Hello, lovely people! This chapter has a trigger warning - I put it in the end notes, so as not to spoil the events within it. If you are not particularly sensitive to any subject, you can skip it.


If a man would have won the lottery, met the love of his life and became resistant to all known illnesses - all in one day - he still wouldn't have felt as happy as I felt in that moment. There were no words to encompass this powerful feeling. 'Joy' was a gross understatement. 'Glee' did not even begin to cover it. 'Euphoria' felt too shallow.

I tried searching for an equivalent in Spanish. In German. In French. In Dutch. In Mandarin. In Russian. In Hindi. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could describe the Big Bang that was taking place within me - for all the love I felt for Bella had imploded, expanding within my every vein, and I could no longer feel like a material being.

Instead, I felt made of light - of the purest, most angelic light, stolen right from the gates of Heaven and brought to Earth by a stealthy seraph. Who was this seraph that wanted me to feel this supreme bliss? What had I ever done to deserve it?

The only thing pulling me back into the living room, back on to the sofa, was Bella moving slightly, reminding me that we were still inside one another.

"You said you heard me?" she asked, her voice as shocked as my brain. "Like… heard me?"

"Loud and clear, my love."

I was smiling like an idiot, but I couldn't help it.

"Well, can you hear me now?"

"No, it is gone. I only caught a glimpse of it. But it was so beautiful. The best thing I had heard in my existence."

Bella's face went through a myriad of expressions in the span of a few seconds: surprise and embarrassment and awe. I wanted to hear her again. And again and again and again for the rest of eternity.

I grabbed her face in my hands, pulling her close, until our foreheads met.

"Please, show me again," I whispered. "I need to see more. Please, my Bella, please..."

"But I don't know what I did!"

My arms locked her in place like steel girders.

"I am begging you."

"How? I have no idea whatsoever how it happened in the first place."

She pulled away, breaking my grip a little.

"Maybe...", I began, making a deliberate effort to temper my enthusiasm. "You focused for so long on extending your shield last night, that it accidentally slipped altogether."

"Can I really do that?"

"You definitely did it there for a second. If you could try again, my love… just for a moment, please... please..."

My enthusiasm came back doubled, and I rushed to kiss her neck. My lips were ridiculously fervent against her skin, as if they might have made Bella's defenses slip again just by overwhelming her with kisses - but it was worth trying, that much I knew.

She was panting in my arms, under my attack. I felt her muscles clenching around me, her wetness dripping slowly on my testicles. My mind was equally divided between two cravings: the one for her mind and the one for her body. I wanted both.

God, I had to have both!

"Let me hear that beautiful mind of yours..."

Bella gasped and started moving zealously on my shaft, her clitoris crashing against my pubic bone each time her hips came down. As she moved, my mouth explored every inch of skin available within reach: her earlobes, her face, her throat, her clavicle, her shoulders, her arms, her breasts - there was so much of her to love and I couldn't leave any inch ignored.

In the background of my fervour, I noticed her breath picking up.

"Oh, God, I'm coming! Edward, I'm..."

Her body finished her sentence for her, sending her into a spiral of pleasure. She buried her fingernails in my shoulders and let out an animalistic, helpless cry. Full of hope, I watched her letting go and waited for her thoughts to make an accidental comeback.

They didn't.

Bella's eyes were half-closed when we looked at each other again.

"I love you so much," I whispered. "You're my absolute everything."

With her hips already moving again, she touched my face and responded:

"I love you too, Edward. More than anyone has ever loved anyone."

I was ready to contradict her when her mouth rammed into mine, overtaking my senses. We devoured each other as our bodies moved in unison. If only I knew what I could do to trigger her shield to fall again…

Without much thinking, I grabbed Bella, wrenching her from my lap and placing her face down on the sofa, right beside me.

"On your knees, love," I requested. "Now."

It took her less than a second to comply. She supported herself on her elbows, raising up her ass in the air to be at the same level with my pelvis. I couldn't resist this perfect sight and I got a hold of her ample buttocks, savouring the way the soft flesh yielded under my touch.

Still playing with her buttocks, I let myself slide inside her, all the way up to her cervix. We groaned loudly - in this particular position, I could reach a perfect spot inside her, so deep and warm that it felt like my own personal Nirvana, from which I never wanted to exit. I listened closely, but the only sounds were her jagged breaths and the lascivious music of my thrusts meeting her wet arousal.

What are you thinking, love?

"Tell me your exact thoughts," I pleaded, easing the rhythm of my plunges, but still going as deep as her body allowed.

She moaned and grabbed a small decorative pillow tightly in her hands before responding to me:

"Honestly? I'm thinking... how big you are."

My damned male ego rejoiced. I pushed even deeper, in smug emphasis.

"Mmmmm… good, what else?"

"And… oh, God… how... you never entered me this deep when I was human... so that you didn't hurt me."

I smiled at the memory, not once stopping my thrusts.

"You were too fragile for your own good, love. More, please."

She was struggling to continue, but managed to:

"How it felt when you took me from behind for the first time."

Her voice was merely a whisper. I remembered that first time perfectly. On a thick blanket spread across the warm sand of Isle Esme, with the twilight surrounding us in its violet glory, I had entered Bella's body from behind slowly and with the greatest care in the world, discovering new and unexpected angles and trying not to thrust too hard, as my instinct told me to.

"You've been amazing that night," I murmured, rejoicing in the memory. "How did it feel for you?"

I pushed again, hard and aggressive, making her grab the pillow tighter.

"It hurt a little, but it hurt so good."

"My little masochist," I teased and gathered her thick locks in my hand and pulled. "You came even in your sleep that night..."

That wet dream she had had upon finally falling asleep after hours of making love had been an unexpected surprise. She had woken up moaning, all flushed and confused. To ease up her confusion, I had decided to go down on her and lick her clean. One orgasm later, she was fast asleep again.

"What else is going on in that mind of yours?" I asked eagerly.

My movements grew more erratic as she told me the workings of her brain.

"Ah… how much I like it when..."

She stopped mid-sentence to whimper when I pulled harder on her hair.

"When?" I pressed.

"When… you subdue me like this," she managed, before losing herself into another moan.

"Oh, Bella..."

I wondered if she could guess how each word of hers drove me closer to my limits. I was ready to explode.

"Tell me more," I begged. "Tell me exactly what you want."

I was slamming against her, no longer able to maintain my focus. My existence had been reduced to the fusion of our bodies. She felt good and tight and like home.

"I… God, I..."

"Yes, say it..."

"Just fuck me as hard as you can, Edward!" her words came with a gasp and my whole world short-circuited in that instant.

She had never used that word to express what she wanted from me. She did have a lovably strong reaction when I first used it with her, in a joking manner - and all the times after that, not in the slightest bit jokingly - but she never used it herself.

Where I was coming from, this particular word wasn't to be said in the presence of a lady - much less by a lady herself. Times and beliefs had changed, but I remained the same for so long, that I hadn't really considered changing what I knew for the sake of progressing along with the rest of the world. But when Bella came along, I had to second-guess everything - including this.

Polite or not by the standards of the time I grew up in, the fact of the matter remained the same: I wanted to fuck Bella. She wanted me to fuck her. And I would be damned if I had to hide that truth from my wife just for the sake of keeping in touch with my traditional credences.

So I did what she asked me to and gave it my all. With her hair in my fist, my fingers dipped in the flesh of her hip, I thrust with all the speed and force I was capable of, until we both lost it. Our voices calling each other's names filled the house as we collapsed over the edge. I continued to move as my climax filled her up to the brim, her contractions milking every last drop of venom out of me.

When Bella's echoing orgasms ended, I noticed that the pillow she had grabbed so tightly in her hands moments ago was shredded. I got out slowly and turned her around on her back, to look at her face. She looked irresistible and in need for more.

"Angel..." I whispered, cupping her face in my hands and leaning down to kiss her. "My only angel."

She pulled me in her warming embrace and I wished to remain in her arms until the end of time.

We spent the rest of the day alternating between making love and me trying to get her to drop her shield again. And each time my attempts failed, I begged for her out loud thoughts - and she gave them to me, with no restraints. Still, I craved to hear them at the exact moment her brain was forming them.

We stopped a few times to update our family about our whereabouts and plans, and learn about theirs in return. They all remained in their respective cities, waiting for a sign from Alice's visions - but she was eighty-five percent convinced that the Volturi weren't going to come out again soon, given the fact that the story about the Wilsons was beginning to die down a little and Cochran hadn't made any new statements. But it was that fifteen percent that kept us on our toes.

When I talked to Esme, she told me, in her forever-hopeful manner, that she was convinced we would be back together soon, despite the odds. I tried to entertain that thought, even if just for a while. The possibility of seeing my family again brought me so much content - content that I could not allow myself for too long.

One thing I knew for sure: I missed them all. I missed Esme asking me to play her favourite songs on the piano. I missed Alice and our completely unfair chess games. I missed Jasper easing up my worries when I went overboard - and him always teasing me for it. I missed fighting with Emmett and Esme coming to separate us, tired of our antics. I even missed Rosalie and how she condescendingly liked to show me how to fix seemingly-unfixable car damages.

And I missed Carlisle. I missed him and everything about him: his calm demeanour, his kindness, his patience; our conversations, our debates, our silent mental dialogues; his endless love for us, his kids.

He and Esme were worried about me and Bella more than usual. Up until that point, Carlisle had been the only one in the family who had ever encountered a Child of the Moon - but that meeting happened over a century ago, back when he was still part of the Volturi, which meant that he hadn't been alone when facing it. They had gone about killing it using the usual technique of the Volturi: luring it underground, into the lightless catacombs of Vatican, and launching a multiple attack on it.

But given that there were no catacombs in Mati and our group of three was hardly prepared to launch a proper attack, we had to make do with our plan of 'distract and attack' - the only plan that made sense, yet not enough for Esme to feel more at ease.

Carlisle's initial reservations towards Nell began to wither when I told him about her again. I wanted to be by his side to understand what it was about our temporary alliance that convinced him to not press his 'no friends' rule further. Was it his intrinsic paternal instincts? Was it the fact that she helped Bella discover a fraction of her power? Was it Nell's willingness to help us fight the werewolf? Whatever it was, it set my curiosity ablaze, especially when my father said:

"If all goes well, I would like to meet her one day."

Until that day came - if it ever came, we had to meet up with her again, for a new round of training. Bella and I dressed up and started to clean up the evidence of our activities. We had left venom stains on almost every surface of the ground floor, but mixing every cleaning product we had found proved to be enough to conceal them.

When the moon rose up over the horizon, I heard the low thuds of Nell running. She entered the house like she owned the place and I couldn't help but think about how inappropriate that was. Sometimes I felt as if common sense grew thinner with each new generation. And I also felt that that was quite a counterintuitive thought to have in the presence of a kid who liked to call me 'old man' whenever she had the chance.

"Thank you for coming," Bella welcomed her.

Nell nodded and didn't hesitate to make herself comfortable on the sofa. I noticed her eyes had a more golden hue today - she must have fed on animals this time around.

"So is this how you, rich people, lived in Forks?" she asked.

It seemed as if she liked to constantly remind us of the material aspects of our way of living. To top it off, she always laughed at these little jokes of hers. I was well aware that humour was subjective, but that knowledge still didn't make her puns any more funny - or any less annoying.

"We did have a big house there," I admitted.

She chuckled.

"It's like you wanted to throw the legacy of our species to the ground by being so… I don't know, man, boring? Predictable? No, I go back to 'boring'."

"You might be too young to get this," - a little sting punctured my tone - "but 'boring' is your best bet when you want to go unnoticed."

"Well, obviously not. I've managed to go pretty much unnoticed - if we don't count that accidental meeting with Jane and Alec - without going all upper-class."

"That is because we have a filter and only feed on animals, kid, unlike some other folks."

My snide remark didn't go unnoticed.

"I feed on animals too, okay? And humans. So what? I'll take what I can get."

"It might be a little excessive," I pointed out.

"If you've been left to fend for yourself when you're still a couple of months into being a vampire, anything goes."

"Wait", Bella intervened. "Why were you left to fend for yourself?"

"Because my father died," she answered matter-of-factly, not really looking at either of us.

The silence that followed was short. Still, it burned in the air like incense in a church, perfusing the atmosphere. Bella was the first one to speak up:

"Your father, do you mean… the one who created you?"

"Yes. He was my father - my biological father, I mean."

"I don't understand," I admitted.

"There's not much to be understood. He was changed soon after I turned 15 and decided to change me right after as well."

If before my inability to read this girl's mind had only been a slight inconvenience, it suddenly became more than that. I had previously guessed that there was more under the surface than she let on, but I never insisted - and why would I have done that? We were not friends. Only acquaintances with a common goal.

But I decided that it didn't matter. For better or for worse, we were stuck together for two more days, until the moon reached its full phase, and there was no harm in voicing my curiosity.

"Your own father got changed and then… he changed you as well?" I asked. "Just because he could?"

"Yes, but you make it sound worse than it was. It's no big deal, really."

"You do that a lot."

"What?"

Brushing things off. Trying to act all detached and cool.

"I'm not doing that. I just don't like to dwell on my past. So my father got changed and changed me as well. Life's like that sometimes."

"Who changed your father?"

"Like I have a clue. He never told me."

She shrugged and threw me a defiant look. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of father would willingly put his own child through the painful throes of transforming - and what kind of father would condemn his spawn to an existence of blood thirst. This was hardly something a sane parent could have wished.

But then again, love could make you take questionable decisions - I should have known that better than anyone. After all, I did condemn Bella to the very same things Nell's father did with his child, so I wasn't any better. In many ways, I might have been worse - especially given the blood feast I had indulged on right before changing her.

Still, how could I have not changed her? It had always been what she wanted. The more I postponed it in my stubbornness, the more I hurt her. The more I tried to dance around it, the worse it got. No argument - after almost a year of arguing back and forth - convinced her to give up her convictions.

However, Nell had been transformed when she was still very much a kid, unlike Bella. No kid could have the mental ability to consent to such a thing. And I couldn't imagine a scenario in which a father would try to persuade his daughter to choose this life. It felt wrong on so many levels.

"Okay, you are taking it way too far," Nell interrupted my thought process.

"Am I?"

"My father was not perfect, but I am not resenting him for this. He's done worse things in comparison."

She turned her eyes away completely, as if to avoid our sudden stares, and started talking again, giving us no chance to ask "what worse things?".

"He died soon after anyway."

"How?" I queried.

I noticed her jaw clenching the shortest of seconds before she voiced up her response:

"He tried fighting off some other vampire to get to his prey and it ended badly. I've been alone ever since."

Silence fell once again - this time more lasting. I didn't know what I should have said to comfort her. In an odd way, it didn't seem like she actually needed to be comforted, but it was hard to tell with my missing ability.

"I have no idea how we got here, but can we please get down to business?" Nell broke the quietness. "That shield won't train itself, am I right or am I right?"

I watched Bella's reaction. Her face seemed conflicted for a short moment, but she pushed out a smile and uttered a semi-convincing 'sure'.

We sat down on the sofa, on the opposite end of where Nell was lounging. As the experimenting with Bella's shield awkwardly resumed, I began to wonder about Nell's past more than I usually allowed myself to do. I still wasn't used to the fact that I couldn't use my special 'hearing' to figure the missing pieces out on my own, without having to press for information.

I couldn't help but wonder what Carlisle would have made out of the whole situation. I liked to believe I knew him well enough to guess that he would have considered it inhumane. He had always kept his principle of only changing people who were on the verge of dying. People whose lives were as good as lost without his intervention. People who needed saving.

However, I knew he could understand changing someone out of love - he never judged me for giving in to Bella's wish and to my own personal selfishness when I had decided to change my beloved. More than that, during one of our late night discussions, he even told me that he would have done the same with Esme. I knew he didn't say it just to make me feel better - his mind, as pure and benevolent as always, had confirmed his words before he even voiced them.

But this was quite different. Nell hadn't exactly been in need of saving upon her transformation, as far as I knew. So what had been so urgent about him changing her when she was still at the unripe age of 15? Would my father or mother have been able to come up with a reasonable enough explanation, given that they were the closest to the concept of parenthood in our family?

"Do you mind bringing me another book, please?" Nell asked, her face not giving away any contempt for my thoughts.

"I'll see what I can find."

I almost didn't look when I picked up my copy of 'Rebecca' from the luggage. I offered it to Nell without a word and sat down on the sofa next to my wife, but I was no longer there mentally. As Bella got back to trying to extend her shield, I could already see the Alaskan northern lights in my mind. Undersaturated greens and blues and purples, swirling around each other to veil the sky above. And next to me, Tanya.

It was the winter of 1979. Carlisle was off-work for the holidays, so our family had taken that as an opportunity to visit our cousins in Denali. It was our third day there and the first day when my need to catch a break from everyone's thoughts had prompted me to go and find some solace up the mountain. My peace didn't last long, Tanya following me soon after. At that time, she was in her 'skimpy clothes' phase. She had enough dignity not to wear them around the house, of course, but not enough for when we were alone.

As we sat on the snow, the only thing covering her body was a transparent nightgown. I had no interest in catching more accidental glimpses of her bare body underneath than I had already done, so I tried to keep my eyes on the sky and nothing else as we talked. That night was the first time she told me about how her mother died.

Sasha wasn't really her biological mother, but her great-aunt. Regardless, she was the one who had changed Tanya into a vampire thousands of years ago. Although a lot of time had passed, the memory of her death still haunted Tanya - maybe that night more than usual, given the fact that it was the black anniversary of the day she got killed by the Volturi.

Tanya didn't do much talking with her mouth - instead, she let her mind take the reins. Slowly, she let me in on her most painful memory: she had just found out her mother's best kept secret: the innocent looking and mass-murderer Vasilii, a three year old Sasha had changed herself. I saw Jane's smile through her recollection of events, as she took the kid in her arms and threw him in the fire.

Vasilii's sole existence was considered a sin in itself in the vampire world. Immortal children were absolutely forbidden, their affinity for wreaking havoc being too much of a threat for the great secrecy of our species. The Volturi made sure to eradicate them and their creators one by one. They seemed to draw the line at around the age of 13 - quite possibly because that happened to be the age when Jane and Alec had been transformed.

Tanya was sobbing ever so slightly by the time her thoughts changed back to that present moment.

"I am so very sorry for her," I murmured and, unsure of how to comfort her without my gesture being misinterpreted, I patted her on the head. When she leaned back, to make the touch last one second longer than intended, I removed my hand. It was all too easy for her to take advantage of my friendship.

"The worst part is… I'll never know why she did it," she sighed after a while, when the sting of rejection faded.

"I bet you have your theories by now."

"I have a few. She'd always wanted children of her own, for instance..."

"That could be it," I admitted, although I still could not condone such a decision.

"She felt lonely."

"She had you and your sisters, Tanya. She was not alone."

"Being alone and being lonely are two very different things, mister."

"But why condemn such a young soul to damnation for this?" I pondered out loud.

It took her a while to go through her hypotheses, before responding:

"Maybe because you love that particular soul so much that you never want to see it grow up. You can't bear one more day without knowing it is safe and yours forever."

That particular response made no sense at the time. But right now, as I was sitting in the living room with Bella and Nell, wondering about what could possibly have been the reason that signed Nell's fate in her father's eyes, I began to understand - if only a little.

Never wanting to see your kid grow up.

I tried to picture this impossibility: in some non-existent parallel universe, in which the rules of biology could be bent in any direction, Bella and I having a kid. Maybe a girl. She would have her mother's eyes and sharp wit. She would have my hair and my penchant for music. I would love her, for she would be part of Bella. I would have no choice but to love any life stemming from my beloved wife. But would I be able to let her grow up, knowing that danger could strike any moment and take her away from us? Or would I cave and change her, just to make sure she will remain with us for the rest of eternity?

Then I saw Carlisle's face in my mind and the answer was obvious: no kid was ever worth condemning to this lifestyle, no matter how noble the intention or how great the love behind the gesture. It was inexcusable.

"Dude!" Nell's voice burst like a popped balloon in the silence of the room. "I am sorry, but it is very difficult to be in your head with all those thoughts of yours. Let me save you the trouble of going through all these theories of why my father changed me."

My eyebrows raised in surprise. Besides me, Bella looked both confused and annoyed that her concentration had been broken.

"I am sorry," I rushed to say. "You don't have to explain anything. I'm not asking you to."

"It's not like it is some big secret, so I'll spare myself of all this angsty blabber and tell you now. It wasn't some grand act of ultimate parental love. He did some messed up shit with me when I was human, okay? And he didn't want to see me grow and lose that, so he changed me. End of story."

"Nellie..."

In the back of my mind, I barely registered the fact that it was me that called her 'Nellie' this time, not Bella.

She didn't have to expand on the 'some messed up shit' portion. I didn't have to read her mind to understand one simple, painful truth: she was a victim of child abuse. How many child abusers had I killed in the past? Too many to count. Yet clearly not enough. In their minds I had seen, time and time again, the faces of too many helpless children. Kids who had not had a guardian angel with them when they had met those demons. Kids whose innocence got disrupted without them having a say in the matter. Kids who had a wake up to the perverse side of humanity before they even knew such a thing existed. Kids like Nellie.

Although I was way past my playing-God phase, the rage towards these criminals was still there, still potent. Most of the time, it laid dormant. But in that particular moment, it resurfaced and filled me with the shameful desire to end them all.

"I am so very sorry..." Bella murmured and her hand reached out to meet Nell's.

The kid retreated her hand immediately.

"I guess that's why I don't like being touched," she mumbled. "The thing is I don't remember the… details. They're blurry memories now. I guess I would have been quite fucked up right now if I did. But it's not the first thing I bring up into the conversation either."

She laughed a humorless laugh and deep within my core, I felt a strange yearning, one that, throughout the years, hadn't been directed towards many people: the yearning to protect.

"Did… did your mother know?" Bella asked.

"I think she did. But she didn't do anything really. She had a lot on her plate, 'cause she was drinking a lot, you know?"

What a terrible home to grow up in.

"No kid should go through that," I said and watched as her face changed into a grimace. "I am terribly sorry this happened to you."

"Yeah, but… it is not all bad, because I think this is why I have the gift that I have. Growing up with parents like that, you kind of have to learn to dissociate sometimes - like a protective mechanism. I guess that coping tool reflected in some way in this life."

She shrugged and finally looked back in our direction. Her ginger eyes didn't seem as sad as her story. I had a new appreciation for this girl who only weeks ago had been nothing but a stranger. And within this appreciation there was also dread: dread that Bella and I were getting closer to Nell at the least appropriate time of our lives.

"Anyway, so I hope that settles it," she uttered.

"You didn't have to do this, you know?"

"I know. I wanted to. And now I'd like to get back to reading, if you don't mind."

"By all means," my wife said and her eyes flew in my direction.

We looked at each other and for a second, I saw in them a spark I had never seen until that very moment. It was warm and profound and beautiful and strange. It was difficult to understand it in its entirety, but of one thing I was absolutely positive: until that very moment, I had only seen that spark in Esme's eyes.


Trigger warning: This chapter contains non-explicit mentions of child abuse.


If you've got this far, thank you so much for taking the time to read, you are amazing!

I would be absolutely thrilled to know what your thoughts on this chapter were - and as usual, respond to them.

Also, I've got NEWS! I've just posted a little outtake for this story, if you might be interested! You can find it by going on my profile page. It takes place before the events of "After Nightfall" and it deals with how exactly Bella convinced Edward to do some "practice" before their first night together ;). Oh, and it is written from Edward's point of view as well, because I seemingly can't get enough of being in this character's head.

Until next time, stay safe and stay happy!