Standing in the shadows of love,
I'm getting ready for the heartaches to come.
Can't you see me standing in the shadows of love?
I'm getting ready for the heartaches to come.
I wanna run but there's nowhere to go.
Cause heartaches will follow me I know.
Without your love, a love I need,
It's the beginning of the end for me.
Cause you've taken away all of my reasons for living.
When you pushed aside all the love I've been giving.
Now wait a minute,
Didn't I treat you right, now baby didn't I?
Didn't I do the best I could, now didn't I, didn't I?
So don't you leave me standing in the shadows of love.
I'm getting ready for the heartaches to come.
Don't you see me standing in the shadows of love?
Trying my best to get ready for the heartaches to come.
All alone I'm destined to be,
With misery my only company.
It may come today, and it might come tomorrow.
But it's for sure I've got nothing but sorrow.
How can you watch me cry after all I've done for you?
Now hold on a minute,
Gave you all the love I had, now didn't I?
When you needed me I was always there, now wasn't I?
How can you leave me,
Standing in the shadows of love,
Getting ready for the heartaches to come?
I'm trying not to cry out loud.
You know cryin', it ain't gonna help me none.
What did I do to cause all this grief?
Now what did I say to make you wanna leave?
Now wait a minute,
I gave my heart and soul to you now didn't I?
And didn't I always treat you good now didn't I?
I'm standing in the shadows of love.
I'm getting ready for the heartaches to come.
Don't you see me standing in the shadows of love?
Trying my best to get ready for the heartaches to come.
Oh, I'm standing in the shadows of love.
Lyrics and music by Holland, Dozier and Holland
Chapter One
The Beginning of the End
JPOV
"GET HIM OUT! NOW!"
She said he couldn't breathe. I'm not sure I really cared whether IT could breathe or not. All that concerned me in that horrific moment
were the screams of pain issuing from Bella's mouth and the horrendous sounds coming from inside her distended belly. She may have
once gone through what Charlie called a "zombie" stage, but right now she actually looked like a Hollywood zombie. She was skin and
bones, her color was ashen, and her body was writhing on the exam table in the makeshift birthing room, blood still running down her
chin from the gusher of it that she had just thrown up.
What a farce! What a sick joke. Birthing room. God only knows what Bella thought the ultimate outcome of this 'birth' could be. Every
one of us, except the blonde bitch queen, tried to talk her out of this course of action she had chosen. Even Edward tried to persuade
her not to go through with it and begged me to help him by offering to give her my children the old fashioned way. He'd really lost it
but I considered it in spite of myself. The doc had told her that the research available only documented mother mortality. That's
no survivors in Wolf English. She had gotten it into her mind that she was strong enough to survive this torture. She was deluding
herself. She insisted if need be Edward could turn her at the last minute. Yeah, like that would be an acceptable resolution. None of
the rest of us had any false hope at all. I certainly didn't.
I had no earthly idea what to do. I would say I had no earthly idea why I was still here, but that would be a lie. I knew exactly why I
was still here. Because she still wanted me here, I still loved her, and I would do anything she asked. Look up masochistic moron in
a dictionary, the picture of me there is a nice shot.
I shuddered while standing next to the table on which Bella's body twisted in unnatural angles. I was afraid to touch her but I gently
tried to let her hand rest in my open palm. Edward, Rosalie and Alice were clustered around the other side of the table. When Edward
stabbed a huge hypodermic of morphine into Bella's arm, I cringed from the force of the insertion. Then as if the morphine had been
injected into me instead, things in the room began to blur, sounds became muffled and movement began to slow down.
The scalpel sliced through Bella's lower abdominal skin. Blood gushed again. Rosalie began to lose it. I leaped at her, slamming her
into the far wall. Alice's stoic face began to falter and crumble and the two girl vamps retreated from the room, leaving Edward and
me alone trying to tend to Bella. The scalpel could make no more headway on the tough wall of her womb. Edward flung the blade
across the room and bent down to rip into the covering with his teeth. I couldn't believe I was still conscious but like a car crash on
a highway, I couldn't make myself look away. This was my Bells. I had to try to keep her here with me.
Finally, Edward got through the barrier and pulled out a tiny, bloody thing, vaguely like a human baby in its shape. He lifted it up,
and a goofy smile bloomed on his pasty face. He called it Renesmee, the girl's name Bella had invented. She held out her arms for
Edward to hand the creature to her. She cooed and held it to her breast. And the thing bit her! I knew the thing was going to be a
monster. What kind of baby bites its mother as its first act of life? Not on this earth should anything like that exist. Edward snatched
it away from Bella's arms and began to coo to it as well, scolding it for attacking its mother. I wondered if maybe he'd ground it as
punishment.
Edward was too consumed in the creature to notice that his wife was bleeding out through the gaping opening he had made in her with
his teeth. I was still focused on Bella and holding her hand when her face lost all its muscle tension and her eyes grew glassy.
I began screaming at her to stay with me, to keep fighting, to keep her heart beating. She was completely unresponsive. Desperately,
I began chest compressions and breathing into her mouth trying to refill her lungs with air. My tenuous hold on sanity was stretching
to the thickness of a spider web. My girl was leaving me!
"Stay with me Bella! Keep your heart beating, you promised!"
Edward finally woke up when blondie returned and reached for the thing he had wrapped in a blanket. He handed it over and then
yanked open a drawer and produced a gigantic stainless steel syringe. It looked like something a vet might use on a horse.
"What's that?!" I shook with terror and fury.
"My venom," he stated matter-of-factly.
Oh God, is this really it? Is this really the only option left? She can't be saved as a human? She can only remain on this earthly plain
as a vampire? Can I handle the final solution? She'll be my mortal enemy. She'll be one of them. But she'll still be here, more or less.
But she'll still be with him. I tried to shut down these thoughts. I had no say in the matter anyway. What was I thinking? It simply wasn't
my call. It was out of my hands. It had been taken out of my hands long ago.
Edward instructed me to keep up the compressions to help pump the venom throughout her body. Oh, my God! Now I was helping her
to become a vampire? My hands rebelled, along with my heart and my head. I began to listen to her heart thumping with each push. I
listened to the short rush of fluid in her veins with each pump. That fluid was a mixture of her blood and his venom. What the fuck was
I doing?
It quickly became evident that her heart was not going to continue on its own. My hands were doing the work for it and I stopped and
backed away a step. I looked down at Bella's still, stony face. She was gone. The tears made the vision, which I knew would be burned
into my memory forever, begin to blur. I stared across at Edward, still maniacally moving his mouth around over her body, adding fresh
bites to various pulse points, frantically adding more venom trying to hedge his bet. I made sure he understood that I was going to ALLOW
him to live, in spite of the fact that he had effectively broken the treaty. I wanted him to suffer the consequences of his actions. He had
practically guaranteed this outcome when he had first approached her at Forks High School. He had sentenced her to death on that day.
He thought he was preserving her body for eternity and that she would stay with him. In spite of what he had told me months earlier
about wanting her to stay human, he now seemed eager to have her become a monster like him. Maybe he had lost his grip on sanity.
He had gone over the edge, like I wish I could.
But I was still quite sane, quite lucid. The trauma of watching the girl I love being put through the wringer of death's sharp-toothed
rollers, had not halted my brain function, nor had it frozen my feet in place. I knew what I had to do. The abomination that had taken
her from me had to die. There was no question in my mind what was now required of me. It was time to be more than just a protector.
It was time for me to be an avenger.
I followed blondie's scent down the hall and down to the den. There she was, lounging in front of the fireplace, in a comfortable chair,
cradling and cooing lovingly to the murderous monster. She had cleaned it up and wrapped it in a blanket. She was just setting a bottle
down on the table next to her. No doubt the little demon spawn had just had its first meal of human blood. Yeah, it was time for swift
Alpha retribution.
As I began to approach them from behind, the vamp lifted the thing up onto her shoulder, as if preparing to burp it. Oh God, I fought
to stop the urge to hurl. If that thing spits up blood all over the back of that chair, I will go completely berserk! I moved two more steps
toward my goal of annihilation. At that instant, the thing lifted its eyes and looked at me. My gaze was locked in place. They were brown,
so very brown. They were Bella's eyes. My vision narrowed down till all I could see was that baby's eyes. My world shifted over one
giant sidestep. The child, who held my gaze in such an adult fashion, was the center of my universe. The strength of the reality of the
moment brought me to my knees. Imprinted? On the child that killed Bella. How is this right? How is this fair?