Author's Note: I love that so many of you keep taking the time to tell me what you think, even if it is only to complain about a cliffhanger :) I promise to work on that, btw…

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Tainted

The cool night air whipped across Billy Black's face as Seth Clearwater helped him back home. Seth chattered on about how his father was taking them to the Mariner's home opener in a few weeks but Billy was not paying attention. He was perturbed, trying to shake off the feeling that something bad was about to happen.

Of course he was worried about the Swan girl. Charlie was one of his best friends in the world and her new friends were certainly not what he would hope for her. It disturbed him the way they paid attention to her in a way they never did to anyone else in town before. The fact was certainly troubling, as Sam kept reminding them, but it was not the source of his apprehension. He trusted Sam and the boys to keep an eye on her now that Paul was under control.

When they reached the house, Seth helped him up onto the porch and through the front door before turning to run back home. Billy wheeled himself into the living room and turned on the light but not, as he usually did, the television. This problem had been weighing on his mind for days now and he decided to use the silence to sort out.

He was shocked yesterday to learn that Paul had become the third. Other members of the council, as well as Sam and Jared, had been predicting it for weeks, but Billy had never really believed it could be true. Yes, he had started growing, which was usually a sign, but so did a lot of boys his age. He was moody, but then again he had been as far back as Billy could remember. He was the average age, but was not necessarily an indicator. Billy's own grandfather was only 15 when he became the alpha in his time.

That right there was the source of his confusion. He had never believed that it was going to be Paul who completed the pack because he was certain that it would be his own son, instead. Jacob was a direct descendent of Ephraim Black, the last alpha the tribe had. Yes, he was a few years younger than Sam and Jared but he had the strongest blood ties to the last pack. Now the three were chosen and Jacob had not changed. It went against everything Billy had thought he understood about the line of succession. There were never more than three since the very beginning, and certainly many candidates to choose from this time around, but Jacob was one he never questioned. Even of his cousins he was the most likely choice. Jacob came from an unbroken, untainted line of Black men, Billy himself having only sisters as did his father. It made no sense, Jacob not being chosen for this pack.

A howl in the distance broke his concentration, one long note followed by two short ones. It was the alarm they had discussed at the last council meeting to give warning to the tribe if the pack sensed an imminent danger. Several seconds later the phone rang. As Billy made his way across the room to answer it, he couldn't help but wonder where his son had gone.

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"Bella, you need to breathe."

He was inches from her face, hands on her shoulders already prepared to support her if her knees gave out again. It was what she needed to hear to bring her back. The last thing she wanted was to embarrass herself again by fainting… again. She took several deep breaths before attempting a half smile to let him know the crisis had been averted.

She heard soft footsteps on the stairs and looked up. Dr. Cullen and his wife were coming down, their expressions full of concern. Edward's eyes never left her.

"Is everything alright, Edward?" He was whispering, so low Bella was almost unsure she had heard him. Edward was still looking at her and did not respond.

She decided to answer for him. "Everything is fine, I almost forgot to breathe again but I'm okay now."

Everyone stopped and exchanged a look that Bella knew meant they were all thinking the same thing, something they knew and she did not.

"What? What's going on now?" She looked back and forth at all three of them, one at a time. Only Dr. Cullen returned her gaze.

"You have very good hearing, Bella," he said.

Edward's expression changed slightly to one she was becoming very used to. It was the same look he gave her every afternoon when they sat next to each other in class and he asked how she was feeling. It was anxiety, the anxiety he always seemed to have for her lately, mixed with what she now understood to be guilt. He had been asking because he knew what happened, because he was the cause of what happened. Suddenly all of his strange behavior to her this past week at school made perfect sense.

He was checking up on her, trying to make sure she was… but she couldn't finish the thought. She had no idea what he should be checking the progress of. She had been bitten by a vampire and her internet research had told her that she should now be one. But Bella was certain she was not a vampire, especially since Edward had clarified exactly what one was. She still got hungry for food, was still clumsy as ever, did not sparkle in the sun.

As she sat there as confused as ever, Dr. Cullen took a seat in the chair next to the couch. His wife sat next to him on the arm and Bella noticed that they were holding hands. She reached out to grab Edward's, who had moved to regain his place next to her on the couch but then withdrew it. He was not looking at her anymore but staring intently at the floor with an elbow on each knee holding the back of his head in his hands, his fingers gripping at his bronze hair.

"Let me explain what happened after Edward's teeth cut your skin."

If Bella was being honest with herself, hearing Dr. Cullen describe the 'becoming a vampire' process was the most fascinating thing she had learned all day. He began by talking about venom and about his own transformation, as he called it. His descriptions were like Edward's, very clinical, at times she felt like she ought to be taking notes for fear there might be a test afterwards. But in a strange way he made sense. She perfectly understood what he was trying to explain to her.

What she didn't understand was how it related to her. She hadn't experienced anything like what he was describing. It sounded awful, buried under potatoes while writhing in excruciating pain for three days. Her shoulder burned slightly but nothing like what he, what they all, went through. He said it was the result of a bite and Bella now knew she had been bitten, but that was where the similarities ended.

When he got to the part where he, Edward and Emmett were all standing in her room as Edward began to drink her blood (she shivered for the first time since she arrived at their house) in an attempt to remove the spreading venom from her system the mood changed.

She could feel Edward tense up beside her. He hadn't moved his eyes from the floor, he hadn't moved at all. Again, she felt an urge to comfort him but didn't know how. Dr. Cullen kept her attention most of the time with his narrative but she kept looking to the side to check on him. It was strange, though, because every time she broke off to throw a concerned glance at Edward she also saw his mother. Her smile was still kind but there was also a happiness in her eyes that seemed out of place in this suddenly heavy conversation.

He finished by explaining that they left her to sleep and went home to discuss how they were going to make sure there was no lasting effect of what happened. Then he paused, as if unsure of how to go on. Relief began to sweep over her body. She had learned enough to understand that, if Edward had removed the venom from her system, she was going to be fine. Venom made vampires and caused excruciating pain and she didn't have any of that.

But relief was soon replaced with something else, anger.

Dr. Cullen was looking at Edward but not speaking. Bella assumed he was communicating something only Edward's 'special' hearing could grasp.

It made her upset. They had promised to explain everything but were still obviously keeping secrets. She hated that it bothered her, because as much as her curiosity burned within her at times, she really didn't believe in prying. People had a habit of opening up when they wanted to and keeping it in when they didn't. Everyone had a right to keep things to themselves, she had always believed that.

But this was different. This involved her, her life, her health. They had done this to her. They owed her an explanation, a full and complete one, one that left nothing out. They owed it to her the moment it happened and each day that passed without it made the whole business more difficult to understand. What could they possibly still have to hide?

She stood up abruptly and walked across the room so she could turn and see all three of them at the same time. She crossed her arms in front of her and planted a foot into the ground on either side.

"Obviously I'm not thrashing around in unbearable pain, and haven't been for any of the last five days."

Edward looked up for the first time. He reminded her of a child expecting a severe punishment, one he knows he deserves. "No."

"So I am not becoming a vampire. That should be the end of the story… yet I can't shake the feeling there's something more you're not telling me." She had been trying to remain firm in an attempt to force them to keep talking. But, as was becoming a consistent problem that day, the pain in Edward's face was too much for her to keep her composure. She softened immediately, exhaling as she dropped her arms to her side and pulling at the pockets of her jeans with her thumbs.

"Edward you can tell me anything."

He was silent for several seconds before responding. It was obviously difficult for him. Bella was starting to get upset with herself, too. Her impatience and curiosity were causing him to sit there in agony. She didn't like to see him this upset. He would have told her in time, when he was ready.

"You are not thrashing around in unbearable pain, Bella, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you are not becoming a vampire," he said.

That was a response she was not prepared for and she froze in place. They waited patiently for her to process it but it didn't make sense with anything else she had heard that day. She thought she understood. First you get bitten, then you suffer three days of agonizing pain and then you're a vampire. Vampires are cold, indestructible, and have color changing eyes. Outside of her pale skin, which looked tan next to theirs, she wasn't anything like them.

"But…" she stammered, "you just said…"

"All we know about the process has come from our own experiences," Dr. Cullen explained. "No one in this family has had an experience like yours and we have never before tried to remove venom from blood after it has been tainted. At the time we were fairly certain we got it all but… but we now have reason to believe that we didn't."

Nothing in his explanation relieved her confusion. Everything else had made perfect sense. Vampires, blood, venom, all of it she had processed with ease. This was something wholly different, something her mind was not ready for but was about to be forced into accepting. The fire in her shoulder had never felt more intense.

"What do you mean by 'reason to believe'?"

For the second time in his life, Edward was experiencing true torture. The first had, of course, been his own transformation, a transformation that made him the monster he now was. That experience was physically painful, the most painful of his life by far, but the emotional torture he was enduring this afternoon at times hurt just as bad.

She was amazing. He still could hardly believe the way that she, just earlier that afternoon, had sat there asking questions about him and his family and what they were with such ease. He had envisioned that conversation over and over again in his head a thousand times and never had he seen it play out that way. She accepted that he could read minds as if he had told her he liked to play ice hockey. She didn't shiver or run away when he told her that his diet consisted entirely of medium to large game. She laughed when he stuck his hand into the sun rays that were shining through the South windows and lit up the room with his luminescent skin.

But that was before she knew what he had done. She was obviously not taking this news with the same ease she had shown earlier. She was probably so repelled at the thought of what she might become that she would bolt as soon as she could get away politely and it was entirely his fault. At least, he understood, that meant that he owed it to her to explain everything as well as he could before she ran off. She had just asked a question and he knew it was he, not his father, who ought to answer it.

"Carlisle and I were doing some research on the subject and we came across something that we think would explain what is happening to you."

She cut him off. "Nothing is happening to me, Edward, I'm fine."

"No, Bella, if you were fine you wouldn't have started screaming when those imbeciles at the movies ran into you. You wouldn't still be avoiding using that shoulder."

She swallowed.

"My shoulder is getting better." Even she didn't sound like she believed it.

"I've been watching you do it all day." He knew he had barely whispered it and it pained him to know that she could hear him clearly anyway.

She didn't respond, surrender in her eyes. He tried to keep his voice as calm and soothing as possible, so as not to scare her away before she understood everything. "But those aren't the only symptoms you've been showing."

She didn't try to argue with him this time so after a glance at Carlisle, who nodded that he ought to go on, Edward continued.

"You have also been experiencing a hypersensitivity to light and sound that, we believe, is evidence you are beginning to take on some of our other unique qualities. You should not have been able to hear or understand the question Carlisle asked me when he came downstairs. Normal human ears would not have picked that up."

She continued to stare forward but was shaking her head back and forth, as if trying to force herself into denial. He stood up and walked over to her one hand out. He was surprised that she didn't recoil at his touch when he grabbed her hand and led her back to the couch. As he began to speak their fingers were still intertwined. It made him feel peaceful in a strange way.

"Carlisle's library is full of books, some new but most very old, about our kind. As he and I were pouring through them looking for answers we came across a one that neither of us had read before. It was a memoir of a vampire who served in the court of the Romanians back in the time when they ruled over many of our kind. He developed a conscience, as we call it, an aversion to taking human life. Rather than sustain himself by feeding on animals, as we have chosen to do, he instead decided to experiment with ways to drink from but not kill humans."

He paused to check her progress. Her heart rate had slowed and she was breathing more steadily now, obviously somewhat caught up in the tale. Carlisle silently promised to keep monitoring her.

"It didn't go well at first. One of two things happened every time he tried to feed. He either let the bloodlust take over and he killed them or he was able to stop himself but had to kill them eventually because their blood became contaminated and they began to go through the change. At the time, the Romanians had very strict laws against making any more vampires. He tried a variety of methods but was never able to keep himself from polluting their blood. Towards the end of his experiments he thought he had found the solution.'

"He decided try the smallest of holes, just a scrape on the surface of the skin, and limit himself to a very small amount. Though he ended up taking too much from the first few, they only lived a few hours because they had lost so much blood, he did find success. A man walked away from him, fed off of but still alive. The vampire watched him for several days, waiting for the transformation process to begin but it never did… at least, not in a way he had ever seen before."

Edward stopped again. He saw the goose bumps that had formed on her arm and, unsure if they were a result of his cold skin or the story he was telling, he moved to let her hand go. She wouldn't release it, though, and instead covered the exposed top of his hand with her other one. She was staring intently into his eyes. He tried to block out the thoughts of his parents who, while watching the two of them sit there hand in hand, were not thinking about ancient vampire memoirs.

"What happened to him?"

Edward continued, unable to look away from those beautiful brown eyes that felt like they were burning holes into his soul.

"At first he seemed fine. Outside of some pain at the site of the bite, pain the vampire overheard him describe as burning, there seemed to be nothing wrong. After a few days he stopped following the man, pleased that he had found a way to appease both his conscience and his thirst. He went on feeding in that same manner when his thirst needed quenched. Months passed.'

" Then one day he was called to be part of a party organized to deal with a newly discovered problem. It was a man, a human, who was screaming like a mad man in the streets. It was not an uncommon occurrence at the time and typically would not have excited their interest but what caught the attention of the vampires was that he was standing in the streets in the middle of the afternoon… and he was sparkling."

She took a sharp breath in. He could hear his father analyzing her reaction and deciding that she was not in shock or on the verge of fainting again. She was simply startled. That made Edward feel a little better but his own worries about her were being intensified by Esme's, who was fighting back another urge to hug the girl and assure her she'll be alright.

The problem was, they really couldn't guarantee the truth of that. He took her silence as an opportunity to continue.

"Obviously, the vampire recognized the man as his first non-victim. As soon as it was safe, the party captured him and brought him in, still screaming, for questioning. He was completely mad, talking about how he could hear whispers from the quiet houses and see clearly at night as if it were day. I assume going through that change, even subtly, without any idea of what you're becoming, would be maddening."

Her eyes were full of compassion, which made Edward burn inside. She was so thoroughly good natured that it almost literally hurt him to think about it in contrast to his own nature.

"What happened to him?" She asked again, though this time her expression communicated that she had already guessed what was coming.

"They destroyed him, as well as the others who began popping up, the others this vampire had tried to feed off of and leave alive. Eventually he stopped waiting for them to come out in the sun. He tracked down, destroyed the rest himself and gave up the effort."

Carlisle leaned in, indicating to Edward that he wanted to step in. Edward already knew what he intended to say and was thankful that his father decided to relate what Edward saw as the most difficult part of the whole story. He grasped the hand of the first girl he had ever loved even tighter for what he feared would be the last time as his father broke the bad news.

"Bella, I want you to understand that the narrative we found is incomplete, scientifically. We have no details on the extent of the change, whether it was ongoing or had frozen at a certain point, or what would have happened if they had been allowed to live. We don't know if you had more or less venom in your system than this man did or if that even matters. This story is helpful in that it tells us the situation is not unprecedented but really offers little more."

Bella was numb, or at least numb was the closest thing she could come up with to describe what she was feeling… or, wasn't feeling, as it seemed to be. She was thinking more about her non-reaction and what it ought to be rather than what was being said to her. She had just learned that she was maybe-possibly-probably slowly becoming like a vampire and she felt… nothing. Her chest was not tight, her breathing was now under control and mind was perfectly calm.

She took a big breath in and more of that peaceful feeling surrounded her. The air was sweeter there than it was at home and it didn't take her long to realize why. It wasn't their home, it was him. She was smelling him, his own distinct bouquet, and it was peaceful. She had smelled him before but never really appreciated how intoxicating it was. She breathed him in again.

"Are you alright?" He was concerned and it didn't surprise her. She just wished she knew the answer to that question. She could hear the doctor and his wife getting up to leave the room, presumably to give them some privacy, but she didn't look away from the boy with the amber eyes.

"I don't know."

He tried to hold her gaze but some kind of emotion, Bella couldn't tell what, swelled up inside of him and he had to drop it.

"I need you to know that we intend to stay here as long as it takes to figure out what is going on and to help you through this. We would never abandon you to go through this alone."

She nodded her head, unable to speak because she was worried about what might come out of his mouth next. She got the feeling he was dancing around something he didn't want to say.

"Of course, that's only if… you know, only if you want our help. We would understand if you want nothing to do with us. In that case, we'll go away and leave you here in peace."

"What?" She was floored. How could he, how could any of them ever think that she would wish them away.

"I'm just trying to say that I understand if you don't want anything to do with me after this, after learning what I did and that, if it's easier for you, I'll leave."

"Edward I don't know how I feel yet about all of this. It's a lot for me to sort out at once and I'm not sure it's really hit me yet. But…" She reached one hand up and placed it on his cheek as he looked at her again, a glimmer of something that vaguely resembled hope in his eyes. "But I am positive that I don't hate you, or anyone in this house, for what happened and I cannot imagine the thought of living through this without you here to help me."

Relief exploded across his face and he moved towards her, grabbing her face in the same way she held his.

Bella took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she felt his lips crashing into hers. They didn't move at first, each savoring that first innocent taste of the other. It was sweeter and more exhilarating than anything she had ever experienced before. Then a surge of something she would later describe as pure passion overtook her frail form and she started to move her lips against his.

She shifted her hand to the back of his head and ran her fingers through his hair. She could feel electricity surging through her body as he placed a hand on the small of her back to pull her closer. His lips were receptive to her attack but still tentative. They mimicked her movements.

When she broke for air he stopped her from resuming, both of them now breathing a little heavier than before. He looked tortured again and she was confused. In her mind, that had been the farthest thing from torture. She could feel the self doubt and rejection rising within her, worried he was disgusted by what he had just allowed to happen.

But then he smiled, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. His scent was washing over her in waves as she buried her face into his chest. He kissed the top of her head before he rested his chin on it. They sat there together, holding each other, perfectly content in the moment.

Bella knew she would soon have to start dealing with the fact she was probably becoming a vampire. There were a lot of things in her life that were about to change, quickly and permanently. There were a lot of questions left to ask and she wasn't sure she wanted to hear some of the answers. But that was all still yet to come because for a few blissful minutes, she was perfectly happy to just be there, with him, in his arms.

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As always, please leave your thoughts on your way out…