CHAPTER SEVEN
The whole school is rolling fake dice
You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes
~ Taylor Swift, Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince
Edward Cullen
We stopped to let Bella hunt, taking down a grizzly quickly before we met everyone in a clearing a few miles away from the main house. We bypassed Eleazar and his coven, meeting Carlisle and the rest of the Cullen's in the center.
I gave Bella's hand a reassuring squeeze as we quickly joined the ongoing conversation.
"Maybe we should have told them why we left town," Carlisle mused, his mind furiously trying to find a way to diffuse the situation.
"They wouldn't have believed us," Rosalie countered. "The mutts were always looking for an excuse to break the treaty."
"We might not have broken it, but I can see where they're coming from. Bella's change was… unexpected."
Bella sighed beside me.
I could see the doubt in everyone's mind, which meant she could too. No one expected to have the time to reason with the wolves before they attacked.
"I've taken out plenty of packs for Aro," I admitted.
Each Cullen had a different reaction. Emmett's eyes gleamed with the excitement of some action while Rosalie struggled with the frustration of her family being put in harm's way and tried not to let her annoyance with Bella and I through her thoughts. Jasper eyed me with a soldiers studious eye, mentally planning to have an in depth discussion about the tactics I had learned from the Volturi while Alice was still attempting to see through the block of the wolves. Esme flooded with worry, picturing me fighting packs of wolves. Carlisle blamed himself for the deaths that had been dealt by my hands.
"How old is the pack?" I asked, deflecting.
"Sam can't be more than two years into his change," Carlisle said, hating himself for even considering taking the pack on.
"Sam is rational," Jasper clarified. "Black will be the problem. Maybe his friends, too."
"Their age will work in our favor. Young wolves are cocky and messy."
Carlisle frowned. "I don't want this to come to a fight."
I eyed Carlisle. The man who made me who I was today, someone I would always respect. While I understood that he was against fighting, against the unnecessary death of someone who was more often than not human, I wasn't.
Maybe my years in Volterra had hardened me more than I realized.
"If any of them make a move towards Bella they're as good as dead," I told him as calmly as I could.
He didn't argue.
Bella's hand went slack in mine. I looked down at her, eyes glazed over before her head snapped to the left. Toward a cluster miles deep of thick forest.
Her growl shook the ground.
A wave of terror akin to a punch in the gut hit me out of nowhere for a moment before it was gone. I looked over to see Jasper resting his hand on Bella's shoulder. His concentration at attempting to help assuage Bella's fear and help control her instinctual response to the predator approaching was taking everything out of him. He gave me a stiff nod.
I cupped her cheek, pressing my lips gently to the other.
It will be okay, I told her. Waiting for her eyes to leave the tree line and meet mine. I brushed my thumb across her lower lip. I won't let anything happen to you.
The furrow of her brows told me she wasn't worried about herself. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile before I turned toward the tree line.
Emmett fell into place, flanking Bella's other side opposite of Jasper. I walked toward the head of the group with Carlisle, the rest of the Cullens and Denalis spreading out.
The pack was impressive. Though only half the size Bella had seen. The other half were no doubt waiting for the fight to start to show themselves, to think they had the advantage.
The black wolf was the largest, Sam from what I could tell of his thoughts and Carlisle's knowledge he was the Alpha. He was flanked by two wolves on each side, including a russet wolf whose size nearly equaled his.
Jacob Black.
I zeroed in on him, attempting to single out his thoughts from the rest of the pack.
Bella, he repeated, over and over. Drinking in any glimpse he was able to get through the vampires surrounding her. Oh, God, Bella.
I barely repressed a growl.
"Sam," Carlisle said evenly. "The treaty wasn't broken. Not by us. But if you make a move against my family, it will be null and void."
All of the wolves growled. Sam, the dark wolf, nodded toward where Bella was surrounded.
I didn't translate. Not yet. My ability was too big of an advantage were this to come to a fight.
"Bella is one of us, now. But we did not change her."
Bella. Oh, Bella.
I fought against rolling my eyes. Black was already getting on my nerves. I had half a mind to start the fight myself just so I could take him out.
"Let us talk. We're in neutral territory," Carlisle went on.
Black's eyes met mine. His nostrils flared. I saw the lines being connected in his mind, the way he latched on to Bella's scent, still somewhat reminiscent of what her human one had been. It was far too enjoyable to listen as he connected the dots, matched her scent to mine. Realized just how intermingled they were.
My lips twitched with a smile, just barely.
He pounced.
Bella's power surged from behind me, her growl beautifully fierce as Jacob Black was launched back into the trunk of a thick tree before he got within ten feet of where Carlisle and I stood.
All of the other wolves froze, eyes wide and minds frantic.
Black shook himself off, gearing up to come back.
Bella growled, shoving him a few feet back with her shield. "That was rude," she snapped.
Emmett let out a booming laugh.
I watched with amusement as Black shook his head and tried to take a step forward. Each of the other four with the group tried the same.
None of them got an inch.
One of the other wolves whined under his breath. He was on the smaller side, his fur a few shades lighter than Black's. He retreated for a moment behind Sam before shifting and walking to stand beside his alpha.
Sam's mind was furious. He tried to move to cover the young man, but couldn't get an inch.
"What happened to her?" he asked.
He was young, couldn't be eighteen yet. His name was Seth, his entire pack was screaming and cursing him out behind him. Assuming he was about to be slaughtered.
Seth Clearwater had a kind heart, though. He wasn't afraid. He trusted Carlisle when he said he wanted a chance to talk. Trusted him enough to fight against the explicit order from his alpha.
Carlisle gave him an appreciative nod. "Bella's change was unique. Her body somehow started it on its own. It was not started by a bite. There was no choice but to let her change complete and try and help her adjust to her new existence."
Seth frowned. "Has that happened before?"
Carlisle shook his head. "Not that we're aware of."
"That… force. Is it her?"
"Yes."
Seth hesitated. Black pushed against the shield keeping him a good six feet further back than his pack.
"Jacob thought she was his imprint."
"She's not," I snapped. Not at Seth, whose mind was free of any prejudices or accusations. My anger was directed toward the darker russet wolf who couldn't seem to take no for an answer.
His mind was in shambles. I might have had sympathy for him if his pain wasn't purely selfish. He didn't think about Bella or her change or what she had gone through. He thought about himself. His life that was now changed. How this affected him and only him.
It was very obvious that he was in love with the idea of her purely for selfish reasons.
I had no sympathy for the boy.
And I only had so much self restraint.
Seth eyed me hesitantly. "Who are you?"
"Edward Cullen," I told him with a nod.
Carlisle's hand fell on my shoulder. "Edward is a friend of mine from long ago. He doesn't hunt humans, as you can tell from his eyes. He poses no threat to you or your people. None of us do. The treaty is still intact. Let us all go our separate ways. We won't return to Forks if that would make you feel better."
Seth looked back toward Sam. His mental connection wasn't as clear when he wasn't in his wolf form, but he knew his pack. What they would want.
"May I talk to Bella?" he asked, peering around my shoulder toward her.
I tried to suppress my growl as much as possible. Evidently I didn't do a good job as Carlisle's hand tightened on my shoulder.
"Of course," Carlisle said, turning to nod toward Bella and Jasper.
Bella hesitated, eyes constantly scanning the pack. I watched her hands clench into fists and saw just how concentrated Jasper was on her. How much energy he was exerting to try and keep Bella and her own emotions and power under control.
I reached my hand out to her. My hostility toward the wolves had nothing to do with our safety and everything to do with the puppy in the corner who was currently plotting to grab her and run at any moment.
He wouldn't get anywhere near her. But his insistence that she was his tested every one of my limits.
I clasped Bella's hand in mine, the contact melting my frustration away. I leaned down to press my lips to her temple.
"Hello Seth," she said softly, carefully. As if she hardly trusted herself to even speak.
Seth hesitated. "Could we talk without all of… that?" he asked, motioning toward Jasper's hold on her shoulder and mine on her hand.
It was a smart request. Seth knew of Jasper's emotional manipulation and had his doubts about me. His question wasn't for any reason other than making sure Bella wasn't being manipulated, while his pack mate whined in the corner about his own misgivings.
"Jasper is there more for your protection than anything," Carlisle admitted. "Bella is a powerful vampire and doesn't quite have control over it yet. Her power lashes out when she feels threatened. This is a stressful situation for her and Jasper is helping modulate that."
Jacob shifted from his wolf form quickly, unabashedly pulling on a pair of denim shorts. He took a tentative step, pleased when the shield was gone and he was able to storm over. "You're manipulating her," he sneered. "You have to be. Our treaty isn't with him," he spat out, eying me.
"I can make my own decisions," Bella snapped at him. "And if you threaten my mate again that decision will be to tear you apart."
Jacob was taken aback, as if she had suddenly slapped him across the face.
I didn't bother to hide my smirk.
"I don't know what kind of ideas you had in your head while I was in Forks, Jacob, but we were nothing but friends. Calling us friends was probably a bit of a stretch in the first place."
Perhaps a better person would have felt bad for the kid as Bella put him in his place. I, however, enjoyed the inner turmoil as I listened to it.
Black had never had any kind of claim on Bella. She had been kind to him, making polite conversation at those weekly dinners she and her father had with him and his dad. But Black, like most immature teenagers, mistook her kindness for an open invitation. He took it a step farther, deluding himself into thinking she was his imprint.
It all seemed to click, rather suddenly, in Black's mind just how wrong he was. Perhaps Bella's threat to tear him limb from limb was the final blow to his ego.
I found it rather disappointing that he was finally becoming rational, because I would have loved to watch her tear him apart.
Bella, not as practiced with not responding to a person's thoughts, nodded to herself as soon as she realized Black had finally gotten over his little puppy fit.
"Now, are we done here?" Bella asked impatiently.
Black's head cocked to the side, but he said nothing. "We should still talk to you. Just you. To make sure you're okay. We owe it to Charlie."
Bella flinched at her father's name.
"You're not the one making demands here, mutt," I snapped reflexively.
Jacob turned to me, sneer in place on his face. "We don't have a treaty with you. I could take you out without any consequences."
"Try me, pup."
"Edward is a Cullen," Carlisle intervened. "He will abide by the treaty on our end, as long as it is intact. We expect the same courtesy to be given to him."
The subtle threat in Carlisle's words was noted by each wolf, Sam included. He huffed in Bella's direction, wanting to hear from her again. Without Jasper's influence, or mine.
The fear in her eyes was noted by everyone. The wolves, however, took it to mean she was being held against her will.
The rest of us knew better.
The Denali's took a few steps back, as well as the rest of the Cullen clan excluding Jasper and myself.
Three things happened in quick succession. Jasper carefully slipped his hand off of Bella's shoulder at the same time her shield against the remaining wolves faltered. One of them, Paul, surged forward.
His alpha reprimanded him, but it was too late.
The ground shook, the largest quake I'd ever felt Bella create, at the same moment Paul stopped his approach. He froze in place, head cocked to the side as he looked around. His mind was completely empty, his burning rage at all of us gone.
"Aversion field," I gasped, eying Bella with awe. Her focus was still trained on Paul, waiting for him to make another move.
Renata is Aro's closest member of the guard, I told Bella mentally, grabbing her hand again and giving it a squeeze. She can repel physical attacks. Making the attacker forget what they were doing, confusing them enough to leave before they remember what they wanted in the first place. They call it an aversion field.
Carlisle eyed Bella with an equal amount of awe. Eleazar's stark glare had me sending a matching one his way before I turned back to the wolves.
"I think we can all agree there have been no wrongdoing by either party," I said, hoping to get everyone's attention focused on the situation at hand. We had far more important things to be doing than entertaining a pack of wolves and my patience had run out. "If none of you get this mutt under control I won't be held responsible for my own actions. Letting you all leave now is a mercy. Take it while you can."
I would have gladly followed through on the threat had the hand that had been so tightly grasping mine not suddenly loosened. I was able to catch Bella around the waist before she collapsed to the ground.
"Bella," I gasped, kneeling carefully while keeping her in my arms. Her mental shield fluttered, but there was little in her mind to focus on apart from exhaustion.
I wrapped an arm underneath her legs and lifted her. I ignored the onslaught of thoughts being shouted at me from the wolves and the Denali's and every Cullen member as I shot into the woods.
A caribou was the first animal we came across. We didn't have the luxury of time to hunt for a bear, and the caribou's neck was easy enough to snap. I knelt us both beside the beast, carefully placing Bella's lips at the nearest artery and only breathing out a small sigh of relief as she immediately started feeding.
I left her there for only a moment. She was still finishing off the first caribou as I brought her a second. She was finally lucid by the third. And apologized softly to the animal by her fourth.
By the time she had managed to stand up I was contemplating the odds of a vampire suffering a heart attack.
I cupped my palms around the back of her neck, thumbs brushing across the pale curves of her cheeks. "Are you okay?"
She nodded, eyes downcast. "It was all too much. I was doing too many things. I couldn't hold on to any of it. I'm sorry."
I shook my head at her apology. All I cared about was her. "You're okay?" I repeated.
I didn't care about the power. If she could never use it again, that was fine.
Vampires didn't faint. They did not get tired or so weak they could barely lift their head to feed. Carlisle had once starved himself for months and he didn't get tired.
All of the unknowns crashed into me at once. I knew of a hundred different ways she could be taken from me, and this moment proved to me there were likely thousands of others I wasn't aware of yet.
"I'm okay. I think I just… burned out."
I did my hundredth scan of her since her collapse, making sure she didn't have a hair out of place before I crushed her to my chest. "You know that you nearly gave me a heart attack?" I breathed out. "Not the easiest thing to do, that."
"I'm sorry," she breathed out.
I shook my head, keeping her as close as possible. There were too many unknowns when it came to Bella. How her change started, how her powers manifested, why any of it happened. It wasn't likely we would get many answers, but there was one thing we could do, one that was within our control.
"We start training tomorrow," I told her.
She nodded against my chest.
—Miss Americana—
We didn't go back to the clearing. We should have, Bella said she felt up to it, but I figured the situation would have been resolved by now and if it wasn't, our reappearance likely would have just made it worse.
Instead, as the sun started to set, I pulled Bella into my arms in an opening not too far from one of the lakes. The sky flooded with pinks and purples as I started to hum a familiar tune for us to sway to.
We were quiet for a long time. Bella's mental shield fluttered from time to time and I got glimpses of her own contentment.
Eventually, a quiet question broke our silence. "What song is that? That you're humming."
I pressed a kiss to her temple. "I wrote it on my way to Volterra in 1931. For you."
Bella froze, face tilting up to stare at me with wide amber eyes.
My palm cupped her cheek, thumb brushing against her cheekbone. "I didn't often allow myself to think of you. It wasn't safe, not with Aro, and hiding things from his touch is difficult. Sometimes I would get out of the city, find a place where I could think of you, just for a moment or two. But other times, if I was stuck in Volterra for long stretches, I would play that song. Your song.
"It was my way of having you around, I guess. Even before I knew you actually existed."
"There's a piano at the main house," Bella said softly. "Will… will you play it for me sometime?"
"Of course. Whenever you want."
"All I want is you," she breathed out. "I don't know–I don't know how anything is supposed to work anymore. What I'm supposed to do. All I know is that… I never realized how uneasy I always felt. Like I was always waiting. And now I have you and I feel settled. Calm," she said with a serene smile I would kill for. With a soft smirk she added, "Despite the somewhat regular earthquakes my emotions tend to cause."
A smile stretched across my face at the joke. Her personality, that dry and almost dark sense of humor, was coming out more and more as she got more comfortable in her new life. I peppered kisses across her cheeks, over the tip of her nose and along the curve of her jaw until I pressed my forehead to hers.
The question floated through my mind quick enough to give me an ounce of hope that maybe she missed it. She relaxed even further into my arms, convincing me further.
Then, quiet as if it were my own thought, Bella's voice fluttered through my mind. Her answer to my unspoken question, a quiet reassurance for the future.
Yes.
A/N: Early posting because I'm trying for eras tour tickets tomorrow and will be a ball of anxiety all day and didn't want to forget. I hope you guys enjoyed this one, this story is still evolving in my head and I'm not even sure where it's going to end up but I love it and hope you do too. See ya next time!
The "Nearly gave me a heart attack" line is, of course, from Eclipse. I couldn't resist.
