The Great Mile

Prologue - "The Test of Horror"

SummaryTwo months after the Volturi have left, Carlisle discovers that Bella having given birth to a half-vampire has made her fertile. Bella is pregnant, and baby Ellie is born! Story will contain her start of babyhood beginning with a prologue of Bella's POV.

A/N: This story will probably be a few chapters long and will mainly be in Third Person POV, except for Bella's at the start and maybe another one. :) Enjoy and please review!

Bella's POV

Jasper and Emmett took Renesmee to the park this morning, leaving myself and Edward some alone time. We get a lot of it, don't get me wrong, but there's just something wonderful about having the Cullen house to ourselves in the cloudy daylight. Our skin doesn't sparkle, but the daylight feels good on our skin. The glass makes the living room look like a posh palace – something I'm still getting used to, as living with Charlie isn't exactly a clean haven. Now that the Volturi will not bother us, and my daughter is protected, we can finally spend eternity together as a family.

I've just left Edward in the living room, playing the piano to me, because I just remembered that some of Renesmee's clothes need to be put in the wash. I walk upstairs, barefooted, around the Cullen house grinning, picking up Renesmee's doll and tidying her bed – Emmett nearly died when she wanted a Hannah Montana bed cover, but what can you do – and just smelling the sweet scent of my daughter fill my sensitive nose.

If you'd told me life would be like this a year ago, I would have probably yelled for Edward and ran like hell. But my life, after so many horrendous twists and turns – like Edward leaving, getting married, giving birth to a half-vampire baby, you know the usual catastrophes (yes, that's sarcasm) – is finally settling down like leaves after a gust of wind.

I lean down and kneel on the ground to tidy Renesmee's playbooks – fairytales mostly, she's really into them, but growing up in a house of vampires you'd think she'd have had enough of make-believe, but apparently not – and start to arrange them in a neat stack next to her pink cabinet.

I pick up one of her books and flick through the pages, coming to a stop on the back page and laughing. Emmett gave this to her as a present, and it has a photo of me and her pasted in the back in a pink photo-frame. Emmett would have made a great father, given the chance, and it makes me sad that this sometimes-annoying-weirdo of a man couldn't have a child. I sigh before standing up, brushing down my black jeans.

Instantly, I can feel something wrong. It starts as a mere quiver of my stomach, which was shocking and scary enough, and then I can feel it grow into something larger. My hands go to my abdomen as my eyes widen and my breathing becomes laboured. A horrifying hot chill spreads through me as I realize that something is terribly wrong and this should not be happening. In fact, it is impossible.

The sheer knowledge that this was wrong and possibly dangerous is enough to make me, if I could cry, becoming a nervous, tearful wreck.

I'm about to scream for Edward when something else happens. The feeling is spreading, growing much larger, like liquid, like blood, only returning upwards.

No, it can't. No, this is impossible... this can't be happening... oh, Edward... it feels like I'm about to...

I just have time, even as a vampire, to run to the toilet and puke straight in the bowl, crashing my eyes shut. Even as a human this would have felt wrong, but as a vampire, it feels alien, inhumane. As if this body is not meant for this, which it isn't. The 'sickness' helped slightly, I, terrified, lift my head up and open my eyes. I was not prepared at all.

What I had just puked up, was blood.

Solid blood. Nothing in it, just plain, red, sickening blood.

"Bella?" I hear Edward call.

I can't reply. I slump against the toilet bowl, placing a ghostly hand on my bloody mouth, and start shaking, and if I could have tears, sobbing hysterically. Instead, no tears come out, and for once I wish they would as maybe something like that would make me feel less gut-wrenchingly terrified.

The next thing I'm aware of is Edward standing in the doorway, watching me as I'm huddled in the corner sobbing with blood stringing from my mouth, and his worried and fearful glance turning to the inside of the toilet bowl and seeing the blood.

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Carlisle hurries home from work immediately when Edward phones, and despite my protestations that people at the hospital need him more and that this could wait, he's here within fifteen minutes of Edward's fearful phone call.

When he walks in the door he gets straight down to business as I'm sitting on the couch with a blanket Edward insisted on putting over my shoulders. He asks if I've ingested anything other than blood, any tablets, any human food, anything. I tell him no, my mouth hanging open, getting even more scared. I instantly think the worst, worrying that Edward's blood didn't work on me after Renesmee and this is my body starting to shut down. I can't leave my daughter, not now, not after everything we've been through.

Finally, glancing at all of us with a worried expression, he announces that he wants to take a blood test. Everyone, excluding Edward, leave the room with grim and concerned expressions. They've never seen anything like this before, and despite their insisting that everything will be fine, I can't help feeling that they're wrong.

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I watch Carlisle's face as he picks up my blood results paper. This is our only hope into finding what is wrong with me, and I grip Edward's hand while I try not to burst into tearless sobs. I couldn't stand leaving Edward, never. Or Renesmee, it would be the worst thing to happen in my life.

I know vampires aren't meant to breathe, but right now, in my state of panic, I'm breathing in a panic. At first Carlisle frowns, then it turns into a surprised frown, then just a frown, and finally back to surprise.

"What is it?" Edward's voice is cool and curt, implying that he is just as worried and panicked as I am. I clutch his hand tighter.

"I... I don't... in the hospital, I would account something as surprising as this as a mistake, but... I can't deny it, it's too obvious, these results have made it clear," Carlisle stutters. I've never seen him look so focused, concerned, and confused as this ever before. He starts pacing around the windowsill, paper in hand, as if trying to work out something. This had me even more panicked. If I wasn't in such a state, I would be asking him what on earth was wrong. But now, I practically weep out;

"What is it, Carlisle?"

He stops at the sound of my croaky voice, and turns to me and Edward. He eyes us both with confusion and concern for a moment before shocking us to infinity by saying;

"Bella... you're pregnant. Again."