I dutifully attempted to give her the privacy that she so deserved. I had taken so much from her already, the least I could do was give her these moments with the family…with her family.

I never belonged without her, never quite fit into the life she had given to me…selfishly. I called into mind now that October night when we joined the family. The emotions she gave off now were much the same. They had accepted her then like they did now despite her differences.

Bella's voice broke loudly through the crisp air around me.

"He's out there you know…"

My eyes shot open now. She was not supposed to know I was here. She was supposed to feel safe and protected. I growled at myself in frustration of my eternal weakness for this woman.

Bella continued, "He's been out there wandering for the past hour and a half…Checking on your emotions I suppose. Keeping his distance in case you need him?" After twenty years with this family, Bella has grown to know me better than any of the others. Having her an immortal made the bond easier. Her emotions were never convoluted, always pure and clean. Her gracing presence soothed my nerves in the oddest ways. Her understanding and new world perspectives on the monstrosities that we were…that I am…it made things easier. She understood in ways that even Edward could never hope to parallel. I had regretted my earlier decisions to take her life.

"Oh," Alice's voice broke through my internal thoughts. Her voice waivered now unlike ever before. She never showed weakness around me or anyone for that matter. Bella was always different for her too I suppose. I froze in place, fear and anxiety flooding my body. I could not differentiate its origins. Were they of my beloved, or my own? I had seldom personal experience in these human emotions. They only spelled death during the wars…a luxury that I grew to yearn for before Peter took me from that place…before I met her.

"I can go chase him away if you'd like…" Emmett offered in a protective and brotherly compassion. I wanted that too. It was the only thing I deserved, but my selfish soul wished for her to decline.

It felt like an eternity before she responded. My entire life had passed before me while I awaited her response. Every mistake and each sin that I had committed reared their ugly heads into my consciousness. The entirety of the reasons I never deserved my angel.

My ears strained past the ambiance. I needed to hear every contour of her perfect mouth as they conducted the sounds my soul craved. I heard her raven hair swish around her petite head as her mouth popped open with a sharp intake of breath.

"No, I think I want to talk to him."

Venom surged through my dead flesh, burning in my lifeless eyes. I felt a heat raise to my skin, though I knew I would never flush that beautiful rosy color of her epithelium. My brow furrowed in frustration, yet my head crashed backwards into the bark in relief. I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, coaxing it apart at the nape of my neck.

I shut her out now, allowing her her time to adjust. I had all that I needed to prepare for her seeking of me. I focused on the life around me. So easily ended. Each and every fragile entity in my vicinity, yet they thrived. With every predator in the ecosystem, there was never a shortage of prey. Such a cruel existence really. Such a stubborn existence.

I heard her small frame crunch on the gravel below her as she gently closed the heavy oak door behind her. A large breath drawing into her core. I too did the same, allowing her heavenly scent to drench my systems. I could feel her now. Not just the typical warmth of her. No, it was something more than that. An electricity of sorts coursed through the air in her direction. It was almost tangible, the tension it brought, the color I could see when I closed my eyes to the world. Such a beautiful feeling I had yet to accept. I was beginning to think that she would give me no choice in the matter. What had I done…why had I reacted that way? I had already decided I would not follow in my brother's footsteps.

She moved so easily, never faltering over the unmoving and dangerous terrain. I made the conscious note to myself that she was in fact, not human. Certainly not human, I nodded to myself.

As she drew closer to the cluster of trees I had been hiding behind, I made no effort to move. I could smell now something out of place about her. A bittersweet and salty experience. I could tell by the quickening of her heartbeat that it was influenced by the presence of caffeine in her system. My face curled up at the smell, it was not her. It at the very least made her intoxicating presence more bearable. All the same, I knew the truth of my previous actions and the hurtful intentions behind the words I had let slip.

"I don't deserve another moment of you…"

She paused a moment, gathering herself I supposed. She started again more confidently this time, around the trees and directly in front of me. Wasn't she afraid? Hadn't I proven to her yet that I was not to be trusted with her safety in such close proximity?

She dropped to her knees then and my dead heart twitched in my stone-cold chest, a small smirk drawing itself on my face. Surely a sight to behold, I thought to myself only.

Her angelic voice rang in the small space between us, "Don't you think after all of that, I deserve a little more say in my own future?" her head moving dramatically to the side to illustrate her frustration with eyebrows knitted gracefully into her raven hairline.

I turned my head then, venom flowing easily into my mouth. My razor-sharp teeth vibrating with temptation. I let her voice ring through my skull, enjoying each and every syllable and utterance as it moved back and forth between the space there. My hands shuddered in my lap, aching to reach for her, to drag her across that divide and into my lap. To hold her warmth against me, absorbing its delicious energies.

"Emmett told me what happened at the ravine, Jasper."

My body froze in shock and annoyance, all previous courses of thought stopped in their damning tracks "Of course, he did." I grunted to no fault of her own. My name on her delicate lips was enough to keep me from that slippery edge of aggression.

Her beautiful messy air-dried curls bounced around her shoulders as she shook her head incredulously at me "I'm not going to let you get off that easy, Jasper. You're not getting rid of me. Not after the clarity and answers you've given me about my confusing existence."

I knew what she said to be altogether true, but it did nothing to calm my ire at the danger I introduced to her "So, I'm expected to damn that very existence then?" I brought my head to her now. Letting her witness the beast inside. I could feel my eyes contracting in the familiar shift of color as my body burned through the last reserves of blood within my ancient tissue. They stung now in a rather unfamiliar way however, something that felt vulnerable and terrifying…almost…loss. I held her gaze, fearing that if I broke it, I would never find her again. She would disappear again into the Aether.

"Jasper, I think you would damn me if you didn't."

"That's horseshit, Alice. You have to see that. Truly you cannot hate your existence so entirely much that you can just ignore the ways that your body naturally reacts to me! You can hide it well, sure but it's there Alice…I can feel it." Nothing I had stated had been a lie of course, but I had to control this. I had to bring myself to the ground beneath her. There was no choice but to allow this to happen, I knew that. Against all instinct I broke free from her glare. I could not bear to withstand another harsh word towards her.

"God forbid I cringe away when being yelled at. Ya' know, you're not as terrifying as you like to pretend to be. Yes. Yes Jasper, I'm pissed, and I'm hurt. That doesn't mean I don't still feel the same for you and that those feelings are of my own volition. I mean unless you've been using that power on me.", she laughed now. I could hardly believe my accursed ears. The striking sound of her laughter disrupted any harsh edges to my black soul. Soothing as it irritated every molecule of evil that had been in place before her.

"…Never" I moved my head in the negation of the ridiculous questioning. I feared tremendously for her autonomy. I could never bear to remove the very last shred of peace and morality that she held in this ugly and masochistic society. While I often tasted her succulent emotions and bathed myself in them, I had never attempted to alter them without her permission. Not then, and certainly not now.

"Then why is it so fucking impossible for me to love you Jasper Whitlock?" I recoiled at her words, the mannerisms of the day never quite aligning well with the preserved past that remained, cemented deep within my old mind. As she leaned into me now, I ceased all movement and the very little breaths that I had ventured before. Her delicate hand raised to my face almost in slow motion. My own flickered to stop her, but I thought better of it. She needed this… I needed this.

Her breath quickened and the egregiously thin and fragile strings within her human heart swayed in dangerous and erratic patterns. A heat drastically spread in the air between us then, carrying a musk unlike anything I had ever savored before that day. It bathed me, warming the decaying being that I was. Her eyes narrowed and I knew that she saw me for everything that I was in that moment. Again, against my better wishes, she ner'ent turn nor flee. She pitied me; an emotion I could hardly bare even from her.

I used it now. I let it wash over me, exonerating me of my sins and immoral actions both against humanity and inhumanity. I had spent an eternity contemplating the very nature of my thoughts from even pre-transition. It had been so long; my human memory and experiences steeped in the pain and numbness of the ancient venom in my veins. Those old thoughts seemed dated now, I huffed with their significance hanging heavy on my shoulders. I avoided human lives as best I could, but Carlisle required a sense of consideration for the beings, for their plight. I was further educated than I was when I was a boy now. It did not however, come without trails and tribulations of the old ways that were carved in the stone of my very essence.

I brought myself back to her, mind realigned with the moment. Remembering what she was, what she fought against with her fellow puny humans… people, Jasper. It's easier to think of them as people, she always reminded me. She seemed so far from them even now. She was not like them. I looked deep into the apertures within her frail "protective" skull. Trying to see within them the meaning behind her existence. Trying to understand her, her physiology, her philosophies, all of it.

I soon forsook that endeavor. It had not worked very well for Plato nor Descartes, who was I to think I could be any different? I placed a fraction of the weight my head possessed into her palm, taking in an agonizing inhalation. I felt every millimeter of my flesh burn with desire for her. My nature told me that this was different. I could feel it now, stronger than I had ever before with her. It was exposed to me. Open for the sampling. My mouth drowned in venom as I clenched my mandible with the force to crush the strongest marble and steel at once.

Through gritted teeth I released a growl as a warning to her, I had to make sure that she understood the danger she was in now. She had to understand.

"You're bleeding." I pushed myself further away from her persistence hearing the tree behind me groan in protest, fracturing at every weakest point between its very cells. Releasing the distracting scent of decay and cellulose into the air, blocking her glorious fragrance. I wanted it to stop its ministrations of my temptations. I ceased before the tree could give way any inch further.

A lifetime passed before she acknowledged her tremulous position in this cruel world. She frustratingly examined her hand, but I knew that was not the source. Thankfully. Had it been, I was not entirely sure that a conversation would have ensued.

"No, I'm not."

As she held it out to me, I took the opportunity to locate the offending wound. The delicious fissure in her soft and malleable exterior. With as much restrain as I could muster, I snatched her all too close figure from nearest the most dangerous elements of my immortal form. Her body visibly recoiled then, alerting me to the manner of her injury. The monster within roared in excitement and anxiety. I ripped the offending fabric of what I assumed to be Bella's criminally boyish fitted sweater from Alice's arm. I had assumed it was to protect her from the chill in the air, but I could see all too clearly now the true intent behind its selection. Her face twisted then in realization as she tried to pull her hand from me.

I allowed no movement as I forced her to take in the rationale behind my exasperation with our fate.

I gestured to it now, knowing she would only dismiss it like she had everything else.

"That…that's fucking why Alice." I rumbled from the deepest pits within me, rising now in attempt to distance myself like her survival required now.

"Oh, no you don't." She moved faster than I had anticipated were within her capabilities, her easily broken finger lacing its way through the loop on my jeans. The strength of her resistance adding further to my disbelief. I easily smelled the friction my leather belt caused against her skin and ceased all movement to prevent further injury to her precariously ferocious demeanor.

I shifted my weight to remove her grip on me with as little force as I could manage; but she used the opportunity to overcome my stance, forcing me to the distressed tree once again.

My mouth hung open in incredulity as her sweet breath bathed my lungs with a simple sound, "No," she started with her brilliantly golden and almond shaped doe-like eyes.

"Alice," I could feel my resolve diminishing now with her very existence.

"Alice, nothing Jasper. This is what I want, and you will not take this away from me. Do you hear me?" I could hardly believe this woman. The omnipotent god that presided over my cursed destiny laughed now as he presented me with this tantalizing tyrant. The cheekily way she waggled those perfectly arched eyebrows at me, challenging the demon within, begging him to play with her.

"You were a soldier, no? So, you know how to follow orders. No, you are not to turn away from me and you are not to give up on this Jasper Whitlock. Not now, not when it gets harder, and certainly not ever. Got it?" Her hands pushed into my chest with an unrecognizable force at which she herself winced at. My mind was alight with the possibilities, having heard my given name fall like the softest satin and the finest velvet from her thin yet pillow-like lips.

A long-suppressed urge flamed within me, I turned from it wishing for it to be doused. I knew that relief would never come. I brought her into me, allowing the demon to play, it was what she wanted after all.

With the longest inhale my form could physically manage, I could feel my grip loosening on it all. On the control I had spent a century mustering. All to fall to hell over such a small and finite being.

When I returned to a semblance of mind, I was hovering over her petite form. Arms encircling her, blocking any exit she might perceive. My fingers affixed themselves within the bark above her head, begging for me to release. To allow them to wander over the heat her exquisite form provided to the space now.

"I meant it you know." The devil toyed, allowing venom to taint the sounds that escaped with allure. "I want you. I want you in so many ways, Darlin'." He leaned closer into her ear with every syllable. Begging me still to release him.

He reached out for her, and I allowed it. He sampled the feavour of her cheek as a blush raised to the surface there. He bellowed deeper now in my belly.

"I know the risks. I've seen it. I've seen every possibility and every future already." She had no idea what she asked for. The beast pleaded with me to show her just a glimpse. Perhaps it would drive home the final point I wanted her to bear witness to.

He blared when her feverish hand found its place on my waist, "I know what I'm choosing." She looked into me with those eyes, those damned eyes of hers.

I was awash with her every emotion. I sucked in a large breath now, gasping for the life she gave me. "I doubt that," I heard from a distance as all resolve finally crashed faster than any army I had ever been up against.

Her body curved dangerously, more than normal as she brought her chest into my abdominal region. Spiked with desire, the behemoth pressed back against her, driving her further into the tree that groaned with its evident frailness. Seemingly more frail than the "human" girl it now supported. My hands drove themselves roughly further into it now, excitatory responses to the possibility of her resilience.

Biting back now, fighting for dominance over the leviathan I lowered myself to my elbows around her, breathing her in deeper now. I moved side to side, drawing her heavenly scent in from every angle and crevice of her form. It changed subtly as I moved around her but left a grand impression in combination within my mind. I categorized every shift in notes as I moved about her, memorizing it. The perfume from the hollow of her deep-set collarbone fought for supremacy over the one from her mouth. How I wanted to taste the both of them.

I weighed out each option in my slurred thoughts. My hand losing its grip in the safe place above her. It made its way along the outline of her being before I gave in to the safest option. I grabbed her deliciously narrow waist, drawing her closer to keep her from making a drastic change in the power dynamic that held so delicately in balance.

I had not realized that I had been kissing her, I had not been paying close enough attention until the venom flowed freely now into her. I silently cursed myself for the palpable ignorance that had become me.

It felt so normal, so intimate and free like it had each and every time before. It felt as if her life did not hang in the furthest of gallows with my hands themselves around her neck. I relaxed into her, giving her what she wanted, as I always had and would from this moment on.

No. This had to stop, she was not the same, she was not my indestructible and sturdy vampire mate. I released all of the tension within me in one breath. I had not thought to direct it away from her, and soon regretted the lack of forethought with the realization of my demonic and efficient killer nature.

She knew me…she always did.

"Stay Jasper, please."

I fought against my urges to protect her at all costs. Surly drawing my actuality closer to her own would ensure a continuance of her ill-fated existence. Surly the omnipotent god would not damn this creature to teach me a lesson in morality and consciousness. Either way, it was decided, "I don't think I have any other choice Darlin'."

My fingers grazed her pulse point as it pushed the offending fabric off her shoulder.