Disclaimer. All publicly recognizable characters, settings etc., are the property of their respective owners. The original characters, ideas and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. I only do this for fun. – B

Dhampir: Broken Moonlight

A/N: If you have any questions or comments, post them in my reviews and I will answer them in my next Author's Note! I look forward to reading your reviews along with your thoughts on the story! – Bella'Xo

Chapter 19
(Bella's POV)

I woke shuddering, my scream muffled by my pillow as Lilly gently coaxed me awake.

"Hey, are you alright, Bella?" She asked me tenderly, brushing the sweaty hair that as stuck to my forehead off and behind my ear.

"Thanks Lilly," I told her gratefully, my voice a bit groggy and hoarse and I wiped my eyes and collapsed against my pillow and continued to lay in bed as the dim morning light filtered through the fog outside my window as I tried to shake off the dream. There had been a small difference last night, and I concentrated on that.

Last night I had not been alone in the woods. Sam Uley – the man who had pulled me from the forest floor that night I couldn't bear to think of consciously – was there. It was an odd, unexpected alteration.

The man's dark eyes had been surprisingly unfriendly, filled with some secret he didn't seem inclined to share. I'd stared at him as often as my frantic searching had allowed; it made me uncomfortable, under all the usual panic, to have him there. Maybe that was because when I didn't look directly at him, his shape seemed to shiver and change in my peripheral vision. Yet he did nothing but stand and watch. Unlike the time when we had met in reality, he did not offer me his help.

"Come on, Bella. Time to get up." Lilly insisted as I pulled the covers back up over my head, not in the mood to go back to school this week.

Ugh, I hated Mondays.

"I'm not anxious for the day to start either. I'm supposed to spend the morning with my parents and they weren't very happy with my leaving so abruptly. I love them both, but I have a feeling that today is going to turn into an argument with them." Lilly sighed and I pushed the covers back and sighed, nodding that I would meet her downstairs since she was clearly dressed and ready for the day looking as radiant as always.

Charlie started at me during breakfast, and I tried to ignore him. Lilly tried to talk and ease the tension off of me, though, I supposed that I deserved it. I couldn't expect him not to worry. It would probably be weeks before he stopped watching for the return of the zombie and I would just have to try to not let it bother me. Two days was hardly long enough to call me cured. After all, I would be watching for the return of the zombie, too when Lilly left to go back home in a couple weeks. When I had asked her about school, she had told me that the Carlisle called and said that there was a death in her biological family and she would be staying with her Uncle for a few weeks to go through her 'dead Aunt's' belonging and for the funeral.

School was the opposite. Now that I was paying attention, it was clear that no one was watching here.

I remembered the first day I'd come to Forks High School – how desperately I'd wished that I could turn gray, fade into the wet concrete of the sidewalk like an oversized chameleon. It seemed I was getting that wish answered, a year late.

It wasn't like I wasn't there. Even my teachers' eyes slid past my seat as if it were empty. I listened all through the morning, hearing once again the voices of the people around me. I tried to catch up on what was going on, but the conversations were so disjointed that I gave up.

Jessica didn't look up when I sat down next to her in Calculus.

"Hey, Jess," I said with put-on nonchalance. "How was the rest of your weekend?"

She looked at me with suspicious eyes. Could she still be angry? Or was she just too impatient to deal with a crazy person?

"Super," she said, turning back to her book.

"That's good," I mumbled.

The figure of speech cold shoulder seemed to have some literal truth to it. I could feel the warm air blowing from the floor vents, but I was still too cold. I took the jacket off the back of my chair and put it on again.

My fourth hour class got out late and the lunch table I always sat at was full by the time I arrived. Mike was there, Jessica and Angela, Conner, Tyler, Eric and Lauren. Katie Marshall, the redheaded junior who lived around the corner from me, was sitting with Eric, and Austin Marks – older brother to the boy with the motorcycles – was next to her. I wondered how long they'd been sitting here, unable to remember if this was the first day or something that was a regular habit.

I was beginning to get annoyed with myself. I might as well have been packed in Styrofoam peanuts through the last semester.

No one looked up when I sat down next to Mike, even though the chair squealed stridently against the linoleum as I dragged it back.

I tried to catch up with the conversation. Mike and Conner were stalking sports, so I gave up on that one at once.

"Where's Ben today?" Lauren was asking Angela. I perked up, interested. I wondered if that meant Angela and Ben were still together?

I barely recognized Lauren. She'd cut off all her blond, corn-silk hair – now she had a pixie cut so short that the back was shaved like a boy. What an odd thing for her to do. I wished I knew that reason behind it. Did she get gum stuck in it? Did she sell it? Had all the people she was habitually nasty to caught her behind the gym and scalped her? I decided it wasn't fair for me to judge her now by my former opinion.

For all I knew, she'd turned into a nice person.

"Ben's got the stomach flu," Angela said in her quiet, calm voice. "Hopefully it's just some twenty-four hour thing. He was really sick last night."

Angela had changed her hair too. She'd grown out her layers.

"What did you two do this weekend?" Jessica asked, not sounding as if she cared about the answer. I'd bet that this was just an opener so she could tell her own stories. I wondered if she would talk about the Port Angeles episode on Friday with me sitting two seats away? Was I that invisible, that no one would fell uncomfortable discussing me while I was here?

"We were going to have a picnic Saturday, actually, but... we changed our minds," Angela said. There was an edge to her voice that caught my interest.

Jess, not so much. "That's too bad." she said, about to launch into her story. But I wasn't the only one who was paying attention.

"What happened?" Lauren asked curiously.

"Well," Angela said, seeming more hesitant than usual, though she was always reserved, "we drove up north, almost to the hot springs – there's a good spot just about a mile up the trail. But, when we were halfway there... we saw something."

"Saw something? What?" Lauren's pale eyebrows pulled together. Even Jess seemed to be listening now.

"I don't know," Angela said. "We think it was a bear. It was black, anyway, but it seemed... too big."

Lauren snorted. "Oh, not you, too!" Her eyes turned mocking, and I decided I didn't need to give her the benefit of the doubt. Obviously her personality had not changed as much as her hair. "Tyler tried to sell me that one last week."

"You're not going to see any bears that close to the resort," Jessica said, siding with Lauren.

"Really," Angela protested in a low voice, looking down at the table. "We did see it."

Lauren snickered. Mike was still talking to Conner, not paying attention to the girls.

"No, she's right," I threw in impatiently. "We had a hiker on just Saturday who saw the bear, too, Angela. He said it was huge and black and just outside of town, didn't he, Mike?"

There was a moment of silence. Every pair of eyes at the table turned to stare at me in shock. The new girl, Katie, had her mouth hanging open like she'd just witnessed an explosion. Nobody moved.

"Mike?" I muttered, mortified. "Remember the guy with the bear story?"

"S-Sure," Mike stuttered after a second. I didn't know why he was looking at me so strangely. I talked to him at work, didn't I? Did I? I thought so... Mike recovered. "Yeah, there was a guy who said he saw a huge black bear right at the trail-head – bigger than a grizzly," he confirmed.

"Hmph." Lauren turned to Jessica, her shoulders stiff, and changed the subject.

"Did you hear back from USC?" she asked.

Everyone else looked away, too, except for Mike and Angela. Angela smiled at me tentatively, and I hurried to return the smile.

"So, what did you do this weekend, Bella?" Mike asked, curious, but oddly wary.

Everyone but Lauren looked back ,waiting for my response.

"Friday night, Jessica and I went to a movie in Port Angeles. And then after work on Saturday afternoon, Lilly surprised me with a visit and -"

"Wait, wait, wait..." Jessica interjected. "Lillian McLean?"

"Well, it's Lillian Whitlock now, since she and Jasper had gotten married." I reminded them. "But, yes, she's in town for a few weeks visiting." I immediately continued my stories to avoid the questioning that was bound to follow. "Anyway, we Saturday and most of Sunday down at La Push."

The eyes flickered to Jessica and back to me. Jess looked irritated, and yet intrigued and I knew that the intrigue had more to do with Lilly then my story. As for the irritation, I wondered if she didn't want anyone to know she'd gone out with me, or whether she just wanted to be the one to tell the story.

"What movie did you see with Jess?" Mike asked, starting to smile.

"Dead End – the one with the zombies." I grinned in encouragement. Maybe some of the damage I'd done in these past zombie months was reparable.

"I heard that was scary. Did you think so?" Mike was eager to continue the conversation.

"Bella had to leave at the end, she was so freaked," Jessica inserted with a sly smile.

I nodded, trying not to look embarrassed when it was really Jess who wanted to leave. But I let it go, just giving her a look, but wanting to gain her forgiveness, I'd gone along with it. "It was pretty scary."

Mike didn't stop asking me questions till lunch was over. Gradually, the others were able to start up their own conversations again, though they still looked at me a lot. Angela talked mostly to Mike and me and when I got up to dump my tray, she followed.

"Thanks," she said in a low voice when we were away from the table.

"For what?"

"Speaking up, sticking up for me."

"No problem."

She looked at me with concern, but not the offensive, maybe-she's-lost-it kind. "Are you okay?"

This is why I'd picked Jessica over Angela – though I'd always liked Angela more – for the girls' night movie. Angela was too perceptive.

"Not completely," I admitted. "But I'm a little bit better."

"I'm glad," she said. "I've missed you."

Lauren and Jessica strolled by us then, and I heard Lauren whisper loudly, "Oh, joy, Bella's back." Angela rolled her eyes at them, and smiled at me in encouragement.

I sighed, it was like I was starting all over again.

"What's today's date?" I wondered suddenly.

"It's January nineteenth."

"Hmmm."

"What is it?" Angela asked.

"It was a year ago yesterday that I had my first day here," I mused.

(Lilly's POV)

I stormed out the front door of my parents house and began to walk down the street with my hood up and my hands in my hoodie pockets.

How dare they?

I had left during the fight that I knew was coming when it came to them and it had to do with me leaving with Jasper and his family instead of staying here and attending Washington University or some school in the area. They couldn't understand Alaska and didn't like the fact that Jasper and I were so involved with his family instead of ours. I obviously couldn't tell them the truth, but the fact is that when they started to argue and tempers began to fly, they would bring up how it was my fault that we had to move to this small town to begin with, and that was the point that I had walked out.

The visit had started nice enough as we caught up with everything and how I was doing and when I had told them that Jasper and I had decided at the last minute to take a year off of school, the arguments had started.

I did my best to push the thoughts from my brain and made a direct ninety degree turn into the forest and took off at vampire speed towards La Push before sending Bella a text message and telling her to just meet me there sometime after school. I just had to go down to the ocean to think.

As soon as I crossed into the wolves territory, a giant gray, black and white wolf appeared by my side, whining as if to show me that he meant no harm. I delved into his mind and realized that this wolf was Paul and shot him a smile as I continued my way down to the beach. Paul stayed in the trees as he shifted and emerged in the wolves regular style of cut off jean shorts and bare chested.

"Hey Lilly," he greeted me. "What brings you out here?"

I sighed and waved him off. "I just needed to get away from my parents and figured that this would be the best place to go. It's nice here...calm."

He nodded and sat down next to me on a fallen log as we watched the waves crash down onto the sand. "If you need to talk about it, or anything ever, I'm here." He supplied.

I turned and gave him an appreciative smile. "Thanks Paul. Good friends like you are hard to find." His face dropped a bit when I said the words 'good friends' but that didn't deter his desire to help. "In all honesty, I came down here to get my mine off of everything for a while. Can we just talk about anything...everything?"

He smirked and shifted closer. "Did you know that during the springs and falls, whales can be seen from the beaches when the come close so shore during their annual migrations?" He supplied.

I smiled at him. "No, actually, I didn't know that. I never came down her last spring and I wasn't here during the fall."

His grin widened. "Well, maybe next time they come through, we can watch them?"

I nodded happily. "That sounds great! I've never seen whales in their natural habitats before, only in captivity and those aren't the kinds of whales that you are probably talking about. They're usually a lot smaller."

We chatted about anything and everything for the longest time. Conversation seemed to flow easily with us unless I brought up Jasper, in which he would just shake and change the subject quickly. I wasn't sure that it was all of the Cullen's or just Jasper that he was having that reaction to, but I'm sure that I'd find out in the future, whether it be near or far.

My eyes caught the cliffs that overlooked first beach and came out to a point.

Paul immediately noticed where my eyes had drifted as he spoke. "Have you ever gone cliff jumping?" He asked.

My brows shot up. "People jump from that height?" He looked at me surprised and I immediately backtracked. "What I meant was humans, regular humans jump from that height?"

He smirked as he shook his head. "Nah, they usually jump from lower down. Sam, Jared, Embry and I jump from the higher points since us wolves aren't risking our lives making the jump. It's still a total rush, though. You should come with us sometime?"

I smiled and nodded. "Sure, that sounds like fun." But it was at that point that I'd realized who he named when he spoke of his pack brothers. "Wait a minute, Embry has changed? Since when? I'd just seen him on Saturday and he was sill human."

Paul shrugged. "It was actually later that night that he phased for the first time." He supplied.

Huh, I guess that's why he reeked so bad of wolf. He was due to change that night.

It was then that my cell phone rang. I looked down at the Caller I.D. and saw that it was from Bella. I'd also noticed the time and realized that Paul and I were out here for over five hours talking.

I answered the phone, holding it up to my ear. "Hey Bella. I'm so sorry, I kind of got side tracked talking to Paul."

"Really? What happened to spending the day with your parents? I was actually on my way to go and pick you up." She said.

I looked at the watch on my wrist. "But Bella, school let out over an hour and a half ago. What have you been doing since then?"

"I-I j-just needed to take some t-time to my self to think." She stuttered.

I sighed loudly. "We'll talk about this later. But meet me down at the Rez. I'll meet you at Jake's."

"Okay, I'll see you in about twenty minutes." She said.

"Alright, see you then." I agreed and clicked the phone shut.

I turned to face Paul apologetically, but he had heard the conversation with his heightened wolf senses. "It's alright, we'll get together another time."

"Well, once I help finish helping Jake with the bikes, he will probably be busy giving Bella a lesson and I can take you up on your offer to take me cliff diving." I supplied happy that Paul and I were becoming fast friends.

A smile spread on his face. "Alright, deal."

A/N: So, what did everyone think? I wanted to show a little bit about how Bella was getting better and better as the days went on before I got back to Lilly. Any idea's about what's going to happen next or what Jasper will think of Lilly and Paul's friendship? Review!

If you have any questions or comments, post them in my reviews and I will answer them in my next Author's note!

To see more, go to my FF page: Xo Bella Italiana oX

If you enjoyed this story so far, check out some of my other stories on my FanFiction page! Also, I am still accepting Twilight stories that involve Jasper/any female leads or Bella/selected male leads if anyone is looking for a Beta Reader. I will make exceptions on the characters depending on the plot. I am also now accepting Phantom of the Opera FanFictions that include Erik! I will also be accepting Bones featuring Agent Seeley Booth, Dawson's Creek, Titanic FanFictions featuring Jack, Snow White and the Huntsman featuring Snow White or Eric (the huntsman), The Ghost Whisperer that feature Melinda and Law and Order SVU that feature Elliot. I will accept OC characters as well depending on the other lead character. PM me for details!
- Bella'Xo
Xo Bella Italiana oX