Disclaimer: The Twilight Saga is owned by Stephanie Meyer. I don't happen to be her; therefore, I cannot possibly own it.

Rating: Rated 'T' for 'Teen'. May change later.

Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Family, Fluff, Friendship, First Time, General, High School, Horror, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Supernatural, Vampires

Warnings: Adult Content, Blood, Discriminatory Language, Violence

Pairings: Jasper/Bella, Emmett/Rosalie, Carlisle/Esme, Peter/Charlotte

Summary: Your typical story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. A baby is quickly made. What happens when the boy's a vampire? What happens when said vampire is killed before the baby's born? Renée doesn't know what's going to happen to her baby, but Nahuel promises to keep it safe from his father. Jasper/ Bella


05. Seven Years


Saturday, September 30, 2000

Emmett's P. O. V.


Continued from the end of '03. Strangers'

I wiped my mouth on his scratchy shirt, careful to make sure I didn't get any of his blood on my clothes. First things first, I quickly stuffed him into his vehicle before collecting my keys, and locating his . I had to destroy any evidence that this could require some form of investigation towards me or my family. Next up, I drove my car about a mile back towards civilization and ran back. Breaking open his trunk, I saw that he had no gas can or anything else for me to siphon out his gas easily. Instead, I tore his shirt up into one long strip and stuffed the majority of it into the gas tank to soak it. Then, I made a trail so that I wouldn't catch on fire; afterwards, I caused a small crack in his tank and it quickly created a small puddle underneath the car while still dripping. The final step was to take my lighter and set the strip of shirt on fire. Running away, about half of a minute passed before I heard the explosion of when his car shot up in flames. I drove away, making it the twenty odd miles to the beginning of the road before I decided enough was enough. Rosalie might have preferred it if I waited until tomorrow to come back, but I wasn't waiting any longer.


My anger rose as I drove and I could hear my steering wheel give in with a little crack. Oh well, it wasn't like Rose didn't have to replace the thing every few months anyhow. The longest I had gone without needing some new part to a car was three months and that was because I had been living in the rain-forest in South America.

I floored it once I was out of town, not that this thing went anything close to vampire speed. Just why did we have to live so far from town? Fucking food. Not that I had sex with the animals I drank or the occasional human I killed. That was disgusting.

Bella whimpered, which had me looking back, checking her over. I wasn't sure if she was having a nightmare, as she hadn't had one of those yet, but she didn't look happy in the least. Was this another one of those moments like with the guy at the bank? Just how did she know about that? Did she find him disturbing or was it a look he was giving her? I sure as hell didn't detect the acidic scent of male arousal. I might not have been able to contain my disgust and rage had there been any of that.

With a glance at the sun, I began kicking myself over the time. It was already so late. Of course, Bella's new unease could be because of how she skipped her normal hour long nap at noon. We had been so busy that it just slipped my mind; besides, she hadn't acted tired until I had started back to go home.

There was a whine from the back seat not ten minutes from the house. "I know baby, we're almost at the house." She whined again. I looked at her, wondering what was wrong, and noticed that she was without her blanket. She just had the thing a moment ago!

"Ban." She pointed to the floorboards, and started kicking in my direction. "Ban." Trying to drive and reach around back behind my seat wasn't the best of ideas, but I did it anyways. I received some well placed jabs from her little feet for taking so long. As soon as I had it within her reach, she snatched it away from me, glaring at me as if I had tortured her blanket. "Mine. My ban." Seemed we were approaching the possessive stage.

"Of course baby."

"We go Mama?"

I almost laughed at how she was putting her sentence structure. "Yeah, we're goin' home to Mama." A slow smile spread across her face, her happiness in seeing Rosalie becoming infectious. She whined again, this time it being the one I had come to associate with her being too hot. I began to open the window only to close it quickly.

There was a vampire in the area.

My entire body tensed up as I gritted my teeth together. Bella's face had been shoved into her blanket so tight it was a miracle that it hadn't been torn apart, so I wasn't sure if she had been able to smell it or not, but she didn't look too upset. "We're gonna have guests, so you gotta stay in the car." Quicker than the vehicle, that smile left and was replaced with an angry scowl. "Now, Bella, baby, we don't know these people. They might be bad people."

"Bad Man?" Now, why did that sounds like a title instead of a man that happens to be bad? "No! No, Bad Man!" She started squirming, breaking the straps of the car seat, so terrified of whoever the 'Bad Man' was that she was in tears.

Pulling over to the side of the road, I grabbed her up, holding her close to me. Jesus, she was more overheated than I thought. If it weren't such a serious situation, I might have made sizzling noises. "It's okay. That's why you've gotta stay in the car. We don't want whoever's there to know you're here." Slowly, she calmed down into a weak laborious breathing pattern with the occasional hiccup.

"You wanna go back in your seat?" Bella clung closer to me, gripping at my shirt so tightly that she was ripping it. "Alright, I'll put you next to me." I set her in the shotgun seat, smiling sadly when she curled up with her blanket, still upset over the 'Bad Man'. As soon as she could carry on proper conversations, I would be finding out who he was.

The rest of the car ride was uneventful and slow. Bella refused to release my hand as I drove, going so far as to bite on one of my fingers when it twitched. I had to hold in my hiss because I knew it wasn't intentional but protective instincts. When I finally pulled up to the property, she started shaking. I swear, if it weren't for the fact that she only went pee once every three or four days, she might have actually pissed herself. This time, she let my hand go without difficulty. If there weren't vampires that might try to kill my wife and family, I would have stayed to coax her out of this unhealthy state.

As I opened the door, her head perked up and she flung herself forward to get past me. "Nan!" I tried to keep her back, to keep her in the car, but she was determined. "Dad-dy, no! Go Nan!" Hell no, I wasn't taking her to 'Nan'. He or she might want to kill her, not that I wouldn't put up a goddamn fight. "Moo! Moo Dad-dy!" Did she just call me a cow?

Suddenly, I was hit by an invisible force in the side of my neck where Bella striking me with her little fists, sending high voltage shocks through my system and had me land on my ass. My body still convulsed, shaking from what felt like electricity traveling in me faster than Edward's top running speed. I couldn't move on my own, just trembling on the ground, so I had to watch as Bella ran off in her frenzied stumbles to find whatever 'Nan'. In the distance, I could hear the sounds of two granite bodies crashing into one another, the feminine hissing of my wife and the another woman.

Then, as sudden as it came on, the substantial pain went away and I was finally able to go after my baby and protect my wife. However, the scene I came across was strange at best. Rosalie and a Hispanic woman were doing battle fairly close to the house; if one of them threw the other, it was possible she'd be flung into my home. Bella babbling away animatedly in her half formed sentence language was such a strange sight I was startled to a stop. Was he the 'Nan'?

He, like the woman, was Hispanic, had long hair tied back in a braid, and wore animal skin clothing. I heard Bella say that damn name again, this time at him, and he nodded, smiling at her happily. Yes, he was Nan.

Soon, the wind shifted, blowing from behind me and towards them, alerting the four of my presence. The two newcomers stiffened instantly while Bella perked up and Rosalie seemed to fight even harder to try to get the woman towards me. Bella was pleased that the four of us were together, though she didn't seem to understand what the two ladies were doing, circling one another with the occasional landed hit. She began bouncing in Nan's hold, clapping her hands enthusiastically.

Then, he growled at me and Bella lost all her happiness. "No, Nan! Bad Nan! Bad! You bad! No grr. Bad." She started kicking him, which caused him to flinch. "Bad Nan!" She had a good hold on him, and he didn't seem to want to cause her any harm, so I went to help my mate with the woman; however, as I moved towards them, Nan started easing towards the trees.

Quickly, I whipped around to face them again. "Where do you think you're going? Bring her here." He hissed, backing away even further. Luck wasn't on his side because my baby began getting angry, which was never a good sign with vampires. "Give me my daughter, now."

"Bella's not your child. I knew her mother. You and that woman are not her parents. They're dead."

I paused, confused as to how he could know anyone that had anything to do with Bella. "Regardless of whether or not they're living, she's my baby. Give her to me or I will end you."

He grit his teeth together, a snarl at the tip of his lips. "No. I promised her mother I'd protect her."

"I can protect her better. We're two vampires that love her like she were our own. If need be, we can have another eight come to protect her as well. She is better off with us. She is safest with us." The man looked torn. On one hand we had much more manpower to defend her; on the other, he was giving up his obligation to the woman that gave birth to my little angel. "If you like, you can stay with us. See that we're the better fit."

"Very well." He kept himself out of arms reach, but stepped closer to me, to hand off Bella. "Huilen, please stop." And like that, we had two guests.


After all the excitement calmed down, Bella was energized. She refused to settle down and simply wanted to be sat on her quilts in the middle of the living room to play with Nan, who we learned was actually named 'Nahuel'. Quickly, she convinced him into a few rounds of patty-cake, though it had to do more with her making the motions of the game and us explaining what he was supposed to do and say.

"Did you have any questions?" This was Huilen, a short woman, barely reaching five foot, and obviously fit from her pre-vampire days. She had a long face with long features, making her look taller than she was, even if she was tiny. Sometime after settling in our house, she unbraided her hair into long waves, due to her hair being in it for such a long time. "After all, Nahuel is a hybrid, like Bella."

Rosalie looked suspicious of them, but I couldn't hold it in. "She's growing so fast. We've had her for a couple weeks and she looked like an newborn when we found her, and already, she's wearing clothes we hadn't thought she'd wear for another three months. She should still be sleeping the majority of the day and crying at any disturbance, but she's ready to take on the day by six and rarely has any problems. And she bit the shit out of me. What's up with that? I've only ever had the desire to mark my mate. I'm pretty damn sure my sire would have a conniption if I bit his mate."

The two of them began chuckling, at what I'm assuming to be my enthusiasm otherwise that's just rude, and smiled. "The growing is normal. Hybrids are full grown by seven."

"Wait, I'm going to stop you right there," Rosalie interrupted. "Seven? Seven years? Please tell me you mean seven years and not seven months." I winced, wishing like hell it wasn't over in a matter of months.

Nahuel shook his head. "Seven years. By the time the first year is over, Bella will look around four physically. Mentally, she'll be an adult. We are like vampires in many ways, for one is the eidetic memory. Even some our time in the womb is remembered. Although right now Bella is an infant, she will remember this. Her first memory is the sensation of being wrapped up in her mother, the beating heart, the love. It's an endless feeling of that and then it stops. You feel her womb tighten around you; the two of you are starving. She can't hold down any human food, and she can't get you enough blood to drink not to keep you from draining her dry, so she goes into labor. Unfortunately, her body isn't strong enough to help her in the process, so you have to claw and bite your way out of her to keep from suffocating. Typically you don't come out of the normal outlet. You come out of the stomach. Because you exist, your mother dies, and, because of what your father was, you will always remember it as if it happened just moments ago."

My fists clenched, understanding that this wasn't just what Bella went through, but what he had as well. Would Bella, like Nahuel, blame herself for her mother's death? This man was a self-loathing mess, and the woman next to him, although we could tell she loved him greatly, she obviously also blamed him for her sister dying.

"But, yes, the growing's normal. In seven years, she'll be full grown physically. By the first year, she'll look four but will have the intellectual capabilities of an adult vampire. She'll be extremely intelligent, but will lack the wisdom older vampires gain by experience. By two, she'll look about twelve. The second year is painful. Her growing isn't a happy experience. She might wake up screaming in the middle of the night because of her body trying to force on a growth spurt that it can't handle. However, the last five years are spent growing however much she's got left to grow. Hybrids are typically just a little bit younger physically than the mother was when she conceived. Since Renée was seventeen, Bella will stop aging at about sixteen. Even though she will be grown so quickly, sexually speaking, she won't be ready to do anything for at least ten years."

I was startled at his last statement. "Why would you even bring that up? She's just a… baby and you're taking about sex? That's disgusting."

"You wanted to know about the growth. And the sexual nature is important, especially for the females." Sighing, I dropped my head into my hands. This conversation was one I wished I could avoid, but it needed to be known. If Rosalie had to sit through it alone, she'd repeat it back to me and exaggerate everything. "The youngest I've known for it to start is ten years. Her ovulation will only happen once every few years. Every two to five years. Now, it'll take somewhere around two weeks, and any unmated male in the area that she isn't related to is going to go frantic. She's going to smell absolutely amazing to them, vampire or not. They're going to want her and if she's had any previous people trying to woo her, they might tear apart all the others to prove their worth in taking her. It's the only time she's fertile. We believe."

I tried my best to push his words out of my head while my wife looked interested. "So, in about ten years, she's going to be guy-nip for any unmated boys that think she's cute? Basically, any guy without a mate is going to be on her like an alpha male wolf and a bitch in heat." Oh dear god, that is not happening to my baby. I'll be sending her to a cabin the middle of the woods and guard it.

"I… yes. However, the starting date varies. I have a sister, Maysun, who is older than I am, and she didn't begin hers until she was about a century old. My eldest sister, Serena, began when she was about ten."

"Have any of them had a child too?" Rosalie, damn it, I'm too young to be a grandfather.

He shook his head. "Maysun has conceived a few times, but would lose the child shortly afterwards. I hate to say this, but I think her losing the children was intentional. Our father, Joham, thinks of us as experiments in a way. It's possible she didn't want her children to share her fate. Right now, we're half the potential of a vampire; however, he somehow thinks that if a hybrid and a vampire were to create a child, then that child would be superior. Or if two hybrids were to have children. He's insane. I don't know what he wants to do with these children, but it can't be good."

There was a long silence as we processed their, mostly his, words. Bella was fine with this; she enjoyed the quiet, but that didn't mean she liked seeing her parental figures upset. Slowly, she crawled over, seeing as she was much better at that than walking, and up on the couch to sit between us.

Huilen smiled. "Such a precious child. You seem to love her very much. She's lucky that it was the two of you to find her and not one of the many prejudiced vampires we've met."

My next words were agreed on between the two of us without thought. "No, we're the lucky ones to have her as our daughter."

At least I wasn't being asked why my eyes were red.


Ending Author's Notes: The meeting with Nahuel was supposed to be in chapter three, but shit got extended as I kept writing more and more. Oh well, hopefully this will mean for a longer story. No promises.


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