This chapter is super short, so I decided to upload it the same time I did the last one.

Carter's POV

I remember it perfectly. Even though it was months ago now.

I had been sitting with my brothers at the corner of that little supermarket and the Boston Market. The mall was in our sights and we could see the neon entrance sign flipping on like it always did at dusk. We lived in the apartment complex up by Old Town, where it seemed like someone got mugged or evicted or knocked up every five minutes. We came to the mall every night at this time in the summer – for my brothers and my friends, it was to see how much they could shoplift by 8:30.

But for me, it was different. I went only to see Amber – five foot one, board straight black hair, brown eyes that I could swim in all day, and the most headstrong human being on earth. I didn't necessarily know her; I worked at the agricultural fair up the road over the summer season. I was in charge of the roller coaster, Devil's Fury. It was fun to watch people freak out and all, but it's not quite so entertaining when you're the one that has to clean up the puke.

Amber had come to the fair with a group of about six other girls, and I had watched them pass the coaster exactly five times – I kept careful count – before they got bored with skee-ball and merry-go-rounds. And they walked right up to me.

It killed me to have to tell her she wasn't tall enough. Infuriated, she'd whipped out her driver's license, waving her middle finger at me as she showed me the height it said. Despite the fact that the license was a complete lie (no way she was five foot five), I let her go in, all because I'd found out everything I wanted to: she turned eighteen in April, she was employed in Hollister in Lakeforest Mall, she was a heart donor and originally from Nashville.

I struggled to come up a smooth pickup line as she stepped through the gate, but I ended up tripping on my own words. She'd laughed anyway and called me "adorable" even though I was older than she was. And, ever since that night at the start of June, I'd been following my friends around the mall for a while and then I'd sneak away to make out with Amber in the Hollister dressing room.

So now it was the middle of August and here I stood with my blood brother, Tony, and my stepbrother, Brennan. They looked a lot like me: dark hair, dark eyes, lean but muscular. It was rare to see two of us without the other. We were waiting for Eli and Darien, two twins that lived down the road from us …

When she appeared.

It was as if she had been a ghost that emerged out of thin air; one minute, no one was there, and then, out off the blue, there she was at the other side of the crosswalk. Her red dress swayed side to side as her pale skin glowed with the headlights of the cars she passed in front of. Our jaws dropped open as she approached us, her auburn hair blowing in her face as she readjusted her sunglass. She stopped before us, putting her hands on her hips.

"Busy tonight, boys?" Her voice was like a bullet that shot through each of our hearts.

"Not anymore," Tony stepped forward, smiling slyly.

Everything from there on out was very fast, too quick for me to control. We were back at the town house in a flash, glad to see that no one was home. I uncomfortably leaned against the wall, thinking about Amber waiting for me, as the girl – supposedly named Heidi – began to kiss Tony aggressively. It hadn't even been a couple seconds before Tony pushed her back, his entire face drenched in his own blood.

I panicked, dashing out the front door as I began to hear Brennan frantically scream for help. I heard glass breaking and wood snapping, making me anxious. After a couple blocks of running, I found a dumpster to hide behind, and I stayed there until it got too dark to see and anything. It felt like hours had passed when I decided to emerge from my hiding place, and that might've been the biggest mistake I could've ever made. I saw the red dress sashaying towards me in the blackness, and before I could realize it wasn't my imagination, her lips were at my neck and I was out of it.

Now, less than a year later, the bite mark still rests at the arch of my neck and I am a monster. I learned after that night that Tony and Brennan had died, sucked dry by that vampire harlot, and I could've lived if I'd kept running, faster and farther.

And currently I'm in Seattle, only three hours away from the very family I had traumatized last night just as Heidi had traumatized mine all those weeks ago. The fact that my victims were vampires too meant absolutely nothing to me – I had almost murdered a human man, kidnapped his granddaughter, and destroyed his living room all before the cops had arrived. Although the regret burned like hell, it's not like I could take it back now; I had already handed the baby over to Demetri, and the yellow-eyes would've found out for sure already.

I was screwed – officially a monster. That is, if I wasn't one before now.

Nonetheless, Aro would protect me through all this, I knew. He cared about me. My real dad left when I was born and my stepdad was never around, so Aro was my father now. I obeyed him faithfully, and I always would. It was the least I could do for his hospitality. But I hadn't known … I would swear it to the yellow-eyes themselves … I hadn't known Aro's intentions. I never meant to hurt anybody … I never meant it ….

I glanced down at the laptop bag that was in my hand, scowling at the black cloak that was shoved up inside of it. I pushed my sunglasses higher up the bridge of my nose as I weaved through all the humans that passed on the sidewalk, slipping into a coffee shop once I reached the corner. I wondered if they knew what was among them. Did any humans know?

The only answer I could come up with was no. Humans were the food, and that was entirely because their ignorance was our advantage. Aro had said that the yellow-eyes were different because they were human-lovers; Felix said they were human wannabes. But when I asked in depth, no one would tell me why they were so special. Were they good to the humans before they ate them …?

I sat down at a table by a window, where I could clearly see the street – I needed the bustle of the city to distract my rampant thoughts. Every time the guilt would start to resurface, I would count the bricks on the opposite building or see how many people that walked by were wearing a certain color. Otherwise, I would become subject to my lament, a pain that I refused to concede to.

I leaned back in the chair, staring down at the pattern underneath the glass tabletop. I was too busy concentrating on it that I totally blew off the waitress who'd just come up to impatiently ask if I was going to buy anything or just take up space. I didn't notice her until she heatedly walked away.

"Sorry," I mumbled, looking down at my hands anxiously.

I wanted her to come back, sit down, listen. I just wanted to find someone – anyone – that I could tell, ask. Am I a true monster? Will I be damned for this? What the hell is wrong with me? Of course, the waitress wouldn't know the answers to any of this. I would, but no one else could.

The sound of hastening heartbeats made me look up. I noticed five pairs of eyes gawking at me from the far corner of the shop. They looked younger than me, sophomores in high school maybe; two blondes, two brunettes, and one redhead. They giggled when my eyes landed on them. They probably wouldn't be so enthused if they saw the bright red eyes underneath my sunglasses.

One of the blondes stood, sauntering over in my direction. I could tell was she was tempting fate as the hem of her short skirt brushed my bare forearm. As she passed to get to the concessions, I watched her, imagining the sweet flow of her blood down my throat. Oh, I could practically taste the warm flesh under my lips, the effortless amount of force it would take to rip through her thin outer layer and dig my teeth through the coursing veins. I wanted it, I needed it ….

No, my thoughts reprimanded. Too young.

I wanted to work towards a humane status – as humane as possible. I wanted to feed on the weak, people that would die soon anyway. But I knew that was virtually impossible. They weren't nearly as satisfying, which only meant I would want more. That was a tough ratio: less of the strong or more of the weak …?

She misinterpreted the bloodlust in my stare as sudden love.

Before she could make a move towards me, I stood, grabbing my laptop bag and moving for the door. I didn't look back at the blonde's expression – either it would fill me with remorse or kill me with hunger …. Neither sounded very inviting.

The street was full and I idly stood at the crosswalk as if I were frozen there. The cars seemed to whip by at a slower pace and all the voices around me seemed to mute themselves. The trepidation in the pit of my stomach boiled as I began to realize that this life – of death, poison, suffering, and blood – would be all I would ever know from now on. I would never be able to get married, have children (was there such a thing as vampire babies?). I would never be able to start a life the way I wanted to: I would've started by getting out of Old Town and moving to the country, somewhere safe to remold my life; I would've taught my son how to play football and I would've gone to every single one of his games; I would've fallen in love with a beautiful girl, and I would've loved her for the rest of my life.

But there was none of that now.

This was it.

Interrupting my thoughts, my phone buzzed in my pocket, snapping my world back into focus.

It was Alec. I put the phone up to my ear. "Hello?"

"Where are you?" His voice was a just a low growl emptying out from the receiver.

I stared blankly at the sidewalk as the crowd behind me began to bustle forward to cross the street. "Hell," I answered.