Disclaimer: Twilight Saga doesn't belong to me, but this version of VampWard is all mine. ;)

A/N: All your reviews for this story have made me smile like crazy. I would like to thank every one of you, who has reviewed, favorited, put on alert or simply... read RoALS. You guys make it worth my time to put my crazy thoughts in writing. Thank you.

Ready for the next chapter? Read on!

Chapter-4: A Touch of Innocence

EPOV

"Fuck this shit!" I said to myself as I leapt out of my window.

I wasn't due to hunt a human for two more weeks yet, but if I was going to be around human blood every damn day from tomorrow, I figured I would go hunting right now even if just to assure myself that I wasn't going to let Carlisle's love for humanity affect me.

Since I had hunted near the Canadian border just two weeks back, I decided to go toward Port Angeles instead.

I spared a look at my car and then shrugged. I knew that if I took it, I'll get everyone else suspicious about where I might be headed. Apparently, our "adoptive father" was worried that I might fall off the proverbial wagon and hunt innocent humans. Unfortunately for him, he didn't know that I never got on the damned wagon in the first place.

Alice will see where I was headed but I didn't think she would even be bothered to try and stop me.

I was wrong. Just as I started to head into the forest around our house, my phone started ringing.

Even without looking at the caller I.D., I knew it was Alice.

"To what do I owe this unpleasantness?" I asked as I took the call.

Her tone of voice told me that she was feeling particularly gleeful as she greeted me. "Hey, big brother. Are you headed for Canada?"

I opened my mouth, ready to tell her to piss off when she spoke again. "Oh wait! You're planning on Port Angeles, aren't you?"

"What's your point, Alice?" I asked, already feeling tired of the conversation.

"My point is that you shouldn't go so close to home."

She waited about one tenth of a second for me to acknowledge her request and when I didn't, she added, "Edward, I know you feel like you can't stop this madness. I know that. But is it too much to ask you to take it as far away from our home as you can?"

"Why?" I asked. "You know I make a clean job out of it."

"It doesn't matter. We just moved here, and I don't want to move away anytime soon," she answered, her voice sounding commanding.

I smirked to myself as I told her, "Fine. I'll see what I can do." And then before she could badger my anymore, I disconnected the call.

If she thought I'd consider her problems when she purposefully shoved me toward the hellhole that was Forks General Hospital, she was sorely mistaken.

With one last look at my car, I turned my head toward the forest.

Running it is.

Shoving my phone inside my back pocket, I started to run toward the town border. If Alice thought Port Angeles was close to home, I couldn't wait till she realized my target had just changed to Forks.

~*~*~*RoALS*~*~*~

When I reached the town border, I stood beside the "The City of Forks Welcomes You" sign and strained my ears to listen past the sounds of the nightlife.

Luckily, the boring town Carlisle chose to move us had no nightlife. So despite of it being a Sunday night, there were no rushing cars or sound of music blaring from clubs to distract me.

And soon, I heard it.

The sound of an engine coming toward the town border from outside.

Dinner's here, Masen, I told myself as I checked around me to see if there were any witnesses.

Seeing no one around, I waited until I could see the headlights of a red car. I felt my instincts take over as I counted down to the seconds before the car would hit the town border.

The moment it crossed the signboard, I used one of the few perks of being a vampire—our super speed—and ran to the middle of the road before lying down there, pretending to be unconscious.

I kept my eyes closed and allowed my ears to take over.

One … two … three … four …

The sound of tires squeaking told me that I had been noticed, and the vibrations of the street coming from the skidding car alerted me that the driver had just hit the breaks.

I counted the seconds, and I was at one hundred and fifty eight when the sound of a car door opening reached me.

"Shit!" I heard someone curse from the general direction of the car and then sounds of shuffling feet came to me.

"Hey, are you okay?" a soft voice asked from beside me.

The sound told me that my choice for dinner tonight was a girl. I liked hunting girls, not because I was some kind of an Incubus or anything of course.

I didn't like playing with my food in that way. No, I liked hunting women because their skin was easy to break. Practicality always came first for me.

"Mister? Can you hear me? Can you tell me if you're okay?" the voice asked again—this time sounding more desperate.

A part of me—the one that wasn't driven by bloodlust—smiled at the innocent question.

I wanted to tell her that no, I was not okay, and neither was she. Why? Because she was about to become a vampire's dinner. A vampire who was there just to despise his creator.

Instead of answering her, I opened my eyes and immediately found myself stuck into a pair of brown eyes looking anxiously down at me.

Those idiots who write poetry about blue-eyed beauties clearly haven't seen this brown-eyed one. The thought came to me out of nowhere and I had to shake myself out of those thoughts. What the fuck?

Slowly, I sat up from where I was pretending to be hit by her car—a typical way for me to lure unsuspecting humans in, and looked at her closely. I guess she was pretty … beautiful even—if you liked the understated kind of beauty, I mean.

She wasn't beautiful the way Rosalie was, no, she was beautiful in a different way. Hers was a more approachable beauty unlike my adoptive sister's.

My eyes followed the graceful column of her neck where I could see the slight rise and fall of her skin from her blood being circulated underneath.

Usually, by now, I would've allowed my teeth to sink into in her pretty little neck, but something told me that this wasn't going to be like the usual.

It was different. That she was different from my usual targets.

What the fuck is wrong with you, Edward? This is a human and you're a vampire—the prey and its predator. Why are you hesitating? I asked myself.

The silence seemed to have stretched on for long enough.

I needed to speak.

I needed to get away from her.

I needed to know what this was that was making me think all these crazy stuff.

With so many thoughts running through my mind, I chose to do the last one. I needed to know what was happening.

I was about to open my mouth when I felt something like a jolt of electricity go through me. Gasping at the sensation, I looked down only to find a small, warm hand grasping my large, cold one.

"Holy shit! You're freezing. You need to move. Do you need me to help you up?" she asked me, and then before I could answer her, she had her arms wrapped around me as she tried to make me stand up.

I could very well have resisted and allowed her to keep on trying until she gave up and just left me there. Or I could have taken this opportunity to sink my teeth in her neck.

She leaned into me, sending a whiff of her smell in my way, and I felt myself unable to resist her. If I were a human I would've thought it was her pheromones that was making it difficult for me to resist her, but in this case, I was pretty certain it was the sweet smell of her blood.

It had to be.

Something about the innocent way she showed her concern for me—a complete stranger who she literally found in the middle of a street—mesmerized me, and instead of killing her—like I had fully intended to do—I allowed her to help me stand up.

"Here we go," she said softly as she brushed away dust from my jacket.

What struck me as odd was that unlike most humans, she wasn't shying away from me.

Doesn't she feel the fear of being in presence of her predator? I wondered. Is she just that trusting, or am I losing my touch?

This was strange and something that had never happened to me before. Even if the humans didn't know who I was, they still seemed somewhat afraid of me. They always drew back from my presence.

Well, almost always, I corrected myself. Because this girl, whoever she was, clearly wasn't feeling a smidgen of that fear.

I looked at her once again, this time, trying to get a read on the thoughts running through her head.

It was then that I realized that I couldn't hear her thoughts—one more thing I had never encountered before.

Why is her mind silent to me? I found myself speculating.

"Are you badly hurt?" her question broke through my thoughts, and I found myself shaking my head.

"Can you walk?" she asked again. "You should get inside my car and get away from the cold air for a bit."

I should get away from you, I wanted to tell her, but instead, I found myself saying, "Thank you."

Even though my most basic instinct told me to drain her of her blood and then leave her there, I allowed her to pull me inside her car.

She closed the car door and then started to tinker with the heater, setting it on full blast and then smiled at me. "Don't worry. You'll heat up in no time."

"Thanks," I said again.

Fuck! Why the hell was I saying the same shit over and over again? I asked myself in frustration.

Oddly enough, she didn't find my sudden lack of vocabulary off-putting. No, she just smiled kindly up at me and held out a water bottle. "Do you need a drink of water?"

I should have told her that I didn't drink water, or better yet, still have gone for her throat, but instead, I took the bottle from her and said, "It might help."

She let out a small giggle and immediately put a hand over her mouth looking horrified. "Oh I'm so sorry. I … uh … I laugh at inappropriate times?" Her statement came out sounding more like a question.

I smiled at her, unable to stop myself, and asked, "Are you telling me or asking me?"

She blushed—a beautiful shade of pink spreading on her cheeks as she looked down at the heater. "Do you think the heater's working?"

I just nodded, keeping my eyes trained on her.

Her cheeks were pink with what seemed like exhaustion and cold, and something tugged into my dead heart as I looked at her.

For the first time since I was turned, I wanted to be a man … a human man.

I wanted to have the chance to ask a woman out.

It was so strange. In all the years living under the same roof as three loved up couples, I never had the urge to have a girl of my own. But suddenly, this one girl was making me want that.

What is going on with me?

As I sat there, trying to understand all these feelings running through me, my phone chimed.

She looked up at me, and I shrugged. "Excuse me. I think it's my sister," I told her, even though I didn't have to.

I brought the phone out of my pocket and saw that I was right. A message was waiting in my inbox … from Alice.

I opened the message and when I read it, I was shocked … another thing that was very uncommon for me.

Congratulations, brother! You have found her.

One second … one whole second, I just sat there, unable to comprehend what I was seeing and then it all clicked.

Holy fuck! Alice thinks this is the intangible girl … my supposed mate!

If there was a time for me to get the hell away from this girl, I believed it was now!

BPOV

"I need to go," the insanely-hot-and-somewhat-weird guy I had almost run over told me.

"Oh!" That was all I could say to him in response.

Really, Bee? Oh? That's all you've got? I heard Angela admonish me in my head. He's a hot as fuck guy and all you've done since you've met him is let your verbal diarrhea run wild.

Although I wanted to flip the Angela in my head off, I knew she was right. The guy must have been in shock and all I had done since meeting him is talk and ask him again and again if he was okay, not letting him say anything edgewise.

He looked at me with wide eyes and murmured, "Shit! I'm …"

And then he was gone.

Faster than I could have expected, he was out of the car door and rushing into the forest lining the side of the road.

"Well, that was weird," I said out loud before pulling the door closed.

I looked at the forest where he had disappeared once more before putting my foot on the accelerator. I needed to get home anyway.

EPOV

"Fucking hell!" I cursed myself, Alice and the world in general as I saw the tail lights of the red Mustang move away from me.

I couldn't believe that I had lost my cool like that. I was a predator, damn it! I was there to hunt … to have my last blood-bath before I was stuck in an office with Carlisle of all people.

I knew it must have looked like I was scared of that little girl to her, and if I was being entirely truthful to myself, I was … kind of.

No! I told myself. I don't get distracted by the way a girl looks or smells when I want to hunt. I am not afraid of a girl. I just lost my appetite. Yeah, that's it.

Having made up my mind that it had nothing to do with the girl and everything to do with my sudden lack of appetite, I started to head back home.

For the first time since I had tasted human blood, I walked away from it.

And it was all because of her. I was just too much of an idiot to realize it at that time.

A/N: So thoughts on the first meeting?

Sorry it was shorter than usual, but I felt that this bit of the story needed to be kept separated from the rest.

The next chapter will be longer I promise.

Hit me with your thoughts and leave a review, please?

I've entered a contest called MaytoDecemberRomanceContest. There are some amazing fics on there. Check them out and don't forget to vote for your favorite. The voting starts from February, 1. Here's the link to the contest page:

u/6289323/MaytoDecemberRomanceContest

Thanks for reading.

The song rec for this chapter: Innocence by Avril Lavigne.

Until next time.

Take care.

Ann