Persephone’s Fall
by Unbidden16
Pairing: Jacob/Bella
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst/Mythological
Status: Completed
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
The skies were growing darker, their pinkened hues
dissipating in favor of the deep purple and blue skies of nighttime. Above the
single layer of pale lighting remaining of the day were the twinkling stars
normally concealed by the Sun’s rays. Every night they returned as though a
blanket had been pulled back from them.
Isabella Swan stared wistfully
up at the sky, the seat beneath her swaying with the faint swinging of her
legs. Her fine-boned hands curled around the chains to either side of her, her
right cheek caressing the frigid metal as she leaned to that side.
This wasn’t her first
night of residing in Forks, Washington, but she was still experiencing
nostalgia. She’d left home, her real home, over two weeks ago to spend a couple
months with her estranged father before college. Her mother, Renee, had always
been the protective sort but realized that she’d denied her daughter of her
father for long enough. Bella was old enough to make her own choices in life
and she’d desired to get to know her father for the first time in her life.
Bella suspected that the
eighteen years of time apart had done its damage.
Charles Swan was a
workaholic, she’d come to find. He was rarely home and when he was he was
either eating a meal she’d made them, late into the evening, or sleeping off
his fatigue. They rarely spoke. More often than naught Bella wondered why she’d
even bothered returning to the town of her birth. It was plainly obvious that
the man that was her father was set in his ways and those ways had never and
would never include her in them.
Sighing morosely, Bella
swung her legs more forcefully. Her body swung to the beat, a pendulum that’s
momentum remained constant so long as she continued the forward and backwards
strokes of her legs.
She’d come out to the
park at the edge of town because it was quiet in a way that wasn’t oppressive.
While it was normally silent at her father’s it was a tense atmosphere. She
didn’t feel at home or as if she could touch and do things freely there. When
Charlie was home she stayed, for the most part, shut up in her room because the
man seemed to have no interest in her. She would read quietly while he puttered
around the house for an hour or so before he retired to his own room. After
that she would meditate in complete silence, regretting her decision to leave
her friends and true family in an effort to make peace with one she’d never
truly met but desperately wanted to know.
Back in Phoenix, now
Jacksonville, she could have been going out to watch movies with people she
called friends. She could be dancing the night away in one of the many clubs
either city sported. She could even be hanging off the arm of a man, had she
found one that appealed to her and treated her well. A man that would be
nothing like her father, she was certain.
She would have been
happy.
Bella gave a particularly
harsh push to her body to gain height. On a subconscious level she was trying
to escape. She was trying to fly away from this place where she’d condemned
herself to misery for three months before school finally started. Her decisions
thus far weighed down onto her like a ton of bricks. She felt trapped in her
own sorrow and loneliness. A prisoner of her own choices.
“And I used to call
myself smart,” she chided into the chilling air as she swung.
For a time she just
watched the horizon dip and rise with her movements. Her legs, bare from the
knees up, glimmered in the pale light. She’d always been a light-skinned woman.
No matter how much time she spent in the sun she didn’t tan. She burned and
peeled and then she was returned to the way she was before the burning. Her feet
were bare, the sandals she’d worn to the park on the sandy pit far beneath her,
and seemed to touch each star individually as she swung upwards. The electric
blue color she’d painted her toes just that morning made her giggle as she
noticed how greatly they stood out against her skin and the sky beyond.
She absorbed herself in
the feeling of the wind rushing past her, of the heat of the Sun fading away,
and ignored everything else. Her life had taken a downward turn recently but in
this singular moment she was content to just be.
“I would be careful not
to swing so high…you never know if one of those chains might break.”
The husky, deep voice
caused Bella to start, jerking around in a hazardous manner on her downward
slope to view the intruder. In the midst of her turn back, the momentum
carrying in a whipping motion back in the other direction, she saw him.
The man was a giant. Pure
and simple. She’d never seen a man so tall, though his proportions were
perfect. Long legs, each thick and solid. A nearly barrel chest and thickly
corded arms of pure muscle. Dark, russet skin. Hair as black as pitch pulled
back to the nape of his sturdy neck and hanging down to his shoulder blades.
The man’s face was hard and imposing. Sharp cheek bones, square chin, semi-flat
nose, and thin lips. His brow wasn’t heavy, simply dark and shading equally
abyss-like eyes. He wore only a pair of what looked to be dark jeans and a navy
blue t-shirt that hugged every contour of his sculpted chest. He had no shoes
on. No socks. Just bare, big feet.
He was possibly the most
attractive man she’d ever had the pleasure of seeing.
…And also the scariest. She added quietly to herself as she worked
to slow her swing more quickly.
He was sinfully gorgeous,
there was no doubting that, but there was an aura around him that screamed
‘danger’. It wasn’t just the scar that segmented his lower lip at the leftmost
corner and continued on over his chin or the way he stood as if waiting for a
strike to be made onto his person…it was the threat he exuded. A near-menace.
He was the male personification of dominance and alpha. He sucked the warmth
right out of the air around him like a vacuum, leaving only a cold shiver of
trepidation and borderline fear in its wake.
Bella came to a full
stop, her head pivoted on her shoulders to gawk at this man. She didn’t dare
turn away from him. She imagined him a wild animal, a wolf of sorts, ready to
chew into her back the moment she looked away. Her toes slid into and settled
within the confines of her sandals. She ached to feel the sand in them, knew
she might feel the grass soon enough if she had to make a run for it, but
resigned herself to the entrapment of the hard leather thong and sole.
The man looked her up and
down as she stood, shakily, to her feet. His eyes were both appreciative and
assessing. She knew what he’d see. Pale complexion, spindly arms and legs in
great need of some muscle or fat, brown hair braided back to hang down to her
butt cheeks, and a modest outfit consisting of a knee-length baby-blue skirt
and white tank-top. She wasn’t a looker, simply average. She’d always been
slender to the point of being emaciated, a point she’d tried to rectify tens of
hundreds of times in the past. Her eyes were a lackluster brown, but framed by
long lashes. Thin, pink lips and a pert nose completed her mundane look.
The man seemed not to
care all that much that she wasn’t modelesque in stature or looks. The smile on
his face screamed male approval.
The urge to run far, far away bloomed brightly in her chest.
Instead of running,
though, Bella gulped down the unease lodged in her throat and stared the man
down. Her fingers gripped the chains she’d been swinging from in a steel-like
grip. Her knuckles appeared almost blue from strain.
“Can I help you?” She
asked somewhat rudely, unconsciously taking a step backwards as the man’s
obsidian eyes locked onto her own. A derisive smile tipped his lips.
“You could, actually.” He
stalked forward then, his strides long and sure. Bella backpedaled several
steps from the swing, unease shifting to outright fright as he approached.
Catching her obvious retreat he stopped, his legs spread shoulder-width apart.
Ready to bolt – either towards her or away she was unsure.
He looked her up and down
once more.
“My name is Jacob Black.”
He introduced himself, his words caressing across her ears and skin like
decadent dark chocolate. That voice was one that could bring entire
civilizations to their knees. “Tell me yours.”
“No.” She refused,
retreating even further from him. Her car wasn’t that far away. She could run
fast if she had to. Belatedly she wished she’d bothered to bring her
pepperspray with her. Of course she hadn’t, though. What person in their right
mind would think that the need for that particular protection device would be
in Forks, Washington in a child’s playground?
Never assume anything, a teacher’s chiding voice from long-past
rang through her head.
Too late for her to be
remembering such things. She was in the middle of the situation and fretting
over the shoulda, coulda, and woulda’s would do absolutely nothing to help her.
“You don’t trust me.” It
was a statement, not a question. And certainly not one she was going to rebuke.
She was a terrible liar as it was. This man would make her nervous enough that
she’d burst into tears if she even tried to call the sky green let alone that
she trusted him. He smiled faintly, one that wasn’t quite cruel or sinister. It
was almost sincere. “You will.”
“W-what do you mean?” She
was already tensing the muscles in her legs in preparation to run. She wasn’t
waiting for the answer to her question. It was rhetorical anyway.
“Sweet little Bella,” the
man cooed, his obsidian eyes flashing gold, “you are mine.”
She took off running.
Bella panted as she tore
across the damp grass, her sandals kicked up and off with the dew-drops she
displaced in her flight. Her feet grew numb quickly from the bitter cold
ground. A masculine chuckle echoed behind her which only fueled her desire to
flee that much more.
“Why do you run, little
maiden?” The husky voice was much closer to her than she could have ever
imagined. She squealed when she felt a brush of hot air puff over the back of
her neck. Another chuckle. “Little maiden, soon to be my Queen.”
Her eyes trained in on
her vehicle, a dilapidated red truck that had been through its own kind of
off-roading war. Most people thought the truck was a run-down piece of shit.
They expected it to break apart into pieces at any moment. She’d even
considered converting the damned thing into a redneck front-lawn ornament when
the engine had stalled out for the fifth time, but not now. Now she welcomed
its solidarity. She welcomed what was stored so conveniently in its passenger
seat.
Bella put on a burst of
speed, ignoring the innate feeling of being prey to one fierce predator. Her
right sole scraped forcefully against a jagged rock, maybe even broken glass,
but she shoved the painful jolt out of her mind. Adrenalin helped to keep the
pain at bay. All she could make herself understand was that she needed some
form of protection against this…man
and that protection was so very close.
“Little maiden, have you
hurt yourself?”
Jerking when she felt
fingers trailing through her hair, Bella lunged into the hard steel of her
driver’s side door. The impact drew the breath from her lungs, but she pushed
on. With shaking, but rapidly-moving hands she scrambled for the silvered
handle.
“Can’t have that, now,
can we?”
She was plowed into from
behind.
Screaming automatically,
Bella began to fight back against the wall of muscle that fitted itself against
her entire back. Stony legs pinned her own smaller ones against the footboard.
Hands the size of saucers, thick and intimidating, snatched around her wrists
to secure them before her to the murky glass window. She bucked her head
backwards as well as her hips in an attempt to dislodge the male behind her.
All the while her voice strained to reach higher and higher tones in order to
bring someone, anyone, to her rescue.
Lips touched her ear
through her hair. A moist tongue traced its shell. A groan echoed in her ears
even through her screams. She whipped her head around to the face she felt so
close to hers in an attempt to bite into any amount of flesh she could sink her
teeth into. Hands and legs immobilized as they were it was her only defense.
The big man jerked back
with a hearty laugh, his chest shaking against her slender back.
“Little maiden, a kitten
with claws and fangs aplenty.” The tone was amused and chiding. It sickened her
and made her shout obscenities at him. He smirked at her through her
peripheral. He shifted his hands still cuffing her wrists so that he could
shackle them together in a single paw. His one-handed hold was no weaker than
his two-handed one. He used his now free hand to trace calloused knuckles
across her cheek. Again she attempted to bite him, this time intent on tearing
his fingers from his person. “What a fine Queen you will make.”
His caressing hand
snapped then and pinched tightly to her chin. His hand was so large that his
palm enclosed her entire chin and a greater part of her throat. His fingers
bracketed her cheeks and jaw where they spanned upwards to her ears. His middle
finger flicked almost idly against the dangling earrings she wore.
“No!” She screamed
through teeth made to clench. Again he rumbled with mirth and tilted her head
to the side so that her neck was bared helplessly to him. His lips met the
fragile column of her throat. His tongue bathed it while his teeth nibbled. Her
heart raced from the uncontrollable fear pumping through her veins while
goosebumps erupted over her skin from the intimate nuzzling being done to the
most sensitive part of her body. A whimper escaped her clenched jaw despite her
attempt to contain it.
“Shhh,” the male hushed
her. His head lifted minutely so that he could speak directly into her ear. The
hot air blowing from between his lips had her shaking. She could feel his smile
against her skin. “I won’t hurt you, you silly thing. It would go against my
nature, after all, to injure my mate.”
“L-let me go,” she pled
on a choked sob through her clamped jaw. His lips began to suckle on her throat
and she found herself whimpering again, this time louder and more consistently.
“Never, my little maiden.
My Queen.” His teeth clamped over the flesh of her neck and compressed. She
screamed as loudly as she could with his hand collaring her. Her hips bucked
forward harshly into the truck in a renewed attempt to flee. She was still
trapped.
“You are mine. You always
were and mine you will remain.” His words were barely intelligible now. Every
syllable was accompanied by an inhuman growl. Before her very eyes she could
see the hand holding her wrists so firmly morphing into something not human.
Coarse hair grew over the backs of his palms and digits. The same hair she
witnessed sprouting there tickled her face where his other hand clenched. Sharp
points ticked harmlessly at her lobes. The body so firmly pressed to her
expanded and grew. Her shaking came to a crescendo as a near seizure with her
horror.
“Dear God in Heaven,” she
swore and prayed at the same time. Her voice was quiet as if that alone would
keep this beast-man from slaughtering her. From eating her.
Razor-sharp points
settled over the curve of her throat where her neck met her shoulder. She shuddered
and jerked, screaming continuously now. In the span of a single breath the
countless fangs at her throat bit down and sunk into her flesh. The pain was
instantaneous. The scream morphed into a squeal and she sobbed.
As she cried the man drew
from her neck. Bella could feel each suckle he made as if it was her that was
drinking from a juice-box. His lips helped to keep the blood from dribbling
anywhere but into his mouth. Her fingers clenched down into her palms, piercing
skin, in an attempt to create another pain to focus her mind on.
After several minutes,
perhaps hours, she began to feel numb. Lethargy and something else subdued her
far more easily than even chains could have. Her body sagged and slumped, the
only thing keeping her upright was the beast pressed so fully against her and
draining her life away. Her eyelids drooped of their own accord.
For a short time more he
drank from her, his tongue lapping at the wound he’d made. Sometimes his sucks
were hard and painful. At other times it was almost gentle and she could barely
feel them. Eventually he pulled himself away from her neck, his tongue stroking
over the wound she no longer felt. His nose, dreadfully cold and moist, poked
at her cheek as if in question.
As he pulled his body
away from hers Bella felt herself falling. It was a surreal experience. She was
aware of everything, albeit tired and mostly numb. She simply could do nothing
to save her own self. It was like she was simply a reader immersed into the
body of one of the characters she so fanatically read about.
Two large arms snatched
under her and tugged her upwards. The world spun on its axis even with her eyes
firmly shut. Had they been open she suspected that she might have viewed things
as a child does after jumping off of those spinning carousel contraptions in
play-parks. Topsy-turvy. Lopsided. Unreal.
Sleep now, my Queen, a seductively deep voice resounded through
every cavity of her mind. It lulled her and embraced her. Warmth was seeping
into her being and making her even more tired. Funny, but she thought death was
supposed to be cold?
Sleep, the voice repeated.
Unable to resist the
voice or her body’s plaintive requests she allowed herself to slip off into
oblivion where nothing could hurt her. Better yet it was a place where that
beast-man could not reach her.
Dropping off at last she
heard one more chuckle from the beast, this one indulgent.
What was so funny?
XxXxX
Bella groaned as she rolled under silken sheets.
Her entire body was achingly sore. Her head pounded to a louder and separate
beat from her heart giving her one of the worst migraines of her life. Her
hands clenched around the sheets covering her to aid them upwards over her head
so that the awful, bright light outside of her eyelids would go away.
A now familiar and
dreaded chuckle tickled at her ears.
“Not a morning person, I
see.” A large hand petted down over her hip to her thigh through the sheets.
She flinched uncontrollably and curled up on herself in order to hide, pitiful
though the action may have been.
A frightened squeak left
her lips.
“Had I not told you last
night, my Queen, that I would not hurt you?” The hand returned despite her
protective gesture and petted her side unrepentantly. “You’re mine to protect
now and for eternity, little maiden.”
“Get off of me!” She
shouted, scooting to the other end of the bed she was laying on. She peeked her
eyes out from under the blankets to view the beast-man once more. He looked as
he had the night before. Dark and terrifying. Whatever it was he’d turned into
lurked in his dark eyes, but his body was completely human now. She could face
the human easier than she could the creature that had torn at her throat.
Remembering it, recalling
the pain and the later numbness, her hand jerked upwards to settle over the
wound. Instead of bandaging, scabbed, or sutured cut she felt raised, hard
bumps. Her brows furrowed. Was it…?
“It has scarred over.” He
reached over towards her as if he would massage the scar along with her, but
she scrambled further away. Her feet met the floor and she backpedaled into the
wall. The man had stood on his own side of the bed between them, his eyes
glinting. As menacing as he looked the night before she could almost swear she
saw something human in him now. His shoulders weren’t as stiff and his hands
were loose. He looked almost calm before her.
“Why?” She hissed, still
rubbing at the scarred skin. Each swipe of her fingers left the spot tingling
with fire.
“Why what, my Queen?”
“Why’d you do this?” Her
free hand swept around her gesturing at the room. It was not her room back at
her father’s home. This place was far too large and magnificent. Over-sized
King bed. Burgundy sheets and comforters. Dark-stained wood. Antique furniture
that befitted a mansion. No, this was not her home. “Why am I here?”
“Because I was not and
will never let you go.” There was the predator again. The menace was back.
Tension slipped into his spine as if it had been waiting for this. He took
large steps towards her. She cowered into a corner, but had nowhere else to go.
He towered over her, his dark eyes trained down onto her. His scent, for the
first time, assailed her. He smelled like the forest after a storm, all wet
ground and pine. Intertwined with that was musk.
Curiously, her heart
began to beat heavily with something other than fear.
“I am Jacob Ephraim
Black. I am Supreme Alpha.” His shoulders pulled back and widened so that his
already massive chest was thrust forward. Pure power radiated off of him. “You
are my Alpha Bitch. My Queen. You will remain here with me, your mate, until
the Spirits reclaim us.”
“No,” she gasped, shaking
her head. The beast, and he was a beast because she refused to think of him as
anything but, stared determinately down at her. This was something that he
believed in. Something that he would not flounder on.
She snapped.
“No!” She screamed,
throwing herself at him. Whether it was surprise or pain that felled him, Bella
managed to thrust a fist into the man’s groin. Air whooshed from his lungs as
he doubled-over. Again she shot her fist out at him, not noticing the bandages
wrapped around her palms. This time she cuffed his ear. Again and again she hit
him, the word ‘no’ falling from her lips like a delirious prayer. The beast-man
had righted himself sometime during her barrage and simply let her beat on him.
For an unidentifiable
amount of time she ranted and wore her body down, trying to inflict pain on the
man. She wanted him to feel pain. She wanted him to know how helpless she felt.
In the recesses of her mind, a darker part of herself, she wanted him to die
for what he’d put her through and would undoubtedly continue to put her
through.
Bella railed against him
until she collapsed on the floor, her hands hanging uselessly upon her lap. Her
head hung forlornly. The man knelt before her and ticked his hand under her
jaw. She refused to look at him and he sighed.
“You will see, little
maiden. Here with me is your home.” He tried to take her into his arms, but she
flailed, slapping his cheek. He was silent for a stretch and then rose to his
full height. “You’re my Queen. You will accept this one day.”
“I hate you,” she spat,
her eyes bleeding salty tears.
Another sigh.
“I know.”
With that he was gone. He
left her to her solitude, the door unlocked behind him. Still she remained on
the floor in her corner, crying. She would escape, she would run and never look
back, but not now.
Now she would bide her
time and let her despair dissipate to a more manageable level so that she could
better free herself later.
XxXxX
Over the long days which bled into months she
found that she and her captor were not alone in this place. This place that
consisted of huge stone walls, imposing fire-places bigger than any normal man,
and grandeur. The halls were filled with people, all of them male. All of them
seeming carbon-copies of the man that had taken her. They were all large in
stature. They all exuded power. Not a single one of them gave her a moments’
peace when their eyes landed upon her as she wandered the halls searching for
an exit.
Bella had lost count of
how many rooms this place had. She’d crossed too many stoic, dark faces to be
able to remember them all. A few stood out, of course. A man with a heavy brow
was introduced to her while she wandered by her captor. His name was ‘Sam’ and
was, according to her beast-man, his second-in-command. Another, Paul, was the
head of their Enforcers. A male that hunted down and killed other males of their
kind. One male, the smallest of any of them she’d seen since being brought to
this place, was called Seth. He led the kitchen staff. He didn’t unnerve her as
much as the others, but there was still much about him that she did not like or
trust. He was a beast just like the rest of them and she steadfastly stayed
away from all of them whenever she had the chance.
She never found an exit.
There were windows, yes,
but they were all sealed shut. She could find no way to open them and never
found one open. Any doors she found led to another room or hallway. There was
no outside for her no matter how long and hard she searched. She could see
freedom on the other side of the windows, a dark, looming forest, but it was
beyond her reach.
The man, Jacob, hovered
over her wherever she turned. She never spoke his name and never offered hers,
though he’d known it somehow that first night. She asked for nothing, not even
her freedom. He would not grant it to her, anyway. She didn’t speak to him. She
didn’t acknowledge him unless he had her physically cornered and forced her
attention on him.
She hated him.
He made an effort to talk
to her even when she didn’t respond. He tried to touch her and hold her no
matter how many times she lashed out at him. He attempted to welcome her into
the home he insisted was theirs. He even told her of her father and mother and
how they were in her absence. Her mother worried, of course, but they’d been
told she was most likely a runaway. Most children of divorced families ran away
from home and never came back. It sickened her that they didn’t look for her
harder. Had she been so unimportant to them?
What made it worse was
that her captor was rubbing it in her face, subtly, but still there.
“You have family here
now, my little maiden.” His hand had reached out to stroke her hair, but she
threw it off. His lip twitched, but that was his only sign of his dislike of
her always tuning away from him and his presence. “I will always be here for
you. No one else could care for you in the way that I always will.”
Days turned into weeks
and weeks turned into months. Her resolve to leave, to be away from the beast
that had introduced her to a world where Shapeshifters ruled and made her its
Queen, never wavered, but depression bloomed. She ate nothing of what he gave
her, instead sneaking food from others’ plates from the main halls when they
weren’t looking. Even that was sparse. They way Jacob looked at her was intense
and sickening. He was waiting for something and she didn’t know what it was…all
she knew was that it could not be good for her.
Late at night he came to
her, no matter where she hid in their ‘home’. He would lead her bodily back to
the room she’d first woken up in, lay her out on the bed, and then spread
himself out next to her to sleep. He didn’t sleep, though. He just watched her
and petted her, whispering words of love and promises of forever into her ear.
She only found solace in sleep, which was so hard to come by with him beside
her. Teasing and tormenting her in ways no one ever had.
She was marked as his and
he would never allow her to leave.
Those were the only two
things she thought of late at night.
XxXxX
“Please,” Bella begged suddenly one evening at the
main-hall table. Every obsidian eye in this horrid place looked to her as she
stumbled up to Jacob and set her head upon his knee. She still flinched when
his hand settled onto her scalp, but she didn’t push him away. Not this time.
“Please, let me go.”
“Your home is here, my
mate.” His fingers stroked her temples.
“Please,” she rasped,
forcing herself to kiss his knee. The muscles in his legs tensed, but then
released as quickly. She’d taken him by surprise. “I need to do something. I
need other people. Please.”
“We are your people.” He
intoned simply, as if she were slow. Her hands clenched minutely and she didn’t
doubt he’d noticed. He never missed anything about her.
“Not wolves. I need human
contact.” Bella kissed higher on his leg. She didn’t care that she was
demeaning herself in front of so many. Queen or not, she was alone. She was
beyond shame. The need for someone other than these beasts overruled everything
she had once stood for. Days, months, or years. Exact time didn’t matter in
this place…it simply drew away one’s sanity like water would leach into a
sponge. She couldn’t stand much more of the quiet she’d secluded herself into.
Jacob was silent for a
long while and simply continued to pet her hair. She rubbed her cheek into his
thigh, desperate to make him release her. She would do anything at this point.
She feared she’d lost her
humanity in this place.
The beast was a man now.
He was Jacob.
That frightened her.
“You will return,” he
promised them both, his tone as hard as the night she’d met him. He shifted
under her minutely, but kept his hand on her. She glanced up at the underside
of the table as if seeking the answers only God could give her. She’d never
been religious before, but she found herself praying to Deities far and wide
now. Prayed for patience and resilience. Too late, of course.
Isabella Swan was a
nearly completely broken woman.
A single, ripe fruit was
held in front of her face underneath the table. With shaking hands she took the
apple from Jacob’s proffered one. As she did so he wrapped an arm around her
chest and tugged her up onto his lap. His lips connected with her temple
chastely. Her eyes remained trained onto the succulent looking red fruit.
“You will return,” he
vowed again and used a palm to nudge her cupped hands closer to her face.
“Eat.”
Momentarily looking to
those surrounding them at the table, she saw through their penetrating stares.
They had been waiting for this. They’d been waiting for her to give in. They’d
been waiting for her to break. They knew that she now knew that in order to live instead of simply existing she
needed to submit. She had to be their Queen and in return she would have a
semblance of freedom.
Sick to her stomach, but
knowing no other way to save herself, Bella bit into the apple.
The juicy piece of fruit
might as well have been a physical tie between her and this place, her new
home, because she was bound here for the rest of her life, however long that
might be. Jacob Ephraim Black, the beast from the park, would ensure that she
always remained his.
“You will stay,” he spoke
into her neck softly with affection.
Bella nodded her head
mutely.
She would stay because
she was Persephone and Hades would never allow his Queen to leave the world he
ruled in her name.
She was a prisoner of her
choices once more.
…And a prisoner she would
stay.
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