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Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2021-09-28 04:31:41 +0000 UTCInstead of driving straight to Alaska, which is what Rosalie had insinuated, they drove to the airport. Bella honestly didn’t mind, she was more upset that she didn’t get a chance to tell Charlie what was happening. Alice had sent a message to Emmett though, saying she would leave a note in Bella’s handwriting explaining that she apparently couldn’t handle living in Forks anymore and simply had to go back to Arizona with Renee. Apparently they were forgetting that Bella had gone into detail at one point about how much she wasn’t a fan of the warmer weather. She had complained all the time about how easily she burned and how stifling the heat was. She supposed that was how much everyone paid attention to her beyond her ‘being Edward’s mate’.
Rosalie hadn’t said much of what her plans were, and Emmett already seemed to know exactly what his mate was up to. Bella was okay with going along with them. There was a supposed blood thirsty vampire after her, after-all…although she probably wouldn’t mind the red head getting a hold of her. What a sweet death it would be if it was by her hands.
Bella quickly cleared her throat in an effort to clear her thoughts. It wouldn’t due to let her mind wonder about the red head when there were vampires around that could probably smell her reactions to just thoughts about the red head. They probably would tell Edward she was having those types of thoughts about him and he would likely become more clingy and that was literally the last thing Bella wanted.
They were sitting on the plane, traveling to Alaska. Rosalie had wasted no time in buying the first and only tickets available. Bella was fidgeting in her seat, thankful that they were almost there. She knew their destination was still the Denali coven, but she wasn’t sure why they hadn’t driven. She had tried asking, but Rosalie only rolled her eyes and Emmett only told her not to worry about it.
She sighed again as she looked out the window at all the snow. They were on a smaller plan, having chanced planes in Canada, how Rosalie had gotten ‘her passport’, she had no idea because the fact that she had never gotten a passport didn’t seem to bother the blonde, so they could get as close as possible to the other coven before they had to drive.
“Sigh again and I’ll knock you out.” Rosalie muttered, just loud enough for her to hear. Rosalie hadn’t really glared at her, but Bella was definitely going to take her warning seriously.
“Oh come on Rose, at least she isn’t giving us any grief about changing the plans.” Emmett said, coming to Bella’s defense.
“We have new plans?” Bella asked, she hadn’t heard about that. Were they not going to the Denali’s?
Rosalie closed her eyes for a moment, and Bella could have sworn she was doing her best to not roll her eyes out of her skull. Could a vampire even do that since they were so strong and able to re-attach their limbs? Well, if their history was anything to go by, if it was possible, all Bella had to do was be around Rosalie long enough and she’d find out.
“It doesn’t matter right now.” Rosalie said and it sounded like it was the last thing she wanted to say; although it could also be because she wasn’t a fan of talking to Bella. It really could have been either reason.
“We’ll talk later Bella, promise.” Emmett said with his normal easy going grin.
Really, it wasn’t like Bella expected anything else. To them, she was just another human after all. The Cullen’s tended to not tell her things because apparently human brains couldn’t comprehend information. Bella just slumped in her seat and looked out the window. She should have known things wouldn’t be different without Edward. Rosalie may not be Edward’s biggest fan, or even a fan at all, but Bella had hoped that she would be able to learn something about the situation. Perhaps Rosalie’s dislike of Edward didn’t outweigh her dislike of Bella. Well, guess she would go back to just looking out the window.
Once they landed, got off the plane, they started walking out into the surrounding woods. They started walking away from the incredibly small town that made Forks look big.
This wasn’t ominous at all.
Bella wrapped her arms around herself, the cold more than starting to nip at her; she was actually concerned that perhaps she would have been in safer, if not warmer, hands with the nomads. At least then she would be with the pretty red head.
Once they were near the tree line, Emmett quickly picked up Bella into his arms. “This is going to probably be really uncomfortable for you, but the faster we get to Denali the better. We’ll run the rest of the way, shouldn’t be longer than an hour run.” He explained as Rosalie took off her thankfully heavy coat and tucked it around Bella.
“They will have a fire going for you and I’m sure you’ll be fine once inside their cabin. We just have to get there before Alice see’s anything we don’t want her to.” Rosalie explained, yet not really explaining anything.
Before Bella could even attempt to ask anything about that ominous statement, the two vampires took off running faster than Bella had ever been carried by Edward.
Her eyes immediately teared up. The cold quickly felt like stinging bees as Emmett carried her, apparently running as fast as he could. Bella had never felt the cold feel as horrible as it did then. She felt like the wind was going to literally carve her body away. She briefly wondered if running to the Denali’s was really necessary, or if this was something Rosalie wanted to do to get back at her for, well, being her.
She quickly lost track of time, no longer aware of minutes or even hours passing. She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t even keep her mind on track enough to be able to count higher than five. Beyond that, she simply couldn’t think what came next, she was too cold to care to remember how to count. All she could really focus on was how heavy her body had started to feel like. She was starting to feel like literal bricks, much too heavy for her to even think about moving, much less moving just to lay more comfortably in Emmett’s arms or to warn either vampire that she couldn’t feel any part of her body anymore.
Even though her eyes were already closed and her body was already completely lax since she was being carried, she couldn’t help but briefly feel like her eyes permanently closed and her body seemed to completely relax into Emmett, more so than she already had been. Apparently she was going to take a quick nap; hopefully she would wake up from it.
****
Emmett felt Bella slacken in his hold and immediately threw a worried look to his mate. He hoped nothing bad would happen to the human. Everything they were doing was for the human after all, they were only trying to help fix what the Cullen’s had broken.
“Hey, Rose.” Emmett said in quiet voice as if afraid to wake up Bella even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to.
“I know Emmett.” Rosalie said in a hard tone, staying focused on where they were going. “We just need to get her to the cabin where there’s a fire and she’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.”
The two vampires ran as fast as they could, Emmett just barely pulling ahead thanks to his strength granting him just a little more speed. They didn’t have long to go. In fact, they were surprised Bella had lasted as long as she did before she passed out. They were hopeful she wouldn’t get too sick; but Carmen would be able to fix it. She may not be a practicing doctor like Carlisle, but both Rosalie and Emmett sure as hell trusted Carmen a lot more than they did Carlisle.
Within ten minutes they ran straight into the cabin, just slowing down enough to be able to take the turns inside the building without hitting any corners. Emmett immediately handed off Bella to Carmen, the Hispanic woman already expecting the hand off. Without Bella in his arms anymore, he left the room to allow Rosalie and Carmen to do what they needed to do to get Bella warm again.
He went into the living room where everyone else was waiting. He completely ignored the soft sounds he could hear from the room upstairs, very thankful that the heavy soundproofing helped to make it harder to hear how bad of shape Bella was in.
“At least she’s here now.” Tanya said as Emmett fell into the loveseat, knowing Rosalie would be right next to him as soon as Bella was okay.
“Yeah,” Emmett said, not sounding very convinced. “Thank you so much for letting her come here.”
“Of course.” Tanya said with a nod of her head from her spot in front of the roaring fire.
“What I don’t understand though, was why run here? Why take such a risk with the human you claim is so important?” Irina asked.
Rosalie had called Tanya as soon as they had started running from the field away from the nomads. Rosalie figured it was their time to get Bella away from Edward. She wasn’t sure what Edwards endgame was, but clearly keeping Bella close was part of his plan. It was just good timing that the nomads showed up when they did. Those nomads gave Rosalie the perfect reason to leave with Bella.
“Well, Rosalie was really intent on getting Bella here sooner rather than later.” Emmett answered as he scratched the back of his head. While he completely agreed with what his mate wanted and with what they did, he figured Rosalie would have been better to explain the whole situation. She was a lot better with words than he was.
“Why did she feel the need to get Bella here? Were the rest of the Cullen’s not able to deal with the nomads on their own?” Kate asked, knowing that since one of the nomads had been tagged as a tracker thanks to Edward’s gift, it would be hard to shake the tracker and traveling would only further entice the tracker to follow them instead of staying. It would seem like a better game for the tracker and only cause the vampire to be much more interested in the hunt.
“Well, Edward actually didn’t think it was safer for Bella to be around them, and Rosalie wanted to take Bella away from Edward as soon as possible.” Emmett explained.
“Why would Edward not want Bella to be with him when she was in danger? Didn’t he have an infatuation with the girl?” Eleazar asked, hoping Emmett would be able to clear something sooner rather than later for them. He could hear that his mate and Rosalie would be a bit longer with Bella as they had to slowly warm her back up to avoid the human from going into shock. They would be busy for a while and Emmett wasn’t normally one for proper explanations.
“Well, that’s the thing, we’re pretty sure Bella isn’t his mate.” Emmett said with a frown.
“We knew that already.” Irina said with a frown, “If she were his mate, he wouldn’t have ran here when he first met her. He would have been glued to her side.”
“Even now, hundreds of years of being mated to Carmen, I couldn’t physically force myself to leave her side knowing she was in danger, never mind when we were first mated.” Eleazar said, not bothering the hide the fond smile on his face as he thought about when he first found his mate while on a mission for the Volturi.
“But when Edward was here, he made it seem like he was having trouble simply being around her.” Irina said with a slight tilt of her head, thinking back to when the young vampire had visited them for a week. “I had assumed she was his singer, and they didn’t want to move.” Irina said, sending a look towards her coven leader as she had spent the most time around Edward when he had visited.
“He insisted she was not his singer and that only her presence called to him so strongly.” Tanya said, eyes narrowed as she thought back to their conversations. At the time, she was more concerned with making his uncomfortable as possible instead of what he was actually saying. For all the cared at the time, he could have killed the human and Tanya wouldn’t have bated an eye. But now, she was rethinking her decision of not following up with Edward and his struggle; especially since he had hinted at letting the human who clearly wasn’t his mate or chosen mate, in on their secret. “She was clearly just his singer, nothing more.” Tanya asserted.
“So Edward was trying to keep his singer alive like an addict keeps their addiction on hand?” Irina asked, clearly not sounding convinced of her words. “Had he even bitten her? It would make more sense if he had tasted her blood to keep her around rather than never having tasted it and simply torturing himself.”
“Being a supposed self-sacrificing idiot to make himself look good even though no one else would care that he was torturing himself around his singer?” Kate asked with a roll of her eyes, “Sounds like something stupid the kid would do.”
“Did Carlisle not have anything to say?” Eleazar asked, turning the attention back to Emmett.
“He honestly didn’t see anything wrong with anything Edward did.” Emmett said with a scrunched up face, “Rosalie and I actually have a few theories about that actually, that we wanted to run by you guys at some point, but then things kind of got out of control with Edward.”
“How so?” Tanya asked, concerned that a coven leader would let their secret be known with so little care.
“Edward started stalking Bella at night while she slept, started to control everything she did and what topped it all off,” Rosalie said as she zoomed into her spot next to Emmett, the giant immediately wrapped his arm around his mate without thought. “Carmen is with Bella still, but she should be out of the woods now.” Rosalie quickly said towards Eleazar. “We were concerned that not only did Edward not choose Bella for a chosen mate but that also he was strictly keeping her around because she was his singer. He was adamant that she wasn’t, but even Jasper thought she was at first.”
“At first?” Kate asked with a quirked eyebrow. “Feelings about a singer don’t change. Either you have bloodlust towards them or you don’t; it doesn’t go away with time and it doesn’t get easier, it only gets harder.”
“The Volturi have a lot of records of singers and their counterparts, there is nothing to be gained by resisting the bloodlust and nothing lost besides a delicious meal.” Eleazar added.
“Edward and Jasper had several of their silent conversations,” Rosalie explained, “Eventually Jasper stopped bringing it up. I assumed it was because he gave up trying to convince Edward he was wrong and that he should either kill Bella or leave the town to leave the girl be.”
“What did Carlisle say about all this?” Tanya asked again, still concerned about why a coven leader wouldn’t step in when it was clearly very needed.
“Nothing.” Rosalie asserted. “He agrees with anything and everything his oldest turned does.” Rosalie said with gritted teeth. “We actually the reason he always agrees with Edward is the reason Edward had pushed so hard to be with Bella.”
“What reason could that possibly be?” Carmen asked from upstairs, everyone taking a moment to listen to the human and hear that her breathing had evened out and was in fact asleep. Carmen remained in the room, concerned of the human taking a possible sudden turn to the worse and so opting to stay in the room just to be on the safe side. She would be sure Bella wouldn’t get worse under her care.
“We think there’s something between Edward and Carlisle.” Emmett said, “Actually, Jasper and Alice pretty much agree with us. But Carlisle definitely wouldn’t agree, never mind Edward. Which was why we left so quickly, so suddenly, so Alice wouldn’t have a vision about it and Edward see it.”
“So that’s why you ran.” Irina said with sudden understanding. “You didn’t have time to decide to rent, buy or steal a vehicle in such a deserted land to make sure there was no risk of Alice having a vision.”
“What are you so afraid of Edward seeing?” Kate asked, confused on why they would be afraid of Alice seeing them run here so quickly.
“The sooner we got here, the more distracted Edward would be with the nomads, and not pay as close attention to Alice.” Rosalie explained. “You see, we think Edward is so fixated on Bella being at the very least a chosen mate because he is afraid of who his actual mate is.”
“He has a given mate?” Tanya asked, shocked. There wasn’t a vampire alive that would turn away from their mate, a given mate. Tanya and her sisters were fortunate enough to find the other part of their souls fairly soon in their lives thanks to their maker. They could never imagine not being happy without the any one of each other. They were a group and nothing could change their minds about it. They simply couldn’t understand why Edward would run from his mate if he knows who it really is.
“We’re fairly sure, and Jasper agrees with us.” Emmett started, knowing that they had to be right about what they thought. The signs were obvious. Their old beliefs and stubborn attitudes were to blame for this whole situation.
Rosalie rolled her eyes at her mate trying to draw out the suspense more than necessary by taking a uncharacteristically deep breath, never mind how unneeded it was.
“Edward and Carlisle are mates.” Rosalie said in a hard tone.
