The Fox

by capricapra

Taste of the Forbidden II Contest entry, now a multi-chapter fic. Student Bella is assigned to the supervision of the reclusive Professor Masen. Both are overwhelmed by their mutual attraction, despite it being against the rules. But can their relationship survive their age difference and a rogue academic hell-bent on destroying their happiness?

35. Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter 34

Edward

"Well, Professor Masen, you've been mighty lucky," chirped the portly, silver-bearded surgeon, resplendent in a sharp, grey suit and bow-tie, on his morning rounds. Behind him were several junior doctors and nurses, frantically scribbling in notes and on charts. "The knife missed all your major organs and blood vessels. You'll make a full recovery."

It was the morning after Aro Volturi stabbed me and nearly attacked Bella. I had been taken to the Royal Alexandra Hospital in the Glasgow suburb of Paisley, the nearest major hospital to the cabin, around thirty miles away.

"Does that mean I can be discharged?" I couldn't disguise the hope in my voice.

"Ach, it's still a stab wound, Professor," he replied. "We'll keep you in for another twenty-four hours."

"I just want to get back to my wife and son. I'm sure you understand."

The elderly surgeon's face softened ever-so-slightly.

"Aye, I do, sir. I'm sure you see this place as an awful, concrete hellhole that's keeping you away from your family, and it sounds like your wife has been calling my nurses non-stop trying to find out how you are …"

"… Great, so I can go home?"

"Not yet, Professor. Look, if you have an infection brewing, I'll know in the next twelve hours, and we'll be able to treat it quickly. Go home too soon, and an infection could take three times as long to settle."

He didn't wait for me to reply before leaving my bedside with his entourage in tow. I threw my head back against my pillow and picked up my phone, but it was dead and I didn't have a charger with me. Jared and Paula had taken Bella and Ollie to a hotel a couple of miles away so they could be near when it came to visiting. However, the hospital's strict infection control rules stated that no babies could be brought onto the surgical ward. Bella couldn't bear to have him out of her sight, so I hadn't seen them for eighteen long hours.

When I closed my eyes, I kept reliving those last moments before Robbie knocked out Aro, especially the fear, the oppressive, helpless fear that Volturi was going to violate my wife and kill my son. It stopped me sleeping, understandably, as did the pain from my wound, so I was utterly exhausted.

"Edward?"

Bree and Jared were hovering in the doorway.

"Hey." I gestured for them to come in. Bree sat down in the chair next to me, while Jared leaned against the doorjamb.

"How are you, Professor?" asked Jared.

"I'm okay." I explained my encounter with the surgeon. "Fingers crossed I'll be out of here tomorrow."

Bree handed me a bag with toiletries, chocolate and a few other bits and pieces.

"Bella sent over supplies. She wanted to come to the hospital and sit in the café, in the hope you'd be allowed down for a coffee, but Ollie's still upset. He wails every time Bella tries to take him out of the hotel room."

I felt a lump in my throat and it took everything in me not to bawl like my baby son. I wanted to see them so much.

"Err … thanks," I croaked. "How are you and Robbie? Where is he?"

"Ach, we're okay. Robbie's with Don. The police liaison officer's just left the house. They spent all morning getting his statement, which was tough, but our Beanie coped well. He was terrified that he'd be sent to jail and wouldn't believe otherwise until the police told him so."

"The poor kid. I'm so sorry he had to go through this. He came for a nice day out on the loch and it turned into a disaster. I hope he's not traumatised for life."

"Edward, please, don't ye be thinking like that," Bree murmured. "It's not your fault, nor Bella's, nor mine. Aro is scum, and now he can't hurt any of us ever again."

"He died?" I looked at Jared for confirmation.

"Not exactly," Jared explained. "He's critically unwell, needing a ventilator to breathe, and his doctors are pessimistic about him ever recovering."

"Do you know how he managed to get to us?"

"Jenks is working on it. He's trying to track down Alec Brighton as we speak."

"Is Volturi in this hospital?" I asked, suddenly overcome with a perverse desire to visit him, to see for myself that he was on the verge of death.

"No, he's in another hospital on the other side of Glasgow. Aside from the fact the police didn't want victim and perpetrator in the same hospital, hey didn't have a ventilator available here," Jared confirmed. "Volturi's wife is on the way, apparently."

I had met Sylvia Volturi once, when I was working in his lab as an undergrad. She was a small woman, who said hardly anything, and clearly disliked the lab environment. She seemed as though she wouldn't say boo to a goose at first, but as she left, shuffling along in a floor-length fur coat, she fixed me with a steely gaze that made me think she might not be as timid as she looked.

"I wonder what she'll make of all this," said Bree. "Maybe she has no idea of what's been going on."

"I think she knows exactly what her husband was like," retorted Jared. "Very few women who are married to men like Volturi are completely oblivious," he added by way of explanation. "In any case, she'll find out the whole truth in all its gory detail soon enough."

"Aye," agreed Bree. "Jared, have you got the charger?"

"Yep." He plugged in an iPhone charger to a free socket by the side of the bed and put my phone on to charge for me.

"Bella realised your phone must be dead," explained Bree as she picked up her handbag. "We'll leave you to get some rest."

"Thanks guys, see you later."

"No problem, Edward. See you soon."

As soon as my phone was working again, I called Bella on FaceTime. Bella's tired but beautiful face filled the screen. She had clearly been crying, but she was trying to smile.

"Hi Baby, you okay?"

"Oh, Edward, I should be asking you that! How are you?"

"I'm actually not too bad, it just hurts when I cough. The surgeon says I should be out of here tomorrow."

"Thank God! I miss you Foxy, and I'm so sorry I can't be there with you."

"Don't worry about that. Our boy needs you. How is he?"

"Let me show you." She stepped away and there was some noise disturbance before she returned with a grizzly-sounding Ollie, his face red and puffy. "He's been sleeping for only half an hour at a time. I'm pretty sure he misses you too."

"Did you call the ward? The surgeon said something like that."

"Yes, but the nurses said you were sleeping so I couldn't speak to you. I think I pissed them off with my pestering, because I knew you'd want to be woken once you realised your battery had died, but they wouldn't budge. The Scots are a tenacious bunch!"

She laughed a little, but I could tell she was frustrated.

"Tomorrow, Baby. I'll be out of here tomorrow and then we can go home and back to normality."

She sighed and shook her head slightly.

"I'm afraid it's going to be a while, Foxy. I phoned the travel insurance company and they are insisting that you not travel for four weeks because of your injury."

"What the hell? No, fuck it, we'll go anyway. I'll get a letter from the surgeon …"

"Edward, they won't budge. If we travelled against advice, and something went wrong on the flight home, we wouldn't be covered. Our medical insurance won't cover the bills because it happened here, not at home, and we'd be bankrupt."

I knew she was right, but that didn't make me any happier about it.

"So we have to stay here for four weeks?"

"You can't fly for four weeks, but we don't have to stay in Scotland. We could go to my dad's house in Wiltshire, which would be my preference, but we could go to Oxford or London … wherever you want, as long as you don't fly."

"What are we going to do for that time though, Baby? We'll miss Labor Day weekend, the start of the semester, teaching and research meetings …"

"The time will pass. We can have quality time with Ollie, and some space to get our heads around what the hell just happened to us."

"Okay … I suppose I'd better speak to Carlisle."

"Already done, and I've informed Amun El-Samir as well. All you need to do is rest and recover, Foxy."

-cc-

We ended up at the Swan family estate, a beautiful, absolutely huge Elizabethan manor house, rather unimaginatively named Swan House. It was around ten miles from Salisbury, and was surrounded by rolling farmland as far as the eye could see. Bella did not have many happy memories associated with the place more recently, as she associated it with feeling lonely. Now that we had Ollie, and she and Charlie had become close again, she wanted to make new memories there.

I was sceptical about spending the whole of my recuperation at Swan House initially, but it had a warmth and charm that I hadn't expected, and within a day, I felt right at home. Charlie had a lot to do with that; he had gone out of his way to make sure we were comfortable and to spend time with us.

Swan House also proved to be an ideal base from which to investigate how Aro Volturi had come to attack us. Bella and I, with the police, Jenks, Jared and Paula, tried to piece together what had happened in Scotland.

"Alec must have been complicit," stated Jenks. "We know that he and his step-sister were completely under Volturi's command and I don't think that would have changed with his fall from grace."

All of us were sitting around a large table in a huge atrium at the heart of Swan House, overlooking the mature, walled garden. It had been four days since the surgeon in Glasgow allowed me to leave hospital.

"His loyalty means he won't talk to us though, doesn't it?" asked Bella, cradling Ollie as he slept after a feed. He was finally settling back into a routine again. It amazed me that even at three and a half months, he was so sensitive to what was going on around him. I didn't know whether it was a trait all babies had, or whether it was a special trait of Ollie's.

"He might when he realises that Volturi is brain-dead, but we can try to hack into his emails and mobile phone records. That might give us some leverage with Brighton, and aid the police's enquiry."

"Where do you think Alec Brighton is?" I asked. "Back in Oxford?"

"Maybe," said Jared, not looking up as he typed furiously into his laptop.

"I don't think so," murmured Paula, however. "I think he will return to Yorkshire to be close to the prison where MJ is being held. All our intel shows that they have an especially close relationship. There is no reason for him to be in Oxford if Volturi is not there."

"We should be able to get a stronger indication of location in the next hour," said Jenks. "I think you might be onto something though, Paula."

She was right. Alec was indeed in Yorkshire, renting a house on the outskirts of the town of Wakefield, a couple of miles from MJ's prison. Overcrowding meant that there was no place for her in a prison closer to Oxford until a couple of days before her trial, which was to take place in late September.

Jenks, Jared and Paula went up to speak to Alec Brighton the next day. Initially, he wouldn't speak to them, but when they returned with police the day after their first visit, and showed him a picture of Volturi at death's door, he finally broke. Jenks described him as equal parts loyal, adoring and utterly terrified of his 'Master,' and was utterly bereft that he was at death's door. When the police arrested him, he meekly put his hands out for the cuffs.

"So what did he tell you?" Bella asked eagerly as we sat down to a fish supper upon their return, provided by Charlie's kindly housekeeper Mrs Terence.

"Brighton knew exactly what Volturi was planning. They'd been working out a strategy to get to Bella since your meeting with the Proctors," Jared explained. "But they were hampered by MJ not being extradited back to the US and Volturi being banned from leaving the UK."

"They couldn't get to you in Boston, so when Professor Gerandy died, it was a breakthrough for them," added Paula. "They knew you would come over for the funeral and memorial service, so they watched out for you, and for us."

"Yes, Alec Brighton recognised Jared and Paula when we went to his house. They knew you'd hired security back in November when you were over for the Proctors' hearing, after the incident with MJ, and figured correctly that you'd hire us again," stated Jenks.

"So Alec was at the funeral?" I realised.

"Yes. There were so many people there, all dressed in black, that it was easy for him to blend in."

"At Aro's request, Alec watched out for us arriving at John Gerandy's memorial service, and then put a GPS tracker on our car when it was parked outside." Jared appeared angry and a little embarrassed. "He followed us to the cabin, and observed all our security arrangements."

"And then told Slimy," said Bella. "That little shit."

"My sentiments exactly, Baby," I agreed. "Did Alec stay in Scotland after that?"

"No, he went back to Yorkshire to see MJ. Volturi wanted to do the rest by himself." Paula shuddered as she spoke. "It still chills me to think of his determination to conquer you, Bella."

Bella closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

"The thing that scares me the most is how close he got to hurting Ollie," she whispered, rubbing her thumb over the screen of the baby monitor. "So he hired the boat, sailed it up the loch and waited for a moment to attack me?"

"Exactly," confirmed Jared.

"How did we not notice him passing in the dinghy?" I wondered. "Hardly any boats come as far north as the cabin. We had the curtains open all the time, and if a dinghy had come past, we'd have waved."

"Volturi was not an experienced sailor and it's quite a long way from the boat shop," replied Paula. "We think he sailed past in the middle of the night, and waited until daylight before trying to find his way overland to the cabin."

"Alec initially claimed that he had no idea what Volturi was going to do when he got to you," said Jenks. "However, when the police came along, he confessed that he knew Volturi's plan was to 'tempt' Bella away from you, Edward."

"The frightening thing was that Alec truly seemed surprised that Volturi's plan had failed," added Jared. "He saw him as akin to God and was devastated that he was unlikely to survive."

"So what happens next?" I wondered.

"You recover and go home. If I were you, I would try to get back to normal life as best you can," advised Jenks. "Volturi is as good as dead. Alec is unlikely to be a threat alone, and MJ …" Jenks paused. "I expect that she'll be in a mental hospital in the near future. When she finds out what's happened to her 'Master' and her brother, she's bound to break."

Bella admitted her tiredness shortly after, and once Jared, Paula and Jenks were on their way back to London, we retired to bed. She soon fell sound asleep, the tiredness catching up with her, but I couldn't get comfortable thanks to my injury. I tossed and turned with pain, and with the image of Volturi in the cabin, creeping towards Bella like she was prey.

When Ollie started to fuss a few hours later, I got up and saw to him before Bella had a chance to stir. Ollie was in the room next door, which had been Bella's nursery when she was little. Charlie and Renee had never changed it, so it was still decorated with pink and cream gingham wallpaper, and held an old fashioned cherry wood crib, changing table and a large rocking chair, which was placed by the window to overlook the gardens.

"There there, my boy, Daddy's here," I murmured. He was grizzly, and a quick pat of his bottom confirmed that a nappy change was in order. He didn't settle afterwards though, so I grabbed a bottle of milk from the warmer and settled down with him in the rocking chair.

He sucked on the bottle teat eagerly for about ten minutes before turning his head away, drinking about half the contents, and after I burped him, he closed his eyes with a satisfied snuffle. I felt his contentment warm me through to my bones as the realisation sank in.

Volturi and his associates had done their worst and they had not broken us. Bella and I were tired now, but we would soon recover, and would be stronger than ever.

-cc-

Bella

Mmm … I'm waking up. It's morning. I feel like I've actually got a decent amount of sleep … Maybe I'm dreaming that I've had sleep … Ollie's going to wake up screaming any minute and this peace will be over …

Hang on, where's Edward? I can't feel him.

Foxy?

I opened my eyes to find that I was alone in my childhood bedroom. The alarm clock read 7.14am. I glanced at the baby monitor. Ollie wasn't in his crib. That got me out of bed with a start and I rushed to the nursery, but stopped in my tracks at the sight of The Fox asleep in the rocking chair, an awake but quiet Ollie in his arms, watching his father while sucking on his fist.

"They've been like that for at least an hour," whispered Charlie behind me. "I didn't have the heart to wake him; they both seem rather comfortable."

"Indeed. Edward must have seen to Ollie in the night and just stayed there," I realised. "I don't want to wake them up either."

"Then come and have a cup of tea with your old man. I've just made a pot. Edward will come find us when he wakes up."

I followed Charlie downstairs to the kitchen and sat down as he poured two cups.

"Thanks," I murmured as he passed me one.

We sat in silence for a while, just sipping our tea and reading the Sunday newspaper from the morning before, much like we used to do when I was home from school on the holidays and they happened to be there, or if I was visiting them abroad. Mum would usually be in bed, often sleeping off a hangover, so it was a routine that was just mine and Charlie's.

"What do you think Edward will do with his Scottish cabin after … you know … the incident?" my father suddenly blurted. "Will he keep it?"

"I have no idea," I responded. "He has so many wonderful childhood memories from there, but now it's tainted, thanks to Volturi."

"How do you feel?" Charlie continued. "I mean … you were in serious danger. You could have … you could have …"

Suddenly he was sobbing loudly into his hands.

"Dad, Dad, it's okay …"

"No, it isn't, Bella." He looked up at me with red eyes. "I used to hold you and sit with you in the rocking chair the way Edward was doing with Ollie. I planned to read you bedtime stories and go to teddy bear tea parties with you and take you to Disneyworld, but I didn't. Your childhood went by in the blink of an eye, and I missed it."

"But …"

"And to think that I could have lost you before making amends, and Ollie and Edward too, just kills me."

I walked around the table and sat next to him. He hugged me fiercely and cried into my shoulder for a few more minutes, until the sound of Ollie grumbling for attention through the baby monitor interrupted us.

"…Okay, baby boy, Daddy's up. Let's go find Mummy," mumbled Edward, his voice thick with sleep. "Oof, you're getting big, Ollie," he added, the rocking chair creaking as he got up.

I walked to the bottom of the stairs and called up to him.

"We're downstairs, Edward!"

A moment later The Fox and our little Cub emerged and as Edward walked down the stairs, Ollie caught sight of me and smiled. I glanced at my husband's face and realised that something had changed. Although tired, he looked relaxed, for the first time in ages.

He was happy, and so was I.

-cc-

A week before we were due to return to Harvard we found out that Aro Volturi had died. His wife made the decision to turn off his ventilator when the doctors declared there were no signs of brain activity. The police informed us directly so that we didn't have to hear about it in the press; thanks to his spectacular fall from grace earlier in the year, his demise had drawn considerable media interest. Thankfully, our involvement and that of Bree and Robbie had been kept quiet.

The post-mortem confirmed that the cause of Volturi's death was a haemorrhage, caused by Robbie hitting him. However, the pathologist concluded that the force of the blow should not have caused as much damage as it did. Robbie was eight years old and small for his age, so was deemed unlikely to have the strength to cause a fatal injury.

Further investigations revealed that Aro Volturi had several aneurysms in his brain, which could have ruptured at any time, spontaneously, to cause a fatal haemorrhage. It was little consolation for poor Robbie, who was still waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares, but he was slowly recovering.

Even though we had known that he could not hurt us following the incident at the cabin, I felt a sense of relief at the news of Slimy's death, and The Fox reported the same. However, I suddenly thought about MJ, so under Volturi's spell she threatened me and Ollie with a gun. Was Jenks right about the way she would react to the death of her 'Master' and the arrest of her brother? Volturi, we understood, had been paying her legal fees.

Jenks was correct; MJ's fragile psyche collapsed when she heard about Aro's death, and she went from being a sociopath to having a full psychotic breakdown. She ended up in a secure psychiatric hospital, and the judge sentenced her to an indefinite period of treatment. As she was deemed to have been of sound mind when she tried to hurt me, however, she would have to face trial when she recovered.

The Crown Prosecution Service recorded our testimonies at my father's house, and informed us that they would be in touch if they needed anything else. Off the record, the barrister told us that he thought it unlikely that we would be bothered, and that we could expect to be protected by a restraining order when MJ was released, which would be at least a decade away.

Alec was charged with aiding and abetting Volturi. He was pleading guilty and it was expected that he would serve two years in prison. Jenks would inform us when he was released, but was confident that he would never attack us. Without Volturi and MJ, he lacked any motivation or initiative.

With that knowledge, we were determined to get back to our quiet, settled family life, and to our work. When the airport shuttle dropped us off in the early hours of the morning after our long flight back to Logan, we both sighed with relief.

"It's so good to be home!" cried Edward when we came through the door of our house before collapsing on the sofa. He had mostly recovered from his injury, but his medication made him tired.

"Totally agree, Foxy," I replied, putting a sleeping Ollie down in his basket. "So, uh, how tired are you?" I added, sidling up to him on the sofa and placing my hand on his thigh. I hadn't been able to get enough of him in the past couple of weeks.

He raised an eyebrow in surprise, before letting his eyes drift downwards to watch my fingers drawing circles close to his crotch. When my knuckle brushed his cock, he let out a deeply sexy, shuddery breath.

"Never too tired to refuse you, my tempting little vixen."

Three hours and five orgasms later (two for him, three for me), Ollie woke up, demanding boob time, and The Fox went out to get breakfast, and to pick up Jake and Nessie from Sarah.

At the sound of the dogs returning, barking and whining with delight as seeing us, Ollie, who was in my arms, suddenly smiled and cooed.

"Oh, puppies, Mummy's missed you too!" They jumped onto the sofa and licked my hands and snuggled up against my sides, and Nessie gently nudged her wet nose against Ollie's cheek. His eyes widened and then he broke out into a full-on laugh. Jake cocked his head to one side and then nudged Ollie's other cheek. Ollie laughed again, this time reaching for Jake. Both Jake and Nessie responded by placing their heads against his hands, causing him to giggle even more.

"Oh, Ollie, you missed your friends, that's why you were so sad when we left!" exclaimed Edward, placing coffee and donuts, and a mountain of mail, on the coffee table as he sat down. Nessie scrambled onto his lap, but then reached back to touch Ollie with her delicate paw. "Back together at last."

"Yep," I agreed, picking up one of the coffees. As I took a sip, however, my stomach lurched and bile rose into my throat.

"Bella, you've gone pale. Are you okay?"

I put the coffee down, and felt better instantly, but still a little sick.

"Yeah, just tired, I think."

He offered me a bite of his maple-glazed donut, but as I leaned in to take it, the sugary, oily smell caused me to feel nauseous, and this time, when I moved away, the feeling didn't go away.

"Baby?"

I didn't answer him. Instead, I jumped up and heaved the contents of my guts into the downstairs toilet.

"Bella!" Edward called frantically from the other side of the door.

"I'm fine!"

"I hate it when you say you're 'fine' and you clearly aren't."

"I'll be out in a minute."

Should I call Dr Evans?"

"For fucks sake, Edward, just let me finish throwing up and stop badgering me!" I snapped, before gasping at my ridiculous outburst. He was only concerned for me.

A moment later, after rinsing out my mouth and cleaning up, I opened the door to my husband and son, and two worried doggies.

"I'm sorry, Foxy …" I murmured as I stepped out of the bathroom. "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I yelled like that."

"So … You've been really horny recently, tired, you're off your food, nauseous, and now you're snappy. Could you be …?"

"Pregnant?" I whispered. As soon as I said the word, I knew I was. That gut instinct again. I knew. "The cabin, the day before that happened …" I pointed at his wounded abdomen. "We made love on the patio."

"Of course," he replied. "Pregnant," he repeated, smiling widely. "You're so pregnant!"

The Fox wrapped me and our little Ollie-Cub in his arms and with Jake and Nessie frolicking around us, we danced and danced with joy.

-cc-

The last chapter! Thank you for sticking with the story, and with me, through all the ups and downs. The epilogue should be posted in the next week or two.

CC xxx