Happy Ever After

Chapter Two

Finding out she was a half vampire had been difficult. After meeting a red-eyed couple, Peter and Charlotte, when she was on the run from James, they'd explained to her what she was. And she had had to believe them, for what other explanation was there, for her being inhumanly fast and strong, not to mention the strange desire to drink blood? 

But the best part about Peter and Charlotte was that they never questioned her. They knew only her first name and her then current age, which had been fourteen. Both had taken to her like older siblings, and they had hoped to see her again, but then James had been spotted nearby, and she had had to flee. Of course, weeks later, she was captured, and soon after that, escaped once more.

Bella looked down at her raggy clothing, and sighed. This hellhole hadn't even realized how long she'd been here. She'd come when she was merely a day old, but when she'd been shipped off to Thomas Cartwright, who used to chain her up outside, and then to Samantha George, who had her used as a playtoy for her overweight children, to Mr. Christopher, who locked her in the cellar for days on end, and finally to James, everyone she had originally known at Stonyfield had left and been replaced. And then two years ago, when she had managed to get herself caught by Social Services, Lancaster had been here with her nasty smirk and beady eyes. No one remembered the scrawny but flawless-looking child who had been dumped in the orphanage on her second day in this world. 

Bella, being only half human, had always been younger than she'd looked, until today, her sixteenth birthday, where her physial features and actual age matched each other. So, when she was fourteen, Bella had looked like around fifteen or sixteen, and so on. It was for this reason that she was so experienced and knowledgeable. Peter and Charlotte, while only having spent six months with her, had taught her so much, which had turned her into a deadly predator, except when it came to people with whips. Having spent so much of her life being beaten by James, she turned into a cowardly mess when confronted with any form of a whip. 

The teen decided to change into real clothing, as she knew she wouldn't be able to fall asleep again that night, and so she pulled off her gray, oversized T-shirt. She turned around, glaring back at the dirty mirror's reflection of it. 

The dark bruises had never disappeared from James' whip. He had been whipping her since she was two, and the welts and scars and marks were certain to never go away. She was marked as a victim of abuse. And that infuriated Bella, because the one thing she'd vowed to never be was a victim. 

For the rest of the early morning, the girl sat on her cot, staring at the only keepsakes from her biological parents: her note, a handmade blanket, and a thick bland wristband with a lion crest. The wristband was her daily accessory. She knew it made her look a bit dangerous and boyish, but she didn't mind. She was never the type to be girly and feminine. 

"UP!" Lancaster screeched, thumping down the narrow hallway, banging on each door with a pot, the same way she always did. The loud noise didn't bother Bella anymore, but it used to terrify her when she'd first arrived back. The sound was so like the bang her cellar door had made when James threw it open in a fit of rage...

Bella stood, having already made her cot to perfection, and with not so much a glance in the mirror, knowing she looked perfectly decent (one of the few perks of having immortality), she left the safety of her "cell" as she liked to call it. 

After descending the rickety wooden steps into the main parlor of the orphanage, she lined up with the older orphans, their military-like line arranged from youngest to oldest. Bella squeezed her narrow frame between a blond girl slightly taller than her and a muscular black-haired boy who loomed over everyone else. 

"I heard someone's getting adopted tomorrow," Emma Tyler whispered from beside her, her warm brown eyes fixed on Lancaster who was moving down the line, checking posture and presence. Bella noted with bitterness that Lancaster wore an expensive fur outfit while she and the rest were dressed in baggy jeans and T-shirts that were five sizes too large. The woman wasted all the money in the budget for her own personal uses. 'And the costly clothing doesn't do Her Majesty's appearance any good,' Bella snickered to herself.