𝘖𝘉𝘚𝘐𝘋𝘐𝘈𝘕 ° 𝘈𝘓𝘌𝘊 𝘝𝘖𝘓𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘐

[13] GOLDEN

this chapter is dedicated to alicenash47
in hopes that your light will always find you 🤍

000

NEED. It drove her. Blood. Hunger. Life.

She had come into this new life questioning everything, unfamiliar and a stranger to the world she had awoken to as if a hundred years had passed, not a handful of excruciating days. Instead of breaking the curse, she had opened her eyes to being one; a beast and a beauty, all for the price of one. At her core, she craved normality.

In Volterra, she had only ever felt such utter blissful peace alone with Alec. The cabin. Patrolling the city. The few and precious moments of pure privacy seemed almost a dream from their much more brutal reality as Volturi guards. The unspoken rules, high expectations, omniscient attention. It had been...exhausting, as dangerous as the thought was. Sorry, Aro, she thought, preparing for the future interaction and her master's inevitable disappointment, if he even acknowledged it out loud.

With Aro, one could never know what secrets he would keep for himself and his own plans. Nonetheless, they were all appreciative of the immortal king's agreement for unspoken secrecy regarding one's raw thoughts, unrefined and primal. It was natural to fear your rulers and ridiculous to expect total obedience. As long as you did as asked, Aro was uninterested in pursuing every particular seed of doubt, sprung from their kind's innate sense of self preservation. All her masters truly required of them was their loyalty.

And she would remain loyal to the Volturi as long as she had what she required.

It was the day of Forks high school's graduation.

The Cullen house was empty; they all had to attend the graduation, to keep up appearances. Aurora had reassured them that she was perfectly fine managing the house for a few hours, setting up for the grad-party that night. Plus, she promised Emmett not to terrorize the werewolves without him anymore.

She had finished up the decorations too quickly, unsurprisingly. When an immortal was left to their own devices and incessant thoughts, what could be accomplished in little time was fairly impressive.

Aurora knew she wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the town, but waiting alone in the house wasn't what she wanted to do. She would be leaving soon.

Thankful for the lack of school funding for once that there were no cameras anywhere in the vicinity of the building to capture her, Aurora scaled up the building in the drizzling rain. She wore a pair of leggings and someone's oversized Forks school hoodie that was left in the laundry room. She wondered whose it was because there was no way the garment and gold hoodie was Alice-approved. She knew she looked crazy in sunglasses when it was already raining, but both the weather and apparel did well enough to obscure her actions.

The roof of the gym was full of skylights, water-stained and decades old, letting in gray light down to the jam packed room. Half the town was in attendance. She crept to the edge of the rectangular window and peered down. The class was understandably small, not more than a few rows of seats filled with the yellow cap and gowns. She spotted Edward first, his bronze bouffant a red flag in the front row beside Alice, who seemed very concentrated. Bella sat in the last row. Everyone appeared to be listening to the brunette girl at the stand, going on about wanting to be a princess for some reason. No one would be looking above.