Wow. I haven't updated fanfiction for a really, really long time. I apologise everyone! To be honest with everyone I feel like the series went a tad downhill, with book 8 being the last one I loved. This made me uninspired to write fanfiction and so I kind of just stopped. Another thing that made me uninspired was the fact that there are so many stories just like this one now! However, I thought the last MV book was pretty good! This has been my most successful story so I'll update this one for now, let me know if you want my other one, New Decisions, updated

A pair of chubby cheeks blows out a candle on a sagging overly-pink cake. Taylor gasps out in joy as she sees the flame evaporate and looks up at Claire expectantly. Claire is overwhelmed with the feeling of her baby daughter turning one. Shane swoops Taylor up and engulfs her with a cuddle much to Taylor's delight. Eve and Michael relax in each other's arms, her diamond ring engagement and weddings rings glinting in the sunlight flooding in through the window.

Taylor's birthday is a small affair; just Eve, Michael, Shane and Claire celebrating the end to Shane and Claire's struggles in their first year of parenting. Having been set back down, Taylor has now happily pulled herself up so that she is standing but holding onto the couch. Tentatively, she takes a step towards Claire.

"Come on Taylor, come to mommy!" Claire coos, realising how close she is to being able to walk confidently. She's never taken more than 5 steps before. Taylor stumbles into Claire's outstretched arms with a big smile on her face as Claire hands her a small piece of cake. Taylor smashes her fist up to her face and gets the cake everywhere except her mouth.

Claire hands Taylor to Shane.

"Could you clean her up, please? I'll clean all this stuff up," she tells him. Shane runs upstairs to wash Taylor's face.

Wow, he's come so far in the last year. Who knew parenting would agree so well with him? Claire thinks as she glides into the kitchen to put the dishes into the sink. She couldn't see where Eve and Michael had gone, but she could guess. Ever since they got married they were inseparable and couldn't keep their hands off each other. She suppressed a sigh. Things weren't exactly the same with her and Shane, and she hadn't exactly had a great first year of motherhood, she thought as she starts scrubbing the dishes.

I can't believe it's been six months since I gave birth to Taylor. I love her, but she was a mistake. How could I possibly have been so stupid and get pregnant? I feel so stupid and I feel like it's my entire fault. I only had one thing to do and that was to take my pill every day and I guess I forgot one day. Taylor was the result. Taylor is beautiful and I love her to pieces but all I feel like I am is a single mother. That's all I am now. I can't study now because I have to look after Taylor and Shane has to go to work. Bringing Taylor into this world was such a stupid thing for me to do. She's always going to have a risky life; bringing her into Morganville. Shane is a natural father, he's so good with her and knows her so well, but I often get frustrated with her. I never pictured myself with kids—at all. It wasn't something that ever occurred to me. My relationship with Shane is not the same. We can't focus on each other anymore, because there's one more person in our family. I'm deeply unsatisfied with my life. If I could go back, things wouldn't have gone this way.

"Hey, Claire, you've been scrubbing that plate for about five minutes straight," Shane says to her, bringing her out of her stupor. She didn't realise she had been daydreaming. She preferred not to think about those days, they were her darkest. Sometimes she still had her regretful thoughts but they were fleeting and she remembered that yes, she had made a stupid mistake but she loved Taylor and she couldn't change anything now.

"Sorry, I just can't believe it's been a whole year." She turns around and sags against him as he puts his arms around her.

"I agree. I can't believe I've been a father for a year," he replies.

"And a fine father you are."

"It's not going to get any easier now. She's turned one, in the vamps minds, she's not a baby anymore and they're going to force us to hand her over so that they can use her. We have to do something," Shane tells her with a fierceness in his eyes.

The thought hadn't occurred to her. The vamps were going to take her. She was valuable to them.

"What can we do?" She asks, knowing he's already constructed a plan and was waiting until we were alone.

"We need to run. We need to get out of Morganville and keep Taylor safe. Morganville was never safe for any of us, and it's not just us anymore. We're a family, whether you want to be or not." Claire understood exactly what he was saying, and she recognised what he was hinting at.

When Taylor had been just a few weeks old, Shane had still been in his apologetic phase. He was bending over backwards trying to make sure Claire was happy. That had included proposing to Claire. Claire was still very upset that she was a mother and the proposal had not been welcome. She didn't want to be 20, married and with a baby. They were too young for any of it. Michael and Eve got married but Claire still didn't want to get married herself.

Claire knew she was being selfish for not wanting to marry Shane. Claire's parents often questioned Shane about when he was going to marry Claire and why he hadn't already, and Shane had never told them that it was actually her that was saying no.

"And how do you suppose we run? How would we get out of Morganville? Even if we did they'd find us," Claire said, shooting down his idea.

"Look, I've been planning this for a while. We could go see Frank, as he controls the barriers around Morganville. He can let us through. We can run and run and run. We don't even have to be confined by the U.S. border. We could go somewhere really sunny so that they'd never want to find us. If we're going to do this though, we need to do it soon, as in tomorrow. We'll take Taylor, and we'll run away from Morganville."

There we go guys, hope you enjoy it, tell me if you want more because I don't want to write anymore if no one's going to read it haha.