A/N: Dear Reader,

Twilight has a special place in my heart and I hope I do the book justice by extending the Universe that SM has created for us. I feel too old to have read the Twilight saga and be in love with a fictional character but New Moon and Jacob Black gave me hope when I thought my world had crumbled beneath me. This is a tribute to the character and the possibility that some day I will find my own Jacob. This is my first fan fiction so please review and let me know how I'm doing!

-VB

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight, the Characters and this Universe.
Just borrowing from Stephenie Meyer.
No copyright infringement intended.

Holding On

"We tell lies when we are afraid...
afraid of what we don't know,
afraid of what others will think,
afraid of what will be found out about us."
-Tad Williams

Prologue

I have spent a majority of my life lying to everyone; it was part of our life and possibly the most essential part of it as well. It's been a constant struggle to keep everyone protected-balancing my real life with my "human" façade. We constantly shielded our human family from what we really were.
My family is not normal, as much as everyone thinks theirs isn't either, I'd have to say my family will always trump that. I looked more like my parents' sibling before I looked to be their daughter. The similarities between us were too noticeable for us to deny being related.
My parents' love story rivals those of great literature; from Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, Romeo and Juliet to Noah and Allie. I could go on forever trying to find people more in love than they were but the reality of the matter is that I'm not going to. There had never been a couple like my parents, and no one will know their story because for all intensive purposes, we don't exist.
My parents are vampires, Bella and Edward Cullen and I am Renesmee Cullen, half-human, half-vampire hybrid, one of a handful of immortals that have a living beating heart.

Chapter 1: A Sense of Belonging

"It's hard to explain
Inherently it's just always been strange
Neither here nor there
Always somewhat out of place everywhere"
-Mariah Carey "Outside"

The first time we lied to my human family was the hardest. My grandfather Charlie Swan, chief of police in Forks was determined to stay in our lives. We told him we were moving so my parents could go to school, which was-true to an extent, but my accelerated growth was what was making it impossible for us to see him. Bella lied to him about where I was and I felt guilty just knowing the truth. I was less than a year old when we parted ways. Edward and Bella already felt that he knew too much and he needed to be protected. If he knew any more we would be putting him in danger of the Volturi.

The Volturi, royalty of the vampire world, and the largest unified coven I have ever met. I remember them with clear precision and utter fear. I became their target along with my family when I was only a few months old. Aro, the leader of the Volturi wanted to collect us and make us part of the Volturi guard.

There are nine Cullens, and five with extra abilities that Aro wanted. I was born with the ability to project my thoughts through touch. Edward is a mind reader and Bella, a shield to other mental abilities. My aunt Alice can see the future and her husband Jasper could control emotions around him. We are a powerful and large coven and we gathered friends to make the Volturi stop and listen. Fortunately they did not succeed in their plans to collect or destroy us. This made keeping our family's whereabouts a secret from everyone the top priority. We needed to get out of Forks to keep Bella's human family safe and hide from our kind. We fear the Volturi would change their mind and wage war on us for one reason or another. The years that followed felt like a hazy daze that I wanted to wake up from.

We moved outside of Seattle to give Charlie some peace of mind. We were close, but not close enough for him to visit us. Alice watched for Charlie's decisions and warned us if he decided to visit us. Bella never let it get that far and visited him before he could visit us. We all felt guilty for the pain we caused him after leaving Forks. We were his only family and I knew that it would be another decade before he saw me again. It was almost as hard for him to lose me as it was for him to lose Bella. To ease his pain during her visits to Forks she made excuses for mine and my father's absence, brought photos of me as 'documentation'. The photos were taken in a matter of weeks instead of months. I think she secretly hoped that the photos she left with Charlie would replace some of the photos that he had of her growing up. She visited him often before it was too noticeable for her to stop. The evident lack of aging would soon stop the visits all together. Bella enrolled in the University of Washington and took night classes while we were in Seattle to earn a diploma for Charlie.

Charlie married Sue Clearwater; Bella went to the wedding making more excuses for our absence. After she graduated her visits to Forks became fewer and far between due to the fact that we had "moved" to London for Edward to continue his education to pursuit a medical career, another lie. Edward had finished with a medical degree a few times already. Soon we were only sending Charlie photos of us, and the visits stopped. My parents "aging" was done with computer image alterations, my grandmother Esme's idea, to keep Charlie from suspecting anything.

We hid from Charlie right under his nose, after leaving Seattle we moved deep in the forest surrounding the Olympic peninsula near Neah Bay. By the time we moved to Neah Bay, I was three but I looked and felt about 11. The rest of the Cullens resumed their quiet immortal lives while trying to give me the most normal childhood they could. My family taking trips to Vancouver and Portland to give me human experiences to balance the life of solitude I had been given. With no children my age I felt isolated. Looking back I guess that was the reason we stayed so close to La Push, the Quileute reservation. It was the only place for me to be "normal", around the Werewolves-who were suppose to be our mortal enemy.

The story was explained to me the first time I went to visit the reservation since leaving Forks. We were at peace with the shape-shifters, who are not werewolves like the children of the moon, our real enemy. They control their shape-shifting and it was only a coincidence that they also took on the wolf form. My vampire grandfather Carlisle, the head of the Cullens, had made a treaty with the last Alpha wolf, Ephraim Black. Since we don't drink human blood-we're 'vegetarians' of sorts and we survive on animal blood they agreed. Keeping the treaty they had made so many years ago-they kept our secret and we kept theirs.

The treaty was strengthened and renewed by my best friend, Jacob Black, the new Alpha. The new terms were based on the fact that it was now an alliance between the Cullens and the Quiluetes. Jacob had been there for me my whole life. I'm not sure why, but he was. He had been fighting for me since the day I was born. He even protected me from my newborn vampire mother. He put his life at risk for me and tested Bella just to keep me safe.

Bella accompanied me to La Push and the trips we took three times a week made us closer. I even mustered the courage to ask her about Jacob and why he had protected me, and she explained that Jacob knew I was special and that he felt the need to protect me. I was not quite satisfied with the answer, but that was the only answer I had gotten from anyone.

At first Jacob was like my older brother, but slowly he became my best friend. He played endlessly with me willing to accommodate whatever age I was at the time. He ran back and forth between La Push and Seattle every day and finished high school early to be able to spend time with me. For reasons unknown to me I have always considered him to be mine. I only fear that one day he wouldn't be.

The speed at which I was growing became slower and I spent hours in La Push with the rest of Jake's pack being a kid. Most of the time I forgot they were older than me. Bonfires and cliff diving in the summer, baking with Emily-the other Alpha's wife and watching Jake build cars in the winter. I felt almost normal.

From Jacob's pack members, Leah Clearwater, Quil Ateara, Dan Kaliba, Andrew Parker and Jesse Reed were around when we moved to Neah Bay. Seth Clearwater and Embry Call were in college in Nevada. They separated themselves from other Quileute teenagers but often spent time with the other pack, led by Sam Uley, made up of Jared, Brady, and Zach Nelson. I grew accustomed to the fact that the only other people I spent time with were Kim, Jared's fiancé, seven-year old Claire Young and Rachel, Jacob's sister. I had reached my full maturation at the age of seven and I stopped growing.

My feelings for Jacob were changing and Edward was not happy. Once he saw how often my thoughts lingered on Jacob he became an over protective father. I couldn't control my dreams. My mind constantly imagining Jacob that Edward would have Bella shield me when my dreams became too much for him to handle. I looked seventeen and felt even older, but my parents were not ready to let me go. Most parents got eighteen years with their children and here I was a teenager at seven. A year later we left Washington for Vancouver and I felt heart break for the first time. I was head-over-heels in love with my best friend that it was difficult for me to be away from him. I often fantasized about running back to La Push for no reason since Edward could read my mind. They would know exactly where to find me if I even managed to get out of the house.

Jacob and I spoke everyday and we visited each other often and the age gap between us seemed to get smaller and smaller. He was cautious never to cross the line and we remained best friends, but the ache in my heart never stopped. I wasn't ready to show him that I was falling in love with him; I knew the wounds his heart endured for my mother were still fresh and I was like a kid sister to him.

Being in Vancouver felt like an endless nightmare. I went to high school for the first time starting as a freshman, my parents were sophomores with Alice and Jasper, Rosalie and Emmett were juniors. I quickly made friends with humans and fed them lies about our family's identity and I learned to call my parents as well as my aunts and uncles by their first name. Four years I endured being away from Jacob for weeks at a time and the pain became too much for my parents to bare that we moved back closer to La Push. I thought I was faking being happy in Vancouver with them, but no one, especially Edward, was fooled and I tore the Cullen coven in half.

A/N: Please review and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.