Disclaimer: I don't own the universe of Twilight

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Jared POV

I decided to go hunt with Austin out of boredom. I needed to go anyways; it had been two and a half weeks since the last time I hunted.

I sighed in frustration. I wanted to run. "Come on, Austin. Hurry up!"

He was beside me before I finished, grinning from ear to ear. He took serious pleasure in annoying me. I rolled my eyes and walked out of the already open door.

"We'll be back soon," he told our sisters before following me. I began to run. Austin easily kept pace with me, even though I was running full out; he was the faster of the two of us. I didn't care. I just needed a physical outlet for my frustration.

I was extremely protective of my family, and even though I knew she was well able to take care of herself and us, B always seemed so fragile and vulnerable. Right now I wanted to protect her from whatever was causing waves of sorrow, pain, and rejection to emanate from her, but I knew I couldn't. Whatever was causing her so much pain was something from her past, a past we knew nothing about. She didn't talk about it, and whenever one of us would ask, she would either give us an answer that told us nothing or refuse to answer at all and change the subject. She didn't let anyone in, ever.

Suddenly, the scent hit me. Vampires. The scent was fresh. I glanced at Austin, who slowly nodded to me, face grave. We followed the trail. There were three distinct scents. It was rare to get visitors, but we had to ask them not to hunt nearby.

We soon saw them: two males, one female. One male was powerfully built, his body rippling with muscle, and curly brown hair. The other was leaner, muscular but more subtly so, with blond hair. The female was a pixie, with short, spiky black hair.

She was bouncing around, trying to get the other's attention, looking toward us.

Almost like B, they all had a sense of sorrow surrounding them that I could sense even without my gift.

Austin suddenly stepped on a twig, and the males' heads snapped around in our direction. I noticed that all three's eyes were jet black, as were ours.

The pixie danced forward, grinning. "Hi, I'm Alice. These are Jasper," she indicated the blonde, "and Emmett," the muscular one.

"I'm Jared. This is Austin." I gestured halfheartedly to my brother. "Are you just passing through?"

"No, we recently moved into a house several miles north of here," Jasper replied.

"What about you?" Emmett asked, radiating curiosity.

"We live in a house a few miles away." Austin answered.

A look of confusion crossed his face. "Do you not hunt humans?"

"No. We drink animal blood. Our sister calls us vegetarians." Austin let out a low chuckle.

Jasper's eyes widened. "There are more of you?" he questioned, shocked.

"Yes. We have a sister, as well as my wife, Beth, and Austin's wife, Melody."

"Do you hunt humans?" Austin asked, wary.

"No, we're also vegetarians. Carlisle would like to meet you, I'm sure. We didn't know there were any besides us and the Denali coven who drank only from animals." Alice answered excitedly.

"How many are in your family?"

"Seven. Our parents, Carlisle and Esme, my sister, Rosalie, who's Emmett's wife, and our brother, Edward. Jasper is my husband." She quickly glanced at him and smiled.

"Would you come and meet the rest of our family?" She was bouncing up and down in excitement and enthusiasm.

"We'll have to talk to the rest of our family . . . after we hunt. That's actually why we're out here. We just ran across your scent. When can we come by if they agree?" I was curious. I had never run across any other vampires except for B who were vegetarians. She was the reason the rest of us were also vegetarian.

"Anytime's good." Emmett grinned easily.

"We're hunting, as well." Jasper informed us.

We finished our goodbyes and ran off.