The accident
Felix Volturi × Demetri Volturi× human mate (fem)
The hot steam rose in dense, fragrant plumes from the surface of the thermal water, creating a suspended, almost unreal atmosphere inside the luxury private cabin that Aro had placed at their complete disposal. Aro Volturi knew how to be incredibly generous when it came to singing the praises of destiny, especially if that destiny bound his two deadliest warriors, Felix and Demetri, to a single, fragile human anchor.
The girl – Bella Swan’s cousin, catapulted into that golden nightmare just twenty-four hours after Edward, Bella, and Alice’s mad dash to save Edward – sat curled up on the highest step of the large lava stone tub. Her body was submerged to her chest in the boiling water, but she continued to tremble. Her eyes darted frantically from one figure to the other, filled with blind, primal terror. Only the day before, she had been ignorant of the existence of monsters; today, she found herself bound to two of them by the most sacred and unbreakable bond in the vampire world.
Demetri was leaning against the opposite edge of the tub, appearing relaxed. His lethal, effeminate beauty was accentuated by the golden reflections of the dim lights, and his dark eyes, veined with the crimson red that so frightened the girl, studied her with surgical precision. He caught every minor change in her heartbeat, every broken breath. A short distance away, Felix sat in the water like a titan of dark marble. His imposing bulk loomed over the surrounding space, but the expression on his square face was unusually tense, divided between the dominant instinct of possession and an innate, clumsy caution not to break that fragile 'mosaic of glass' that was their mate.
'You should relax, sweetheart,' Demetri murmured, his voice flowing like liquid silk, designed to soothe. 'The water is good for your mortal body. And we have no intention of harming you.'
'You... you feed on blood,' she replied with a thin voice, pulling her knees to her chest. Her heart was drumming in her chest at a frantic cardiac rhythm. 'How can I...'
Felix let out a low grunt, not of anger, but of frustration. 'If we had wanted to harm you, you wouldn't be here. Aro cleared the entire wing of the resort for us. You are safe.'
But safety, for a human surrounded by apex predators, is an ephemeral concept. And danger, at times, has no sharp teeth.
The girl decided to move slightly away from Felix, whose range of motion intimidated her more. She slid a little deeper into the tub, moving her legs in the thermal water toward the center of the artificial pool, where the water was deeper. She could not have known that on the bottom of the luxury structure, hidden by the steam and convective currents, was a powerful suction drain for rapid water recirculation, missing its protective grille due to maintenance work left half-finished by the resort staff before the forced evacuation ordered by the Volturi.
The disaster happened in a deadly blink of an eye.
As soon as her right foot passed over the invisible vortex, the terrifying suction force of the industrial pump pulled her downward. Her ankle slipped right inside up to mid-calf, wedging itself into the steel opening.
The girl didn't even have time to scream. A gasp, an expression of pure shock on her face, and she was violently dragged below the surface. Water immediately filled her mouth and lungs as she desperately tried to resurface, but the vacuum generated by the drain held her glued to the bottom like an iron vice.
The change in the air was instantaneous. For two predators whose reflexes were calculated in milliseconds, the girl's sudden movement and cessation of breathing were like an explosion.
The young woman's heartbeat spiked in a peak of pure panic, then broke.
'No!' Felix snarled.
The massive vampire moved at a speed that defied the laws of physics, raising a wall of thermal water that crashed against the marble walls. A moment later, he was at the bottom of the tub, his huge stone hands gripping the girl’s hips to pull her up. But as soon as he exerted the slightest fraction of his superhuman strength, a dull crack resounded underwater, accompanied by air bubbles escaping the girl’s mouth in a mute scream. The pressure of the drain created a suction cup effect; pulling her with force meant tearing her leg off.
'Stop! You'll break the bone, Felix!' Demetri hissed, who had already slid underwater next to him, his eyes wide and bloodshot from the adrenaline.
Demetri's mind, usually cold and calculating, specialized in tracking prey, focused with absolute ferocity on the threat. He saw the pale skin of the girl’s ankle begin to bruise, stuck in the steel pipe. The girl was running out of air; her glassy eyes fixed on the two vampires underwater, her hands beating weakly against Felix’s chest in a last, desperate glimmer of life.
Felix, seeing his mate suffocating, lost every shred of his legendary self-control. A bestial, vibrating snarl shook the walls of the tub. Unable to pull her, he used his destructive strength against the structure itself. He sank his marble fingers directly into the lava stone surrounding the drain, shattering it as if it were dry clay. Pieces of rock sprayed everywhere underwater.
Meanwhile, Demetri surfaced for a fraction of a second. With a lightning-fast leap, he jumped out of the tub, landed on the slippery floor, and lunged at the main electrical panel recessed in the cabin wall. Instead of looking for the switch, he delivered a devastating punch into the wall, ripping the high-voltage electrical cables with his bare hands. Blue sparks flared in the air, and a strong smell of ozone filled the room as the resort's power went out, instantly shutting down the pump's motor.
Underwater, the transition was immediate. The suction grip ceased.
Felix didn't waste a moment: with millimetric delicacy, he slipped the girl’s leg from the deformed pipe and lifted her in his arms, breaking the surface of the water.
'Demetri!' thundered Felix, his voice reduced to a roar of pure, primal terror as he laid the girl’s lifeless body on the marble edge of the tub.
The girl was pale, her lips bluish, and her chest was motionless. Her heartbeat was reduced to a weak, irregular flicker.
Demetri was beside them in a millisecond, his wet hair plastered to his perfect face, his usually ironic expression replaced by a mask of fierce determination. 'Move,' he ordered Felix, whose powerless fury risked only causing more damage.
Although they were creatures made to deal death, both knew perfectly well how fragile human anatomy worked: Aro forced them to study it for pure intellectual complacency, and now that knowledge was their only salvation. Demetri tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and pressed his cold lips against the girl’s, breathing air into her desperately empty lungs, while Felix, pressing with only two fingers so as not to shatter her sternum, performed chest compressions with a timing marked by his own millennial sense of rhythm.
'Come on, sweetheart, come on...' Felix growled through gritted teeth, his eyes fixed on her face, while the scent of human blood dripping from a deep abrasion on her injured ankle filled the room. In any other situation, that scent would have sent them into a frenzy. Now, it was just the terrifying reminder that their mate was dying. The monster inside them didn't want to feed; it wanted that heart to keep beating.
After three agonizing cycles, the girl’s body jerked violently.
She expelled a jet of thermal water, coughing convulsively. Her chest rose in a deep, greedy, desperate breath. Air returned to fill her lungs and her heart resumed beating, accelerating wildly under the effect of adrenaline and fear.
She opened her eyes, glassy and filled with tears, and the first thing she saw were the faces of the two vampires, very close to her. They were wet, their features distorted by anxiety so deep it seemed almost human, their blood-red eyes glowing in the darkness of the room illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the glass walls.
Felix let out a sigh that sounded like the roar of a relieved lion, suddenly clutching her against his massive chest. Despite the terror she still felt for his strength, the girl instinctively curled up against that marble warmth, too weak to resist, while Demetri stroked her wet hair with trembling fingers, a violently protective emotion tightening his throat.
The silence that followed the girl’s first breath was broken only by the sound of her convulsive sobbing—a broken, raspy cry as the thermal water still drained from her lungs. The pain in her ankle, a sharp, throbbing ache radiating up her leg, was beginning to tear through the veil of shock.
Felix and Demetri moved in unison, a choreographed ballet of predatory grace that had transformed into extreme solicitude. There was no trace of the typical Volturi arrogance; there was only a kind of terrified reverence toward the fragility of the creature who, by pure chance, was their only link to a humanity they had forgotten centuries ago.
"Shh... it’s all right, breathe," Demetri’s voice was a velvety whisper, devoid of any trace of that hunting tone that made him the Tracker par excellence. He knelt on the wet marble, his cold hands caressing the girl’s face, drying her tears and the water with almost unreal delicacy. Every touch was calibrated to the millimeter; he feared that if he applied too much pressure, he might graze her skin like tissue paper. "You are here. You are with us. Nothing will ever happen to you again, I swear it."
The girl trembled violently, her pale face streaked with wetness, unable to stop coughing. "Thank you... thank you..." she stammered between sobs, gripping Felix’s shoulder with a hand that shook so violently it seemed beyond her control. "I thought... I thought I was dying... I thought..."
Felix, usually the executioner who left no witnesses, felt paralyzed by an helplessness that made him shudder with rage. His right hand covered the girl’s broken ankle, not gripping it, but acting as a shield, radiating a supernatural cold that vainly sought to soothe the pain of the shattered bone. His eyes, usually dull in a glacial calm, were lit with a dark, restless fire.
"Don’t cry, my little life," Felix began, his voice deep and raspy, sounding like the rumbling of a volcano. He was not accustomed to managing emotional pain, let alone that of a human who feared him as much as she had feared the drain. With studied slowness, he took off the heavy linen robe lying on the floor and wrapped her in it, pulling her into an embrace that was a fortress. "Don’t you dare think about the end. As long as you breathe, as long as your heart beats for us, no one can take you away. Not the water, not the earth."
Demetri sprang to his feet, his gaze fixing for a second on the chaos they had created: the destroyed drain, the torn-out electrical panel, the shattered marble of the tub. His mind, accustomed to mapping every corner of the world, was already calculating how to repair, how to hide, how to sanitize.
"Felix, take her to the lounge," Demetri ordered, his voice returning to an authoritative tone—not out of command, but out of practical necessity. He approached again, and this time, with a lightning-fast yet incredibly gentle gesture, he lifted the girl’s legs with his arms, careful not to touch the bruised ankle, while Felix supported her torso.
The girl moaned in pain, a sharp sound that made the neck muscles of both vampires contract.
"I know it hurts; we can feel it in your scent, in the way your blood accelerates," Demetri murmured, looking her straight in the eyes with an intensity that forced her to slightly calm her breathing. "But soon the pain will be just a memory. We won’t let you suffer. Never again."
They carried her into the private lounge, laying her on the large, blood-red velvet sofa. Felix did not pull away, sitting beside her, offering his own chest as a backrest, keeping her locked in a bubble of protection where no danger—not even a grain of dust—could enter. Demetri walked away for an instant, only to return with a warm towel and a glass of mineral water, which he held to her lips with infinite patience.
"Drink," Demetri said, carefully drying her hair. Every time she jolted from a sob, they stiffened, ready to spring, ready to destroy anyone or anything that had caused her that pain.
The girl continued to stammer apologies, thanking them as if they were her saviors rather than the monsters holding her hostage. And at that moment, the dynamic between them changed. They were no longer just their "owners" or mates by Aro’s decree. They had become her guardians.
Felix took her hand, pressing it against his marble cheek, forcing her to feel his supernatural temperature, to look beyond his assassin’s frame. "You don’t have to thank us," Felix said, and his voice was no longer a roar, but an almost fragile whisper. "It is our duty to keep you whole. If you break... we break. Never forget that."
Demetri, sitting at her feet, held her ankle between his cold hands, applying a firm, almost magnetic pressure that, for some inexplicable reason, was starting to make the sharp sting of pain vanish. His gaze was fixed on the wound, a mask of absolute concentration, as if he were trying to reset the bone with the sheer force of his will.
"We are here," Demetri concluded, looking at Felix over the girl’s head—a silent agreement sealed in that crimson gaze. "For this month, and for as long as Aro allows us, you will no longer know fear. We will chase it from your heart, one second at a time."
The silence in the suite was broken only by the girl's uneven breathing and the soft crackling of the embers in the fireplace, which Demetri had lit to warm the freezing air radiating from the girl due to the shock. Despite the throbbing pain in her ankle, her heartbeat was finally slowing down, shifting from the rhythm of a hunted prey to that of a human who, against all logic, feels safe.
Felix had not left her side for even a second. He was sitting on the sofa, a living block of granite supporting her with obsessive care, while the girl, wrapped in soft blankets, rested her head against his massive chest. Demetri, on the other hand, moved through the room with a grace that defied reality. Without needing to consult the hotel staff—who feared the Volturi far too deeply to dare disturb them—he had already taken care of ordering the best the resort had to offer.
With a quick nod toward the door, Demetri made a terrified waiter appear as if by magic, who left a silver cart in the hallway and fled. Demetri returned with a tray piled high with crushed ice, upon which lay, opalescent and inviting, dozens of fresh oysters and a small bowl of Beluga caviar.
"You cannot fight trauma on an empty stomach," Demetri began, approaching with a smile that was meant to be encouraging but retained a hint of predatory intensity. He sat on a velvet stool right in front of her, isolating her from the memory of the drain. "Aro says that the taste of salt and life is the best way to remind the body that it is still tethered to this world."
The girl stared at the food, still pale, but hunger—a physiological reaction to the drop in blood sugar caused by the panic—began to make itself felt. Felix handed her an oyster, opening it with surgical precision that wouldn't have scratched a millimeter of the mollusk.
"Eat," Felix ordered, in his usual deep voice, which this time vibrated with a gruff tenderness. "Demetri insisted that they bring the best from the sea. We have no intention of letting you weaken."
While she began to eat, trying to ignore the dull ache in her leg, the two vampires began to weave a carefully constructed web of conversation. They did not speak of Volterra, they did not speak of her family, and even less of the dangers that awaited her outside that resort.
"Have you ever seen the Norwegian fjords in winter?" Demetri asked, starting to recount a distant anecdote, his voice becoming hypnotic. "The sunlight reflects off the ice, creating colors that don't exist anywhere else on earth. It is a silence different from this one. It is a silence that gets into your bones and makes you realize how quiet eternity can be..."
Felix, for his part, intervened with more concrete, almost tactile descriptions of the beauty they had encountered over the centuries. "We will take you to see the forests of the North, when your foot has healed," Felix said, and his hand rested, warm and protective, on the blanket covering the girl's leg. "No water, no currents. Only solid ground, ancient trees, and skies that seem to have no end. You will like it. You have no idea how much you are made for quiet, not for this chaos."
The girl listened, enchanted, while the oysters and caviar acted like a balm. She felt like a doll contested between two gods who had decided, for once, not to destroy what they touched, but to preserve it.
"Why are you doing this?" she whispered at one point, her voice broken by an emotion she couldn't define. "You are so... different from how I imagined you."
Demetri interrupted his story, exchanging a look with Felix. It was a look that contained centuries of loneliness, of ruthless hunting, and, finally, of that new, burning obsession that bound them to her.
"We are creatures who have seen far too much death, my little life," replied Demetri, leaning in to tuck a lock of damp hair behind her ear. "For millennia, our only interaction with the human race has been the end of its path. You are the only thing that reminds us that a beginning exists. It is not kindness, ours. It is a craving for life. We want you to live, because as long as you breathe, we, too, in a sense, feel less... of stone."
Felix nodded, a slow and solemn movement. "Do not think about what happened. Think of the sea, the cold of the fjords, the caviar you are eating. Think of everything we can show you. The world, from tomorrow, will only be what we allow you to see."
The girl felt her breath catch, no longer because of the drain, but because of the intensity of those promises. She knew that, despite their sweet words and the fine food, she was in a gilded cage. Yet, as she felt the heat of Felix against her back and Demetri's rapt gaze upon her, for the first time since she had discovered the existence of vampires, fear gave way to a seductive resignation.
"A little more caviar," Felix said, offering her a silver teaspoon with the diligence of a royal servant. "Your recovery starts here. And we have all the time in the world to ensure that you heal perfectly."