***This fanfiction is also posted on Archive of our Own under our pen-names dontyoudarestiles and MadTheLine. I strongly suggest you keep up with the fanfic on that site instead, as we are more consistent with formatting there and we update there first. We give longer notes, chapter summaries, and respond to all of your reviews on that website. Plus the website layout is much more convenient for reading on both mobile and desktop. It's better for your eyes!

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The sharp pinging of water dripping into the metal bowl of the kitchen sink.

The sound of Carlisle's queen sliding on the chess table as Esme audibly strategized a way to take his castle.

Rosalie and Emmett drag racing 500 meters away from the house sent an irksome roar with unpredictable crescendos towards Edward's bedroom.

Alice's mind frankly blared with the sound of Smashing Pumpkins coming out of the tiny earphones she was wearing.

"Be ashamed of the mess you've made, my eyes never forget you see, behind me...
Quiet! I am sleeping!"

A book falling off of Alice's bed. Thump.

Ping! The sink again.

Vrooom. Rosalie rushing past in her fiery convertible.

Th-thump. Swish-swish. Th-thump. Swish-swish. The load of laundry that Alice had put in 10 minutes before was just finishing the wash cycle and was about to enter the dreaded rinse cycle.

A staccato laugh from the library where his parents played chess.

Ping!

The hum of the radiator, the boiler-frankly unnecessary (Ping!) for 6 vampires, but Esme insisted the warmth made her feel more human. Edward commiserated.

Ping!

Th-thump.

Jasper's clothes rustling, his shoulders hunching as he takes aim, then BOOM! CLUNK! The can he had lined up out back goes flying, no match for his double barrel rifle. Frankly overkill, but (Ping!) it's still better than Jasper taking out his anger on the local human population.

Ping!

Th-thump. Swish-swish.

Vroooooooom.

BOOM!-CLUNK!

Ping!

"Quiet! I am sleeping..."

Ping!

"ENOUGH!"

Edward bolted upright from his position lying on his couch and ripped his own "noise-canceling" headphones off. It seemed they didn't quite standup to vampire-level hearing, nor vampire level strength since the force of his throw sent them flying, tearing the fragile cord connecting them to his Walkman. He stood heaving, as if he had been running, and needed to breathe at all.

Downstairs he heard Esme and Carlisle's minds turn to him in concern before making their conclusions and pulling back toward their game once more.

Already regretful, he picked up the broken headphones from where they had fallen, thankful that he hadn't accidentally damaged his CD player. It was the one thing he'd kept from their last move.

Edward didn't mind the noise, usually. Years with vampire-level super-hearing had him accustomed to tuning out whatever was needed whenever the world grated too much. It was more the absence of a certain kind of noise that bothered him. All day, every day Edward could hear the sounds of daily life, of his family. Yet, at home, he barely heard any proof of life. Real life. Not a single heartbeat jumped out at him, not even the single chambered thump of an insect. It seemed every creature in the vicinity knew what kind of family they were.

He opened his window and jumped out, speeding without thought to the meadow. All of a sudden, the sounds of life jumped out at him once more-the faint buzz of insects, the rustle of rabbits in the undergrowth, even the light taps of deer hoofs against damp earth. He sighed in relief. Asides from school, the meadow was the one place where he could relax among the living, and forget, if only for a little while, the monster he truly was. He lay down in the heath, closed his eyes and focused. The soft susurration of blood flowing through the veins of a rabbit. Edward wrinkled his nose, ignoring the call of the creature's veins. He refocused on the gentle tinkling of the nearby stream, periodically interrupted by the splash of a trout, heard the creaks and groans of an old beech that housed a pair of marsh hawks, just returned from their journey south for the winter. A white moth fluttered through the budding flowers of the heath, stalked by a clumsy-footed fox pup, his mother lurking nearby. The pup was less than 100 meters from where Edward lay, stiller than the trees that swayed gently above him like dancing giants. May gloried around him and all was tranquil.

He smelled them first, the gagging odor of dog and blood and rotten fur, but they weren't doing anything to mask their footsteps either, unfamiliar bodies rustling through the forest.

Edward didn't bother getting up, only lifted his neck to see them emerge from the dark of the trees, beastly figures prowling as low to the ground as they could get, fluffed scruffs bristling in the quiet morning.

The fox pup, startled, loped on back to its den, unnoticed by the figures in the clearing.

The largest of the La Push wolves transformed, a disturbing sight at night, but skin-crawling in the daylight. Fur rippled and peeled back, bones popping, muscles flexing, melting, and then reforming. Sam Uley stood in the same place the alpha had, mocha-skinned, naked as the day he was born, eyes like ink spilling around before focusing in on Edward, still splayed on the ground.

"Wolf." Edward's voice was low, but carried high, and Uley's dogs snarled, curling around him and branching out, three, then four great beasts with devil-fangs and demon eyes.

"Cullen," said Uley, a smile without substance on his lips. His mind was cool and smooth, like the surface of a lake, ever-shifting, but pliable all the same and he didn't even have to speak before Edward had caught his orders.

"You've been summoned to a tribunal for breaching the treaty," the damning words, spoken coolly.

"I figured." Edward stared up at the cool expanse of blue sky, reflected in the alpha's mind.

"Breaking the treaty comes with consequences, as you well know." Uley was strangely respectful for a wolf, mind void of distaste, but curling with anger and possessiveness. My land, this man, on my land, a ringing cry in Uley's mind, echoed and warped in his wolves'.

"Carlisle has been told, I assume." Edward stood slowly, brushing off stray bits of grass and petals that clung to him.

Uley dipped his head, an affirmative. "You are to come with us."

The four unchanged wolves showed their teeth gleefully, tails curling over their spines in delight. Dogs.

Edward smacked his lips against his teeth. He made no motion to try to escape. "So be it. Lead the way."

...

The old men and women were familiar, faces easily recognizable from visits to Forks. Casually dressed, they struck Edward more as fishermen, hunters, carpenters and craftsmen than chieftains of a legendary tribe of animal warriors. He'd seen more than one of the older women at the community center knitting. One face stuck out to him immediately, that of Billy Black, the former pack alpha and the current tribe leader. Jacob, Beau's best friend, was infamously Billy's son. Jacob was protective of Beau, but scrawny and long-haired, and Edward hoped, no matter how unlikely, that he would stay that way. For if Jacob turned, there was little chance he wouldn't succeed to turn Beau against Edward and his family forever.

Billy's face, sown with sunspots and stress-lines, was yet young, despite his wheelchair and gentile air, the same age as Charlie Swan. He was most definitely younger than Edward. However simple biology was in Black's favor: Edward was self-aware enough to realize that he developmentally remained frozen in his adolescent maturity and still lacked the wisdom that graced Billy Black's face, pinched with concern.

Other elders sat reclined in folding lawn chairs around the ancient bonfire pit seemingly built into the side of the seashore cliff. The pit was empty, ashes washed away by a high-tide, but still the men and women clustered around, skin stained from hazelnut to darkest amber, perched like old forest gods in broad daylight. They didn't seem perturbed much at all by the circumstances. Harry Clearwater even chuckled deep in his chest at something Edward didn't catch as he and Sam's wolves arrived, the younger canines loping off to the side and crawling on their bellies in respect to the head chiefs.

"...smitten, yes indeed," Harry broke off at their entrance. "Edward Cullen." Harry turned and smiled at him without malice.

"Mr. Clearwater." Edward's hands twitched at his sides, awkward.

Clearwater had a friendly, open face, and his mind was much similar, bittersweet lemonade and earthy thyme. He's young yet, and Edward pulled away from his thoughts, disgruntled. He had a least half a century on the man.

"Perhaps you could explain to these gentlemen why exactly you felt it was necessary to all of a sudden break the treaty?" Eyes glinted at him from all sides, some amused, others indignant, few legitimately angry. It was baffling.

"Hmmm?" Harry's kind eyes looked at him expectantly.

Edward decided to go with the truth. "My friend was sick. I feared I would never see him again. I was wrong. I apologize deeply for the intrusion, but I felt compelled to see him one last time."

"Beauregard Swan?" Billy Black spoke up, mouth disapproving.

"Yessir." Edward shifted. "He went through a fever a week ago. I-I assumed he was Changing."

The crowd rippled, glances exchanged, but no murmurs, and Edward reached out, desperately confused.

—Poor boy—

—Alaqua's blood through and through

—knew it

But Billy's mind was a cluster of consonants and vowels, tangled together in a miasma of what Edward assumed was the Quileute language, rough and smooth on the tongue at the same time, vague impressions of images (Beau, slick with the fever, cheeks flushed, but then an older woman's face, eyes silver and stern, mouth forming Quileute words, Beau again, this time as a child, dripping river water in Black's threshold, mouth a pink, plum pout, Jacob laughing, "Princess").

Edward retreated again, eyes squinting in frustration.

And then the women and men stood, inexplicably, some of the men even pulling off their hats. A woman stepped down from a cliff-side pathway, which looked too rocky for a woman of her age and height, and Edward knew this was Beau's grandmother, the same elder lady as the one in Billy's memories.

"Mama Swan," said Billy, the only one still sitting, and reached out for her hand. Billy looked incredibly young sitting next to this ancient creature, but she was sprightly, and pinched his cheek before he could dodge.

"Good morning, William," and Billy looked exasperated, like she'd been calling him that since he was a child. Liquid eyes looked at him, and Edward wondered whether this was what it was like to have his mind read. She seemed to peer straight through him, like he was a strange ghost that would disappear into the mist if she looked away. "Is this him, then?"

"Yes'm," Billy answered.

Mama Swan pursed her mouth. "Hah. Beau has some taste, then does he?" Her voice was soft and deep, a thick fog on a sticky summer night.

Billy's eyebrow twitched, but admirably he held his comments to himself. It didn't stop Edward from overhearing them and what 'Uncle Billy' thought of Beau's companionship with him.

"I'll take him," declared Mama Swan, and the men shifted, but said nothing, strangely. Some murmurings at the back were quickly silenced by an arched eyebrow from the older women and they acquiesced.

"Mama," began Billy, a protest forming on his mouth, but she shot him a look and repeated, "I will take him."

And that was that.

She was an old, hunched woman with nut brown skin and grey streaked hair, her eyes going filmy with cataracts, but Edward knew from experience that her fingers were hard, strong claws. She dragged him up the cliffs and out to the very woods he'd trespassed upon, hand clutching his bicep like a little one getting dragged out of church for squirming during the hymn. The wolves followed sedately, great fluffy creatures loping lazily at the edge of his senses, claws pattering on the leaf-covered ground.

"They don't mean any harm, the little brutes," she said, and despite her age her gate was as smooth as any young woman's. They walked for a time on a trodden path weaving through the trees, the grass worn away by old shuffling feet, narrow enough that Ed got the sense that only Alaqua walked it daily, no one else. They only stopped once they reached a relatively clear area but for a shackish house, old stained wood and windows cloudy with dust, a porch creaking under their footsteps as they ventured up the steps, a fat brick chimney poking the sky jauntily like a top-hat.

"You go on in, I'll be there in a hot second." Her eyes gleamed like miniature moons in a hazel-tint face.

Edward did as she asked.

The threshold reeked of kerosene and sugar, gasoline tainted silver-sweet in the air, and Edward's arms crawled with it. It got worse the further he went inside. Piquant magic swelled in the air, a brimming pulse, steeped into every crevice like pepper tea. Edward stopped breathing so he wouldn't have to taste it every time he opened his mouth.

"Sorry about the smell," said Alaqua, holding a broken set of wind-chimes, blown glass in shades of blue and green hanging from wrought iron. He watched as Beau's grandmother shuffled on into the parlor, setting the cracked chimes down on the stained coffee table. "You make yourself comfortable, darling, we'll be here for a while."

Edward parked himself on a cute, plush armchair in a pale purple, sinking down into a cloud of magic, and had he been human, he would've sneezed. She sat down across from him, knotted hands smoothing over the chimes.

"The tricky thing with glass, you know, it's so fragile." She tapped one shard, and it rang sweetly as a bell. "But when it's broken—" The edge sliced into her finger, and a bud of red bloomed and then spilled. It smelled like the house, metal and copper and sweet-edged fire. "It cuts deeply."

Edward could recognize a metaphor when it slapped him across the face.

She grinned at him. One of her canines had been replaced with gold, and it glinted when she smiled. "But glass isn't irreparable. It can always—" A hazel finger smudged blood over the glass, and the edges rippled, liquefied, glowed with heat, and then reformed, melding with its twin as she twisted the two pieces together. They smoothed and then cooled, hardened. "Mend. But only if heated to perfect temperature."

It wasn't the first time Edward had seen magic. A Roma woman in late 1960s Poland, an Irish witch in 1930s Brooklyn. Carlisle had told him of his experiences during the Salem tragedy, a shadow passing over his eyes whenever the incident was brought up. It was one of Carlisle's traditions to bring his newly turned children to the site to warn them of the dangers of humans, of what they could do to those they perceived as abnormal, bizarre, inhuman. And Edward had heard rumors about other sects in London and Scotland, but had never followed the rumors to their root, discouraged enough after what happened in Poland.

But Alaqua was of a different stock than those he had met before. Magic cloaked her, soaked her from skin to bone, and it layered her mind, and when he reached out to touch, it pushed him back, a gentle tap on his wrist, a soft but firm no.

He had never seen such magic before, except, perhaps, in Beau.

His mouth dropped so quickly there was a click, and Alaqua laughed, delighted.

"So you've finally pieced it together, hmm," a throaty hum, and a flash of gold in her teeth. "Ah, Beau isn't a wolf, not the kind you feared he'd be, no." She reattached the newly fixed glass piece to its place in the iron, and the chimes clinked together again, as if greeting an old friend.

"He's—"

"Yes, magic. Like me." She grinned again. "It skipped Charlie, thank god."

"Oh, Christ," Edward said. "Does he know? Beau? About being—?"

"It's diluted in him. My blood is strong, but my husband, bless him, wasn't Quileute. And neither is Beau's mother." She sighed, smiling faintly. "Whatever gifts my grandson has, they aren't apparent in him yet, and neither will they be exactly like mine. The mixing of the blood—it hasn't been done, not willingly, in many years, and never with a child of Yut's children."

"Is that what you are?" asked Edward faintly. He gripped his purple armchair tightly. "A child of Yut?"

"We call ourselves Pitichu Wisastsu'upat." The word splintered into the air like glass. "Moon Woman is the direct translation. Like the moon pushes and pulls the tides, we influence the nature of all things. We bring change, but we also bring balance."

"Woman?"

"Yut has never had a male heir before. Beau is the exception," she said, and glanced out the window, caked with dust. "I really should clean that."

Edward's teeth gritted. "I don't understand."

Her inky eyes looked at him, the window, and then she said, "Let me show you."

...

Two months earlier.

...

He shone in every mind, was the word on everyone's lips. Beau. The new boy. He was only a temporary disruption in the purgatory he called high school. It would only take a few days, a week at most, before the glimmer faded and the monotony of Forks resumed. But presently, the distraction lingered. Some of the poor girls of the school already fancied themselves in love with him.

For the most part, Edward tried his hardest to ignore all of the thoughts and voices crowding up the hallways, tuning out the most private details of each person's thoughts, less out of courtesy and more out of self-preservation. To know the secrets of every hormonal teen in Forks High was a burden no one should bear.

At lunch, curiosity and boredom at last won out, and he focused his thoughts on the Swan kid, who sat nonchalantly on the other side of the lunchroom, with Jessica Stanley's little clique. They were gossiping, unsurprisingly knowing Jessica, about the "mysterious Cullens."

Edward listened in amusedly as Jessica gushed over his family, and elbowed Alice, whom was sat next to him. When he had her attention he nodded discreetly in the direction of Jessica's table, tapping his ear to indicate she use her super-hearing. She smiled, overhearing Jessica bumbling along and motioned to Rosalie, Jasper and Emmett to listen in as well.

"What?" Jessica mocked. "Is that all you can say?"

"I'm confused," Beau frowned. "And kind of starstruck, actually, and I don't even... know who they are? Should I be swooning or something, 'cause hubba hubba. Can I say man-candy?"

If Edward had been a human, he would've turned the color of beets, he was so mortified. Emmett and Alice visibly struggled not to lose it, while Jasper and Rosalie closed their eyes in silent suffering. Edward's eyes shifted over to the daring human, sandwiched between mousy Angela Weber and dullish Michael Newton.

Beau was short and thin, but not lanky. He was milk-white, cheeks pinked with embarrassment, dark curls spilling almost artfully against his forehead, inky eyes bracketed by chunky glasses. Edward could understand why the girls of Forks High were so easily endeared by him. He was endearing, and nonthreatening, different from the broadened American boys that roughhoused in the hallways and bruised their friends with their ungentle touch. His clumsy humor seemed to fit him, at least, making him an approachable boy, not cold or aloof. And to his own surprise, Edward found himself charmed, found himself listening intently for Beau's self-deprecating rejoinders.

They were always unexpected and different, which surprised Edward, made him smile into his 'lunch'. But something was off. For most of his non-life Edward had been accustomed to hearing the thoughts spoken aloud echoed first, or edited first by a person's mind, even if he wasn't intentionally listening in on their thoughts. There was no surprise in what people said or their actions, every motion, every thought already illustrated to him milliseconds before a hand was outstretched or a word chosen.

In Beau's case, all was silent. There was no whispers, no ever-present hum in the background, no flashes of images or wave of emotions vibrating around him. Just a miniature ocean of quiet. Edward probed deeper, searching for Beau, but snapped back to himself in shock when suddenly he felt a pulsing wall gently, but firmly pushing him back.

"Alice."

Alice and Emmett were recovering from a laughing fit over something that Beau had said. Edward had missed it in his distraction.

"Yeah?" Alice wheezed out.

"I can't read his mind. The new boy. I can't read his mind."

Alice immediately sobered at the alarm in his eyes. "Edward look at me. Can you read me?"

He immediately closed his eyes and reached out for her. Pictures instantly familiar to him appeared: Carlisle in scrubs, greeting them at the hospital, the wind whipping icily through Alice's short hair as she raced Edward through the woods last Thursday, the surprised sound of Jasper's rare laugh, and he sighed in relief. "I can read you. I can still hear everyone else. Just not him."

Edward looked over at the boy.

Something had changed. Where the air had been tepid and suffocating before, it was now buzzing with static. Anticipation bloomed in his chest, rippling down to his wrists and stretching into his fingers. As if the town itself could feel it, Forks was awake and in motion.

...

That was two months ago.

He was back in his own house, unscathed, unpunished, but for the new kernel of knowledge burrowed in the back of his skull, blooming with new consequences. He sat near the window looking out at the trees shifting with the breeze, sun splashing the sky in shades of gold and ember and bruising purple as it dipped down beneath the horizon towards La Push in the distance.

Alaqua had told him, with curling blossoms of sand and dust and magic, and when she was done, she fixed him with a look. An old look. "You have to make a choice, Edward," she said. "The distance that has grown between you two is your doing, not his."

"I was trying to protect him," he argued, but quieted at her soft, derisive laugh.

"Trying to protect him from what? You can't protect him from his own nature, vampire," and she stood, gathering her shawl around her shoulders. "Whether you like it or not, Beau will learn what he is, and what you are. You can't stop it any more than you can stop your skin from shining in the sun."

Edward grimaced.

"Your intentions were good," she said, softening slightly towards him. "But you're not his father, Edward. You cannot make decisions for him anymore than he can make them for you. He has a right to know himself. This is his world as much as it is yours. It's up to you whether or not you two can share that world."

Chastised, Edward had crept back into Forks, wolves trailing his steps, claws clacking against rock and root. Alice had tried to intercept him at the doorway, but he'd shaken his head and blurred into his room, conflicted.

Jasper complained—what's his problem, I can feel his confusion halfway across the forest.

And Edward was confused, yes, but it went deeper than that. He was guilty, guiltier than before if that were possible, because everything he had done for Beau to protect him, it was unnecessary.

Alaqua was right. Beau would know what Edward was, and he would hate him for it. He wondered whether it would be better to just tell Beau straight out what he was. Maybe Beau would hate him less then.

But no matter what happened, Edward had to make things right. Or at least try.

He needed to tell Beau the truth.

...

This is a disclaimer. All Native American mythology used in this fanfiction is fictionalized. While some of our myths are inspired by myths from the works of Stephanie Meyers, we are NOT a reputable source for Native American myths, and neither can we vouch for her accuracy either. We do not mean to offend anyone of Native heritage and if any reader of Native American ancestry has any suggestions for improving our representation or has an issue with the representation of Native American culture in this piece we encourage you to contact us, privately or in the comments. We did attempt to do research on real Quileute myths, but there was a surprising lack of myths to be found online and that which we did find did not suit the story we were writing. That said, if we did misrepresent any aspect gravely, we do apologize and will seek to correct any mistakes. We have nothing but respect for other cultures, especially marginalized groups like indigenous peoples.

Chapter Title Song: Claire de Lune by Claude DeBussy