Well, it looks like I've managed to finish another chapter sooner than expected, so let's call it a slightly belated Valentine's Day gift to all you wonderful people who read, followed, favorited, or reviewed the first one. Thank you, all of you; it's always a little nerve-wracking, publishing a brand new story and not knowing if anyone will like it, so I'm very grateful for your encouragement in this early stage.

With Bella's condition somewhat stabilized, a short debate over what to do next ensued, but in the end, there was really nothing to decide; although she might be out of immediate danger, she still needed more care than Carlisle could provide with the tools he had on hand, so the only option was to take her to the nearest emergency room and hope the doctors wouldn't notice that she wasn't human.

She was immediately whisked away upon arrival, and none of them were allowed to stay with her while the small army of medical personnel that had converged on her did their work, leaving them to discuss the situation in hushed voices out in the waiting room.

"I can't believe I misinterpreted my visions so badly," Alice muttered, running a hand through her short hair so that it stuck up at crazy angles. "I mean, I knew from the moment I first laid eyes on Bella that she wasn't destined to live a normal human life, and when she and Edward got together, I just assumed she would become one of us, but I should've known better. Who ever heard of a blue-eyed vampire?"

Sensing her chagrin at what seemed in hindsight to be a painfully obvious error, Jasper tried to lift her spirits both psychically and with words of comfort. "Don't get down on yourself; you're still the best prognosticator I've ever met."

Alice raised an eyebrow at him. "How many have you met?"

Tactfully avoiding the question, Jasper went on, "Anyway, it's like Carlisle said – there's no way we could've known until now, especially not when her father's human…" His voice trailed off as a troubling realization hit him. "That can't happen, though, can it?" he said slowly. "If Bella is fae…then Charlie Swan can't be her father."

"I'm afraid not," Carlisle affirmed, his face falling into a grim expression. "Talk at the hospital was that Chief Swan's marriage ended because his wife disliked living in Forks, but maybe that wasn't the only reason, or even the primary one."

"If infidelity was a factor, Bella didn't know about it," Edward said absently, still staring fixedly at the door that stood between them, clenching his fists as he fought the urge to rip down the flimsy barrier and run to her side. "She was thoroughly convinced that her mother truly did despise Forks."

"If Bella's mom is fae, how could she have been married to a human anyway?" Alice wondered. "Isn't that illegal?"

"Maybe that's why they lived in Forks," Jasper suggested as Carlisle answered her query with a nod. "Aside from the weather, the fact that there are no other fae any closer than Seattle is why we live there, after all. Except those wolf-shifters down at the Quileute reservation," he corrected himself, "but they don't seem to want any more to do with fae society at large than we do, and they've intermingled with the tribe's humans pretty extensively themselves, so they probably wouldn't report another fae doing the same."

Emmett nodded in agreement. "Yeah, they might not like us 'cause of that whole 'vamp versus wolf' thing, but at least they're not caught up in politics like those pureblooded snobs that look down their noses at us just because we used to be human."

"That must be it, then." Alice clapped her hands together, satisfied that they had solved the mystery. "Bella's mom ran off with Charlie, then decided small town life with a human husband wasn't all it was cracked up to be." Then her face fell into a pout. "That still doesn't explain why Bella didn't tell us what she really is, or why she seemed to think Charlie's her real father."

"I'm not sure she knows," Edward said, his voice sharpening a little as he turned away from the door to the emergency room at last. He didn't appreciate the insinuation that Bella had deceived him, deceived all of them, even though it seemed to be the only plausible explanation. "When I told her the truth about what we are and about the fae in general, she acted like she'd never heard any of it before – and trust me, she's not a very good actress."

"I never sensed that she had a deceptive nature when I was around her," Jasper said with a thoughtful nod. Then he shook his head, dismissing what his empathic gift had told him. "But maybe she's just a better liar than the others I've met, because no fae would bring up their child without telling them what they are and preparing them for when their powers develop. She had to have known."

###

Then Renée Dwyer arrived the following day, and promptly blew their theory out of the water. The woman calling herself Bella's mother was as human as her ex-husband, which of course meant…

"Neither of Bella's parents are actually her parents?!" Alice burst out after Renée disappeared into the hospital room where Bella still lay unconscious, having barely managed to hold her tongue while the woman thanked them for looking after her daughter. "This is insane!" Then she whirled around and smacked Jasper lightly on the chest. "Guess this means I was right about Bella not being a pathological liar, though."

"Yes, you were right, as always. I'm sorry for doubting you."

Edward shared her feeling of vindication, because no matter how damning the evidence appeared to be, deep down he had never believed that Bella was capable of such dishonesty, that the girl he fell in love with was merely a persona adopted by a mischievous or perhaps even malicious fae who wanted to toy with him, as Jasper had thought once or twice (though he was smart enough not to say it out loud, and to banish the thought as soon as it crossed his mind).

Mostly, though, he was baffled; they all were, because a fae being raised by humans who clearly did not have the slightest inkling of her true nature was simply unheard of. None of them could figure out how such a thing could have been allowed to happen, though with a little eavesdropping – using both his ears and his telepathy while pretending to sleep in a chair by Bella's bedside – Edward soon unraveled at least a part of the mystery.

"Let me get this straight," Emmett said when he had finished relating what he'd learned. "Charlie and Renée were going to have a kid of their own, but it was stillborn…and while she's recovering in the hospital, a stranger shows up out of the blue and offers them a replacement baby? And they went for it just like that?" He shook his head in disbelief. "Did they never see The Omen? Just kidding!" he added hastily when Edward growled softly at him, clearly not finding his joke very funny.

Fortunately, everyone else's reactions were more serious. "We all know there are fae with the ability to influence the minds and emotions of others," Carlisle said thoughtfully. "Charlie and Renée may not have had much choice in taking Bella in, though they've obviously come to love her as their own."

"They do," Jasper agreed; in the short moment Renée had spent with them before going to see Bella, he hadn't even needed his empathic talent to sense how much she loved the girl she had raised as her daughter. "The question is, who would influence a couple of humans into taking an infant fae? Our world has easier, better ways to get rid of an unwanted child than that."

"Maybe they couldn't go to the authorities for some reason," Alice speculated. "Maybe they were desperate, and this seemed like the best option."

The discussion continued, but Edward's attention drifted away, back to the room where Bella slept on, blissfully unaware that everything she thought she knew about herself was a lie. He knew he should be interested in her true origins and how she had ended up among humans, yet all he could think about was how he would have to tell her the truth when she awoke. She deserved to know, needed to know…no matter how devastating it would be or how much he would hate himself for being the one to shatter her world.

###

Knowing what he had to do, Edward found himself caught in a weird emotional limbo, eagerly awaiting the moment when Bella would regain consciousness yet simultaneously dreading it (somehow, Emmett's attempts to lighten his mood by joking that the next time he ran his fingers through Bella's hair, he should check for a 666 marking on her scalp weren't terribly helpful). Of course, his mixed feelings did nothing to delay the inevitable. Three days after she was admitted to the hospital, she woke up precisely when Alice said she would (Edward made a note to tell her later, knowing his sister would be pleased to know that at least one of her predictions regarding Bella had been right on the money).

Her eyelids fluttered a time or two before she actually managed to peel them open, and he held his breath the whole time – which felt like an eternity but actually amounted to only ten minutes – until she finally succeeded and he was gazing into her eyes…her warm brown eyes.

A wave of relief washed over him, so overwhelming it was almost dizzying, and it was only then that he realized he didn't know what he would have done if they had been blue. Then she blinked, bringing his face into focus, and hers lit up like it always did when she saw him, brilliant as a sunburst, banishing every last shadow of doubt that had crept into the corners of his mind. Whatever else she might be, she was still his Bella.

As they talked, it became clear that she didn't remember much of what transpired in the studio, nor did she understand the significance of what little she did recall. Even though he knew it was cowardly of him, Edward postponed the painful revelation by lingering over every other topic he could think of, even the exquisite pleasure of tasting her blood at last as he sucked out James' venom and the excruciating agony of forcing himself to stop – even worse, the terror of not being able to stop, of thinking he himself would be the one to end her life by draining her dry…

"I suppose it helped that I didn't actually swallow any of your blood, though," he added offhandedly, almost as an afterthought.

Bella's eyebrows shot up. "You spat it out?" Incredibly, she almost seemed to take that as an insult.

"Well, yes." Edward frowned at the realization that he had inadvertently stepped on a landmine. "I wanted to stay with you after we brought you here, so I couldn't very well be walking around with red eyes, could I?"

Of course, that was only half the reason. While fae blood was generally safe for consumption, there could be side effects depending on the species of the fae in question, which made drinking from someone of an unknown breed stupidly risky. Bella may have been exactly his brand of heroin, he thought wryly, recalling the analogy he had used to explain why her blood was so much harder for him to resist than everyone else's, but that heroin just might be laced with a lethal dose of fentanyl.

With that thought, the elephant in the room, which he had almost managed to forget for a few wonderful minutes, shoved its way back to the forefront of his mind, and he knew he couldn't avoid it much longer.

"No, we couldn't have that," Bella agreed. "I'm glad you're here." She smiled at him, but it didn't quite reach her eyes, which were suddenly troubled. "So now that you've told me how you stopped… Now I want to know why."

"Why?" he repeated in a last-ditch effort at stalling.

"Why you did it," she clarified. "Why didn't you just let the venom spread? By now I would be just like you."

And there it was: the moment of truth. Edward inhaled sharply, his eyes closing almost of their own accord, as if to brace for an incoming blow, before he opened them once more and forced himself to look at her. If he was going to destroy her life, the least he could do was look her in the eyes while he did it. "No, Bella," he said softly, "you wouldn't."

She frowned at him, not understanding. "What do you mean? Alice told me how it works-"

"Most of the time," Edward interrupted. "Not everyone can be changed."

"Why not?" It would be just her rotten luck, she thought with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that if there were people who were somehow immune to vampirism, who were doomed to be stuck as frail, weak humans, she would be one of them.

Instead of answering, he asked a question of his own. "Do you remember when I took you to the meadow, and you asked all those questions about us – the origins of my family, and our kind in general? And I told you that we aren't the only supernatural species in the world, or even the only breed of vampire."

"Right – you said there are all kinds of creatures out there," she recalled, her frown deepening as she wondered where he was going with this. "They're called fae, right? So what about them?"

"Fae DNA is incompatible with ours. If we bite one of them, they won't become like us; the venom merely aggravates their system until either their immune system purges it or… Sometimes, if they suffer an especially severe reaction, anaphylactic shock or heart attacks have been known to occur."

"That's awful…but what does it have to do with me?"

Edward drew in a deep breath, and she sensed that the simmering tension she'd detected in him from the very beginning of their conversation, much as he'd tried to hide it, was reaching the breaking point. "Bella…when James bit you…your response went beyond the typical agonized thrashing. You had a seizure, and your pulse became so erratic that Carlisle was afraid your heart would fail."

He watched her face intently, his golden eyes boring into her as he waited on a knife's edge for her to realize what he was getting at, but she just stared blankly at him. Later, she would blame her sluggish thought processes on her recent head trauma and the medication coursing through her bloodstream, but even if her mind had been perfectly clear, what he was suggesting was so outlandish, so fantastical, so utterly absurd that she would probably have been just as slow in reaching the conclusion he was trying to lead her to. After a moment of peering into his eyes, though, trying to read in them what he couldn't bring himself to say out loud, the pieces slowly slid into place.

"Wait. Are you saying I can't become a vampire because you think I'm already… That I'm one of these…these fae?"

Edward didn't answer, but the look in his eyes confirmed it.

She gaped at him in open-mouthed astonishment for a second, then scoffed. "That's ridiculous. There's nothing remotely supernatural about me."

"That's because you haven't turned eighteen yet," he replied matter-of-factly. "That's the age when fae typically manifest their powers for the first time, but your body's reaction to James' venom caused that side of you to awaken ahead of schedule."

She blinked, taken aback at his insistence on continuing to push this ludicrous theory. "Okay, so my body overreacted a little – so what? I've always been a wimp about pain-"

"Your eyes turned blue."

"What? My eyes changed color?" She immediately looked around for something with which to verify this, but there were no mirrors or other reflective surfaces nearby.

"They're back to brown now," Edward assured her, causing her to stop scanning the room and refocus her attention on him. "Pureblooded fae are better at disguising themselves than my kind are; they only show their true nature when provoked, or when they use their powers, usually through their eyes changing color or some alteration to their facial features. The rest of the time, they look just like everyone else. It's another reason they don't much like us, in addition to our human origins; with our unusual eye colors whose shifting is outside our control and our cold, hard skin, not to mention the way it reacts to sunlight, we don't blend in as well, so the risk of exposure is greater."

"You definitely stand out in a crowd," Bella agreed, though it was their inhuman beauty that marked them as different in her view, not their eyes or the temperature or texture of their skin. For once, however, she refused to get sidetracked with contemplating their perfection. "Just because fae can pass for human doesn't mean I'm one of them, though. I can't be – Charlie and Renée would have told me if we were some kind of mythical creatures, and I'm pretty sure I would've noticed if my parents had magical powers."

"You didn't because they don't," he informed her, his voice growing quieter as if to soften the impact of his blunt words. "Charlie Swan and Renée Dwyer are human."

Rather than clearing things up, this piece of information only served to confuse her more. She gave her head a slight shake – as much as she could without making it hurt – and tried to make sense of what he was telling her. "But if my parents are human, how can I be something else? Am I like the Muggleborns in Harry Potter or something? That has to be a pretty rare genetic fluke…right?"

Something shifted in Edward's face then; something disturbingly close to pity crept into his eyes, and she didn't like it one bit. "There are no Muggleborn fae, Bella," he said gently. "Fae offspring are only produced by two fae parents."

Stunned into speechlessness once more, it took her several minutes to find her voice again. Even then, she could only put together a few disjointed sentence fragments. "But then- That would- What are you-? Are you saying…?"

He nodded, his expression now one of profound sadness. "I'm sorry, Bella; I wish I could tell you something different, but there's no getting around the facts. Charlie and Renée can't be your parents."

"No!" The monitors around her bed erupted in a chorus of alarms as her heart rate and blood pressure spiked and she tried to sit up, her pain seemingly forgotten. "You're wrong!"

The door banged open and a male nurse rushed in, brandishing a syringe full of sedative, but before he could inject it into her IV-line, Bella's hand lashed out like a striking cobra and seized his arm.

"What the…?" His eyes widened when he found himself unable to break free of the petite, battered girl's grasp. "Ow, that hurts! Let go!"

"I don't want more drugs," Bella informed him in the same tone she had used back in the dance studio, though this time there was no undercurrent of seduction in her voice; now she just sounded furious. "I want my mother!"

Then she abruptly released him; since he was already pulling against her, the sudden cessation of resistance sent him reeling across the room. Unable to halt his momentum in time, he crashed into the wall.

Drawn by all the noise, a doctor came in – followed closely by a worried-looking Renée.

"Mom!" Bella cried, ignoring the man in the white coat. "Thank goodness you're here. Edward's got this crazy idea in his head that I'm adopted or something-"

"You shouldn't overexert yourself right now," the doctor interrupted as he bustled over to her bedside. "If you'll just lie back-"

"Not until this is straightened out," she snapped before looking back at Renée, impatient now. "Mom, tell them this is all a huge mistake, tell them you're my mother… Mom?"

Renée had burst into tears, one hand pressed over her mouth to muffle a sob, which struck Bella as a wholly inappropriate reaction. She had expected an instantaneous, vehement denial, for her mother to demand to know who had told such an outrageous lie and give them a piece of her mind, or to hug her and assure her that of course it was all a mistake, there was no way anyone else could possibly have given birth to her – she had expected her to do anything other than stand there frozen, looking horrified and…guilty?

"Mom, what's wrong?"

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Renée whispered, and as she pulled her hand away from her mouth Bella saw her lips tremble. "I didn't want you to find out like this…"

"Find out what? What Edward said – it can't be right. It just can't…"

"Your adoption was noted in your medical records," the doctor said briskly, still more worried about her aggravating her injuries than her emotional state. "Now if you'll just lie back…"

He placed a hand on her shoulder, intending to apply some gentle pressure to encourage her to do so, which turned out to be a grievous error – as he learned when she grabbed his tie and yanked, pulling him down so sharply that his nose nearly smashed into hers. "You're lying!"

Anticipating what was about to happen, Edward took her face in his hands and turned her head toward him, leaning in close in an attempt both to focus her attention on him and to block everyone else's view as her eyes turned blue again. "Bella, I know this is a lot to take in, I know it's hard, but you need to control yourself," he told her, speaking quickly yet doing his best to keep his tone low and soothing. "Please, you need to calm down before you hurt yourself – or someone else."

She made a soft noise deep in her throat that was disturbingly close to a growl and strained against his grip, her eyes darting back in the doctor's direction, but he held her fast. Luckily, the doctor wasn't paying attention to them; he was too busy trying fruitlessly to pry her fingers off his tie while shouting at the nurse, "Damn it, Jesse, get that sedative into her already!"

"I did," the nurse replied in a tone of bewilderment, holding up the empty syringe. "I don't know why it's not working!"

"Give her more, then!"

Jesse injected another half-dose into the line, and after a moment, it seemed to take effect; Bella blinked, her angry expression wavering, and the unearthly glow slowly left her eyes. She resisted for a few more seconds, her eyelids fluttering rapidly as she fought to keep them open, but at last they closed, her body going limp as suddenly as a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Edward caught her by the shoulders as she sagged and gently lowered her onto the bed, placing her head carefully on the pillow and making sure none of the tubes attached to her had gotten tangled. By the time he finished arranging her limbs and tucking the covers around her, she was the very image of serenity – almost like Sleeping Beauty, albeit with a lot more medical equipment – yet something told him it would be a very different story when she woke up again.

###

The doctor and nurse left as soon as they were satisfied that Bella hadn't hurt herself; only when they were out of earshot of Renée and Edward (or so they thought) did they begin quietly discussing the strange things they had just experienced.

"I don't get it – the first dose I gave her should've put a girl that size out like a light. An extra half-dose should be enough to knock out an elephant, but for a minute there I wasn't sure it would even slow her down… And when she grabbed my arm, it felt like it was caught in a bear trap! How was she able to sit up and grip like that with as much pain as she's gotta be in?"

"She was obviously distraught over learning she was adopted," the doctor murmured, still occupied with fixing his tie. "Adrenaline can be very powerful…"

They were so absorbed in their covert conversation that they walked right past Carlisle, Alice, Jasper, and even Emmett without noticing them, though that might have been partly due to the unobtrusive aura Jasper was projecting. He was so good at making passersby think it was perfectly natural for them to be there that no one had objected to them lurking in the hall for over an hour, ever since Alice had announced that Bella's awakening was imminent, which had allowed them to hear every bit of the ensuing commotion. Now that it was over, they withdrew to the visitors' lobby to wait for Edward; he wouldn't want to leave Bella, of course, but Alice said Renée would insist on being alone with her for a while, and anyway, he couldn't ignore the necessity of talking over what had happened.

Emmett, however, couldn't keep his thoughts to himself until his brother arrived. "Well," he remarked in an uncharacteristically somber tone that nonetheless retained the barest hint of wry humor, "I guess it's safe to say she didn't take the news well."

"You have a remarkable gift for understatements," Alice returned, her voice even dryer. "Of course she wouldn't; I didn't even need to look into the future to see that. …I wouldn't have thought she'd react so violently, though."

"It's extremely fortunate that she didn't hurt anyone," Jasper said gravely, "although it sounds like she came dangerously close to exposing herself. That's a risk we can't take."

"It won't happen again," Alice assured him, "at least not in this hospital. Her doctor's decided to keep her sedated for the time being."

"That's something, but what about when she gets out? We need to know what we're dealing with. Carlisle, is there any way you can identify what species of fae she is?"

"I can take blood and tissue samples and try to isolate the unique biomarkers, but without anything to compare it with…" The doctor let his voice trail off helplessly. There was nothing more to say anyway; even if there was a database containing genetic material from every species known to fae-kind, and it could be accessed from the relatively small enclave in Seattle – which was still the largest fae community within a few hundred miles of Forks – none of them particularly wanted to think about what he would have to do to get a look at it, the favors he would owe…or what the local Light Fae leader, the Rowan, might make of such a request. She was a keenly ambitious woman, eager to climb the political ladder, and if she thought she could advance her own interests by passing the information on… Well, that would draw attention to Bella, and the entire Cullen family, that they definitely did not want.

Jasper wasn't quite ready to give up, though. After a moment passed in grim silence, as they pondered the implications of having an unidentified fae on their hands, one whose origins someone had broken several laws in order to hide, he spoke up again. "Okay, approaching the authorities at this point is obviously a nonstarter, but there are subtler ways of making inquiries…less official channels I can go through."

"Are you thinking of reaching out to that lawyer you occasionally do business with, Mr. Jenks?" Though he did his best to mask it, there was a barely detectable flat note in Carlisle's voice, almost bordering on distaste.

"I know some of his clients are on the shady side," Jasper acknowledged, "and the forgeries he's done for us when we've needed to update our identities probably aren't the only, or even the most, questionably legal activities he's involved in, but you can't deny that he's useful, and very good at what he does."

Somehow, the man was able to keep his ear to the ground of the fae world without getting in so deep as to warrant being claimed or killed, and the fact that he had successfully maintained this delicate balancing act for years was quite an impressive feat. It was too bad, Jasper reflected, that he had to scare the living daylights out of J every time they met in order to ensure his loyalty, since he actually liked the guy.

"If anyone can help us find some answers without tipping off the elders, I bet he can."

Now that you've had a chance to read the actual chapter and might be more inclined toward patience with my rambling, there are a couple of things I wanted to say about this story: first, as you can see, the genre labels are 'family/romance'. I picked those because this fic will focus primarily on the familial and romantic relationships between characters, and not just the sisterly bond between Bella and Bo. This means it probably won't be the most action-packed thing I've ever written, so I hope that won't be a deal-breaker. Blood Sisters will be the first installment in a trilogy, though (you can find more info on upcoming projects and sequels to existing ones on my profile), and the sequels will take a more dramatic turn.

On a more immediate note, the ETA for chapter 3 is sometime in March, most likely the second half of the month. My writing schedule has been a little wacky lately, but I usually manage to provide monthly updates for both of my ongoing stories.