Renesmee twists about beside Jasper on the long soft couch. His shocked expression, the dramatic lines in his normally composed face seems exaggerated and amuses the ten-year old to no end.

"Okay, Jasper. My turn…" she screws up her cocoa eyes in preparation. Then, Renesmee pulls her ears and blows air out her rosy cheeks, cross-eyed.

Jasper smiles minutely, leaving Renesmee to scream with mirth at the mere thought of her own appearance.

"Jasper, I'd say you win this round. Renesmee, let's get ready for bed."

Renesmee dances into her mother's arms, saying, "May I finish Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tonight? Please?"

Bella pretends to think. "I don't know…it could give you nightmares."

Even Jasper snorts at that, providing the leverage Renesmee needs. "Jasper! I win!"

The leonine uncle leans back and settles into the cushions comfortably. "Sure Nessie."

Bella and her small slight silly daughter begin up the marble steps.

But Carlisle's wary face is suddenly right before them, halting their pace.

"Carlisle? Is everything…?"

Carlisle forces a grin to his stone lips. "Jacob's awake."

---

After flying fast to his room, Nessie launches herself across the threshold, cheering "Jacob!"

He's bent awkwardly, cramped, and angular. The threads of black silk issuing forth from his skull fall over his red-skinned face. His large hands are loose in his lap.

"Jake?" Renesmee tentatively asks. "Are you better now?"

Jacob doesn't answer for a few moments. Then, just when Nessie's sure she must have the truth of the matter (that Jacob is certainly far from fine) he lifts his head slowly and eerily replies, "I've become, I think."

Renesmee touches her own pink mouth in confused but selfless thought.

The arrival of Bella, however, alters the mood drastically. Jacob smoothes the mass of hairs back with his palm and stretches his veined neck till it cracks. Jacob is obviously comfortable in her presence. Leeringly comfortable. He steadily removes the bandages from his forehead. His smile is evident…yet strange.

Nessie, however, backs away in fear, brown eyes widening as some dark notion strikes her.

"Jake? How are you feeling?" the slender brunette inquires caringly preoccupied more with her friend's welfare then Renesmee's.

Jasper enters, adds, "You've been sleeping upwards of seven hours."

Jacob pauses before responding. He says quietly, in a manner reminiscent of Jasper's own antisocial nature, "Things are a bit clearer now." His gaze never leaves the female vampire's white countenance.

"…Right. Well, I'm glad. You scared us a little. Big Jacob's never hurt." Bella grins.

Jasper, staring intently at the werewolf, seems unsettled. He wants to do some unsettling, apparently. He whispers, "Never vulnerable."

A snarl starts inside Jacob's chest, quiets, and vanishes entirely. Jacob's ebony brows raise cryptically, as if all at once denying Jasper's claim and innocently denying the angry growl ever occurred.

The startling noise known as thunder echoes around the house, encasing it with the multi-layered spectrum of sound heard by the majority of its occupants.

Bella glances out the clear pane of glass on the far wall. "Looks like a storm. Think it'll be a bad one?"

Renesmee, previously silent, murmurs ominously, "It will be bad. I think it might stay."

The wind picks up, howls. It's almost like ghosts screaming.

---

Tearing, shredding, Jacob removed skin from bone and bones from body. This was living, this was pain. Savoring the meat, blood, and sinew for sustenance. His muzzle was bathed in red. Sharp teeth snapped in the feeding frenzy.

Another brother approached. 'Share?' they asked. Jacob's only answer came in the rage of his hungry snarl.

Jacob is startled out of his gory reverie by a sudden discomfort in his mouth. Pausing, stirring as if from sleep, Jacob blinks. His large hands are stained with bloody chunks of raw steak straight from the package. The torn plastic lies on the surface of the uncharacteristically messy kitchen counter. He reaches inside his pained mouth. He's somehow cracked a tooth in the back. The culprit resurfaces on his coppery tongue. It is a thick sliver of t-bone. Spitting out his own blood, Jacob backs away.

Then, a fierce headache steals over him. His cranium is inflamed, splitting open, halving itself…

Black eyes dilating, Jacob resumes his feast.

---

"How's the weather? Sunless, hopefully." Bella laughs as her husband replies on the other end of the small silver cell phone. "Good, good. And how are things going? Uh-huh. Don't worry, darling, you'll figure it out soon." Bella grows quiet. "I miss you. So much. Hurry home to me." She giggles. "Edward, be nice! I love you, too. Bye."

The raven-haired man rolls over on the long couch, a sneaky snide sly expression over his angular features. "Talking to King Edward? Of course you are. Planning some other great sexual escapade? The walls in your cottage collapsing that one night seemed pretty curious."

Shocked, Bella spun around. She observes her friend for a moment. Then, smiling shyly, she says, "So you caught on to that, huh? You're smarter than I gave you credit for, Jake."

Sitting beside him in a jovial joking manner, Bella tosses her brownish hair over one exposed shoulder and bares teeth. "What do you do on your nights off?" she asks him suggestively.

Jacob's black eyes narrow, Bella's shapely brows raise, and a split-second later a loud slap sends the female vampire sprawling from the couch and onto the floor. A hurt cry accompanies the sudden action.

"Don't ever speak to me like that." Jacob looms over the thin trembling terrified figure.

Bella's golden eyes appraise Jacob like one would normally gaze at an apparition.

"Who are you?" she whimpers pleadingly, touching her own stone face.

Jacob turns and leaves the room.