brothers'. Stefan and I are her brothers. We would never attack her like one of them had. And we wouldn't abandon her like they both had. But, I think a majority of my jealousy was toward the patriarch of the clan. She viewed him as a father figure which hurt me more than I would've thought. I raised her, she's my little girl.

The worst part is that she viewed this man as a father and his wife as a mother, yet they abandoned her as soon as their 'son' requested it. They'd played favorites, but she still cared for all of them. And because she still cared she begged me not to hurt them. And I promised because I just couldn't take the look of complete misery that was painted across her face.

I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn't realize that Stefan had returned home until he spoke.

"Where's Bella?" he questioned.

"I told her to go to bed. She looked exhausted and I can't blame her. She's had a draining evening." I answered him.

"Well what did I miss?"

I rehashed all that had happened while he was gone and told him of my promise that we wouldn't go looking for her precious Cullens. At that he seemed more than shocked.

"I can't believe you promised her that. You were so ready to practically start a war with all 'Cold Ones'" he chucked at the thought because to him it seemed like an exaggeration, but really he was right. I was ready to start a war with all of their kind and had Bella not begged me not to than I most definitely would have.

"She practically begged me. And I only promised not to go hunting them down, I never promised not to hurt them if we ever happened to cross paths with them." I explained.

"So, what now? We just do nothing?" he asked.

"All we can do right now is help our little sister. She needs it." I said with a tone of finality so he would know that the conversation was over and so I could try to go and get some sleep.

"Goodnight, brother."