2,929Notes: This story is an alternate universe of Twilight. Bella is the youngest of any of the wolves, Jacob included. I do not know how well this story is going to go over or how quickly I will update it. The story itself is near completion, but I was unsure as to if I wanted to post it. This story will be more mature in nature than any of my other stories and may have themes that others will dislike immensely.
If you do not condone ménage (multiple sex-partners), please do not read this story!
As you read you will see the differences clearly between my story and Stephenie Meyer's. This story will be darker in some point and contain ménage, mature themes, D/S, spanking, and pack love (not M/M). The language will also be more vulgar. Please do not hate me.
If you like this story at all please review. This kind of story is new for me to post and I am not used to writing sexual stories in relation to fan-fiction. The first chapter will resemble the New Moon scene when Edward leaves Bella, but that is essentially the only chapter that I mimic so thoroughly. Everything else is custom (certain scenes will take place as in the book, but not in the same way).
Also, like with my other fanfictions, I ask that when someone reviews that they do not use profanity towards me or my readers. I will listen to any and all feedback, make corrections when they are pointed out, and respond to most all my reviews if I am asked a question, but I do not allow vulgarity around each other. You will be heard better if you are polite.
Disclaimer: I do NOT own Twilight.
Chapter One: Departure
"This isn't a social call, is it?" Bella asked softly as she hopped out of her truck to look towards where Edward stood at the side of her house.
During school she had been as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It had started when Edward had informed her that morning that he would be unable to pick her up and take her to school as he normally did. Under normal circumstances she might have bypassed his nonchalant tone, but with the incident on her birthday so recently, barely a week, behind them she didn't trust it. Her anxiousness was proven when at school the Cullen's table had been empty.
She had become used to the family being incognito when the sun decided to make a rare appearance so as to avoid the inevitable question of why they seemed to 'sparkle' in the sunlight. She had gotten regularly used to then changing out to hunt. Two or three of them would remain at school while the others would hunt. This day had been different, however. As dark and gloomy as ever and knowing that all of them were recently fed Bella knew that the entire family's absence heralded something big.
And in all likelihood it wouldn't be good for her.
"Please follow me, Bella." Edward intoned before making his way into the woods. Bella watched him for a moment before following slowly after. His grace always amazed her. The way he moved was enticing in its simplicity and terrifying in how predatory it was. At all times she could feel the tightly caged animal just underneath the surface of his too cold skin waiting to surface. At times it was frightening, but for the most part Bella found it exhilarating. She was a junkie for the high of being around such a predator brought her.
As she followed Edward into the woods, she took notice of the fact that he hadn't brought the Volvo. Another warning chimed in her head that they were bound to have a conversation that she was sure would end on a sour note. Though Charlie wasn't due home for another hour or so Edward preferred to keep up appearances and have the car handy. If he didn't bring it then that meant that he was not planning on staying with her for very long.
Edward led her into the forest several hundred yards, just enough to see back to the way she'd come and navigate her way home, but physically unable to see the house any longer. He kept a safe distance from her as if she had a contagious disease. She could feel his apprehension from where she padded after him, her steps cautious of the upturned roots and decomposing debris scattered about. It wouldn't do to fall and bust her face open she was certain.
Bella came to a standstill when Edward finally turned to face her. His amber colored eyes glittered with something that she had come to know quite well in the past week. It was a mixture of guilt, grief, and apprehension. Those three emotions had become his whole being. They had become all that he would ever express to her.
They remained silent for so long that Bella feared that she might have to be the one to break the tense silence. The air was colder today and the skies seemed to crackle with the building pressure between them. It was just as likely to pour down sheets of rain upon them as it was to keep as hideously dark and overcast, though she was prone to believe that with the gusting wind that a storm was just awaiting the perfect moment to strike.
Finally Edward sighed and turned his head slightly away from her.
"Bella, we're leaving." He spoke flatly, his eyes refusing to make contact with her any longer.
Worrying on her lower lip, Bella took his words for what they were worth. With a heavy sigh she took a step closer to the boy that had become her whole world in the very short time that she had been living in Forks.
"When you say we," she queried softly, the tears building just behind her eyes, "you don't mean me, too, do you?"
"No, Bella. I do not." She fought back the need to weep at the cold, cool calm of his voice. Here he was initiating in their separation and he had the nerve to be composed about it while she was breaking slowly up inside. "I mean my family and myself."
It was several minutes before Bella could bring herself together enough to continue with this loathsome conversation.
"What happened with Jasper…that was nothing that I was not prepared to deal with eventually."
"You should not have to deal with that, Bella." Edward snapped with a fierceness that she was not used to seeing in him. His tone caused her to flinch, though she showed no other reaction to his anger. "I promised to do what was best for you. Staying here with you would by far be the worst mistake I will have ever made in my life, Bella. I am not Romeo."
'So many mistakes.' The words echoed in her mind until it was sickening. She felt her stomach roll, but once again she suppressed the urge to do what she so desperately wanted to do. She needed to get through this in one piece. She could afford to let herself crumble later in the safety of her own room, but not here. Not now.
"No, you are not." She hissed, the tears stinging hotly behind her lids.
"Bella, I don't want you to come with me."
"It's more than that." She assured him, her brown eyes burning with ire and agony into his own. She glared at him until there was no choice whatsoever of ignoring her any longer. Her lips trembled as his liquid gold eyes met with her own gaze. The pain was becoming to a fruition and she needed to ask the one question that would end it all. It would open the floodgates, she was certain, but this needed to come to a conclusion before either of them could hurt each other anymore.
"You don't want me." She reaffirmed, the words more of an accusation than a question.
His eyes seemingly focused onto the ground beneath them for several tense moments before he once again faced her, the look in his eyes showing his hardness.
"No."
Bella turned her back on him then. The tears broke free, but the sobs were still held in check. She knew that later tonight that she would be reverted into the proverbial 'crying jay', but for the moment she was semi-stable. She was like a house crumbling. The structure was so far unshaken, but the rest of the home was falling to the wayside.
"If it is what you want…" She began succinctly, the nonchalance of her tone giving away nothing of her inner turmoil. She would have been so proud of herself if it weren't for the fact that her heart was breaking and that the numbness that was enveloping her was doing nothing to relieve that agony. "If it is what you want, then who am I to stand in your way?"
"It is." He responded flatly. She could feel him approach a few steps behind her though she could not hear the footfalls. She had always been absurdly aware of him no matter if she could see him or not. "I would ask one favor of you, though, if it is within my rights."
"It isn't." She snapped, her calm evaporating at his gall. He had no rights with her anymore. He had given up anything and everything he had held with her the moment he had uttered that 'no'.
And yet she could deny him nothing.
"Ask your favor Edward." She whispered knowing that he would still hear her.
"Don't do anything reckless or stupid."
The laugh that escaped her then was bitter and stagnant. Of course. What had she expected? Did she really think that he might ask her to wait for him? To find someone more worthy of her? Not in so many words, yet she wanted something more than what he'd asked of her. She wanted something that would be more substantial and possible help her to reinforce her crumbling self-worth.
"Bella, do you understand me? Charlie needs you. Do it for him."
"You've said your peace, Edward." She retorted coldly, her jaw clenched in the effort to hold back the vicious words she wished to spit at him.
"Please, Bella. Promise me. In return I will make my own promise." He came closer yet. "I will leave you be. I will never return. You will never be put through the hardships you have faced with me again. I will make it so that it was as though I never existed."
Another laugh, this one softer. Her head shook slowly, sorrowfully.
"You foolish, foolish boy." Bella exhaled deeply. "You can erase the physical evidence of your presence, but do you honestly believe that you have the ability to completely remove yourself from my memories? If you do, then you truly are depraved."
It was several more minutes before anyone spoke again. Bella felt ghostly fingers skim over the back of her scalp before the sensation was gone entirely.
"That's everything, I suppose." He murmured as he stepped away. "We will not bother you again."
"They're gone already?" She deadpanned, referring to the rest of the family. She was already trying to detach herself from all of this. It wouldn't stop the heartache, but it was her hope that maybe she could keep herself from breaking completely.
"Yes. They have already left. I remained to say goodbye."
"You should have just left." She uttered bitterly, her own feet carrying her off towards the house.
"I will always love you…in a way." His words were spoken from far away now. Bella kept walking.
"But not in the way that I wanted." She parlayed, her voice cracking with the emotion she was trying so hard to hide. "Goodbye, Edward."
The wind picked up even more then, the scent of maple thick in the air. Bella let her eyes overflow with the tears that she could never hope to stop. With every step she took she felt like her insides were disintegrating. She couldn't lose it here. She just couldn't.
"Goodbye, Bella."
Those two simple words struck her in the back like a knife. Her feet locked to the ground beneath her and her teeth clenched so tightly together that she thought that they mind grind down into dust. Unimaginable pain ripped through her insides as that farewell registered completely.
Bella whipped around to face Edward for the final time.
But he was gone.
With what seemed like the force of a thousand tornadoes Bella fell to her knees clutching her head between her fists. The wind whipped at her freely hanging hair. A scream ripped from her chest as she released her devastation to the eerily silent forest around her.
It was hours later when Bella was able to stumble her way into her own home. The sound of Charlie's distressed voice reached her from the kitchen to where she stood in the foyer. Shaking her head vigorously Bella strode as surely as she was able into the kitchen.
"I think she's gone, too, Billy." Charlie hurriedly explained, his tone harried. "My God, Billy! I knew that things were moving too fast with that boy. I should have put a stop to it. I should have told her to stay away from him even before Pheonix. I'm getting everyone together. Do you think that you could…"
"…Hang up the phone, Dad." Bella interrupted, her voice raw from her scream and her earlier sobbing.
Charlie whipped around, his eyes frantic. He dropped the phone in a flash, not bothering to put it on the receiver, and charged towards her. His arms encompassed her in a tight embrace.
"Bella! I was so worried!" He gushed, his body trembling with what she assumed to be relief.
"I'm sorry, Dad." She whispered into his ear as she hugged him back. She could hear a deep voice, one that she assumed to be Billy's, yelling over the still active phone line. "I think you should tell Billy that I'm home. I'll be in the living room."
She pulled herself from his arms before he could say anything. Bella walked gingerly into the living room before settling onto the sofa. A few stray tears continued to cascade down her raw cheeks, but she was otherwise silent.
"She's home, Billy." She heard her father say in a muted tone. She might not have been able to hear it under normal circumstances, but with all of her senses acutely aware of everything around her in her frazzled state, she couldn't mistake the words. "I'll call you back. I have to talk to her. I'm sorry."
Bella sat stiffly on the sofa cushions, determined not to curl up into herself. She was already a mess from her crying jag out in the forest. She had let herself crumble to bits on the forest floor. She imagined that she looked a fright with all the dirt and twigs in her hair as well as sprinkled over her face and clothes. Without the jacket she was certain that she would have gotten hypothermia after darkness had fallen.
Charlie tromped into the room, a determined look stamped onto his face. Bella was fairly certain that she was going to get reamed for scaring him to death, but then something a lot like pity flickered through his eyes when he got a good look at her. In the moment that it took him to crouch down before her, Bella realized that her father had just taken in her broken appearance and deemed it that she was in enough suffering so he would forgo the lecture until later.
"Bells?" Her father whispered, his hands coming to rest upon her stiffly set knees.
"They're gone." She hiccupped, her heartbreak clear to even her ears. "They packed up and left. Edward just said goodbye and that was it."
The silence was something that Bella was becoming increasingly familiar with. Except in school when she was forced to endure Jessica and Lauren's incessant whining she had been fairly quiet around both her father and the Cullens. None of them really were open enough to speak freely to each other. At the time it was normal for her and yet now that she had time to really think about, to truly sit in the silence, she hated it. She despised the silence with a passion.
"It hurts." Bella choked out, her hand coming to fist on her jacket above where her heart lay. "I gave him everything and he just…Edward told me…I can't…"
On that note Bella fell forward into her father's arms and whimpered into his neck. His arms rose slowly to hold her closer. His warm breath skirted past her ear as he shushed her.
"Shh. It'll be okay, Bella." His hands rubbed circles into her back to try and soothe her. "It's okay, honey. It hurts now and you'll never forget, but the pain does get better. Shh. Calm down."
Bella wasn't really aware of how much time passed before she felt her father removing her jacket, her shoes, and then lowering into a reclined position on the sofa. He nabbed the afghan from the back of the sofa before spreading it over her. His eyes bore into her swollen ones before he smiled a little harshly.
"I'm going to go make you some tea and grab a sleeping pill from the cabinet. Just rest, Bella." He murmured before making his way into the kitchen.
Time passed slowly as Bella allowed herself to fall in and out of consciousness. It seemed like every time she fell asleep the phone would ring and wake her back up. She wanted to go to her room to where it was quiet, but there were two problems with that desire. The first was that she was too exhausted to move from the sofa. The second was that deep down she didn't want to be alone and she knew that if she went to her room that the feeling of loneliness would intensify.
It wasn't until well past midnight, if the clock on the DVR under the television was anything to go by, that a peculiar call came in. Charlie grumbled into the phone before hanging it up and dialing a new number. The person on the other end answered quickly.
"Hey Billy. It's Charlie. I'm sorry to be calling so late…no, no. She's fine. She's sleeping now. That's not why I called anyway. Mrs. Stanley just called and told me that she can see smoke coming from the Sea Cliffs…" There was a silence before his voice returned, a hard edge to it. "Why are they doing that? Uh huh. Really?...Don't apologize, Billy. Just make sure that they don't let those fires spread. So long as it's not on the Reservation it's out of my hands…"
Bella listened halfheartedly as she yawned and pulled the afghan up over her head. She would be more comfortable in pajamas right now, she knew, but she was just too tired to care much.
"Look, how is Jake? Is he feeling any better? After Bella's little birthday accident I remember you telling me that he had come down with mono." Charlie began, his tone a trifle lighter now that he wasn't talking about the possible felony taking place in La Push.
She felt her eyes widen a little. Jacob was sick? She'd talked to him a bit over the phone even after her poor attempt at flirting at First Beach last summer. He was a good guy…a little naïve, but otherwise a marvelous esteem-booster. That man could make anyone smile. He'd called the morning of her birthday before school to wish her well. Though she hadn't liked the reminder of the added year onto her life, she couldn't help but smile and thank him wholeheartedly.
"Ah, that's good to hear…With Sam Uley, huh? Is that the boy that's been leading some of the other young men in cleaning up the Reservation?...I thought so. He's certainly been setting a good example for the rest of the Tribe."
Bella remembered a Sam from First Beach when she'd encountered Jacob after so many years. He'd been the twenty-two year old that looked older. He'd been such a big guy! Jacob had been bragging to her that he'd been going through a growth spurt, but she doubted that he could match Sam's six and half feet height. Oddly enough, something about the way the guy had looked had told Bella that he hadn't stopped growing even then. Maybe this Sam Uley was the same Sam from the beach?
"Oh. Uh-yeah. I was actually thinking of sending her back to Jacksonville for a little while. Renee knows this kind of thing better than I do. It might do her some good, anyway. Just to, you know, get away from everything…Sure sure. I'll call you tomorrow. Have a nice night, Billy."
Bella peeked out from under the covers to look at her father as he came back into the living room. The television was still on, the movie 'Remember the Titans' playing quietly, but she paid no attention to it. Her father looked harried as he reclaimed his seat in the recliner. He brushed his hand through his hair before sighing deeply. It took a drawn out minute for him to realize that she was awake.
"Oh, Bells. I thought you were asleep. I'm sorry if I woke you."
"No big deal." She assured him with a yawn. A wry smile curled her lips. "I haven't been able to sleep much anyway. So, you're sending me away?"
"No, Bella! No." He tried to amend his earlier words to Billy quickly, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. She could even see their rosy hue in the little light provided by the television. "It's just…well, wouldn't you rather be with your mother for this kind of thing? I don't think that any father is really equipped to have these 'break-up' talks with their daughters."
She winced and shuddered under the blanket at the term 'break-up'. Charlie had no idea of how close he was to the true meaning of the phrase. She'd had time to wallow in her thoughts out in the woods and she'd realized that she'd committed far too much of herself to Edward Cullen. She'd been a girl with her first crush, her first true love, and he'd effectively shattered her faith in the opposite sex for anything but general friendship. He broke her heart in one fail swoop.
Now isn't that a kick in the pants?
"Dad, Renee isn't exactly the best with that sort of thing, either." She grumbled back as she tried to recover from the emotional blow she just took. "I was the one that was her shoulder to cry on if something like that ever happened to her. I love Mom, I really do, but sometimes she's the kid in our relationship.
"I'd rather stay here. Please?"
They stared at each other for a long moment, Charlie seeming to ponder over what she asked of him and her too afraid to break the silence and ruin her chances of staying. She wasn't sure why, at least not entirely, she didn't want to go to Jacksonville with Renee and Phil. It was partially due to the exact reason she gave Charlie, but it was something else, too. She felt that she had to stay. There was something deep down pulling at her very soul, begging for her to remain here in Forks. At this point in time logic had blown right out the window and she was relying solely on her gut feelings. They got her into this mess, they would get her out.
"Fine." Charlie conceded with his brows furrowed. "But if you need to go to see your mother all you have to do is ask. I love you, Bells. I only want what's best for you. If that means that you need to be with your mother, then I guess…"
"Dad," Bella interrupted softly, her hand appearing out from under the blanket to rest on his knee. "It's okay. And I love you, too, Dad."
Charlie leaned forward then and pecked her lightly on the forehead. His brown eyes, ones that she had inherited from him, bore down into her. A genuine, fatherly smile spread across his face as he looked down at her.
Well, today we're just a loving family. A little voice in the back of her head chimed sarcastically. Still, Bella couldn't help but feel warmed inwardly by her father's actions. Maybe they weren't as estranged as she had once thought they were.
"Get some sleep, kiddo. We'll go out for breakfast in the morning so you don't have to cook."
"All right. Goodnight, Dad."
"Goodnight, Bells."
Bella allowed her eyes to drift close and this time the phone didn't ring and wake her back up.