We'd split up to hunt, each of us tracking our favored prey, but it wasn't hard for me to locate Emmett when I was done. I didn't even have to listen for his mind; just for the roars.

"Back already?" Emmett called over to me. I wasn't even sure how he'd seen me around the bulk of the bear he was currently squaring off against. "What, that mountain lion get away from you?"

I settled myself down on a boulder far enough away to avoid attracting the bear's attention. "No, I just don't play with my food."

What's the point if it isn't fun? Emmett went into a roll to avoid a swipe of the bear's paw, laughing as it bellowed.

I rolled my eyes, but didn't bother responding. Emmett was about to wrap things up anyway. I looked away as he crouched and sprang, wincing at the crash as the two solid bodies met the forest floor.

Jasper jogged up as the bear's roars died away and sprawled on the boulder beside me. He was always so much more relaxed after hunting. Did I get any on me?

I shook my head. "You're doing much better than that overgrown child over there."

Jasper smiled, revealing teeth stained red. I know better than to risk the wrath of Alice.

I looked down. The love that crept into his mind as he thought of Alice usually made me feel somewhat lonely, but today it made me... uncomfortable in a way I couldn't name.

Emmett, finally finished, came bounding over, with fur, blood, dirt, and leaves clinging to his clothes and hair. "What are we talking about?"

"How not to eat like a savage," Jasper said.

Emmett roared with laughter. "You're just whipped," he said. "And Edward's a prissy little princess. I know how to have fun." He dropped to the ground and started picking fur out of his teeth.

"Whipped," Jasper said, mockingly. "I'm not the one who has to compliment Rose fifteen times a day in order to keep her from breaking things."

"I don't have to sit through five-hour fashion shows."

"I don't have to grovel to ensure my car stays in working condition."

"I don't have to apologize for something I didn't do but that Ally saw in a vision and got mad at me for anyway."

"Yes you do, she made you apologize after you nearly ripped her favorite sweater last week!"

They both laughed. Emmett shook his head. "I'm telling you, Ed, don't ever get married." But despite his words, his mind was still full of fond thoughts of Rosalie.

"I have to admit, I don't understand either of you," I said lightly, struggling through my discomfort as I was surrounded with thoughts of intimate relationships. "It seems like so much work. Why on earth did either of you ever agree to it?"

Jasper smiled fondly, thinking back to the first day he'd seen Alice - she'd walked right up to him, looked him in the eye, and put her hand in his. Not even an introduction. And despite the cold of that day, and the fact that they were both vampires, he'd felt warm when she touched him. "I couldn't even begin to explain."

"I can," Emmett said. "Have you looked at Rose?" He growled under his breath, picturing something I desperately tried to block.

"You're such a gentleman," Jasper teased.

Emmett laughed. "Just joking." Well, a little. "Of course I love everything about Rose. She's the full package."

"If she's the full package, Alice must be two packages," Jasper said.

"She certainly buys enough clothes for two."

They both laughed again. Jasper, noticing my mood, put a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry, Eddie, you'll find someone just as wonderful and exasperating eventually."

Wonderful. Exasperating. Warmth. Attraction. I shook off Jasper's hand and stood, swallowing against the tightness in my throat, speaking through the tightness in my chest. "We should head back. We can't miss the arrival of Peter and Charlotte, after all."

We returned late Saturday morning. As Alice's second vision predicted, Peter and Charlotte arrived in the early afternoon. I made an appearance just long enough to say hello and to hear the answer to Carlisle's usual question: when did you eat last?

Two days ago a hundred or so miles to the south, came the casual reply. Peter and Charlotte had long ago become acquainted with and accustomed to this way Carlisle had of reminding them to not hunt in the area. I headed back upstairs, relieved.

I stayed in my room the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday. I had no need to leave the house, not when Peter and Charlotte both stayed in it. And I had no desire for company, nor did Peter or Charlotte think much of me. Not that they disliked me, but they had always thought I was strange, even for a vampire. Apparently knowing someone in the room could read your mind is a concept one has to get used to.

I did finally leave my room when they began saying their good-byes. It would be rude of me not to, and at the farewell the second half of Carlisle's reminder would take place. I needed to know the answer to his question.

Charlotte and Alice were hugging. Peter and Jasper had just finished shaking hands, and Peter turned to Carlisle, thanking him again for his hospitality.

"You're always welcome," came the warm reply. "Where are you headed next?"

"We'll continue north." I held my breath. Port Angeles was north of here. "We're thinking of spending some time in Canada, maybe even head all the way up to Alaska and finally meet those Denali friends of yours." As he thought of their possible routes - mostly through deep woods, I was glad to note - his eyes lit up as he suddenly remembered something. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about a shifter in the area, would you?"

"A... shifter?" Jasper's confusion was echoed in the minds of my entire family.

Peter went on. "We thought we caught the scent of one in the woods on our way here, not too far from the town." Charlotte nodded beside him, remembering the patch of woods they'd been passing through. It looked vaguely familiar to me. "We could be mistaken, though; the scent was faint, and human enough that it would have had to be a fairly young one. As far as I know they never send the young ones out alone. I hear they can be even more trouble than a newborn vampire." He chuckled a little.

My family was exchanging glances, still confused... all but Alice who had caught my eye, her own eyes wide as her mind played a vision, just now prompted, of me speeding toward Port Angeles as the sun set.

It had helped her make the same realization I already had.

"If it was a shifter, they must have just been passing through," I said loudly.

Everyone turned to look at me, surprised. Most of them hadn't even noticed I'd come down the stairs.

I took a few steps closer, striving to look nonchalant, hoping against hope that Rosalie would wait until Peter and Charlotte left to point out the lies I was about to tell. "I've been out in the woods a lot lately, including where you two were - I recognized the place you thought about just now, Charlotte - and didn't notice anything unusual."

They both looked uncomfortable. "O-or in the town?" Peter said. "They pass for human a lot more easily than we do..."

I shook my head. "Nope, nothing out of the ordinary."

Peter let out a breath, looking away from me. "We just wanted to be sure you knew. They can't keep close tabs on us nomads, but if they knew about you there would almost certainly be... trouble. You're outside of the Volturi's protection, after all, and your lifestyle doesn't do them any favors." Unfortunately, his discomfort with me and the subject kept him from thinking about what he meant by such a statement.

"Thank you for the warning," I said firmly.

We all stood around awkwardly for a few seconds before Jasper broke the silence. "Well." Peter turned to him, eager to forget his unsettling impression of me by focusing again on his old friend. "If you cross paths with Maria, tell her I wish her well."

"I doubt we will," Peter said with a half-forced laugh. Maria disliked him nearly as much as she did Jasper. "But I'll tell her, if we do happen to see her."

Another round of handshakes and embraces later, and with only one nervous backward glance at me, they headed for the front door.

The door closed with a click behind them. Two figures, running now, flashed past the window. My entire family stood still and silent.

Well, it was a kind of silence. The cacophony of thoughts was almost overwhelming.

Rosalie broke the silence first, as soon as she could be reasonably sure Peter and Charlotte were far enough away to not hear or see. "Carlisle, everything Edward said just now was a lie." She glared as if to turn me to ash on the spot.

"I got that impression, considering none of us know what a shifter is," Carlisle said, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. You've run out of time, son.

I swallowed hard. I could take Rosalie's anger, but disappointed Carlisle was another matter. "For the record," I said, trying to keep my voice steady, "I don't know what a shifter is either."

Rosalie's mouth dropped open as she realized I was telling the truth. "But - you - "

"However," Carlisle said, speaking over her, "you do know who a shifter is."

Everyone stared at me. I nodded.

Nearly everyone in the room made the same connection at the same time. Carlisle had already figured it out, of course. And Alice, she'd known in almost the same moment I had.

Rosalie screeched, trying to throw herself at me. Emmett barely managed to hold her back. "THIS is what you've been hiding this whole time?"

But she was all bark, no bite. No, the real danger lay with someone who'd made the Bella-shifter connection, and gone one step further.

Bella is a shifter. Shifters cause trouble. Shifters are a threat.

Bella is a threat.

His mind was already sorting through possibilities.

"Jasper," I said, unable to keep a growl out of my voice, "no one is going to touch her."

Alice laid a hand on his arm. Jasper deliberately met my eyes, taking Alice's hand and pulling her close to him, wrapping his arms around her. "You're right. No one is going to touch her."

We did not mean the same her.

A vision sprang up in Alice's mind. Bella and Jasper, squaring off in the woods behind her house.

"No!" I nearly jumped Jasper then and there, but submitted to Carlisle's restraining hand on my arm. "She's not a threat to us!"

"I think," Carlisle said quietly, "it's time you actually explained yourself, and her."

"Please, Edward," Alice said, her mind rotating through different locations and times of day where Jasper could attack. Now I was in those visions, fighting to defend Bella. Sometimes Rosalie was, on Jasper's side. The family was splitting up before Alice's eyes.

Can't you see you're putting me in danger? The memory of Bella's voice echoed in my head.

I had tried so hard, and it had still come to this. Emmett had his feet firmly planted, though Rosalie had stopped fighting for now, contenting herself with glares and unspoken insults. Jasper had Alice pinned to his side as she reeled with vision after vision, trying and failing to see a path in the future that did not involve all of us fighting. And Carlisle and Esme stood side by side, radiating disappointment.

I started with the most pressing thing, the person I most needed to convince. Even Rosalie's feelings of betrayal, her steady stream of insults and curses, were nothing compared to Jasper's already firm decision. "Bella Swan is not a threat to us. I swear it."

"And how do you know that?" Jasper said, with deadly calm. "You know Peter's thoughts and feelings about... 'shifters' better than I do, and I get the impression you don't have much on your side to counteract what he said."

"Which is an unusual state of affairs for you, Edward," Carlisle added. I pressed my lips together. "Are you asking us to believe that she never thought anything indicative around you? Or are you just saying that you know her perfectly but kept it from us?"

"Neither," I said, hoping my voice didn't shake. "The truth is, I've only been able to read her mind twice -"

"What?" Rosalie's shriek cut off the rest of what I'd been about to say. "You can't read her mind? And you kept that from us this whole time?"

I nodded.

Rosalie shrieked again, fighting against Emmett's encircling arms. Yet another vision popped up in Alice's mind - Jasper, Rosalie, and now Emmett squaring off against me.

"Edward." Carlisle's voice was colder now than I'd ever heard it. I didn't dare face him as he spoke to me. "What explanation do you have for putting this entire family in such danger?"

I stared down at my hands. I was sure this answer would not go over well. "Because... because she was in danger first. The day that she was nearly hit by the van, when I took her home... she accused me of putting her in danger." I hesitated a moment, not liking to admit that I'd put a near-stranger over my family. "At the time, I couldn't... I didn't like the idea of immediately making her accusation true."

"You feared she'd be in danger if you told us all you knew of her," Carlisle clarified.

"Yes," I said. Despite my shame, some small anger, some desire to protect this girl rose in my chest. "And what has happened tonight has only proved that belief true."

Jasper flinched mentally, but Alice's visions did not change. "You still haven't given us any assurance that she's actually not a threat."

Fine. I'd lay it all out on the table. "She and I talked on Wednesday," I said. "She did not let me back in her mind, but what she said corroborated things I had already observed or assumed. For example, she said she'd known I was a vampire from her very first day of school."

I hurried on to prevent the outburst I knew Rosalie was gearing up for. Even Emmett was starting to have uneasy thoughts. "I admit, I had wondered... something in her eyes when she'd first passed me in biology had made me think that she might know. But when she brushed off her classmate when he wanted to ask her about my actions, and when we got no hint of anyone else in the town having any idea about it, I convinced myself that I was wrong."

Jasper shook his head. "But even convincing yourself she didn't know, you knew she was different and you didn't tell us. How do you know you're telling the truth now? Your loyalty to the family seems to be shaken."

I had always prided myself on keeping my temper. My hands curled into fists as I tried to keep it now. "I don't see why loyalty to my family should mean harming an innocent girl."

"An 'innocent' girl who could be the undoing of us all," Rosalie spat out. "Whatever she is, Peter knows she's a threat and that there are more of them!"

"Bella means us no harm!" I replied, some anger creeping into my tone. "And as for the others... she told me this week that there were more like her, but in such a way that assured me she herself feared them."

"All the more reason to think she'd tell them about us, and they'd come after us!"

I shook my head. "She was deliberately distancing herself from me in order to prevent attracting unwanted attention from the others!"

"Enough." Once again, Carlisle's steady voice cut through our noise. My body relaxed as I realized what he was thinking. "Edward, if you are telling the truth now -" I nodded emphatically, meeting his eyes for the first time since this whole fiasco had started - "then, while I think Miss Swan not quite in the clear, at the very least we do not need to take immediate action. She has known for months and not said a word, after all."

Jasper muttered something under his breath, but I could see his resolve waver for a just a moment - and a moment was all Alice needed. She sighed loudly as a new vision broke through, one that caused a hitch in my own breathing.

Alice spun in Jasper's arms, reaching up to hug him. "I know you want to protect me," she said, speaking to him, but loudly enough to be clearly heard by all of us. "But you don't need to protect me from Bella. We're going to be great friends."

In her mind, Alice was performing her current action - hugging - but the recipient was the much-smaller Bella. I swallowed against a lump in my throat.

The tension in the room lessened. No matter his own thoughts on the matter, Jasper did not go against Alice's visions. "You're sure?"

"Mm-hm!" Alice pulled away to smile at the whole room - wilting Rosalie, relieved Emmett, calm Carlisle, pleased Esme.

I looked away from her gaze. The vision had caused a tightening in my chest that I didn't know the reason for.

Carlisle stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder. "It's up to you to prove that my decision, and Alice's vision, are correct."

"Of course." I glanced out the huge front window. The sun was beginning to set. "I need to go."

"Now?" Esme said, surprised.

I nodded, already heading toward the front door. "I need to make sure Charlotte and Peter steered clear of Port Angeles."

It was an incredible relief to close the door behind me, get into my car, and leave all the thoughts and emotions behind.

Soon, I would see Bella again.