Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns it all.

Rated M for several reasons.

Chpt 16 Mulling it Over

BPOV

"Couldn't you have told me that last night?" I ask with a slight edge to my voice. "Or just now when I got back?

Do you have any idea how fuckin' scared I was that I'd lost you completely? That you where goin' to me hunt me down an' kill me for murdering Chelsea?"

My fingers cease caressing his cheek an' for a microsecond I fight the urge to pinch it viciously instead.

"I'm sorry." He says with real feeling, opening his eyes to look into mine.

I sigh, a little bit disappointed in myself for not being able to stay mad at him. I just can't do it though, even with so much to discuss an' understand this is still more than I was expecting. I may technically be a traitor to my sex but I am in love with in extraordinary man. The fact that I am starting or realise that he has some clay in his boots doesn't make him any less amazing.

An' it was me that started withdrawing after Aro's death. Just like it was me that ran away last night.

An' so I resume caressing his cheek without too much guilt.

"Bella." He sighs, closing his eyes again. "I'm so grateful to have you back. Please don't ever leave me again."

I lie limply in his arms as my brain gradually starts working again. Only a vampire would be able to hold another at such a classic 'Gone with the Wind' angle for so long.

"What does it mean that you couldn't 'feel' me?" I ask eventually.

"When you left, I couldn't feel you, couldn't feel you moving away. I couldn't come after you." He looks into my eyes again, his face sad an' pained. "She broke our bond. We aren't mated anymore."

I gasp. Not mates? I don't understand.

"But I can still feel you." I hedge.

"You can?" He asks, brightening a little.

"Yes." I nod minutely. "Same as always. The 'indigestion' feelin' started to fade the closer I got to home. Does that mean it's still there?"

"I don't know." He admits. "We should probably ask one of the older vampires. I've only been mated for a little over twelve months. I think that makes me somethin' of a novice."

"But you think it's broken, don't you?" I push. Comforted strangely by how well I know him, even if I'm not that impressed with his conclusion.

Reluctantly he nods.

"Are you just bein' pessimistic?" I ask hopefully, remembering his whole 'woe is me' deal over Edward.

He doesn't respond.

"Is it bad, if we aren't mates?" I press.

He closes his eyes an' nuzzles my palm again. "I don't know."

"What if I'm mated to you but you're not mated to me?"

Eyes are still closed. Evasion.

"Does that mean you could mate with someone else?"

"I would never." He vows without opening his eyes.

Not by choice, I realise. But where's the choice in who you mate with, or did I miss that episode of Blind Mate on TV?

My newly recovered warmth is pierced with cold. He loves me, I won't doubt him, but what if we walk into a place one day an' he finds a mate, what happens to me then? Will someone stick up a rota for it in the kitchen?

Do mates automatically equal love? I don't know. I was irrevocably in love with Jasper before we knew we were mates, I suppose we were technically already there but I didn't feel any different before I knew, surely that must mean something? An' does it actually matter? Doesn't that just leave us in the same boat as 'normal' couples? The one where you have to work at it if you want to keep it. Or is there just one of us left in that boat, me?

I must have been silent too long because Jasper shakes me gently an' I refocus on his golden eyes.

Ah, Jasper coma. The cold washes away. Is it naïve of me to believe that because everythin' feels so right it will all be okay? Mentally I sigh. Probably, but what's the alternative? There isn't one because there's no way I'm giving him up now in favour of some fuzzy future that may or may not actually happen. The un-mated thing might not even be permanent. Mental snort. When was the last time I got that lucky?

So, Pompeian style, I will live at the foot of that volcano.

He shakes me again, harder this time.

"Bella?" His voice is laced with concern.

"Sorry." I murmur. "Just mullin' it all over."

"You won't leave me, will you?"

I hate that he sounds so vulnerable an' unsure so I make a rash promise.

"Not until you ask me to."

"I won't ev . . . ."

I move my index finger to his full lips.

"Don't make promises you can't keep." I urge him.

He closes his eyes again an' I marvel at how it's possible to feel so at peace with such a background level of fear. Perhaps I've just got used to it, one way or another.

"There are things I need to tell you." He says eventually.

Yes, I suppose there must be, it's one of those days.

All in all we stay there for the best part of three days, leaving only once to hunt.

It turns out we both have a great deal to tell each other. Fears, insecurities, shaming truths an' I wouldn't have been able to do any of it without his gentle encouragement. Bottling things up is my default setting, his too apparently.

I would never in a million years have told him my real feelings about the Chelsea situation if he hadn't made it so easy for me to. Because it seems immature to me that I feel he's effectively been unfaithful. But I saw them together, I saw the way he looked at her an' right or wrong I feel betrayed. His description of how it felt certainly hasn't helped. So much so that I can't even think about it for the time being. No. I need my sister for that.

For that matter the news that Char caught him innocently hugging Alice didn't exactly make me smile either. Suddenly I don't give a flying fuck how badly she's been abused by Rutilio, if she touches my husband again I'll rip off the offending body part, or crush it, I've already got form in that department. Foretell that! An' no, I haven't suddenly become unreasonable. According to Jasper she was already regretting cutting him loose when Chelsea got her hooks into her an' now she's free she's convinced herself she's still in love with him. There is no sympathy under the circumstances, she an' I are on a war footing until she gets the message that he's not interested. Might be good practise for later an' luckily he thinks my reaction is justified, albeit funny.

Two things he told me shocked me to the core. One I have filed away to worry about later, along with all my other mate related issues. The other at least cleared something up. I'd never wondered why he'd lied about his age to join the army, assuming it was a man thing. But that summer a girl in his county, who he was sweet on, was brutally raped an' left for dead. Jasper an' his brother found out who the culprit was an' rounded up some like-minded friends to exact revenge. There was a fight an' Jasper's beloved older brother was killed, two days before his eighteenth birthday. Hence his warnings to me about vengeance not always working out the way you hope it will. It cost him his brother an' his family, since he ran away to enlist an' never saw them again, because of Maria.

As much as that made me sad it seriously angered me that he'd been having as much trouble as me adjusting to our new reality as 'The Cowboy Coven'. If he'd only told me I could have missed out on weeks of feeling inadequate. We could have helped each other. I wish Char had made him eat that fuckin' book after he'd read it. I am, was, am, whatever, his mate. Did he think I would have posted his insecurities on Facebook? I'll admit it, I pummelled his chest a bit with my fists while we thrashed that one out.

Stupid Alpha Vampire.

An' then he asked me. Did I want to carry on? Despite his concern over maintaining our safety he would willingly walk away from it if that's what I wanted, try to find another way.

I did think about it. But in the end I said no. We are doing the right thing, I realise that now. That doesn't mean I'm entirely happy about it, but I've stopped wishing it would just go away an' I'm going to actively try to help. An' not just by crushing stuff. I promised.

Anyway, with all this to chew over it's hardly surprising that most of my attention is now focussed on the one thing I can affect.

The long overdue death of one Rutilio Asturias.

At least this time I have plenty of support. Perhaps even competition.

Who will get to him first . . . .?