I stared at the man who was holding out his credit card to me. I had swiped my own twice, and it had been declined. Near tears and desperate to Maddilynn home to my parents I just looked at him. When I got out of the car to fill the tank up, he intimidated me. He was tall well built and scary looking. Part of me wondered at that moment if they had more following me than I knew.

"You don't need to help me," I said.

"No, but someday you'll re-pay the favor to someone else."

"I don't know how I'd re-pay you," I said.

"Don't think about it, just do something nice for someone else," he said pushing his card into the machine. He punched his pin in and took the card back.

"Thank you," I said as he started pumping the gas. The passenger door opened and Maddi stuck her head out.

"Who are you?!" she demanded.

"Maddi, my card was declined. We need gas we were on 'e'. He offered to pay,"

"He's not one of them?"

"One of them?" The man asked.

"The men chasing us to kill us, you're not one of them?"

"Someone is after you?"

"Maddi shut up! Get back in the car."

She scowled at me and slammed the door.

"Look I don't know you and I don't think it's fair to burden you with our problems."

"Who's after you?" He asked.

"Maddi's kidnappers, I was supposed to help them out but she's my little sister. Once they know I ran away to save her they'll spare no mercy. Max will kill us both. She's five, and has her whole life ahead of her. If I could I'd give my life to spare hers but they won't."

"How much longer until you reach where you're going?" He asked.

"About four hours, to take Maddi home. Then another six days for me to get home. If that's the path I decide to take."

"What four hours away?"

"My parents," I said.

"You're taking your sister there?"

"Yes, they have been waiting for eleven months for her to return home," I said with sad eyes.

"Could you trust a stranger?" He had stopped pumping gas.

We worked quickly transferring what we had from my SUV to the strangers Jeep. He made more trips than Maddi and I put together.

"I'm Emmett, by the way."

"Kyrah and this is Maddilynn," I introduced ourselves.

"Kyrah," he said raising an eyebrow.

"We call her Kyre for short." Maddi said.

"Shall we?" he helped us both into the Jeep and he sped off.

It took me forever it felt like to be at ease once I was, realized I fell asleep.

I woke to someone shaking my shoulder.

"Where to next, sleepy head," he said.

"Huh?"

"I kind of need directions, sweet heart,"

He came to a stop in front of my parent's home. His face seemed full of question, worry and a little bit of doubt.

"You can trust me," he told me.

"Trust you with?"

"If you tell your parents I'm a stranger they'll have no reason to hold that back from anyone coming there to look for you. So just trust me ok?"

"As long as you don't screw me over, I'll go with it."

I followed Maddi and Emmett to the door. It swung open and there stood my teary eyed mother. Her arms opened for the little girl she was missing. She didn't look up at me, part of me wasn't surprised.

"You're welcome," I said.

Emmett just stared at me.

"Can we please go?" I asked him.

"Kyre there your family," he said surprised.

"That's never mattered to her, she could care less."

"I don't understand," he said following me back to his Jeep.

"I'll explain later. Please can we go?"

"Get in," he was holding the door open.

"Thanks."

I climbed in and turned the stereo on. It was playing some classical music, pretty but not what I was looking for. I wanted something with feeling, beat and screaming. Possibly lots of screaming; in fact the more the better. The longer I could prolong explaining to this man why I was not welcome where my family the better. I had been disowned by them at sixteen when I agreed to help my uncle with a project. Extracting, modifying and replacing DNA, replacing the old with the new. I was no longer human as far as my DNA went but they were unsure what they had created.

In desperation to understand who I was I left the facilities and joined a group as trackers. We hunted for a nomadic group. It was hard coming to terms with what I was and how to deal with it without having it control me. He turned the music down once we reached the freeway.

"Care to explain what is really going on?" He asked me.

"I don't know if I can."

"Who's stopping you?"

"No one, I might not say it right. I don't want to scare you or offend you."

"Try me. You might be surprised. I wanna be your friend Kyrah."

"I'm what they call a genetically engineered super human."

"Okay," he said hesitantly.

"I should have kept my mouth shut," I grumbled.

"No," he said quickly.

"You're never going to look at me the same way," I said.

"Kyrah… I'm not exactly human either," he smiled.

He launched into a story about his family and how they survived. I liked them better than the nomads I hunted for. He smiled at the mention of someone he used to love, she left him. He hadn't been home in four years and where his home was, was far away from where we were and where they were. He described each of them in detail for me, and told me what they meant to him. He talked about one in particular a man named Carlisle. He was his creator and a very understanding and loving man. The things Emmitt said about him made me love him without even knowing him.

"Do you mind if I ask where were going," I said

"I'm going to take you to my house. You can stay there while I visit my family for the first time in four years."

"You're leaving me?"

He laughed. It felt like I had always known him. It was nothing like we had just met. He knew about me and I knew about him.

"For a few days, I'll be back by Sunday morning," he said with a smile.

I felt embarrassed by saying that without thinking how it sounded. It sounded desperate, like I couldn't live without him, and I just met him.

"What?" He asked.

"That didn't come out right," I said.

"I don't mind that you trust me Kyrah. We all need someone we can trust."

"It just made me sound like I couldn't survive without you. Granted I have someone seeking me out to kill me, but it's not the same."

"It is and it isn't. Your heart and mind know when they can really trust someone. They know when they have found something they can relate to and find familiarity with. I haven't seen my family in four years," he said.

"Why so long don't they like you still?"

"Yes they do and there's not a day that goes by that one of them asks me to come back. I just can't. I don't want to push Rose into an awkward position."

"Rose?"

"My ex-wife."

"You were married?"

"We were all married, Carlisle and Esme, Edward and Isabella, Jasper and Alice, I was married to Rose that's how it is with us. Without her I would have done something stupid a long time ago."

"What happened?"

"She fell in love with someone else."

"Ouch," I said.

He nodded.

"Marcus was the first guy I fell in love with," I said. "I met him two months after I join my uncle. He was a cross breed, that's what he was classified as. Marcus was trying to make my uncle happy but struggled to control his anger that set off his morph. My uncle has several professional sent in to try to help him find a way to channel his anger. They only made him worse. None of them could be told what he was and why he needed help and those exposed to him had their memories erased. I found him in the library late one night, the first time I met him. He was flashing in and out and couldn't stop it. He was screaming at me to stay away. I was the first person who was able to touch him, to calm him, to not run away. He was one of the scariest things I had ever seen but there was a person in there. Someone that deserved to have love and compassion, I couldn't turn away. Not even when he asked me to. He was with me when I decided I couldn't stay with my uncle. But he was caught. I remember the news story on his death the flashes of him mom and dad crying for the loss of a boy they hadn't seen in six years. My uncle took him at a young age and he never knew what happened to himself."

I had tears running down my face. It was the first time in almost a year I cried. His memory was something I struggled to cope with. The wrath my uncle had and the fact that he had sent people out to kill him.

"He didn't know how to cope with the reality of what he was. He couldn't talk to his family; none of us were allowed to engage in training to learn what we were. We were experimented on. Many of us spent months in and out of the hospital wing. He never cared."

He was holding my hand as I talked, I felt safe for the first time in a long time. I felt like I was able to let loose a lot of fears, and there was nothing to lose. He lifted my hand along with his and wiped the tears off of my checks. I gave him a faint smile. He turned on to a dirt road and I looked up, in front of us stood a masterpiece of architecture. The home was beautiful; I had a hard time imagining it in the surroundings it was in.

"Welcome to your new home," he kissed the back of my hand.

I smiled and threw my arms around him, "thank you."

He laughed, it was a memory I would store away he sounded happy and genuine.

"I could get used to this," I said.

"There is no one stopping you," he said helping me down out of the Jeep.

* ***** **** ****** *** **** ***** *** ***** **** ****** ******* **** **** ***** *** *** ** ***

I wandered the house, I felt lost and hopeless he told me last night he wasn't going to call today, and that he'll call when he's on the road home. I was nervous. He was gone for two days now, and I was sick.

I tried to tell him on the phone but I freaked out and said goodbye instead of what I needed to. I lay down on the over sized gaudy bed he had set up in his room; it was the one place I found peace. I woke up to a phone ringing.

"Hello?"

"Kyrah?" the female asked.

"Yes, who is this?"

"Maddi," she said.

"Maddi, where are you?"

"Uncle Jimmies." She said.

"Maddi you have to leave. Go! Run before he changes you, please."

She started to sob, "He already did," she whispered.

"No!"

I woke to the sun in my eyes, I felt disorientated. The bed was covered in tissues and it took me a few minutes to remember why. Then the tears started up again. Why was this all happening at once? Then the phone rang I wiped my face on the bottom of my shirt.

"Hello?"

"Kyrah, what's wrong?" Emmitt asked.

"Everything," I said starting to cry again.

"Are you hurt?"

"No," I sobbed.

"What's wrong?"

"Maddi… she's with m… my… my uncle… h…he."

I couldn't finish.

"Kyrah I'm twenty minutes away, okay? I'll be there soon," he reassured me.

"Okay."

I rushed to throw the tissues away but I couldn't finish before a wave of nausea made me make a bee line for the bathroom. How was I going to survive? I was a super human, yes, but he was a vampire. And now there was a baby in the mix.

I heard the front door open and him walking from room to room. I sat on the bathroom floor exhausted. He opened the door slowly.

"Hi," he said sitting down next to me. I leaned my pounding head on his shoulder and sighed.

"Tell me what going on," he begged.

"I'm pregnant, my little sister joined my uncle and my mother hates me. I have no idea how I'm going to survive, or if my body will take and reject the fetus. And I'm scared of the unknown."

"A baby?" he asked.

"That's generally what a fetus it, all though the two of us could have created a monster."

He laughed as he hugged me close to him.

"I think we can do this," he said.

"We are doing this," I buried my head in his chest and we sat there.

He held on to me. In those few moments I knew it wasn't just him helping out a stranger, and us doing something stupid. I loved this man that I had the hardest time living without. My life without him would be me lost and alone, wandering from place to place confused.

**** ****** ** *** **** ***** **** ***** *** **** ***** **** ** *** ** ******* *** **** ** * *

In the first six months of my pregnancy we were inseparable. When we heard the heart beat I cried as he held me in the doctor's office, when we found out it was a girl the two of us started on a nursery. When it was done he proposed to me and we made plans to make us a family.

The day Alaundra was brought into the world the two of us couldn't be happier. She was a healthy, happy human baby girl. No abnormalities.

****** ** *** ***** ** * **** ****** * **** ** ***** ** ***** * * *** **** *** * ** * *** ** *** *

I laughed as one year old Alaundra ran around in circle after the simple ceremony. It was one year of growth and getting to know each other. Neither of us thought about our families that we had not included. His because we were a secret, I struggled with that for the first few months after Alaundra was born, but I listened to him explain why. He wanted us to feel safe he would introduce us to his family when he felt that they could handle knowing I existed.

Mine, well had been disowned. I would have loved to invite my little sister but she couldn't be reached.

I smiled as the photographer Emmett had hired took a picture of the two of them together. Since we were an untraditional family I had dressed Alaundra in a beautiful floor length white, Cinderella style gown. Her shoulder length brown curly hair complements of both parents was loosely tied in a red ribbon. I had put a small amount of red lipstick on her. She looked incredibly fragile next to Emmett, but at the same time entirely protected.

"Okay, one with all three of you, these will be memories you'll want to have for forever," he said.

I nodded grabbing handfuls of the dream dress that I wore. Emmett lovingly grabbed my waist pulling me quicker to his side.

"I feel bad that there is just us and McCullie's. It's your wedding you should be surrounded by friends and family," he said with his head in his hands.

"Don't," I begged.

I knelt in front of him urging him to look at me.

"We decided the life we live; I walked out my parent's front door that night. Yes, I was mad at them, but they never forced me into it. I'm coping with it and you left your family to be selfless and to let Rose stay. You are the man who helped me save my sister that night at the gas station, the man who let me live, the one who gave me a home, and the man who I love and has given me a chance at my own family. I will never and have not regretted this. Please," I said.

He pulled me into his arms and sobbed. His tears were not wetting me nor him because he couldn't cry. True love to me was when the man you loved was no longer afraid to hide his emotions.

"Kyre," he said snapping his fingers in front of my face. I playfully slapped it away. Alaundra was running in circles laughing. And in our background the sun was setting on another day of my life.

I smiled as I looked at him sitting in the rocking chair holding Alaundra. He was reading to her, she was content sitting on his lap holding a bottle and teddy bear. Emmitt had her wrapped in a blanket.

"Mommy's awake," he whispered. Alaundra struggled to be free of the blanket that held her.

"Mommy!!!" she screamed and grunted to get free. Emmitt tried to help her but she slid from his lap, my heart raced at the thought of her falling. He caught her before she made contact with the hard floor.

My arms encircled her as she started to cry, and his phone went off in the other room.

"I'll take her outside to play," I said.

He nodded and went to answer it. I opened the sliding glass door and set her free, I had no fears of her running away, she wouldn't get very far if she did. My hand rested on my ever growing bump in my abdomen. We had talked about wanting Alaundra to have siblings; Emmitt said it was the one thing he enjoyed about the Cullen family.

"I just can't Alice; I have other obligations to attend to at the moment." There was a break; I could tell he was fighting with himself.

"I don't want to talk about it okay, and I would appreciate if you wouldn't think about it around Edward. I don't think the others can handle what I'm involved in."

I rested my hand on his chest. To me it felt like it was time to meet them and I could tell he felt the same way too. He feared for Alaundra and the unborn baby I was carrying. He was afraid that they wouldn't understand why he chose to live the life he is.

"I give Alice; tell the others I'll be there tomorrow night. That's all you are to mention okay."

He shut it as Alaundra came in he bent down and picked her up, gently tossing her in the air. Laughter came from both of them. I loved my little family that was ever growing.

"I need to shower; will you bath her in the bath in the nursery?"

"Mommy thinks you're dirty," he said to in a disbelieving voice.

She giggled, but nodded her head.

I laughed walking down the hall; this was going to be hard on him.

I took my time in hopes that it would let the wave of nausea pass, and help with the stress I was feeling. I stepped out and wrapped a towel around me. I opened the door that connected our room to the bathroom. Emmitt had Alaundra sleeping on our bed and two suit case that took up the bottom half of the bed. He had clothes piled up.

"I was unsure what you wanted to pack," he said smiling.

I smiled, "anything that matches, try for light colors."

"Yes, m' lady," he said with a southern accent.

I dressed as he packed. I went to the kitchen and packed a small cooler with food and drinks for myself and Alaundra. She was still attached to her bottle, something I loved watching her do. Walking from room to room almost blinded because the bottle was the center point of her view.

Emmitt packed everything into the Escalade that he purchased after we got married. Before we drove two separate cars his Jeep and my Honda, but I was apprehensive about him driving in a Jeep with Alaundra. It didn't feel like it was safe for her no matter how much I trusted him.

"We are all set to go!" He said. I picked up sleeping Alaundra and carried her out side, he locked the door and held open the car door me. I buckled her in, and climbed into the front seat. He raced around and before I knew it had himself buckled into his own. He took a hold of my hand as we drove off.

"Alice is married to Jasper. Alice has short black hair, Jaspers is medium length blond. Bella, or Isabella, is married to Edward. Bella has long brown hair and Edward has lighter hair, I don't really pay attention to this stuff. Sorry Kyrah," he said.

"It's okay I'm sure that they'll introduce themselves when we get there," I said rubbing circles on the back of his hand.

"I just feel like I'm in for a heap of trouble."

"From who? I love you, they are your family. The worst is that they need time to adjust. We have been together for almost two years Emmitt you can't blame them if they get mad."

He nodded as he kissed the back of my hand. His fear is what might happen if he goes hunting. He was unsure of how much he could trust his family with little Alaundra, me I didn't smell remotely human or intriguing. Out of curiosity I had asked him once what I did smell like he compared it to vials of medicine at the hospital that held medication in it. He said that none of his family would even think about the possibility of hurting me. Alaundra on the other hand, was another story.

I fell asleep and before I knew it I was being shaken awake. Alaundra was babbling happily to herself and Emmitt still had a grip on my hand. I laughed.

"Relax," I said slowly.

Confused I looked around he had pulled into a truck stop. There was almost no one around.

"Were ten minutes away," he explained.

"I won't leave you," I said. He said the same words to me when I told him I was pregnant, when I faced my uncle, when I talked to my parent and when we were getting married. Those few word held a deeper meaning. No matter how wrong something seemed we stuck it out together.

He turned the engine on, and with a kiss on my hand we were back on the road headed to his parents.

I tried to calm myself so that I could be there for him without thinking of my worries. I had the hardest time accepting that his ex-wife was going to be there. From what he said she was incredibly beautiful. What I sure wasn't prepared for was in the home we had just pulled up to.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"No," he said quickly. I could see the figures in the window waiting for the love of my life to emerge. With a child like groan he raced around the front of the car opening my door then Alaundra's. He unbuckled her and softly told her that she was his world.

I opened my door, even from where I was; on the outside I could hear them all hold their breath. I laughed which caused Emmett to look at me.

"Do I smell?" I said. I knew the answer to the question, I smelled like my perfume.

"Like baby's breath and roses," he said.

I took Alaundra from him, she was fighting the sleep begging to overcome her.