Well, folks, here it is, Chapter 26. THE. LAST. REGULAR. CHAPTER.

If you think you're freaking out, I'm in an outright panic.

This was done for days, but I sat on it because I didn't want the chapter to be done. But the characters kept ignoring me. I even tried forcing something else onto the end of the chapter, but nothing was right. Finally Edward said, "Just post the thing already."

More down below, but for now, let's draw this lovely pair out of Angstville, shall we? SM owns, of course.

BPOV

Awareness returned to me in stages.

First there was the roiling pain of molten fire moving at a torturous pace from my fingertips and toes up my arms and legs. As the heat receded from my extremities, the cooling relief was barely noticeable as the conflagration got sucked into focus in the middle of my chest.

Then there was a strangling explosion in my heart that suffocated me and stole my equilibrium. The agony of it threw my body into uncontrollable convulsions and all I could think was 'oh, please, let this be the end'.

Then everything went dark, still, and silent. I was floating, suspended, in merciful nothingness. Neither here nor there.

And then the world exploded around me in an orgy of sensory input.

I gasped down a sucking breath that brought in smells, scents, tastes. Some were familiar but so different from what I remembered or expected; some were completely foreign – intriguing and terrifying at the same time. Sounds met my ears but were garbled, indecipherable – and at any rate they seemed deafeningly loud. I tried to send the message to my hands to cover my ears but couldn't tell if my arms responded or not. Struggling to make sense of the cacophony of existence surrounding me, I finally managed to get my brain to relay the message to my eyes to open, but was so overcome with the Technicolor vision that fed back up through my optic nerve that I groaned and rolled over and buried my face into…wait. Where am I?

Still folded in on myself, I pushed my head up a little and chanced my eyes again. I recognized the thing that I was looking at – it was soft and flat and warm and comfortable – but couldn't immediately find the word for it. At lightning speed my brain sorted through my available vocabulary and though the words were familiar, I was having a hard time matching words together with their meanings.

Through the myriad sounds, one caught my attention on an instinctual level. It was a small noise, hardly noteworthy amongst the symphony of sounds my ears perceived. Just the soft brush of movement across a surface. But it told me something very important, and I froze: I'm not alone.

I looked up and found two sets of brilliant gold eyes staring down at me.

A screaming sound roared through my ears but I couldn't be worried about that as I scrabbled across the soft surface in an effort to get away.

My back slammed into a barrier that made a cracking noise as I ran into it. But then I was trapped, cornered.

"Bella?"

As opposed to the screaming noise from a moment ago, this sound was beautiful, melodic. And it captured and held my attention in a way nothing else had so far. My ears traced the source of the sound to the owner of one pair of those gold eyes.

My whole body erupted in tremors as I brought my eyes to his.

"Bella. Oh, Bella," he encouraged softly. "You came back to me. You're okay. It's all okay."

A quick scan around the room identified seven others here with me: six with gold eyes, and one with black. I stared at the black-eyed a beat longer than the rest. He had the most peculiar expression on his face – it was fierce and concerned and protective and relieved all at once. I had the curious sensation of both being afraid of him and wanting to…thank him?

But it was the golden-eyed, bronze-haired one closest to me that most held my attention. I felt a primal pull to him that frightened me because I didn't understand it, or him.

A chance glance downward distracted me. I gasped as I saw the way the lamp light reflected off the…damn, what is the word? Oh, come on!...the shiny, glassy stones on the…ring!...on my finger. Colors refracted that I didn't have names for, not because my brain wasn't pairing words and meanings together, because they were colors I'd never before seen.

I looked at the man. "What is this called?" I finally asked in a dry quivering voice.

He glanced down and got the oddest expression. "It's your wedding ring—"

"No. This," I clarified, pointing to the shiny part.

"A diamond?"

"Diamond!" Of course! I looked down again and tilted my hand back and forth to see what new colors the light would create for me. I was, quite literally, like a child with a new shiny toy.

"Bella?"

I cowered away from him as I glanced back up. But then the look on his face was filled with so much longing and need and something a hairline away from panic that I began to feel…concerned…for him. I fingered the diamond and a fleeting image flashed through my mind. "You gave this to me?" The words came out of my mouth in a gasp and I surprised myself, but I knew on an elemental level it was true.

I watched in wonder as the hint of a smile played on the face of the achingly beautiful creature in front of me. "Yes. Yes, I did," he replied, then he extended his hand toward me and I flinched back into the…wooden…thing…headboard!...behind me. He withdrew his hand, his face a mask of patience and understanding. "No one's going to hurt you, Bella. I just meant to show you my ring. See? You gave this one to me."

I looked at the masculine band on his third finger, and then back down to the rings on my own hand. My band matched his.

I inhaled to speak but when my eyes met his, they didn't see him, but instead a series of memories in my mind. They all involved the ring on his strong hand: shopping for it with…the little dark-haired one…Alice…oh Alice!; placing it on his finger as we stood together in front of a large group of people; spying him admire it when he didn't know I was looking; sucking the finger with the ring so far into my mouth that I could wrap my lips around it as well.

With wide eyes, I looked up at him. And it all came back to me in a disorienting and fuzzy rush. I moaned and swayed and felt hands grab my arms and shoulders. When the dizzying sensation passed and the world righted itself again, I crawled across the bed at an inhuman speed and launched myself into the lap and arms of the love of my life.

I sent us tumbling straight off the side of the bed and Edward absorbed the impact with his back and a grunt but his face was all concern for me. A fleeting image of him once tackling me flashed past my mind's eye but I couldn't hold onto the details of the memory.

"Edward! Edward!" I croaked as I wrapped myself around him and clutched him to me.

"Oh, thank God," he moaned as he drew his arms tighter around my back. "You came back to me, Bella. You came back." Lying on the floor with me on top of him, Edward rocked me gently back and forth.

"I never left, Edward," I rasped, "I was right here the whole time. And I…sometimes I could hear you…and feel you…and I—" My voice died in a choked sob that erupted at the force and variety of the emotions running through me.

"Ssshh," he soothed. He smoothed my hair and rubbed my back and held me for a long time.

I pushed up to look at him and was fascinated by his appearance. Everything about him was the same, only better. His beautiful bronze hair was there, of course, although now I could perceive lighter golden highlights and darker copper lowlights throughout. I reached up to touch it and oh! I gasped. "It's so soft." I apparently said it out loud as his face lit up with a smile so dazzling that I forgot about his hair. His teeth were brilliant white and, while they had always just appeared as perfect teeth to my human eyes, now I could detect the sharpness of their edges that set off a niggling sense of danger to my newborn instincts. Inhaling a calming breath, I noted that his lips were redder than I remembered and somehow soft and powerful at the same time. The cut of his jaw and of his cheekbone seemed more defined to me now, which added to his intense masculine beauty.

And his scent.

His warm spicy scent set off a series of interconnected reactions: my chest clenched in recognition of the smell of him that I'd always found so appealing, and now found downright intoxicating. My mouth watered…venomed?...oh, like the word matters!...I was literally salivating over his scent. And there seemed to be a curious connection between the flow of venom in my mouth and…elsewhere. His scent was making me want to…taste him…have him. I swallowed thickly and noted with a raised eyebrow that his eyes followed the movement of my throat.

He watched me look at him for a long time, allowing me free rein with my exploring touches and gazes. Then, after a while, he chuckled as he gently pushed me back.

"What?"

"Nothing at all, you're just very strong."

"Oh. Oh! I didn't hurt—"

"No. Well, a little," he chuckled again. "It's nothing."

"Is this really happening, Edward?" I whispered.

"Yes," he whispered back as he leaned forward and pressed his lips softly against my own.

The feeling of his kiss set loose an instinctual reaction, an instinctual need – one that had been simmering as I took him in. I moaned and pressed my lips harder against his. Oh, his taste! I stroked my tongue out over his lips and groaned. Cupping his face, I lapped at his lips as a kitten would a bowl of milk and he opened his mouth. When our tongues met tentatively in the space between us, I whimpered and pulled him into me and tried to get my body closer to his.

He moaned into my mouth and a chuckle caught my attention.

I frowned and pulled back.

Oh my God! I forgot about…them, I thought as I lifted my head and met the amused expressions of the rest of our family. I hid my face against the side of Edward's neck as he patted my back with a huge grin on his face. I noted wryly that I no longer felt the blushing heat that once occupied my cheeks on a regular basis. That was something I wouldn't miss.

The next moments passed in a joyous reunion of hugs and greetings and accidents that revealed I didn't know my strength. It was a bit…overwhelming. And then I caught my reflection in the dresser mirror.

I gasped and stepped towards it. Edward saw and came up behind me.

The woman in the mirror was…striking: curvy with full red lips and creamy white skin and long thick brown hair that fell in loose waves down her back. I gaped as I took in the reflection of the wild red eyes that looked back at me. "Oh," I breathed as I leaned forward. The eyes were beautiful, and terrifying. I'd seen eyes like these before. I shuddered and felt Edward's fingers gently brush my hip.

"They'll start changing in a few months, Bella. Don't worry. You're beautiful, love, absolutely stunning."

I nodded absently, too intrigued to look away from the image before me for even a moment. I reached a hand up to my cheek tentatively, like it was someone else's, and it felt like…me.

I rubbed my fingers along my lips, noting with pleasure that my bottom lip was still somewhat fuller than my top, and opened my mouth to look at my teeth. They were white and straight and gleamed in the low light. I ran the pad of my forefinger over the edge of my bottom teeth and hissed in pain as I pulled my finger back and clutched it to my chest.

I looked up and met Edward's concerned eyes in the mirror. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. But, damn, they're really sharp."

"Yes," he chuckled, "they sure are."

I turned in his arms and looked at the headboard I'd smashed into, the lamp I'd knocked over when I sprung from the bed with too much force, the picture frame I'd crushed when I'd tried to pick it up, the way Edward's shirt had shredded from my grip, and the iron towel bar Emmett had disconnected from its brackets so he could watch me bend it.

"Holy…crow!" Edward's eye brows flew up, surprised by my outburst. "How did you do it?"

He frowned in confusion.

"Be…with me?" I fingered a hanging flap of fabric where it hung on his chest.

"I would have done anything to be with you." His expression was filled with a deep sincerity, but also something else.

"What?" I asked.

He sighed and his smile was wry. "You've just given up your human life and endured agony to be with me, yet your first thoughts are of the sacrifices I've made, which of course weren't sacrifices at all."

A little embarrassed, I bit my bottom lip, then sucked it into my mouth just as quick. I was going to have to unlearn that habit, fast. I looked up at him. His face was full of wonder as he watched me discover my world. His expression was so endearing that I cried out, "God I love you," as I grabbed his face and pulled him into a long, deep, exploring kiss.

Someone cleared their throat and I pulled back, having forgotten myself again.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I need to go for a while," Jasper said quietly. He was tightly gripping Alice's hand and his eyes were still black.

I walked over to him and he braced himself defensively in front of Alice. I frowned at his action but couldn't stop the impulse to embrace him. I threw myself around him and heard the low growl in his throat. His body was all coiled tense muscle.

"I felt you," I rasped. "I was trapped…in…it was like a room of fire. And I saw you. It was like you were outside of the glass room I was in and you sucked the fire out of my room and pulled it into yours. And then because the roar of the flames was gone I could hear Edward. You gave him to me."

Jasper's body didn't relax and I finally let go. Then I felt awkward and I stepped back until I crashed into Edward's chest.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I just wanted to say thank you."

Jasper walked up to me and his black eyes were so intense that I had to fight the urge to cower against Edward's chest. "How are you doing this?"

"What?"

"Being so calm, coherent?"

I choked out a strange strained laugh and the words tumbled out of me. "I'm not calm. I feel shaky in my skin. I can't remember the words for half the things I see. Shiny things keep distracting me. My own eyes freak me out. And it feels like I only hold one emotion for about six seconds before a different one slams into my brain."

We stared at one another for a moment until I swallowed thickly and Jasper caught the movement of my throat.

"She's thirsty, Edward," he groused. Then he looked at me again and his expression softened. He took a deep breath and his shoulders fell as if in relaxation or defeat. "Ignore me," he said, "I'm not quite myself at the moment." He gently squeezed my shoulder as he started to walk past. "I'm happy you're…here, Bella. Really. I'll see you later."

A smiling Alice followed behind him and pulled me into another bone-crushing hug. "Don't worry, he's okay. He'll be a new man after a good hunt," she whispered. Then she pulled back. "We'll be back soon, sister! And then we're going to have so much fun!" She bounced and hugged me again and I couldn't help but smile as the tangible level of her excitement.

Soon they all filed out and Edward and I were finally alone. But now that Jasper had put the idea in my head, all I could think about was how damn thirsty I was. Where before I couldn't find the words I needed, now words tormented me: dry, dehydrated, arid, parched, desiccated, baked, waterless, scorched…. I grabbed at my throat and Edward understood immediately. He held out a hand and I placed mine in his. I noted with pleasure that his touch no longer felt cold. It simply felt…like me. The thought of our sameness was so gratifying that I couldn't help the smile that enlivened my face. He smiled in return and motioned towards the door. Hand in hand, we hurried through the house and out the front door into the moonless night.

Once outside, the reality of what I was going to have to do descended upon me and froze me in place.

"What's wrong, love?"

"I don't know how…."

"You don't have to know how, Bella, your body will just do it. Trust me. You're going to be a natural at this."

I looked up at him doubtfully.

"Come on. You're going to love running."

He jogged backwards a few steps and beckoned me to follow. My gut instinct was to protest the idea of running in the dark, but I realized I could see everything – even down to the individual tree branches on the trees at the edge of the forest in the distance – in clear detail.

As soon as I resolved to give it a try, my body shot out and I passed Edward in a flash.

It was…incredible. I laughed out loud, my exhilaration echoing off the trees we were now flying through. I was amazed at my agility and grace, realizing that I'd been half certain I'd end up the one clumsy vampire in the world. But instead I was fluid and sure-footed. I laughed harder and harder and never once became winded.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Edward vault easily over a fallen tree and I marveled at his actions. When an outcropping of rocks appeared up ahead in my path, I yelled out to him, "Can I jump that?" He laughed an "Easily" back to me and he…was right! I squealed in delight and thought I could run like this forever and I wondered why Edward ever walked normally when he could do this.

Then new sensory input brought me to a skidding, halting stop.

I took off in a new direction and heard Edward behind me. But whereas before Edward's presence had felt fun and safe and playful, now I was…irritated by his presence, threatened by it. As I closed in on my destination, the compulsion to warn him away settled over me and I came to a dead stop, whirled on him, and…growled.

His darkening eyes seemed to confirm the appropriateness of my instinctual reaction. "Bella?" he asked in a low voice.

"Mine," I growled.

He took a step back and raised his hands in surrender. "Yours," he agreed.

I continued to eye him suspiciously for a moment before the scent pulled me away in a blur and I took off again. I raced through the trees, leapt across the small stream that served as their watering hole, and landed with a thudding crack of bones around the large thick neck of a caribou.

I grunted in frustration as I searched with my mouth for the most constant flow of blood. When I finally found it, I groaned in ecstasy at the relief the blood provided. It was warm and earthy and full of life and wet, so wet.

But it was gone too soon and I whined and growled again, needing more.

A sound caught my attention and I snapped my head in its direction only to find a now black-eyed Edward standing forty feet away. Between me and him were two more caribou laying on the forest floor. "Yours," he said as he pointed to the animals.

I was wary, my natural instincts raised like hackles, but my need was too great and I sprung from the empty beast to one that promised more relief.

When all three were gone I knelt between them, panting in satisfaction and relief. I just felt so. damn. good.

The ingestion of blood lifted a fog from my brain and I could finally think about something else besides my thirst. A small breath of breeze blew and brought Edward's scent past my nose, reawakening my earlier reaction to his warm spiciness. I looked up and found him still in the same position as before by a distant tree.

Then another instinctual need rose in me and I flipped up off the ground and stalked in his direction. I didn't know if it was despite the blood or because of it, but I was still lusting. For. Him. I couldn't help the low growl that rattled in my throat as I got closer and his scent intensified in my nose.

Edward's body was tense, braced. His nostrils flared and his mouth hung open. He stepped towards me tentatively, then with more determination, and finally we came together in a crash of hard bodies, open mouths, stroking tongues, and groping hands.

"Oh God," I gasped around the edge of our kisses.

Edward's tongue was everywhere, tangling and swirling with mine, tasting the remnants of the blood still coating my mouth. He groaned and licked the blood from my face and I felt a dizzying rush of moisture between my legs in response.

"My…God….In me. In me. Need you," I panted as I writhed and pressed against him.

With a frustrated grunt I ripped his ruined shirt off as he more carefully removed my own.

"Now, now, now," I begged.

He pushed me until I backed into a large tree and then fell to his knees. He wrenched my pants down and we impatiently pulled them free of my ankles. Then I screamed when he lifted a leg, threw it over his shoulder, and buried his mouth with abandon into my wet heat.

EPOV

She was perfection, brilliance, beauty, and grace.

The joy she so clearly exuded as she raced and leapt through the forest lifted whatever regret and hesitation that remained for me. When her instincts kicked in and she went from playful to a huntress, it was hands down the most erotic thing I'd ever seen. My mate. Was hunting.

I'd followed her – it was stupid really to push her to such an instinctual reaction – but as she whirled and growled at me, my erection responded immediately. She was glorious in her territorial fury. When she turned to pursue her hunt again, I sprinted off in a different direction that allowed me to come around on the herd from the opposite direction.

Her approach was noisy and scattered the animals in a panic, so I took down a few more for her to have, knowing one wouldn't suffice. As unpracticed as it was, her attack was also full of majesty. The way her body moved so lithely, the way she abandoned herself to her need so completely. Her body wrapped sinuously around the neck of the beast and her throat and jaw worked rhythmically while a rivulet of blood trailed down her chin.

I was unhinged.

But it wasn't until she stalked towards me, black-eyed with the scent of her arousal washing off of her and over me, that I lost the resolve to restrain myself and gave into my need. To claim. To mark. To possess.

And I knew what I wanted first – to feast on her the way I'd wanted for so long but hadn't been able to. I fell to my knees, wrenched her pants down and off, and opened her up so I could settle myself between her legs.

I was fucking relentless. I licked and sucked and stroked and penetrated and fucking nipped at her with my teeth until I thought I'd lose my mind. The change had enhanced her natural nectar so that it was richer, sweeter, more pure – SUCCULENT! I couldn't get enough of her, and her responsiveness only served to egg me on.

I couldn't help but remember that first time the desire to taste her this way had gripped me. That Sunday of the weekend we'd spent together at the Forks house. How is it possible that was only a matter of weeks ago? It feels like a lifetime. I'd come home from hunting and found her playing at the piano, and it was the first time we'd bared ourselves fully to one another. How I wanted her that day.

"Bella, I want…there are things I want to do right now. Things I can't do. Things I shouldn't do…yet."

Her voice was breathy as she pleaded with me. "Tell me. Please, Edward? There's nothing that you would want to do that I don't want too."

I remember kissing her, summoning the courage to voice my desire to her. "I want to put my mouth on you, Bella, everywhere. I want to taste you so bad. But I'm too afraid that I could lose control, there, if I do it now."

She moaned and voiced her understanding, but I didn't think she understood just how bad I wanted to do that for her. "Do you, Bella?" I'd asked her. "Do you understand that I want it? Bella, as soon as it's safe, you have to know….I am going to feast on you, Bella. I am going to eat you alive."

I smiled as I compared the memory of that unfulfilled desire to the ecstasy of the actual experience. The abandon with which I could pursue her pleasure thrilled me.

She screamed my name in one, two, then a third orgasm and I drank down everything she offered me with a smug feeling of pride.

With a grunt she reached down and pulled me to my feet. Her hair and her eyes – erotically black with a red ring – were wild as we fumbled together to remove my jeans. I didn't even worry about removing them completely. By the time they'd gathered at my knees, I'd already lifted Bella by her ass.

She was grasping against me and mumbling "now, now, now, in, in, in."

And then I slid home. I groaned an "oh my God" into her hair and she hissed and grunted and wrapped her arms and legs around me. I leaned her now durable back against the rough bark of the tree for leverage and slammed into her again and again.

I marveled as I took her in – her skin was luminous and flawless, and her breasts were fuller with dark pink nipples. I gasped as I saw how the change had impacted the tattoo of my name on her chest: in an apparent effort to expel the foreign matter from her skin, the venom had pushed the ink outward, giving a three-dimensional quality to the mark that now sat slightly raised across her left breast. I leaned down and licked over it and grunted as I felt the contours of the letters of my name ridged under my tongue.

"Oh God, Bella," I rasped.

"More, Edward! More!"

With each stroke, I pulled my erection nearly all the way out of her before driving in to the hilt again. My body was a flexing mass of taut muscles and unrestrained need as I pistoned into her.

Bella grunted and mewled and moaned and pulled my hair until I hissed. Her grasps dug into me and her pulling fingers stung my scalp and the mixture of pleasure and pain was a fascinating new sensation.

"Oh…ungh…pleasepleaseplease…harder, Edward."

It was against two years of trained instinct, but fuck it, I gave it to her just the way she wanted. It was a biological imperative. I had little choice.

And….

Oh, God, I thought in a state of euphoria, Oh the relief!

I thrust myself into her in a frenzy and she encouraged and taunted me into giving more with soft strokes and words one moment and with hissed commands the next.

My mind flashed an image of that very first intimate experience with her, also against a tree – that day in the meadow had been such a surprise, a revelation. How it felt to hear her call my name in ecstasy, how she looked when she gave herself to me so completely.

I could now have that every day for the rest of forever. And so could she.

The thought drove me harder and I grunted out a string of strained expletives when her body clenched and convulsed around me and she screamed my name.

Her orgasm was fascinating in its intensity. Her muscles literally screamed in response to her release and her venomous arousal flowed freely down our legs. The smell of it created a steady flow of venom in my mouth that I found myself having to swallow again and again.

As if that myriad of sensation wasn't enough, Bella sunk her teeth hard and unapologetically into my left shoulder. I was immediately at the brink of explosion, but so badly wanted to prolong the phenomenal pleasure of this moment.

Bella released her jaw and in a panting heavy command grunted, "You better fucking bite me back this time. Don't. Hold. Back!"

Her words hit me in a primal place and my orgasm shot out of me in wave after wave of need fulfilled. I sunk my teeth into her neck just behind her ear, where she'd always wanted me to mark her when she was human. Her venom in my mouth was like a shot of the most high-quality liquor: biting and warming and smooth and intoxicating.

I released my jaw from her skin once my orgasm played out and we stood for a long time, completely wrapped up in one another, panting against the ancient pine. Finally, we sunk down to the ground together and for the rest of the night I held Bella's strong bare body in a ball on my lap.

In quiet tones we exchanged relieved and grateful words of love and commitment. She asked tentative questions about things she was feeling and experiencing, and I reassured her as best I could that she was exactly as she should be. And so very much more.

We talked about her experience of the change – as Jasper suspected, once the venom had circulated through her system, the morphine hadn't helped ease her pain, only her expression of it. I was sure Carlisle was going to want to hear more about this, but I would see that the conversation was delayed until Bella was more able to tolerate the memory of it.

We were both curious about how she'd visualized herself during the change – trapped in a glass room in her mind and seemingly shielded by what she imagined was an invisible wall that separated her from Jasper's absorption of much of the conflagration. I remembered nothing of the sort from my experience, but then I hadn't had Jasper's assistance.

And we talked about the entries in her book – what a difference those had made for me. I thanked her profusely and she looked down and away, allowing me to identify the facial expression that would reveal to me her embarrassment. Now I'd know what to look for, since I no longer had her telltale blush. We made plans to read together the remaining eleven entries I hadn't had the chance to read. She couldn't wait to read my homework…and begin to work through it.

As morning dawned, Bella looked up at me shyly. "I'm sorry I growled at you last night. I don't know what came over me."

I pressed kisses into her hair and her temple. "Bella, don't apologize. It's part of who you are. And it was my fault for following you so closely. Besides, I liked it."

She quirked an eyebrow at me and I laughed.

"It was sexy, trust me."

She laughed softly. "So…does that mean…."

"What, love?"

Her face turned somber again. "Does that mean you like me…like this, I mean?"

"Oh my God, Bella," I exclaimed as I drew her to me again in a tight embrace. "You're beautiful. You're perfect. Like you? God, I love you more now than ever before. Bella, you need to know this: I would have lived happily with you as a human for as long as I could have, but you, like this…I feel free. Because I know I can't hurt you, and I know you'll never suffer from illness, and we'll always be together. You've given me everything I've ever wanted and so much I didn't even dare to hope for."

She blew out a shuddered breath and nodded.

"And how about you, love, how you do feel…about this?" I'd always worried that she might grow to regret it; the thought still nagged at me.

"I feel…well, outside of the messiness of my state of mind…I feel…strong. I…like the way I feel. And look. I feel…don't get mad…but I feel like I belong beside you." She hushed me when I tried to interrupt. "Not that you ever made me feel that I didn't, and, really, not that I didn't feel like I belonged by you…but now…it's just…we fit. We're the same. We're equals, Edward. Finally, equals. I love that. And I love knowing you can relax, that you don't have to worry about hurting me, which you never did, but I like knowing your mind can be more at ease. It makes me feel more at ease too."

I stroked her cheekbone with my thumb while she spoke. I imagined my face wore the adoration I felt.

After a while, she leaned up to me and we kissed – long, soft, worshipful kisses full of love and gratitude and comfort and acceptance.

"I love you, Edward," she whispered.

I cupped her face in my face. "I love you too, Bella. Forever."

There's no "The End" to write just yet, because there will be at least one epilogue. And that's all I have to say about that.

Don't forget to listen for me on an upcoming Twigasm podcast. And drop on by the story's forum some time over on Twilighted (under Post-Eclipse Fan Fiction).

I'm already experiencing separation anxiety from this story despite the remaining epilogue. So, please, give me a virtual hug by clicking on that there review button!

Thanks!