𝑨𝒏𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒅𝒂 𝑽𝒐𝒍𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒊 was found by none other than Caius Volturi as a newborn after being kidnapped by members of the newly expanded Romanian coven. After looking into her brown eyes, Caius knew that this child was as good as his own and...
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THERE WAS A CLIFF MADE OF MONSTERS FROM DREAMS BORN FROM STONE EMBRACES BENEATH HER FEET. Bella hated her life, she wanted more from it. Dreams of Edward and Alice flooded her mind during the dead of night, haunting her. The visions of Andromeda giggling with Jacob terrorized her when she thought she was alone. Isabella Swan had never been more grateful for coming to Forks than when she was staring down at icy waters.
There was little difference between her dreams and the true reality that had been so cruel as of late. Her hair slightly matted and her clothes unwashed, she was the picture of a disaster. A shifter may have thought she were a starved vampire if not for the human scent that lingered around her neck.
Once upon a time Bella may have reveled in the fact that she didn't really make much of an effort in her appearance. Edward found it honest and endearing. Yet he had left her, and every vampire she'd ever known had been perfect in the ways she was not. Andromeda was gorgeous, auburn hair and fancy, high fashion and fitted clothes. Bella hadn't been insecure about her hair until she met Rosalie, who should have been a model instead of a student. Carlisle would have done anything to make Esme happy and they just had so much history. Alice had a girlish charm to her that Bella didn't manage, her voice was too low and slow for it.
There she was, on top of the cliff in La Push and Bella couldn't think of herself in the way she wanted to. She desired the effortlessness of Rosalie, the style of Andromeda, the love that Esme had, and the appeal of Alice. None of it was hers.
Bella was sure her humanity had been a curse placed upon her. She'd opened up Pandora's Box when she'd made a move on Edward, questioned him in the hospital that day. Each one of their kisses were torture to her soul and the memory of what they had.
If this heartbreak was what growing up was all about, Bella didn't want to be alive anymore. It wasn't worth the stress, the lack of connection. Her heart was numb and her soul angry and distrusting of whatever fate put her on this path.
Looking down, there was one way out.
Yet she didn't die that night, but perhaps she should have.
...
ARMY GENERALS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WAR-HARDENED AND STONE COLD. Jasper knew he could be only one of those things with the way his emotions spilled from his mouth and into the void that was anyone who got just a little too close to him. Even in his days of a war that he didn't even want to fight in, Jasper felt the embrace of death before it hit that it wasn't his it was feeling, but other's.
It should have shown him that being a vampire was perhaps the worst thing to ever happen to him. Quick-paced like war, yet always drawing into peace like a preacher's last song on a Sunday. Jasper despised the irregularity of his hunger and the severity of it when it rose from his chest to his teeth.
His body was eating away at itself each time it ran out of cow or bird or even mountain lion.
In this turmoil Jasper found himself making phone calls with people he could barely remember the names of trying to figure out where his Covenmate had gone without a single word. The way that his wife, the woman he was supposed to love until the end of time, tried to nag him to get off the phone and comfort her, was indeed worse than the idea of Edward never coming home.
"He hasn't been seen in over a week, sir, and yes, Alice has tried to trigger a vision of where he's gone," Jasper' southern accent was laid on thick as he tried to explain over the line to a vampire who Carlisle was close with, "Edward is dear to us and Carlisle wants everyone to be on high alert as to where he's gone. He hasn't done this for years."
Each word that rolled from his tongue felt like a school day presentation from his youth, explaining to each set of parents what he'd done in his research and what it had to do with what piece of history they were studying. Whether it be Constantinople or Edward, nobody was very interested. When they left for the North over their values clashing with the South his father adored, he hadn't thought of his classmates that he'd presented to. It was always the children being displaced by their parents, wasn't it?
It was he who uprooted him this time, wasn't it? His brother Edward? When once it was his dear Esme, who tried to lessen the blow of their intrinsic disconnection of a home with movie nights and carefully planned events, Edward had met this task of explanation with screaming and melodramatic fits of discontent.
"Jasper you need to get off the phone! I've been asking for you for over half an hour. Esme has organized a search party in Maine." Alice tugged at his sweatshirt and stared up into his golden eyes with matching ones of her own. "Make haste, we have classes in the morning and we have to find him before the end of term. So people don't get suspicious. So we can have our brother back!"
The former Army general had two matching degrees in his current field of study, he would pass either way. Alice knew this, she'd been the one who'd convinced him to take another English degree.
She'd convinced him of a hell of a lot of things.
"We will be on the lookout," was all that the other person said before hanging up the phone.
Jasper's face turned downward into a curt frown. He had wanted to talk to that person more, even if all they spoke about was Edward's disappearance.
"I was there on the last one, you can fill in for me, can't you? I need to hunt." Alice frowned. "I didn't get enough to eat last time, you know that."
"Well, I did tell you to-"
"I am not comfortable eating endangered species and I've told you that half a dozen times. If Edward weren't dumber than a bag of hammers he would have allowed me to eat the fish like Carlisle suggested."
"How can you just speak about him like that when he's gone?" Alice all but wailed as she crossed her arms. "Edward has run away because of everything that's happened and you call him dumb? He's hurting! He has been hurting for so long and after Bella...."
Jasper sighed and shook his head, dropping the phone onto the bed.
"Edward was the one who decided to leave Bella. And he blamed me for it until the day he left when it was he who put me in that position." Jasper sat down onto his bed and held his head in his hand, looking into the golden eyes of the woman he married so many years ago. "When I raised concern about him bringing her to the house, I was ignored."
"This isn't a game of I told you so."
"It doesn't matter than I told him so, it matters that he let himself believe that since I told him so, it is my fault instead of his."
