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Believe Me Chapter 8
🕑 Added 2021-11-11 04:06:15 +0000 UTCThey told everything to Victoria while Bella ate her food. The human added her two cents in every few minutes, but for the most part Rosalie and Emmett did most of the talking. The Denali’s eventually added what they knew about the Cullen’s from an outsiders’ perspective. Victoria listened to everything they had to say, only asking questions once she was sure they were done talking. She wanted to make sure she had so much information that it was as if she had been with the Cullen’s all this time not Rosalie and Emmett.
Bella had finished long before they were done talking but once they were done giving Victoria all the information they had, the redhead requested to talk with Bella alone. Tanya and Victoria had a couple minutes long stare off that the blonde promised retribution if she did anything to hurt the human or tried to run and the redhead tried to silently assure she had no intentions to run. From what Victoria could tell, the Denali’s at least, only have intentions to protect the human and their laws; Victoria wanted any extra protection she could get for her mate. Victoria was no fool, Carlisle may be young compared to most of the vampires in the house, but he was more than old enough to have friends and if he called on those friends to help get Bella, that could be very problematic.
No one left the house, but once everyone had left the room and gave them an illusion of privacy, Victoria moved to sit so that she was sitting next to her mate but facing her so she could keep better eye contact. Bella could sense there was an importance to the conversation she was about to have with the beautiful redhead, but all she could really think about was that she was sitting next to Victoria and she had her full attention.
“Bella.” Victoria said nearly as a sigh, as if she was just happy to be able to say her mate’s name without an audience that was trying to keep her mate away from her. Bella only answered with a smile to let the redhead know she was listening. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Seems like it.” Bella agreed, not at all sounding worried about what the redhead would want to talk about. Edward may have been very good at keeping things from her, but she wasn’t dumb. She was actually very observant. She knew who Victoria was to her and she knew what Edward claimed; what she didn’t know was the details of what the fallout of this information would be.
“You understand that you are mate as I am yours, correct?” Victoria asked, never one to beat around the bush but wanting to make sure her mate was on the same page as everyone else. She was actually mentally preparing herself for a fight with her mate depending on how bad the glamour effects would be on her human.
Bella nodded; she already knew what she was saying. But there was something she didn’t understand that none of the Cullen’s seemed to either be aware of or care, “Then why does Edward say he and I are mates?”
Victoria couldn’t stop the snarl if she tried; just hearing that someone else tried to lay claim to her mate made her want to tear the world apart in agitation. Victoria was never one to restrain herself; as a nomad, she hadn’t really ever anyone to answer to except the Volturi and as long as she followed the laws, she didn’t have them to bother her either.
Immediately after she snarled, she remembered who was right in front of her and instantly regretted resorting to acting like a stereotypical vampire with no control over their base instincts. She had words of apology on her tongue about to spew from her mouth when she actually took a look at her mate and saw instead of the fear she had expected, her mate had a grin a blush painted on her face.
“You are not afraid of me?” Victoria asked. All the anger in her and all the black in her eyes completely melted at seeing her mate not afraid of her.
“You’re too pretty to be afraid of.” Bella said with a grin and then a few seconds later, realized what she said and quickly averted her eyes. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.” She mumbled as some sort of apology for saying her thoughts out loud that were meant to stay in her head.
Victoria couldn’t help but chuckle at her mates’ embarrassment. “That’s not the first time you’ve said something like that out loud.” Victoria said with mirth, “I would be more than okay with hearing you say that more often.”
“Oh god.” Bella said as she buried her face in her hands in embarrassment. She remembered saying things to Victoria that normally would have embarrassed her, but the embarrassment was only just hitting her. Victoria’s deep chuckle and smoky voice certainly didn’t help her to not say things out of impulse, but at least, for the moment, she was able to contain herself.
“That’s actually part of what I wanted to talk to you about.” Victoria gently said as she realized the only reason her mate had said all those compliments was likely because her inhibitions were down due to be glamoured at because the vampire that had done it wasn’t there to maintain Bella’s focus. If Bella was only just now realizing what she was saying, then she was clearly getting the drug-like effects out of her system. Good.
Victoria slowly pulled her mate’s hands away from her face, thankful that Bella wasn’t resisting because at that meant she was at least receptive to what she had to say even if she may not believe or even want to hear. Her mate was giving her a chance, even though it was only a chance to talk to her it was still heartwarming for her mate to show such trust at an early part of their relationship.
“You wanted to talk about me complimenting you without a filter?” Bella asked, grabbing Victoria’s hand as the older woman was about to release her hold.
“What exactly do you know about vampires and their hunting efforts?” Victoria asked and Bella’s eyes went wide. That was a topic that was entirely off limits around any of the Cullen’s. Bella was fairly sure Edward would rather die than for Bella to know about anything beyond the Cullen’s drinking from animals.
“Not much.” Bella answered, “Edward only told me they were perfect predators but that he and his family only drank from animals because they were better than other vampires.” Bella answered with no small hint of annoyance. That part had always annoyed her when she would talk with Edward. She would try to get answers from him and then he would clam up and then she would stop talking.
“Of course he would.” Victoria said with a sneer, Bella’s grip on her hands the only thing keeping her from lashing out in anger with a growl or angry words. Victoria was very happy to have her mate not only not be afraid of her, but to be holding her hands; as cheesy as it was, and she really didn’t like being cheesy, she just really couldn’t get over the giddiness it gave her. She’ll just make sure to take it to her grave that her mate made her feel such silly things. “The first and foremost tool we have to lure in our prey, to lure in humans, is our glamouring affects.” Victoria said, getting back to their conversation.
“He said your tools were your scent, looks and even voice. Is that what you mean?” Bella asked, causing Victoria to roll her eyes. Now she was just wondering if while the boy seemed more than willing to give up information, if he didn’t know what glamour was and just did it by accident or if the boy was just an asshole and did it anyways because he could.
“Those are all tools, but those are not the strongest tools we have.” Victoria said and then went on to explain exactly what glamour was.
She went into much more detail than Bella ever thought a vampire would when explaining to her; at least, more than she had ever heard the Cullen’s do. She had expected a brief explanation saying glamour was something used to eat humans; she didn’t expect to get a full on explanation of exactly how it worked and why everyone was apparently so pissed that she was glamoured. She was told about what happens to humans while they are glamoured and the possible future negative effects if they were glamoured for a prolonged period of time. But that last bit of information brought more questions from Bella that not even Rosalie or Emmett had thought about.
“Would glamour effects still work on me even if Edward couldn’t read my mind?” She asked, thinking that while she probably did go along a lot more easily with what Edward wanted and didn’t put up much of a fight, she had thought she was doing so because she wanted that connected with the vampires because she thought she was meant to be one. Meeting Victoria, now she was definitely sure she was meant to be a vampire. Perhaps his glamour only made her argue less with him when he was making sure she didn’t hang out with people on the reservation too much or stay out too late when she wanted to hang out with Angela and Jessica.
Victoria pulled back a little from her mate as she heard the question. She hadn’t thought about that. Edward’s gift didn’t work on her mate; that was something everyone had told was the catalyst that really drew Edward in. As Victoria thought about Bella’s gift possibly being a form of protection against that idiot Edward, something else crossed Victoria’s mind: what if Edward just didn’t know how to glamour properly and only assumed he was doing it correctly because he was arrogant? Victoria would never admit it, but there was a time when she was coming out of her newborn age that she thought she was perfect and didn’t use as much pheromones as she should of, to glamour her prey and the human ended up snapping out of it when she bit down on his neck. Perhaps it was something similar with Bella and Edward?
She needed to figure out if it was Bella’s gift or Edward’s stupidity that had unwittingly protected Bella. Luckily, there was someone in the house that could very well answer that question by figuring out what exactly Bella’s gift could do.
***
The Cullen’s had split up soon after Rosalie and Emmett had taken Bella to safety. Esme and Alice stayed to protect Charlie and the rest of the town in case one of the nomads decided to try and eat one of the townspeople; it wouldn’t do for someone to disappear while they were living in the town. So they left the weakest of their group to do the easy part while the stronger ones did the actual work. Carlisle, Edward and Jasper tracked the nomads.
Jasper had initially wanted to go after James, the aggressor of the two nomads, but Edward put his food down and said that if anyone was going to kill his mate’s hunter, it would be him. Edward needed to make sure that Bella realized that not only was Edward perfect for Bella, they were mates after all, but Edward could also keep her safe from anything for the rest of her life. Edward needed for Bella to understand that he was the only option for her, that he was the only one to be able to keep her safe and to make her happy.
Thankfully, he had his coven leader’s full support in what he wanted to do. Edward knew it was very much bending the laws and giving it a very loose interpretation but Edward was okay with that. By the time the Volturi realize anything is wrong, Bella would have already died from old age. That was what Edward wanted for his mate. He couldn’t see Bella’s soul being damaged with being a vampire. He would protect her soul just like a mate was supposed to. He wouldn’t fail her; and with Carlisle’s support, he knew he had his coven’s support as well.
As soon as they were able to kill the tracker, he was sure Bella would be safe. He was the only one that wanted to hurt his mate because of her scent; therefore, he was the only one that needed to die. Edward was against violence if he could avoid it. But dire situations such as this called for desperate actions. Edward wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Bella. Of that he would swear.
“They split up a while ago.” Jasper assured as they continued following a trail that led towards the reservation. Jasper was positive that the two had split up as he could only really smell just one strong scent and a weaker version of the other; as if one of them was carrying just a piece of clothing that belonged to the other. “We should do the same until we can get eyes on both of them.” Jasper advised. He had a lot more experience than both of them combined. Not only the small training he had as a human, but the life and death training as a newborn meant he definitely knew how to track down a wayward vampire and knew how to neutralize them. He just had to get the other two to trust him long enough to listen to him.
“We don’t need to find the other one; we just need the tracker.” Edward asserted, not at all happy with where his brother’s thoughts were going. “This isn’t a matter of trust.” Edward assured, wanting his brother to relax and just focus on the main problem, not whatever issues he thinks there may or may not be between them. “Let’s just get Bella back and our lives will go back to normal.”
‘Our lives are far from normal.’ Jasper thought, Edward choosing to ignore that thought and just focus on the scent of the nomad that was after his mate. Edward had only one goal: to get his mate back and to protect her from everything that wanted to cause harm to her; even if that meant herself.
Edward tossed a glance at Carlisle and the calm smile the younger vampire received in return only meant that Carlisle was with him. As long as Carlisle was with him, Edward was sure he would be successful in whatever he tried.
***
James couldn’t help but laugh as he raced into the reservation. These vampires were just too easy to mess with. Although, their mutt friends were kind of annoying, they weren’t that bad.
James heard a howl in the distance and knew that his trip onto the reservation was almost over. Truthfully, he had only crossed over into the disgusting smelling land to get some distance between him and the Cullen’s; they were getting just a bit too close for comfort.
But he was sure he was having more fun than Victoria. He understood that Victoria saw the human as a mate but with all the other vampires surrounding that human, he wasn’t sure if it was worth all the risk she was taking. He wasn’t sure how much more time he was going to buy for his former coven mate; probably until the fun was over. But for the moment, James thought it was hilarious how this coven thought they had any chance of catching him or Laurent when they were so busy not getting caught by humans or the mutts on the bordering lands. If it were James in the coven leaders spot, he would have just flat out hunted the nomads and killed any humans that got in the way; it would be two birds with one stone: kill the nomads and get a meal.
But these so called vegetarians were weak willed and just flat out stupid. James was honestly curious on how many humans he could get away with killing for his meals before they actually did something outside of just chasing him. It was going to fun to find out.
