Chapter 29

Bella POV

"Bella just calm down for a moment and take a deep breath." Jasper urged me from where sat perched on a small boulder looking off into the distance.

He looked both human and not in that moment. Casual in his posture with his long legs bent up around him and his elbows resting on top of his knees. But he hardly moved. Hardly breathed. His eyes were set off into the distance and I knew he was listening far further away than where I stood. His face and nature were that of a predator, but for once he looked like he was relaxing into the role of teenage boy.

I very nearly ignored him and continued on my path of pacing before deciding that was probably ruder than the situation called for. So I stopped where I was before stepping up onto the large fallen log in front of me.

"Look I need to keep myself busy for now or it's all going to get too much and the panic is going to take over." I stepped up and over the log and continues to wear the path into the little mountain top clearing we'd sought refuge in.

It was high enough up here that the air stung my throat and numbed my nose, and snow clung to the pine needles surrounding us, and pooled in little piles around the base of the boulders. It was a beautiful place, a winter wonderland.

It was beautiful.

But all I hoped was it was safe.

Just ten minutes ago I'd been watching everyone practice and prepare for the inevitable and within seconds it had found us.

The mere minutes we spent in the clearing as Alice screamed and fell into silence while Edward explained exactly what she was seeing lasted a lifetime.

And then I was in Jasper's arms, being run through the forest at breakneck speed trying to find safety, Seth keeping an impossible pace beside as, running through shrubbery and brushing against tree trunks to leave a thick blanket of wolf scent over myself and Jasper's easily identifiable ones.

And then the world stopped.

I was in the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. And so close to us there was a battle about to rage. And the sole reason for the battle happening in the first place was me.

The clearing was still and calm. I suppose it had looked like this since it first came to be. Was it a year ago, a decade, a century? Longer? It felt timeless and untouched and my mind felt far too busy to be here. To anxious and frantic for this peaceful place.

I continued my lap of our little clearing, stumbling a little as I passed where Seth was sitting. He huffed a little chuckle before quietening down again and resuming his silent watch. I didn't think he wanted to be here, but Sam had sent him on the official duty of helping us to keep contact with the rest of the pack and everyone left behind in the main field. But we could all read between the lines and knew he was sent here as the youngest of the wolves to try and keep him out of as much danger as possible.

Moments after he fell silent Seth jumped up into a low crouch and began to growl.

"They've just attacked the clearing." Jasper said in a low voice. "We're close enough I can hear."

And I stopped.

Jasper appeared beside me and gently led me to a small pile of dry pine needles where he sat with me, pulling me into his arms.

As I sat there against Jasper's chest he began to speak to me in a low voice. I had to strain to hear. We must have been uncomfortably close to the action.

I didn't absorb anything he told me. I could feel my heart hammering away in my chest. But Jasper was here, and he was telling me it was all going to be okay. And with every inch of my soul I knew he would protect me until the very end.

But if we were close enough that Jasper could hear what was happening and he was barely breathing out the words, surely that meant we were close enough to be easily found.

I felt my stomach sink and seemingly fill with lead.

We had made a terrible mistake.

Bree POV

It felt surreal to be outside in the daylight. It was misty and foggy but it was more sunlight than I had seen in months. Riley had practically beaten it into us that the sun was dangerous. We were vampires, all the myths said the sun was our downfall, and so we believed him. Even after my day of fooling around with Diego I still worried just what the sun would do to me.

Something in me ached when I thought back to that day not that long ago with Diego. He wasn't here. I hoped to god he was okay.

But I knew he was ashes.

As we ran west I marvelled at the sight of the billions of water droplets seemingly floating in the air, the weak sunlight refracting through all of these diamonds. The colours of the forest. The sounds of the dozens of footsteps passing over the muddy ground. I'd never seen the forest so closely before, and every sight and noise and feeling caught my attention. If it hadn't been for the bizarre pulling in my chest propelling me further west with every step I would have fallen behind the rest of the group.

As it was I hung towards the back with Fred. I fought every instinct in my body that told me to leave disgusting Fred, but after these last few months of coexisting I liked to think I was somewhat immune to his grossness.

He still made me feel nauseous though.

Something was telling me whatever was happening today was going to end terribly. It was adding to the nausea I was feeling.

The pulling in my chest pulled me along, growing ever stronger.

Perhaps I was being called by death.

Ahead I could see the bright red of her hair. There had been whispers around the many houses we inhabited for as long as I had been there about this beautiful red headed woman who was really in charge. That Riley was just acting on her orders. Only the very oldest of the group had actually seen her.

She appeared out of the trees as we ran west. We had to have been nearly at wherever our final destination was because almost as soon as she was there, she began to speak.

Her voice was sweet, it reminded me of how candy used to taste when I was a child. But there was something horrific behind her words.

She made us split up, half were to run north-west, the other south-west. She never spared a glance at us. Just a hand gesture down the middle. I stuck with Fred and headed north.

I was sure we would not survive today.

As we headed north-west, hanging to the back of this group, I spared one last look back to where the red headed woman stood talking to Riley. He looked at her with such admiration and love. She looked at him like we was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

I don't think he saw it at all though.

Bella POV

It could have been hours. Days. Years even.

It was likely only minutes.

But we sat in near silence most of the time. I could only hear the thumping of my heart and Seth's occasional growl and chuffs.

Sometimes Jasper would let me know when he heard something distinctive. Emmett had laughed once or twice. Esmé had yelled out for Rosalie to watch her back. Alice had instructed someone to the left.

It was disorientating.

And then Jasper was on his feet and I knew it had gone terribly wrong.

"She's coming for us." He said in a shockingly normal sounding voice.

I heard something echoing through the forest around us, it sounded like an alien scream, so distant and distorted but there was something familiar about it.

My gut screamed at me: Alice!

My throat tightened and every breath felt like a marathon. I felt icy cold and like I was on fire all at once.

"Bella, I need you to stay with me here. Listen to me, I will keep you safe, we will be fine." Jasper said to me.

Seth began to pace around the clearing. His fur was raised up along his back to the point where he looked like he was twice the size I remembered him being.

"Bella, are you with me?" He asked, looking directly into my eyes with such an intensity it kept me grounded.

All I could do was nod.

My breath was rattling and painful in my chest. The whole world was moving too fast and yet far too slow.

"I need you to stay right here and don't move unless you absolutely have to." He said as he led me to a little crevice where some of the rocky mountain jutted out of the ground. "I love you, and I will keep you safe, but please keep yourself safe too." And he was gone with the whisper of his lips on mine.

I huddled into the little rocky refuge. I pulled me knees up to my chest and hugged them as tightly as I could with my left arm still encased in plaster.

And I waited.

I didn't take a breath. The idea of breathing hurt my lungs and tore at my throat.

A savage growl rang out and it sounded like two boulders had slammed into each other with immense force.

Seth howled.

The feral screams and the loud growls rang out around me. They darted around faster than I could really keep track of.

I saw a flash of red.

And then the flash of red was thrown across my field of vision with a scream and a grunt.

Then she was back up.

We locked eyes.

She was beautiful in the most terrifying way I had ever seen. The wild red curls seemed to dance in the slight breeze and were filled with leaves and sticks and debris. Her eyes were just as red and seemed even wilder. There was some kind of wildness to her that was unnatural and foreign to me. I had seen her before, all those months ago when she strolled into the baseball game. But she looked entirely new and foreign. Greif for her mate had twisted her into this beast intent on revenge.

Jasper crouched ready between the two of us. He was my protector. The border between life and death.

To my left I heard another feral growl that drew my attention.

Seth was facing off with a man. Or a boy maybe. He couldn't have been much older than me when he was changed.

But he looked like he had lost all of his humanity.

His clothes were torn and rumpled, his short blond hair as much of a mess as Victoria's. And his right arm was hanging kind of limply as if it had been half ripped off.

The collided with growls and snarls and moved in a blur. And then they were apart again. They charged so quickly I couldn't tell they had moved until I saw Seth fly through the air and crash down in front of me with a whimper.

And then a severed arm landed in front of me. The ripped shirt sleeve and pale colouring like snow was vaguely reassuring because I knew it wasn't Seth's, and it was the wrong shirt to be Jasper.

I watched in horror as the hand began to twitch like it was trying to get back to the rest of its body.

I began to scream.

I ran out of breath and forced a blisteringly cold breath of air in again.

More snarls.

A howl.

More screaming.

Something felt warm on my face. I tasted metal.

I could see blackness creeping into my vision. I only had a small tunnel of vision left, focused purely on Jasper. The blackness kept on coming.

The screaming grew louder as the darkness finally took over and everything went silent.

Bree POV

My eyeballs felt like they were ripping themselves apart as I sobbed from where I crouched hidden from the massacre in the clearing behind me.

I had followed Fred. Ignored all of my instincts that told me to run as far from him as possible.

We sat on the outskirts of this huge clearing that must have been the size of a couple of baseball field and waited. But everyone else rushed in.

I felt like a child. We were supposed to go out and destroy these people who wanted us dead. Who knew all of our secrets and were going to punish us for what they perceived as a threat on their territory.

But Riley never told us about those giant wolves.

And he was gone. And so was she.

I tried to make myself as small as possible. Maybe the ground would swallow me up if I pleaded with it hard enough.

I felt something shift beside me and suddenly I was alone. The one constant I had come to know in Fred was gone.

I crawled into a nearby bush and hoped and prayed to every deity I could recall that I just wouldn't die in so much fear that my heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest.

Something slammed into me. Hard.

Harder than anything I had ever felt.

I was sent tumbling along the ground and crashed into a giant tree, smashing the trunk into a million pieces around me.

This was it. It was time for my death from this strange painful life.

And then I heard the loudest most unnatural scream. It was otherworldly and shook me to my core. It was like ice through my chest.

I jumped up and turned and slipped into my hunting crouch.

The scene of the clearing was one of chaos.

Pile of writhing arms and legs.

The giant wolves. The strange enemy we were sent to kill.

I couldn't focus on the giant grey wolf that was snarling at me from just a few yards away, from where I had been sheltering only a second before.

All I could see was the tiny angel with dark hair and light eyes that was running towards me. Face twisted into something especially inhumane as she continued to scream.

My heart settled back into my chest. I no longer felt the ache. The pulling was gone. This angel was going to kill me, hopefully she would be quick about it.

I sunk to the ground and closed my eyes to prepare for the killing strike.

A.N. Hey guys, it's been a while hasn't it? I hope you're all keeping well and safe, respecting everyone's distance when going out for essentials, and taking this time to help limit the spread of the virus.

I've had some massive changes in my life over the last nearly two years since I last updated this story. And I think it's time to finish it for you, there will be another couple of chapters but not too much. We're getting to the end and I have that all planned out now.

Since I last updated, I changed careers, into the travel industry so I am currently on a paid stand-down (many thanks to the Australian government for helping my company pay my wages while I can't work), I'm in a long term relationship and my partner and I are hoping to buy a house in the near future. Scary and very grown up, very different from where I was when I first started this project. What's going on with all of you?

Let me know what you think of this, and enjoy the rest of my story.

xx