"If you could stop staring and start speaking, that would be nice."

The feisty stranger kept her distance when she spoke again. The silence of her thoughts felt daunting. Her mind was just as quiet as Bella's, who was now gripping me tighter, holding her breath. She looked harmless enough, but I couldn't take her appearance for granted, especially not when I couldn't guess her true intentions.

I didn't know this particular girl. I had seen younger vampires before, even met a few throughout the years. I had heard of Jane and Alec from the Volturi's guard, who were only 12 when they got turned - but the description of Jane's appearance did not match that of the vampire in front of us.

"Why don't you start, kid?" I offered on an even tone, while my mind was busy running in a hundred different directions at once, in hopes that I might catch a clue to a hidden path of thoughts from the outsider.

It was the best offer I could give her. After all, she was alone and there were two of us. She was outnumbered and she had to understand that.

"You're the one trespassing and doing weird shit on my territory, so you go. Besides, I asked first."

Somewhere hidden in her voice I could sense the slightest accent. It was an accent I was all too familiar with, one that I grew up with: she was a Chicagoan. What was she doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Of course she had the same question for us, but that was a different story. And more importantly: was she alone?

Her eyes looked incredulous and annoyed as they shifted from me to Bella and back.

"Fair enough," I said, stepping in my role. "My name is Thomas Langdon. This is my fiancée, Rosemary Baker."

"It is nice to meet you," Bella said, her voice warm from behind me.

The girl watched us with scrutinizing eyes. She remained unmoved and I couldn't begin to guess what she wanted to say next. Maybe she was going to introduce herself as well now. Maybe she was going to tell us what she had meant earlier by saying "her territory". Or maybe she was going to explain why the hell I had no access to her mind.

The one thing I did not expect was for her to spew this:

"Liar."

"Excuse me?" I raised my brows, glimpsing the horizon getting warmer in the background.

"Those are not your names, so tell me who you actually are and what you are doing here. This is my place."

My immediate instinct had been to keep the charade going, so I went for it:

"I am afraid I don't know what you are talking about."

"And I am afraid I can sense bullshit from miles."

Intuition? That was the gift of this annoying kid? It wouldn't have been the first time I met someone like this. But intuition never came packaged with the bonus of an unreadable brain. There had to be more, something I was missing.

"Look, stranger, the sun is minutes away from rising, and we were leaving," I said, unwilling to continue whatever game she was playing. "You can tell us who you are - or not. It is all the same to me, but my fiancée and I are heading back."

The girl frowned, obviously displeased. Bella broke my grip and came beside me, but I locked my arm against her waist, keeping her as close to me as possible.

"We mean no harm, really," Bella said and immediately raised her eyes to me.

I met her gaze and in one second I guessed all the questions hidden there. She didn't know if I really meant no harm, as she did. She didn't understand why the girl called me a liar. She didn't understand why I hadn't used my gift already to sort this peculiar meeting out.

"Your name is Bella," the odd creature said and I froze in place; she moved her ginger eyes to me before going on. "I can hear you, you know? It's a nice gift you've got."

And just like that, my stream of consciousness went wild.

The kid heard me?

Could she hear me now?

Was there an off-switch?

But the most burning question was this: why couldn't I hear her?

"I'm 15, by the way, so not a kid," she snickered. "I still don't know your name."

Suddenly, it became next to impossible to stop my brain from hiding that simple fact about me.

"Ah," the girl smiled when my subconscious slipped. "Edward was the name of my grandfather. I barely remember him though."

I felt Bella's body tensing up inside my embrace.

"What is your name?" my wife demanded.

"Eleanor - but that's boring, so Nell."

We stood there for a moment that seemed to last forever, with the sun creeping closer, getting ready to erupt from the horizon. I fought between the potent impulse to learn more about the young vampire and the need to get back to the house, to seek cover from sunlight before any hikers could see us.

In the end, the sensible part of me won.

"As I was telling, we have to get going," I announced.

"I wasn't finish-"

"I don't care," I cut her right in the middle, before taking Bella's hand in mine. "Let's go, the sun is rising."

My wife didn't need more explanations to understand. We started running together downhill and took a shortcut through the woods. Not once did I let go of her hand. The road back to the house flew right by us, the forest barely awakening from its sleep as we whooshed past the trees and above the ground. I expected the girl to follow us, but she didn't.

In the two minutes it took us to arrive back to the cabin, I had plenty of time to think.

I tried to make sense of our strange encounter. Whoever this Nell was, she could read my mind - and for whatever reason, I couldn't read hers. The oddity enraged me, but not enough to go back and track her for more explanations.

She had referred to the mountain plateau as her "territory". That struck me as particularly bizarre. The colour of her eyes and her lack of a companion were obvious proof of her being a nomad, thus unable to maintain a permanent residence. But I could be wrong: her creator might have simply been away for the moment.

How much did she make out of my thoughts, beyond seeing through the false names charade? I was confident that I had kept all the other details - me and Bella being on the run, our family scattered throughout the world, the Volturi having us followed - hidden in a chamber far enough away in my brain.

The people from the small camp were just beginning to wake up when Bella and I arrived. Our host was still lost in a drunken sleep. The first rays of sun touched our skin for the shortest of seconds, lighting it up, before we got inside.

"She didn't come after us, right?" Bella breathed, peeking out through the window, pulling the improvised curtain away.

"No, we would have felt her scent if she did," I said and I dragged her away from there, pulling the sheet back. "Please stay away from the windows."

"Should we call Alice?"

"Most definitely."

But before either of us did anything, my phone rang. I took it out of my pocket and saw Alice's name flashing on the screen ominously.

"I saw you wanted to call," she skipped past 'hello' as soon as I answered. "I wanted to call as well."

"Glad we're in sync."

"Jasper and I just landed in Cusco. I had a vision up in the air - how late am I?"

"Minutes late. What did you see?"

A voice talking in Spanish announced something about baggage claim on the other end.

"I saw you tracking some vampire kid I've never seen in my life and going all Spanish Inquisition on her. Does this make any sense to you?"

"Yes, except I didn't do that."

In the end, I completed in my head. Alice stopped for what seemed like a long time and I knew that she was analyzing glimpses of the near future.

"You're not going after her," she inferred.

"Not planning on it. She is probably just a nomad and we happened to cross paths. This happens."

"I can't see her clearly yet."

"Did you catch anything about her in that vision you had - anything she said?"

I wondered why I avoided telling Alice about the outlandish ability of the kid to keep me out of her head. I wasn't ashamed, only frustrated. Relying on mind-reading was something that lied at the very core of my being. It was my error-free way of understanding those around me and sensing danger. Being kept out went against my comfort zone and my survival instincts.

But I wasn't ashamed. Of course I wasn't.

"Only her name: Nell."

"That I already know," I grumbled.

"It seemed that she wanted to warn you two about something, but I didn't catch it. It ended too abruptly."

The warning part seemed easy enough to guess: all that talk about 'her territory', whatever she meant by that. But nomads couldn't really claim territories, it went against logic. It didn't surprise me that a teenager would claim such an absurd privilege.

"Okay, forget about this, you need to tell me about the Volturi, Alice," I requested, trying to focus on the real problem.

"Yes, about that..."

I recognized the edge in her voice - she had it each time she tried to drag along an inevitable discussion. Of course it never worked with me, but that was when we were face to face.

"Just spill it," I hissed.

"They found nothing of interest in Denali - besides that note we left behind, asking the Denalis not to call us. Caius pondered whether that was incriminatory enough, but Aro seemed to be in a good mood and shut him out. So they decided to go back to Italy for the time being."

"And what are they doing now?"

"I'm not sure, Edward, there are too many variables. It goes back between them taking a break from tracking us, them going back to chasing us and… sending Demetri."

I felt every single muscle in my body contract upon hearing his name. Demetri was the Volturi's best instrument when it came to tracking. They used him when they really wanted to find someone.

"They're still monitoring the news about Elijah right now. Depending on what he says next - if he says something next - they'll make a decision."

"Let's say he doesn't say anything: how set in stone is it that they will leave us alone?"

"You know nothing is set in stone," she complained.

"Humour me."

Hesitation slowed her down for a moment.

"It's kind of a fifty-fifty situation," she eventually admitted. "There are too many possibilities at this point, I cannot give you something more specific. I am really sorry."

I didn't realize I was rubbing the bridge of my nose out of stress until I felt Bella's hand in my hair, stroking it carefully, in a way that felt incredibly comforting.

"Call me when things get clearer, all right?" I said.

"You know it."

It took all my will not to throw the telephone to the other side of the room after I hung up. I knew I would need it later.

If there was something worse than Alice having a faulty vision every now and then, it was her having too many visions in a row to count. While she couldn't exactly help it, it wasn't any less annoying. I found myself foolishly hoping Alice could get a software update.

Or maybe I was the one in desperate need of such an update, since a small part of my brain was still busy executing tumbles, trying to process the fact that my gift hadn't worked on that girl.

"So what happens now?" Bella asked.

"We stick to moving around - or not. It might be safe to linger here a little longer, while they decide. I really can't tell."

The anguish in my voice seemed to startle her and she reached out to press her palms on either side of my face. This helped - her touching me always helped.

"Maybe we'll have a week here, Bella. I can't promise anything."

"This could be a good thing - it offers us a bit of a headstart with the training, you know?"

I nodded mindlessly. A headstart could be a good thing. It was waiting for the Volturi to make a decision that I didn't like.

"Maybe we can find that girl again and-"

"She is probably just a nomad, no reason to go looking for her," I interrupted.

"Something was disturbing her, I could tell. Maybe she needs help?"

It was impossible not to roll my eyes. I knew Bella had an unending spring of goodwill running freely inside her. As much as I loved her for this, the timing of her benevolence was extremely ill-placed.

"She is perfectly fine, Bella."

"Can you vouch for that?"

Her words took me aback for a second. Mostly because I couldn't, in fact, be so sure of what I was saying. Bella had seen my struggle earlier, on the mountain, and her eyes told me that she wasn't going to let it slide.

"I can't," I admitted and she didn't need more explanations, because whatever theory she had formed in her mind, it was confirmed.

"Why do you think you couldn't hear her?" she asked.

"For the very unknown reason I can't hear you either."

"But she did hear you, right?"

"It seemed like she did."

"That is so freaky! I wonder why."

I wondered that too. But Nell wasn't my priority, which meant I couldn't allow myself to dwell on our bizarre meeting longer than I had already done. She was nothing more than an entitled teen, for all I knew.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "No harm, no foul, after all. Can we just forget about it, please?"

She flashed me a disbelieving smile, but agreed nonetheless. I pondered over when she was going to bring the subject up again.

"Okay, then I'll go clean up a little," she announced. "I'm covered in dirt and grass from head to toe."

A quick glance assured me that she was right. Her clothes were crumpled and stained lightly, and her hair a wild mess, congested with grass threads.

I succeeded in suppressing a laugh.

"I don't know how you've managed to get out of this with your clothes wrinkle-free," she sneered.

"Well, for once, I am not a savage," I teased her.

"Just a big show-off."

"I'm simply a little more experienced than you are, Bella."

"What an understatement."

Just as she was turning around to go to the bathroom, I swept her feet off the wooden floor and took her in my arms. A yell escaped from her throat, but it swiftly faded into a chain of giggles.

"You know, I believe we've got some unfinished business," I said, drawing a line of kisses from her ear to the hollow of her neck.

"Oh, we do..." her words came in a beautiful suspiration, while her hands started to open the buttons of my shirt - we were learning to be patient with taking our clothes off, to avoid shopping for new stuff; she was a little better at this particular task than I was.

We were already in the bathroom by the time she finished her sentence. It was clearly a space intended for only one person. I quickly took mental notes of the slight cracks and weak spots in the structure, so that I could avoid bumping into them.

I let Bella down on the floor and she was quick to continue her endeavor of undressing me. We were back to where we left off on the mountain plateau before I could blink twice.


If making love to Bella after her transformation had taught me anything, it was this: she was practically unappeasable. I could offer her the longest string of orgasms - watching as she succumbed to the most divine rapture again and again, hearing her crying out my name - and at the end of it all, she would still whisper 'More'. And by God, I gave her more. Had I been a human male, I would have found it an impossible mission to cater to such a voracious appetite.

Luckily for both of us, I was just as hungry for Bella.

And when I had her, our bodies sang tales that could only be explained by witchcraft. It wasn't just the zenith of the act, when I finally got to spill my venom wherever I could inside and outside her body, that brought me tremendous joy, but the act itself as well. For there was nothing more holy, nothing more exquisite than the delectation of melting my body into hers, forgetting which limbs belong to me and which limbs belong to her, discovering new pleasures and taking delight in the old ones. The sounds we made together were better than all the symphonies in my music collection. Her moans were the violins in the composition, always harmonizing perfectly, as if rehearsed, to the double bass of my groans.

This music held a power over me that made me forget about everything. Hearing it made every other sound disappear: if there was ever someone nearby, the sound of their thoughts was suffocated and forgotten. The only thoughts I would have loved to drown in were Bella's. I craved to know where her mind went in these precious moments, when she felt me disappear in her body. When I loved her slowly. When I went rough on her. When her climax hit. When I didn't offer her time to recover before ravishing her once more. When she heard me whisper sweet obscenities in her ear.

It was difficult to find a good enough reason to stop - I never wanted to stop. If I could love Bella to the end of times, I would have and I would die a happy man. But our bliss always had a time limit, which was set either by the outside world or by Bella's thirst for blood. Today it was the latter.

We were on the floor, close to the bunk bed and shrouded in the muted light of the twilight, entangled in such a way that we could both please the other with our mouths. My lips were wet from her delicious array of orgasms, while Bella had her tongue around my tip, slowly summoning me to come again. It was then that I heard a low growl growing in her chest - most certainly not a growl of pleasure.

"Everything all right, my love?" I checked carefully.

She nodded 'yes' and resumed her mission. I shrugged and went back to slowly pushing the tip of my tongue in and out of her. Her sap coated my taste buds with its magnificent taste and I found myself wanting to feed on this and only this, never to taste one drop of blood again.

Bella's next groan alerted me that something was most definitely not right. I stopped immediately and pulled her from where she was positioned, so that I could see her face. Her eyes were the first thing that I noticed: they were just a shade darker than the usual crimson.

"You're thirsty," I inferred.

"It's not so bad, it barely stings," she hurried to say. "I want to go back to what we were doing."

I chuckled, but I was not amused, and held her in place when she tried to prop herself back.

"I am not doing anything with you until you are fed and satiated," I said. "You need to enjoy this as much as I do."

"But I am enjoying myself!"

"Not the way you should."

"Come on, I hunted two days ago..."

"Your thirst doesn't have a clock now, does it?"

Before she could protest further, I was up and dressing myself. Bella frowned at me when I gave her a set of clean clothes from our luggage. She crossed her arms at her chest and watched me with a look of defiance.

"You know how I love to see you naked, Bella, but I am not a big fan of anyone else seeing you like this, so please be good and dress up, so we can go."

Eventually, she obliged, albeit unenthusiastically. I tried to cheer her up, telling her that I will join her in hunting this time, marking our first hunting trip together. The last time I had hunted myself was the night of the accident, when Emmett went with me.

The details of that night were muffled by the memory of finding Bella and Alice on the side of the road, but I could still remember vividly what came before: the unspoken desperation after tasting the blood of those bears, that took over me as a painful reminder that nothing could come close to the Eden of feasting on my beloved during her last day as a human. It was the accident that brought me my sanity back - yet a significant part of me was afraid to hunt again.

I didn't want to burden Bella with this selfish and irrational worry. Maybe this time it was going to be different, after all. It had to be. Besides, before heading out the door, we had a more important disturbance to deal with, one that could not be postponed any longer: letting Charlie know that we had left Forks for good, without visiting him.

As expected, it didn't go well. Charlie was in a good mood when Bella called, as he had taken one day off work and he was getting ready to go fishing. His sweet disposition got shattered when his daughter told him that she wasn't going to see him again too soon. His surprise turned to worry in a few seconds - then his worry turned to anger even quicker.

He shouted at Bella. Hearing the ever-calm Charlie Swan lose his temper like that was both surprising and unnerving. But what truly got me were Bella's eyes, so forlorn and filled with unspoken sorrow, when she heard him. I wanted to take the phone from her hand and tell Charlie that no father should ever talk to his daughter like that - especially when that daughter was Bella. Of course I had no right to talk, since I was never going to know the intricacies of what being a father meant. But did I have to know those intricacies to recognize that what he was doing was wrong and hurting my wife?

Bella offered one excuse after another: none good enough, none redeemable. But beyond his shouting, I knew Charlie loved Bella more than anything. As much as he was hurting her, he was hurting as well. The last time he had seen her he was fraught with questions regarding her well-being and my intentions. I wanted him to understand that his daughter was everything to me, that she was more precious than life itself, that - if it came to that - I could happily wave goodbye to my existence to save her. But it was impossible to explain any of this to him without revealing my true nature, and knowing this burned like a thousand fires.

It seemed like forever had passed when Bella hung up her phone. We didn't say a word, but we didn't have to. I held her in my arms for a few endless minutes, until she pulled away.

"He probably hates me right now," she uttered.

She pressed her teeth hard against her lower lip, as if trying to rip through it.

"No sane person could hate you, Bella."

"I don't know about that."

"Your father will forgive you," I murmured, tracing the shape of her cheek with my palm.

"He's getting used to it by now," she pouted.

When we exited the house, the purple shadows of the twilight still lingered on every surface. A few hikers were coming back and I held Bella's hand with such force that she looked up to me with a confused look on her face. I had grown to accept that slip-ups could happen anytime and that I could never be too careful with her. It was a fine line I was walking on - the one between being protective and being a tyrant - but I tried to make it work.

We headed south-west, towards the village of Abyy, where we sensed the commanding smell of lynxes, our road lightened only by the full moon rising slowly above our heads. Bella remained behind, so that I could lead the way to the point where we would be the furthest from the human population. The rush of the running helped me clean my thoughts, if only a little. This was going to be a good hunting trip, no mistakes, no breakdowns. I could feel in every bone of my body that it was going to be perfectly fine this time. I would focus my attention on Bella, watch her hunting in order to distract me from any possible outbursts.

My breath got stuck in the back of my throat when I felt in the air the ghost of the sawdust and moss scent I felt in the camp one day earlier. For an incommensurably short second, it overpowered the fragrance of the lynxes. Then just as it came, it was gone. When I looked over my shoulder at Bella to catch her reaction, she didn't even flinch. The phantom scent got caught in the wind before it could reach her.

I shrugged it off once more, as the night creeped in upon us and the forest grew thicker. We were getting closer now, close enough to hear the low purr of the lynxes hunting. The night was the time they were most active, daytime being too conspicuous for their attacks - much like vampires.

Bella and I doubled upon their track, to avoid being heard too soon. They were following the scent of a herd of sleeping deer. Their senses combined to make them some of the stealthiest predators in Siberia. Unfortunately, they were still not at the top of the food chain. The powerful lynxes had an Achilles' heel, like almost any species - and it was us: the ultimate apex predators.

When we got closer, I made a silent motion to Bella to split directions, so that we could make a double strike. She disappeared between the trees like a night nymph and I heard the delicate echo of her titter reverberate around me.

I let my feet and my nose guide me, and it wasn't long until I saw the glowering profiles of three lynxes closing in on their prey. Bella was right there, just a few meters away, on the other side of the animals. I raised three fingers in the air and began a silent countdown.

Three.

The lynxes were crouching on their forelegs, their snouts closer to the ground. They were almost as silent as us, only their jagged breaths warming the soil divulging them. The deer had no idea.

Two.

Bella's eyes were moving fast between me and the three predators. I saw the delicate muscles underneath her skin clenching, craving, awaiting. She was ready. I bowed, making no effort to swallow the abundance of venom in my mouth.

One.

We launched one second before the lynxes got to jump on their prey. Their feral roars ripped through the night and somewhere not far away a wolf howled in return. My hands grabbed one lynx by the throttle, while holding the other down with my leg. I twisted the animal's neck and its whimper was the ultimate sound it made before breathing one last breath. I rushed to kill its partner as well and caught a glimpse of Bella, bent over the lifeless body of the third lynx, getting ready to sink her teeth through its fur. The deer, awakened from their peaceful sleep, started running past us, their most unlikely saviours.

With my eyes still glued on Bella, I bit the first lynx. My teeth pierced through its fur, its skin and the doughy layers of fat underneath, until they punctured a large artery. The blood inundated my mouth instantly, still brimming with warmth. I couldn't help but moan loudly, as I let the liquid wash over my tongue and slither down my throat.

My brain allowed me exactly one moment of relief before bringing me back to where I had been with Emmett the night of the accident. This blood was good. This blood was thick. This blood was pure. But it was still a poor travesty compared to the memory of drinking Bella's blood. Her blood had been narcotic and sweet, silkier than raw honey and laced with flowers from another world - the lushest Heaven imaginable.

This was barely a low budget Purgatory.

Bella's eyes were closed as she drank from the animal, unaware of the fact that she was being watched. She was a sight to behold, with her hair flowing like a mahogany curtain on the dead lynx, her snow-white fingers sinking deep in the soil as her thirst was gradually being quenched. Beautiful, so very beautiful.

I forced myself to swallow another mouthful of blood. The phantasm of her taste lingered somewhere deep inside me, reminding me how nothing could be as good as her, how I could never be satisfied, how I had had the chance to drink more of her blood and didn't take it. The reminder angered me. But looking at Bella, my thoughts began to quiver ever so slightly.

Had I taken the chance to savour her blood fully, she wouldn't have been here with me. Her body would have been buried under an ordinary rock, in a cemetery that didn't deserve her. Had I succumbed to my most sinful wishes when I had the chance, I wouldn't have been here either, for a life without Bella was nothing but a long and pointless encumbrance.

There was no alternate universe in which the monster could have won. As this thought hit me, I began to understand that there had never even been a monster in the first place - only my own carnal desire, pushing me to want what I had no right to want so badly, encouraging me to dissociate and put myself above my cravings. In reality, I had never been above them.

We had always been the same, the monster and I. Two parts of a whole, childishly refusing to coexist. I sighed and welcomed him in, taking him in my arms, becoming one with him. He was not so bad as I feared, just scared. My now whole conscience understood that there was no point in mourning the lost blood. Without it, there would've been no chance of happily ever after - as happy as the gloomy circumstances allowed - with Bella. Bella, the love of my life. Bella, my only reminder that beneath the porous rock I was made of, I still had my humanity. Bella, my alpha and omega.

God, how I love her! Her eyes opened all of a sudden and met mine. The slight shock of realizing she was being watched faded and gave way to a warmth I was all too familiar with. She held my gaze and we swallowed in unison. The corners of my mouth lifted in a smile she couldn't see. This blood wasn't so bad. It wasn't amazing, but it was something better than that: it was enough.

Bella lifted herself after draining her lynx, and I pointed with my finger towards the other animal. She needed it more than I did. I exalted when I saw her biting into its fur and feeding again. So beautiful.

By the time I was finished, my wife was still drinking. She was taking her time, savouring this. I wanted to take my time as well and spoil myself by admiring her. But just as I was propping myself against a tree, that damned sawdust and moss smell returned. I breathed in, my senses sharpened by the blood in my system. It was annoyingly faint and it seemed to disappear with the wind.

I listened, zeroing in on the sounds I was hearing: Bella's sweet 'mmm's, the leaves dancing wherever the wind led them, a river flowing rapidly in the distance. Just another night in the woods. But my momentary repose crashed when I heard a low grunting and the sound of paws hitting the ground. The sounds the paws made were irregular: almost as if the animal had two of its limbs replaced by pointy stumps. The peculiar smell came and went, but the noise grew impossibly closer.

Nothing but an animal, I assured myself - yet my body seemed to know better, because I stood up, my fists closed. Bella wasn't finished, but I encircled her waist with my arms and pulled her up. She groaned as a protest and I wanted to explain to her that something felt off, but I didn't get the chance - the leaves behind me rustled and, as I turned around, pushing Bella behind me, I froze.

The creature standing in front of my eyes was unlike anything I had ever seen. Nine feet tall and covered in coal-black fur, it was half standing up, half crouching, with its forelegs hanging by its body, much like an ape's. What I was so convinced were stumps of actual limbs were something worse: long fingers, grotesquely reminiscent of a human's, ending with razor-sharp claws.

The beast's head was an atrocity, like a failed lab experiment: it was an unholy blend of human and wolf, with long pointy ears and dark grey skin, coated in an unruly layer of fuzz. It had a snout like that of a wolf, yet flattened and misshaped, with a wide and awry mouth, that had way too many teeth inside. The eyes were the most surprising - for they were obviously, unequivocally, the eyes of a man.

As I took in every detail I could in the span of one second, I realized I knew what this abomination was.

Carlisle had told me stories about its kind decades ago.

It was so different from a Quileute shapeshifter.

The vile James had hunted one such creature across Siberia, with no luck.

The Volturi feared nothing but this beast.

Caius almost got killed by one millennia ago.

My epiphany hit me with the force of an atomic bomb. We were standing in front of a Child of the Moon. The true original werewolf.

The creature howled just once, breaking the night in half with the sound, before launching at us.


Sooo just in case the Volturi threat wasn't spicy enough, we now have a freaking werewolf in the picture as well! Fun times, right?

As you might remember, Stephenie mentioned the Children of the Moon towards the end of "Breaking Dawn". She didn't offer us much there, but she did give us more interesting details in the Official Illustrated Guide, so that served as the starting point for this particular storyline. Ah, I just love the lore she created!

Moving on from this: if you have any thoughts on this chapter that you feel like sharing, I would feel SO honoured to read them and, as always, respond!

I am forever thankful to each one of you who is following this story - it makes the journey of writing even more captivating.

Oh, and if you want to get sneak peeks of future chapters, early heads-ups regarding updates, visuals and other fun stuff, you are welcome to join the Facebook Group "After Nightfall: Updates, sneak peeks, music and discussions" (the link can be found on my profile page).

Until next time, stay happy and safe!