A/N: Thanks so much for your wonderful thoughts.

Once the story is complete (which I promise it almost is!), I'll tell you all a little secret about it. ;)

Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.

Chapter 20 – The Race

St. Matthew's Island: Bering Sea, Alaska - October 30, 2092:

Alice:

On a summer night in the year 1614, the indigenous seaside community of Patuxet suddenly disappeared.

For many years afterward, the few who knew the community's fate discussed it in bone-chilling whispers. That night became the origin story for Hobomock, the evil spirit of death. Within the tribes, it became a cautionary tale.

Outside of the tribal communities, however, Patuxet was rarely mentioned. In fact, within a generation, everyone, save for the tribes, more than forgot the dark whispers of the village's horrific fate. The village was conveniently wiped from memory, almost as if it had never existed.

There are a couple of reasons why Patuxet was allowed to be forgotten so quickly, so easily, and so eagerly by all except a few. One of the reasons is now, after many centuries, finally recorded in the history books. Though, as history itself has repeatedly proven, an event's status as documented fact neither guarantees nor equates its rectification.

What history tells us about the night of Patuxet Village's disappearance, as well as of the ensuing events that forever changed the Wampanoag and Native American narrative, is the following:

Its sequence begins in the days preceding Patuxet's extinction, with a European shipwreck off the village's coast. A few of the men from the floundering ship managed to swim ashore. However, they soon exhibited fever and delirium.

In the days that followed, these sick men introduced previously unknown pathogens to the village's Wampanoag inhabitants. Patuxet then became ground zero for what the Indigenous later called The Great Dying – a European disease turned Native-American plague that ripped through the Wampanoag Nation and shredded their numbers by the tens of thousands. Within the next three years, more than ninety percent of the Wampanoag Nation, over one-hundred thousand men, women, and children, would be dead.

The Pilgrims arrived six years later, in 1620. With Wampanoag numbers decimated, the Pilgrims "discovered" an attractive coastal land now vacated. They named it Plymouth. Still, the Pilgrims had difficulty learning the "new world's" land and coaxing it into production. It was the few remaining Wampanoag who taught them how to nurture the soil so that it would bear them fruit.

And with the riveting story of Plymouth's valiant survival over that first, harsh winter, the story of Patuxet, a once-thriving Wampanoag community whose native roots spanned 12,000 years, became barely a blip in history.

This is all fact. Where history differs from reality isn't by attributing the decimation of Wampanoag and innumerable indigenous populations to European-wrought disease. Where history deviates is with the events that occurred in Patuxet Village on that night in 1614. Just as history got it wrong on a similar night, almost eight decades later, explaining Andover Village's demise in 1692.

I know the truth of these events because I was there for it all.

Without excessively defending a posterity whose narrative has always been naively uneven at best and deliberately deceiving at worst, it might be possible to concede that history would've had a hard go of including bloodthirsty vampires in the narrative of those events that wreaked havoc on not one but two towns – one Indigenous and one Colonial American. For those who weren't there, accepting what happened to both villages would've meant accepting that immortal beings walked among them. Even today's mortals are too close-minded for such acceptance.

This brings us to the being who now stands a short distance away, across a tundra on this remote Alaskan island.

Once, I hated Captain Carlisle Cullen with my every breath. I couldn't envision myself ever forgiving, much less sympathizing, with the bewildered and ravenous newborn vampire who massacred almost an entire fishing community when he weakly allowed his bloodlust free rein. As far as I was concerned, he was the disease that wiped out my birthplace. To those who lived through that time before history disappeared, reshaped itself, then reappeared, he became the Hobomock of nightmares.

Yet, as I now observe Carlisle Cullen, where he waits for us, a few concurrent thoughts run through my mind:

Four-hundred years ago, Edward – my nephew and Carlisle's son – embarked on a similar mindless massacre as his father before him. Yes, the villagers of Andover wrought their own demise with their perfidy, with their false accusations and actions against Edward's mate, Bella. But the result was the same: a village almost wiped from history. To this day, Salem, Massachusetts is notorious for its witch hunt; its victims absolved of all accusations. In contrast, very few remember Andover's history, even the reshaped narrative of the fire that destroyed the town.

Yet, except for those first few minutes of Edward's life, when he tore into the world by tearing through my sister's womb, I've never thought him a villain. Neither do I still believe Carlisle a villain. And, in the past four hundred years or so, I have come to feel sympathy and gratitude toward Carlisle.

The blind hatred toward him ended within a decade after his rampage. I was raising his son, so like him. How could I continue hating him? But it wasn't until my own transformation, until I awoke to my new existence, ravenous for the warm substance I smelled thick in the air, that I understood it wasn't weakness that overpowered Carlisle that night. It was instinct.

Had I not had my nephew to restrain me, reason with me, and remind me of my humanity, I, too, may have succumbed to an impulsive, bloody rampage. I may have become the monster our people whispered of, the one my nephew once feared he'd become.

We vampires are predators. We're creatures ruled by instinct, and holding us to the same moral standards that guide most humans would be masochistic. Nevertheless, an echo of the benevolence Carlisle must've once possessed had to have remained within him after the change. After all, he spared Sokanon and me.

And it wasn't for his love of my sister that we were spared. In a fever haze, Carlisle believed Sokanon was his beloved wife, Esme. Neither did he spare us for the love of his unborn child. Leading up to that night, none of us knew Sokanon was pregnant, just as Edward knew nothing of his child's existence the night he and I arrived in Andover.

It was Carlisle's lingering humanity that spared us. Even though, on the night when he turned, he had no one of his new kind, no vampire to guide him, to remind him to hold himself a step above a beast, a monster. Not the way I did my best to remind Edward as he grew, then Jasper when I changed him. Or the way Edward reminded me, then Bella, when we became vampires.

Such is our nature. This is why, lacking a conscience to temper our thirst, lacking someone there to be our voice of reason when we can't reason for ourselves, someone who, through love, can help us find our way, we face one of two inescapable fates:

We commit that one heinous act for which we can never forgive ourselves, which will forever haunt us. Then, we do as Carlisle did, physically withdraw from humanity, and become outcasts. We become the rumored monsters of legend.

Or, a thousand times worse, we mentally withdraw. We forfeit our own humanity and thereby become not merely the rumored but the actual monsters of dark myth – the Hobomock.

Because Captain Carlisle Cullen was never the true Hobomock. The true Hobomock appears yearly on the anniversary of Bella's human death. With every passing year, Hobomock grows stronger yet more confused. She takes up increasingly more space for more extended periods. She convinces Bella of bigger and riskier lies – all of it to get Bella to kill her and then mentally withdraw. Vacate the space so that Hobomock may take it over.

If Hobomock succeeds, not only will Bella lose her mind, she'll forfeit her humanity. Neither will Edward survive, for such is the mating bond. I haven't seen how it would happen, and I thank God, Providence, anything, and everything for sparing me such a vision. Not seeing it throughout all these centuries gives me hope that it'll never come to pass. That no track leads to it. That, after four hundred years, we're on the right track.

That although Bella and Edward's fate shifted, it didn't change.

So, here we are, close to the end. So close that the luster of the ring that will end this glints like a jewel much more precious than the silver with which it was fashioned. It calls to me like a memory of warm summer evenings wading by Patuxet's seaside. Or like the memory of an infant Edward's first gurgles. Or the memory of the first time I saw Jasper. It calls to me with the gauzy sweetness of so many daydreams from my youth.

I reach out a hand.

The ring.

It's close. So close.

"Yes. The ring…my ring…"

"Alice?"

"My…" I reach for it the way one reaches for a long-lost lover who-

"Alice!"

The alarm in Jasper's voice wrenches a gasp from me. Pulling back my arms, I blink rapidly – an unnecessary action for our kind, one of those humanisms that remains with us. Nevertheless, I'm startled when I see Jasper now in front of me rather than beside me, where he was.

"What…?" I ask in confusion.

Jasper cups my face, guiding my eyes to his, warily searching them.

"Alice, you've been standing with your arms extended for a few minutes now."

I'm temporarily struck mute by this, then hit by another strange, unnecessary humanism: lightheadedness.

"The ring…" I finally say, peeking over Jasper's shoulder and at the same time trying not to sway on my feet, "it's…pulling me. It's almost too strong to resist…almost as if it's calling my name…my name from days gone by."

"Alice, darling, look at me," Jasper says, an acute note of alarm now tinging his tone. "Look at me."

"But…but the ring…it's so close…"

"The hell with the ring! Look at me!"

Before we can say anything further, pewter-stained clouds roll in with an abruptness that makes their speedy path resemble an inkwell suddenly tipped over. They seep into heaven's unending canvas. The endemic population of birds, foxes, and rodents, already keeping a vigilant distance, scurry from their hiding places as if whatever approaches frightens them much more than the alpha predators among them. Birds shriek and take to the darkened skies. Snakes hiss and slither in hasty zig-zags. Four-legged creatures whimper and scamper through willow, moss, and lichen in search of caves and hollows.

Jasper grabs my hand and weaves his fingers through mine, his gaze scouring our surroundings.

"Something is very wrong here," he growls under his breath, for my ears alone.

My gaze sweeps back to Carlisle. Behind the cliffside near which he stands, a rippling flash slants brusquely across the sky. It strikes the Bering Sea's peaked white waters like a sharp whip, and the ensuing crack of thunder would've split human ears. Its residual roar evokes a tear in the world's very fabric.

The ground under our feet wobbles and shakes as if the entire tundra balances on a jagged precipice. Mountains that have for eons stood mighty and sentry in this desolate part of the world now tremble and quake like soft mounds of newly-fallen snow. It all soon steadies, but the vibrations linger.

All at once, the world before me disappears.

Hundreds of worlds, all with different paths, take its place. At the end, I see something I've never seen before, not a different world with a different path, but the past of this very path. The entire vision lasts fewer than a handful of seconds – they never last more. Yet, unlike any other episode I've ever had, this one brings me to my knees with an accompanying sharp cry.

"Alice! Alice, what is it?" Dropping to his knees, Jasper grasps my shoulders and shakes me. "ALICE!"

Again, I reach out, but no longer for the ring. I reach for individuals a thousand times more precious…yet too far away.

Gales of wild wind whip up my hair, then whistle loudly in my ears. They make me shiver as if I were a mere mortal. When I speak, my voice quivers in a way it hasn't done so in four hundred years, not since that night when Edward and I followed the scent of burning flesh into Andover Village.

"She lied! All these years! All these centuries! She lied!"

"Who?" Jasper spits out the question in as much genuine bewilderment as unconcealable fear. Concurrently, his shoulders stiffen, set against an unseen and unspecified danger. "Who lied?"

"The witch! She saw this! She planned it! And now Edward's gone hunting to keep Bella fed throughout the possession! He thinks he has time, but she's gotten too good! Too strong! And I-!" Hurdling back onto my feet, I grab Jasper's forearms. "I've got to get in touch with him! I've got to get to Bella, but-"

But I'm thousands of miles from any civilization, in a forgotten, almost uninhabitable corner of the earth. I'm in one of the few remaining parts of the world lacking any form of communication. Of course, I could run. Jasper and I could swim through the Bering Sea, sprint back home in record time, never break a sweat, and never feel tired. Yet even our legs, our speed would fall short this time.

Once again, my legs threaten to buckle. "But there's no time! I saw it all too late, and she's already decided. There's no time," I say in a strangled voice.

Jasper's eyes widen. "What did you see?"

"She's going to kill her. She'll kill her, and he'll go on a rampage and- and oh, my God, Nessie!"

"Alice, what do we do?"

Our conversation erupts inhumanly quickly, and I know that, compounded by how I'm tripping over my words, I'm making little sense. But I also know my mate will follow my lead no matter what.

"What do we do, Alice?" he repeats.

"It's too late. It's too late for us to do anything! She planned it, and," – I choke on a tearless sob – "we're too far away!"

"Something can still change, Alice! Maybe Edward will return to her in time!" His eyes brighten with hope, no matter how futile. "Love finds a way! Maybe the ring-"

"The fucking ring is cursed!" I shout at the top of my lungs. "Not charmed, but cursed!"

Jasper inhales sharply. As I gaze back at the man a few yards away, his head tilts sideways. He's listening but not entirely understanding as he watches us with an inscrutable expression. Perhaps he has no interest in how he fits into this. Maybe he always knew of his son and didn't care.

"She lied," I whimper, my eyes remaining on Carlisle. "All those years ago…"

"Who lied?" Jasper asks once again. "Rosalie?"

"No. No, Rosalie was always a second-rate witch. A horrendous effect and a necessity, yes, but also a distraction from…from…Hobomock."

The word erupts in a low whisper amid the howling storm, like those horror-filled susurrations with which we used to share Hobomock's inaccurate legend.

But, Carlisle hears. Of course, he does. He's a vampire, just like us. He is no more and no less unless one counts that he was the original vampire, her – the true Hobomock's – creation.

My gift, the one she handed down to me, has never before afforded me a vision of the past, only ever of the tangled webs of uncertain futures. She never meant for me to see the past, but I saw it. I saw the beginning:

I saw how she – a young, unpracticed witch – wanted her husband safe. I saw how she worried when she learned he was to sail across the seas to the new world of which so little was known. She wanted to ensure that she wouldn't lose him. That, should something happen, he'd remain strong – as strong as he was when he left England. Even more robust, if possible, so that he would "transcend harm and remain alive, no matter what."

Such is the mating bond.

So, she found a way. Even if she wasn't sure what she was casting, what she was creating with her self-concocted spell of "invulnerability" and "indestructibility." She found a way and damned the unforeseen side effects, an immortal body's sustenance needs. Even if she could never recreate that same spell, that same witchcraft of superhumanity on herself. She found another way to ensure that if something did go awry, she'd see him again. She'd be with him again.

Even if it was a different version of her.

"We've all been pawns," I whisper, "Esme's pawns to get us to this moment. Had I touched that ring…"

At the mention of his wife's name, of the guileful, cunning Seidr witch's name, the man a short distance away straightens. His frame tenses. A low growl erupts from deep within his throat.

With slow, wary movements, Jasper turns and looks over his shoulder just as Captain Carlisle Cullen, ancient destroyer, and husband of Esme Platt Cullen, lunges.

OOOOO

The outskirts of Oakland Airport: Oakland, California – October 30, 2092:

Edward:

Strange…the thoughts that flood one's mind while in the middle of a hunt.

Bits of broken, neglected driveway gravel crunch under my feet as I stroll toward the dilapidated house where my prey are holed up. The sound reminds me of bones grounded into dust, which reminds me of my first human kill. Like the sound the gravel makes now, the first set of human bones I crushed between my fingers, turned into silt and dust before draining their marrow, resounded throughout the tribe, and sent its people into fits of horrified hysteria.

That was almost half a millennia ago. In this day and age, my kills rarely raise an eyebrow. Much less do they make a sound this close to Oakland's airport, where the constant barrage of flights camouflages the entire process. Not that I'm much concerned with being stealthy.

Thoughts of firsts lead to thoughts of my daughter's first birthday. In those days of the late seventeenth century, birthdays weren't celebrated as they are now, with parties, presents, and voices raised in embarrassing renditions of ridiculous songs. We spent Nessie's birthday hunting lands that back then still teemed with herds of bison and elk, and scaling rugged hills full of bears and mountain lions. Afterward, Jasper, Alice, Nessie, Bella, and I enjoyed an evening out under the unending, obsidian sky, chasing stars rather than game.

It was a typical day, or typical for our kind. Certainly, as typical as our days were, considering we were keeping a witch sedated with poisonous concoctions in a cave a short distance away. But, except for what happened on the night when Bella awoke from the transformation, for the pull she exerted on Bella's mind that evening due to her unrestricted and unhindered proximity, the witch had been suppressed and silent.

That's not to say there'd been no incidents. There was an incident when our daughter, at eight months of age, cradled her mother's cheek and with an innocent smile, declared, "Mama burned in fire, but Mama still beautiful."

Bella had always been stunning, even before her transformation. But her attraction was a mix of intelligence, inquisitiveness, courage, compassion, and inward and outward beauty. All of it shone in her dark eyes and made her too bright to be contained or concealed, not even by the drab colors, the unflattering styles, or the restrictive social mores of the times. Which is why Bella was both an envied and coveted enigma in an environment where women were taught to stifle anything that made them stand out.

The venom's healing properties erased most of Bella's scars from the burn, certainly anything visible to human eyes. It also made Bella's physical beauty almost ethereal to human eyes. Yet, like me, half-human, half-vampire, our daughter – could see what solely human eyes couldn't.

Yes, Bella had been aware of the lingering scars, but hearing our daughter acknowledge them, even more, acknowledge that some part of her remembered that night…

Once again, it had taken physical restraint to keep Bella from tearing off and tearing up the witch. But, it had been the volatility and unpredictability that came with being a newborn vampire which caused the incident.

Other than for those instances, Bella took to her new life with an ease that assuaged any remaining guilt I may have harbored regarding the manner of her transformation. She took to motherhood…we took to parenthood with equal exuberance and joy for the family we'd miraculously and unintentionally created.

We led a perfect…almost charmed existence.

I certainly had no cause to repine, not with my mate and daughter safely by my side. A few months earlier, my aunt had returned after having fetched her mate, Jasper. We now lived as a group, apart from everyone else, a family of others. We'd even begun to wonder…to question whether we were doing it all for no other reason beyond the fatalistic delirium of a dying crone.

Which was why, on that day that marked our daughter's first year, we actively ignored what else the date represented.

That evening, Bella sat on my lap, and Alice sat on Jasper's lap while the four of us watched Ness as she ran around like a typical toddler. She picked wildflowers, then handed them out to us. Bella taught her how to fasten a crown from them. My mate then placed the crown of flowers on our daughter's head, making her resemble a woodland fairy. Eventually, like a typical toddler, Ness grew restless and began jumping on legs much stronger and abler than an average one-year-old.

"Mama! Papa! Look!"

Our daughter pointed upward at the twinkling mass of constellations dotting the ink-colored sky. Before the days of light pollution, the stars were as bright as any electric bulb that came afterward. They glittered with unequaled brilliance on clear nights and cast a bluish-white luminescence over everything below.

Nessie jumped, her strong legs propelling her high, almost higher than the lush canopy of trees in the distance. She descended with a finger still pointed upward, one foot leading the other, her landing graceful and fluid, the entire execution flawless. Each consecutive jump propelled her higher, yet was never quite near enough to touch the stars.

"Papa, carry me! I want to touch!"

Bella met my eyes with tender amusement. She'd readily adopted our more comfortable dress, trading Puritan restrictions for soft suedes and tunics. I enjoyed the access it gave me. As I stroked her smooth leg, she leaned in close and whispered in my ear so that the words were barely more than her mouth brushing my earlobe.

"Should we tell her, my love, that not even our kind can jump high enough to reach the stars?"

Meeting her eyes, I shook my head. "Nay, I once jumped high enough to reach the brightest star."

She chuckled softly.

"What is more..." I curled my fingers around her waist and lifted her, setting her beside me. She raised a brow.

"What is more?" she prompted.

"What is more, if she be anything like her mother, she shall not pay heed anyhow."

Before she could exact her punishment, I rushed out of her reach, laughing as I approached our daughter. Bella joined us, and we played with our daughter until the onyx sky lightened into the color of burned amber and absorbed the stars. With Nessie in one arm and Bella's hand encased in mine, we made our way to Alice and Jasper.

Alice held out her arms, cooing at our daughter. Jasper joined in the crooning at his mate's side because we all adored Nessie. With Bella's hand still in mine, she and I ran off together.

A few miles away, we came together over a lush field and under the first gauzy rays of the day. We greeted the rising sun with wordless gratitude – not just for all we had but for what had not happened.

Spurred on by as much relief as lust, Bella rode me hard, and knowing she was solid and durable, I dug my fingers into her hips and thrust into her with equal vigor. She arched her back like a bow, bracing herself on my thighs and almost grinding us into the ground with a release that tore through her like wildfire. The sight of her, her uninhibited bucking, brought on my release, as it always did. And together, we sent the hidden birds soaring for further cover.

For hours, we alternated between fucking like demons and making love like angels. I took her on all fours, knelt behind her with one palm outstretched on her hip and the other hand fisted around her hair, guiding her frenziedly as she wrenched against me with frantic momentum. Her nails raked the earth, and I hissed, growled, and grunted as our bodies crashed like boulders. Then, I tenderly covered her body, ebbing and flowing into her like a wave swelling against the gentle shoreline…moving in long, soothing strokes, her legs wrapped around my waist, and her body pulling me in like the gravitational force by which I existed.

For such is the mating bond.

The moments afterward were our version of idle downtime. Peaceful. Our presence had frightened away all other lifeforms in the area, their instincts warning them of the predatory impulses being fulfilled and further alerting them of how one stimulation leads to another. And so the only stirrings were the green blades billowing in the morning breeze while Bella's fingertips skimmed my chest, the featherlike strokes of a lioness at repose after a tempestuous rage.

By then, her emotions, which in the first year of the transformation fluctuated, mainly had leveled out. That didn't mean neither of us felt intensely; we feel more intensely than mortals ever can. It simply meant that Bella, like the rest of our kind, was learning how to master the fluctuation.

She mastered everything. She mastered me. Commanded me. And I had no wish ever to change that.

"I wish to kill her upon our return," she murmured, snuggling closer. "Ground her bones between mine fingers."

My lips grazed her temple back and forth. "Aye."

She stretched a hand above us, her rings glinting in the sun's rays.

"And once she ceases to exist, I wish to remove these rings and grind them into dust as well."

"Aye, my love. Aye."

"I cannot extinguish all proof that she once interfered in our lives." She lowered her hand and brushed her fingertips along her cheek. "I shall forever bear the scars of the burn, and our daughter shall forever remember how I looked before the transformation…"

Slipping my hands under her arms, I raised us both onto our knees to face one another. Behind her, the sun's rays illuminated her silhouette, dark tresses tumbling over her shoulders in a riot of tangled waves, tousled from hours of lovemaking. Her hair brushed the swells of her breasts, exposing her nipples and the supple torso beneath that narrowed before curving again. She was the goddess of nature, the perfect embodiment of a woman. And as I drank her in, her gaze did likewise to me, as it always had.

Pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear, I slid my hand further down and cupped her nape, holding her locked in my gaze.

"My love, ye transcend any and all scars, for thy beauty has always been more than physical."

She leaned in and brushed her lips against mine, smiling. "I suppose 'tis fitting then that we be mates, for despite thy perfection, 'tis as I have always said about ye."

"Aye," I breathed succinctly before cradling her waist and lifting her. And, as I fastened her to my lap, she wound her arms around my shoulders, and once again, I buried myself deep inside her incomparable heat. She rocked languidly over me, her mouth and tongue slow and savoring.

"When I am like you, we shall no longer need to take care."

I furrowed my brow, chuckling, but the way she moved made me discard, if not forget her words.

"I love you, Edward, my Soaring Eagle."

"I adore you, my Bella."

"Bella," she breathed. "I like that name."

The date was the 31st of October of 1693, as we returned to our daughter and the rest of our family.

"First, let us inform Jasper and Alice of our plans," I suggested.

"What plans?" she smiled.

"What plans, indeed?" I snorted.

We met with Jasper, Alice, and Nessie a couple of miles from our home. Our daughter spotted us immediately and ran toward us, her gait still childishly uneven yet gaining grace. I assumed she meant to comment on it when Bella turned to me wearing a furrowed brow and a smile.

"The child is strong, is she not, Husband?"

Had her confusion been insufficient proof that something was unspeakably wrong, her appellation would've further confirmed it. Bella and I were not married.

For the merest fraction of a second, I remained frozen to the spot before I forced myself to form the words.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"Who am I? Why, I am Rosalie. Thy wife."

Dread as cold as ice rolled up my spine. But I had no time to wallow, despair, or question how quickly it had come on because, unlike me, Nessie had no idea what was happening. She barreled forward, her hair, so like her mother's hair, waving wildly in the breeze.

"Mama! Papa!"

"No, Ness! No!"

I yanked my hand away from Bella…from the witch, but she refused to surrender it, her grip preternaturally tight.

"Edward?" she asked, her head tilted sideways so that her hair…my mate's hair shone in the sunlight.

And Nessie kept coming.

"Nessie, NO!"

I held up my hand, palm out, but even back then, such a gesture was more temptation than warning to a child.

"Renee Aquinnah Sokanon, come child! Come to me!"

I staggered backward, my stomach churning at the realization that somehow, the witch knew my daughter's full name. But I had no time to enquire.

"Mama!"

Before I could tackle the witch, in plain sight of Nessie, who was so advanced, so intelligent but still a child who'd likely see it as an attack on her mother, Jasper scooped Ness up from behind.

"Come with Uncle, sweetling."

Alice was only a moment behind him. Ness shrieked happily, believing it all a game, while Jasper, who had only heard our tales and hadn't before witnessed the events firsthand, blinked successively. His features were as hard as stone, the smile he gave my daughter forced. Alice quickly took her from him, better able to feign playfulness.

"Protect her!" I yelled out to both of them. "Focus on her."

Jasper nodded while Alice took my daughter and began walking away.

"I want Mama and Papa!" Over Alice's shoulder, my daughter extended her arms toward us.

"Take her back home!"

With a lightning-fast sprint, Jasper, Alice, and Nessie were out of view.

The witch looked up at me with a beatific smile. "Why does the child call ye Papa and me-"

Before she could complete her blasphemous question, my fingers wrapped around her throat.

She gagged. Her arms instantly flailed, reaching for me. I smacked them away with my free hand.

"Do not touch me," I spat viciously, "and never call thyself her mother, witch." My lips twisted into a hate-filled snarl.

"But, husband-" I tightened my grip, and she choked, gasping unnecessarily as if she genuinely believed herself deprived of air.

"Neither call me thy husband. Where is my mate?" I seethed.

"Mate? What mean ye by mate?" She wheezed and again lifted her hands, resting them over mine and working on loosening my hold. "Husband, I do not-"

I shoved her away, watching her stumble backward.

"WHERE IS ISABELLA?"

"Isabella?" Her eyes flared. "Why do ye ask for her? I, Rosalie, am thy wi-"

I rushed her, yanking her hair. When she yelped in pain, a sharp and bewildering pang of guilt speared me, twisting like a poisoned arrow through my innards when she took in the dark hair and cried out like a wounded animal, her eyes rounding in horror. Releasing her roughly, I floundered again, groaning and grunting like a beast who'd been handed a death blow.

Meanwhile, she shrieked and grabbed her- Bella's hair herself, glaring at it in incomprehension. "My hair be not brown!" She shook her head vehemently. "Whose hair be this?" Wild eyes met mine, demanding, "What sorcery be this?"

"What sorcery?" I echoed, scoffing, my chest heaving, nostrils flaring. "'Tis Bella's hair – my mate's hair. You are a witch," I scowled, "a Hobomock, and you are in my mate's body. And someday, we shall banish you. Then we shall tear you apart."

She looked at me as if I'd spoken heresy, repeatedly shaking her head and mumbling, "No, no." When she screamed, I resisted the urge to go to her…to wrap her in my arms and comfort her. I struggled not to fall to my knees and howl in concurrent despair.

Because it was my mate's voice raised in overwhelming fear. It was her hair the witch grabbed and pulled in horror. It was her beautiful face I observed, twisted in delusion, and her dark eyes lost in a haze of rabid fog.

Yet, it wasn't. The defiance in her expression was not that of my mate's. None of her expressions matched my mate's expressions.

Bella was not there; it would be seven days before she returned to me, our daughter, and the rest of our family. And as horrific as that first possession was, it's grown worse every year. The time in between is exquisite. But every year, little by little, the time in between grows shorter and shorter.

And so, that day, we abandoned willful ignorance if not hope.

We made inquiries with those we knew across the land. But those days were different from the present. Regardless of our kind's relative speed, gathering information was a slow and arduous process. Mail service was still uncertain and useless for our purposes. There were no telephones or cellphones or holos or the net. Whatever search we conducted was done by mouth and on foot.

That is still my preference.

And so here I am, in this typical place for a hideout.

Over the century-and-a-half or so since airplane travel came into being, the slew of travel-related businesses has changed as technology progresses. One general fact regarding airport-adjacent neighborhoods remains: they rarely get much traction beyond thousands of people wanting to be in and out as briskly as possible.

The irony is that none of them care. These transient visitors have zero interest in redirecting their attention to examining what else may be happening in the vicinity and what sort of criminal element may be taking advantage of the relative seclusion beyond the airport. They're here for a specific purpose. Just as I am here for a specific purpose.

Just as Alice and Jasper are somewhere in the wilds of Alaska for a specific purpose.

Just like my daughter, Ness's research is conducted for a specific purpose.

The world changes. Fortunes ebb and flow. Yet some things remain the same.

Still, the criminal scum chose their foxhole well, for the most part. Had I not been born a predator and raised a hunter, they may have remained hidden,

A few feet from the back entrance, I come across the first one. He's the lookout, sporting a gun, holo, and binoculars. Out of curiosity, I allow him to spot me, curious to see if his first instinct will lead him to his holo to warn the rest or to his gun to save himself.

Not surprisingly, he chooses the gun. I rip it out of his hand and twist him in a chokehold before he can scream or fire his weapon. Spluttering and wheezing, he bats my arm, swats that are no more than the fluttering of a bee…weakening into those of a gnat.

After a handful of seconds, his frame falls limp, and like a discarded marionette, his body tumbles to the floor. Stepping over him, I make my way into the house, where the rest of the half-dozen are already screaming and shouting. Nowadays, it's hard to catch people by surprise. Even if you're a vampire

"He killed Alec! Grab a gun! Grab a gun! He killed Alec!"

"Who the fuck is he?"

"Who the fuck cares who he is?! He's by himself, and it looks like he's unarmed! Come on! If he finds us, we'll take care of him!'

I roll my eyes, and when I find them in the hidden room where they've sequestered themselves, I can't help messing with them just a bit, even though I generally avoid stopping to converse or to be unnecessarily cruel. But this particular gang's history is gory, even by criminal standards.

"Alec's not dead. That would ruin his blood…"

Because while the witch in the cage dines on old, poisoned rats, my mate must feed before the witch takes over. And she must feed on fresh blood so that I can know – even as I watch her lose herself, even as the witch begs for sustenance – that my mate is well somewhere within.

Such is the mating bond.

"I need you all alive – for the time being."

There's a moment of stunned silence while they look at one another.

In the time it takes them to weigh my sanity against my perceived level of danger, I've relieved most of them of their weapons – save for one who manages to shoot me in the shoulder. With a hiss, I reel back, then storm forward in irritation. Black venom drips from my already-healing wound and serves to unnerve and terrorize them all the more.

I've made my way through half of them when I'm hit by a bullet that rips my chest open.

Only that's impossible, and the part of my mind that knows it's impossible and can still function amid the physical agony forces me to stop.

Still, when I look down, half of me expects to find a gaping hole where my heart should be, one put there by something much more powerful than any weapon I've ever encountered in almost five-hundred years. Something that must've been recently invented and still unknown to my kind. Something with the ability to cause us excruciating physical pain. Perhaps even with the power to end us.

Bewilderingly, my chest is intact. Even the shoulder wound from moments earlier has healed.

I'm gasping. Brought to my knees by torment. My head spins as moments pass, yet instead of alleviating, the sensation worsens into unadulterated agony. Body trembling, I throw back my head and open my mouth, but the pain steals any sound.

The two men who are still conscious take advantage. They charge, pouncing, striking, and jabbing. It only takes a few heartbeats before one of them remembers the guns. Yet nothing they do eclipses the torture clamping around my chest…around my half-human heart. A heart that beats for-

"Bella," I gasp.

As I force myself back on my feet, a bullet tears through my stomach. I feel it in a way I've never felt pain before, and the roar that escapes me belongs to a beast. I tear the heads off the pair, then rip out of the house like a bolt of lightning.

As I race through the streets, I make no attempt at concealment. I don't care who sees me. Who hears me. All I know is that I've got to get back to my mate.

To Bella.

A/N: Thoughts?

1…2…3 more chapters? We'll see. Either way, we ARE winding down. Promise. ;)

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TODAY'S HISTORY LESSON! – is embedded in the actual chapter, and it's both a riveting and heartbreaking history.

Patuxet was indeed a coastal community belonging to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which was spread across what's now New England, North America. For more than 12,000 years, the Wampanoag called Patuxet their home. However, the history books are only now beginning to mention the Patuxet Wampanoag beyond reducing them to a tribe that helped the Pilgrims survive their first year at Plymouth.

Some 69 villages throughout the New England region were part of the Wampanoag nation. It's estimated that there were upwards of a few thousand Natives per village. In the summer months, they lived closer to the water, where food was more abundant, and then as the weather got colder, they moved inland. There was a government structure, with delegates from each village who would meet with each other, discussing issues and collectively making policies and rules that would be in the best interest of everyone.

There are accounts that in 1616, a French fishing ship became wrecked off the coast of Patuxet, and of some of the fishermen came into the village exhibiting signs of sickness, with yellowing of the skin and fever, then dying. Shortly after, the plague ripped through the Wampanoag nation. Everyone in Patuxet either died or fled the village and never returned. Estimates are that over 100,000 Wampanoag died in just three short years (The Great Dying). This is how the village of Patuxet ended up vacant in 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived.

So, no, there were, of course, no vampires. But the rest is sadly true.

"See" you soon!