Edward knew where Isabella was without scent or sound, because he read her thoughts as she leaned over the coyote she'd drained. She had one hand in the fur, and she waited for the initial rush of the blood to subside. It had been over a month since her last hunt, and he wondered if that was normal for her. He was desperate for blood almost daily, but Carlisle had been fine going a week or two between kills.

The breeze shifted. She raised her head and stared into the darkness. There were deer in the distance.

Be calm, Bella, she told herself. Sweet and calm.

If she discovered him, he could bet she would be anything but sweet or calm, so he waited until she left to stalk the herd before he moved. The cabin was to the east, but the wind was mostly from that direction, so he decided to circle south first to help mask his scent.

The moon made the landscape sharp and colorless. The trees had more room to breathe, and the undergrowth was thin. Edward had not been this far from the cabin since he arrived, and every once in a while he would come across a narrow, worn track in the ground. He stopped at a towering pine with a blue rectangle painted on the trunk and put his nose to the mark. Paint, sap, waterlogged bark and something more. There was a hint of ash and fire in the air and, dear God, the barest whiff of something that wrenched every muscle tight like a harp string. Blood. So sweet it rivaled Isabella's memory from before. Blood like a tribal beat.

There was a roar echoing off the trees. Edward was running almost on all fours without having made the decision to run. The source was still miles away but the scent grew more complex. The petroleum smell of vinyl, an appalling stench of cooked meat, and behind it the call of urgent, potent blood.

There was a cut, and there was antiseptic and clotting, and the small wound far ahead was the center of the world. The roar sounded again, and he felt it in his throat. The beat of the blood up ahead pounded faster. He made his feet match the pulse – twenty sprints to a heartbeat. Nothing but the blood now. It seemed like there would never be anything again but this blood, until he heard branches cracking behind him. He counted the slower footfalls of his pursuer and knew that no one could catch him in time to steal his kill.

"Edward, wait!" he heard, but the sound meant nothing to him.

He pushed himself until his muscles were at the edge of what they could do, but then a sudden fear hit him so hard it made him stumble. He rolled back onto his feet and hurtled forward. For a moment, he thought it was only panic that he would lose the kill, but that made no sense, because the prey was his to take.

The fear kept swelling in his chest.

"Edward!"

Hang on, he told himself. Just ahead. But the terror chasing from behind shook him so hard that his feet gave out, and he rolled, limbs out of control, into a curled up ball on the dirt. His end was coming. He could feel it bearing down on him as she got closer. As much as he longed to meet death with his teeth sunk into the throat of the prey up ahead, the terror made it hard to get his limbs to work. For a moment he had a random memory of himself as a child clinging to a frayed, green blanket. He was twitching on the ground with the effort to move, until finally dread pulled him under.

"Edward."

He heard a mind practically shouting, Be calm. Stop.

"Edward, please. It's ok."

He felt his knee being tugged away from his chin, and as the pressure on his jaw lessened, his teeth started to chatter. Surely the force of it was going to crush his incisors.

"No," he heard himself say, but it came out more of a moan than a word.

Isabella was trying to pry his hands from his face. "I'm sorry. You're going to be ok," she said, but she was pleading. "Look at me."

The air was thick with the tension that could only come from Isabella, and Edward felt the ground beneath him, felt her climbing over him. She managed to push his fingers back, and her hair brushed against his cheek as she leaned close.

"Don't breathe," she said.

He didn't.

"There's a pair of humans further south. You caught their scent."

He remembered the blood now. There was a part of him at the primal base of his skull that wanted to return to the hunt even now, but fear of what Isabella could do had rendered him almost catatonic in its wake. He fought against it, wanting to run, even if only to get away from danger. The woman above him had almost destroyed him; he was sure she'd come close to unleashing her own brand of hell, but her words were soft.

"You're fine," she said.

He shook his head. It was possible he would never be fine again knowing that a dread this dark and bottomless existed. There was a keening sound, and he realized he was using the last of the air in his lungs.

"Easy. Relax." She leaned in closer and brought her lips to his cheek so she could press the words against his skin. "Easy." Her pendant hit his chin and her elbows were on either side of his head; her long hair was a curtain parting them from the rest of the forest, and he couldn't understand why he didn't feel trapped beneath her. Her mouth moved across his eyelids and to the other cheek, catching against his skin as her lips pursed together in words of comfort he could no longer make out. He felt the tip of her tongue on the thin skin behind his ear, and her voice was warm and breathy there. "'S fine."

Edward felt safer pressed between her and the earth. With his eyes closed, he could still envision the trail her mouth was making as she kept to the line of his jaw. Then her mouth moved against his. At first he just lay motionless and memorized the feeling. The pressure of her lips and the teeth behind them. Her warmth. Then he flickered alive and kissed her back as his hands moved to her shoulders and clutched her tight to his chest. She felt small against him, and he brought one hand around to brush fingertips against the smooth skin at her neck. His touch was light, as though his softness now could make up for the way he'd tried to bully her last week. Close like this, she was mesmerizing, and he wanted it to last. She tilted her head to the side and her lips pressed harder. Her tongue touched his lower lip, and he bucked up against her and took in a shuddering breath.

The air was thick with the scent of human blood. His need for it crashed back over him. He shoved upwards again, this time to throw her off, but he only succeeded in rolling them sideways. She dug her fingers into his arms. It wouldn't be enough. One more thrust and he would be away.

"Stop breathing."

"I can't," he said. He didn't want to.

The fear started to creep back in and he longed to throw her against a tree, but there was no stopping what she could do. He could feel it right down to the marrow. Why hadn't Carlisle warned him that she was like this?

"Come on." She pulled him to his feet, and he shuffled forward, though they were headed away from the blood. "Run with me. You don't want to know what it feels like to end human lives."

Actually he did. At this moment, the only thing holding him back was the threat of whatever the hell it was she could do to him if she put her mind to it. He'd stopped breathing, though – anything to avoid a repeat of thrashing in the dirt – and he let her drag him the twenty miles back to the cabin while the scent of blood faded until the forest covered it over with earth and pine. He pressed his face into Isabella's neck so that verbena would overpower everything else.

When she let him drop to the porch steps he was panting.

A normal night in this boring wilderness could send him over the edge, so this one had been more than enough to turn him into mush. Bloodlust and fear followed by Isabella's body flush against him. Everything but the bloodlust was wrapped up in her, and it occurred to him again that he was screwed. She could have him dancing like a puppet if she wanted.

But she'd been sweet as well. Even Carlisle with his somber eyes and patient smile had not been able to make him feel as safe as Isabella had when she'd whispered in his ear. Nothing he felt made sense, and he didn't even have the energy to work the tension out by tearing into her.

"Are you alright?" she asked

"I don't even know what the fuck to say to that."

She raised an eyebrow at him. Carlisle had warned him not to curse. Edward had assumed it was just for the sake of politeness, but maybe she really didn't like it.

"Sorry," he mumbled, surprising them both.

She sat down next to him, and he wanted to take her hand. Next he would start picking wildflowers and threading them into chains. Why did she sit so close? It was like she was daring him to touch her when she'd told him that he could not. She certainly had no problem touching him though.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

She jumped up and started to pace in front of him. "You were going to kill them."

"Not that." He rolled his eyes. "Why did you kiss me?"

She stopped and crossed her arms. It made the black strap of her dress fall down, but she shoved it back up. "I wanted to comfort you. You were a mess."

"What the hell is it that you can do?" he whispered. "I can feel something coming, something so close. It's like, if you let it go further, the air is going to erupt and knock us back into oblivion. Is it lightening? It feels electric. I can't even…" he trailed off to a stop when he realized he needed to give her room if he wanted the answer.

"I can't tell you."

"Can't or won't?"

"I'm sorry. It's not… It isn't something I'm willing to talk about."

"Does Carlisle know?"

"No."

"Bat?"

"No one." She sighed and dropped her arms to her side. "No one but the one who turned me, if he's even still alive."

He could feel her moving the conversation away from herself, but curiosity made him take the bait. "Why wouldn't he be alive?"

"He dropped out a long time ago, disappeared. The last I saw him was in Herculaneum, and he may have ended it in the fires."

What he saw in her mind wasn't fire, but ash and smoke. "You've lost me, Bella," he said.

She went completely still.

"What did you just say?"

"You've lost me."

"You called me Bella."

He nodded.

"There's only one time I've called myself that." She stalked toward him. "You had no right to follow me on a hunt." Her hands were pulled into fists. Her mind was a stuttering streak of Calm. Calm.

"So now hunting is a secret too?"

"I asked you not to," she said. She shook her head and turned to run. "Stay here. No following me this time."

When she'd gone so far that even her thoughts had left him, Edward sat on the steps and waited to feel some sense of control. It was a long wait. The sun came up, and small circles of light made it past the canopy. At least he didn't have death on his hands this morning, and he had her to thank for that. She was still far enough out that her mind was hidden from him, but it was the first time since he'd come here that she'd had that sort of privacy, so he tried not to let it bother him. He stood and opened the door to the empty house. Upstairs he pulled off his dirty clothes and took a bath, and when she still hadn't returned, he wandered down the narrow hall and into her room.

Thanks for reading.

All the usual characters, settings, etc. are the property of S. Meyer. Original characters and plot are mine. No copyright infringement is intended. May not be reprinted without express written permission.