This chapter turned out wildly different than I anticipated. When I first started writing this I pictured a lot of angry outbursts from the Amazon's and a lot of upset from Bella as she relived her experiences at the hands of the Cullen however, the more I wrote and immersed myself in their headspace the more I realised that as Bella's mate, Zafrina (and her coven) had to be able to offer Bella the one thing she had never had from the Cullens - autonomy, respect and their complete attention - and that didn't feel like angry outbursts. Which instead resulted in a much softer, more healing chapter.
As always, please let me know your thoughts. I appreciate all of you more than you know.
My love - Nell xoxo
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"I think it's time you tell us everything, Isabella."
Zafrina's growled words, spoken through clenched teeth, bounced around her mind as she struggled to battle her own warring instincts. The anger that radiated off of the three ancient women in front of her had the hair at the back of her neck prickling, her nerves spiking at the unfiltered fury before her.
She hadn't ever seen them like that. From the moment she had met them, they had done nothing but accommodate her. They were calm in demeanor, playful and welcoming. So much so that despite their immortality and vampiric nature, some part of Bella had actually forgotten just how dangerous a vampire could be. Not that she didn't know deep down that they were apex predators.
She had come face to face with James after all.
The vampire had been cruel, sadistic and the very definition of master manipulator. He had lured her in and struck with a cruelty she hadn't ever seen matched. But now standing face to face with three woman clearly displaying that same anger, that same hostility, the brunette couldn't get her mind to work fast enough in figuring out just what on earth was happening.
Fear and uncertainty had taken hold of her as she simply stood rooted to the spot. Limbs shaking as she pulled in harsh breaths - a futile attempt to feel some sort of balance once more. She gulped forcefully, her eyes darting from one vampire to the next as she struggled to remain still.
A big part of her screamed within her mind to go, to escape, to save herself from the inevitable pain she was about to experience at the hands of the predators that surrounded her. A horrific certainty that the past several days had all been a lie crept slowly up her spine.
The kindness they had shown seemed to be nothing but a rouse to lower her guard.
Zafrina's claim just as false as Edwards. The knowledge that she had been played by the beautiful goddess she had come to adore so quickly made her heart feel as if it were
breaking into fragments. Small pieces that would forever be unfixable as it crumbled, lost to be.
A whole other part of her, somewhat more rational than the deeply ingrained self doubt, screamed in outrage at her own intrusive thoughts.
Zafrina wouldn't lie! Would never lie. Not to her. Would she?
Bella refused to except it, there must be some sort of reason behind this. They were angry but that didn't mean they were about to hurt her, it didn't mean that what she had come to believe about the three women in front of her was a lie.
It couldn't be.
Her mind jumped from thought to thought, an internal battle, every insecurity and hope she had ever had fighting to be seen all at once while her heart hammered wildly.
Bella hadn't realised she had stopped breathing normally until her vision started blackening, the image of the angry vampires in front of her becoming more and more skewed by the second.
She had to breathe, she knew she had to pull in a breath but her body refused to cooperate. The sheer panic over ruling any ability she had to force her lungs to draw in the breath she so desperately needed.
She could feel her heart beating throughout her body. Her limbs throbbing and her head splitting. Her vision narrowed, her body swaying dangerously. The turmoil she felt was overwhelming.
The last thing she saw before everything faded was the sun scorched earth that suddenly sprung up to meet her as she fell.
—--
Zafrina stilled as she saw her mate lurch forward. The fury she felt at her mates' words receding instinctively as her human fell forward. The vampiress snapped forward, her arms wrapping round her mate before the human had a chance to hit the ground.
It was then, with her mate in her arms that she registered just how badly she had screwed up. The scent of fear was suffocating in the air around them and her mate's heart was beating scarily fast.
"Stop" she commanded, her fury filled black eyes shooting towards her sisters, both of whom were still growling quietly. "We are scaring her!" She hissed, stopping Senna and Kachiri in their tracks. Both of whom looked exceedingly guilty as they took in the same information their coven leader had moments before.
Bella was pale, her heart beating rapidly as she struggled to gain control of her breathing. The fear they had caused unintentionally had sent their human coven mate into a state of panic.
"Shit" Kachiri whispered, looking to Zafrina with worry.
"We need to calm down, and help Bella calm down." Zafrina whispered, pulling her mate in tighter to her chest. Releasing her pheromones into the air to help sooth her mates fear. Zafrina had to battle her sorrow as her inner vampire realised this fear from her mate was because of her and her sisters. They should have known better than to let themselves lose control over their emotions like that.
"We are millenia old, we cannot lose ourselves to our anger. Isabella is here safe." she continued. Her voice soft and grounding as she silently worked on calming her mate with her pheromones and her sisters with her words.
It was for this reason that Zafrina was the coven leader. Her ability to react and take charge quickly even when she had been lost to her own upset. The minute her inner vampire had registered her mates distress and her sisters upset, Zafrina had felt her inner vampire take charge. Eager To eradicate the scent of fear coming from their beautiful mate.
Zafrina reassured her sisters with her words, whispering softly as she watched her sisters calm and regain control.
Bella was clutching on to Zafrina's shoulders, her nose buried in the ancient vampires neck and she could feel her mate take in greedy lungfuls of her scent. She began gently rocking her mate, purring quietly too knowing that it had soothed her mate quite quickly earlier that day.
"They dazzled her?" Senna whispered, too low for Bella to hear and Zafrina frowned, her eyes flashing to her sisters over the top of her mates head.
"You will speak loud enough for Isabella to hear you." The ancient woman demanded, pulling Bella in a little tighter once again. The ancient woman held eye contact with her sister, the anger in them let Senna know that Zafrina was serious. Intentionally or not, Zafrina would not let her sisters leave her mate out of important conversations.
That wasn't how things were done in their coven, it never had been. It never would be.
Senna nodded apologetically, looking mortified at the realisation, repeating her statement out loud at a volume she knew her new human sister could hear.
Zafrina almost chuckled when confused brown eyes blinked up at her in question, but Zafrina didn't know what the question was. Only that Isabella had reacted to her sisters words, her fear having began to dissipate alongside the erratic heart rate.
"come sit with us" Zafrina directed as she reluctantly pulled away from her mate, far enough to look the woman in the eyes. Her mate's eyes didn't look as wild now, which was a good sign to the ancient. It meant that despite the fear, her mate was okay, and would be alright if they continued to reassure her and offer her the time and patience she needed, like they had been doing.
The ancient vampire was secretly relieved when Bella let herself be guided back down underneath her tree, nestled between Zafrina's legs as Kachiri and Senna sat opposite them in a position similar to the one she had woken up in on the first morning.
"What happened?" Her mate queried, her voice filled with uncertainty.
"We lost control of our inner vampires for a minute. We do not like the implication of your words because it means the vampires you knew committed a heinous crime against you and our vampire side cannot stand the thought of what they have forced upon you." Kachiri responded. A little bit of anger slipping into her tone.
"We are not angry at you, sister" Senna clarified for her own mate when she saw Bella react to Kachiri's anger. "Our vampires are mad on your behalf. Mad at these vampires for doing what they have."
"Isabella, what do you know of a vampires nature?" Zafrina queried, looking to understand her mates knowledge in hopes Of making sure she was as informed as possible and therefore aware of what she had been put through. She wanted her mate to have all the facts.
"Not much, they never told me more than what they deemed important for me to know." Bella answered. " He told me vampires where possessive, Territorial and that everything about them, from their looks to their scent was meant to draw a human in and that only a select few vampires had the self control and discipline needed to both feed from animals and be near humans. He said it set him and his family apart and made them better than most vampires who were slaves to their instincts." She continued, her voice a strained whisper and Zafrina had to suppress the growl invoked at her mates words.
"The Cullens' Zafrina stated, her mate's words clarifying her nightmares and confirming what they had suspected. The Cullens had harmed her mate, and that wasn't something Zafrina would ever forgive. Nor would her sisters. Her inner vampire was already demanding Zafrina find the disgusting vampires and punish them for ever daring to look at Zafrina's mate.
Isabella winced as she nodded, silently confirming the ancient woman's statement and Zafrina automatically wrapped her mate in her arms, pulling her close in comfort.
"Edward and I dated, up until my 18th birthday." All three vampires could hear how uncomfortable saying his name was for the human girl and it filled them all with silent rage.
"He was full of lies, we vampires are much more complex than that. We are designed to lure humans in but it is more than a lure, our very scents are designed to incapacitate a human." Zafrina informed her mate, doing her best to keep her tone factual.
"A human gets a whiff of our scent and they are hooked, it will eradicate who the human is, taking away the humans free will. All that will be with a human under a vampires thrall will be a shell of a human, a human that wants nothing more than to please the vampire." She continued, despite the horror she could see written on her mates face as her mate digested her words.
"That is what they did to you. Your description, the heart ache, the desolate feeling you experienced? That is what happens to a human when exposed to a vampire's thrall for an extended period of time and then abandoned by the vampire. Our thrall were never designed to be used on a human we intended to leave alive Isabella."Senna took over, knowing that this part of the conversation would be hard for her sister to tell and her human sister to hear.
"A human who has been exposed and then abandoned will increasingly loose the ability to function, it would start with thrill seeking behaviours. The human is eager to find that euphoric feeling again, but when the human realises that nothing will bring that feeling back because the vampire that caused it is gone, the human gives up on life. They stop functioning, they stop eating or sleeping, it eventually kills them."
"why did I snap out of it" Bella's tone is strangely calm and Zafrina has to crane her neck to get a glimpse of her mate. Isabella's eyes are filled with raw anger and Zafrina isn't sure how to reassure her mate so she settles for stroking her thumb over her mate's stomach where her hands rest. Unwilling to interrupt whatever her mate is feeling but keen to ensure Bella knows Zafrina is here.
"A human that does snap out of it, is always snapped out of it by someone they love, if a human under a thrall is forced to see someone they love hurt because of them, it can break the hold the vampire bad on them. You said your dad broke down, this would have been the turning point for you. Your brain couldn't stand to see your father suffer, so managed to free itself from the desolation being caused by the Cullens" Zafrina answered, unable to hold in the sneer when she spoke the Cullen name out loud.
Those vampires where as good as dead as far as she was concerned.
"and you?" Isabella asked Zafrina, and the ancient Vampire mourned at the suspicion in her mates voice.
"mates work differently, you are my other half and as such my scent will only ever soothe you, it cannot manipulate or control you in any way. Its designed to ensure that mates relationships are authentic to them and not influenced by anything. Everything you feel for me and I feel for you is real." Zafrina whispered, her tone laced with sorrow and an unspoken plea for Isabella to believe her. It devastated her to know that Bella would ever hold suspicion over their relationship.
"He said I was his mate" Isabella replied and Zafrina could hear the anger and hurt in her mates tone.
"He wasn't" Zafrina hissed, unable to control her reaction at the acknowledgement.
"I know." Her mate replied, her voice barely more than a whisper as she turned to face the vampire that was holding her. She swallowed thickly at the emotion she could see in Zafrina's eyes and moved to straddle the vampire's legs without prompt, sensing that she needed to do something to help eradicate the turmoil she could sense within her vampire.
Zafrina, on her part, was hanging on to her sense of calm by a thread. A mate bond was sacred in the vampire world and for these vampires to have threatened that sanctity by tarnishing it in such a way aggrieved the ancient vampire more than she could express.
She brought her hand up to cup her humans face, unable to control the need to touch her. Isabella leaned her cheek against the cold palm and kept her eyes locked on her vampires.
"You are mine." Zafrina declared and it made Bella smile slightly, remembering the very early minutes of when she had woken up wrapped in her vampire's arms.
"yours" she agreed easily, surprising them both with her easy acceptance of the possessive statement despite the turmoil she felt inside at all she had learned. She knew without a doubt that Zafrina couldn't hurt her and it went a long way into reassuring her of their bond.
For the remainder of the evening Zafrina and Bella sat together, unaware that Senna and Kachiri had snuck off, feeling it important to give the mates space to figure out their emotions in private and despite how difficult the conversation got for both Bella and Zafrina - Bella struggling to voice her experiences with the Cullens, with James and in the forest when the Cullens had abandoned her, and Zafrina struggling to remain calm and in control of her beast - the pair did not lapse into silence until Zafrina had reassured and addressed every anxiety her mate had because of the Cullen's.
Though Zafrina knew by no means was her mate healed nor did it mean Isabella would never again doubt their bond again but she felt like it was a start.
A start for them both because it meant that there was complete transparency between them, it meant now Zafrina knew everything her mate had endured and it meant now that she did know she could ensure she always strived to help her mate heal. It would be a learning curve for them both she was sure, but for her mate, Zafrina would do anything.
However one thing was for absolute certain - Edward Cullen was a dead man if he ever crossed their paths again.