The line of black advanced on me through the shroud-like mist. I could see their dark ruby eyes glinting with desire, lusting for the kill. Their lips pulled back over their sharp, wet teeth – some to snarl, some to smile.

I heard the child behind me whimper, but I couldn't turn to look at him. Though I was desperate to be sure that he was safe, I could not afford any lapse in focus now.

They ghosted closer, their black robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their hands curl into bone-colored claws. They started to drift apart, angling to come at us from all sides. We were surrounded. We were going to die.

And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing changed – the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge. The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl ripped through my bared teeth.

I jolted upright, shocked out of the dream.

The room was black. It was also steamy hot. Sweat matted my hair at the temples and rolled down my throat.

I groped the warm sheets and found them empty. "Edward?"

Just then, my fingers encountered something smooth and flat and stiff. One sheet of paper, folded in half. I took the note with me and felt my way across the room to the light switch.

The outside of the note was addressed to Mrs. Cullen.

"I'm hoping you won't wake up and notice my absence, but, if you should, I'll be back very soon. I've just gone to the mainland to hunt. Go back to sleep and I'll be here when you wake again. I love you."

I sighed. We'd been here about two weeks now, so I should have been expecting that he would have to leave, but I hadn't been thinking about time. We seemed to exist outside of time here, just drifting along in a perfect state.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I felt absolutely wide awake, though the clock on the dresser said it was after one. I knew I would never be able to sleep as hot and sticky as I felt. Not to mention the fact that if I shut off the light and closed my eyes, I was sure to see those prowling black figures in my head.

I needed to talk with Edward about the Volturi. He had said before that it could take them a decade to remember me, but they were still a threat in our lives until I became a vampire.

I got up and wandered aimlessly through the dark house, flipping on lights. It felt so big and empty without Edward there. Different.

I ended up in the kitchen and decided that maybe comfort food was what I needed.

I poked around in the fridge until I found all the ingredients for fried chicken.

The popping and sizzling of the chicken in the pan was a nice, homey sound; I felt less nervous while it filled the silence.

It smelled so good that I started eating it right out of the pan, burning my tongue in the process. By the fifth or sixth bite, though, it had cooled enough for me to taste it. My chewing slowed. Was there something off about the flavor? I checked the meat, and it was white all the way through, but I wondered if it was completely done. I took another experimental bite; I chewed twice. Ugh – definitely bad. I jumped up to spit it into the sink. I threw the rest of the food in the trash.

I was abruptly exhausted, but I didn't want to go back to the hot room. So I opened more windows in the TV room and lay on the couch right beneath them. I turned on the same movie we'd watched the other day and quickly fell asleep to the bright opening song.

When I opened my eyes again, the sun was halfway up the sky, but it was not the light that woke me. My head was pounding. Cool arms were around me, pulling me against him. At the same time, I was feeling queasy.

"I'm sorry," Edward was murmuring as he wiped a wintry hand across my clammy forehead. "So much for thoroughness. I didn't think about how hot you would be with me gone. I'll have an air conditioner installed before I leave again."

I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. "Excuse me!" I gasped, struggling to get free of his arms.

He dropped his hold automatically. "Bella?"

I streaked for the bathroom in a dizzy state with my hand clamped over my mouth. I felt so horrible that I didn't even care – at first – that he was with me while I crouched over the toilet and was violently sick.

"Bella? What's wrong?"

I couldn't answer yet. He held me anxiously, keeping my hair out of my face, waiting till I could breathe again.

"Damn rancid chicken," I moaned.

"Are you all right?" His voice was strained.

"Fine," I panted. "It's just food poisoning. You don't need to see this. Go away."

"Not likely, Bella."

"Go away," I moaned again, struggling to get up so I could rinse my mouth out.

He helped me gently, ignoring the weak shoves I aimed at him.

After my mouth was clean, he carried me to the bed and sat me down carefully, supporting me with his arms.

"Food poisoning?"

"Yeah," I croaked. "I made some chicken last night. It tasted off, so I threw it out. But I ate a few bites first."

He put a cold hand on my forehead. It felt nice. "How do you feel now?"

I thought about that for a moment. The nausea had passed as suddenly as it had come. My head still hurt and my joints felt a little stiff, but I was fine "Pretty normal. A little hungry, actually."

He made me wait an hour and keep down a big glass of water before he fried me some eggs. I felt perfectly normal, just a little tired from being up in the middle of the night. He put onCNN – we'd been so out of touch, world war three could have broken out and we wouldn't have known – and I lounged drowsily across his lap.

I got up to go make myself a lemonade, when the same headache and stomach queasiness as before hit me. I knew I'd never make it to the bathroom this time, so I ran to the kitchen sink.

He held my hair again.

"Maybe we should go back to Rio, see a doctor," he suggested anxiously when I was rinsing my mouth afterward.

I shook my head and edged toward the hallway. Doctors meant needles. This was my honeymoon and not biology class, "I'll be fine right after I brush my teeth."

When my mouth tasted better, I searched through my suitcase for the little first aid kit Alice had packed for me, full of human things like bandages and painkillers and – my object now – Pepto-Bismol. Maybe I could settle my stomach and calm Edward down.

But before I found the Pepto, I happened across something else that Alice had packed for me. I picked up the small blue box and stared at it in my hand for a long moment, forgetting everything else.

Then I started counting in my head. Once. Twice. Again.

The knock startled me; the little box fell back into the suitcase.

"Are you well?" Edward asked through the door. "Did you get sick again?"

"Yes and no," I said, but my voice sounded strangled.

"Bella? Can I please come in?" Worried now.

"O... kay?"

He came in and appraised my position, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the suitcase, and my expression, blank and staring. He sat next to me, his hand going to my forehead at once.

"What's wrong?"

"How many days has it been since the wedding?" I whispered.

"Seventeen," he answered automatically. "Bella, what is it?"

I was counting again. I held up a finger, cautioning him to wait, and mouthed the numbers to myself. I'd been wrong about the days before. We'd been here longer than I'd thought. I started over again.

"Bella!" he whispered urgently. "I'm losing my mind over here."

I tried to swallow. It didn't work. So I reached into the suitcase and fumbled around until I found the little blue box of tampons again. I held them up silently.

He stared at me in confusion. "What? Are you trying to pass this illness off as PMS?"

"No," I managed to choke out. "No, Edward. I'm trying to tell you that my period is five days late."

His facial expression didn't change. It was like I hadn't spoken. The spell broke and my husband became again a mere statue of a god.

"I can't be, right?"

He didn't respond.

"Edward, please, say something!"

Edward's stare seemed glassy, as if he couldn't see me anymore.

I did the math again and again. I was worried; I'd never been late a day in my life. But there was no way I could be pregnant. The only person I'd ever had sex with was a vampire, for crying out loud!

A vampire who was still frozen on the floor with no sign of ever moving again.

So there had to be some other explanation, then. Something was wrong with me. A strange South American disease that made my period late, made me tired and sick…

And then I remembered something – a morning of internet research that seemed a lifetime ago now. Sitting at the old desk in my room at Charlie's house with gray light glowing dully through the window, staring at my ancient, wheezing computer, reading avidly through a web-site called "Vampires A-Z."

It had been less than twenty-four hours since Jacob, trying to entertain me with the Quileute legends he didn't believe in yet, had told me that Edward was a vampire. I'd scanned anxiously through the first entries on the site, which was dedicated to vampire myths around the world. The Filipino Danag, the Hebrew Estrie, the Romanian Vârcolaci, the Italian Stregoni benefici (a legend actually based on my new father-in-law's early exploits with the Volturi, not that I'd known anything about that at the time)... I'd paid less and less attention as the stories had grown more and more implausible. I only remembered vague bits of the later entries.

They mostly seemed like excuses dreamed up to explain things like infant mortality rates – and infidelity. No, honey, I'm not having an affair! That sexy woman you saw sneaking out of the house was an evil succubus. I'm lucky I escaped with my life! (Of course, with what I knew now about Tanya and her sisters, I suspected that some of those excuses had been nothing but fact.) There had been one for the ladies, too. How can you accuse me of cheating on you – just because you've come home from a two-year sea voyage and I'm pregnant? It was the incubus. He hypnotized me with his mystical vampire powers...

That had been part of the definition of the incubus – the ability to father children with his hapless prey.

I shook my head, dazed. But...

I thought of Esme and especially Rosalie. Vampires couldn't have children. If it were possible, Rosalie would have found a way by now. The incubus myth was nothing but a fable.

Except that... Well, there was a difference. Of course Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in the state in which she passed from human to inhuman. Totally unchanging. And human women's bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing child. Rosalie's body couldn't change.

But mine could.

And human men – well, they pretty much stayed the same from puberty to death. I remembered a random bit of trivia, gleaned from who knows where: Charlie Chaplin was in his seventies when he fathered his youngest child. Men had no such thing as child-bearing years or cycles of fertility.

Of course, how would anyone know if vampire men could father children, when their partners were not able? What vampire on earth would have the restraint necessary to test the theory with a human woman? Or the inclination?

I could think of only one.

Part of my head was sorting through fact and memory and speculation, while the other half – the part that controlled the ability to move even the smallest muscles– was stunned beyond the capacity for normal operations. I couldn't move my lips to speak, though I wanted to ask Edward to please explain to me what was going on. I needed to go back to where he sat, to touch him, but my body wouldn't follow instructions.

Then, Edward's phone rang, shrill and demanding. Neither of us moved. It rang again and again. I tried to tune it out, but it kept ringing.

Finally, the annoyance broke through everything else. I got down on my knees next to Edward and patted his pockets until I found the phone. I half-expected him to thaw out and answer it himself, but he was perfectly still.

I recognized the number, and I could easily guess why she was calling.

"Hi, Alice," I said. My voice wasn't much better than before. I cleared my throat.

"Bella? You're wrong."

"What?"

"You're not pregnant."

"Wait? How… I'm not? Then what's going on?"

"You have Lyme disease."

This seemed to revive Edward and he asked me for the phone. He put it on speaker.

"You saw this?" He asked in a worried voice.

"Yes, she would have developed worse symptoms in November."

"Is she going to be fine?"

"Yes, Carlisle already has a treatment in plan and it looks like she'll be in perfect health when she starts school.

We both let out a sigh of relief.

"Carlisle is here. He's going to tell you more about the treatment, but Edward, and I am talking specifically to you: Bella is going to be fine. You can continue enjoying your honeymoon."

"Hello, son!" Carlisle said in a calm voice before proceeding to tell us about my treatment. It involved me taking a pill twice a day for two weeks. He explained that all my symptoms were from the disease manifests and that my lack of period was due to the change in climate and food. I had nothing to worry about.

When we got off the phone, Edward and I looked at eachother and seeing the shock still on his face, I started laughing uncontrollably.

"What's so funny?"

"I can't believe I managed to give you a human experience."

"What do you mean?"

"A pregnancy scare. It's a very human and teenage right of passage."

"I about had a heart attack, Bella."

"We should be on the look-out for that at your age."

"Bella!"

I went to him and I gave him a hug. He leaned into my embrace and I stroked his back and hair trying to soothe him. "I was joking. I'm trying to put you in a better mood. This was a shock for me too."

"I was so scared. I kept thinking ``What have I done to her? What have I done to her?' with some this can't be happening mixed in for good measure."

"Well, thank you for not thinking I cheated on you."

His tone was scandalized, "Bella, you'd never do something like that. You are honest to a fault. If ever the day came when you'd want to leave me, you'd tell it to my face as gently as you could."

I pulled apart to look him in the eyes "You know that day is never going to come? No, you don't get to look away. I am telling you, that the day will never come when I won't want you. You are a part of me as much as I am a part of you. I know you don't think this about yourself, but you are worthy of love, Edward. You are worthy of my love." I pressed my thumb gently on his lips, "And I am so happy that you think me worthy of yours."

Instead of kissing him, I hugged him even stronger, putting all my might. He responded in kind, holding me stronger than he normally would.

A part of me was still curious, so I asked "What would you have done if I was indeed pregnant?"

"I think the first thing I would have done would've been to take you home. And then… I don't know. We'd see what the baby was. Hopefully human."

"Would you have liked to have one?"

"As long as I have you I don't need anything more. If I was human I would have liked to have a child or two with you. I know that we've talked about this before many times, but are you sure that you can accept never having a child of your own?"

"Edward, I've never imagined myself a mother, never wanted that. Children, in the abstract, have never appealed to me. They seem to be loud creatures, often dripping some form of goo. I've never had much to do with them. But that being said, if I was indeed pregnant, I would have had the child, because it was yours. Not the hypothetical child of a hypothetical man. Yours. And I could count on you to be my partner in raising the child. The only children I would ever want are yours. No one else's."

Edward looked at me with a sad smile on his face.

"So let's celebrate our first pregnancy scare and then you can tell me more about Lyme disease."

Later that evening, after the excitement of the day had gone down and I was preparing for bed, I thought more about the day's events.

While the thought of being pregnant frightened me, it also filled me with a sort of exhilaration that I had only felt when riding my motorcycle. Edward's child– a tiny creature with Edward's eyes – green, as his had been when he was human – lying fair and beautiful in my arms. There were signs of me in the child, but he was a carbon copy of Edward. I felt a longing in my heart for our family picture; all the Cullens dressed to their best, a young copper haired boy besides Edward, a smaller girl with the same eyes and hair perched on his shoulders, and me with another baby in my arms.

It was for the best like this, with children came heartbreak and I could not imagine what the loss of a child would do to him, or me. In the Cullen house it was best for any new members to come grown if not already a vampire.

By the time we had returned to Forks, I had already completed my treatment and had become something I'd never thought possible: tan.

It was the first thing that Charlie had commented on when we went to dinner at his house the second night we were back at home. It was going to be a short stay, just to grab a few more things before we moved to New Hampshire.

Esme and Alice had been kind enough to make preparations for us already and our new home was ready for us to move in. I felt bad about it, it felt like I was taking advantage of my new family, especially after they had told me that both Charlie and Renee were going to come and drop me off at school.

"I must pay you back," Charlie told Edward in the kitchen. I had fallen asleep while watching a movie with the both of them.

"My father and I do not want to hear about it, Charlie. You are Bella's father and both you and her deserve to see her dropped off at College. This was going to be a surprise, but when you returned from New Hampshire, my parents were going to gift you ten standing round trips tickets so you could come and see us whenever you liked."

"I don't know what to say. I can't accept that."

"Charlie, please, if not for yourself, for Bella."

"Then, thank you!"

There was a pause between them and I knew that Charlie was composing his next words carefully, "This does not mean you are off the hook. Bella might have forgiven you for what you put her through, but I haven't. I don't hate you kid, but I just don't think you are worthy enough of her."

"Believe me, Charlie, I know that very well."

"I don't think you understand me." I had to stop myself from letting out a small awkward chuckle. Edward might be the only person who understood him. "I'm saying that the way she loves you has offered you a power to destroy her that no man should have. And you have already done that once. While I know it made her incredibly happy to have married you, it's no secret to you that I didn't think it was a good idea and that you should have waited."

"Bella is the only woman I love and the only woman I will ever love."

"That's all nice and good, but that doesn't mean you won't hurt her again. I'm going to give you some very hard earned advice. Listen to her, she knows herself best, not you. And don't make yourself her whole world or the other way around. It's not good for either of you."

Charlie sighed. "You're not a bad kid; you're just inexperienced. So listen to this old man. Now, show me more of those photos. You say Bella swam with dolphins?"

I managed to keep my breathing still throughout Charlie's speech and I spent the next ten minutes pretending to still be asleep and musing over what he had told Edward. He thought that my husband did not deserve me, but how could he not? Edward was wonderful.

On the ride back home Edward was quiet. I knew he was overthinking his talk with Charlie.

"You know that you are worthy of me?"

"What?"

"I heard you and Charlie talk."

"Oh, that. I wasn't thinking of that more than I usually am. I was thinking about what he said about making myself your whole world? Have I done that to you?"

"I don't think you did it as much as I did it myself. I fell hard and fast for you."

He smiled. There was melancholy on his face, "As did I. But Charlie isn't wrong. Your closest friends are part of my family. And don't say Angela or Ben, Jessica or even…," Edward scowled at the last name, "Mike. I want to ask something of you. Please promise that you'll try and make some new friends at Dartmouth. And keep in touch with some from here."

"Even Mike?"

"Even Mike," he mumbled.

"But you do know I have other friends. Like Seth?" I avoided mentioning Jacob, I had no idea where we stood. Soon to be mortal enemies?

"Just promise me, Bella."

"I promise."