Hello!

Thanks for the reviews so far got to Grumpy DelSan13, Dottyanne and Brain In The Gutter (Check out her story Hellhounds and Demons a great read so far) I appreciate feedback so when you're done reading please do type a quick note and hit the review button, getting them in my inbox makes my day.

This story is Beta'd by SeptemberSkies without whom it would rougher then rough and there is a good chance it would also be a lot more confusing. Thank you for your time and effort!

Lastly, the same disclaimer from the beginning of the introduction still applies.

Happy reading (and reviewing)

Chapter One

(BPOV)

Forks, Washington. Middle of god knows where. Population: three thousand six hundred and ninety-two. The birth place of Charles and Renee Swan. My birth place. I should have grown up in this backwards slice of nowhere. I would have known each and every one of the people I would be going to class with come the morning. Instead I was a stranger in my home town. A home town that I felt absolutely no affinity toward, after all, Forks was just the seventh move in my life and the second that year.

Carlisle had felt that it was important for me to know where I came from and the family already had connections in the area which made the move that much easier. I had begged them to pick anywhere else in the world, even Alaska a place that I had confessed to hating when we had visited the Denali's over Christmas one year. When that had failed I had asked for the first time in my life to shed my own parents' last name to take the name Cullen. Again I was denied. Meeting old friends of my parents would perhaps give me answers to question that I had always had about them. Problem was, I didn't have many questions and it made me wonder if there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

It hadn't taken long to unpack my boxes and flop down on the living room couch next to Emmett. I had wrapped myself in a terrycloth bathrobe; my hands were laced around a hot cup of peppermint and chamomile tea as we watched Aliens for the hundredth time. He had an arm draped across my torso as my head rested on a pillow that I had put between it me and him. With the fire burning high in the fireplace, my tea and the hot water bottle I had pressed to my middle I found that I wasn't as cold as I would normally have been snuggled up to one of my siblings.

Esme, Rosalie and Alice had disappeared not long after the whirlwind unpacking (not that they had brought much, they didn't feel attachment like I did) and disappeared in Rosalie's Eclipse far away from the Fork's house. After being away from large crowds of people Jasper had been a little too on edge so Carlisle had taken him hunting leaving Emmett and I to our own devices, we didn't mind. Emmett and I had always liked being left to ourselves, it meant we could watch a horror movie or two without being interrupted or made to change to something more lighthearted.

"I still don't understand why we had to come here." I grumbled at him.

"Humans need other humans. It's like a rule." He didn't take his eyes from the flat screen.

"Do you think I'm wrong not wanting to become a vampire?" I turned suddenly to my friend and brother. I could see his jaw working as he thought; his eyes still glued on Ripley dressed in her giant loader-suit as she prepared to take on the alien queen.

'Get away from her you bitch!' Ripley yelled as the queen turned and looked at her, it was in that moment that he turned his full attention on me. He was serious, from the heavy gaze of his golden caramel eyes to the flare of his nostrils and the set of his jaw. It wasn't often that I saw Emmett that serious and suddenly I wasn't sure if I wanted his answer.

"It'll hurt like hell when you're not around to do shit like this with or to tease mercilessly or talk to but I don't think that you're wrong." Ripley's fight to survive had become background noise. With Emmett there was always honesty minus the sugar coating and I loved him for it. "I'm pretty sure that if any of us could have chosen differently for ourselves we would have." There it was, the half-suspected secret, the forbidden truth that lay under the surface that I felt no one ever liked to voice when the rest of the family was around. They were happy, they loved each other and their lives together but there was also a lot that they would never experience because of what they were.

We went back to watching the movie and silence descended between us. I could feel Emmett thinking next to me but I chose to ignore it in favor of burrowing deeper into my pillow. By the time the credits were rolling I was almost fully relaxed again and my tea was gone. The clock on the mantel read nine; it was probably time to start thinking about sleep. I was sure that Alice would have me up at an ungodly hour so she could put me in the perfect outfit for my first day at Forks High.

"It's not going to be as bad as you think." He stated as he turned off the television and I sat up yawning loudly. "You might even make some friends or learn something new about yourself." I blinked at him, hoping that the expression on my face let him know that I was unconvinced by his positivity. "Alice and Rose will have a lot of the same classes as you and we'll all see each other at lunch. I'll give the boys that seem a little too friendly a hard time. It'll be entertaining."

"Is that before or after you make sure that Jasper doesn't make a snack out of a poor freshman." I rolled my eyes at him as he stood, offering me a hand which I took and he used to stand me on my feet next to him.

"Freshman are annoying." He snorted winking. "Just remember, it won't be that bad, it'll be fun."

"Right, Emmett, fun." I rolled my eyes but found that I was smiling anyway. At least I wouldn't be starting Forks High completely alone.

"Trust me, it will be." He kept a gentle hold on my hand as he pulled me along the hallway toward the garage. My mother and sisters must have returned from wherever they had spent the afternoon and evening.

"Did you guys have a good night? Alice said that you were watching horror movies again." Esme greeted us as they exited the garage and met us in the hall. Emmett let go of my hand as in a blur of bags and limbs Rosalie jumped into his arms, wrapping both legs around his waist as her lips fastened to his. I gave them an indulgent smile as Esme wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

Who wouldn't want a love like theirs and a thousand lifetimes to live in it?

I sighed. I wanted that. A love so all-consuming that it burned you up from the inside out. I wanted the kind of love that made forever seem short and that soothed the ache of loneliness that even my family couldn't hope to erase. In that I was just another typical seventeen year old girl who hadn't found her place in the world yet.

"Yeah watched Aliens again, it was kinda mindless. Dad took Jazz out hunting he was getting so edgy he couldn't sit still in the same room as me." I said, Esme kissed my temple and dropped a box the size of my palm into my hands. The box was made of a dark wood and wrapped in a little silver bow. I pulled on the silver bow and then opened the lid. On the black velvet cushion inside lay a set of car keys with the Ford insignia branded on them in blue and silver. "Mom?" I gave her a questioning look as Rosalie disentangled herself from Emmett a huge grin matching his on her face.

"It was about time you got your own vehicle so Carlisle and I decided to get you the truck that you've been trying to convince us that you need so badly." Esme was smiling at me. I stared at her then at the keys in the box. I had wanted a Ford F-150 ever since I got my driver's license at fifteen. "Rose drove it home. It's parked outside."

"She's beautiful Bella, Sterling grey, super crew cab, twin turbo 4X4. It's got all the bells and whistles and then some." Rosalie said enthusiastically as I turned grinning to them. I felt like my face was going to be split in half by my own smile.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" I exclaimed over and over again. Esme laughed as I threw my arms around her neck and squeezed with all my pitiful human might.

"Does that mean you want to drive to school in the morning Bella?" Emmett laughed as I disentangled myself from Esme and wrapped my arms around my sister. Alice was noticeably absent but I figured that she had gone to find Jasper, as uncomfortable to be away from him as Rose was Emmett. The attachments that the females in my family felt toward their mates was astounding, according to Esme it took time and age to relax fully into the relationship.

"You sure as hell aren't." I winked at him and we walked together toward the kitchen. I was getting tired but I had missed my family as they had gone off to their own adventures. It had been a very long day.

There were some tangible perks to having a family of vampires. The fact that money had never been an issue was one of those many things, although I had never been given a present as extravagant as a brand new truck from my parents before. Alice loved to shower me with clothes and Jasper and Rosalie with the library that took up the most space in my room, but even those gifts were as much of a blessing as they were a curse. Perhaps it made me a little spoiled but the way I saw it, it helped them feel like they were balancing out the constant moving and the way that there were times that Jasper would get so edgy that Emmett wouldn't leave my side for days, or the stilling of a room and rapid holding of breaths if I got so much as a paper cut.

An hour and another cup of chamomile tea later I made my way upstairs to my bedroom. It looked identical to the room that I had left behind on Esme Island, the last place that we had lived before the move to rainy Forks.

It was plainly furnished, a queen sized bed stood against one wall with matching dresser, desk and two book shelves that each took up a full wall before meeting in a corner all made from mahogany. The set had belonged to a grandmother of Rosalie's and she felt it suited me far more than it did her.

The walls were cream, the curtains a deep blue that matched the bedspread and pillows. There were snapshots in black and white dotted around on the walls, mostly of my family, the places that we had been that I had loved the most, most of them taken by Emmett who was a shockingly wonderful photographer. There was very little clutter, it was neat and clean, a little pond of tranquility in an otherwise crazy world. It was my space. I took a deep breath grabbing the old pair of sweat pants and oversized T-shirt that I left out on the end of my bed after I had unpacked. I changed quickly, throwing my clothes in the corner that held my laundry basket not caring if I missed. I would pick them up in the morning.

Alice had made sure that everything would make me feel more at home. She had left a week before all of us with Carlisle to get the house ready. In code it meant packing up his room. The infamous him, Carlisle's first son, the reason my parents were dead and I had been thrust into the world of the supernatural. I was sure that while there were certainly going to be old memories that there was physically nothing left of him here. His old room had been turned over for storage purposes and the only reason I even knew it was his was because I had noticed Esme's momentary pause and grief filled sigh that had crossed her lips the first time we had passed it bringing our things upstairs.

I lay down on my bed, pulling my duvet up to my ears and wondered what tomorrow was going to bring.

-BMR-

(JPOV)

I trudged over to the table that Leah had claimed at the edge of the Forks High cafeteria. None of the other students had approached her and who could blame them when she looked so eager to kill anyone that got too close. If the kids at Forks High hadn't been sure what to do when the natives had arrived, I was sure that they would be leaving us the hell alone now. Thank god, I wasn't exactly in the best mood.

While I hadn't seen a Cullen yet, it seemed like their sickly smell had permeated the whole school. I shuddered; while they smelled different than the human drinking vampires with a more old and loamy scent, I still wasn't sure how I was going to react to seeing one of them face to face surrounded by so many vulnerable humans.

One class after lunch and then I could go back to the confines and security of the rez. God I hated Sam Uley and the council so much!

"You haven't seen them yet, have you?" Leah finished her sandwich as I started on mine. I shook my head.

"They weren't in AP Chem." I mumbled through a mouthful of roast beef and cheddar on rye. "I take it you have?"

"You're really not going to like it Jake." Leah nodded before taking a bite out of her apple.

"No shit Sherlock." I already knew I wasn't going to like it; their somewhat diluted smell was already burning my nose and making my body feel like it wouldn't take much to have me explode into a wolf. The look on her face told me that there was much more to it than that. I raised an eyebrow at her and finished my sandwich.

"Sam said there were going to be five attending school right?" I gave her a look that I hope conveyed my desire for her to get to the point.

"Yeah; three females and two males." I shrugged.

"The three females were in AP Bio with me. Thick as thieves and calling themselves sisters, it was weird." I shuddered again and frowned. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her, that much leech so close and in a confined space had to have sucked. "That wasn't the worst of it," she was shaking her head. What could have been worse than that I wasn't sure and I certainly wasn't prepared for the words that came out of her mouth. "One of them is human Jake. A one hundred percent, fragile, living and breathing human girl."

"You're fucking with me." I glared at her, my appetite gone and a ripple that was almost agony running through my muscles from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head. The scent of leech was suddenly almost overwhelming. Leah's eyes narrowed and darkened but she wasn't glaring at me for once, she was glaring past me toward the entrance to the cafeteria. I swore that I could feel the joints in my body grating together as the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I turned; there they were, all five of the Cullens.

The males were polar opposites, one was huge, as tall as I was with short hair so brown it was almost black and built like he spent every spare minute of his life lifting weights. The other was shorter by a couple of inches and was much leaner, his chin length blonde hair was swept haphazardly back from his face, a face that looked pained in comparison with the cocky confidence on the other's. His eyes were a lighter shade of caramel then the rest of his companions, a shocking comparison to the crimson red that I was so used to seeing staring out of a vampire's face.

None of the females looked alike, although the tall blonde could easily have been genetically related to the blonde male, she was statuesque and I hated to admit that she looked more like she belonged on the cover of the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated than in a high school cafeteria. The big male had one arm wrapped around her and was laughing as the smallest member of their group fluttered around them like a butterfly on crack. She was tiny, barely five feet tall with short black hair that shot out in every direction and pixie-like mischief all over her face.

Between her and the largest male walked the last of the females. Her humanity was undoubtable as her face flushed at a comment made by one of her companions. Dark brown hair tumbled down her back in perfectly styled waves to just below her ribcage, she had a heart shaped face and translucently pale skin you could almost see her blood flowing under. She was petite with a figure that was appealing enough on her perfectly proportioned frame which was about a foot shorter than her largest companion. The big one chose that moment to look over her head suddenly and lock eyes with me.

His face darkened as my teeth ground together and nostrils flared. One of his tree trunk sized arms reached out, wrapped around the human girl's shoulders and drew her close to his side. If he had been human I would have thought the gesture was protective, the girl instantly looked up at him a happy smile on her face as he broke eye contact with me to look back at her. The other male had stiffened, his senses now trained on me, his body angled toward Leah and I as they walked to the edge of the cafeteria furthest from us like he was ready to defend the rest of his coven.

"I can't sit in here and watch them with that poor girl." I stood up, fisting my brown paper bag that held the rest of my lunch in one hand. Leah's movement next to me was far more graceful but I could see the tension in her muscles.

"Told you so." She muttered but followed me outside anyway. There was safety in numbers and since there were only two of us, we were stuck with each other.

Fresh air, cold and moist, hit me in the face and I gulped it into my lungs like a drowning man. It was all too much, too fucking much! I felt like I was drowning in bloodsuckers with no escape. It was bad enough when I knew I was protecting the population of Forks High but knowing they had a human girl with them like some sick sort of pet that I couldn't protect made my sandwich do nasty flips in my stomach. I really was going to kill Sam Uley!

"It's like she doesn't realize that her life is in danger." Leah was standing next to me huffing in the same refreshing and mind clearing breaths that I was. "Did you see her all cuddled up to that big one?"

"Yeah, Leah," I ground out. It was a wonder I had any teeth left in my jaw. "I saw."

"Well try sitting in a class room with that going on in the row in front of you." She slid down the wall, letting her head fall back so it was resting against the side of the building, her eyes closed making her look relaxed even though I knew she was fighting her wolf as hard as I was and had been at it a whole lot longer too.

I looked down at her. She had been a beauty before her transformation and now looked like she should have been a sports model in her own right. She had deeply tanned russet skin stretched over well-defined muscles on a six foot tall frame, her black hair had been cut in a diagonal bob that started at her chin and sloped upward but she looked older. Her dark eyes holding a bitter contempt that made her seem like she had already seen a hundred years of heartache and sorrow instead of eighteen.

She had to be exhausted. I couldn't help but wonder if Sam was trying to kill her. The imprint thing had been awkward especially with two tortured individuals in your head, one guilt ridden and the other deeply bitter but Sam seemed to encourage rather than discourage her destructive behaviors. She was usually the least of us, with exception of Paul who never seemed to have himself under control, to be able to hold and control her temper and he had put her right in the middle of the lion's den. I wondered if he wanted her to self-destruct allowing us to hunt the Cullens mercilessly and putting both of them out of their misery.

"This day sucks." I grumbled.

"And we've only got another one hundred and seventy-nine to go." She chuckled her reply, her whole tone caustic. "Fuck Sam Uley."

"Only one of us has done that." I quipped at her, ruffling her short hair as she snarled at me halfheartedly. I wondered how much we had all underestimated Leah Clearwater and if she didn't like it exactly that way.

"He wasn't even that good." She muttered under her breath and I snorted. Unfortunately I had seen in her head and I knew she only half meant it.

"What's her name?" I asked after a few minutes of silence.

"What? Want to torture yourself with the knowledge that you can't do anything to save her?" There was an edge to Leah's voice. It was no secret that every human we hadn't managed to save from the vampires we hunted had become a weight on my heart and a black mark on my soul. I carried them with me, the image of a vacant face and a name that would never be used again.

"Leah, her name." I snapped. I was the Beta of my pack; I wasn't used to being questioned or ignored by anyone beside my Alpha and I would have an answer from her.

"Isabella Swan." She mumbled. My eyes snapped down to look at her again. I had the sudden image of the photo of my dad and his best friend that sat on the mantel at home rush to the forefront of my mind. "Yeah, I wondered too." She nodded, eyes still closed but I knew she could sense the intensity of my gaze and the question at the tip of my tongue. Her dad had been close with Charlie Swan too, they had all grown up together the same way that I had with most of the Pack.

"You think vampires killed Charlie and Renee Swan?" I frowned.

"Dad always said that it was a car crash when they were visiting Renee's parents. I don't remember what their kid was called, only that it had been adopted well before anyone here knew what had happened in Maine." She responded. "Last name is probably a coincidence."

"Yeah, maybe." I nodded my agreement but the problem was, I didn't believe in coincidences.

The bell signaling the end of lunch rang. My reprieve was over; it was time to go back to vampire hell. Just an hour and a half of AP English and I would be able to escape back into an afternoon and evening of the dull routine of patrol and sleep. Sam would need to know about the Swan girl being with the Cullens and then the weight of the decision making could leave my shoulders.

"Good luck." Leah breathed, pushing off the wall and getting back to her feet.

"You too." I mumbled knowing deep down that there was no way my previous luck would hold.

I was right. The pixie and the human girl were in my AP English class as I made my way to the back and sank down in my chair as far as my six foot five inch frame would allow. The pixie looked over her shoulder and wrinkled her nose at me like she smelled something bad. I glared at her; it wasn't exactly like she smelled like a bed of roses either. She turned back to the girl with her and said something too quietly for me to hear. The girl tossed her heavy dark locks over her shoulder and laughed a pleasant sound like bells ringing as her scent filled of vanilla and strawberries with just an undercurrent of vampire washed over me.

I gritted my teeth as my heart sank in my chest a little more. She lived with vampires, she had to know what they were but did she understand how much danger that her life was in? Did she want to be like them? Didn't she know there were other options, other ways to live her life?

I tried to ignore the crawling feeling under my skin and focus on the text that was being passed through the class. I looked down at the text that I had been passed to find Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen on the table, my groan joined that of most of the other males in the class. All I could remember of the book was the stupid movie with the stupid costumes and the antiquated way of speaking that my twin sisters had forced on me as a child.

"I know, I know." Miss O'Hare stood up from where she was leaning on her desk and tucked a piece of her short brown hair behind one ear. "What, if anything, can a modern day teenage boy learn from a romance novelist who died nearly two hundred years ago? I promise that you will all be surprised! We will spend the next couple of months working through Austen's completed novels, starting with Sense and Sensibility and finishing with Persuasion. Without further discussion, let's begin." If it was possible I sank down deeper in my seat and resigned myself to my fate as Miss O'Hare, unaware of the danger to her classroom, began to speak about characters, themes and style.

I didn't think my life could possibly get any worse or more complicated until Isabella Swan turned her head, large almond shaped chocolate brown eyes locking with mine. My stomach flip-flopped, my heart tried to pound its way out of my chest and the whole world spun until I was lost and she was the center of everything that I was. In the same moment that I realized that life without her in it would be an impossible task my mind quickly reminded me that she was living a life with vampires.

I could feel the control that I had been holding onto by the skin of my teeth start to slip. I was up and out of my seat, across the room and out of the door as fast as possible, leaving a wake of commotion in my path. Less than a minute later I had burst outside, jogged into the forest and burst out of my skin, destroying a perfectly good set of clothes as I began to lose my mind.