Diamond Legacies: Part 12

The interest in this story was bigger than I expected and I cant be any more grateful for the response to the first chapter. It blows me away. Thank you all for your wonderful comments, here’s the second chapter and its with Nova. They’ll be alternating POVs in the story. It seems like at the start that they’re 2 separate stories, but they’ll come together eventually. Their chapters are running parallel to the other, it will make more sense as it progresses I promise.

I realise Nova’s kind of entitled, but she’ll become a better person I promise :D  Its just fun to write at the moment what kind of lifestyle being a Cullen kid could do to you and the perspective it could breed.

 

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 Isle Esme, May 2226

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Nova Cullen

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The white sand was warm against my feet. I stood as the warm clear water lapped at my ankles as my feet slowly sunk deeper into the sand. My eyes focused on the horizon where blue met blue. I could smell the sea and the humidity in the air as I stood with the sun on my face.

I was in my favourite place on earth. Isle Esme. My parents had brought me here every year of my childhood. We’d stay on my grandmother’s island for two weeks in the summer between school years. The years my parents let my sister and I go to school at least. As children we were kept hidden, too many curious minds wanted to meet us when people heard of Carlisle Cullen and Esther Josephson’s biological children having children. The families joined in blood at last. I wondered as a child why it mattered, especially when it wasn’t the first time Esther and Carlisle’s families had joined in marriage and with children. The Volturi were living examples of that but my mother had explained to Eden and I one night as children that there was power in our blood. Most that wanted to meet us were curious but those with power, with magic and certain abilities, knew that the blood that ran through Eden and I possessed the kind of power they could only dream of. Whilst we were part Luna Bambini, we were entirely unique. Esther’s bloodline was unique and we had to be careful who we told our parentage to. Being linked to Carlisle, although he was just an ordinary vampire was a burden in its own. Blood could be used for very many of things, tracking, manipulation and leverage just to name a few. Carlisle had made a big name for himself, in both supernatural and human worlds. He was a big deal and we were his newest weaknesses. By five years old physically, and only two technically, we had spells cast, barriers around us to ward of any trackers or witches that may want to find us. My sister and I sat as our grandmother Esther cast a spell that would protect us for life. One that was modified from the spell that protected our great aunt Naarah for her whole human life.

After we had been protected our parents went through phases of letting us be normal. Eden and I managed to persuade them to let us go to school by the time we were physically hitting the teenage years and this was where I met my now boyfriend and imprinter Lucan. It was a chance meeting and I still cant believe it really happened. I was seven, but physically fourteen and Eden and I started our first year of a high school in Chicago. It was the most prestigious, protected, private school there was but Eden and I couldn’t complain really. It was a school. It was for spoilt rich kids with families in power and therefore needed extra protection but at least it was a school. Lucan had been patrolling the area with a few of his pack brothers because they had received a tip one of the kids at the school had been struggling with extreme anger issues. It was just an investigation, just in case, with the school being so close to the Volturi Estate on the outskirts of Chicago, it was quite common for schools in the city to have problem children like this completely oblivious to their true nature.

Lucan had been only fourteen at the time too, he had phased only a few months before hand and was getting his first real mission from his alphas in the Guild pack. He knew the area well and he also knew a kid in the school, making the encounter a little less suspicious as they waited for the troubled kid to leave school that day. Eden and I recognised the wolves instantly. It was hard not to when there were three overly tall muscular men waited across the road from the twenty-foot-tall iron gate into the school. Eden and I didn’t have much to do with wolves, but we had seen them around the Volturi Estate quite a lot, whether they were there as guard dogs to Amirah Cullen or on official business from the Guild pack. They had taken up quite a bit of the scouting jobs from the Volturi after my grandmothers’ fate whilst the guard members were out searching for answers. We’d been told to stay away from them from our mother, I didn’t realise until that day that maybe my mothers warning was in place for this specific reason.

Imprinting was strange. I hadn’t been told a single thing about it until that day, but my father had noticed the change in my soul the second I returned home from school. Lucan and I had only met our gaze across the road for a split second, but it had been enough to change our lives forever.

My mother had been furious. She had wanted to know straight away who it was that had imprinted on me, and I remember standing there looking at Eden like our mother had gone mad. We had no idea what she was even talking about. As usual my father calmed her within the minute of her reaction, and I learnt through my parents conversation exactly what it meant.

Back then Eden and I hadn’t quite managed to control our telepathy, we were still joined in every thought and feeling. I felt her relief that she wasn’t tied to this stranger that would suddenly never leave my life and I, for the first time in my life, felt resentment for her relief. Was this it now? I had no choice? No chance to date or learn my own preferences? I was stuck with this wolf that I would become reliant on to breathe.

How come it hadn’t happened to Eden? Why was it me that was chosen and not her?

Eden and I had always been complete opposites. Nearly everything about us was different, except the way we looked. It was crazy that we were identical twins when there was absolutely nothing we had in common. I loved my sister and she loved me, but we definitely didn’t like each other.

I was outgoing, she was an introvert. I was the one that spoke for us both as children and she was the quiet shy one. I loved bright colours and everything feminine. She hated it all and her favourite colour was grey. I hated sport and dance, she loved it. I often went with my gut on everything, where as Eden was the planner and the thinker. I was the high strung one; the overreactor. She was the calm and collected one in a crisis. I was loyal and set in my ways, she was ambitious. I was family orientated and she avoided as many family gatherings as she could get away with. I was the affectionate hugger; she was the one with a personal bubble of two meters. Every trait I could think of; Eden was my opposite. It was like we had been made that way, made to conflict when we needed to work together. The only thing we did agree on and look past our differences with would be the training of our abilities. Finding out what we could do changed quite a lot between us, it was something we could finally relate to each other on.

As children, before finding out about our abilities, we fought a lot. And it was made even harder with the telepathy that joined us together. During our training of our abilities our grandmother Esther helped us create a little room in our heads. She explained that this was how other generations controlled the telepathy, but it was harder for us because we didn’t have Teddy Cullen in our heads helping to create the mind palace. Whilst my mother’s generations default setting was now hiding their thoughts and would enter the room in their mind to share their thoughts, we were the opposite. The default for us would be to share everything but at least now we had a place in our minds we could go to block out the other twin. There was also an option down the road to meet Teddy’s son Ned. He was the same generation as us in the Luna Bambini tree so it was inevitable that we shared a telepathy field with him, but we just hadn’t met him, nor had we met the others of our generation. Christopher, Hollyn and Amelie Wright would also be connected to us if we meet them one day. But with my parents keeping us secret as children it hadn’t happened yet. Esther mentioned its possible Ned or even one of the others inherited some kind of mental ability from their mutual grandfather, Eddie Cullen, but they all lived private lives in England away from the supernatural.

It was just myself and Eden, at least for the foreseeable future. I wasn’t sure my parents would ever have more children, but if they did, maybe Eden and I will have mastered the form of our telepathy by the time anyone else joined it.

Apart from the room in our head that meant we could block each other out on will, we had simply learnt over the years to ignore the other in our mind. It got easier when she moved away. My sister had moved to New York right before the Dark Years happened and although I missed her, id never tell her directly. I was jealous she got to live an independent life and explore and learn about the world but at the same time I was glad she was happier. She had lived in my shadow most of her life and I was proud she was becoming her own person that didn’t rely on her twin sister to stick up for her.

As she became independent in a ballet boarding school, I stayed near home and started medical school in Chicago. I had an affinity for medicine as both my parents and grandfather and it was only natural for me to go down this route when my sister had turned her back on our parents legacy faster than she learnt to pirouette. She had never wanted to be a doctor. She had never wanted to be a Cullen, in fact she hated it I was sure of it. I didn’t mind the kids at school bowing at my feet but she did. She hated the attention and the questions. She hated the stares whereas I didn’t mind them. It wasn’t about narcissism or vanity. I just simply didn’t care for the attention; I knew what mattered in life and I didn’t care what people thought or felt about me. Eden cared about public opinion more than me, she struggled with the spotlight, which I found ironic considering she now performs on a stage in front of thousands of people on a regular basis. But I guess it was different under the guise of Eden Balev, no one went to see her dance because of her name, they went because she was amazing at what she did.

I couldn’t say the same for myself though. Although I enjoyed the medical field and I had the affinity to be a doctor, I struggled a lot because it was just so damn hard in today’s age to become a surgeon. They only took the best and nothing less. I often wondered if I was even doing the right thing following my parents’ legacy. I hated the sheer thought of letting them down. If I was set to inherit the Cullen hospital empire, how the hell was I going to run that when I could barely even pass my medical exams?

Stress was all I breathed through medical school and although I was in my last year, I was definitely feeling the pressure of being a Cullen doctor more this year than in previous ones. I had three months left and everyone expected me to know everything simply because of who my father was. It was exhausting.

The exhaustion was close to becoming too much, so Lucan had surprised me with a trip to my favourite place on earth, Isle Esme. He had arranged it with my grandfather Carlisle behind my back and over spring break handed me a prepacked bag and dragged me to an airport. I was reluctant at first, I needed to study but I was so glad he had made me leave all my books on my tablet at home. Even though my impending stress was at the back of my mind, it would only take one look out at the ocean to remind myself of where I was, and it all just melted away.

“Nova” my name echoed across the beach, and I turned to see Lucan jogging up the beach with just his swim shorts on. I smiled instinctively as he reached me. “A thunderstorm is rolling in. Why are you still out here?” he asked, his large hand reaching for my own.

“I was on my way back,” I lied to him as he led me back towards the house at the end of the beach.

Lucan was my best friend, my imprinter, my boyfriend and the love of my life but he also drove me insane most of the time. He was extremely overprotective and smothering, even more so than my own parents.  I knew it was the imprint most of the time, but I know I didn’t exactly help the situation. With my long study and workdays and the stress of it I often forgot to update him occasionally, but I knew it was definitely more than the imprint. It was an entire personality trait of his to be so controlling. It was funny really, considering I was the more durable supernatural creature out of the two of us, but I let him get on with it because it made him feel better. I was a people pleaser, and I would probably jump off a cliff if someone told me to make my life easier.

Lucan wasn’t all bad. I was always told I was lucky to have been handed the love of my life at the age of fourteen but I did often wonder what my life would have been like if I had never met him that day outside my school. I wondered if id have had a dozen partners by now, or if id have stayed with my high school sweetheart after all. I wondered what it would be like not to love or worry about the other person in the intensity an imprint relationship has. I wondered what heartbreak felt like and first date butterflies. I had missed out on it all.

I walked into the house to see Lucan had moved the couch back from the centre of the living area. He had covered the floor in pillows and lit a dozen candles. In the centre was our favourite board game.

“Your grandfather told me to shut off the power if a storm rolls in to protect the generators. So I figured we could play a game or two” Lucan said playing with my fingers in his hand, he looked slightly nervous as he did it, his eyes dropped to our fingers and I smiled at him. For some reason gestures like this always brought out this reaction from him, i wondered if he was always afraid i would say no or disappear from in front of him. I hadnt quite worked out why romantic moments like this made him so ... well puppy like. I gripped his hand and stepped towards his nervous frame.

“Perfect idea” I said giving him a small peck in response. We had been together fourteen years and yet there was still so much to learn about each other. I knew I should be grateful I had him, a partner to stand by my side in it all and yet I felt like my life had been put on a trajectory I was in no control of. Everything had been handed to me, a husband, a job, a house, a legacy. Silly things to be ungrateful for, I knew that logically, and yet in my heart i felt it each and every passing day. My loss of free will.