Chapter Two -

We reached the main door quickly, I paused for the smallest millisecond, wondering whether I should knock. Alice opened the door and walked in, pulling me hard behind her. I stood next to her and looked around. Several beautifully pale and shocked faces were staring at me. Jaz got to me first, no surprise there.
He could probably feel my guilt from a mile away. His arms were tight around me and I dropped Alice's hand to hug him back, hard. He was instantly using his gift, trying to wash away my guilt and fear replacing it with nothing but Love. His scent was comforting and familiar, as the whole house was. He lifted his arms softly and put them on the sides of my head, angling it down and kissing me on the forehead. I put my hand to his face, and projected my thoughts at him,'Thanks Jaz. I missed you.'

He smiled and turned away from me, looking at the others. I could tell he was sensing their moods. Thankfully, his smile never faltered. I turned to look at the rest of my family and before I knew it I was across the room, holding tightly to my Grandmother, Esme. If she could I know she would have been spilling tears of joy. One after another I hugged the members of my family, crying silently the whole time. I hugged Uncle Emmett last,
he'd always been my favorite. He grabbed hold of me and spun me in circles. "Where you been Nessie? We've missed the Hell out of you!" I Shoved my face in his neck and grumbled, "You don't even want to know man, seriously." He stopped spinning and squeezed me tight before putting me down. "Oh, well, you're back now. That's all that matters right?" I smiled, knowing he would be hurt the worst when I left again. He might understand though. Dad had told me he'd felt it once. His own temptator, but then again, Dad had also told me that he'd killed her.

I looked upstairs hopefully, knowing that they weren't there. Emmett caught me looking. "Don't worry, they should be back tonight. They went hunting over the weekend. I looked down at my feet, I knew I shouldn't be scared of seeing them. I'd missed them so much, and surely they'd missed me to. Daddy would understand but he'd still be furious, and mom... she'd once told me she had a problem about people leaving her. I can't imagine what my absence had done to her. She had been the one to beg Dad to stay, when he was protecting her. She would be against me leaving again, and she would tell me that I can do it, that Dad did. She was human more recently though.
She would understand that killing Jake wasn't the ONLY thing I wanted to do when I smelled that sweet, luscious fiery scent.. I felt the burn in my throat again. Only a mere shadow of the pain I had felt when I'd last seen him. I knew I would have to hunt before seeing him. I'd probably have to take down a few forests to be able to ignore his smell, if I even could. It would be so easy and his dumb-ass would be all too willing. I'd only have to give him a kiss and he'd forget everything. I could kiss his lips slowly and pull his hair back leaving his neck wide and unprotected, move my mouth slowly down.... I could feel how easy it would be for my sharp dangerous teeth to sink into his throat. My throat wasn't the only thing was aching now. "Renesme!" I snapped back to reality, feeling guiltier than ever. Jasper had definately noticed that.. how embarrassing! Well, at least he knew why I had left now. He looked at me with his eyes wide for a second and abruptly started laughing.

"C'mon Em, let's go" I grumbled starting out the door. He followed behind me with a very quizzical look on his face. When he reached the forest near the house I could hear Jaz still laughing at me, though not so loudly now. I could hear him start on about 'damn teenagers' before I was out of earshot. Emmett and I took off into the forest at full speed.

After a couple minutes of racing (he let me win), we were at a clearing. We climbed to a high tree and looked down. There was a small river on the outer edge of the clearing and we could see several bucks and doe drinking, even a few fawn that weren't very steady on their legs yet. Sparing their life wasn't as easy as not killing them. They were obvious newborns, without their mothers to nurse them they wouldn't survive. "Not them Emmett," even if I hadn't have said he would have known how I felt. "Look Ness, there's a couple big bucks over there" he nodded toward the far end of the river. I looked at him and we'd both decided. We pounced.

After a few minutes there was nothing left in them. The group that was down river ran, a fawn, in it's confusion ran the wrong way. I ran in font of it and growled, scaring it enough to force it to turn around and run toward it's family. A brave buck, assumingly it's father ran towards me thinking I meant to eat it's young. It meant to attack me with it's antlers. It was dead in seconds, drained in minutes and the fawn was long gone running towards it's herd. I knew I hadn't needed the buck, I'd been full and I could have easily jumped from it leaving it nothing to attack. Emmett was on to a new animal, away from the clearing.. I followed his scent and found him draining a grizzly. "Nice one man, he's pretty big" I said, honestly impressed. Apparently he'd stepped up his game while I was gone. That was okay, I had to.

We spent the next hours out-doing each other. Finding larger and larger animals, both of us past uncomfortably full.