A/N: I've been meaning to add this in here for a time, now—but thank you for (now well over) 100 reviews! So awesome! And thank you for all the positive feedback on the last chapter. I was actually super nervous to see what you guys would think, so I'm glad you liked it!

Someone commented on how sad the last chapter was, because we know what is coming—and I totally agree. Writing it and this chapter was surprisingly heartbreaking for me. I'm glad I'm going through with the alternative, because it's a much smoother transition than this abrupt transformation was :'( Of course, it's sad for Beau—but I was appalled by how heartbreaking it also was for Edythe, after I've immersed myself deeper into her psyche. Yeesh.

And as far as the plan goes—for anyone who is confused—I will be finishing the book in the Life and Death world, and then I'll do the alternative ending after the final L&D chapters are posted, and then I'll continue on to New Moon through Edythe's eyes—which will be called Darkest Hour. Can't wait to share my edit with you guys! :)

Enjoy this one…! Or… don't :'( *tears*

…

I sat abnormally inert—the type of inertness humans notice—throughout the entire flight to Phoenix. This time, Eleanor sat beside me, and when she noticed my statue-like state, she kicked me in the ankle, hard enough that it would have shattered a fragile human bone.

I blinked, but otherwise did not move.

The stress of the situation was too much for me to handle. I trusted my brother and sister, truly I did, but I did not trust Beau's wildly incongruous instincts. This would not be over until I was in his arms again, and I was glad he, Archie and Jess would be meeting us at the airport. There would be no delay. We would disembark, and I would be reunited with my love again. My heart ached for his closeness, his warmth, his soft fragileness again.

Ten seconds had passed, and now, El elbowed me so hard in the side, it would have ruptured a mortal's kidney.

I turned my head slowly to look at her, cocking an eyebrow.

She stared wide-eyed at me.

Breathe, she urged, People are noticing.

I took an exaggerated breath, lifting my shoulders almost to my ears, and then letting them fall.

She rolled her eyes. What's the plan?

"The plan," I repeated, and in the seat across the aisle, Carine cocked an ear to listen in, "We get in, and get Beau out. I'll catch the first flight to anywhere with him."

And then? Carine fished.

"And then the rest of you converge on Renee's house and take care of the tracker and her mate."

Eleanor worried it was a trick. She didn't want me going alone.

I stick with you, she reiterated.

I sighed. "They'll need you to fight with them."

Eleanor contemplated this. She could see the logic there, but she still didn't feel comfortable with me going alone.

"Jess?" I suggested.

Maybe. She might not want to leave Archie, though.

"Royal?"

El snorted underneath her breath in disbelief.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

Carine? she offered.

"Maybe," I breathed.

Carine's thoughts were questioning, and I explained in a terse whisper, the plan.

Certainly I'd go with you, she agreed immediately. Or I'm sure Earnest would as well. The Isle is always a possibility…? It's isolated enough that the chances of them finding him would be slim, and you'd be able to hear the thoughts of anyone who was to approach…

I nodded. The plan was set—now all that was left to do was carry it out.

Time passed slowly—each tick of the second hand on the clock like the pulse of blood behind a mortal bruise. I ached for Beau's warm, soft arms around me. I ached for the assuredness I would see in his eyes. I ached for the death of the tracker who was so intent on stealing Beau's young, pure life from him. I ached for things to be as they were only three days ago.

How had so much changed in such a brief amount of time?

It became clear to me that I would have to find some way to leave Beau, once he was safe again. I was tempting fate by continuing to put myself close to him. Every minute he spent in our world was a minute spent in peril.

It might kill me to leave him, but somehow, I had to find a way.

But the thought was too painful to bear, and I could do no more than merely decide that this would be the correct course of action. I could not dwell on it, or make plans in accordance with it.

I would focus on today, this minute. Tomorrow would come later.

But I would be strong enough someday. I had to be—if these last two days had been any indication at all of how star-crossed we really were.

We were just about to the tarmac when everything fell apart—again.

Edythe?! Edythe, I'm sorry! He's gone! I'm so sorry—he went to meet her! I don't know how it happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!

Wild panic tore through me, and my hand tightened reflexively around the armrest. It splintered to pieces in my fingers with a loud detonation. Humans in the immediate vicinity started and swiveled their heads around, but they did not discover the source of the sound.

What?! El demanded, gripping my arm, What happened?!

Edythe? What is it!?

A very unladylike word slipped from between my teeth.

"Tell us!" El hissed out loud.

"He went to meet her," I breathed, staring fixedly, numbly, at the seat in front of me, "She has him."

Their alarmed reactions were horror-struck and immediate, though branching off into two different directions.

Carine, How? She, of course, needed to know the semantics behind it.

Where? El growled quietly. She was immediately fiercely protective.

I was frozen with terror. My teeth locked together, and I was afraid I would never unlock them again. They felt bonded by cement.

… corner of 58th and Cactus, Archie was thinking, his mental tenor frantic and ashamed, Renee's house is just down the street. I'm waiting at the West exit. Black CTS-V. Flickering roadmap pictures shuffled through his head… The airport exit, west on the I-10, Exit 147… I followed his directions, memorizing each turn as it came, all the way to the dance studio—the dance studio!—on the corner of 58th and Cactus.

And then he began the whole spiel over again, not knowing if I was within hearing range of his thoughts yet.

"Archie has a car," I reiterated to my mother and sister after I'd memorized it all, "He's waiting at the west exit. Beau is meeting Joss at a dance studio on the corner of 58th and Cactus."

"We'll be right behind you," Eleanor said.

"How did she convince him to meet her?" Carine wanted to know.

"I don't know, I don't know." My head rocked back and forth mechanically. "She tricked him, somehow. I don't know…"

The wheels of the airplane touched down on the runway, and the humans bounced in their seats, heads wobbling. I was completely stiff, paralyzed. The moment the doors opened, I would be gone. I tensed in my seat as the pilot taxied toward the gate. Her thoughts were serene and casual, and she was in no rush at all.

"But how did he get away from Jessamine and Archie?" Eleanor prodded.

"I don't know!"

Finally, we were there. It took them a ridiculously long time to open the doors, but then the safety hatch disengaged, and I stood so quickly I wrenched the seatbelt clean from its moorings with a snap.

I moved down the aisle just a little too quickly. The thoughts around me registered with surprise and confusion. Most of them brushed my sudden appearance off as their own grogginess and inattention after a long day of travels. The flight attendant jumped when she turned and saw me over her shoulder. To her, I had quite literally appeared out of thin air.

With a polite smile, I slipped past her and moved down the concourse as fast as I dared. Eleanor and Carine were right behind me.

It was agonizing to move at the clip I was. I was forced to run at a quick human's pace through the terminals, though all I wanted to do was burst into motion—to push my legs as quickly as I could. Though no one would see me if I moved at full speed, I risked hurting someone in the jostling crowds around me.

I stepped onto the down going escalator and shouldered my way—gently—through the packed steps. People protested out loud, and some complained only in their minds, as I shoved past them. I hit the first level, where the groupings were coagulated even thicker here—gathered around the luggage carousels.

Finally, we made it through the automatic doors, and out into the balmy early morning of the desert. If I'd been in this unlikely place under any other circumstance, I would have taken a moment to revel in the wonderful balmy heat, to appreciate the spiny, barren vegetation around me, somehow beautiful in their naked shapes. I would have taken time to value the red dirt-sand, the pitch-black asphalt, the light beige structures. Above us, the sky was clear and wide and almost as blue as Beau's eyes, and under any other circumstance, I would have tipped my head back to examine it.

But this circumstance was not like any other, and so I did not take the time to notice these things. Instead, my eyes zeroed in immediately on the black Cadillac idling at the curb. Archie was in the driver's seat, Jess on the passenger side.

We dove inside, luckily sheltered by the deep shade of the awning, and Archie stomped on the gas pedal before the doors were closed, the peeling out tires echoing in the sandstone tunnel behind us.

Thank what god there might have been, Archie drove us through the bright desert city just as I would have if I'd been in the driver's seat. But I could not be hindered by the ridiculous notion of driving. Though it was agonizingly unbearable to sit back and let Archie take the wheel, in being the passenger, I would be able to exit the vehicle sooner, and get to Beau that much faster.

Please, please, please, I begged, If there is a God, please let me get there in time!

"I saw that we might get separated," Archie was explaining, his words blurring together so fast that they tripped over one another. "So I was watching him carefully. I watched his every move, every muscle twitch, every inhalation…" His thoughts flickered briefly to me, apologetic once more, but I saw no point in chastising him. He was nearly as frantic for Beau's safety as I was.

"We caught Joss's scent outside the airport, and I thought she might make a grab for him, though the scent wasn't exactly fresh, but I was being extra vigilant. When he asked Jess to go with him to get breakfast, I started seeing it—the separation—but I assumed it would be a move on the tracker's part, not on his!" The final words pushed through his locked teeth in a snarl of frustration. "Depending on the traffic, we'll get there in time. But we have to hurry!"

He pushed the car forward, taking to the shoulders or sidewalks to slip around vehicles in his way. He took to alleyways and the opposite route on one-way streets to bypass clogged traffic. We were forced to slow at inopportune moments, hindered by the presence of law enforcement, a part of the daily morning commute. It was not the right time of morning for this.

But then, when would the correct timing be?

As we raced through the far too expansive city, I compiled all the different ways I would torture Joss in my mind. It was no wonder I loathed what we were when creatures such as she were a part of my species! I thought of the most agonizing ways to kill the tiny villain who wanted Beau dead, organizing each one in order of the greatest amount of agony.

While I compiled this list, another part of my very spacious mind was assembling another catalogue—a much shorter catalogue: My contingency plans, what I would do if I were… too late. If I did not arrive in time to save Beau, there was no question that I would not be able to go on without him. In the short time I'd known him, he'd changed me so completely, so irrevocably. My life was nothing if Beau did not exist. Our lives were tangled, inexorably, into one strand. If you cut one, you cut both.

I knew enough from Carine's own experiences that I would not succeed in ending my life by my own terms. It took a vampire to kill another vampire. If I was too late to save Beau—and I was hoping with all I had that I would not be too late—I hoped there was a chance that I could engage Joss in a fight, a battle where I would allow her to prevail. But I doubted my family would stand back long enough to allow that to happen. My sisters surely would not take my life for me—nor would they stand by and watch it happen.

The only option left, then, was to go to Sulpicia and the Volturi, and provoke them in some way. If I was not in time to save Beau, if, by the time we got there, he was already… departed, I would go to Italy.

The time to ponder such eventualities had come to an end, for we had come within a mile of them, and I could hear the mental atmosphere of the dance studio.

I could not hear Renee's mind in the vicinity. This did not bode well. There was a chance that her mind could be as reticent to me as Beau's was, but I did not think that was a likely possibility. Beau was the only being in my entire existence whose mind I could not hear whatsoever. Of course, I could not hear him now, but I could hear Joss.

Her thoughts were undeniably malicious, wild with bloodlust and hard-fought restraint, but I did not focus on them. I skipped over that and funneled my hearing as we closed in on the address.

Hope bolted through me when I heard it—it was too fast, whether that was due to terror, agony or emotional heartbreak I didn't know, but it was his heartbeat. I would have known it anywhere. He was alive! Beau was alive! However, I could hear only one heart pumping. Did that mean Joss had already done away with Renee? How would Beau handle losing his mother to this type of monstrosity?

"He's alive!" I gasped.

In the next instant, as Archie sped down the final roadway, there was a crunching, shattering, breaking sound. And then—worse than the breaking, worse than the shattering, I heard Beau scream.

I didn't realize that I was wailing too until Carine gripped my hand, her thoughts terrified. My choking yowling cut off with a whimpering moan.

"I'll kill her!" I choked, nearly soundless.

"What the hell is happening?" Eleanor shouted.

"He's hurt—" I howled, "She's hurt him badly!"

Archie took the turn into the parking lot too sharply. We rose up on two wheels and then crashed back down. I was out the door then, sprinting across the parking lot toward the studio. I was screaming again, a harsh metallic screech of terror and fury and pain.

I did not take the time to pull open the front glass doors. I smashed right through, shoulder first, glass splintering everywhere.

I was beyond reason, beyond logical thought, beyond words, when I saw them at the other end of the long room. Beau, my sweet, sweet Beau, was lying in a crumpled and broken heap.

The first thing I smelt was the wonderful aroma of his blood—too thick in the air. Also, I could detect the rancid odor of vomit. There was blood everywhere, seeping from his scalp, down his face and shoulder and arm, pooling in a dark, scarlet puddle underneath him. But it did not affect me in this very instant as I suspected it would have.

I crouched, lips pulling back from my teeth to release the menacing snarl of an attack roar. And then I launched myself at the slim vampire, who was, at this very moment, hurling herself at Beau.

We collided mid-air, the sound like granite smashing against granite. Glass shattered as I tangled my fingers in her hair and smashed her face into the wall of mirrors. The tiniest fissure appeared on the edge of her cheekbone, and she had the audacity to grin at me. There was no fear in her eyes—there was only smug satisfaction, and the expression, as well as her thoughts, enraged me.

A furious shriek escaped my throat, and I turned her to face me. Her thoughts twisted and contorted, showing me the ways she'd tortured Beau with horrifying clarity. The snap and pop of his bones breaking, the strange hissing sound she'd heard, when his shattered rib had punctured his lung… The unadulterated fear in his eyes…

Beau cried out again.

We've got this! Eleanor was there, shoving me toward Beau's arcing, agony-gripped form. Jessamine had already trapped the tracker in a death grip, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Eleanor tear the tracker's head clean from her body.

Her thoughts cut off as her mind went deathly silent.

I went numb for one singular moment, and then I turned, flashing to Beau's side. "No!" The agony pierced me anew, turning my legs to rubber as I collapsed to my knees in the blood puddle beside his head. So much blood—it was horrendous. His leg was twisted unnaturally, his right forearm out of line from the bicep. His skin was deathly pale, almost grey in pallor. His eyes were wild with pain as his agonized yowling gradually lost volume.

His breathing was rapid and weak, his heart tachycardic and brittle—his body was working too hard, and my distress proliferated.

"No, no, no, no!" Tearless sobs wracked through me as I scooped his frail, broken body up and held it to me, laid his head gently in my lap, and stroked his anguished, beautiful face. "Beau, please. Please, please, please, Beau, please!"

His screams had cut off with a strange sounding, groaning sigh. I could hear his lungs struggling to work, the air escaping through the punctures like popped balloons. His heart labored weakly, frail and frantic.

"Carine!" A terrified shriek escaped me. She was the only thing I could count on now to save his life. She was the best doctor in history—she would save him. She would! "Help me! Beau, please," I begged, frantically attempting to control the bleed in his scalp. The laceration was deep. I could see all the way to his skull. "Please, Beau, please!"

He was fading fast, awareness disintegrating from his face. Some light in his eyes went out, and they fluttered shut. What little strength remained in his lungs left, and he stopped breathing. His heart stuttered unevenly, sluggish and feeble. His lips turned a worrying shade of blue.

Undiluted terror lanced through me—horror like I'd never felt before. It wasn't just horror; it was pain and fear and heartbreak and shame and guilt and desperation, a tangled mass of negativity and hopelessness.

I leant over and pressed my lips to his, blowing softly. I heard his lungs fill and respond, and then I breathed for him once more.

I pulled back slightly, finding his eyes open, just barely. Through his lush, wet lashes, I could just barely see a splinter of blue.

"Keep breathing, Beau," I ordered him, hoping he was processing my words. "Do you hear me?! Breathe!"

I bowed forward and pushed another breath into his lungs, because he was not doing as I asked!

Carine kneeled down next to me, her mind immediately lapsing into assessment and inventory. She catalogued his injuries, one by one, ticking them off in her head. I tried not to pay attention to the tally.

"Archie, make splints for his leg and arm," she commanded, "Edythe, straighten his airways. Which is the worst bleed?"

"Here, Carine," I told her, moving my blood soaked hands away from his skull so she could assess the wound.

Beau began to whimper, and the sound shattered my heart into a million pieces. He was in pain, such pain, and it was entirely my fault!

"My bag, please," Carine requested of Archie. She glanced up at him momentarily; she saw the glint of restrained thirst in his eyes. I did not pay attention to his thoughts. I was in one agonized swirl, trapped with Beau. His life was my life. His pain was my pain. In this moment, there was nothing but him, and me, and the agony. "Hold your breath, Archie, it will help." Eleanor returned Carine's butane lighter. Vaguely I noted that Joss's pieces were burning now. "Thank you, Eleanor, now leave, please." She turned back to the task at hand. "He's lost blood, but the wounds aren't too deep. I think his ribs are the biggest problem now. Find me tape," she ordered Archie.

Beau's whining lengthened in rhythm, long agonized keening.

"Something for the pain," I hissed brokenly.

"There—" Carine nodded toward her bag, "I don't have hands. Will you?"

I reached forward, snatching the syringe from the kit.

"This will make it better," I promised him, and injected the pre-measured dose of morphine into the forgiving flesh of his unbroken arm.

Carine straightened out the bones in his leg so she could brace it, and I waited with bated breath, for his scream of agony. But he didn't respond.

"Edythe—" he rasped, his eyes fierce on my face. I wiped the blood from his eyes so he could see.

"Shh, Beau," I crooned soothingly, stroking his exquisite, tormented face, "It's going to be okay. I swear, it's going to be fine."

"E—" he wheezed, "It's—not—"

His suffering whispers faded; Carine beginning to suture the gaping head wound, and Archie gently pulling at his broken arm, so it could be braced, too, probably distracted him. I moaned in anguish.

Beau's shallow, winded breaths ceased once more.

"Hold on, Beau. Please just hold on," I begged him through the dry heaving of my vampire tears.

He pulled in a rasping inhalation. He heaved a few labored breaths, cyanotic lips moving shakily, as if he were trying to speak. The words he breathed were jumbled and unintelligible.

"Can you understand him?" Carine asked. She didn't lift her eyes from his head, where she was still sewing.

I shook my head. "Just rest, Beau. Breathe," I urged. This was all he needed to worry about right now; he just needed to keep his heart beating, continue to breathe, and we would do our very best to take care of the rest.

"No—hand," he choked, "Edythe—right hand!"

I picked up his hand, examining it for some sort of overlooked injury—and then I found it. Barely identifiable, a single puncture wound on the tip of his finger, matted in sticky, half-dried blood, but I saw it for what it was, and the realization shook me to the core.

"No!" I cried.

"Edythe?" Carine asked, perplexed.

"She bit him," I choked out with what air remained. I felt like my lungs had been crushed. My head swirled in sickening circles.

Carine gasped, and her mind went blank with shock. Her hands paused on the head wound, just momentarily.

"What do I do, Carine?" I begged.

She resumed her work.

I don't know that it will work—it might not—but there may be a chance that you can suck the venom back out, as one would with a snakebite. The wound is fairly clean. Can you do that?

Did I have a choice? Would I go back on my word and end his life? No. I decided that I would reverse the damage Joss had done. She thought she'd fooled us, but I was strong enough for this. I needed to be. There was no other way—if Beau were to live a normal human life, I would have to succeed at this mountain of a task.

"Yes," I snapped through my teeth. I had to. "I can try. Archie—scalpel."

Archie did not pass me the surgical tool. "There's a good chance you'll kill him yourself," he warned.

I had promised myself that if it took any measure of self-sacrifice to save Beau's life, I would gladly go through with it. This was more difficult, more tortuous a conquest, than I had ever imagined. But I would prove Archie's vision wrong. I would not kill him—I would save him.

But I could feel the venom pooling in my mouth, I could feel the hollow pang in my stomach as I reached forward and snatched the scalpel from Archie's hand.

"Give it to me. I can do this."

I gripped Beau's hand, slicing a fresh access point in the artery of his wrist. Beads of blood welled on the fresh wound, and my jaw ached. I lifted his hand, bowed my head, and pressed trembling lips to his skin.

The world focused into a fine-tipped point, and all of a sudden, I forgot what I was fighting for—forgot what I was doing. Dimly, in the back of my mind, someone screamed in agony. I didn't focus on that. For in this moment, I had tasted the sweetest of tastes I had ever experienced.

The flavor was ecstasy—it was everything.

I floated in the warm, electric sensation, locking my fingers around his wrist and pulling his hand more securely to my lips so that I could taste more of him.

The taste, the scent, the syrupy sweetness of him coated the inside of my mouth and the back of my throat with ambrosia.

Searing white heat overtook my vision, and I felt when my mind began to fracture into fragmented pieces.

His luscious blood was more potent a flavor than I ever could have imagined. The moist drink was a soothing balm on my desiccated throat. The flames were entirely extinguished in this moment.

I fell down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, its velvet confines swallowing me whole.

Lovely burgundy brocade, warm succulent bliss…

"Edythe!" A faraway voice shouted, as if from a dream. Or maybe I was in the dream, and this person was calling to me from the real world. I struggled to focus, knowing this voice was important, knowing the words he would say should mean something, but when I focused, this experience dulled in sharpness.

No! I gripped this intimate moment closer, not wanting to lose it.

"Look!" the voice shouted, and something battered on the soft, flexible walls of my mind. Something sharp—a physical strike—but I didn't feel it, not really. It did not register, caught up in this stupor. I imagined my physical life could be done away with and I would not have noticed until this all-consuming experience was ripped from my hands.

"Stop it, Edythe! Stop it now!" An image broke through the frontier of my mind, and at first glimpse, it didn't mean anything, but when I looked longer, I realized that I recognized the ghostly pale boy in the picture. He was broken and gnarled, bloody and gashed, and there was no life in him. And then, with a shock that was suddenly very icy in this very warm bubble, I saw myself, curled over the boy possessively, eyes demon-red. The boy was empty, and she had taken everything.

But firmer than this image, there was something else—a picture more concrete than the one currently taking place. How could this be? How could I be carrying out the warpath of the one ascertained vision, while this alternate option remained so much more obstinate?

The sharp planes of my lover's face—pearl and smooth. Blood-red newborn eyes, each angle of his body sharp and defined. Beau would curl forward, full lips pulling back over glistening sharp teeth, and the expression would be almost a grin, except for the silent snarl I knew would issue from between his teeth.

Never before had the image been clearer. Where before it might have been concrete—now it was unyielding, unbreaking titanium.

Always in the past, the visions had held some sort of indistinctiveness. Always there had been one or two other facets of the equation left unresolved. Always there had been other possibilities, no matter how faint they were.

But now, there was nothing else.

Either Beau died in my monstrous hands, or he became immortal.

My lips released from his skin, and I dropped his hand, gasping in shock.

"It's too late," Archie said to me, his eyes hard with resolve. "We got here too late."

"You can see it?" Carine's voice was quiet and subdued.

"There are only two futures left, Carine," Archie explained, but his eyes were on mine, "He survives as one of us, or Edythe kills him trying to stop it from happening."

"No." The word escaped my lips in an agonized moan. How cruel it was, to present me with a fate such as this one. To have formerly thought I would do anything, anything, to keep him from becoming a vampire—and here, now, in this moment, the only thing I could do that would prevent such a thing, was kill him. The only thing I could fathom less than Beau becoming one of us, was losing him altogether because of something I had done to him. I had been intent on protecting him from mortal dangers such as illness and accident and natural disaster. I had been intent, even, on protecting him from my own kind—from others who did not share our view on human life.

But the one thing I could bear less than the possibility of Beau never seeing the light of heaven he so deserved, was being shoved prematurely into death because of the monster inside of me.

I dropped my face to his, and kissed every inch of his gorgeous visage. His fluttering eyelids, his smooth cheeks, his full, cracking lips.

"I'm sorry, Beau," I sobbed, "I'm so sorry."

Would I ever forgive myself for this? Could I?

"It doesn't need to be this slow," Archie griped. "Carine?"

"I made an oath, Archie," she reminded him. An oath that stated she could never bite a human again. An oath that stated, if she were to do so, the treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes, would be broken.

"I didn't," Archie snarled, and I heard him lean toward us. I still had my face near Beau's, breathing in his scent. It seared my throat, and I groaned in agony as I fought back the animal instinct inside me. I drank in every facet of him I could smell and see and touch, knowing this might be the last time I would be able to do so. I wanted to do that without fighting the urge to murder him.

"Wait, wait." I lifted my head, though it felt as heavy as a planet on my shoulders, as if I were a mere mortal. The words Carine had said to me in the forest only a day earlier returned. But Beau has a choice in this, too. Ultimately, it is his life, his decision… What if he chooses this…? What if he's willing to risk everything…? I was reminded again that we had never had this discussion. It was hardly the place for it now, but in that moment, I did the weakest thing I could do. I hesitated.

How could it be that just hours ago I had been prepared to let him die rather than to chance the negative repercussions of something I wasn't even sure to be true? Carine was so decided on her viewpoint; I was so decided on mine. I had condoned the fact that she could be wrong all of these years, but I had never entertained the possibility that I might be the one who was wrong. Couldn't it be that everything Carine believed for us was true? Was I really so immovable to risk the tiniest sliver of a chance, to weigh Beau's entire existence against that slim chance? The slim chance that I was right?

It might have been the most selfish thing I ever had done, and ever would do, but I was not willing to risk it.

But this was his choice. I would let him decide. I was prepared now, to barter this risk. I was prepared to chance it. I was not prepared for the alternative, if Beau so chose, but I would respect his wishes if they were as such. And then I would follow quickly after.

I leant down once more, putting my lips to his ear so he could hear me above his torturous groans.

"Beau? I won't make this decision for you. I won't take this away from you. And I'll understand, I promise, Beau. If you don't want to live like this, I won't fight you. I'll respect what you want. I know it's a horrible choice. I would give you any other option if I could. I would die if it meant I could give your life back to you." A sob hitched in my throat. "But I can't make that trade. I can't do anything—except stop the pain. If that's what you want. You don't have to be this. I can let you go—if that's what you need. Tell me what you want, Beau. Anything." I was sobbing again.

"You," he gasped, "Just you."

Unreasonable relief and joy warred with the sharpness of self-hatred. "Are you sure?"

He moaned, his shoulders arching off the sodden wooden floor. "Just—let me stay—with you."

My eyes closed as the emotions washed through me. Of course, he was entirely unprepared for this. He didn't understand the full weight of the consequences. It was entirely selfish of me not to ensure he was fully briefed—but how could something like that be achieved in this instance?

In that moment, I accepted the fact that he may wake to his new life and hate me for this. He might resent me for taking away his humanity, but at least, at least, he would go on existing. And even if he walked away from me, and lived the rest of his immortality without me, that would be enough. Because at least Beau Swan would live—in a twisted, convoluted way. I could not imagine a world where Beau did not exist.

"Out of my way, Edythe," Archie barked. He was prepared to make the change progress faster himself, but I was suddenly entirely sure.

"I didn't make any oaths, either," I snapped back.

I tipped Beau's chin up, very gently, in order to expose his throat to me, leaned down and pressed my teeth to his skin. They sunk in easily, effortlessly. When the blood touched my lips, my tongue, my throat this time, there was no responding head rush. There was no loss of self or downward swirl into oblivion. There was only pure, focused determination—an administration of venom to his jugular, and then each of his ulnar arteries, and then his fibular arteries at the ankles. I injected my venom into as many places as I could, because, if I could give him anything, anything at all worthwhile now, it would be to make the change occur as quickly as possible.

…

A/N: … Phew! Intense, right?

Did you see where I took similar writing before and compared it? … I'll give you a hint—remember in the kitchen the morning after Beau and Edythe spent the night together, and their little experimentation resulting in Beau nearly passing out again, happened? Her little monologue in getting caught up in the sensations, the moment…? Do ya remember now?

I drew a parallel to that, because vampirism has always been a very seductive thing, and I thought it very appropriate to draw a counterpart between bodily lust and bloodlust. Because I think it applies.

Anyway—please, please let me know what you thought of this one, lovelies! I would very much appreciate the feedback! xo