Chapter 7 - Burning

BPOV

I was fading in and out. Here and there… everywhere. I wasn't sure what was happening, where I was, but I could make out the distant sound of voices. I tried to open my eyes, struggling against what felt like an incredible amount of swelling forcing them shut.

My head throbbed in an indescribable way.

My body ached in ways I had never experienced before.

I burned.

But not in the way I'd burned when James had bitten me. This burn was different. Maybe worse.

"What the fuck, man? Drive faster!"

I couldn't place that voice, although it was familiar…

"I'm driving as fast as I can without drawing any attention. How's she doing?"

"How would I know, I'm not a doctor." Emmett – that was Emmett's voice.

I tried to open my mouth to speak to him, but I couldn't. I felt myself being swallowed up again, the darkness pressing against each corner of my vision, trying to pull me down into unconsciousness again.

I fought against it. Who was he talking to? Who was he with?

"Emmett, get Carlisle on the phone, now." That was Jasper.

My entire body pulsed with the urge to speak to them, to ask if this was real of if I was dreaming… or if I was dead. Was this heaven?

No. Heaven couldn't be this painful.

"No answer. I'll try Alice."

I tried to follow what was happening around me, I could feel the car we were in jolting and shifting, each movement painful.

We must have gone over a bump, because suddenly my body was flying up from the cold leather of the seat and slamming back down into it with a loud thud.

"Ah!"

It was the only sound I could manage in this moment, but it was enough to alert them both.

"Oh shit."

"Thank God. You're awake. Bella? Can you hear me?" I felt a cold hand brush across my forehead, gently tucking my hair behind my ear. I wanted to respond, but words felt too hard, so instead I managed a weak nod.

"She's awake, Jas. She's awake!"

"Good. We'll be at the hospital in 3 minutes. This is Alice's vision, Emmett… Carlisle will be there."

"Yeah. Yeah, he'll be there and he'll know what to do."

"Is she still conscious?"

"Yeah, I think so." I nodded again, trying to convey that yes, I was still here. I was conscious. I was fighting against that darkness now, fighting to stay alive.

"I've got you, little one. Hang on." I exhaled deeply, and pushed my eyes open despite the incredible effort it required.

I was met with Emmett's face, worry etched into all of his features. I looked up at him and realized I was sitting in the back of his Jeep, my head resting against his lap with my body draped across the back seat.

"There you are, Bella. You're ok now. We've got you." The sadness in his eyes was overwhelming. I closed my own again to avoid it, willing the tears that were welling up to disappear.

"We're here." I heard the distinct sound of the car shutting off and in an instant Jasper appeared at Emmett's passenger side door.

"We're going to take her to Carlisle's office. We can't let anyone else know she's here," Jasper explained, his voice hushed as he pulled a thick blanket over my body.

Everything around me was spinning as Emmett carefully lifted me into his arms, passing me to Jasper before jumping out of the car.

Suddenly, a panic erupted inside of me. Why were they taking me to Carlisle? Did they know what happened? Did they know what I had become? Did they see him… did they know what he did to me?

I struggled against his arms, wanting him to put me down, wanting to run away… the shame inside of me overshadowing every other thought and feeling.

Edward.

Where was he?

Did he know?

Does he know?

"Edward?" I struggled against the words and the sound of my own voice. Deep and raspy – unfamiliar and terrifying.

"He's on his way, Bella. Don't worry," Jasper smiled down at me, tension driven into every feature of his otherwise flawless face. He probably assumed that the thought of Edward being here would be comforting. It was exactly the opposite.

"No – no. I – I can't. He – he can't. No." I was frantic, trying to thrash against Jasper but my struggle was useless. I didn't have an ounce of strength left in me.

Slowly the world around me began to fade, my panic fading along with it.

The darkness was back.

CPOV

I had spent most of my night sticking close to my office, occasionally finding an excuse to pass by it to see if Bella was there. I tended to my patients, made my rounds, socialized with other staff members and called to check in on Esme. She assured me that everything was fine at home. Alice was doing some digging, trying to see if there was anything we'd missed in local newspapers, anything that we had overlooked. Rosalie was hunting, Emmett and Jasper were trailing Bella and Edward was making his way over to the Police station to speak with Chief Swan.

All was as it should be, and yet an uneasy feeling still lingered around me.

Alice's vision had placed Bella in my office, presumably tonight, and she wouldn't be alone. What an odd thing to happen, considering that Jasper and Emmett were following Bella. How would she manage to get away from them long enough to make it all the way to my office, who would she be with – and more importantly, why?

It was no matter, really. I tried to brush it off because I had quickly learned that Alice's visions had a way of turning out, even when they seemed completely out of place and improbable.

We had all been rather hasty to dismiss Alice's vision of Edward finding a mate because it had seemed so improbable at the time. But, here we were. Edward had found his mate in Bella Swan.

"Dr. Cullen, do you think I could get something else for this pain?" My thoughts returned to the patient sitting before me. She was 5 hours post op from an appendectomy that had been performed by one of my colleagues.

The thick, sweet smell of her blood filled the room, pressing into every crevice, overshadowing the typical sterile, clinical smell of the hospital.

It didn't faze me in the same way anymore. The blood was attractive, sure, but there was rarely ever any pull to drink from humans. Not since we'd dedicated ourselves so wholly to preserving human life and abstaining from the darker parts of vampire nature. I saw the sweet aroma of human blood to be a reminder of their fallibility – of how weak and in need of protection they truly were. It motivated me to preserve their lives, above all else.

"Sure, Mrs. Garcia. I'll have the nurse adjust your morphine dose, how does that sound?" I smiled at the elderly lady, glad she'd pulled through the surgery without issue.

"Thank you, dear," she croaked, a grateful smile adorning her small, round face.

I pulled the door closed behind me as I left her room, intent of finding a nurse to takeover Mrs. Garcia's care.

And then it hit me.

The strength of it was alarming.

Bella's scent filled the air with such intensity that I could only assume she must be bleeding.

I followed the scent, realizing that this was Alice's vision in action.

My course of direction changed upon that realization and in seconds I was standing outside my office, realizing that the voices I was hearing from inside the room that Alice couldn't distinguish in her vision belonged to Jasper and Emmett.

The door had been forced open, evidenced by the broken lock, and I tucked inside quickly. The scene before me stopped me where I stood, a wave of rage flooding my statue still body.

Bella was laying still and unmoving on the couch. Her frail body was wrapped in a thick blanket while Jasper and Emmett hovered protectively around her.

My brain took half a second to register the shock before my instincts to protect Bella, as her doctor, overtook all else.

In seconds, I was at her side, assessing her injuries, keeping a mental tally in my mind as I examined her.

Her face: a series of traumatic bruises, wounds, and welts. The wounds would need stitches. Emmett was holding a bloodied towel against Bella's left cheekbone, but I could see that it hadn't done anything to stem the flow of blood. I pulled his hand away, taking the bloodied towel and throwing it aside as I took stock of what had been done to her face.

In my periphery, I could see Emmett's body slump forward, his back resting against the opposite side of the couch as his hands came to his face.

What happened here?

In all my years with Emmett, I had never witnessed such an emotional display of distress. Jasper was on the opposite side of the room, his body pressed against the wall behind my desk as he watched the scene unfold from a distance. I realized how overwhelming this all must have been to him – it would overwhelm any one of us, but Jasper was so new to this, and the pull to human blood was especially strong for him.

"Jasper." He was at my side in seconds.

"Yes?" His voice was strained, evidence of significant effort he was exerting to control his blood lust. There was an alarming amount of blood pooling around Bella. I assessed her again, pressing my hand against the wound on her left cheekbone, attempting to stem the flow of blood until I could get my hands on suturing supplies.

"Edward. Does he know?"

"No. We were there… waiting… watching. On the border of their land. He was speaking to Chief Swan. We didn't call him when we found her because we didn't think it would be a good idea to tell him what had happened over the phone… we figured a tightly controlled set of circumstances would be… safer." Jasper's body stiffened and his eyes trained on the wall opposite him as he avoided staring at Bella.

"That was wise. He won't handle this well at all."

"He's not the only one," Emmett growled, standing to his feet in one swift motion.

"Settle yourself, Emmett. Right now, isn't the time. I need to stabilize Bella and to do that, I'll need help from both of you." I glanced up at Jasper and Emmett, trying to determine their readiness.

"What do you need?" Emmett and Jasper asked in unison.

"Jasper, go outside of the hospital, calm down and call Alice. Tell her that she needs to prepare the medical office in our home for a full trauma workup." Jasper looked shocked, his eyes full of question.

"What do you mean? Why aren't we keeping her here?"

"Do you know who did this, son?" I locked eyes with Jasper and Emmett, urging them to understand my reasoning.

"We didn't see them… but we can smell them." Emmett was seething, his hands balled into tight fists at his side.

"Wolves," Jasper's rage was evident but it wasn't useful given the current circumstances. I needed them to be calm, to act rationally and to focus on the most important issue at hand. Bella was losing blood, and had a variety of traumatic injuries that needed to be attended to immediately, otherwise her condition could begin to decline rapidly.

"Yes. Wolves. And that means that we must ensure that there is no involvement from anyone else, especially Chief Swan. When we deal with this matter, we want the utmost discretion. If we treat Bella here it won't be long before word travels that someone…" I stuttered over the word, finding it difficult to vocalize "that someone brutalised the Chief's daughter. Then any attempt we make at remedying our problem will appear suspicious. I'm going to do as much as I can here but anything that isn't imminently urgent must wait until we get back to our own home."

"Now Jasper, go and call Alice, and then you had better call Edward. Say nothing, son. Do you understand? No matter how hard he presses only tell him that Bella needs him now and that he should return home and wait for us there. That's all."

Jasper nodded and left without another word.

"Emmett – I need you to get me some basic supplies. I need a suture kit – you'll find that in the three-tiered drawer two doors down in the supply closet…"

I rattled off a long list of things I needed himt to gather for me, and in seconds he returned with everything I had asked for.

"I need you to pull this blanket off Bella. I need to get a visual assessment of all other injuries while I suture this laceration on her face."

Emmett looked at me with pained eyes but nodded.

Now that Bella was uncovered, Emmett's pained expression made perfect sense to me.

Bella's clothing was tattered and torn and every inch of exposed skin was covered in deep, dark bruises. She was covered in large patches of blood, some of it hers, but judging by the increasing intensity of werewolf scent, I was certain some of the blood didn't belong to her. Her fingernails were bent back and bloody, dirt pressed beneath the nail beds. Her sickly thin frame appeared to be even more frail and slight when coupled with her other injuries. Never in all my years as a physician had I ever cared for anyone that had been this badly beaten before.

The urgency to care for Bella only increased as I sutured her cheek and assessed her injuries. Thankfully my hands worked quickly, 50 stitches placed in a matter of seconds.

Emmett's voice broke through my concentration "why isn't she awake, Carlisle?" his voice was devoid of emotion, each syllable weighted down by an indescribable heaviness.

"She's unconscious. I suspect a traumatic head injury, likely a concussion and possibly hemodynamic shock." I continued to work as I spoke, my hands finishing the last of the sutures on Bella's cheek, relief washing over me as I finished and stemmed the flow of blood.

"Will she… is she gonna' wake up?" Emmett's voice was lifeless, his body hunched over as he took in slow, deliberate, albeit unnecessary, breaths.

Despite wanting to protect him, and myself, from the truth in this moment, I couldn't.

"I hope so," was the only honest answer I could give him.

EmPOV

When we heard it, it shook me to my core. I felt it rattle through my whole body and it felt like it would set me on fire. Bella's screams were frightening me more than anything else ever had.

Something was wrong.

Jasper and I didn't even speak, we just ran. We followed the sound and kept running and the closer we got, the more intense her scent became. The smell of Bella's blood was everywhere. It held onto everything in sight and clung to it with an intensity that scared me.

And it only made us run faster.

The other scent, the one that was mingling with Bella's was confusing. Wolves. One wolf, to be exact. We could only pick up the stench of one of them – and I wasn't sure if the smell was of someone that was helping, or of the one that had spilled her blood, to begin with.

When we finally arrived, my body froze in shock.

I wish my reaction could have been like Jaspers. He dove into action straightaway, it didn't matter that Bella's blood was everywhere, or that the pull to it was stronger than ever because it was everywhere. Jasper sprang into action and was at Bella's side in an instant.

I took a bit longer. But it wasn't because of my bloodlust. There was no way I could feel any sort of desire for Bella's blood in this moment. It was because of the devastation that was laying before me.

Bella's body was… wrecked. Her face was almost unrecognizable between the intense swelling and the blood. She was bleeding heavily and every part of her body that wasn't covered by her clothes was overwhelmed by bruises.

Her hair was matted with dirt and blood. Her hands were bleeding, scrapes and cuts all along her fingers from what I assumed was an attempt to crawl away across the dirt floor.

"She's breathing!"

Jasper's voice shook through me, pulling me out of stupor and back into the present.

I listened for the sound of her heartbeat. It was weak, weaker than it should have been, but it was there and that was good enough for now. I ran to her side, kneeling opposite to Jasper.

"What do we do?" My voice was hardly recognizable as I stared down at her broken, almost lifeless, body.

"We need to get her to the hospital. We can't take her home; her injuries are too severe." And with that Jasper stood, pulling out his cell phone from his pocket before punching a number into the keypad.

"Don't," I whispered.

Jasper paused.

"Don't?" he questioned.

"Don't call Edward. He won't be able to handle it. We need to be with him when he finds out. He'll go ballistic, man. He'll totally lose it and then he'll go all out and probably kill everyone on Quileute land."

"Can you blame him?" Jasper looked confused. I'm sure he was wondering why I was the rational one here. My moment of inaction had allowed me to collect myself enough to see things more clearly.

"Bella needs help, Jas. This isn't good. We need to hurry. We can worry about him later. But I don't know how much longer Bella can hang on…" And with that, I pulled Bella carefully into my arms and we ran toward my Jeep.

I had never moved so carefully or quickly before in my life. I watched the ground below me, trying to avoid all the obstacles I possibly could, not wanting to shift her in the slightest because I worried about hurting her or making her injuries worse.

When we arrived at my Jeep I crawled into the back seat, pulling her in and laying her across the backseat with her head on my lap. Jasper flew into the front seat, turned on the engine and drove in the direction of the hospital.

I looked down at Bella and noticed that she was still bleeding. Her blood had soaked through my shirt and was now starting to pool on my lap. I found a towel in the backseat and pressed it firmly against her cheek, trying to stop the bleeding.

"How much more blood can she lose, man?"

"I don't know," Jasper responded, his words clipped and curt.

I tried gently shaking Bella, hoping to rouse her… wishing she was awake because everything would seem so much less uncertain if she was awake. I focused on her heartbeat, her breathing, everything I could to remind myself that she was alive.

"Wolves." It was all Jasper said, but I knew exactly what he meant. The smell of wolf was oppressive. The entire car was filled with it, and it burned our throats and our nostrils, filling our senses, dulling other smells.

"They did this…" I agreed, brushing my hand across Bella's forehead, pushing the hair from out of her face and tucking it behind her ears.

I heard her heart rate increase, and we both stilled. Was she waking?

"What the fuck, man? Drive faster!"

"I'm driving as fast as I can without drawing too much attention. How's she doing?"

"How would I know. I'm not a doctor!" I felt Bella's frail body stir in my lap. Her breathing growing more laboured, her body shifting and her heart rate picking up.

She's waking up.

CPOV

Stabilizing Bella had not been easy. It was challenging because I didn't know exactly what had happened, but also because I was largely without help. Jasper couldn't withstand the bloodlust any longer, though he'd done remarkably well until now. Emmett was distraught and struggling to control his anger as well as his own bloodlust. Nurses were intuitive, they knew what to help with and how, and the relationship was synchronous and automatic. But I couldn't ask for a nurse to help right now, we needed to be discreet.

Edward could have helped, given that he had two medical degrees and a great deal of competency as a health care practitioner. But there were two problems with soliciting his help:

He wasn't here.

And when he arrived, he would be absolutely destroyed by the sight before him.

I worked quickly because Jasper had returned to inform me that Edward was on his way home. He was, as Jasper described, incredibly distressed and quite angry with being left in the dark. I knew we would have to make it home quickly, or else he'd end up here and having Edward here, in the presence of humans to see what had been done to Bella was absolutely a worst-case scenario situation. Edward wasn't rational when it came to Bella. He was reactionary and emotional, unable to think logically more often than not because his love for Bella clouded his judgment.

I worked alone and I worked quickly. Bella had a concussion, along with a fractured nose. It was astonishing that her cheekbone hadn't been fractured, but I was grateful nonetheless that she wouldn't need surgery to repair the damage to her face. Despite being horribly bruised, deeply cut and swollen, surgery wouldn't be necessary.

I checked her vitals. They were dangerously low but I was confident it was due to blood loss. She would need a transfusion. I had Emmett use my key card to access the blood bank, picking up as much blood as he could without raising suspicion.

Bella needed intravenous fluids and a blood transfusion. I palpated her abdomen, checking for any signs of internal trauma that would need surgery to correct. If surgery was needed, it would significantly complicate matters. Our home, while well equipped, was not an operating room.

I knew Charlie would find out sooner than later, but before then my family would need time to devise a story that would satisfy his questions about what had happened to Bella. We would need to make sure he didn't know that someone did this to Bella, otherwise, it would mean exposing Charlie to the possibility of uncovering what we were, and that complication was very, very dangerous for all involved.

"What's going on?" Emmett asked nervously.

"I'm checking for internal injuries. I don't think she has any, thankfully. I can feel three or four fractured ribs. We'll need to get an x-ray, but I won't be able to do that here without alerting others."

I continued working, checking over Bella to make sure I hadn't missed the most important possible complications.

"Edward won't stop calling, Carlisle. He wants to know what's going on." Jasper's voice was filled with exhaustion and unease as he paced the length of the room, no doubt attempting to control his thirst. He was in and out while I worked, leaving when he felt like his thirst was reaching an overwhelming point, and returning when he felt he was in control again.

"Ignore him. This is more important now. We'll be home soon, and he can see Bella then." Emmett shifted uncomfortably in his position kneeling next to me, as braced against the couch.

I eyed him carefully, curious about his thoughts. He was shifting uncomfortably, and his eyes were glued to Bella's body, question and deep concern evident in his face.

"Carlisle…" Emmett began, his voice a reflection of his face "is she… was she…" he stopped before he could finish, stumbling over the words I knew he wanted to ask, but couldn't.

"I don't know, son. I won't know until we get her home. I can't perform that kind of an exam without Bella's consent."

Jasper froze in place, finally connecting with what Emmett was asking. In a matter of seconds, he flew from the room, slamming the door unnaturally hard behind him. I continued to work in silence.

It wasn't long before Emmett headed toward the door, intending to leave and join Jasper, possibly overwhelmed with his bloodlust, or with the sight of Bella. His hand rested on the door handle before I stopped him.

"Emmett – we're ready. Get Jasper – it's time to take Bella home."

I sat in the backseat with Bella, her IV resting on the garment hook in the backseat. Her head was braced against my lap and she had my full attention. I was carefully tracking her breathing and her vitals, taking care to make sure we arrived home without incident.

Emmett drove uncharacteristically slow, trying to avoid any obstacles that might cause Bella to shift in the backseat. Her condition was still quite precarious, and although transporting her home wasn't ideal, it was our only option.

I pulled my phone out and dialed Rosalie's number.

"Carlisle" her worried voice filtered through the phone and I watched as Jasper and Emmett stiffened in the front seat. We had agreed amongst ourselves before leaving the hospital that we wouldn't say anything about Bella's condition until we arrived home. Alerting Edward before we had arrived to manage his reaction was something we were adamant about avoiding.

Rosalie was the easiest person to call upon in this moment, she had grown quite adept at blocking Edward from her thoughts, and I knew I could trust her to react appropriately, to prioritize Bella's well-being above all else in this moment. She understood this better than any of us ever could. Rosalie had been subjected to the most horrific kind of violence a person could know, and although I didn't know if Bella shared in that experience, I had a dreadful suspicion that physical violence wasn't the only thing she had endured tonight.

"Rosalie, where is Edward?"

"He's at home, and I'm on my way there now… Alice called me… he's not handling this well," her voice was filled with a familiar ache.

"I know. But this is for the best. I'll need you to meet us there. Wait outside, and when we arrive I want you to take Bella and bring her upstairs into the room Alice prepared."

"Ok…" I could tell by her reply that she was confused, and I sensed a hint of fear in her voice accompanying the confusion.

"We'll need to speak with Edward right away. He'll be resistant – he'll want to see Bella himself, to hold her. But it is imperative that we speak with him before that happens."

"I don't understand Carlisle. What's going on?"

"This is as much as I can tell you right now, Rosalie. Can you manage this?"

"Yes," she answered without hesitation.

I pushed the phone back inside my pocket and rested the back of my hand against Bella's forehead. Her temperature had changed slightly, one degree higher than it had been at the hospital. I knew this wasn't a good sign – a fever could mean the onset of infection.

I exhaled sharply as I gazed out the window, my eyes fixating on the passing trees as we pulled up to the driveway of our home.

"Are you ready?" I asked Jasper and Emmett. They remained silent but nodded

. "He'll be searching our thoughts, trying to pull them apart. Resist for as long as you can. I don't want him picking up fragmented pieces of all that you've witnessed today."

"Is it OK for you to leave Bella alone to help us with Edward?" Jasper's voice was straining against the unbearable weight of everyone's emotional state as well as the overwhelming blood lust he was fighting against.

"Yes. She's stable for now. With a traumatic head injury, it's a matter of allowing her time to come back to consciousness. There isn't much that can be done to encourage her to awaken. We'll have to be patient. In any case, we won't be far. I'll be able to listen in and monitor Bella's vitals from afar."

The crackling of the gravel road beneath the tires of the Jeep worsened the anxiety I was already grappling with. I dreaded the next few moments – I wasn't prepared to deliver this kind of news to anyone, but with Edward, it would be especially painful. He had waited an entire century for Bella, only to have her ripped away from him repeatedly.

I knew this would destroy him.

I inhaled and focused on disturbing my thoughts as much as possible. I began reciting anatomical formations, starting with the brain and working my way through the rest of the human body. I gently pushed my hands beneath Bella's body, preparing to lift her out of the car.

Edward was standing outside, his body pressed against the width of a large oak tree. Rosalie was next to him, idly watching us as we pulled in.

Within seconds he was at my door, yanking it open. As quickly as he'd arrived at my door, Jasper and Emmett were at his side, pulling him away from us as he struggled against them.

"What the hell are you doing?" he roared, thrashing against Emmett's body in an attempt to get away.

I pushed past them, gently carrying Bella in my arms.

I heard Rosalie gasp, the sound momentarily freezing me in place. Rosalie rushed to my side, her eyes wide and her brow pulled into a hard line across her forehead. I heard a low growl rumble from her.

Edward was snarling, his steel jaw snapping frantically in Jasper and Emmett's direction as he continued to fight against them with such intensity that I worried he might break loose.

I ran to his side, both of my hands coming to rest on his shoulders as I urged him, through my thoughts, to calm down enough to allow me to explain. But he continued to struggle against us.

"Edward!" I roared, shaking his body, as though it would pull him back into reality.

EPOV

Emmett's vice-like grip was impossible to break free from. His hands were like unbreakable steel, their hold on me keeping me from breaking free – keeping me from Bella. Jasper was attempting to manipulate my emotions, to inject calm into my frenzied state, but it was useless

I smelled Bella's blood before I saw her. I knew the car would be rolling down the driveway because I could smell her.

Why could I smell her from such a distance?

My stomach churned at the thought and a shiver rolled down my spine.

When Jasper had called me to tell me to come home I'd been on my way back to the reservation. He explained that Bella was at the hospital with Emmett and Carlisle. She was injured, he'd explained, but they weren't keeping her there. They were bringing her home because it would be safer. I pressed for more information, anxiety and fear breaking through me.

Jasper's line went dead before I could continue my interrogation. In an instant, my course had changed and I was running in the direction of Forks Hospital, Jasper's instructions be damned.

Before I could gain any real speed, Alice was slamming into me from behind, her thin arms wrapping around my neck, yanking me backward.

"Get off, Alice!" I hooked my arms underneath hers and threw her small body off my own. She skidded across the ground, expertly regaining her balance before launching herself at me again.

"Listen to me, Edward!" she shrieked, clasping her tiny hands over my eyes.

"I need to see her."

"Trust me?" she whispered in my ear as she began to pull me in the direction of our home.

I cocked my head around to glance at her, and the look in her eyes stopped me in my tracks.

"What is it, Alice? What have you seen?"

She shrugged, her eyes filling with a sadness that caused the familiar churning feeling to return to my stomach.

"I can't see her if that's what you're wondering. But I… I can see Jasper's future, and it's giving me small glimpses of Bella because he's with her. I really think you need to trust Carlisle on this one, Edward. He's on his way. He'll be here soon. Trust him. Trust that." Her voice was pleading, her eyes conveying how much she was hurting, too.

"What did you see?" I was searching through her thoughts, but she was blocking me at every turn. Alice had become so adept at this that when she wanted to, she could block me completely for days on end. Usually, it was just a minor annoyance, but today it was infuriating.

"Trust me, Edward. Please?"

I stopped dead in my tracks then, my eyes locked onto Alice's.

"Is she alive?"

I didn't want the answer to that question. Part of me wanted to trust Jasper… when I'd asked him if she was still alive on the phone he'd assured me that she was, but there was something in his voice that left me with a sinking feeling. There was so much he wasn't telling me, his voice laced with an evasive edge.

"Yes," Alice offered, her hand outstretched at she mentally begged me to follow her back home.

Alice's response confirmed what I had already suspected: whatever had happened and was happening to Bella was very, very bad – possibly worse than I'd originally expected.

But she was alive.

With nothing left to fight against, with helplessness creeping up on me, I placed my hand in Alice's and ran back toward our home to wait for Carlisle to arrive with Bella.

I thrashed against Emmett, who was holding one of my arms, Jasper holding the other, with Carlisle's face inches from my own, begging me to calm down.

I snarled, my jaw snapping inches away from Carlisle's face.

"I know you need to be with her, son. But you need to listen to me first. Once you've listened, you can go. I won't stop you. But I need you to listen to me first."

The agony contained within Carlisle's voice was causing the anxiety to steadily mount inside of me. I'd never heard him so panicked before. In all our years spent together, he'd never faltered, not even for a minute. And here he was, crumbling before my very eyes.

"What?" I growled out through clenched teeth. I eased up on my thrashing for the moment, trying to calm myself down enough to listen to what he had to say. I could feel waves of calm washing over me, and I let them soak into my body, allowing them to cool the anger that was bracketing against me in fiery waves.

"Bella is very badly hurt," he started, his eyes locked onto mine. He continued, his voice filled with an aching heaviness "she's been badly beaten. But she's alive, and she is stable for the moment. You need to prepare yourself for what you will see when you go to her. It isn't good, Edward."

I could hear him speaking, but it was as though the words and their accompanying meaning weren't penetrating. He was falling on deaf ears because although I could hear him, I couldn't comprehend the meaning of what he was saying.

He continued anyway, his eyes never leaving my own "She's here now because it's safer for everyone. We don't want Charlie finding out about this."

Finally, Carlisle's words and their meaning penetrated. My head snapped up and the ferociousness returned.

"Who?" My voice sounded alien to me, the rage and hatred present were erupting inside of me.

"Son, I'll tell you – but you need to act rationally. We can't have you running off, deciding to take care of this on your own. It wouldn't do anyone any good. We must know for sure before we take any action."

"Who?" I shouted, pulling against Emmett and Jasper's hold.

"We think it was one of the Quileute werewolves." Carlisle's eyes burned with anger, an unfamiliar state energy building up around him.

Before I could control it, my body shook with rage, a loud snarl ripping through me, echoing off the surrounding forestry.

I summoned my fury, channeling it into fighting against the hold my brothers had on me. In a blinding rage, I managed to rip my arm free of Jasper's hold, pulling him up by his arm and slamming his body into Emmett's, knocking them both to the ground with a deafening thud – the sound of stone scraping against stone screeching around us.

I lunged at Carlisle, grabbing hold of him, throwing him across the expanse of our driveway. His solid, stone-like body flew into a tree, a loud cracking sound thundering around us.

I pivoted and started running. I'd never experienced speed like this before, my legs carrying me with such intensity that I knew I'd make it to the reservation land before anyone could match my speed.

But before I could make it past the driveway a loud, shrill scream pulsed through my body, stopping me dead in my tracks.

Bella.

A/N: So, things are heavy.

I know, I know. I can't even promise that they'll get much lighter any time soon - though we'll see glimpses of hope.

The two unique POVs we saw aren't going to be regulars throughout the story. A different POV will pop up every no and again, but more often than not we'll shift between Bella and Edward.