Kate still hadn't quite gotten over the shock of it - her oldest friends, her own family, presenting them with an immortal child like some horrifying replay of what had happened with their mother. Of course, as the Denalis quickly came to realize, Renesmee wasn't anything like Vasilli. And this "crime" wasn't anything like the first one that she and Tanya had witnessed, except that the faces villains remained the same.

It pained Kate to no end to think of Irina being at the heart of all this.

Eleazar's gentle sympathy, nor Carmen's warm inclusions, not even Tanya's walled-off manner, could break through Kate's anguish. She stood with her family, of course, Kate would always stand by her family. But each time they failed to stand by her, it broke her heart just a little further.

Except... it seemed impossible, not to be drawn in by Rensemee. Kate had felt it in the moment she lined up, the last of her family, to let the child tell her side of the story. Suddenly she had no issue comprehending the defensive positions the Cullens, and even the werewolves - the silver female didn't even like Renesmee! - took around the baby.

She was special. She needed to be protected. Like her human charge long ago, her coven after that, Kate had long since adapted to defend her loved ones. Renesmee fitted so easily into the same category it was impossible not to imagine her always there.

Kate had taken up a subtly defensive position in front of one of the windows as the latest nomad arrived - this close to Renesmee, the newest charge the blonde warrior had taken it upon herself to protect - she could leap to her side in the fraction of a second.

Except... it was awfully hard to concentrate on her job when the damned nomad was quite this good looking. Just because Kate hadn't been sleeping around with men for the last hundred years or so, the way she'd done since mastering her vegetarian skills, it didn't mean she was any less appreciative of a good male form.

He couldn't have been the absolute best looking vampire she'd ever set eyes on... Carlisle or Peter probably would have taken that title, not that of course she thought abut either of the long since mated vampires with anything more than appreciation. But this one - he had to have been the most outright appealing. He certainly had downright rugged good looks in his favour, but more alarming from Kate's perspective was the immediate pull she felt towards him, a feeling nobody had ever stirred in her before now. Sternly, Kate told herself to stop acting like a valleygirl, and kept her eyes trained on the nomad as Edward explained their need for witnesses and asked him to hear Renesmee out. He didn't look alarmed by her appearance - curiosity was the defining emotion on his face.

He was tall - taller than her, Kate figured, unable to help herself comparing - and rangy, with leanly emphasized musculature she doubted was all from his vampire transformation. The eyes didn't give her any surprise, as theirs and the Cullens were the only families she knew of on the vegetarian diet. But there was something both thrilling and attractive about the colour, matching his scruffy hair well.

She had no idea where the urge to run her fingers through that hair came form.

Beyond the rugged good looks Kate was surprised to find his eyes sparkled with good humour and his lips lifted in an easy smile, betraying an outgoing, affable nature all too easily as he knelt down in front of Rensemee.

She wished she'd caught his name.

A/N| Apologies for the short chapters, they will get longer from here - I just wanted to break up the first meeting into both a perspective from Kate's frame of mind and one from Garrett's, otherwise I find the chapters get harder to follow if it skips between them both.