I stood next to Carlisle, watching Bella sleep. We knew she wasn't sleeping, but the morphine he'd given her made it seem so.

"Alice says it's going fine," I told him, as though he hadn't heard Alice tell me downstairs.

He nodded, still worried. "Why isn't she moving? Writhing at least. Can you tell if she's in pain?"

"I can't feel her physical pain, Carlisle, but she is hurting, troubled in some way. I don't know if it's the burning or something else." I swept one sweat-drenched lock away from her forehead. Carlisle had pulled the sheets over her, but Bella was still naked from their lovemaking.

I had to hand it to Bella. When Carlisle had given her the shot of morphine this morning, sex was the last thing on his mind. She had gotten him turned on and in the bed in about five seconds. She had known how she wanted to be bitten, and it wasn't coldly and clinically.

Carlisle had worried, wanting to be in his full faculties when he tested his strength. As it was, it hadn't been a problem. I had been watching over Alice's shoulder as she browsed through designers' offerings when the wave of thirst made it to me from upstairs. I was already at the bedroom door when it faded, swallowed by lust. I had been able to smell Bella's blood through the open door and peeked in to see Carlisle, his mouth on her breast, licking the wound he hand made and closing it. He slid down, doing the same over her navel and on her inside thigh. His thirst never hit me again the way it had that first time. My own had roared in my throat each time he opened a vein, but his was under complete control. What wasn't, was his lust. After he had drunk from her thigh, Bella began moaning.

"You've got me so hot. More." She had pulled his face to her crotch and I backed away, not wanting to watch further. I'd only come to assist if necessary, and it obviously wasn't necessary.

"She drifted off. I thought it was the drug," Carlisle mused.

"I'm sure it was," I agreed, brought back to the present by his voice.

"It was," Alice said from downstairs. "She's fine. Will the two of you get to the job you have for today? Those cadavers are being moved this afternoon."

She was right. We were staging the accident today. "Your car or mine?"

"Mine," he said. "She told Charlie she was asking me for ride. Besides, I want something flashier."

"The Mustang," Alice called to us again.

We laughed. "Any other instructions, sugar fairy?" I asked.

"Yes. Get the bodies and wreck the car west of Port Angeles, just before the one-twelve intersection. It's going to be dead today."

I left Carlisle to kiss Bella goodbye as I descended to Alice's side. She was looking at flowers now, and placing an order! I kissed her cheek. She was in her element and pleasure seeped from her pores. "Three bodies?"

"Yes, Carlisle will not be part of it. He is going to be distraught, though, taking leave from the hospital to mourn." She smirked, clicking away on the browser.

"I thought we were waiting till spring?"

"It's going to take some time to fill this order. You don't mind holding the wedding in Alaska, do you?" She looked to me. "After all, that's where our relatives and guests will be. And look at this setting." She switched windows showing me a landscape from Denali National Park. "How could I turn that down? Of course," she turned to look at me, "no cherry blossoms."

I laughed. "I wasn't thinking about blossoms."

"You're sure she'll be fine?" Carlisle asked as he joined us.

"Yes, Carlisle. She's going to be fine, and I'll go up and dress her in a minute. I'm just going to finish this order. Now go!" She shooed us toward the door.

"You proposed?" I asked as we drove away.

He snorted. "Yeah." I felt his rush of embarrassment. "I asked her to marry me in the middle of sex. I can't believe she's going to hold me to it. She should be insulted and never speak to me again."

I laughed. I could almost picture that. Instead of "I love you," he said, "I want to marry you." Poor Carlisle. No wonder he was so embarrassed.

"She must have been flattered to hold you to it," I told him as I raced for Seattle.

"I don't know why she would. I'm doing it properly when she wakes up. Do you think I can find a ring in Seattle?" He was excited now.

"Yes, and I can get mine sized."

The phone rang in my pocket. "I think Alice has other plans for us." I pulled it out.

"Tiffany's is on Pine Street."

I snickered. "Thanks, Alice."

"Don't take too long," she warned.

Carlisle quirked an eyebrow. "Tiffany?"

I nodded and pressed the accelerator a little further.

The accident was easy to stage and we were back at Bella's side just after sunset. Alice had changed her into a simple sheath of a dress as well as the sheets on the bed. She looked peaceful. She didn't feel peaceful.

"Something's going on behind her eyes. We're here, Bella. If you can hear us, know we're here, waiting for you." I ran my fingers over her paling cheek, feeling the skin smoother than before. Her heart was still thumping wildly, pulsing with the change going on inside her.

"Bella?" Carlisle asked, kneeling beside the bed and taking her hand. "I hope you aren't in pain. I hope that is why you are so still. I pray you don't hate me for doing this to you, even though you asked. That you won't wish you'd done more with your life before joining it to mine. I can't tell you how happy I am to have you in our family as one of us. I would never have asked it of you, but there is nothing I wanted more."

Alice shrugged. "I told her she's going to be fantastically beautiful. She's going to be wildly powerful, and she's going to love every minute of it. So suck it up and get it over with." She grinned at me.

"Is she in pain?" I asked Alice.

"I doubt she'll ever admit to it, but I think so. I think she is burning, but she's nearly half-way now. I'm sorry, Bella. I know that isn't going to make you feel better, knowing you have to bear as much again. It will be worth it though, I promise."

"I promise too, Bella," Carlisle echoed, still at her side, putting his lips to hers. "I will do everything in my power to make you happy."

"She doesn't need much," I reminded him. "I'm pretty sure she just wants you."

I felt a break in the jumble of painful emotions coming from Bella. Like one ray of light breaking through the clouds. It was gratitude. I smiled, knowing she was agreeing with me.

"Well, as much fun as it always is to watch Bella sleep, I have a wedding to plan," Alice ran off again.

I sat on the foot of the bed, shaking my head at the heels Alice had put on Bella's feet. I pulled them off.

"Really. Her balance is going to be perfect, but she isn't going to appreciate these."

Carlisle chuckled. "I can't even picture her in those things."

I rose and pulled a pair of slippers from the closet, white satin. I wedged them onto Bella's feet, which were just a little larger than Alice's.

"Do you believe Alice? About her first year?" Carlisle asked, watching me.

I sighed. "I don't know what to think about that. It sounds impossible. What do you think?"

"I think if anyone can evade the turmoil of being a new vampire, it's Bella."

"And yourself."

He chuckled. "Hardly. I didn't feed, but I was as volatile as any other. I just took it out on inanimate objects rather than people." I felt the disappointment, the loneliness, the fear the memory brought him. "It was a terrible year, knowing what I was and fighting it so completely. I hated myself so much." He shook his head, shedding the pain. "But eventually I fed, and learned how to live with what I was. By then I had much more control over myself. I only tried to kill myself once a month." He rolled his eyes.

I squeezed his shoulder, sending comfort. I didn't like to think about my father killing himself. He would have wanted to, though, very much. It would have been hard for him not to go to those that hunted our kind, seeking release. I knew why he didn't. He didn't trust himself not to kill all of them.

"I will be thrilled if she doesn't have to deal with any of that."

"She won't. She's going to wake surrounded by us, and she's going to be as free from the thirst for human blood as you, never tasting it. I wish I had had that start."

Carlisle looked to me now, sympathetic. "I wish you had, too. You took to it well, though." He smiled.

I snorted. "After a few decades."

"Well, nobody's perfect."

"She is," I said softly.

Carlisle nodded. "She is. When do you think I should..." He pulled the box out of his pocket.

"Give her a few days. I imagine she's still going to be very raw for a while, even if she isn't wildly out of control."

Alice called from downstairs. "Day after tomorrow. Let her hunt first."

I rolled my eyes. "Nothing is a surprise with her around."

"Not true," she called again.

"Just shop, would you, woman?"

She giggled and didn't answer again. Carlisle was smiling at me. "You two have grown much closer."

I nodded. "Much. She is my other half." I looked at the door, in the direction where Alice sat a floor below. "She is the wildness that was disciplined out of me. She is the impulse that I fight. She is the stable love in the maelstrom of emotions I wade through."

"I wonder if I will be as much for Bella."

I smiled at him. "I'm sure you will."

"Fourteen hours," Alice called from downstairs. "Why don't you go hunt, Jasper? Carlisle will take her out when she wakes, and he's going to have to go into Forks to talk to Charlie soon."

I nodded and obeyed my wife. Carlisle was slower to do so. "I don't want to leave her, Jasper."

"You heard Alice, fourteen hours. She'll understand if you have to go for a couple of them."

He followed me out, reluctantly.