That night I stayed with Bella, just talking to her and telling her jokes and funny memories to ease her pain. I had been so worried that my feelings for her would ruin the friendship we shared, but she had not even mentioned it yet.

"Emmett?" she asked, still laughing from my tale of how our family had played truth or dare once, and how Jasper had done his dare, which was to go to the diary near where we lived at the time and pretend he was insane. We all remembered that fondly, all of us except Jasper, of course.

"Uh-huh?" I managed through my laughter, which flowed freely and uncontrolled now.

"Do you really love me?" she asked, albeit shyly.

I sighed. There was only one real answer I could give her, and Edward would come barging in if I wasn't honest with her. He had, with much persuading, accepted that Bella and I needed to talk, but he was listening to our conversation and would force me out if he had any excuse to do so.

"Yes, I suppose I do," I answered resignedly.

"Why?"

I hesitated. It was one thing for me to admit the truth of what I had already said, but to embellish on it might invoke Edward's wrath.

"I don't think your fiancé is going to want me to continue this discussion," I said, apologizing.

She protested as I had known she would. "But I have a right to know! I need to know!"

"But Edward will-"

"He'd better not do anything to you," she said, "Just because this situation has come up, it doesn't mean you're not still my good friend!"

The words stung more than I had expected them to, more than was humanly possible. Of course, I was not a human and she was well on her way to becoming one of us.

Too late she realized how her words must have sounded to me and she looked stricken, "Oh Emmett! I am sorry, please listen!"

And I did. I loved her and would continue to do so for eternity. Oh, how God had mocked me the day He had sent Bella to Forks. If you believed in all that Bible-y stuff, which I didn't.

"The thing is," she continued, "When I came here, to Forks, I noticed your family. On my first day - I'm sure Edward noticed, with his mind reading talent - I asked Jessica all about the Cullens because you were the first really interesting people I'd met here. You five were basically social outcasts and you were excluded but this didn't seem to bother you and I wondered why. I guess you guys just had a super strong bond from being together for longer than the others."

"A lot longer," I muttered darkly, earning a chuckle from Bella, but then she winced.

"What hurts?" I asked, instantly anxious for her sake.

She tutted, "For Gods sake, Emmett. Everything hurts, but there's nothing you or Edward or Carlisle can do to stop it."

"I hate seeing you so helpless like this," I whined. It felt wrong not doing anything to help her plight.

"Oh, it's nothing," she dismissed, but I could see the fear and pain in her eyes. "Three days? Big deal."

I could see she was close to tears now and I rushed to her side and enveloped her frail - still human - body with my arms. That did it. The floodgates burst and I held her even tighter to make myself feel like I had a hope in hell of protecting her from the intense fiery pain she was enduring. It had only been about five hours since Edward had finally bitten her, but it seemed like an eternity.

I remember the anger I felt when James, the tracker, noticed her. It was obvious - even to me, with no special mind reading talents or future seeing talents - that he wanted her blood very badly. I recall having a wild desire to approach him then and there and fighting him. The only reason I held off and stood back was Edward, giving me a hard look

But if I had attacked then, would it have saved Bella from all that torture, emotional and physical? I had never been sure, and it had haunted me ever since.

So it was satisfying when Jasper and I found James in the ballet studio near Bella's mother's house. It satisfied my outrage that someone would dare to harm Bella when we were finally able to finish him. I took pleasure in beating him and ending his existence and I don't regret doing it.

I couldn't go into that room and see Bella lying there, broken and battered like a doll, so I stayed outside with Jasper. I wouldn't have been able to control my stricken and loving emotions if I had seen her there, and Edward would have found out. I wanted to see her - the urge to hold her was overwhelming - but I controlled myself. Being immortal gives you patience and I used this to my advantage, telling myself that I would see her soon enough.

"Hey, hey," I murmured softly, rocking her still. "I love you because you're perfect in every way. You're nice and caring, funny and unpredictable and you're more than beautiful."

She snorted through her tears, "I'm beautiful? But Rosalie…"

"I don't love Rosalie, though," I reminded her sadly.

"Emmett?"

I nodded, but realized she probably couldn't see me. "Yeah?"

"If Edward and I weren't… together… would you…?"

Her deep blush was rendering her incoherent.

Again I nodded. "I would, and he knows that. I think it scares him."

"Wow," she breathed. "I think if Edward and Jacob didn't exist, you and I wouldn't be an impossibility."

"I'm flattered." This was more than I had expected; that she would have given me a chance were it not for her two open admirers.

Just then, Edward rushed in, looking every inch the overprotective and worried boyfriend. Fiancé, I had to remind myself. I hated using that word - it made me sad that Bella and I shared nothing but a good friendship, while Edward and Bella were deeply and madly in love.

"Bella!" he called to her, shouldering me aside and picking her up gently. He cradled her in his lap and talked to her softly.

"Bye Emmett… Talk to you tomorrow," she mumbled lazily, her hand busy tracing Edward's chest. I took this as my cue to leave and in my eyes, her dismissal was evened out by the fact that she was in severe pain and needed to be with her love to get through it.

Edward smiled, "No hard feelings," was his parting response as I left the room, unsettled and upset by Bella's hurt.

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We were running through the forest like bullets, almost faster than the speed of light. The only difference between this hunting trip and any other we had been on in Forks was that instead of there being seven vampires hunting, there were eight.

Bella was a striking newborn. Her somewhat plain brown hair had darkened and was now more chestnut coloured. Her skin was paler, though not much. She had always had very pale skin as a human, and now her skin colour was equal to ours. She, of course, was amazingly beautiful; her nose straighter, her lips fuller and her eyes wider. Her eyes were red, as any newborns' were, but they would fade to yellow if she stuck to our diet. Jasper and I had been taking bets on how much she would… slip up… in her first year as a vampire, but she seemed to be holding out very well.

Bella spoke in a quick voice, much quicker than before. "How often do you do this?"

"Whenever we need to," Esme replied, speaking equally fast.

"That is, when we can't be around humans without restraint," Carlisle added.

"How often normally?" she pressed. Their previous answers didn't seem to have satisfied her.

"Every couple of weeks, usually," Edward said.

And then she was speaking to Edward.

"When will we have the wedding?" she asked him, more quietly this time, but we were all vampires and we all possessed extremely good hearing and so we could all hear her.

"When would you like to have it?" He asked, a gentleman to the end. "Isn't Alice organizing it?"

"How about the twenty-third of August?" Alice suggested, running next to me with Jasper on her other side.

"I think so," Bella replied.

Jasper chuckled, "You don't need to be nervous."

And then we were there - our favourite hunting spot. It was twilight, so everything was bathed in a kind of half-light. We were in a small clearing several miles from our house, but this was not Edward's favourite clearing. The trees that stood here were taller, more imposing, and there was a lot more bush and foliage to hide behind. (We had once played hide-and-seek here, but it obviously hadn't worked. When Edward was in, he listened to what we were thinking to find out where we were hiding, and of course Alice could see where we had decided to hide.)

We planned to show Bella how to hunt, though she would have an instinctive feel as to how to do it. There were bears here, but no lions or any other large cats. More importantly, though, there were deer. These were the easiest to hunt, because they were slow - though all animals were slow to us - and because they didn't or couldn't fight back well.

One ambled into view, hardly frightened of us at all. I saw Bella eyeing it suspiciously, and with caution. Edward ran quickly and, with a feral snarl, he brought it down. It was very true to say that he looked like a lion when he hunted. He leaped onto his prey and used his weight to bring it tumbling to the ground.

He looked at Bella nervously, obviously worried that she would be scared off after seeing him hunt. It was rather a bit too late for that, though, and she smiled weakly.

"What if I suck?" she asked of everyone.

"You get better," Alice said optimistically. "Hmm… you're going to completely muck up your first try, but then you'll get the hang of it."

Bella snorted, "Great."

Next was Esme's turn - but Alice frowned. "Maybe Emmett should have this one," she suggested lightly.

"Why? What is it?" I asked, but I could guess.

"Grizzly," she answered.

I nodded, and took a tentative sniff of the air. I had been doing this for centuries, but I had never before been this nervous before a kill. It was Bella, of course. I didn't want to frighten her and at the same time I wanted to impress her with my hunting skills.

I could smell the honeyed and ravenous grizzly bear. It was close. Very close, in fact. It was upwind, which meant that it was behind the pine tree over to the left of where we were standing

But now I could smell something else. It was a very familiar smell to all of our noses, and I was sure that they could all smell it and knew what it was. Bella wouldn't know who the smell belonged to, though. All she could smell was an awful, rancid stench that the rest of us could easily identify as wolves.

"Ugh, what is that?" Bella complained, holding her nose.

I saw Edward grin out of the corner of my eye and he took on a protective stance next to Bella.

Carlisle took a step forward and spoke to the seemingly empty clearing. "We mean no harm," he said calmly. "I am sure you will understand why we did it - she wanted this of her own free will. Please keep the treaty standing."

"You broke the treaty, not us," Edward translated for Sam, the alpha in the pack.

Suddenly Bella understood. She tried to run forward to greet the wolves and Edward put out an arm absently, expecting to be able to stop her easily. He had forgotten about her newborn strength and she broke free of his grasp easily.

"Careful, Bella," Carlisle cautioned, "You cannot cross the border into their territory anymore."

A russet coloured wolf leapt forward to the border line and howled at Bella. She frowned in recognition.

"I'm sorry, Jake."

"Not as sorry as I am," Edward said in a low growl, obviously hating to translate for Jacob Black. "We need to talk. Can your… No, dog, I will not insult my kind! Anyway, can your people stand back so that we can talk alone?"

She nodded.

"So will mine," Edward finished translating, and gave her a hug. "You don't have to do this, you know."

She was firm. "Yes, I do."

And then we were gone, waiting for her. But I could not help myself; I was powerless to resist listening in. I listened as Jacob Black walked towards her with a forlorn and morose expression on his face. As I said, I couldn't help it.