Once again, thanks for the reviews, favourites and alerts, I really appreciate the support! I hope you are all enjoying the story! For those of you hoping to see more Bella as a child, there may be flashbacks every now and then, but that's not what I am planning on focusing on.

Copyright belongs to Stephanie Meyer.

Chapter Eight

Edward's POV

To say Bella was a precocious child would be a gross understatement. I suppose the fact she was raised by vampires with decades of experience in almost every subject played a helping hand in her intelligence. But not only was Bella intelligent, walking, talking and reading long before any of her peers, she was also a very talented piano player and mechanic. And while she was acutely clumsy, she took like a fish to water and the grace with which she moved in water astounded us all. She also had a mean right hook, a skill Emmett had insisted on teaching her once he had realized the power she possessed could lead to danger. Not that her skills would be any use on a vampire that came after her. Rose insisted that he only got the idea after he picked her up from play centre once and saw the way the little boys were following around his four year old daughter. Despite the fact that it was innocent at the time, Emmett insisted the day would come when it would not be so innocent, and that Bella needed to be able to protect herself. It was a skill which came in quite handy on her first day at school, when at age six, and by far the tiniest in her class, she had broken the nose of a young boy who had attempted to steal her model corvette, incidentally, an exact replica of the one her and her mother were building in our garage. She still is deathly protective of that car.

Once her parents had returned from their holiday to the news that their baby was quite possibly going to turn out to be one of the most powerful vampires in existence, talk had turned to how to train her so that she could control her gifts. Another coven of vegetarian vampires we had known for some decades had moved back to Denali, albeit a little more in the wilderness than us, and Carlisle had enlisted their help training her. One of their number, Kate, could electrocute with touch, and Eleazar had been with the Volturi some years before and was a useful source of information. They all quickly became enamored with Bella, who was truly a charming little girl. Tanya was the only one of their coven who did not seem to adore Bella, instead focusing her attentions on me. She had always been rather persistent, but I was able to shrug her off, as I had been doing since we first met the Denali's. For the most part our families interacted quite well, except for the slight awkwardness that came in the weeks following Rose tearing off Kate's arm. Early on in Bella's training Kate had, under Carlisle's supervision, been attempting to shock a five year old Bella to see if her shield would hold, Rose, seeing Kate acting aggressively towards her daughter, even if it was in training, had gone Momma-Bear on Kate's ass and torn off a limb before Carlisle could get between them. Kate didn't volunteer to help with the training for a few months after that.

Not long before Bella's sixth birthday, and having spent much longer in one place than we generally had before, we bade farewell to the Denali's and left for Canada where Bella was to start school and where we were to remain for four years. The Denali's came to visit once a year, and once a year we went back to visit them. Bella's training was progressing impressively, and by the time Kate volunteered to help Bella train again, she couldn't even make it through Bella's shield far enough to touch her, her hand instead remaining just millimeters off Bella's skin. Bella had also learnt to allow me to enter her thoughts, though she still kept me shut off for the most part, and had learnt to block not only Jasper's talent, but also block Alice's visions of her future. No small feat for a vampire, let alone a human child under the age of ten.

We had never really had to express to Bella what we were. She just knew somehow. Her only real concerns, particularly when she was young, were that she didn't sparkle like we did in the sun, and that she wanted to grow up to be beautiful like her Mommy. She needed not worry herself, she had grown up to be more beautiful that Rose just by being her. Not that I would ever say that aloud. Rose told her all the time how stunning she was, but I felt my saying it aloud may leave me without a limb or two. As she got older she had more in depth conversations about it with Carlisle, eventually learning the label 'vampire' and seemingly unphased by that fact. We were her family, that was all that mattered to her. I think she was about eleven when she had the turning conversation with Carlisle. He promised her that should she still wish to be turned, he would grant her wish after her eighteenth birthday, and the topic was not discussed aloud by any of us for quite some years after that.

We moved a few more times, time seemed to go even faster than normal for us vampires as Bella literally grew before our eyes. Sometimes we would home school her, sometimes she went to a normal school. She threw herself into learning, seemingly loving the challenge and even in her early school life was well ahead of the pack and acing her classes. She was reading the classics at age nine. Her daily training sessions with Jasper, Alice and I, always with Carlisle or one of her parents watching in, were progressing well, and by the time we made our next move, Bella was able to block me from reading the thoughts of others as long as she was touching them, and to not only block Alice's visions, but send false visions of the future in their place. I wondered if all humans were capable of such things if raised and nurtured in such an environment, or if Bella was just special.

At the beginning of what should have been Bella's eighth grade year Emmett, Rose, Alice, Jasper and I found ourselves back in the continental USA and once again starting high school, this time in Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. Alice and I were masquerading as twins in our sophomore year, Rose and Jasper as twins in their junior year and Emmett was also unsuccessfully due to his size attempting to be a junior, and the biological big brother of Bella. Alice and I took the Cullen name, Jasper insisted on Whitlock for Rose and himself as it hadn't been used in forever and Em and Bella took McCarty in attempt to keep some semblance of consistency for her. It was the first time we would be able to be at the same school as her, and we were all excited to observe her interactions with other students, and be able to keep a closer eye on her. Or in the case of Emmett and Rose, keep the prepubescent boys away and ensure she ate a healthy lunch.

Two weeks into the school year, Carlisle and Esme who were now listed at Bella's legal guardians, were asked to come to the school to discuss her progress. None of us could figure out what was wrong as she was doing excellently in school and had been in no trouble since we had arrived. Alice, with a quick glance to the future, ensured us that everything was fine and that the school simply wanted to move her up a grade. Carlisle and Esme went in for the obligatory meeting, Bella agreed that despite being in advanced classes for her age she was bored stiff and it was agreed by all parties that the best thing for everyone was for her to be moved into the ninth grade. Looking back, it may have been better to have left her where she was. Hindsight is a bitch.