Author Note: I am officially 22 as of April 15 of 2025 and I found out I am pregnant with my first baby as my birthday present. Crazy. Anyhow, okay, so, Pretty Brown Eyes isn't over. I couldn't do it. So, I don't know when this will be posted but I can already guess whoever favs and follows noticed it's back in progress. There are going to be more changes and more lengthy pauses in chapters. Bold lettering throughout the story is important. Expect these author notes, honestly.
…
March, 2017
…
"The tournament…" Naomi says looking out one of the windows, her voice was so… dead. "The tournament is officially underway."
"What do you mean, Naomi?" Carlisle asked, standing at her side, holding her arm.
She sighs, her shoulder dropped. "The tournament. The Return by Death tournament started the moment I went through that portal. They've been waiting for you guys to come get me."
Jasper blurted into the room with Alice. He looked down at his wife as they settled in, her arm linked with his. Alice looked up at him with worried golden eyes.
"It was a trap?" Bella asks, picking at the skin around her nails.
"How do you know that?" Leah inquires, stepping forward.
"I can… hear them still… It's like… a doorway is still open, like… one of them is nearby." Naomi replies, staring out the windows.
"Huh?" Emmett asks as he blurs into the room with the rest of the Cullen's, Gika, and the Denali coven.
"She's talking about an open portal and a present ghoul within the room." Edward clarified.
"Whoa whoa whoa, wait, please, wait, what the fuck is going on? I thought everything was going to be fine when we brought her back?" Leah demanded, looking around the room.
"In the room?" I repeated froze next to Esme on the couch.
"No. It was never going to be fine." Naomi removes her arm from Carlisle's and he steps away. "Nothing will ever be fine again."
"Please help me understand what's going on right now." Leah says.
"Explain."
"They wanted you all to find me. They were waiting for you all to wake up and realize their spells and curses. Spells of illusion and return by death with curses influenced to also help the illusion of the shift like increased lust and desire, anger, depression, ignorance. Once those were broken, the real show starts. The war. The tournament."
"War?"
"We're in war?" Esme looks to Carlisle and Naomi.
"As of 3 hours ago." Alice says with her eyes distant and shifting back and forth as she fell into her vision.
"You said there was a ghoul in this room. Who is it? How do you know that?"
"My body adapted to their energy. And it's Seth."
"Huh?"
"I'm not a ghoul." Seth defended, stepping forward.
"Naomi." Carlisle looks between Seth and Naomi.
"This doesn't make sense." Leah says looking at Seth.
"It's a clone," Alice says still in her trance.
"Why haven't you said anything?"
"Because I can't hear him, like I can't hear Bella." Edward answered Kate.
"No, no, no, no." Seth shook his head, stepping backwards. "I'm not a Ghoul. I'm not a clone."
"I feel like I'm missing about 50 years of knowledge right now." Bella rubs her temples and sighed and dropped down behind the island counter, I couldn't see her anymore.
"I don't believe this."
"Oviously, no one is moving." Rosalie retorts sarcastically crossing her arms.
"Naomi, this doesn't make sense." Leah says, glancing at Seth in a sideways.
"She's telling the truth. We're about to go through another shift." Alice says, "This one will be the start of the first attack of the War. It's going to happen in three minutes. Seth is…"
"He's alive. You successfully assisted him out like me," Naomi says turning around, "But the curse of illusional scenery is intact for us, but he broke that curse on himself. I can feel it, I can see the curse spreading, it's like this dark blue fog almost black, it's an invisible power filling this room, this air. A portal is open in the Park, when 'I opened my charkas.' That was a ruse to power up my clone for her first initial attack after 'Gijas death', who is still alive by the way. Ghouls can damage other Ghouls but can't kill them, like this law or reversible death bound by a higher power." Naomi says, "I didn't imprint on Seth, I imprinted on the Ghoul who cloned him in our cursed world who had been looking for him."
"We never broke through the barrier?" Rosalie repeats not believing it, "But, I thought that we can't be effected by them."
"You deflect most of them. But not all, especially curses."
"Gijas alive?" Bella echos with fear in her voice.
"Yup. Just like my clone, and the ghoul cloning Seth." Naomi says nonchalantly.
"I'm not a clone." Seth urged.
"I can smell you." Naomi replies in a growl.
"You imprinted on a Ghoul? Wait, can we find him? Does he feel it?" Bella inquired.
"Oh for the love of–" Leah ran her hands through her hand with a quiet rumble in her chest.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Emmett steps forward. "Wait,
The floor went out from under my feet. And I was consumed in darkness and knocked out before the bubbles of surprise and fright escaped from my throat. Gravity pulled me down at a harsh speed.
…
May, 2006
Naomi AU
…
"Bella went to visit her mother in Florida with Edward," Billy said in an automatic, robotic tone, focused on the television.
His daughter, his youngest of three, Naomi Vivian Black. She sat down on the couch in a robotic motion, leaning into the cushions of the couch. Her hair, an odd mark of her disguise of a shapeshifter, is black like satin curtains, long, thick, and straight, framing her face and ending at her thighs, bunched up along her thighs clad in green khaki shorts. Her hair provided a natural cloak, and she refused to cut it; her hair length didn't affect her wolf form. Her face was youthful, 16 years old with a sharp jawline and angled eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes with brown/black irises, smooth and bright russet brown skin, and flawlessly beautiful. Her eyes were blank, robotic, unfocused, and simulated.
Her ears registered Billy's voice and more than just the robotic tone. Her eyes opened with a sharp inhale through her nose. She was sitting perfectly still, perfectly content on cushions. The fabric of the arm rest was rough and was tightly crocheted, with thin strands, rough, coarse under her fingertips, under her nails when she closed her fist. The rain pattered against the rooftop in a rhythmic beat with a certain fury of gusts of wind through the trees and foliage and against the house. Naomi wasn't thinking about her father's tone anymore; she was thinking about the eerie chill crawling up her spine, making her shiver. Her head spun at the cool temperature of the cushions, but the temperature didn't chill her to the bone; the room she was imprisoned in flashed before her eyes, and her throat closed. She felt it. She can feel the fog blooming from the micro cracks of the top right corner, creeping along the trim, sending chills up her spine instead of down, blooming from the knowledge of the energy near her right ear.
She inhaled through her nose and whipped her head to the right, but nothing was there; however, the energy was still there invisibly. She glared at it even though her body was permanently shivering, nothing related to her wolf.
Bella. Her mind repeated, fully waking from the temporary slumber for the shift.
"Bella went to visit her mother in Florida with Edward," Billy repeated, never casting a glance at Naomi.
"What?"
"Bella went to visit her mother in Florida with Edward," Billy said, the automated voice never quit.
"Edward?" Naomi asked, never casting a glance in his direction.
"Yeah," Billy sighs and then perks up rather quickly, "I'm surprised he ungrounded her." Billy sighs, shaking his head. Naomi can't see his face, and she doesn't want to.
The energy leaking from him screamed deception; anything he said right now seemed like a lie. She didn't want to fall into the trap that they were laying out to her, she had to go a different route. But she had to keep him talking.
"Paul is… Paul is gone, Sam said he took off. He didn't say when he'd be back or if he'd be back. Such a shame."
"Where is Sam?"
"I don't know. Emily didn't say."
"What did Emily say?"
"That Paul just left, and Sam was out. Why?" Billy's why was irritated and his voice had deepened. Naomi looked at the TV, and Billy's head turned in her direction.
She didn't dare look at him. She shrugged casually, casting a glance at the clock and back to the TV, avoiding his eyes boring into her face, "Just wondering if I have patrol or if I can go to school today."
Billy looked away, back to the TV, "I assume school. But if you wanted to skip, you know I'm all for it."
Interesting. Naomi's mind chimed. Naomi released a short, 'tired' sigh, and stood up from the couch and started walking to the hallway, "I gotta catch up on school work. Are you okay with me being out until I do a self-driven patrol at 4 until like… 10?"
"Sure, go ahead."
Naomi kept walking to her room even though Billy's voice changed, less automated but deeper in tone. She pulled out clothes for school and noted to head out the back door when she was ready. Naomi showered and dressed in the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and used the men's deodorant in the medicine cabinet even though hers was sitting there, new and still in the package. Chills ran up her spine, she pulled on a pair of sneakers from her room and grabbed her backpack and ditched the doors altogether, and left through an open window.
Naomi kicked up the kickstand of her black motorcycle and walked it for a few steps in the driveway before mounting the bike. She started the bike with one last look at the house, she didn't make eye contact with the ghoul cloning her father looking out from the small front window. She started the motorcycle and looked forward. The engine of the bike roared to life with a fury, and Naomi edged her fingers off the clutch and sat on the seat before the bike dragged forward with a ripping snarl. As soon as Naomi drove onto the main road into the town, she brake checked herself, and the bike stalled when the back end flipped over. Naomi scrambled away from the bike and let it clatter into a shoulder on the road with her eyes on the buildings that were on fire and the smoke rising to the clouds through the rain. The fires were spreading rapidly from the houses to the forest, from the Ghoul levitating a mile and a quarter into the sky with his body consumed in orange/golden flames that were produced from deep within his chest.
Naomi growled, it resonated from deep in her chest, her wolf beneath the barrier growled and paced side to side with her head low and her fur fluffed up in defense, and traveled into her throat. A female Ghoul was also levitating in the air about a three mile distance, her veins were pulsating with a deep purple glow that exploded from her palms and the purple flames passed through an invisible field a mile down towards the forest and the color of flames were replaced by the first male ghouls orange/golden flames. Naomi's fists balled in aggravation, and she ran her hand through her hair, furious, her wolf refused to surface. She couldn't think of anything else to do but to phase, she had to phase.
A lightning bolt traveled in the clouds above her, the rain increased when she let out a loud cry in emotions she couldn't acknowledge in her panic to figure out what to do. If her father was cloned, so was everyone else. She couldn't phase if she couldn't phase, she couldn't fight. She felt broken, she felt useless and powerless, she hated feeling this way with a great, heated passion.
She stopped solid in her tracks, frozen, and stared straight ahead of her at a crumbling house in the flames. A spiritual figure of her ancestors, he stood behind her in a hazy form of a hallucination, but his spirit was there. His father before him, his father's father before him, and so on all the way down to the first alpha male of the Quileute bloodline. There were five of them, and Naomi made six. They could see her wolf cowering under her spiritual barrier, refusing to fight, refusing to take back her territory; it was completely unacceptable.
She got this far, and they weren't going to allow her to completely break. They were always there, from the very moment she phased, from the moment Bella Swan demanded to talk, from the very moment the snap within her brain when she was fighting Paul Lahote over his imprint on Bella. From the moment she challenged Sam for the Alpha title, from the moment she fought him and won, every single moment leading up to this very moment. They were with her, and now, she was refusing their assistance, their strength, and wisdom through a thinning of the spiritual plane veil. Naomi looked down at her trembling hands. Naomi's eyes welled with anger and anxiety as she began to slowly hyperventilate, and her wolf continued to cower further into her being. She looked back up at the sounds of crumbling houses through the heavy rainfall. Naomi spun around frantically in search of her motorcycle and dragged it from the shoulder, kick-started it before she mounted it.
Naomi hyperventilated and whimpered as she began to sob and tremble. When she let go of the clutch too fast, she nearly fell off, but she maintained control of the motorbike and drove towards Forks. She heard no howls through the rain, no howls calling for her, no howls to alert of danger, just the heavy rain and the active energy blasts echoing behind her and her tires on the wet pavement. Naomi managed to get out of La Push as the Ghouls destroyed more than half of her territory, and she never saw a wolf in the trees or one of them coming onto the road to greet her; she never heard any howls. She prayed more than anything that the Cullens, Charlie and Bella weren't clones, she prayed that she wasn't alone in this. From above, the Ghoul she imprinted on followed her and released dark green electric bolts that resonated from deep in his chest and flowed into his arms and put his hands. The bolts struck Naomi from behind and knocked her off the motorcycle and tumbled onto the shoulder of the road and into the forest.
He watched her roll on the forest floor unconscious and he descended from the air, his unnatural dark green eyes raked over her body as she stirred awake. He hovered over her, forcing her to look into his eyes and fall under his curse. His curse is being able to see her deepest and darkest sexual fantasies, what she craved from sex, from a man, his curse was able to keep her attached to him, ignorant and powerless. His large hands grabbed her arms and pinned her to the floor, his knees dug into her thighs and he was getting ready to let his jaw unhinge to further deepen the curse when she opened her eyes. But when her dark eyes opened and she gazed up at him with a quiet warning growl, the Ghoul felt something snap within his chest and head, his dark green eyes bored down into the inner barriers of her soul. A massive area over his heart flamed in red hot pain at his betrayal and his true intentions against his imprinter, the pain knocked something into him that he never felt before and the torn flesh of his jaw mended back together and his jaw clicked back into place and his body shrunk and morphed into his host.
He got off her and stepped back several feet watching her get to her feet and tremble even with her body releasing steam from her high body temperature and frigid rain. Naomi glared at him and dipped her chin down, her lips curled and she snarled at him in warning. The Ghouls host name is Stefan, he stands at a natural height of 6'7 because of the Ghoul merged into his DNA, and he was 32 when he was transformed; that was over 30 years ago and he hasn't aged since. His blood still coursed through his veins, and what made Stefan, Stefan was alive within his mind in these moments. Stefan couldn't believe what he was feeling towards this teenage girl, Stefan couldn't believe that now she was finally right in front of him, the moment he felt the imprint lock down over his soul. Stefan was in shock, and he was in pain every single second knowing his true intentions towards her, the intentions that were planned before she laid her pretty eyes on him. Stefan has dark olive skin, smooth, and handsome rugged facial features with dark brown eyes with thick eyelashes, a head full of thick pitch black straight hair, veiny thick muscles. But he had been tricked, he went through the Return by Death as a person that wasn't him, but a person she wanted and had the intention to bring her to her death.
But when he realized she wasn't there, that she had never been there… The surges that coursed through him when it came to her were undeniable, the pain of bringing her harm was no longer tolerated and he couldn't bring himself to do it again.
"Go." He said in the deepest voice she had ever heard, his voice had an accent she couldn't decipher but it was Asian.
Naomi stayed in her place, glaring at him.
"Go." Stefan stepped forward with a firmer tone in his voice.
"No." Naomi said. "You," She jabbed a finger at him, her face twisted in rage and despair as she glared at her imprint. "You did this. You did all of this!"
Stefan apologizes, "I'm sorry."
"Fuck you." Naomi growled, trembling harder.
She couldn't believe he had the audacity to even try to apologize for anything, she had believed for a long time that Seth brought her harm but that was not the case. Anything he said, anything he did would never be enough for her to feel anything but anger towards him, and deny the imprint connection.
So she made it a little easier, she had to say certain things to keep him away from her if he truly did feel the imprint, "I hate you, I don't want you, I don't want anything to do with you! Look what you did! How dare you apologize to me when your initial motive was to kill me, my town! I don't care what you feel or what you think! I don't want you."
Stefan's body chilled to the bone, he apologized again, "I'm sorry I brought you harm. I don't have any valid reason for my actions but I promise you I won't let anything else happen to you. I will–"
"Fuck you." Naomi snarled through her teeth and the shiver of heat finally rolled down her spine.
Her angry cry turned into a canine roar as her body folded in one itself and an intense ripping sound and cracking of bones, a copper red wolf exploded from within her torso and there she stood snarling at Stefan, and baring her teeth with head low.
"Naomi," Stefan says in a soft tone. Naomi growled a huff, telling him to continue, "I promise you I won't let anything happen to you. Anything you say, I promise I will follow… If I had known that you would have imprinted on me and what that meant and what it's doing to me, I promise you I would have never let Gija lay a finger on you. You have no reason to trust me but I hope you will give me a chance to prove myself."
Naomi growled at him preparing to launch herself at him.
"Traitor!" A Ghoul roared, his voice was like an echo of a lightning bolt striking the Earth, from above in the treetops, towards their left a ball of navy blue electricity shot down towards Stefan.
Naomi didn't hesitate to run in the opposite direction hearing the dead silence in the pack mind, hoping she was going in the right direction towards Forks, towards the house of the golden eyed vampires. The Ghouls behind her made no intention in following her, Naomi glanced back here and then before she lost sight of them, all she could see was two male Ghouls radiating separate shaded electricity that made the ground shake and their battle echo for a couple miles from the active and reactive energy.
Naomi jumped a few fallen tree trunks in the backyard of the Cullens house, she let out more than a few loud warning barking to signal her arrival, and hoped that Edward would be able to relay her thoughts before she got attacked for her presence on their land in wolf form. Edward stood on a hill, clothes in his hands, in front of her, looking straight at her when she ran up a small hill 20 feet from him, and jumped over another fallen tree. When she approached him, he jerked his head once and both of them were running towards the Vampire liar. Before exiting the forest Edward stopped and turned towards Naomi who was trotting to a stop, he handed the clothes and she took them in her jaws, Edward turned and left.
Phasing back was terrifying for Naomi, the memory of her bones cracking and dislocation from her prison restraints still numbed your wrists and ankles, she checked her surroundings. She didn't know whether or not this was real, the soil and grass beneath her feet, the rainfall and the swaying treetops, it seemed unreal but what did she know about what's real anymore? A Ghoul disguised himself as the first boy she ever loved, then she was attacked and imprisoned. Was she even real? Naomi looked at her hands after she finished pulling on the shirt and lounge shorts, she traced with her eyes along the creases of her palm, her finger pads, and then she flipped them over. Her knuckles were scarred, the back of her hands were scarred, her hands were thin and slim and not a single trace of tattoo ink. Her hands were continuously trembling, her body was continuously trembling, Naomi stared at the forest floor as her arms dropped to her sides.
She remembered every moment, she remembers every single moment being within that cell. The routine she grew accustomed to, she grew accustomed to it all and she…. Her heartbeat was racing in her chest, her stomach twisted in unease. She could still feel the last Ghouls claws lingering in her side when he sliced her open, she could feel his other claws digging into her chest when she screamed from her side being torn open. Her arms wrapped around her torso in a subconscious attempt to comfort her, Naomi shrunk in on herself as she lowered to ground and huddled there, trembling and sobbing from the vivid images and sensations of her mind. She wanted to be dead, she grew accustomed to it all and she would rather be dead right now than being out in the open and free.
If she had to be completely honest with herself, she wished she was dead, she wished that she had died because she couldn't do this. She couldn't deal with this War, the Ghouls, the destruction of her hometown, she couldn't deal with any of it. She wanted to dig herself a hole and crawl in it, bury herself alive in it, she wanted more than anything to be dead. Death was easy, peaceful and quiet. Life was difficult, cruel and unforgiving.
She wanted to welcome death, she wanted to be at peace.
"Naomi," Rosalie stopped a couple feet in front of her, and walked slowly to her and crouched down. Rosalie gently reached out a hand to Naomi's arms around her legs, "Naomi."
Rosalie's index fingers gingerly brushed her forearm and Naomi's head lifted. Rosalie's golden eyes absorbed her expression and the dark, dullness of her irises, Naomi lowered her head back to her knees with tears still falling from her eyes.
"We can't stay out here, Naomi. They're coming. We have to prepare," Rosalie says.
At this moment, Rosalie hated feeling insensitive. Naomi needed comfort and encouragement right now, she needed to hear supportive words to get back on her feet but Rose was right. The Ghouls were coming and they weren't going to care about Naomi's tears, and Rosalie certainly didn't have the time to comfort the alpha.
"I can't," Naomi murmured into her knees, trembling. She lifted her head and looked Rosalie in the eye, "I can't do this."
Rosalie's eyebrows pinched together, she was having a difficult time believing what she was hearing. She couldn't believe that her natural enemy was refusing to fight, she couldn't believe the descendant of an alpha she had met once before was refusing to fight. Rosalie didn't know Naomi and she didn't know why Carlisle asked her to go collect Naomi, but Rosalie knew a couple of things about Naomi from people who were now cloned and imprisoned; this wasn't like her. Rosalie knew this wasn't her because of the uneasy twisting in her gut, she wasn't thirsty and this feeling hasn't settled in her dead stomach in what felt like forever. Something was wrong here, something was deeply wrong.
"I can't do this. I can't do this." Naomi wiped her face with her hands but the rain resoaked her, "This will never end! I can't do this." Naomi buried her hands in her hair.
Rosalie, impulsively, rolled her eyes, her voice dripped like molasses toughened by bluntness, "If I remember correctly… they were doing this all for you. The tournament, they want your life, your soul, Naomi, they want you. Why are you giving them what they want? They ripped you from your home, they ruined everyone's lives, our lives with continuous loops of different realities, and they tortured you. Searching for us when they had us within their grasp… We can't let them win anymore. Stop letting them win and get your ass inside to discuss the next move. You are here for a reason, step up to your place, Naomi, because no one else can."