Note from me : I'm just taking a moment to thank you all for the encouragement I have received. Your reviews give me life and hello motivation to keep writing. I'm so sorry about the cliff-hanger I left last chapter I just knew though that this scene was gonna be long and emotional and needed a good place to cut the chapter or it would have been suppppeeerrr long. That seemed the most natural place to stop things without taking any thing away from the story. Here's the next section of this scene, I tried to get it edited and uploaded as quickly for you all as possible but I apologise for the wait. I hope you're all keeping yourselves safe.

ThisBadge: in response to your questions about submission and what's happening there, they will be answered in time as part of this fic so I'm not going to give it away. I'm sorry. I get why you're intrigued but I don't wanna give out spoilers or anything so just please bare with me xo

My love

Nell xoxo

~ Bella's POV ~

No matter how hard I tried to fight I could feel my resolve crumbling. I had promised myself when the Denali's entered my room that I would hold strong, that I would not divulge what I knew to them because I was not ready too. I didn't want to relive those memories or face the pain that comes with remembering.

But as I was held so tightly against Tanya I could feel myself giving in to her, I could feel the carefully created walls I held around myself like armour being chipped with every soothing murmur, every gentle stroke of her fingers through my hair as we stood in place, rocking slightly as if she were cradling an infant. Though what scared me most was the desire I had to do as she had asked. I'd been fighting that desire as hard as I could as soon as she had asked her first question. I had wanted too give in to her softly spoken command, even then, to spill everything she wanted to hear, everything that I knew and the desire was so foreign I had almost not been able to fight her.

I didn't understand it, didn't know why I felt that way but her mere presence made me want to follow her, to follow her command. Not in a romantic sense, but in the sense that I knew this woman was in charge, that I should follow her lead, do as she asked, as if she were a shepherd and I a part of her flock. Though I knew she was the coven leader, she had introduced herself as such, just not directly. She was the Denali's leader, but her presence effecting me as such threw me just as much as it scared me. So I had fought it, as hard as I possibly could. Even more so when everyone apart from Irena and her had left my room.

Being held in her arms, despite my want to protect myself and shield myself from them, made me feel safe. As if no one could possibly harm me with her standing by my side. As if she could shield me from the pain and my resolve had faltered. Somewhere, somehow it had faltered and as I calmed I found myself searching for the words I needed to tell her what she wanted to know.

"Good Isabella, when you're ready to talk you can begin" she murmured as she tightened her arm around my waist slightly and the action seemed to give me strength and comfort all at once. I nodded minutely, aware that she would catch the motion easily.

"Do you want to sit back on your bed to talk or remain where you are?" She asked me, her voice holding the ever present command despite how softly she had spoken. It was clear that despite my reluctance, despite my upset she fully expected me to comply and for some reason I couldn't find the will to fight it anymore.

" Bed" I whispered as I finally relaxed fully into her, bringing my arms around her neck in a brief hug before going to pull away. Slightly surprised when she allowed me to move. Though as I sat I realised she had followed me across my room. Perching herself beside me. Her body angled slightly so she was facing both Irena and I as I sat myself back in the corner, at the top of my bed, back against the wall. She tucked a blanket back around my legs before patting my knee gently and sitting herself back.

"Can you ask the rest of your coven to come back in, I don't want to repeat this again if I can avoid it" I ask hesitantly, looking up at her. All to aware that she can probably see just how much I mean that in the pleading look within my eyes.

"Certainly young one" she replied, smiling gently at me as Kate, Carmen and Eleazer appeared back in my room. Kate reclaiming my chair as Eleazer and Carmen moved over to lean against my wall beside the door.

I quickly took a glance at Irena, all to aware that she had been present the whole time, sitting quietly in the middle of my bed and I couldn't help the blush that arose on my cheeks when I saw that her eyes were trained on me. The blonde beauty offering me a gentle smile and an approving nod of encouragement. I didn't want to dwell on how I reacted to her, didn't want to over analyse how whenever I looked at her I felt my heart tug painfully and a deep routed longing fill my chest that I had no idea how to decipher, let alone how I kept referring to her in my mind as the blonde beauty, for that was what she was. Perhaps the most beautiful person I had ever laid my eyes upon. So instead of allowing myself to think on that I looked down at my lap quickly, drawing in a steadying breath in preparation for what I had to do. More than aware that I had to try and hold myself together otherwise I'd break down and be unable to talk as I let memories of them filter through my mind.

"I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. With my mom but I am originally from Washington. It is where I was born and where my father remained when my parents divorced. Renee my mother has always been a little hair brained. More like a child than I ever had the chance to be. I grew up taking care of her. Making sure she ate, had clean clothes. Making sure her bills were paid and our fridge filled. When I was sixteen she met Phil, a small leagues baseball player. They began dating and at first I thought nothing of it. She dated a lot and I had no reason to suspect he'd last very long for no one had ever been able to handle my mother's erratic behaviour for long. However not long before my seventeenth birthday they married and Phil and his team got a promotion. Moving to the big leagues. It required him to move around a lot. Travelling from place to place to play and while he was away my mom stayed at home with me. By the time I was seventeen I could tell that she had begun to miss him, more than she let on and it was making her unhappy. Life became more and more unbearable for her and me in turn and to make her happy I moved back to Washington to stay with my dad, allowing her to join Phil in his travels" I began, knowing that they would want to know why I had moved in the middle of my junior year of high school because they had. It had been one of the most asked questions when I first became involved with them.

"When I arrived, Charlie enrolled me into the local high school and that's where I first met them. Forks is a small place, where everyone knew everyone and as such knew everyone's business. But they were different. They were beautiful and stuck out in the crowded cafeteria. There was five of them. A girl I had just met, Jessica told me who they were and basically told me to forget about them because no one was ever allowed into their circle. One of them were in my bio class. I had to sit next to him and the first time he made me feel as if he couldn't get away from me quick enough. It made me self conscious and I wanted to confront him about it because he had confused me and intrigued me all at once. He was pale, his eyes gold one minute, dark, almost black the next but he didn't show up for a week. By the second week he had come back and began to talk to me. Question me really, constantly about my life. My likes, dislikes, my reasons for moving there. All the while warning me that he and his family were dangerous, that I should stay away from him. He kept sending mixed messages. Pulling me in and then pushing me away. It took a while but one night after I was almost raped by a gang of men in port Angeles and he showed up to save me I had finally figured out what he and his family were. My friend was part of the local tribe that had legends about them and after I had heard the legend and along with his many hints and adamances that they were dangerous it wasn't hard to work out that they were vampires. There pale faces, the cold feel of their skin, his ability to move faster than humanly possible, their eye colour. His strength when he pushed a moving van away from me that had lost control on the ice and almost crushed me. Not to mention how fast he got to me from the other side of the parking lot. Once I had figured out his secret, their secret. We began dating. He took me to meet his family and the coven leader and his mate became the closest thing to parents I had ever had. At that point Charlie and I weren't that close and Renee had never been much of a mother. I loved them. So much that I didn't see that they really didn't care about me, no where near as much as I cared for them. One of his sisters became my best friend, and it wasn't long before I had grown attached to them all, I loved them as if they were my own family." I stopped pausing, trying to calm my heart that had suddenly began pounding again, knowing that I was approaching the part of this story that had devastated me completely. Willing myself to calm down and just finish the story so I could get them to leave me be and then I could fall apart in secret.

"Keep going" it was Irena that spoke this time, her voice rigid but soft, looking up at her I could see the darkening of her eyes and her rigid posture as her eyes burned into a fixed spot on my arm and when it dawned on me what she was looking at I realised with horror that it was the bite marks left by him and James from that god awful day. Suddenly insecure and a little afraid of her reaction I pulled my arm away from its resting place on my lap and covered my wrist, looking away from her and fixing my eyes on Tanya's hands that were folded together neatly in her lap.

"On my eighteenth birthday his sister insisted I allow them to throw me a party. Something I did not want but she had a habit of never listening to me about that type of stuff so she threw one anyway and I had to go. I got a paper cut. In a room full of vampires and one of them lunged at me, slipping in his bloodlust. I was thrown away from him by the vampire I was dating and in the process I got injured even more. I landed on a glass table that shattered, cutting my upper arm open. The wound bleeding heavier than it should have and everyone bar the coven leader had to leave the house. Once I was patched up I was driven home and for three days I didn't see any of them apart from the one I was dating. He was distant and cold and on the third day he led me to the forest. Told me his family and he were moving. That I wasn't welcome. He told me I had just been a distraction. A way for them to blend in, a pet of sorts. He said I had never been good enough, that none of them cared for me and had already left. Not caring to say goodbye to the frail naive human girl that thought she could play family with a coven of vampires much more superior than she ever would be." By this point I could tell I was shaking, my arms crossed at my chest, holding myself tightly as I attempted to quell the pain that threatened to break me all over again.

A sudden cool hand on my leg and a gentle squeeze had me looking up into the now almost black eyes of Tanya.

"Keep going Isabella" she murmured, squeezing my leg again and I smiled briefly in thanks as I forced another calming breathe into my system.

" He left me in the forest after telling me that I'd forget all about them, that it would be as if he never existed. He kissed my forehead then disappeared leaving me broken and lost in the woods. At some point I passed out on the forest floor. I was found hours later by a man from the local tribe who had been part of the search party out looking for me. When I returned home I noticed that all my pictures of them, all my gifts from them and anything that linked them to me had vanished from my room. That was the last straw to my already broken heart. I felt myself shatter. I became comatose for the first few weeks. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep without waking up screaming from nightmares and Charlie was there for me, every time. He wouldn't stop reminding me that he loved me, that he cared about me more than I would ever know. Weeks passed and I finally managed to get out of my room and I tried to put on a brave face for my father, I didn't want to cause him the worry and pain I could see on his face whenever he looked at me. Three months after they left me. Charlie suggested we moved here. He got the chiefs job and we upped and moved, hoping for a fresh start" I finished. My voice barely a whisper but I could tell all eyes were on me. Every vampire paying close attention to me.

"It is why I reacted the way I did when I saw Kates eyes. I had to get away because of the memories I couldn't control. We moved here to get away from vampires. I thought I'd never be faced with the supernatural again, naïvely. And then Irena followed me and it terrified me. You remind me of them. None of you have left me alone since that night and I was, I still am terrified. I don't want to be hurt like that again. I wouldn't survive a second time" I admit hesitantly, not at all sure why I was being so honest and not willing to look at any of them. A large part of me certain that now they had the answers they wanted they would leave me and disappear from my life too. Not that I had given them any reason to want to stick around.

"Who were they?" Kate asked, her voice tense and I still couldn't find the courage to look up at them. "Who did you date?" My heart rate accelerated and I felt my breathing become un even as I tried to swallow the sudden lump in my throat. The pain I felt even thinking their names felt like it would choke me and I didn't think I could speak if I tried.

"Tell us now Isabella" the command was clear in her voice and the anger present with it gave me no choice but to answer Tanya as I felt that unknown feeling of needing to answer to her wash over me once again.

"The C..c..cullens" I winced, my heart squeezing painfully as I tripped over their name. Saying it out loud for the first time since they had left. Though saying his name after was easier than I expected, the pain I imagined feeling at acknowledging who he was to me was strangely absent, making my words a little easier.

"I dated Edward. He said he would never hurt me, that he couldn't because I was his mate.." The angry growls of the vampires in the room cut me of from saying anymore as I found my chin grasped in slender fingers that didn't bring about the expected coldness I was used to as my head was turned to face a furious looking Irena. Her head suddenly inches from mine as her pitch black eyes pinned me in place.

"You're not his" she hissed. "You're mine. My mate. MINE" her voice was more of a growl than actual speech and I felt my heart drop. Her mate? What did she mean? I wasn't hers, I wasn't anyone's. I wasn't good enough to be a vampires mate, he had told me that. I was human. Inferior in every way. How could this beauty be my mate?

I shook my head, trying to pull away from her when she quickly took a hold of my waist, pulling me into her and wrapping her arms around me tightly, her face burying itself into my neck and I couldn't have held back my cry of alarm if I had tried. Completely uneasy with this vampire so close to my neck. Yes she had been fine around my blood in the library and part of me was screaming that I could trust her but the other much larger part of me, the part of me that had been broken and left on the forest floor was much louder as it told me that it was unsafe for me to be in this position.

" MINE " She growled, holding me more securely in response to my struggling.

"Stop Bella, you'll make her worse if you fight her. You need to calm down or she will never be able to calm down. She's lost to her instincts right now but you are completely safe I promise" Tanya softly commanded and I managed to turn my head slightly to look at her. Her eyes were back to there usual gold and she looked more composed than she had been though I could still see the anger lingering in her eyes and I couldn't help but instinctively shrink back a little from that anger. Unintentionally pushing my body tighter into Irena's, who stopped growling and began purring lightly almost instantly as I stopped fighting to free myself from her. An odd sound that I had never heard before directed at me. I had heard it a few times from Rosalie when Emmet had held her but never before had it been in response to me. The sound was oddly comforting.

"I'm not mad at you Bella, I'm mad at them. They had no right to do that to you and that boy had no right to tell you that you were his mate. You aren't. You may not believe Irena right now but you are her mate. Her reaction just now proves that completely and I know you have no reason to trust me but I would never lie to you. Whether you want to be or not you are a part of our coven. Our family and we will never leave you. You are ours. Do you understand me?" Her voice was gentle but became more firm at the end as she emphasised that I was theirs and without thinking much I offered her a hesitant nod. Not willing to believe her right now but not willing to voice that out loud.

"You may not believe us right now Isabella but Tanya is right. We will not leave you. Ever" As if reading my mind Kate added. Offering me a reassuring smile as I looked at her. I looked at Carmen and Eleazer, both were also smiling at me gently, their eyes like Tanya's and Kates back to the usual gold I was so used to seeing.

"Tell us how you got the bites on your wrist" Tanya asked, changing the subject slightly when it became apparent I wasn't going to reply to their comments. Without conscious thought my body tensed and I pressed my wrist against my chest more tightly where my arms were trapped in between Irena and I.

"Come now Isabella, you should know by now that when I ask a question, I expect an answer" her tone was still as gentle as before, patient but I could detect the threat in her voice. What the threat was I did not know but I had no incline in wanting to find out.

"Not long after we started dating they took me to watch them play baseball. A..alice" I winced again, her name causing the ever present pain to flare in my heart in the way I had expected his to do still. "She had a vision of three red eyed nomads approaching but they didn't have time to get me out of the clearing. There were two males and a female. Laurent, he was French, dreadlocks in his hair. James was their leader he was a blonde and a tracker. His mate Victoria is a red head. When James caught my scent he decided he wanted to drain me, the Cullens protected me and James decided to hunt me. Alice and Jasper took me to Phoenix to get me out of the area. Laurent chose not to participate in James game and was sent up here" I pause looking at Tanya for confirmation to which she nods in response.

"He left just before you moved here claiming our diet to hard" she replied, motioning me to continue.

"Victoria broke into my school, getting my records and gave James my information, he figured I'd do anything to protect my parents and contacted me. He had me believing he had my mom and told me if I wanted her to survive I had to slip away from Jasper and Alice and come to him alone at my old ballet studio. I did it without thinking. All I could see in my mind was him hurting her and I couldn't let that happen. When I turned up he was alone, turns out he had found an old video of me as a child with my mom and used her voice from the video to trick me. He started to hurt me. He broke my leg, tossed me around a lot and then he bit my wrist, intending on draining me. Edward turned up and he and Carlisle stopped the transformation from happening, Alice, Emmet and Jasper killed James. Edward sucked James' venom out. While Carlisle tried to stem some of the bleeding from various wounds I had. Edward almost drained me before Carlisle stopped him. I woke up in the hospital and he told me then that my blood was like a drug to him, that it called to him, that he couldn't ever lose control of himself with me because he would kill me without thought if that happened." My voice was quiet but determined as I tried to fight the sheer terror thinking of James and Victoria brought me. Though it didn't quite work as Irena began growling softly again.

"Is there any vampire you can think off that would be sniffing around you and your father that isn't us, Laurent or the Cullens?" Tanya asked and I could see the anger return full force in Tanya's eyes when I replied.

"Victoria" my voice was a whisper and I didn't even attempt to conceal the fear I felt at Tanya's question. There was only one reason she would ask that. Only one reason she would feel it important to mention another vampire.

"They left Victoria ALIVE!?" Tanya growled, her eyes back to being pitch black again. I could do nothing but nod as my heart felt like it was about to stop it was racing so fast. My breathing erratic as fear consumed me. Victoria had been here.

Victoria had come looking for me. Had been around my home where my father sleeps.

What if she hurt my father? What if she blamed me for James death? What if she got me? What if she hurt the Denali's because of me? I hadn't even thought of Victoria in so long. Not since they had left. My heartbreak had consumed me, not leaving enough space in my mind to think much on the red headed vampire who had lost her mate.

I was helpless, what If the Denali's decided to leave me for her? I knew they promised I was part of them but how could I trust that? How could I believe they cared when the very people I had loved more than my life had abandoned me the first chance they got without even a word? When I was merely human, so much weaker than they?

"Isabella, breathe, come on you need to calm down" Carmen's voice felt distant, I hadn't even realised I'd spiralled so quickly in my own mind and it took every bit of concentration I had to focus on her words.

"You're safe, she will not harm you or your father. You're safe little one, no one will get close enough to hurt you. It's alright just breathe for me" her soft reassurances were grounding and I found myself sinking into the feeling of Irena holding me tightly and Carmen's hand that was cupped around my cheek, soothing my skin with her thumb. Though I couldn't tell you when she had moved or approached me.

"Good Bella, keep breathing" she whispered, placing a kiss on my forehead and I felt my heart squeeze painfully again though this time in appreciation for the safety I was currently feeling. A little voice at the back of my head told me it wouldn't last, that these vampires couldn't possibly see anything in me worth protecting for long but in that moment that little voice didn't matter. My brain was far too crowded and overwhelmed to think much past the warm reassurance of Irena wrapped around me and the softly spoken words of comfort offered by the vampires around me as each of them repeated that I was safe. That no harm shall come to me for as long as they were around.