Chapter 16

If there was one thing Bella had discovered in her short life as a vampire, her dreams were more vivid as well. And Kol was in her dreams as she was lying in the grass near the water they had visited earlier, trying to wake her up and being weird about it. Rude, even.

He was poking her with a stick.

“What the fuck, Kol?” Bella whined as she sat up and tried looking at him but looked into the sun instead. When Kol stepped into the sun to block it for her, she blinked. “Oh fuck me,” she breathed out as she looked at the young Viking boy with an inquisitive look on his face.

“What are you?”

Bella got to her feet as she kept her eyes on Kol. Oh, she must look like an alien to him in her shorts and shirt – her sleeping attire. She didn’t want to upset the balance of history and she wouldn’t be interacting with him this time. He was still so human. He smelled delicious. “Invisique,” she whispered and took a few steps back from him. Just to watch him.

There was a curiosity in his eyes, a mischievous twinkle. He was carefree and beautiful. “You may still be here,” he started with a shrug and turned to walk away. “Follow me around, if you wish, I was sent by the great witch Ayana to get her the herbs that only grow out here for one of her mixtures. If I do that, she’ll teach me something new again.”

Bella followed him to the rocks nearby and watched Kol pluck herbs. “If you’re not a witch, you must be a Goddess by turning unseen as you did. Are you perhaps curious as to what your followers are up to?”

Wow. Bella blinked as she watched him carefully. She couldn’t find the pull to go back yet and that frustrated her. The longer she was around human Kol, the more damage she could do.

“Or perhaps bless the women and men in our village with fertility?”

Ew, no.

“I am not afraid of you, and if you want to appear as us mortals, I could get you garments from my sister, I’m certain she wouldn’t mind you borrowing her outfit?”

Bad idea. The worst. And on top of that, she didn’t trust that playful smile on his face. He was mocking her. Human Kol was a little shit.

“If you’re neither a witch nor a Goddess, are you lost? Your clothes and your language… it’s different.”

Bella huffed as she tried to will herself back. She was going to kill her Kol when she got back. No way she had herself under control if she time-traveled in her sleep, and this far, too! And why to human Kol and not to somewhere else? Why was it always him she found herself with when she traveled out of her own control?

Kol got to his feet, and she really didn’t trust that smile on his face. “I wonder…” he said before he reached out and grabbed her, dropping the spell she had cast over herself. She used a bit of her strength for him to let go of her. “I heard you speak, where are you from?” He asked as he walked toward her.

She didn’t want to compel him, because it would come back after he’d turn, and she didn’t want to use magic on his human brain to make him forget her. Bella merely shook her head.

“You’re pretty. None of the girls in our village are my fancy but you… I could make you stay.”

“No way in hell,” she growled. “Stay away from me.”

“You’re a feisty one, I like it!”

“Kol, don’t.”

“You speak my name, but I don’t think we’ve met, how is that possible?”

She started to scratch her arms and finally felt the pull to go back. “Invisique,” she whispered before allowing the magic to take her back to the room she had been sleeping in. Not even checking the time or the way she was dressed she set out to find Kol as she had heard him move around downstairs. “Tell me one thing.”

“Good morning, Bella,” he said as he handed her a blood bag.

“No,” she said as she discarded the bag. She was so angry, she could rip off his head if she wanted to. Well, no, he was an Original, but she could definitely do damage. “Tell me why everytime I don’t have control over my time travel gift, I end up with you. It was even worse this time!”

Kol picked up the bag and handed it to her and made her sit. “Calm down before you do something you’ll regret. What are you wearing, darling?”

“Kol.”

He sighed as he leaned on the counter to look at her. “I don’t know. What happened the first time?”

“I had a vision where I saw the wolves dead.”

“And what happened this time?”

“I don’t know! I was asleep!” Bella spat.

“You could have had a nightmare or another vision, but because you were asleep you don’t remember,” he said as a matter-of-factly, trying to calm her down by rationalizing. “Where did you go?”

Not wanting to answer that, she tore open the blood bag and started to drink her blood.

“Or more importantly, when?”

She looked at him as she drank her blood like an upset toddler. She hadn’t made him forget, and their interaction had only been brief. “That’s not important. What is, is that I always seem to go back in time and find you whenever I get a fright or something.”

“I’m no shrink,” Kai said as he walked in to get something from the fridge. “But maybe your subconscious is telling you something,” he said as he took a bite from his homemade cake and closed the fridge door and turned around to have his exit blocked by Bella. “What?” He then looked at Kol. “You know I’m right, you’re ignoring it. Well, Bella is.”

“Likely, but you’re not helping,” Kol retorted as he pushed Bella back into her chair. “She’ll pull your head right off and there won’t be any means of reviving you. Which will upset her even more.”

Bella huffed as she kept looking at Kai as she squeezed her blood bag.

“Butting in, gotcha.” Kai winked as he sauntered back out of the kitchen.

Kol looked at Bella and gently squeezed her shoulder. How long was he going to wait for Bella to open up even more to the possibility for Kol to become hers? It pained him to see her this upset. “Why does it upset you so much that whenever you travel out of fright that you end up with me? Am I that revolting?”

“No.”

“I think that it’s a smart thing, a safe move, that your subconscious directs you to me. Then at least I know you’re safe if you’re not here. That at least some version of me can help you.”

Bella sighed as she smacked down the now empty blood bag. “Human you is a little shit.”

Kol blinked at that. “What?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I went over a thousand years back in time and human you poked me awake with a stick while you were going to pick herbs for that witch of your village. I assumed he was you you, so I cursed and upon realizing that it wasn’t you, I turned myself invisible.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I vaguely remember something like that,” he eventually replied. “That explains the period clothing.”

“And you managed to break the spell by merely reaching out and grabbing me,” she said frustratingly. “I was trying so hard not to mess with the timeline and didn’t even wipe our encounter from your mind because it would come back anyway and it fucking sucked, because it took some time for me to get back here.”

“I thought you had everything under control?”

“I do! But not in my fucking sleep!”

“Calm down,” Kol laughed. “I’m sure we can find a way for you to have control, even in your sleep. Such as a dark object with you whenever you go to sleep, to ground you or to nullify your magic temporarily.”

“That’s possible?” Bella asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Kol replied. “And if not, I’ll teach you how to create such an object. But don’t be angry or upset about it. It happens. And now we know that your control is less while you’re asleep. So we can fix it. And seeing as we’re all done here, we’ve all eaten something, I think it’s time for you to get dressed and the three of us will go back home.”

~o.O.o~

Despite Kol having grown to like Kai over the last couple of days, he still wasn’t happy with Bella wanting Kai to live at her home with her father. Yes, it’d mean fewer opportunities for Kai to take magic from anyone, but it also made Bella vulnerable to Kai as he was the take kind of guy.

On top of that, Kol wanted Bella to stay with him, and his family, in the former Cullen house but he saw two problems with that; a) it was the Former Cullen House and b) Bella still hadn’t seen the light. And that was frustrating.

Bella was his, but he wasn’t hers yet. And knowing that she was hanging out with Kai, and was likely going to visit her friends, he decided to listen to Myriam and give Bella space… and go to Seattle to beat people up. Misbehave. And his sister coming along was a bonus, and he didn’t care if she was coming with to babysit him.

Bella had spoken to her father about Kai, and why he was with them, and surprisingly, Charlie was very agreeable. Charlie would give Kai a job at the station and go from there. Oh, Bella knew that Kai’s passion lay elsewhere, but she wasn’t sure if she could unload him onto the diner just yet, he was safer and in a controlled environment at the station.

She shot texts to Jessica and Angela to meet up for coffee somewhere in the week and headed to the treaty line before texting Jake that she needed to talk to him. While Bella never had to ask for permission to enter the rez, matters had changed. And she’d need Jake’s permission. It was the only right way to do things because while she looked human, she wasn’t, and the wolves would know.

Oh, she hadn’t told Charlie. He wouldn’t be able to believe it and it was safer if he didn’t know, but, her friends who were supernatural themselves, needed to. Even if the result was Bella not being allowed on the rez anymore. She really hoped that Jake was more liberal than she’d even thought.

She had kept Jake in the loop for the last two months about just about anything, what she was doing and why, Bella only hadn’t told him that she’d died and come back. Yet. And she had no idea how he was going to react to the news.

“Loca!” Jake greeted her with that big, goofy smile of his. “You’re back! Why didn’t you just come to the rez? Everyone’s dying to see you!”

“Because we need to talk,” Bella replied before she was being smothered by Jake and his awesome hugs. And, as if on cue, Jake let go of her and nearly jumped back. “About why you just recoiled?”

“You’re a vampire! He fucking turned you, didn’t he? I’m going to kill him!”

“Calm down,” Bella gently said. “I’m alright. If it hadn’t been for Kol, I would have been dead.”

“What!” More rage. Bella could almost taste it. “He took you into a dangerous situation?!”

“No, I dove right into that situation, but I had underestimated how dangerous it would be and Kol had anticipated the danger so here I am,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “I’m still me, I still eat food and I can behave myself around people who are filled with blood.”

“What about your magic?”

“Surprisingly, it’s also still present and I don’t need another magical being or object to do magic, either, seeing as I am one now.”

Jake looked at her with a dumbfounded look on his face. “H-how can you be alright with this? You’re dead, Bella!”

“And I’m still here. I’m not a threat to you or the people on the rez, I promise,” she said kindly. “I’m still your friend, Jake, if you allow me to be.”

He looked at her for a moment and ran his hand through his hair as he sighed deeply. “We can deal with your magic being out of control.”

“But it’s not.”

“But I am not sure if you have that thirst for blood under control.”

“I just told you, I do,” Bella countered. “And I don’t snack on humans or animals. Blood bags from the clinic is what I drink, Myriam brings me a bag every day. I’m fine. Honest. I’m safe.”

Jake let out a breath and nodded, his heart clearly broken. “I believe you. I’ll have to inform the others. Why won’t you and your friends come over tomorrow night?”

Now it was Bella’s turn to be surprised. “You want me to bring along Kol and Kai?”

“Yeah, why not? You’ve spent a lot of time with them lately, and I want to get to know them.”

“I don’t think bringing Kai will be such a great idea around a bunch of magical wolves right now. He’s… different when he has magic inside of him and I want him to experience a normal life without magic, but with love and attention that he never really got before.” On top of that, she knew how she had reacted to the shifter magic and she wasn’t sure if Kai would be able to control that either despite him having been a siphoner all his life.

“Then bring your boyfriend.”

“He’s not my-”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jake winked at her. “After all, he’ll have to go through me if he wants you to be his.”

She rolled her eyes at her friend. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

~o.O.o~

“I’m not sure if Kol wants to come with you tonight,” Myriam said as she sat at the dining table at Bella’s home. Charlie had left for work and Myriam popped by to give her her blood bag. “He’s letting off some steam, it’s all that pent-up emotions and aggression that he really tries to control around you,” she said nonchalantly. “To be honest, I’m surprised he’s been behaving himself that well.”

“Don’t knock him down like that, he’s a great person,” Bella said as she ripped into her blood bag.

Myriam saw the irritation on the girl’s face and smiled. “Why are you annoyed by that? It’s a known fact that Kol’s not known for his restraint.”

“Because he doesn’t show that side to me.”

“Just because he doesn’t show it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and honestly, I’m not sure if he’ll be sticking around for much longer. He likes to travel a lot. Maybe he’ll wait until we’ve helped you with the Cold Ones and then fucks off. He clearly doesn’t trust you enough for him to show you that side of him.”

Bella glared at Myriam as she kept drinking the blood, anger rise inside of her. She wasn’t going to let Myriam get to her, she was clearly on a mission to push her buttons.

“I’m all for playing games, having things naturally evolve, but sometimes drawing things out for a very long time isn’t the best course of action with a Mikaelson. Especially not with Kol, he’s impatient,” Myriam continued before an amusing smile appeared on her face. “Klaus was the complete opposite. I had to wait 25 years until he finally realized I wouldn’t leave him.”

“Kol and I already made plans for after we deal with the Cold Ones, he knows I’m not going anywhere,” Bella eventually said as she stuffed the empty blood bag in Myriam’s purse. “As far as what’s between him and me is between him and me and we don’t need any persuasion or not-so-subtle digs.”

“You’ve spent two months alone with him.”

“And?”

Myriam sighed. “No wonder he ran off to let off some steam.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Bella said as she shook her head. “Thanks for the blood, I’ll be sure to call Kol to see if he’s alright.”

“You know, you’d have better access to blood if you’d just move in in our house. You have a room, after all.”

Bella carefully eyed Myriam. “And then what? Have three or four other vampires comment on how Kol and I are together or not? I might just ask him to move in here. It’s nice and quiet here,” she added before shrugging. “Then again, he might want to go after the Volturi when he comes back and the Cullens, so we won’t be here for much longer, anyway.”

“I will not let you hurt him.”

“Myriam!” Bella threw her hands up in defeat. “We’ve been over this. I won’t hurt him! Now, if everyone would just stop trying to throw us together before we’re both ready, that would be grand. I can tolerate it from Kai, but not from you. Please.”

“Oh, it’s time to have coffee with your friends?” Kai smirked as he hopped down the stairs. “Hi Myriam, Bella’s going to introduce me to her friends. How boring is that? So… ordinary.”

“And then I’m going to drop you off at your ordinary job at the station,” Bella reminded him. “Dad says you’re fantastic.”

“I know, right?” Kai beamed with pride. “It’s nothing special but I do my best because that’s what you want.”

“Working your way up to the diner.”

“Exactly,” Kai grinned. “Honestly, Bella, I thought I wouldn’t like it here. But here we are, a couple of days in… and I’ve never felt more appreciated by people. Feels good. So, coffee with your friends?”

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