The Major's Mate

6

Carlisle's eyes widen. "Too?"

"They call us Cold Ones," Edwards says, smirking at Carlisle.

"Ahh. I've read about you guys, but I've never met one of your kind. Cool."

"And you?" Jasper drawls. "You're a.. traditional vampire?"

"Sure am." Celeste flashes her vampiric face for everyone to see and laughs at the expressions of awe. "Some say my kind look demonic, but to each their own I guess."

Jasper is suddenly in her space and something in Celeste warms as she watches him slowly lower himself into a crouch in front of her. His gaze darts all over her face and she surprisingly leans into his hand when he reaches up so his fingers trace the side of her jaw. "Beautiful."

Edward's nose wrinkles. "Can you not.. think that," he mutters at Celeste. "I'd rather not hear what you want to do to Jasper right now."

"Then stay out of my head, Cullen, and tell your brother to stop smoldering at me. It's distracting." Alice giggles and even Rosalie now seems amused. Blinking and breaking eye contact, Celeste clears her throat and leans back. "Woo. That was.. intense." Jasper takes a seat next to her and she shifts nervously when they sit thigh to thigh, only to exhale softly when she feels comfort and adoration wash over her. "Oohhh. That's the good stuff," she muses.

The Cullen's all watch the duo on the couch, smiling at seeing one of their own finally look so content.

"So how exactly old are you?" Emmett asks.

"Old."

"Yeah, but how old?"

"Emmett," Esme scolds.

"It's fine, Mrs. Cullen," Celeste says. Then looking at Emmett, she tells him, "I was turned in the early 1400's."

"Holy shit. You're older than Carlisle."

Celeste snorts and shrugs at everyone's awed expression.

"How did you-" Rosalie starts, but then snaps her mouth shut.

"Turn?" She guesses. Rosalie gives her a terse nod. Sighing softly, Celeste recalls her turning. "I remember turning eighteen and not knowing that people like us existed," she tells them. "This.. woman befriended my family. She got close enough for my Father to approve of unchaperoned outings, and one night she led me deep into the woods and into a run down shack."

Jasper takes Celeste's hand in his own, squeezing softly. "You don't have to tell us if it makes you uncomfortable."

Feeling her heart flutter, Celeste squeezes his hand back. "It's okay. She told me- she said that He couldn't have me. That if he found me still human, he'd kill me to break some curse that neither vampire or werewolf wanted broken. But she- she didn't want to kill me, kill me either. She wanted me to live so when he did eventually find me, I'd be a vampire and my blood would be of no use to him."

Carlisle frowns. "So she turned you."

"She did," Celeste nods. "She forced her blood down my throat, snapped my neck, and then left me to fend for myself. When I woke, I didn't know what was happening. I was alone, cold, terrified, and I had this odd hunger that nothing would sate. Then when I was taken back home by some of my Father's men who'd been searching for me, my Father's misplaced anger at me made me snap and.. I drained half the town."

Esme gasps, her hand flying up to her mouth. Everyone else is listening with rapt attention.

"By the time I snapped out of the blood lust and realized what I'd done, I cried for days. I couldn't go out into the sun and I couldn't walk into a home without being invited into it first."

"But you walked in here just fine," Rosalie says.

"The name on the deed of the house has to be that of a living human. If a vampire owns the home, I can enter freely." Understanding dawns on them. "Anyway, when the sun went down I buried those I could and then fled the only home I ever knew. For years I lived like a savage- hiding in caves or burying myself in the ground when I could find no shelter to hunker down in when the sun was out."

"But you're so- excuse my wording-" Carlisle muses, "but you're so domesticated now. Do you mind me asking what happened?"

"Not at all. The man that woman was trying to save me from, he found me. He was obviously upset I was no longer human, but he took pity on me and showed me how to be a proper vampire."

"Why was he so interested in your blood?" Rosalie asks.

Celeste's mind immediately conjures up the answer and Edward's eyes widen. "A vampire-werewolf hybrid? The First of his kind?"

She chuckles softly. "Yes. He was the first and only of his kind. He was born a werewolf, but his wolf gene hadn't been triggered since it's only triggered once the person makes his or her first kill, either on accident or on purpose. So when his Mother eventually cast the Immortality spell on their family, Nature took it's course and made them into the First Vampires- the Originals. And when he first fed as a vampire and killed his first victim-"

"He triggered the wolf gene," Jasper finishes.

"Bingo. His Mother and Father bound his werewolf side, and one of the steps to breaking his binds was the blood of a human doppelgänger to the woman whose blood his mother used to make them into vampires in the first place."

Emmett gapes. "What even is your life?"