"Buongiorno, io... mi sono fatto male al polso. Puoi dargli un'occhiata?" "Good morning, I ... I hurt my wrist. Can you take a look at it?"

Carlisle could remember the pair of brown eyes peering into his clinic shyly. Striking eyes owned by a young woman holding her wrist with a pained expression. He remembered as though it was yesterday. He stared at her for a moment before rushing to usher her inside.

That day was incredibly cold. He had just settled in Perugia, having left Volterra after staying with the Volturi coven for decades. He befriended the town's mayor upon arriving — one of the things Aro liked to tease about him was his gift for making friends — and the mayor, extremely charmed by Carlisle's manners, promised to send out a good word for him around town.

He hadn't planned to stay long in Perugia. But when he met Isabella Swan, daughter of an Englishman Charles Swan, Carlisle decided to stay for a little while. He became a friend — her only friend — and listened to her dreams tirelessly. She was a frequent patient in his clinic due to her propensity to put herself in minor accidents.

Carlisle knew she did not remember what truly happened the night she almost died. But he could remember the burning orange of the fire in their small estate. The bodies that burned along with it. They found her in the rubble, barely alive with a large portion of her body unrecognizable. But Bella's scent was unmistakable.

He took her away soon after, knowing she would not survive long.

Guilt twisted in his heart at the thought of dooming her into this life. But Carlisle wanted her to live. Wanted to see her smile again. Needed to see if the pull attracting him to Isabella Swan was a mate's instinct. He whisked her away to Castiglione del Lago and waited for her transformation. He waited and watched as her charred skin heal, little by little resembling the girl he knew.

And with baited breath, Carlisle witnessed her open her eyes the first time. Gone were the brown eyes he had been so fond of.

Gone also was the pull he thought existed.

Though dismayed, Carlisle was happy she was alive. He comforted her through her grief and guided her through her newborn stages. Bella became his companion in this eternal life.

"A shield. A very strong mental shield, I believe." Eleazar nodded to them as he stepped back. "If she is trained, she can be a very powerful vampire."

"Really?" Bella's eyes lit up, her golden eyes flicking Carlisle in both curiosity and excitement. "How shall it serve me?"

"You can have the ability to block projections or telepathic communications. You can be, in theory, impenetrable." Eleazar looked thoughtful.

"That sounds ... ominous." Carlisle replied, smiling unsurely at Bella who smiled at him. "Who can teach her?"

"Who is impenetrable?" Their heads whipped to see Kate dragging a chopped off pine tree to decorate their house. Christmas in Slovakia with the Denalis was always a merry one. Carlisle had taken Bella all the way to central Europe to have her meet the Denali coven.

"Merely in theory." Eleazar corrected.

Kate smiled, lifting her chin as she wiggled her fingers to Bella's direction. "Shall we see?"

Carlisle winced. "I do not think that's a good idea."

"Carlisle," Bella chided. "If I'm truly a shield, she won't hurt me."

The blonde vampire only smiled wider as Bella approached her. She touched Bella's hand though seconds later, she backed away, impressed and looking slightly irked.

"She's a shield." Kate confirmed. "I haven't met one before."

Carlisle blew a breath and he heard Bella laugh as she returned to stand beside him. He had once been subjected to Kate's gift and he shuddered to think if it.

"The Volturi has been coveting one for centuries." Eleazar cut in. "They might try to recruit your mate, Carlisle."

He had marveled at the fact that Bella could look like she was blushing without her cheeks pinking.

"We are not mates." Carlisle shook his head, not wanting to make Bella uncomfortable. "Besides, we are not planning to make a detour back to Italy so soon."

"I can teach you to magnify your shield." Kate offered. "Though I am by no means an expert, I am a psychic myself."

"Thank you." Bella squeezed his hand, nodding softly to the blonde woman. Kate gave him an arched smile as she led Bella inside the house.

Carlisle spent the last hundred years with Bella, traveling around Europe like she dreamed and eventually sailing to the New World. She gradually mastered her gift, crafting a mental bubble around the two of them whenever they traveled to remain undetectable to their kind.

He was proud of her. For staying with him and adopting his unusual diet despite damning her into such an existence.

She was his dearest friend. The only one who stuck with him. Being with her had removed his thoughts of his fated mate. He knew in time he would meet her but he was, for now, content with the life he made with Bella. The pining he felt for my missing mate grew faint when he was with her.

"Bella, he is a boy. No older than eighteen. I have doomed you to this life. Do you think I can handle another?" Carlisle fell into her embrace, his angelic face contorted in anguish.

He had pulled her into a broom closet into the hospital as she was on her way to check on a busy ward. The influenza epidemic had crowded the Chicago hospital to the brim.

"What makes this boy so different from the others?" Bella asked softly. She had never seen him so stricken before.

"His mother ... she succumbed to death hours ago but she implored me to do everything to do what others cannot do." He looked into her eyes pleadingly. "It was as though she knew what I was."

"She asked you to save her son?"

Carlisle sighed raggedly. "Save? It isn't an act of saving. After all, I've damned you into this life. What's another soul to be Damned?"

Bella glared furiously at him. "Haven't we talked about this before? You didn't damn me. You are not Damned. Change this boy, if you must. If you feel it's the right thing to do. You have never been wrong about these things, Carlisle."

"Oh, Bella." He shook his head. "I am not infallible."

"No, certainly not." She rolled her eyes. "But you have always done the right thing, even if I have countlessly doubted them."

"We will be three." His smile was small and reluctant. "We would have to teach him through it all. I hope he does not resent me."

"He will adore you, Carlisle." Bella said firmly. "Just as I do."

That strengthened his resolve. In a matter of days, Edward Masen joined their coven. The seventeen-year-old melancholic boy who filled his and Bella's home notes of the pianoforte that's been collecting dust since they moved to Chicago.

Edward had been much harder to guide. Carlisle felt helpless as the boy's control was unpredictable. Their diet was unsuitable to him. It was much different from Bella's newborn phase. She was much calmer and restrained — her movements were calculated. It was a marveling realization that her control was associated with her mental shield.

He had no trouble with her.

But Edward,... he was a different story. While he was willing to learn, he was volatile at best.

And his gift of reading minds did not help. His mood every so often was brooding and scattered. Bella's projected mental shield was a great help to rid him off the loud thoughts he was constantly plagued with.

They moved to Columbus, Ohio three years later where he was reunited with Esme Evenson. He remembered the sixteen-year-old he treated. She had fallen of a tree and broken her leg.

Carlisle knew the girl formed a crush on him. He and Bella moved shortly after and he never saw her again. Until ten years later, he was called into the ER to tend to a dying woman. She had broken limbs, her skull was cracked. He could not treat her. Not medically.

Edward read his conflict. His longing. The loneliness he buried and urged him to turn her on her deathbed.

And so he did.

"She's who you've been waiting for?" Isabella asked, looking down at the woman who writhed in agony in her transformation.

Carlisle could only nod.

"I wished we could have met in different circumstances."

"What's important," His best friend smiled shakily. "is that she's here. You ... you shall never feel alone again. She shall complete you." She squeezed his hand and walked away,

Edward watched them by the door quietly. He took Bella's hand and Carlisle caught his whisper, "I'm sorry." Their hushed voices were drowned out by Esme's whimpers.

In a moment, Carlisle found himself alone.

Esme was easy to love. He helped her through her trauma, held her hand as he assured her she was worth everything. Carlisle fell in love with her gentleness, her laugh, her beauty. His father would have been proud that he found such a woman.

And yet Bella's growing distance perturbed him. She was not aloof, per se. She never was but her smile now was more restrained. The light in her eyes had dimmed. Carlisle thought it was because she longed for her mate, too, now that he'd gotten his.

He never asked why and it had been his failing.

"Will you not stop her?"

Carlisle regarded Edward solemnly. "I always knew she'd leave, Edward."

"With that nomad? He's not like us. Where will she live? He will influence Bella with his human diet in no time." Edward asked angrily.

He looked at the trees where Bella left, remembering her beautiful face twisted in sadness. Carlisle had sworn to always make her smile.

"You think Bella is so fickle?" He asked passively. "If anything, Bella will influence Garrett."

Edward looked at him, his golden eyes flashing. "She has been with you for so long."

"Indeed she has." Carlisle clenched his fist inside his trousers' pocket. "She is my best friend, my companion since 1815. She's the best thing to ever happen to me, Edward. Do not act like she means little to me."

Edward looked away and asked quietly, "Was that man her Mate?"

"Garrett?" It had never crossed his mind. The thought caused him to falter but her leaving with his friend had solidified it. His dearest Isabella ... with Garrett."No, he can't be. Bella would tell me."

The vampire teenager looked derisively at him for a moment. "When was the last time did she share her secrets with you? The last time you asked her how her day went?"

Carlisle suddenly get the world get narrower. He couldn't remember the last time Bella happily told him about her work. She always dropped a kiss on his cheek when she came home with a skip in her step, rambling about the school and the children she taught. Bella would squeeze herself on the arm of his chair, picking at the strands of his blond hair as she listened about his work in the hospital.

They had been so close.

What happened?

Edward answered for him, ever so protective of Bella. "You have been ignoring her, Carlisle. She means everything to you. That's an understatement. She only has you." He paused. "Though, I suppose not anymore. Your friend will make sure of that."

"What do you want me to do, Edward?" Carlisle asked in frustration. "Though I find it hard to grasp, it is Bella's choice. Should she want to return, she will always be welcomed."

He scoffed. "Has it never crossed your mind she went away because she loves you?" The boy glowered at him. "And not simply because she's your friend, but because she's in love with you?"

Carlisle looked away.

"You can't read her mind. How can you know that?"

Edward raised a brow. "Oh, she never told you she can disable her mental shield? She's opened her mind to me a few times. Her mind is wonderful, Carlisle. She sees the world in a rose-colored view because it's full of Carlisle Cullen."

Carlisle clutched his chest, the spot above his undead heart.

"She ... she never told me."

"She never would have told you." Edward's voice softened. "You longed for a mate and she was not yours. What good would come out of it eventually? You found Esme and where would Bella have fit?"

Carlisle didn't answer, only staring outside the window.

"She'd come back someday, Carlisle."

"I do not think I can wait that long, Edward."


"It's still something to get used to." Garrett spat distastefully, wiping his mouth off their lunch. Bella buried the deer she hunted under the forest soil and inhaled a lungful of air as she took in their surroundings.

"You don't have to join me hunt." Bella huffed.

He rolled his neck, his eyes a burning shade of amber after weeks of his new diet. "I have often thought of trying your lifestyle. I still find it strange that you and Carlisle deny your very nature but," he shrugged. "I'm slowly understanding why."

"Not missing your Englishmen?"

Garrett smirked. "Not you?"

Bella made a strangled sound.

"May I ask something?" He paused, looking very serious. "I fear it may offend your sensibilities."

"You may." Bella nodded.

"Did Carlisle never lay with you?"

Bella got up, ears ringing. "I beg your pardon, Garrett?"

"He never ...?" Garrett trailed off.

Bella had been cold for a long time but she felt phantom warmth suffusing her cheeks at Garrett's words. Carlisle ... laying with her? Her teeth dug into her lip as her mind raced.

He cocked his head. "Forgive me but you and Carlisle did give a misleading impression that you two were mated. You smell like Carlisle very vaguely though it may be largely due to an unconsummated bond."

She opened and shut her jaw with a clack. "I-"

"No one ever mistook you two as mates?"

"Plenty of times." Bella answered with a huff. "Carlisle easily corrected them."

Garrett scrutinized at her with a narrowed gaze. He leaned into her, nose sniffing her. Bella batted him away.

"What on Earth are you sniffing for?" She stepped back, curling her shoulder defensively.

His expression turned uncertain. "Are you sure you do not want to return to Carlisle?"

"It is very much evident who misses the Englishman between the two of us, Garrett."

Garrett looked down at her pensively. "My friend, I think you've been gravely mistaken."