So here's the next chapter – at long last – so I hope you all enjoy it and I hope it was worth the wait.

Massive thanks to my beta ms_ambrosia who helps make everything readable and to my twitter girls for the never ending WCs to get this written.

Thank you also to everyone who continues to review, favourite and support this fic.

I own nothing except the plot.

First Day

EPOV

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was the tapping that got me. The repetitive clank of the nickel in Jasper's fingers upon the marble kitchen work surface was driving me crazy. I didn't blame him though – if the thoughts were bad enough then I couldn't imagine what the emotions were like.

Or rather I could. Because not only could I read his mind as he processed the emotions, I could also feel the nerves radiating out from him.

It wasn't his fault though. The tension in the house had been terrible over the weekend and every member of the household was becoming more nervous and irritable by the second. Any minute now someone was going to burst.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Emmett's hand slammed down on Jasper's, flattening the nickel into dust.

Bella swallowed heavily before shoving another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. Even from across the room I could see that she was having trouble swallowing the food. Esme was bustling around her, alternating between manically cleaning the kitchen and fussing over Bella's appearance.

Even the normally cool Carlisle was peering anxiously over his morning newspaper at my adopted sister.

Esme was now running her hands over Bella's hair, smoothing it behind her ears as she choked down more cereal.

Emmett bounced lightly from foot to foot.

"Bella, stop." Jasper gently laid his hand over hers, halting the spoon in its path to her mouth. "You're going to make yourself sick if you try and eat anymore."

Bella obediently placed the cutlery back in the bowl, where it was promptly whisked away, washed and dried by Esme.

Carlisle cleared his throat and everyone's eyes shot to him. He wanted to check in with Bella before we left. That was good. If there were any problems we would know in advance and if necessary, as Bella's legal guardian, he could arrange to keep her home. I was sure that Esme would love the company.

"How are you feeling today, Bella? Looking forward to school?"

She nodded noncommittally and I saw Jasper frown at her, obviously reading something from her emotions that I couldn't pick up.

Esme had obviously seen Jasper's frown too. "Bella, honey, if you don't feel like going then you don't have to. You can just stay here with me and have the work brought back, like before. Isn't that right, Carlisle?"

"No, I think Bella should go to school," he replied, and my mother swivelled to face him.

"But Carlisle..."

"No." His voice was firm and I could tell from his thoughts that he would hold firm on this pronouncement. "Bella needs to get out amongst other people her age and dragging it out won't help."

He looked up at Jasper as he spoke and my brother nodded wordlessly back at him. Ah, they had already spoken about this. That made sense with my brother acting as Bella's unofficial guardian.

"I'll be fine." The whisper was quiet, but all of us heard it clearly. Bella was twisting her fingers anxiously, her teeth massacring her bottom lip. It was clear that she was uncomfortable with the attention that she was being given and I wondered if her nervousness was down to her own anxiety, or if the rest of the family's emotions were feeding into her.

'Do you think this is going to go on for a while?'

I glanced up at Emmett and nodded quickly, tilting my head towards the door. He took my cue and clapped his hands together loudly.

"Right, I say let's get a move on, otherwise we'll be late."

Everyone seemed to break out of a trance as he spoke, Bella sliding off her chair and running up the stairs to gather her coat and bag from her room. The rest of us donned our human props, ready to face the first day of term.

Emmett, Jasper and I gathered by the front door, waiting for Bella to come downstairs, Esme and Carlisle trailing behind us.

Eventually Bella clumped down the stairs, tripping on the second to last one and Jasper shot forward to catch her. She blushed as he righted her on the carpeted hall and I had to swallow down a mouthful of venom as the tinge of fresh blood lit up her face.

Esme immediately darted forward again, adjusting Bella's clothes and hair repeatedly until Carlisle wrapped his hands around her shoulders and drew her back.

"Well, have a good day at school, Bella." Esme's voice was shaky and her eyes were suspiciously bright. In her mind she was both berating herself for her neediness and trying not to hug Bella and never let her go.

"Just remember, Bella, that if you become uncomfortable or if anything happens, your brothers will be there and can either look after you or phone one of us to come and get you."

Bella smiled tremulously at Carlisle and Emmett quickly whisked her out the door. I moved to follow, but halted halfway out when Esme suddenly grabbed Jasper's arm. He froze and unconsciously considered defending himself from the perceived attack before relaxing.

"You will look after her, won't you? You won't let her be scared. What if she doesn't make any friends? What if she's doesn't do well in her classes? Will you sit with her at lunch? I'll be so worried if she doesn't have anyone to sit with..." Her mind, along her mouth, was running at an almost incomprehensible speed, her fears for Bella compounding on top of one another until she was convinced that Bella would never be happy at school and should just be tutored instead.

"Esme." Jasper had taken Esme's hands and was lightly emitting calm towards her. "We'll take care of her. Stop worrying."

I decided to rescue him. "We're going to be late."

Carlisle nodded at us both and we left hastily, unwilling to be caught up in another emotional outburst from Esme.

It was curious to observe. Esme had never really had the chance to mother any of the family properly beyond me. Being her first 'son' and the youngest when turned meant that I often received the benefit of her maternal instincts regardless of whether I needed them or not. Jasper and Emmett had been too old to benefit from excess mothering, although Emmett sometimes indulged her. So it was – and I hated to use the word – sweet to see her find a willing child who would actually gain much from her attentions.

I did think that there could be too much of a good thing though; she would need to tone down her concern if she didn't want Bella to be uncomfortable.

Climbing into the driver's seat of the Volvo, I noted that in the back Bella was desperately clinging to Emmett's hand in a way which looked like it would be painful if he were human.

A heavy silence hung over the car as we drove to school. To my surprise it was Bella who broke the quiet.

"So, I'll be at the same school as you guys?"

"Yes." Emmett was relieved to be talking. He never liked uncomfortable silences, always preferring to confront things head on. "The town's too small with too few pupils to have a separate junior and high school, so it's all in the same building." He winked at Bella. "So that means we'll still be able to keep an eye on you."

Bella laughed nervously at that. "Oh yeah, I forgot I'm not in the same year as any of you."

"Nah, me and Jasper look too old to pass for any younger than sixteen and Edward can barely get away with pretending to be a freshman."

"How come you have to start out pretending to be so young?" she questioned.

This time it was Jasper who answered. "Carlisle and Esme want you to be as settled as possible while you're still in school. The younger we pretend to be initially the longer we can stay in one place before people start to notice that we're not aging. We were hoping that you'd be able to finish out high school here."

"Oh." Bella considered that for a minute and, not for the first time, I wanted to know what she was thinking.

"So, we should be here for another four and a half years," Jasper continued.

My sister nodded before we all fell into silence once more. Turning the corner into the school parking lot, a flood of voices hit me and I winced.

Everyone's thoughts, as well as much of the talking I could hear, revolved around the new student who would be arriving and what she would be like. My brothers and I were already a source of gossip in this place, being both relatively new and aloof from the rest of the students. Throwing Bella into the mix was just adding fuel to the fire.

Parking, we all piled out of the car and the stares immediately hit us. Bella whimpered audibly at the attention and sidled behind Emmett's bulk out of sight, once again gripping his arm. Jasper was breathing heavily, obviously struggling to deal with the emotional turmoil that was he was being bombarded with.

We hadn't thought of this. We were used to being the centre of attention; it was natural to experience human curiosity and wariness. Bella wasn't expecting the degree of speculation she was about to be subjected to though and I felt guilty for not forewarning her.

As we made our way across the lot to the front office to get Bella's schedule I began to hear it.

'...with the Cullens...'

'...wonder what she's doing with them...'

'...she's not really that pretty...'

'...maybe if we became friends then I would have a chance with Jasper, he's...'

'...holding hands. Maybe they're secretly together...'

'...be hot when she fills out a bit...'

'...wouldn't mind tapping that...'

My head swivelled sharply in the direction of the last two mental voices that had infiltrated my mind and wasn't surprised to see Matt Adams and Joshua Hartfield staring lustily at Bella. The two boys and their friends were notorious troublemakers with no respect for women. Half the girls in the school were terrified of them and one, Lisa Jenson, was alleged to have committed suicide after a date with the gang's ringleader, Royce King, went badly. It was unfortunate that wealth could hide a multitude of wrongdoings. These boys, I had no doubt, would probably end up growing up to be the kind of men I used to hunt during my...rebellious phase.

So it was with a great degree of anger that I intruded upon their mental musings and I wasn't the only one annoyed. Jasper had picked up on their lust towards Bella too and was also glaring in their direction, a low growl resounding from both of us.

A meaty hand shoved into my side, pushing me into Jasper, and I turned to face Emmett who was scowling at us.

"Knock it off, you guys. We're already drawing enough attention to ourselves as it is without you growling at people."

"Sorry," I muttered, pissed off that I wasn't able to defend my little sister in this environment. If only we didn't have to act human I could...

"Edward, can you please stop the murderous impulses when I'm trying not to kill everyone here." Jasper was breathing heavily and I realised that I must have been sending a heavy amount of rage his way for the last few minutes.

"Look," Emmett broke in. "Why don't I go with Bella to the office and get her settled in class and you two can go and do...whatever."

I chanced a look at Bella and noticed that she was beginning to look rather green around the gills at all the attention. Our behaviour was only stressing her out more.

"We'll go," I agreed, before seeing that Jasper was about to protest. "Well, I'll go anyway."

Shaking my head, I ran my hands through my hair and made my way to my English class. Today was going to be interesting.

As it turned out today wasn't interesting after all...it was complete hell.

Everyone was talking about Bella. Everyone was thinking about Bella. And by extension they were then talking and thinking about my brothers and our family as well.

Everywhere I went I was confronted by Bella's image in people's minds. As close as I had become to her over the last few months, I was still the family member who spent the least time with her. As hard as I tried to fight against it, her blood still appealed to me in a way that none other's had and I was feeding almost daily in an effort to curb my thirst.

But now, everywhere I turned, Bella, Bella, Bella.

Just the picture of her face in the minds of the children, dimmed of course by their inferior vision, was enough to remind me of that sweet scent and what it would taste like if I would only just bite.

However, my longing for her blood, inspired by the thoughts of those in the school, was tempered by the other images of her that I was seeing.

Some were innocent enough: Bella hanging out with friends, Bella going shopping, Bella having a study session.

Others were not: Bella kissing David Farrow, Bella biting her lip, Bella dancing seductively, Bella doing a striptease, Bella bent over a...

Jesus Christ. I shook my head viciously, trying to physically remove that particular daydream from my mind. Unfortunately the perpetrator of that particular thought was two floors up and three classrooms along, so there wasn't much I could do about it.

But good God, she was only fourteen. What were they thinking?

I had grown used to the overactive adolescent daydreams of our peers – if they were indeed that – regarding myself and my brothers. Our inhumane attractiveness was useful when hunting for prey, but less so when it came to the attention it drew towards us. We had come to expect their lustful interest, but it had never occurred to me that Bella would also be the focus of such considerations.

By the time lunch came around my nerves were on edge and my hands felt like they were permanently clenched into fists. Grabbing a tray, I loaded it with food before stalking over to the table where Jasper was already sat and slamming it down. Throwing myself into a seat I leaned forward, my elbows on the table, my head in my hands.

"You too, huh?" Jasper's smile was wry, his voice tired.

"I knew it would be bad and I knew there would be gossip, but..."

"Not this bad," he finished for me.

"Not this bad," I repeated. "How are you holding up?"

He grinned at me. "I've already mentally dismembered over fifty percent of the male population of this school." Jasper shook his head. "What I don't understand is how they look at her, the lust, the desire, she's just a child."

"Maybe we only see it that way because she's our little sister."

Jasper glared at me. "You're telling me that if you were human, if you were still seventeen, that you'd honestly be attracted to a fourteen year old? That you'd be attracted to Bella?"

"Who's attracted to Bella?" Emmett's loud voice interrupted our stare-off and I shook my head at Jasper before turning to face him.

"Everyone apparently," Jasper answered.

"What?" Emmett was completely clueless.

"It seems that as well as the students harbouring a certain amount of curiosity towards Bella, the boys in particular are paying her a lot of interest."

"But she's my little sister." He was utterly bewildered, his mind completely unable to comprehend the idea that Bella could be viewed as a sexual being by others. "She's only fourteen."

"Yeah. That's what we said."

"But...she's only fourteen."

Emmett's mind was stuck on a memory of Bella from a few weeks ago, just before Christmas. It had been two days since the blood incident and he and Jasper had vanished back up to Alaska at Esme's request. In his absence I had taken over reading to Bella before bed and that particular night we were halfway through Wuthering Heights. Bella had never read it before, but was immediately enraptured by the tale of Cathy and Heathcliffe. I thought the novel was insipid, but our collection of fiction was surprisingly low and Bella had a penchant for the classics.

In the middle of a sentence I paused, hearing the door click quietly open and Carlisle greet my brothers. Not five seconds later a soft knock came at the bedroom door and Emmett entered with his hands behind his back. Making my excuses, I wished Bella goodnight and retired to my room, seeing perfectly in my head the moment when he presented her with her childhood toy.

Her squeals of delight had rang throughout the house and she jumped out of bed, hugging Emmett tightly. Eventually he had settled her down enough so that she lay back in bed, curled up in pyjamas with dancing snowmen on them, hugging her stuffed toy tightly.

That was the image of Bella that Emmett carried with him. That was the problem he was having with this new information.

A hush suddenly spread over the cafeteria as Bella entered the room. To my surprise she walked in alone, steadfastly ignoring the stares and whispers that greeted her. Grabbing an apple and a bottle of lemonade, she quickly walked over to us and sat down.

We watched as she picked at the skin of the apple, her eyes fixed on her task. The concern radiating from the three of us would have been funny if we weren't so worried.

"Uh, Bells, are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She smiled brightly at Emmett, but it didn't reach her eyes.

I focused in on what Jasper was receiving from her: embarrassment, hurt, irritation. Emmett looked up pleadingly at us and we both shrugged.

"Bella," he tried again. "If you don't want to sit with us you don't have to. I know we said you could, but that was only if you wanted to. If you want to sit with someone else we won't be offended."

"Speak for yourself," Jasper joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Bella smiled half-heartedly before biting a chunk out of her apple. We exchanged glances over her head.

"Bella, are you alright? Was your morning ok?" This time it was Jasper trying to break Bella out of her silence.

"I'm fine, really. I just wanted to spend time with you guys. Is that a crime?" This time the grin that lit up her face was more convincing and I shook my head at Emmett who was about to coax her out of her silence again.

"Of course it's not a crime, Bella. But if you're going to sit with us you have to learn the rules."

"Rules?" she glanced up questioningly at Jasper.

He pushed his tray across the table towards her. "You have to eat something other than an apple."

Bella scrunched her face up. "I'm not really..."

"What would Esme think?"

I smiled at my sister, currently levelling Jasper with a death glare.

"Tell you what..." She leaned forward challengingly. "I'll eat something else, if you do too."

She picked a slice of pizza off of my tray and held it up to her mouth before pausing. Jasper growled under his breath at her and she giggled in response. Grabbing his own slice of pizza, he shoved the entire piece into his mouth and swallowed after the minimum amount of chewing, grimacing at the taste.

Emmett guffawed at the look of complete shock on Bella's face and I hid a smile behind my hand.

"Well?" He gestured towards her food and she begrudgingly took a bite before chewing in silence.

Although Bella seemed amused enough by our behaviour and joking around during lunch, she was uncommonly quiet and it worried both my brothers. When the bell rang she sighed heavily and gathered up her belongings. Jasper decided to accompany her to her next class as she didn't know where the room was.

Emmett and I remained behind.

"She's not telling us something."

I hummed in agreement and he turned to me, a desperate look across his face.

"What's happened? Do you and Jasper know?"

"No," I denied. "We only know that she's upset and you could see that for yourself. The children's thoughts are all over the place today with her arrival as well so it's difficult to pick anything specific up."

I clapped him on the arm as we walked down the corridors to our next classes. "Emmett, I'm sure if it's anything then she'll tell you."

"Right. Right." He took a deep, unnecessary breath before letting it slowly out. "She'll come to me if she wants to talk. Right." He wandered off down the corridor and I made my own way to algebra. I hoped that I was right in my assessment of the day and if anything was bothering Bella she would eventually talk to Emmett about it.

Maybe the stress of the day had just gotten to her. We had made a big deal out of it after all; it was natural that it wouldn't live up to expectations. Whatever the cause of Bella's sadness, I could only hope that she would have a better afternoon at school than she had that morning.

My hopes were unmet, however, when at the end of the day we were met by a sullen Bella in the parking lot. No attempts at teasing were made as I drove us all home and when we reached the house Bella pushed past the waiting Esme and ran upstairs, slamming and locking the door to her room behind her.

Esme was already half-hysterical by this turn of events and I pulled her into a hug. "Just give her a bit of time, she's had a bad day."

"We should probably all give her a bit of time," Jasper agreed, pointedly looking at Emmett who had been sidling not so subtly towards the stairs.

Squeezing Esme lightly, I let her go, wandering over to the piano and letting my fingers wander idly across the keys.

And then we heard it - a light snuffling, obviously muffled, coming from upstairs, swiftly followed by a choked sob.

Bella. In pain.