Disclaimer:  Don’t own any of it.  My world, their characters.  Capiche?

Pre-Edit Count: 2,213 Words

Song: All Fall Down by OneRepublic

Previously:

Though she frowns, upset that the one who Pam is waiting for only recently appeared in her visions.  As soon as Eric met his mate in fact.  Also, the person has suffered greatly, which she would have never allowed.  Then, there is someone sending her the visions, which she actually believes in that fact, and nothing, since she has been turned, has made her ever doubt it. 

Now:

As of right now, Eric has been pissed off for a long time.  He has tried to get everything in order so that he can leave to go claim his mate.  However, everything he tries to do seems to do nothing but delay him further in his quest.

Eric just wants to have his mate by his side.  His very human mate, who he completed a first level bond with in a rush, only because he felt the need to. He would be worse off if he had not found out that that they dream together if he rests at the same time she does. Thankfully, her dominating ass of a Cold One has made her a day sleeper, to prevent others from being able to see the changes he is making to her.

The first time he had discovered their shared dreams, it had been because he was frustrated by another issue that Molly had come to tell him of.  Either Felipe or someone had funneled money away from the royal coffers.  Now he is one of the first vampires to agree the IRS or any human government didn’t need to know more than it can prove, but some of this shit that he is finding is a little more obvious.  Also, it was taking money from him, a huge no-no.

All of it became too much and Godric asked him not to trash another office.  Instead, he had lain down on his bed in the early dawn to think it over.  Before he knew it, he was asleep, a true sleep with dreams. It started out in a forest.  Eric looked around, shocked since vampires don’t dream.  He heard humming and walked further into the clearing in front of him to investigate.  He had been shocked to see his mate.

She never came to his suite when he had left late that night to wait for her.  He had not wanted to rest where others could find him, as well as he did not have time to make sure he would be safe resting inside the ex-King’s own places. The following night, instead of looking for her as he wished to, he had to return to Felipe’s hotel to make sure it was his.  He was going to offer his mate nothing less than a kingdom as her bride-gift.  Of course, when he had been ready to go after her, there had been that phone call telling him not to.

Stepping forward, Eric watched as she turned and lifted an eyebrow at him. “You again?  Is this another dream?  All you say is that I will get the information I need one day, and I am frankly getting tired of you telling me that!  I am finding it harder and harder to do as you ask and just wait!”

At her words, Eric shook his head and then vamped to where he was kneeling before her, her face in his hands. “Min Älskade.  How?  Where?  What is going on?” His voice was awed, overwhelmed by him being here by her side.

She lifted the same eyebrow again and told him, “I have no idea.  You have always just asked me to wait as you stand on the other side of the clearing, watching me.  So… you tell me.  I don’t even have a name to go with you and you have been invading my dreams, making my awake self’s life so much harder.” She rolled her eyes then went back to tearing up the grass.

He chuckled as he stood, and then looking her in the eye, he bowed slightly. “Eric Northman at your service, min Älskade.  I am what is called a Traditional Vampire, and well…” He was not sure what to tell her to make her understand what they were to each other.

Bella sighed at his hesitation as she waved him off. “Let’s get it all out there, why don’t we?  I’m a clumsy plain Jane, who here can be the girl who managed to raise her mother, take care of everything, including her father when I moved out here.  However, out there in the real world, I am nothing.” She was tearing up grass, letting it fall to tear up again.  The fact that the same handful was there time after time seemed to not bother her as if she really had been there so often that nothing surprised her in this world.

As he watched her hands, Eric frowned with those words but before he could say anything, Bella offhandedly stops him from saying anything. “Not yet, I’m not done.  Oh yeah, my name is Isabella Marie Swan, but call me Bella.” She lifted her eyes up to his, and he enjoyed the look of those brown eyes.

He nodded, waiting as she had asked to clarify the earlier statement.  Answering her statement of telling everything, Eric said to her, “If you wish to have everything on the line, then there is one very important piece of information.  You are my mate.  I have waited for over a thousand years for you, and that chance meeting on the street in Vegas changed my existence.  Now, tell me more of your life.  I do not understand why you would be one way here and another in the real world.” His eyes watched hers, wanting to know everything.

Bella looked at him, shaking her head at his information and she asked, “Is it true?  Could there be a mistake? Cause that self out there, believes the words from Assward and Malice.  Could I be his mate and yours?  Or did you make a mistake?” She is not sure of anything and questioned it all.  Though she had a strong pull to the man before her, she knew that the twit running her body around thought she had one to the fucked up teenager.

Eric cannot help the growl that ripped right out of him, and his eyes flashed.  He drops down to crouch before her. “Mine!” How dare another claim what is his!?! His fangs dropped as he growled.  He will kill, dismember, or whatever is needed to make sure all know that this precious female before him was his!

She blinked at his response, but at the same time, she could not deny how the response answered her own inner one since this version had shown up.  Bella sighed again, “Yours.  Ok. Got it.  But now I have two so-called vampires claiming me as a mate.  While the idiot that is me when I am awake is drooling over whatever Fuckward does to her, you are here claiming me as a mate.  Which one is right? And who is the real vampire?!?!” She has not stopped pulling up the grass, and a pile was forming around her feet. It is the only thing that she did now.  She had raged and done all the other stuff before, and none of it mattered.  Now she destroyed the patch before her, which reappeared as fast as she pulled it.

Eric got up from his crouch, dragged his hands through his hair.  After he had thought through everything she told him, he couldn’t help but ask about the part what bothered him the most, “Why do you insist that there are two of you?” Does his mate have two personalities?

Snorting, Bella informed him, “Because after we met Fuckward and his fucked up family, she, the awake one, has lost all my respect.  Seriously, if I didn’t know better, I would say she is drugged.  When I started to surface again after he and his family left me, he came back and I was ruthlessly pushed aside again.  So what else can I say?  This is the me that she should be.  Somehow, I live only as a dream anymore.  I look out her eyes, but cannot seem to do anything.” And she grabbed another handful of grass to shred even more aggressively.

When it sank in what she was passing on to him, Eric started to growl as he thought furiously.  His mind tried to make sense of this then he finally stopped and looked at her.  “This makes no sense.  So you are saying that somehow he is muting her to the point she is splitting her personalities?”

Not able to help herself, Bella laughed at him. “She would have to have a personality to have it split.  No, she is like a robot.  She has no personality; she is being molded to be the perfect wife to Edward.  And she doesn’t know that he has been bleeding her.” The last is whispered, as she is afraid.  Her being Fuckward’s singer makes her worry about him bleeding her and what else he may do.

Eric’s eyes flashed with this information, “What?” The tone would have warned her if she had known him better of his ire.

When she looked up at him, the smirk was gone from her face. “I think he is trying to erase whatever you did.  Drain her blood to rid her of your smell.  Plus she is his singer, her blood is addicting and I think that is why he is trying so hard to not have her changed.” She may not know why he was mad, but the situation was turning deadly for her real life side.  She may not like her life stuck here, but she’d rather have that than be dead.

Growling, his eyes dark and fiery, Eric demanded of her, “Tell me.  Tell me all of it.  Moreover, from here we can figure out how the hell to get you home.  I would also like to give you some of my blood here, see if we can help you.” He had been clenching his hands as his very instincts demanded that he fix this now.

With that request of his, she divulged to him everything.  The way that she met the Cullens, the way the boy had started to fog the person she is normally.  “I raised my mother, paid the bills for her, and then when I came out here, I took care of my father.  That is what I am; quiet, but I am very caring of others, and can take care of myself.  I typically don’t deal with people my age since they are immature.  I was doing my thing to get out of school and move on with my life.” She had shrugged, believing as always it was nothing special.

Eric, by this time, is seated behind her his body wrapped around hers, as he mused to her, “This sounds like someone that would be my mate.  So what happened?” He nuzzled her neck, wrapped his arms closer, making her as snug as he could.  He needed every assurance she was here; his blood demanded it.

“Edward Cullen.”

Bella then went on to explain how the sullen Cullen warped her senses.

She told him about how she went to a baseball game and ended up with a broken leg, broken ribs, and a bite courtesy of the idiocy of the Cold Ones.  Eric had gotten up to pace, unable to stand still.  His fists clenched and unclenched as a low growl sounded from him as he clenched his jaw shut.

Watching him as he prowled around the clearing, she commented as if to herself, “Now that is a real predator.  Nothing like the lion Edward keeps trying to tell me he is.  In fact, you and Jasper look alike when you are pissed.” She enjoyed watching him as he prowled around the clearing, feeling the sheer desire going through her at his movement.

As he paced, he lifted an eyebrow to her, as he growled out, “Not too sure if I enjoy being compared to one of them.”

In answer to his comment, she said to him gravely, “Jasper is the one who told me I was worth it; worth fighting another vampire over, worth uprooting his life to protect.  He is the only one I respect, even when he tried to bite me; I know he only did it because of the wonder twins.  They basically touched their rings together and threw their lust at him.” Her voice was full of anger at them.

Eric gave her a look. “Wonder Twins?” He had heard jokes from Pam about them but never watched the show.  There are things that even bored he could not watch.  Though, he was amused at her reference and wondered who she was casting in the places.

She nodded, “Malice and Fuckward.  Now if you ask me, those two act more like mates than Alice and Jasper.  I suspect that she is keeping him from his true mate, but since Isabella is too busy becoming the perfect Stepford wife for Edward…” She shrugged her shoulders.  There was nothing she could do.

Sighing, Eric washed his face with his hands, “Continue, min Älskade.  I am not sure how long we have here.”

She nodded and proceeded to tell him of the months afterward that had her true self-becoming more and more dulled.  “The venom from the bite actually seemed to make things worse, like I fell under his control even more, but then, if there were any left I should have changed.” She remembered back to the time they had left her, how bad the pain had been.

Eric’s eyes were dark as night in his rage, but he motioned for her to continue.  He already had things he would be researching as soon as he was up that evening.  Luckily, he was old enough to be up before the sun set.

Bella enlightened him of the sham that had been called her birthday party. How the normal her seemed to come out of her shell, protesting it, but in the end, they left her after Jasper attacked her.   A growl made her look up.

As he listened, Eric continued to prowl the clearing, not able to stop himself.  He listened as he heard what was someone making psychological warfare on his mate.  The allowing her to protest, then removing themselves from her, taught her that rebelling was not desirable, while never once punishing her physically.  Those vampires who like pets of that type had done it.  He never did, but he was well versed in it, having it been done to try to break his own maker.

He listened to her continue with the months of zombification that actually were her real self-coming back to the surface.  He smiled when she enlightened him of her thrill in riding motorcycles, as he made plans to buy them both bikes if she genuinely liked to ride.  He also made note that it seemed his mate liked adrenaline rushes.  He would look into whether this was normal, or if it were just a way to bring her real self out more. If it was normal, well he loved to test his limits and her doing so was another sign that it had been fate that brought them together.  He never liked females who wanted to stay home and have babies.  He liked those that had their own inner fire.

He snarled as he listened to the way the Cullens forced their way back into her life.  It was nothing more than a verification of what he had already accused them of: psychological warfare, and they had played their side with perfection.  He didn’t know that his prowling had turned to slinking, being more like a lion as he still paced.  He listened to how they came back, how the bitch tried to take his mate, and how they fought for her life.  He snarled again when he heard how close she came to losing her life. They had been perfecting the act they have been doing over the years, but the threat of her having to be changed having stopped the games per the rules of the so-called royalty of their kind having given an ultimatum for her change before they are brought up on charges.

This travesty of her being forced to be married, just to save the fucked up assholes that made her be in this situation, is one that had him seeing red.  Eric was before her in seconds, looking into her eyes.  “You are mine.  I will not have you marrying this Edward person, who does not have your best interests in mind.  However, from what you are telling me,” he paused as he looked into her chocolate brown eyes. “You are resisting this.  Did you never want to be married?  And if so why are you agreeing?” He wanted, nay, needed to know how she felt.  He will never force his mate to do something that she hated.  However, he cannot lie and say he would desire to tie his mate to him in every way.

Bella furrowed her forehead as she carefully answered him. “I don’t know!   I don’t want to be married. Not this world’s fucked up ideas of being married where you can be divorced so easily!  What does it matter?  Why be married if he is my mate?  How can a piece of paper be more powerful than emotions?” She stared at him, imploring him to explain it.  The question held too many minefields, and she could guess that this ancient vampire wanted the same thing.  But why?

Eric looked away then imparted to her softly, “It is not more powerful, but it is a way to show the other how much you want them, to be tied to them in every way.  I would like this with you; I would like to be tied to you in every way.  I also would want this to make sure that others in my world know that you are taken, and I am also taken.  There will be no alliances with me by marriage; I could not do that to you, min Älskade.  Nevertheless, I am not happy with how this so-called vegetarian family is treating you.  They have warred upon what is mine, and they will not find that I give up what is mine easily.” His voice grew harder at the end.  No matter what she wanted, he would end the ones who had made her life so miserable.

Bella looked up at him with tears in her eyes.  “I don’t know what to do.  I really don’t.  I have been fighting, and I am just so tired.  What will you have me do?”

Eric crouched in front of her and kissed her with all his thousand years of experience. There were no teeth knocking; no there was only him pouring forth his passion, his need for the woman in front of him.  His mouth soon took over hers when she moaned out in pleasure from his kiss.  His fangs clicked back down with their passion.  Soon he leaned back and pleaded with her, “Don’t give up.  Give us a chance.  I will come for you, but I can’t until I clean up this mess.  I will not have you come to war from the one you are coming from.  Just give me a month, lover.  I will make it up to you.  Can you do this?”

Final count: 3,299 words.

Fairfarren~