Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PROLOGUE

When I was but a concept , there was Renee and Charlie.

She was all bare feet, sunscreen, and chaos. He was tidewater stillness and ancient silence. She talked too fast, laughed too loud and was human. He blinked like a glacier shifting and was a member of the Meir’ha’dun. Somehow, they made it work—at least for a while.

They met on a beach she wasn’t supposed to be on, and he wasn’t supposed to leave. But love makes fools of everyone, even creatures who remember the Ice Age.

She used to tell me, “He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Even when he wasn’t fully a man.”

He used to say, “Your mother could talk a storm into changing direction.”

That’s how I was made. From a kiss beneath the waves, and an understanding that didn’t need translation.

When I was born, I looked human.

Mostly.

Ten fingers, ten toes. Brown eyes like Charlie’s human form, lungs that screamed on schedule. There was a weird mark on my side that pulsed under moonlight, but the doctor said it was probably just a birthmark.

Charlie didn’t say much. But I’ve since seen him look at tsunami clouds the same way.

When I was one, they separated.

My mother cried. My father didn’t—he never does—but I think he stopped singing in the ocean for a long time. I didn’t understand any of it, but I do remember the silence afterward. That thick kind of silence people leave behind when they love each other and then can’t.

They said it was better this way. For me.

Better to live on land and visit the sea. Better to learn to walk before I learned to dive.

When I was three, I saw Charlie shift.

He was holding me in the shallows off La Push, floating with the current. One minute he was just my dad with calloused hands and a low voice—and then the next, his arms stretched longer, his back arched strange, and his legs disappeared in a glint of pale fluke.

He looked at me with silver eyes, not brown. I giggled and smacked the water. I thought it was a game.

Renee did not think it was a game.

When I was five, I screamed—and the windows shattered.

My parents were fighting. They thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. Their words didn’t make sense, but the tone did. I got scared. Not tantrum-scared—deep, cellular scared. I opened my mouth and let something out that wasn’t a word. Glass cracked and fell like rain.

No one touched me. No one yelled.

Renee didn’t sleep for three days.

Charlie went back into the sea and didn’t come out for a week.

I got ice cream.

Also a pet fish.

When I was seven, I woke up glowing.

Like… actually glowing. Blue. From inside my stomach. I thought I was dying. My mother thought I’d swallowed a glow stick. Charlie calmly said it was a “developmental milestone.” Like teething.

Renee started keeping me away from swimming pools.

My teacher asked the class which parent we looked like and what they did for work.

I proudly said, “My dad is the chief of police. He has bioluminescent spots and webbed hands like me.”

Mrs. Capen called my mom in for an emergency parent-teacher conference. Renee brought donuts to soften the damage. It didn’t help.

The teacher decided to teach about mythical creatures for fun and I bit my lip to keep from correcting her on everything. Well, mostly the underwater stuff.

When I was nine, I held my breath for six minutes.

Didn’t even notice. I was reading underwater— Jane Eyre, the salt-crinkled copy from Charlie’s shelf. The book didn’t make it. The pages flaked apart like old coral. I cried, and Charlie laughed for a solid three minutes before offering to read it to me from memory.

I still don’t know how he remembers that much. I forget where I leave my toothbrush.

I got bullied for having ghost-pale skin. One kid sarcastically asked if I was allergic to the sun or just undead. I laughed so hard I snorted in front of everyone, and then muttered something about sunscreen being my only religion.

They backed off. Humor is a great shield—especially when you know you could make them drown themselves if you sang loud enough.

When I was eleven, the ocean started talking back.

Not in words. In clicks and pulses and waves that curled just for me. I started to understand what the barnacles were whispering. I started to hum back. Charlie said I had an accent.

Also that year, I could hold my breath for over thirty minutes. So Charlie took me out past the kelp beds. Not too deep, just deep enough. He strapped goggles on my face, held my hand, and showed me the shadows gliding below us.

A pod. A hundred of our kind.

They looked more alien than I’d ever imagined. Long, silver bodies, glowing in pulses, twisting through the dark like light made liquid. I’d always imagined something more… human. They weren’t.

I didn’t speak for an hour after.

Then I asked Charlie if they were looking at me the way I was looking at them.

He said, “No, Bells. They already know who you are.”

My mother asked if I wanted to join theater.

Weeks later I was still thinking about the alien look of our kind , I asked if I’d ever get to choose.
I meant: could I be normal? Could I stay on land? Could I go to prom one day without bioluminescence showing through my dress?

Charlie said, “Some tides turn slowly, Bells.”

He meant no.

But he didn’t want to break my heart with it.

When I was thirteen, I screamed without opening my mouth.

It happened during a history quiz. The classroom was too loud — pencils scraping, desks creaking, someone whispering. I wanted quiet. I wanted stillness. Instead, something… burst out of me.

A sharp click echoed inside my skull, and I flinched so hard I knocked over my desk. Every head turned. I couldn’t breathe — not because I needed to, but because the noise was still ringing through me.

It felt like I’d slammed my brain against a wall made of mirrors. I had a migraine for three days. A crow exploded out of the tree outside my window when I twitched in my sleep.

Charlie didn’t ask questions when I showed up that weekend. He took one look at me — pale, squinting, still flinching from fluorescent lights — and told me to grab my wetsuit.

We swam out past the shelf, deeper than I’d ever dared go. Then he took my hands, nodded once, and told me, “Try it again.”

I did.

Underwater, it didn’t feel like shattering. It felt like singing. Like I’d dropped a thread into the ocean and it came back with answers.

Shapes bloomed in my head — the smooth sweep of a ray’s wings, the curled arms of a sea anemone tucked in a rock cleft, the slow pulse of something huge far below. I felt the distance between my body and the world shrink until I could taste the direction of fish scales and the silence of stone.

When we came up, I gasped and whispered, “I saw it all.”

Charlie just smiled and said, “Welcome to your second set of eyes.”

After that, I couldn’t stop listening — above water, below. It wasn’t just a sound anymore. It was home.

When I was fifteen, I started shifting.

Just a little. A ripple across my ribs. Spinal ridges under the skin. Cartilage where bone had been. My lungs expanded weird, like balloons in reverse. The first time, I thought I was dying. Screamed like a dying whale. Charlie had to talk me down through echolocation and a lullaby only half of me understood.

He didn’t panic. Just said, “It’s okay, kiddo. Your tail’s just remembering.”

I did shift back. Eventually.

Clothes did not survive.

Later that year, Charlie took me deeper. Far enough down that the pressure buzzed in my teeth. We moved through cold layers and electric silence, and I got my first up-close look at my kin.

They didn’t laugh. They didn’t wave.

They flicked through light patterns too fast for me to follow and moved like they were part of the current.

They weren’t human. Not in mind, not in mannerisms, not in expression. Watching them, I realized something I hadn’t dared ask before:

Would I ever belong down there?

On the next holiday visit, Dad sat me down after dinner, a serious look in his eyes. “Bella,” he said, “there’s something new in town. Something... different. Not just the usual people you see every day.”

I blinked. “Like the Meir’ha’dun?”

He nodded slowly. “Not exactly. But like us, they have to hide. They aren’t the only ones keeping secrets.”

I pressed him for more, but he just smiled sadly and said, “You’ll understand more when you’re older. For now, just remember: you’re never really alone in this world, even if it feels like it.”

That night, I dreamed of shadows moving beneath the trees—pale figures watching from the darkness, moving at inhuman speed, waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves.

When I was sixteen, the whales beached themselves.

Thirty-two of them. All washed up on a cold Washington shore. I found out arriving home from school—Renee on the phone, sobbing, frantically trying to reach Charlie. Her voice had that sharp edge it gets when she’s terrified but trying not to show it.

For hours, I couldn’t breathe. I pictured him there—his body stranded, waterless and wrong. I imagined strangers cutting him open to see what he really was. I imagined the news crews catching his faint glow on camera and scientists asking questions they had no right to ask. I imagined them coming for my mother and me.

Then, finally—he called.

His voice was calm, but cracked under the surface.

“Sorry, Bells,” he said. “I had to get there first. Had to make sure they didn’t find… too much. Had to bury who—and what—I could.”

That was the first time I heard him cry. Not with loud sobs or broken cries. Just quiet, leaking grief through his silence.

Later, we learned it was sonar testing—military interference. Charlie already knew. He’d seen it before, further south. He said most of the pods managed to escape in time. But not all.

That’s when it hit me—how dangerous it really is to be like me. To be something the world refuses to believe exists. And how far he’s willing to go to keep us safe.

When I was seventeen, my body stopped pretending to be human.

Phoenix became a microwave and I was the popcorn bag. My skin stayed cool to the touch, it’s usual 93.2°F but my insides felt like they were trying to steam-cook me from the bones out. I got dizzy. My nose bled in the middle of math class. I puked food and blood on the school nurse’s shoes.

Renee didn’t cry this time. She just nodded, made sure the nurses shoes were destroyed, packed my suitcase, and bought me a one-way plane ticket to Seattle.

I hugged her at the gate and said thanks.

She said, “Go find your people.”

And then, a beat later, “Tell your father I still think flukes are creepy.”

We laughed and pulled dying fish faces at each other, much to the bemusement of the people around us, until she was out of sight. I wondered when I would see her again. I couldn’t help but feel that she was finally free, free to pursue the life she’d dreamed of since she was my age.

I traded cacti for cedars. Dry heat for wet fog. A closet of tank tops for about six sweaters that all smelled like fish guts after my first swim. And I moved into a house with salt-stained floors, bioluminescent nightlights, and a dad who may or may not be able to kill a bear with his tail.

I didn’t fit in Phoenix. And I didn’t exactly fit here either.

Not yet.

But I’m getting closer.

When I was born, I was almost human.
Now I’m not sure what I am.

Chapter Text

By the time we crossed into Forks, I was down to a T-shirt.

Not that there were many people to witness me slowly stripping down like a fevered disaster tourist. The sky had done its usual Forks thing—clouds drooping low, rain smeared across the windshield in gentle sheets—and Charlie had already turned on the air conditioning when I started sweating halfway through Clallam County. We sat in companionable silence, both of us in short sleeves, like some weird Pacific Northwest cult of cold-blooded oddities.

“You’re boiling,” he said, one hand still on the wheel, the other reaching over to press the back of his fingers to my cheek. His touch was cool. His hands always were, even on land. “You shouldn’t have stayed in Phoenix this long.”

“Mom insisted.”

“You should’ve pushed harder. Or told me. I would’ve pushed her.”

I shrugged. “You know how it is. I hit puberty and suddenly I was setting off metal detectors and fainting in swimming pools.”

That earned the ghost of a grin from Charlie. He brushed his thumb along my jaw in a subtle, affectionate gesture before dropping his hand back to the steering wheel. He was always like that. Tactile. Anchoring.

I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until now.

“You’re not starting school until next week at the earliest,” he said.

“Oh, c’mon—”

He gave me the full Dad Look. Trademarked and certified.

“I mean… yes, please, keep me out of the social zoo. Let me soak in the cold Pacific and molt.” I stripped off my T-shirt and struggled out of my shoes, socks and trousers, all while wearing my seat belt. Dad didn’t even blink.

He snorted, which from Charlie was practically a belly laugh. “We’ll take you to the coast tonight. See how long you can dive now. Check your body’s catching up to itself.”

That flickered something warm and eager inside me. “I haven’t felt cold since… I don’t even know when.” I grabbed insurance paperwork out of the dashboard and fanned myself with it. God, I was boiling.

“You’re home,” he said simply, but his frown and hand pressed to my forehead betrayed his alarm at my condition.

As we continued through Forks, my father tossed my clothes back over me to avoid giving a random citizen a heart attack. Or a hard on. I moaned and tried to focus on my surroundings. Ever since I’d turned nine I had spent every school holiday here. Nothing changed.

Unlike me.

We continued down Highway 101 and eventually turned right down B street SW, which continued down Bogachiel Way, named after the nearest river. We kept going past Forks Community Hospital, past 7^th Avenue where we used to turn off to our old home, before my transformation risked being too public, and headed out of town and past civilization, beyond Dahlgren Logging Company, past an allotment of homes and continued down the quiet road.

We turned onto the dirt track, the trees closing in like an old memory. And there it was—Charlie’s house. It used to be called The River Inn and house holiday makers, but a fire and Charlie pouncing at the opportunity to buy a burnt ruin isolated on a river bank meant it was now our home. Crouched on the edge of the forest, weather-worn, its roof starting to stain with moss and age. The river tinkled faintly behind it, constant and familiar.

A beat-up red truck sat in the driveway.

“You got me a car?”

“Billy had it. Said it needed a good home.”

“Does the heater work?”

Charlie lifted one eyebrow at my undressed state, mustache twitching.

“…Right, dumb question.”

I really didn’t need heat. I certainly didn’t want it. My blood had adjusted too far from human for that. But I still liked it, the illusion of normalcy. A warm car, warm clothes, a warm bed. They were rituals I clung to when I was far from the ocean. A security blanket made of cotton and habit. I was vaguely aware that I hadn’t said thank you for this amazing homecoming gift, but I was too busy trying not to faint.

I stepped out of the car, still in just my underwear, grateful for the lack of close neighbors and all the trees my father had planted for extra privacy. Inside the house, almost nothing had changed. The same wood-paneled walls. The same stubborn furniture. The same noticeable absence of a television. A minimalist lifestyle for a creature as old as the emergence of the Bronze Age.

“I’ll need internet for homework,” I called as I dragged my duffel upstairs.

“Library and school have it.”

I stuck my head back down the stairwell. “That’s not how high school works anymore.”

“If you really need it,” he said, noncommittally, “ask me again.”

I rolled my eyes, but it was good-natured. “You’re trying to make me suffer.”

“Character-building.”

My room smelled like salt and cedar. I dropped my bag on the bed and ran my fingers across the edge of the old bookshelf. Most of the books were mine—left here from summers and school breaks—and a few were Charlie’s additions: laminated field guides, oceanography texts, even the occasional battered fantasy novel. He’d taught himself to read when he first came ashore, and never really stopped.

He once told me, “Fiction is humanity’s only proof they can imagine something better.”

I never forgot that.

I let out a low, instinctive click, not with my melon, not after the five day migraine when I was thirteen, but with my tongue—barely audible to human ears. The sound bounced off the walls, painting the room in soft outlines. Chair. Dresser. Window. The fan above my bed.

The echoes returned like brushstrokes in the back of my mind, creating a ghost-map of my surroundings. Safe. Familiar. Lived-in. But beneath it, I could feel the undercurrent of absence.
Charlie had lived here alone for eleven years, whilst single-handedly learning to fix up the building. I could feel it in the furniture—the quiet, the neatness, the rooms that echoed too quickly. My presence every school holiday hadn’t chased away his loneliness. We were both haunted. Just by different ghosts.

That evening we drove down to the Rialto Beach just before twilight, when the clouds had dulled the world to grey-blue and the ocean called like an old friend. We trekked up silent hiker paths away from La Push and the reservation and in direction of the Hole-In-The-Wall. We made it barely a tenth of the way before I dropped to my knees and begged to get in the water, remnants of Phoenix heat still barbecuing my organs.

We undressed behind the rocks, neither of us shy. Well, my father wasn’t shy. I was still learning to not look like a blushing tourist who’d accidentally stumbled onto a nudist beach. I was mostly fine, as long as Charlie didn’t glance at me too much, and maintained eye contact like a pro. Funnily enough, I was used to seeing Dad naked, having watched him shift since I was a child. Modesty wasn’t really a thing in our species. Meir’ha’dun weren’t born ashamed of their bodies. I’d only been doing this without a wet suit for two years, so I think my embarrassment can be excused. Charlie turned slightly away while I stepped into the surf first, letting the water reach my ankles, knees, waist—cool and sharp like a blade. I exhaled. Thank god.

My skin prickled. The change began.

The shift took me seconds now—one heartbeat, then another—and my body responded like it had just been waiting for permission.

My legs fused together from the inside out, muscle winding tight like rope, bones softening and bending, knees disappearing into a smooth, tapering length. My ankles cracked, then folded inward, reknitting into cartilage. My feet flattened, toes fusing, the skin stretching and widening into a single, paddle-shaped fluke—broad, flexible, and strong. It unfurled behind me like a banner caught in slow current, more tail than limb, ready to drive me through the deep. Strong. Sensible. A tool built for the deep.

My skin changed next—pink-tinged and pale one moment, bleached white along my stomach the next, like old moonstone. Color bloomed outward from my spine, darkening in waves to a deep oceanic blue. My hips narrowed, vanishing into the torpedo-line of my new body. No seams. No scars. Just one fluid, alien form.

My lungs compressed. My inner organs shifted. The ones humans needed for food and breath and sex rearranged themselves, tucking inward, becoming protected. Hidden. My genitals and breasts folded up and disappeared. Unnecessary here. Vulnerable on land. The ocean required efficiency, not exposure.

My hair receded into my scalp, scattering like loose threads vanishing beneath skin, and I exhaled as something deep inside me settled—the melon allowing echolocation sat above my brow shifting forward, finally unburdened. No longer squashed behind a human skull. No longer reshaped to blend in. It rounded fully now, swelling gently, letting me feel the world in vibration and sound.

My hands thickened, fingers stretching longer. Webbing sprouted between them in soft translucent sheets. Nails grew and curved—no longer nails, but talons, honed for grip and prey. I flexed them and watched water slide between the webbing like silk.

I was just over seven feet long now. I looked like a dolphin textured human with a tail and fluke. Not small by human standards. Whole. But next to Charlie, I was a guppy.

Charlie was next. His transformation was slower—about thirty seconds—but no less graceful. I knew it hurt him, every time, but he barely let the pain show anymore. He crouched low against the rocks, body rippling like water under wind. Then his spine cracked outward—elongating, thickening, his vertebrae multiplying in rapid succession as his torso stretched beyond human limits.

His chest split wider, ribcage flexing to accommodate new lungs and volume, growing extra ribs . His legs snapped together with a shudder, flesh and sinew weaving tight until his thighs vanished, knees flattened, and feet melted into a massive, powerful fluke. Muscles realigned with the grace of ancient design. His pelvis canted downward, disappearing into the streamlined body built for pressure and speed.

He kept growing. Taller. Thicker. Broader. From six feet to sixteen feet of power and fluidity. His arms stretched long and elegant, fingers webbed and claw-tipped, able to manipulate coral or crush a shark’s throat.

His skin darkened as the shift completed, shading to that familiar silver-blue shimmer along his back, like moonlight over an oil slick. His underbelly was pale and soft—opalescent, almost tender by contrast. Running down his back were ridges of bioluminescent stripes— hundreds of them. Blue, glowing, perfectly spaced. One for every ten years lived. I used to try to count them. There were too many.

Three-quarters down his back, just above where knees might’ve once been, his small rounded dorsal fin rose, designed for deep diving. Mine barely registered—an underdeveloped ridge at my lower spine, more suggestion than structure. Like baby teeth waiting to fall out. I could feel it flicker weakly when I moved.

His head changed last. His jaw stretched forward, nose flattening slightly, eyes widening and sliding slightly apart to accommodate his swelling skull. His brow thickened. His melon blossomed outward, still invisible in his head like mine, but free from the constraints of a smaller human head. His ears vanished into sleek skin. Every feature adjusted, adapted. Aquatic. Ancient.

Then he submerged, and I saw him.

Charlie, the man beneath the badge. The creature beneath the cop. Sixteen feet of lean muscle and history. His arms were longer in this form, webbed fingers spreading as he adjusted to the tide. His sharp teeth flashed once in a grin, his echolocation ridge catching the low light. Tattoos—inked from octopus dye and stingray barbs—curved across his biceps and ribs. Symbols of mating, survival, and honor. I didn’t know what most of them meant. But I knew he’d earned every single one.

His eyes glowed in the dark like silver moons.

He brushed against me underwater, hand to my shoulder, a reassuring pulse of warmth and family.

Then his lights flickered in a coded rhythm I’d known since I was six.

Feed?

I blinked my response in return. Yes.

We both put our heads above water and took a last deep breath. Then we dove.

The surface broke around me like skin splitting. Salt slammed into my face, pressure clamped around my skull, and the world narrowed to cold, motion, and pulse.

The water embraced us like skin, cold and alive and welcoming. Every current felt like home. Every breath—or what replaced it—felt earned. Schools of fish darted below us. I felt the echoes of their movement, tasted their heartbeats like tiny thuds in the stillness. We sank deep, and deeper still, until the land above us was a distant memory.

This was where I was me.

Charlie was ahead of me, already slicing downward in slow powerful strokes. I followed, fluke sweeping behind at a much faster pace, arms tucking in as the darkness folded over us like a second lid. The light above dimmed into silver mist. Then into nothing.

We kept going.

Every beat of my heart slowed. My lungs, reshaped and small, compressed into stillness. Water flowed through me in rhythms I no longer resisted. My skin prickled—not with cold, but with sensation. Currents. Temperature shifts. The flicker of electric fields from distant creatures, painting shapes in my mind like lightning across glass.

It was dark, but I could see.

Not with my eyes, not really. But with pulses—clicks and chirps that echoed off the world. Each sound came back different, bending around forms. Stone. Fish. Wreckage. A jellyfish like a floating chandelier. A crab scuttling sideways under silt. The world was a sculpture of echo and static, constantly shifting.

Charlie veered right, and I adjusted without thinking. His body glowed faintly now, bands of bioluminescence along his spine pulsing in low rhythm. A language of movement. Of light.

Follow. Slow. Left. Now.

We came around a reef shaped like a broken ribcage, and I felt it—thrumming just ahead. Prey.

Tiny vibrations in the water. Fins brushing coral. A heartbeat like a drumstick tapped against membrane.

Charlie halted just above, body curved in a wide arc of stillness. His light blinked once. Yours.

I hesitated. Then dropped.

I twisted in the water, tail coiling like a spring, and I felt the thing before I saw it—a thick-bodied fish with a torn dorsal fin, hiding in the dark. It sensed me too late.

I lunged.

Jaw split. Teeth lengthened. My mouth opened wider than human jaws were meant to. There was a moment of struggle, a wriggle of desperate life—then crunch, tear, swallow. Warmth spilled down my throat like oil. The thing kicked once in my stomach and went still.

I hung there, trembling, my hands gripping the remains.

Not with fear. Not with horror.

With… recognition.

I had hunted before. Small fish in tanks, freezer bagged mackerel, careful kills with Charlie watching. But this—this was something different. This was blood in water. This was hunger answered.

I looked up.

Charlie hovered just above, watching. He hadn’t moved to help. Hadn’t interfered. But I saw the pride in his eyes. The flash of light down his side. Approval.

We dove again.

The trench opened up beneath us, deeper than I remembered, its mouth vast and black. The pressure here pressed against my skull like invisible hands, but my body took it—flexed with it. My inner ears twisted, my vision sharpened. Bones thickened where they needed to.

We hunted in tandem.

Schools of fish scattered like sparks before us. I caught three more, quick as blinking—sharp turns, sudden lunges. My instincts did the thinking. My body simply obeyed.

When we weren’t hunting, we played. Or maybe the play was the hunt. Charlie spun in circles around me, flashing lights and echolocation bursts, testing my reactions. I snapped at his tail once and he laughed—soundless, but visible in his flickering skin. His joy was physical. A spiral of force through water. A wave that hit me behind the ribs and shook loose something I'd kept buried.

I chased him through caverns and around shipwreck bones. We wove through silt clouds and currents that smelled of brine and decay. We startled a sleeping eel the length of a bus. Charlie nudged it affectionately. I gave it wide berth.

Eventually we slowed, floating near a vent that pulsed warmth into the frigid deep. I drifted, belly full, fins relaxed. I was still and not-still. Tension gone, but senses flaring. Awake in a way I'd never been on land. My mind was quiet for once. Not empty—just quiet. Balanced.

Charlie came up beside me and nudged my shoulder. A soft pulse of light passed between us, with a flicker indicating a question.

Content?

I pulsed back. Whole.

We hunted. We spiraled. We played some more—fast sprints and sudden turns, diving past reefs and boulders that loomed like sleeping giants. Charlie kept looping around me and tapped my flank with his tail, a teasing nudge. I nudged back. He laughed in bursts of light and sound, loud clicks indicating happiness. He was happy to have me here. And for the first time in a long time, I was happy.

I kept thinking about a fish I didn’t catch. A long, slender thing with a fractured fin—darting through the seaweed like it had something to prove. Charlie had moved to intercept it, but I’d veered away, letting it go.

Not because I was soft. But because… I understood it. Caught between speed and pain. Still swimming.

I wondered if my empathy would kill me someday. Or save me.

By the time we surfaced again, five hours had passed. I hadn’t taken a single breath. My pulse was slow, calm.

We resurfaced under cloudlight, the rain still falling—soft, steady, a curtain of silver threading the surface. Neither of us spoke.

Instead, we drifted to a set of rocks jutting from the shoreline, slick with moss and tide foam. They were half-submerged, like teeth in the surf, but familiar. We’d rested here before, two years ago—when my transformations had taken hours, and Charlie would hum low notes through his melon just to keep me calm.

Now we settled side by side, still in our ocean forms, our slick torsos gleaming with salt and rainfall. The clouds pressed low. The world was grey and close. There was no sun, no sound but the hush of water against stone.

We were safe here. Wet enough not to dry out. Hidden enough to linger.

Charlie lay flat on his front, fluke curled to one side, hands resting lightly on the rock under his head. His dorsal fin cast a small curved shadow over his back. The glow of his stripes was faint in the dim light but still visible—pulsing slow and steady with the rhythm of his breath. He closed his eyes. Resting. Not sleeping. Never sleeping.

I shifted slightly and caught a glimpse of myself in a shallow tide pool beside the rock—still water caught in a hollow. Rain stippled the surface, but not enough to distort the image fully.

I leaned over and looked.

And I saw her.

Me.

Not the girl who’d left Phoenix with salt in her throat and a T-shirt sticking to her back. Not the daughter who sat small in her father's house, straddling two lives. But the creature I became when I let go .

I was seven feet long and still growing. My skin was smooth as pearl, pale along my stomach, fading to that deep stormy blue down my spine. The transition was beautiful—not a hard line, but a watercolor bleed, like waves blending into sky.

My arms were longer now, elbows resting easily on the rock, fingers tipped in fine black claws. Webbing hung like sheer fabric between them, delicate but strong. My face was changed too—less human, more… something else. My brow was rounder. My jaw wider. My eyes—larger, darker, ringed in the faintest silver glow. And my melon—softly rounded and pulsing gently above my forehead—gave me an odd sort of regal tilt.

My hair was gone, fully receded into scalp. My ears invisible. My throat seemed slightly wider. Sleek. Streamlined.

While in this form, with our genitalia invisible, and it was hard for humans to tell the difference between Charlie and I asides from our body length. Meir’ha’dun bodies weren’t built for display. I was sleek, seemingly sexless, perfect.

I lifted my hand and blinked at the mirrored motion. My reflection blinked back.

There was something terrifying about it. And something holy.

“Not land-walker anymore”, I clicked softly.

Charlie cracked one eye open, head tilting toward me.

“You never were,” he clicked back. “Not completely.”

I didn’t know if he meant it as comfort or truth. Maybe both.

“I look like a monster,” I clicked, almost reverent.

He shifted closer, pressing the edge of his fluke against mine. A gesture of affection. Of kinship.

“You look like you belong.”

I swallowed. My reflection rippled with rain. My belly still glowed faintly—an internal, low heat, like bioluminescence waiting to bloom. Like a promise. Or a warning.

I didn’t look like the girl my mother raised.

But I looked like something real.

My claws flexed slightly, rainwater dripping from the tips. I pressed one hand to my chest, feeling the quiet hum beneath it. The ocean’s echo inside me.

Charlie was right. This was where I belonged.

Even if it scared me. Even if it changed me.

I stayed like that a long time. Watching my own face. Letting it become familiar.

Letting her become me. Then I shifted back. Dad followed suit.

Charlie looked at me, eyes half-lidded with satisfaction. “You’re growing up.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I said, blinking. “You know I had to stop somewhere between fish fingers and high school dropout.”

He grinned and ruffled my hair, fingers lingering a moment too long. Tactile. Reassuring.

“You’re strong,” he said again, more quietly.

I bumped my shoulder against his. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

We didn’t sleep. Not the way humans did.

Sleep for the Meir’ha’dun was more like a system reboot than a full shutdown. A kind of quiet pause. Floating near the surface, motionless, eyes open, just like Sperm whales. Or on land, standing upright, still and silent with our minds half-submerged in rest. Renee had once walked in on Charlie and I doing it in the living room and screamed. She thought we’d died upright. She dubbed it “creepy standing zombie mode.” I’d always done it in the privacy of my bedroom after that.

Charlie called it a cat nap. When I was six, he explained it like I was a kitten learning to purr.

I haven’t slept in a bed for two years, not since my biology flipped the switch. Still, I liked lying down now and then. The ritual of it. The comfort of a blanket I didn’t really need.

When we got back from the ocean, salt still drying in our hair, we stood quietly in the kitchen. Me with my hand on the counter top for balance, like most young of our kind. Charlie stood perfectly upright. Eyes unfocused. Minds drifting.

Twenty minutes passed like a heartbeat.

Then Charlie straightened, blinking brown eyes clear, and turned to me. “Hungry?”

“I ate a whole squid.”

“You’re still growing.”

He picked up the phone and ordered pizza—pepperoni and mushroom, my usual. He didn’t ask what I wanted because he already knew. The familiarity made something warm settle low in my chest.

When it arrived, I devoured it with greasy, greedy hands while Charlie sat across from me with the look of a man watching someone eat barbed wire dipped in battery acid.

“You okay over there?” I asked, mouth full.

He grimaced. “Smells like poison.”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“Processed food can kill me. Your generation,” he muttered. “No respect for real food.”

“Half-Human. Also, I hunted today.”

“You still ruined it with cheese and chemicals.”

I stuck my tongue out. He didn’t flinch.

He retired to the couch with a thick book I didn’t recognize—something old and annotated, full of folded corners and crumbling margins. I drifted to the kitchen wall and leaned against it, falling into a light standing nap. My brain did its Meir’ha’dun thing—half off, half listening. I floated in thought.

I needed more rest than he did. Charlie said it was because I was still “balancing between systems.” Dual heritage. Human inefficiencies. Like having a tail and legs trying to exist in the same body.

When I blinked awake again, the kitchen clock said an hour had passed. Charlie was still reading, his fingers absently brushing over the pages like they were alive.

He looked up when he noticed me stirring. “We should talk.”

“Is this the ‘don’t kill anyone on your first day’ talk?”

“No.” He sat straighter. “This is the other talk.”

My stomach did a slow, sinking twist. “Please don’t say the words ‘birds and bees.’”

He grinned slightly. “More like seahorses and whales.”

I groaned. “I hate it already.”

“Renee didn’t want me to tell you,” he said, voice softening. “She thought it would scare you. That you'd be too young to understand. But now you're shifting regularly, you're home, and… well. You're old enough.”

I dropped into the nearest armchair like I’d been shot.

He didn’t notice.

“You know Meir’ha’dun are tactile,” he began.

“Yup, very touchy. Got it.”

“We’re also very… sexual.”

I considered just leaping out the window.

“Not in a shameful way,” Charlie said, gently. “In the ocean, intimacy is part of health. Connection. It keeps our minds clear. Keeps us bonded. It happens among pod members. Regularly. Several times a day. Not everyone, mind. But coitus is the way some friends say hello.”

I curled into the chair like it was a bunker.

“It’s not about performance or status or conquest like in human society. It’s just—comfort. Care. Most of the time, no one even stops to watch.”

“Most of the time?” I whispered in horror.

Charlie’s tone didn’t change. “You’re not fertile yet. That usually takes a hundred years and it’s once every hundred years. So, it’s almost always safe. But if you feel desire, that’s normal. If you don’t, also normal. Not everyone does it. And right now you're still a baby, biologically speaking. Infantile.”

I slid slowly off the chair onto the floor.

Dad kept going.

“You might start feeling attraction sooner, because of your dual nature. Humans mature fast. It’s okay if that happens. Just remember—if you find a partner among us, that’s something to celebrate. You’re allowed. I’d be proud of you.”

I stared blankly at the ceiling. Was this how migraines started?

“Some members form permanent bonds, so they usually stick together,” he added cheerfully. “Others don’t. I’ve never been bonded. Thought maybe I could’ve been with Renee, but… humans think about these things differently. That’s okay too.”

I whimpered.

He finally looked down and frowned. “Why are you on the floor?”

“I’m traumatized.”

Charlie sighed and got down to lay beside me, shoulder to shoulder. “I wanted to tell you before you see it. Pods will be traveling up the coast soon and this will be your first interaction with them. First time witnessing an orgy can be confusing, but it’s great once you join in.”

I made a small noise that might have been a death rattle. He laughed.

“I'm exaggerating. But it’s less weird when you’re in the water,” he added, voice gentle now. “When you’re in your other skin. You’re thinking like a human right now. That’s natural. But it’s not the only way to be.”

I was silent for a long moment. Then I gathered the shreds of my courage.

“So… have you been… y’know… in the ocean every day… having fun with… everyone?”

There was a long pause. I immediately regretted asking. I winced, preparing for Charlie to say obviously, sweetheart, I’m 6,000 years old, I’ve invented half the techniques they teach now—

But he said nothing.

When I dared glance over, his eyes were soft.

“I haven’t touched anyone,” he said quietly. “Not since Renee left. Not even once.”

I blinked.

“You always asked about family. About belonging. I didn’t want you to ever think you weren’t enough. That I had to leave to find joy. That I regretted anything. I never have. I didn’t want you to feel… abandoned.”

“But you need it,” I said, stunned. “You told me touch is like… oxygen. And from the sound of it, sex too. What happened to ‘several times a day’?”

“It is.” He smiled. “But so is love. I wanted to show you, by example, that you were never too much. Never wrong. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Something in my chest cracked.

Without thinking, I curled into him, arms wrapping around his chest. He pulled me tight, held me like his life depended on it.

Maybe it did.

Maybe mine did too.

Later that night—though “night” felt like a vague concept now—I lay on my back in the room that had always been mine. My suitcase was half-unpacked, a hoodie draped over the edge of the chair, my damp towel hanging from the back of the door. I could hear the faint ripple of the river just beyond the walls, always calling. Like a heartbeat I hadn’t realized I missed until now.

I curled deeper into the blankets I didn’t need. My back still remembered the pressure of Charlie’s arms—the quiet rhythm of his lights pulsing against my skin. Hours later, I could still feel where his fingertips had pressed into my shoulder—like a constellation left behind. Not a brand. A bond. Not property. Kin.

I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t need to sleep. But I needed stillness. And I needed to think.

I remembered one summer, back when I was eight. My mother and I were at a quiet motel pool in Flagstaff. I dove to the bottom and didn’t come up for four minutes. When I finally surfaced, grinning, hair floating around me like seaweed, she slapped me across the face.

“You scared me,” she’d whispered, eyes wild. “You weren’t breathing.”

Once the shock had passed she apologized for weeks. I never went in a pool with her again. She wasn’t cruel. Just human. Just scared. Maybe that’s why she let me leave to live with Charlie in the end. Why she hadn’t come. Maybe she finally realized I was never hers to keep.

What had my mother expected, having a child with a creature like Charlie?

Not that Charlie was monstrous—he was gentle, thoughtful, fiercely protective—but he was undeniably alien. He didn’t move like a man. He didn’t think like one. He was born without legs. No aging. He talked about history like someone who’d attended it. The first time he told me about the rise of Babylon, I thought he’d read too many historical epics. Then I realized he meant it. Had traveled up the Euphrates river back when it was safe for Meir’ha’dun to do so.

He'd seen nations crumble. Seen slaves thrown overboard, saltwater turning red. He remembered when humans feared the ocean instead of bottling it into plastic.

I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for him—holding an infant that looked nothing like him. A child with toes. A child who cried and needed cribs and naps and alphabet charts. A child whose species had once hunted his out of jealousy and fear.

And yet… he had loved me. Patiently. Fiercely. Silently.

That made me ache more than anything.

What did I want?

I tried to picture the future and it blurred. Would I travel from pod to pod, awkwardly presenting myself like some deep-sea exchange student, hoping to spark interest from males who might not see me as truly Meir’ha’dun? Would I be alone forever—caught between the wild, tactile chaos of the sea and the distant, restrained quiet of land?

Would I ever adapt to the water? Fully? Or would I spend my entire life caught between tides?

I loved my father, but I couldn’t stay with him forever. That wasn’t done. Even our kind would probably raise fins at that. He needed his own space. His own life. His own return to touch.

But where did that leave me?

My fingers brushed my stomach—the faint glow always humming below the skin. I wondered how long I’d live. I’d once asked Charlie that, when I was twelve. He’d gone quiet and said he didn’t know. “We don’t really… die of old age,” he’d admitted, voice like gravel. “I’ve never seen it happen.”

The oldest he’d ever met was 64,000 years old. A lone female, almost legendary, who’d survived empires and extinction only to be killed three centuries ago—caught and studied, like a specimen. A warning. Charlie had had to go ashore and destroy her body and all evidence of their discovery.

The oldest he’d heard of was 136,560 years old.

I was only seventeen. And some days, I already felt like my mind might splinter. How did anyone hold on for millennia?

There had been others, of course. Hybrids like me. Charlie told me there had been over five hundred, born over ten thousand years. Most born of human mothers and fathers from Asia, Africa, Aboriginal and Native American cultures—those tied closely to sea and story. Cultures with roots in the water.

Only I, as far as anyone knew, had a white, European-descended mother.

Apparently, Meir’ha’dun weren’t picky, and certainly not racist—they just didn’t… notice. Charlie told me, with a completely straight face, that most of his kind couldn’t tell humans apart unless they were glowing or screaming. Got him into some trouble his first year on land.

He told me he got lucky with Renee. That she’d been reckless enough to love him, but smart enough not to tell the world. I couldn’t help but wonder if she regretted it. Regretted me. A baby who cried so hard she broke windows. A daughter she couldn’t understand.

Even with Charlie, even in the sea, I sometimes felt like a tourist in my own life.

Half mammal. Half myth.

I started calling my parents by their first names when I was eleven. Not out loud at first—just in my head, like a quiet rebellion.

Renee. Charlie. It felt like a punishment. A boundary. A way to say: You did this to me.

It had started not long after I saw a pod of Meir’ha’dun for the first time—sleek and pale, gliding like ghosts beneath the surface. They didn’t look human. They didn’t even look like they were from this planet. The sight left me shaken. I realized this wasn’t going away—this difference inside me. It wasn’t something I could grow out of or hide under clothes. It was in my blood. My bones. My future. And I hated them for it.

Renee cried the first time I said her name aloud. Big, messy, guilt-laced sobs that made me feel awful, but also gave me a sense of power. Charlie didn’t cry. He just sat there—watching, waiting—until one day he sat me down and said:

"You can hate me if you need to. You can resent me, ignore me, call me whatever you want. That’s your right. But it won’t change who you are. And it won’t change who I am to you."

He told me about the kids he saw as a cop—kids with real monsters for parents. And then he said, “I love you more than anything. If that’s not enough, nothing ever will be. And that’ll be on you.”

That shook me. I went back to “Mom” and “Dad” after that—on the outside, at least. But in my head, I still defaulted to Charlie and Renee. Part of me was still afraid. Part of me didn’t know how to fully connect with either of them. Renee had always felt fragile, unsure of how to handle a daughter who barely breathed like her. Charlie felt like something even more alien than I was.

Maybe that was the problem. I didn’t really hate either side. But I didn’t belong completely to either one.

I wondered if I’d ever truly love myself. Not tolerate, not adjust, not pass—but accept. All of it. The skin. The eyes. The quiet lights that glowed when I laughed. The mouth full of teeth. The long, breathless silences between words.

I keep using dad’s name like I’m testing it. But since I started shifting at fifteen... I felt the gap between us shrinking. He’s not just the one who gave me this—he’s the one showing me how to live with it. As a legacy.

I’d caught myself thinking of him as “Dad” a couple of times today. I liked it. And hopefully one day, I’ll stop thinking of him as “Charlie” once and for all.

Maybe “Dad” will feel like the truest word again—not because I love him more, but because I finally love the part of me that’s his.

The part I tried to cut out. The part I’ve grown into. The part that’s Meir’ha’dun—cold-blooded and silver-eyed and strong.

When I instinctively call him “Dad” in my head again, it won’t be an act of forgiveness. There is, after all, nothing to forgive. It’ll be an act of acceptance. Of love—not just for him, because I already truly love him, but for me. All of me.

I turned my face to the pillow and let the river sound through the walls, a lullaby older than time. And for the first time in months, I didn’t feel alone. Just… unfinished. Like the tide hadn't claimed me yet.

But it was coming.

Chapter Text

By Sunday night, the salt had finally left my skin.

My hair still smelled like the ocean—brine and shadow—and my muscles still hummed from the last dive, but the ache of transformation had ebbed like the tide pulling back. I felt… balanced again. Still too warm for comfort, but grounded. Solid. Like I could walk into a high school and pass for normal, even if every cell in me rebelled at the thought.

When we weren’t in the water, we worked on the house. Dad was building a second bathroom—mine—so I’d have privacy every teenage girl dreamed of. We spent hours threading pipes under the floorboards. He gave instructions; I crawled through dust and copper like some half-domesticated sea creature pretending to belong on land.

When we took breaks, I either had a quick standing nap, read a book, or practiced playing my viola. I hadn’t been learning for too long, but since I no longer properly slept, I had all the time in the world to practice. I’d initially hesitated between violin or cello. Something about string instruments just drew me in. But a concert by the school music band had in Phoenix introduced me to the viola. Its deeper, richer sounds could be haunting, and it sounded like it was speaking to me. Speaking for me. Only that instrument could translate the loneliness.

Also, cellos are just too damn big, and Renee was often too scatter-brained to drive me to practice.

Before the viola, I had tried out other instruments and had initially turned to loud ones to vent my anger at… life. My condition. My parents. I wanted to practice the drums. The electric guitar. Anything that said: Hear me.

Until my instructor, who allowed me to try out different instruments, asked my why I was so sad and if everything was okay at home.

That revelation that I was actually sad, and not angry, had probably saved me from a self-destructive path. It's not like I could see a therapist.

My mother had been relieved when I hadn’t brought a drum kit or an electric guitar home. Then again, when I’d wanted to play the glass harmonica she’d been relieved to discovered it was too expensive and large. She did, however, regret her teasing when I discovered the waterphone. Charlie paid for it. When she saw the size, she thought it was a small oddly shaped thing that looked quiet. Until I woke her up in the middle of the night, standing over her playing horror movie sound effects, whilst whispering dramatically: “You made me!”

Yeah. Preteen me had issues. Renee had confiscated it. Dad had laughed himself sick.

He listens to me play it now as he tries to cook me food. Like me, he enjoys the odd, creepy noises. It reminds us both of the ocean. A lot of humans are afraid of that too.

Charlie made me grilled cheese. Burned it. I ate it anyway. He watched with quiet horror and found himself oysters, as if trying to remind me where we both came from.

I was drifting into a half-standing nap by the door when he cleared his throat behind me.

“I need to talk to you before tomorrow.”

My spine straightened. That never boded well.

“Is this the ‘don’t kill anyone on your first day’ talk? Or a sequel to the trauma speech?”

A faint smile tugged at his mouth, but didn’t stay. “Not quite.”

We sat at the kitchen table—me curled in my usual perch, one knee up like I was balancing on deck; Charlie across from me, nursing an unopened beer he could never savor. His fingers tapped a slow rhythm against the label, like sonar echoes through deep water.

“You’re going to see some… unusual students at Forks High,” he said. “They’ve been in town for a couple years. Keep to themselves. But you should know what they are. I mentioned them once, briefly.”

I tilted my head, curiosity rising like current.

“They’re not Meir’ha’dun,” he added quickly. “Not like us. Not ocean-born. But they’re not human either.”

Now he had my full attention. My pulse slowed, senses narrowing like a hunter’s.

“They’re vampires.”

Silence rippled. One beat. Two.

“…Excuse me?”

“They don’t hide it exactly,” he said. “But they don’t advertise it either. The whole family has golden eyes—sickly-looking, but they’re never sick. They don’t eat. They avoid the sun. Cold as stone. They’ve been adopted by a doctor in town—Carlisle Cullen. He runs the ER at the hospital.”

The name struck a faint note. Like something half-remembered from a depth too far to swim.

“They drink animal blood,” Charlie continued. “Not human. That’s what keeps their eyes gold instead of red.”

I blinked, trying to process the revelation that vampires existed. “You’re telling me there are actual vampires in public school.”

“Yes.”

“Vampires are real?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And they… drain wildlife, or people’s pets, and pretend to be students?”

“Basically.”

I leaned back, stunned. “Are we sure I’m the weird one?”

Charlie chuckled softly, then the humor drained from his face. “They’re not dangerous, Bella. Not to you. They’ve never slipped. Not once. Doctor Cullen’s saved more lives than anyone knows. Whatever they were before… they’re trying.”

The air shifted. Heavy. Compressed. Like the moment before a dive when your lungs brace against pressure.

“Do they know about us?” I asked.

Charlie’s expression tightened, dulled.

“No. No vampire alive knows what the Meir’ha’dun are. We vanished from their stories a long time ago. On purpose.”

That landed sharp. Cold. “Why? How?”

He hesitated, mouth tightening. “There are no stories if there are no survivors.”

A chill ran through me. Something in his voice curled low—ancient and weighted. A current that ran deeper than time.

“But vampires? How can they even exist? I thought they were myths.”

Charlie looked away. His hand closed tight around the bottle. Not drinking. Just grounding himself.

“Dad?”

His eyes weren’t with me anymore. They were with ghosts. Looking back—not decades, but centuries. And to my shock: tears. He blinked them away fast, but not fast enough. His hand shook once before stilling against the wood.

Every instinct in me stilled. Like a reef going silent when something massive passes overhead.

I swallowed. “What happened?”

Charlie’s jaw clenched. “Not tonight.”

“But—”

“Bella.” His voice cracked like dry coral. “I’m not ready.”

I stopped. He never snapped unless something old and dangerous was stirring under the surface.

I reached out, touched the back of his hand. “Okay.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. He exhaled and rubbed his brow like trying to wipe away centuries of memory.

“You’ll be safe,” he said at last. “They don’t hunt sea-born. Meir’ha’dun don’t smell right to them. We’re… wrong. Not appetizing. It’s humans they crave.”

I raised a brow. “Reassuring.”

“Just keep your head down. If they don’t approach, don’t approach. If they do—be polite. But careful.”

I nodded slowly. “What’s their leader like? The doctor?”

“Smart. Calculated. Kind, in a way I didn’t expect. You’d like him.”

“Kind vampire,” I muttered. “Sure. That’s a phrase that should be impossible.”

Charlie gave a tired smile. “You must not judge them. You wouldn’t want to be judged for what you are.”

That hit harder than I expected.

“Most vampires didn’t choose this life,” he said. “Just like most of us didn’t choose ours. And the ones trying to live clean?” He shook his head. “That’s worth respect. Even if it’s strange.”

I paused, thoughts circling like distant fin shapes. “Wait… you’ve met Carlisle?”

He nodded. “Had to. To make sure they were safe.”

“So they already know about us?”

“No.” His voice firmed. “He hasn’t noticed. He can’t.”

I stared. “But wouldn’t he smell you?”

Charlie shook his head. “To him, I’d smell human. I made myself that way. Chose it. But you…”

I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a hybrid,” he said. “Half human. Half Meir’ha’dun. You’re both, Bella. And you don’t get to choose. You shift freely, naturally. But when I came ashore, I chose to stay. I made myself pass as human—fingerprints, blood work, cell structure. Everything. But when I transform, it’s… a rewrite. Every cell protests. That’s why it hurts.”

His voice had gone quiet. Not ashamed. Just honest.

I let the silence sit. Heavy. Shifting.

There were so many things he had yet to tell me, but as he’d informed me a couple of years ago, there wasn’t much point in burdening me with information when I just needed to enjoy my childhood. But now I had too many questions. But I didn’t want to unravel everything tonight. Not with school looming like a dock I didn’t want to step onto.

I took a breath that shuddered, then stilled. “I’ll need to know more. But later.”

Charlie nodded, eyes on his beer like it might offer answers.

“I didn’t tell you sooner,” he said. “I was afraid. Of what it might do to you. Of how much you’d want to know. Sometimes, not knowing everything keeps you safe.”

I stood slowly, my thoughts drifting. “These vampires… do you think they’ll talk to me?”

He looked up. “Would you want them to?”

I hesitated.

“I don’t know.”

We fell into silence again. Listening to the dark river outside. Worrying in different languages.

Eventually, I slipped away to sleep—half in dreams, half in the deep.

Charlie packed my lunch like it was my first day of kindergarten—except instead of juice boxes and PB&J, he filled the bag with chilled squid, kelp salad, and two raw oysters sealed in a glass jar. Classic Meir’ha’dun comfort food. It smelled like low tide and tasted like home.

“You don’t have to eat it all,” Charlie said, lifting an eyebrow. “Just don’t let anyone else taste it. Might start a war.”

“Noted.”

He drove ahead in the cruiser while I trailed behind in my rust-shelled truck. Forks High loomed through the trees, low and gray and damp. Clusters of students gathered like small herds—hooded, loud, breathing steam into the fog. I found a spot and pulled in.

The moment I stepped out, I felt them. The staccato pulse of nearby hearts. Dozens. All too fast, all too warm.

Human. Human. Human.

My nerves prickled, jangling under my skin, but I forced a smile.

“You’ll be fine,” Charlie called from his window. “Remember who you are.”

I did.

Cold-blooded. Salt-born. Full of sea monsters and secrets.

And ready to pretend I belonged.

I took a deep breath before opening the door. Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer than I needed. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. Plants grew everywhere in large plastic pots, in an attempt to bring greenery inside. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly colored flyers taped to its front. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a large, red-haired woman wearing glasses. She was wearing a purple t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed. I felt relieved, as I may start to boil if I didn’t get out of my coat soon.

The woman looked up. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and she immediately nodded. Not too many new kids joining here.

"Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school." She brought several sheets to the counter to show me. She explained my classes and gave me slips for teachers to sign. I thanked her and went to leave. I was almost out the door when I doubled back.

“Ah, Mrs. Cope?” I asked, shifting my bag higher on my shoulder. “Do you have a list of student clubs or activities?”

Her smile sharpened with surprise. “Of course, dear! We love to see new students getting involved.” She rifled through a drawer and passed me a photocopied sheet that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the nineties. “This is a general list. Some clubs are more active than others. Let me know if you need help contacting the sponsors.”

I thanked her and tucked the page into my notebook before heading out.

The morning slipped past in a blur of names and invitations.

Apparently, being the chief’s daughter made me a minor local celebrity. A boy named Eric offered to walk me to class. Angela shared her spare pencil. Mike Newton asked if I surfed.

(I didn’t. I was the board.)

Everyone seemed curious. Friendly. Human in a way that felt… easy.

And I liked it.

Maybe too much.

The cafeteria reeked of ketchup, milk, and something overcooked. I slid into a seat beside Angela and Jessica, my lunch pack unopened at my elbow. They eyed it as I popped the seal and started to eat.

“You brought… raw clams?” Jessica asked, nose wrinkling.

“Yup,” I replied around a bite.

“…Cool.”

I didn’t elaborate. There was no language for explaining tide-scented homesickness. Instead I asked them about the school clubs and what they recommended.

“—so Chess Club’s just three guys and a folding table in the library,” Mike said, launching into a rundown of Forks High’s social life like it was a sport. “And Yearbook is mostly people who wish they were in Drama.”

“Which is a war zone,” Jessica added, rolling her eyes. “Two girls already fought over who gets to play Juliet this year.”

I blinked. “Juliet? We’re doing Romeo and Juliet?”

“No,” Eric said dryly from across the table. “We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but they’re fighting anyway.”

“Ah. Shakespeare-induced delusions. Classic.”

Mike laughed, clearly surprised. Jessica gave me a look that said you might survive here after all.

I skimmed the club list, crossing out Drama with a firm line. Pity. I’d learned to enjoy it back in Phoenix; playing parts had been my only therapy. But I had enough drama with all the changes going on in my life.

As they chatted about upcoming events, I quietly reached out with my senses—electroreception, like sharks or rays. A pulse behind the pulse. A rhythm beneath the skin.

I wondered if I would ever develop the ability to feel ‘vibrational empathy’, as dad called it. He described it as feeling the tension via the electroreception, knowing people’s moods. Saved his life many times over as a Meir’ha’dun and a cop.

One by one, I cataloged heartbeats: fast, slow, distracted, steady. It felt like rain hitting a thousand surfaces. Angela was fast-paced, excited. Mike, surprisingly calm. Jessica’s heart buzzed somewhere between the two.

Then—

The door opened.

Five entered.

No heartbeats.

None.

My map shattered.

Every hair on my arms lifted, spine rigid. My breath caught like a net mid-haul.

Dange r, danger, danger!

I spun around to look, my instincts shouting at me to flee. They moved like mist—silent, smooth, too precise. Their skin gleamed faintly, like polished stone under moonlight. Gold eyes scanned the room with eerie calm. Faces sharp as coral, beautiful in the way cliffs are beautiful: deadly and unmoving.

Jessica followed my gaze. “Oh, that’s the Cullens.”

I didn’t answer.

They weren’t hunting. Not openly. But instinct shrieked anyway.

They felt like me.

Too still. Too cold.

Too other.

And I couldn’t tell if that meant kin… or threat.

They didn’t sit with anyone.

The five of them slipped to a corner table, silent and separate, like the room shifted subtly to give them space. No tray bumps. No awkward glances. Just fluid, inhuman coordination.

I focused on the one by the window—tall, bronze-haired, currently picking at the edge of a napkin like it had insulted his ancestors. His eyes lifted once. Brushed past me.

And moved on.

“You’re staring,” Jessica whispered, too delighted.

I blinked. “They’re hard to miss.”

She leaned closer, voice dropping with the conspiratorial glee of a gossip goblin. “Like I said, that’s the Cullens. Well, technically the Cullens and the Hales. It’s kind of complicated.”

Five perfect strangers. One curated set.

They looked like they’d been designed, not born. Like someone sketched them from memory and forgot to add flaws.

“Complicated how?”

Jessica grinned. “Okay, so. Dr. Cullen—you know, the ER guy? He adopted all of them. Or fostered. Whatever. It’s a whole thing.”

“All five?” I might as well get the perspective of humans on these creatures, my dad not having been very forthcoming.

She nodded. “The tall blonde—Rosalie—and the big guy next to her? That’s Emmett. They’re dating.”

My brow lifted.

“I know, right?” she said. “They say they’re not biologically related, but it still weirds people out.”

“And the other two?”

“Alice and Jasper. They’re a thing too. Jasper’s Rosalie’s twin. Although, I hear they have different accents.”

I glanced back.

Jasper looked… off. Coiled tight, like he didn’t trust chairs. Or floors. Or himself. His eyes darted like sonar in a thunderstorm.

Jessica noticed. “He always looks like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s about to run. People have tons of theories.”

I didn’t ask what people thought of him. In a small town, rumors wore everyone’s face.

I admired the bronze sheen in the hair of the last sibling.

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and his eyes brush past me again, but not gawking like the other students had today — he had a slightly bored expression. I looked down again.

"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Everyone’s tried—literally everyone. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. His cheek appeared lifted, as if he were smiling, too.

“Maybe he’s just not interested.” In dating potential lunch. I could only imagine my father’s face if I fell for a squid.

“Oh, totally,” she said, with a knowing smirk. “But, like, in a tortured loner way. Makes people obsessed.”

I nodded and popped a piece of squid into my mouth. Jessica blinked.

“You’re eating… octopus?”

“Squid,” I said. “I like seafood.” Definitely never dating squid.

She nodded slowly, clearly out of follow-up questions.

Across the cafeteria, Edward Cullen stilled. His hand froze on the shredded napkin. His gaze snapped toward me like a current shifting direction, like he’d just realized something.

And this time, he didn’t look away.

The cafeteria emptied in slow waves—clattering trays, squeaking sneakers, the chaos of fifteen-minute freedom. I packed my lunch carefully, sliding the clean Tupperware back into my tote.

I was halfway to the trash bin when Mike caught up, all grins and flannel optimism.

“Hey! You’ve got Bio next, right?”

I blinked. “I think so. Still not sure which hallway isn’t a trap.”

He laughed, clearly delighted to be helpful. “C’mon, I’ll walk you. Banner’s room is in the science wing—just past the mural with the beaver that looks like it lost a fight.”

Danger!

It slammed into me like a rogue wave. My instincts flared. Something pulled tight along my spine.

When I looked up, she was already watching—small, dark-haired, sharp-eyed.

Alice.

She stood too still. Eyes narrowed slightly. Not hostile—but alert. Tense.

I knew that look. I’d worn it before, in deep water. When you saw something new and maybe dangerous, and didn’t know which way to swim.

Our eyes locked for a heartbeat.

She didn’t smile.

Then her gaze flicked past me, triangulating something invisible. Her hand twitched—barely—and the blond boy beside her (Jasper?) shifted too. His eyes swept the hallway like a sonar scan.

I walked faster.

Mike talked the whole way. Something about his parents’ outdoor supply store, how his mom knew Charlie, how everyone knew Charlie.

He was easy to listen to. Human. Warm. Soothing in a way I wasn’t used to.

“You’ll like Banner,” he said as we reached the door. “He’s kind of a nerd—but like, passionate about it.”

“Better than dead-eyed disappointment,” I said.

Mike grinned and pushed open the door.

The room smelled like antiseptic and paper towels. Beige walls. Fossil posters. Lab tables.

And he was already there.

Edward Cullen.

He sat alone at the table in the back, one arm braced like he was holding himself in place. His head snapped up the moment I entered.

Still no heartbeat.

It felt like standing near something that should be still—but wasn’t. A statue that might blink.

“Isabella Swan?” Mr. Banner called.

“Bella,” I corrected, handing over my slip.

He scribbled something. “Take the open seat next to Edward. We’re starting mitosis.”

I exhaled slowly and crossed the room. As I passed, other students barely looked up. But I felt Edward’s gaze tracking me—sharp and unmoving.

I sat. Gave him a curt nod.

“Hi.”

No answer.

He didn’t blink.

Cool. Normal.

I turned toward the whiteboard. Banner had launched into a passionate spiel about spindle fibers and cell division. I took notes. Or tried to.

It was hard, with an ancient corpse glaring at me from six inches away.

His scent wasn’t strong—just sharp. Cold metal and citrus rind. Not unpleasant. Not tempting. Just… wrong.

I glanced sideways.

He sat like carved stone. Jaw clenched. Neck taut. Like he was holding his breath.

Then—he inhaled.

And twitched like I’d slapped him.

A jerk of the shoulder. Barely visible—but I caught it.

His eyes—pitch black—locked onto mine. Still. Focused. Intense.

Cool cool cool cool. Totally not terrifying.

I turned back to the whiteboard and raised my hand.

“Wait—can you go back a step? I thought chromosomes duplicated during prophase, not interphase?”

Banner beamed. “Ah, good question! Duplication actually happens during the S-phase of interphase. Mitosis begins after that. Let’s diagram—”

He went on. For five minutes. To the whole class.

Perfect.

I nodded like I cared deeply about cellular division. (I didn’t.) But now I had thirty witnesses if Edward decided to go full Dracula.

I asked two more questions before the bell.

He never spoke. Never moved. Just… watched.

When the period ended, I shoved my notebook into my bag and stood fast.

“Next week,” Mr. Banner called, “we’ll begin your genetics project. Partners will be assigned. Brush up on dominant traits.”

Edward didn’t move.

I glanced at him. “See you.”

No reply.

I walked out with my spine straight and my pulse steady.

One thing was certain: Charlie hadn’t warned me nearly enough. That thing in Bio? Not a boy.

A corpse. A beautiful, confusing, tightly-wound corpse with no heartbeat… and no manners.

The rest of the day blurred by.

History, locker-wrangling, too many questions. The humans were warm and loud and full of breath. I answered with dry comments and well-timed smiles.

But Edward Cullen stayed with me.

Not his voice. Not his presence.

His absence.

The way he’d stared. Like I was something new. Something wrong. Something… familiar.

By the time I hit the locker room, I was craving saltwater. My muscles itched—not from dryness, but restraint. I was holding too much inside. My skin wanted to ripple.

Coach Clapp met me just outside. Clipboard in hand like a third limb.

“You don’t have to suit up today, Swan. First day’s a pass.”

He held out a school-issue uniform—blue cotton, loose fit.

“I’ll change,” I said. “Might as well start off right.”

He gave me a nod, impressed. “Your call.”

Inside, I changed quickly. The shirt itched. The shorts hung awkwardly. I tied my hair back and studied my reflection.

No glow. No fluke. Just girl.

I stepped onto the court.

The gym smelled like dust and varnish. Volleyball nets had already been set up. Students milled around in loose clusters, tossing balls, laughing. One kid missed a spike and the ball rolled toward me.

I caught it one-handed on the first bounce.

Mike appeared. “Hey! You’re in my gym class too?”

“Apparently,” I said, spinning the ball once in my palm.

“You wanna team up? We’re doing quick sets. First to seven. You any good?”

I grinned. “I’ll try not to humiliate us.”

We were up second.

When Coach tossed me the ball, I caught it clean. Took a breath. Let instinct guide me.

Serve.

The ball arced just right—slow, soft, carefully calibrated. Tyler missed the return.

“Point!” Mike whooped.

The game unfolded easily. Short volleys. Decent saves. I moved fast, but never more than I should. Reached balls no one else saw coming. Timed jumps perfectly. Before my shift two years ago I had been abysmal at gym.

By the third point, Mike was staring.

“Where’d you learn to play?”

“Phoenix,” I lied. “I like patterns.”

“…What?”

“Volleyball’s just math with gravity.”

He blinked. “Okay.”

We won 7–4.

I earned two high-fives and one glare from Lauren, who did not like being outscored.

Coach Clapp raised a brow from the sideline. “You play club?”

I shrugged. “Not really. Just practiced a lot with my friends.”

He let it drop. “Keep it up.”

“Will do.”

I had no friends.

The bell rang.

Mike walked with me, chatting about gym rotation and flag football and lunch next week. I half-listened, tuning into the beat of sneakers on the court and the steady thrum of his heartbeat.

I felt… sharp. Balanced. Settled in my skin.

No one here knew what I was.

And if I was careful?

Maybe I could enjoy it, too.

By the time I got home, I was starving—not for food, but for silence. For salt. For water. My body tingled with the need to shift.

But first—

“Hey,” I called. “I survived.”

Charlie looked up from the table. “How was it?”

I dropped my bag and collapsed into a chair. “Busy. Loud. Everyone wants to know if I’m adopted or just glowing from seaweed supplements.”

He grinned. “Told you. Small town. New face? Blood in the water.”

I snorted. “Speaking of blood…”

Charlie stiffened—barely.

“I met the Cullens,” I said. “Just Edward. Biology. He didn’t talk. Just stared. His eyes were black.”

Charlie sat straighter. “Black?”

“Yeah. Not gold. Pitch.”

He frowned. “He hasn’t fed.”

“He’s going to school.”

Charlie shook his head slowly. “That’s… reckless. Carlisle must trust them more than I thought.”

“Carlisle?”

“Their coven leader,” he reminded me. “The Doctor.”

Coven. Right. Not pod.

“He didn’t say anything,” I added. “Just sat there. Like I’d knocked the wind out of him.”

“You probably did.”

“Thanks?”

He gave me a look. “You don’t smell human. Your heartbeat’s different. Your blood chemistry, too. Unfamiliar to their senses. Especially now, while you’re still changing.”

“Great. So I smell weird.”

“To vampires, yes.”

“He looked like he was deciding if I was edible.”

“He wasn’t.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ten years ago, I’d have worried. But now? No.” His voice was steady. Solid. “And even if he wanted to—he wouldn’t risk it. Not at school.”

I nodded, uneasy.

Charlie added, “Some vampires have… abilities. Beyond strength. Some can read thoughts. Sense feelings. Influence others.”

I went still. “Do the Cullens?”

“If they do, they won’t work on you. Or on me. Our minds are… different. Like trying to hear sonar through glass. It could be this Edwin was concerned by more than just your scent.”

I couldn’t correct him as a sudden thought jolted me. “Speaking of vampires, shouldn’t they burn in daylight?”

Dad raised a very deliberate eyebrow. “According to myth, we should be hot chicks with long flowing hair, fish tails and cute clam bras for modesty. The ‘burning in daylight’ myth probably comes from the sparkling in direct sunlight.”

I’d been pulling the list of clubs out of my bag, and the distraction was what must have caused my thoughts to perform a catastrophic car wreck as they slammed into each other at his words. “Sparkling? I—I’m sorry, what?”

He sighed, clearly unimpressed with the whole conversation. “Vampires have rock hard skin that reflects direct sunlight. Think sunlight off the surface of the water. Or a disco ball.”

I absorbed that, studying his face for any hint of humor or deception—and found none. Too shocked to laugh, I placed the list on the table and asked, “How do you know all this?”

Charlie’s face twisted. Briefly. Like something broke inside.

“Dad—”

“Another time,” he said gently. “Not tonight.”

I reached across the table. Touched his hand. “Okay.”

A pause. Then—

“You want to swim?”

I exhaled. “God, yes.”

I grabbed my pen as he went to grab our towels and looked at the list. I circled two clubs in pencil:

Music — quiet, low-commitment, and a chance to do something that didn’t involve dodging conversations or pretending to be okay. And maybe the act of playing my viola with other people — just bow to string, no words — would help.

Library Volunteers — because books didn’t ask questions. They just sat there, waiting.

I hesitated over Art Club, thought about how good I was at swimming, and then crossed them off.

There was always the risk I’d dive too deep and not come back.

We walked the familiar path through the trees. The air was cool, laced with salt. At the rocky shore, we shed our clothes without comment—

—and stepped into the sea.

The shift came easily now.

My body stretched and shimmered, skin prickling with memory. Bones rearranged. My lungs folded inward, like sails caught in sudden wind. Behind me, I heard Charlie shift—his form flickering faintly.

We dove deep.

The cold wrapped around us like silk. The water held us in its quiet grip.

And I thought about Edward Cullen—his eyes, his silence, the way he looked at me like I was a question no one had taught him how to answer.

He didn’t know what I was.

Neither did I.

But this? This I understood.

As we glided through the deep, my light flickered—uncontrolled, a pulse of white and violet.

Beside me, Charlie’s glow dimmed for a moment, like he’d felt it too.

The sea held our breath.

And in the dark, something stirred.

A sound deeper than thought.

A call.

Not mine.

But meant for me.

I thought again of Edward Cullen.

His eyes—black as the abyss I was swimming into.

His siblings—focused on me in an inhumane way.

Did that make him the predator?

Or me?

Or maybe neither of us had realized how much we already shared.

The darkness—like my future—stretched before me, vast and unknowable—and somehow, I knew I wasn’t just diving into the ocean.

I was swimming straight into his path.

Chapter Text

“Also,” Charlie called from the hallway the next morning, halfway into his uniform shirt, “they’re fast, strong, have better sight and hearing than we do—y’know, basic apex predator stuff.”

He slammed the front door before I could respond.

I stared at the space he’d just vacated, toast halfway to my mouth.

“Sure,” I muttered. “Thanks for the helpful horror movie trailer, Dad.”

He hadn’t even looked concerned. Just casually tossed the word predator over his shoulder and vanished into the drizzle. I chewed mechanically and stared at the window. The morning fog was pressed against it like a second skin.

We’d been discussing my language skills as a Meir’ha’dun and Charlie admitted I needed to start preparing to meet others of our kind. He’d spent the vacations of the last two years teaching me to shift and then to not drown and lastly, to hunt with echolocation.

The one thing we’d done years ago was learn ASL. It had become obvious that it would be too dangerous to take me out into the ocean with no way to understand him, we’d learned quite a few signs. Charlie struggled initially, mostly because of the webbing between his fingers impeded certain signs. But we’d managed to communicate. Now I needed to communicate properly. Dad warned me it would take time: like dolphins or whales, Meir’ha’dun language was infinitely more complex then any human form of communication. He’d warned me not to be upset of I failed and that as a young, I wouldn’t be judged by a pod, as it takes time to learn.

Then he’d tossed the Cullen Speech over his shoulder and bailed before I could protest. Stupid, scary Cullens.

I wasn’t afraid, not exactly. But I was aware.

The silent fraternity had clearly noticed me yesterday—if not all of them, then definitely Edward. The tense classroom standoff had been awkward at best, mildly terrifying at worst. And now that I knew what black eyes meant, it felt like playing chess with a bear.

But I couldn’t let it show.

Stress would spike my pheromones. Vampires might smell it. If I got nervous, they’d know. And nervous meant suspicious, and suspicious meant maybe-she’s-not-just-weird-but-something-else.

It was easy for my dad. He was so good at holding his human form, and he wasn’t even born human. I should ask him how that works.

So I decided not to think about them.

Instead, I asked about the clubs.

The school library was quieter than I expected—not that Forks High had much noise to begin with. Rows of slightly faded bookshelves stood like sentinels in the gloom, most of the lights off to conserve energy. A few dusty skylights filtered grey light onto the worn carpet, and somewhere in the distance, a printer clunked mournfully to life.

Behind the desk sat a thin, hawk-eyed woman with a cardigan buttoned too tight and a pair of reading glasses hanging from a purple beaded chain. She was squinting at a catalog screen like it owed her money.

I cleared my throat gently. “Hi. Um, I was wondering if you needed any help during lunch or after school. Like, shelving? Inventory?”

The woman looked up sharply—then slowly tilted her head.

“Are you one of the Swans?” she asked.

That surprised me. “Yes. Bella.”

Her gaze became abruptly devoid of life, drifting away from me slightly, but before I could think anything, she smiled faintly, then tapped the side of her glasses. “You look like your father around the eyes. Though he never read anything I gave him.”

My father had never been to a human school.

I wasn’t sure if that was an insult or a fond memory of the person she thought my dad could be, but I smiled politely. “I like books.”

“Well, that’s a start,” she said, and slid a clipboard across the desk. “We’ve got a backload of returns from last semester. If you can handle Dewey, you’re hired.”

I picked up the clipboard, scanning the call numbers.

“Looks like 812.5 got dumped in 641.5. That’s plays in the cookbooks.”

She blinked once. Slowly. Then smiled—an actual, full smile.

“You’ll do fine.”

After that, I headed down the hall to the band room, my bag slung over one shoulder and nerves stirring faintly under my skin. Music was always one of the few things that made me feel… anchored. Safe. If I could make this work, maybe Forks wouldn’t feel like a holding tank.

The band room smelled like brass polish and floor wax. Someone had written "JAZZ IS JUST SPICY MATH" on the whiteboard and underlined it three times.

A tall guy with curly dark hair and an oversized hoodie sat at the piano, idly plinking out the opening notes to Clair de Lune. He looked up as I stepped in.

“Hey,” he said, not stopping. “You lost?”

“I’m looking for Jack?” I shifted my bag higher. “I wanted to ask about the music club.”

He grinned and stood. “That’s me. And you’re Bella, right? You just transferred?”

“Guilty.”

Jack offered a fist bump. “Angela said you play viola?”

I nodded, glancing around the room. “Also waterphone. Which I know is weird, but it’s—”

“Awesome,” he cut in. “Like movie-score horror waterphone? Haunting screechy vibes? That’s insane.”

“Pretty much.”

“We’re doing some experimental compositions for the fall showcase. If you’re down to bring that thing in, we could work you in easy. Forks hasn’t had a string player in years—especially not a viola.”

I smiled, warmth blooming in my chest. “I can bring both instruments Wednesday. After school?”

He gave me a thumbs-up. “Perfect. You’ll blow everyone away. And Ms. Lovell loves anything even vaguely avant-garde. You’ll be in.”

“Thanks,” I said softly.

And I meant it.

At lunch time, I stepped into the cafeteria and spotted the Cullens instantly.

They were impossible to miss—five too-beautiful people, each of them some uncanny version of human perfection. Edward was already looking at me. No blinking. Just calm, unnerving focus.

Jessica noticed too.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, leaning in close. “Edward Cullen is watching you!”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed a tray. “He’s not watching. He’s staring blankly into the abyss.”

“No, seriously! He doesn’t look at anyone like that.”

“Like what?” I said, stabbing at my pasta salad. “Like I owe him money?”

Jessica giggled, too delighted to be offended. “You’re so mean.”

“He didn’t say hi yesterday. Didn’t say bye either. Just sat there like I was a mild inconvenience.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“So if you’re hoping I’ll step aside so you can swoop in, Jess—go for it. You’re too good for him anyway.”

Jessica beamed, nearly dropped her milk carton.

From across the room, Emmett Cullen—enormous, broad-shouldered, and trying not to laugh—shook once with suppressed mirth.

I didn’t look at Edward. Not once.

I only had biology with him. The others weren’t in any of my classes, though I saw them in the halls—eerie flashes of grace and stillness that always seemed to slow slightly when I passed. If I was talking with Mike, I’d lean into the conversation. If I was alone, I kept my gaze forward. Focused. Controlled.

But I could feel them inhale when I passed. Always quietly. Always deliberately.

My scent. They were trying to figure me out.

Fine. Let them.

That night, we floated a mile offshore, the sea calm beneath a pearl-colored sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but the water still shimmered faintly—alive with light from something older than moonlight.

I couldn’t get the clicks right. Again.

“Try slower,” Charlie clicked, patient as ever. “You’re letting your throat tense. Loosen your jaw.”

I clicked the pattern again—slow, focused, pulling from somewhere low in my chest.

Wrong.

He shook his head gently, offered a soft trill in correction. His sound was clean. My version was clumsy, off-rhythm.

I gave a frustrated sigh and let myself sink a few feet, limbs heavy with exhaustion.

He followed.

For a moment, we floated there in silence, suspended in the deepening blue.

Then Charlie signed, hands more delicate this time:

Let’s try your name.

My head snapped toward him.

My name? I asked, the signs sharp, startled.

He nodded once, slow.

You never taught me.

Because you never needed it. His answer was calm, steady. It was always just us. You only started shifting two years ago. But… you might meet a pod. You’ll need to introduce yourself.

That thought stopped me cold.

I hadn’t considered that—what I would say when meeting others. That there would be an actual conversation. Meir’ha’dun that weren’t Charlie. Other creatures like me. Others who spoke in sound and flash and song. Others who’d look at me and know I wasn’t quite whole.

The idea made my stomach curl.

Do we really have names? I signed slowly. Like… Isabella? Fred? Sam?

Charlie’s eyes sparkled, and for a second, I thought he might laugh. Instead, he gave a single, slow click that sounded like amusement and affection braided together.

Not exactly.

He indicated to go back to the beach and I realized this is a conversation we need out loud. We surfaced together, exhaling in soft huffs and shift to human form.

“You had a mark,” he said aloud, his voice low against the waves. “When you were born. Right here.” He tapped his own chest, above the sternum. “A little crescent glow. Only visible during the full moon.”

My heart jolted.

“I thought it was a trick of the light,” I whispered.

“Your mother thought so too.” Charlie gave a small smile. “But it wasn’t. It was… your birthmark. Like the spots on an orca calf.”

I stared at the horizon.

“What did you name me?” My voice came out smaller than I meant.

Charlie’s expression softened. His eyes were dark, but not unreadable.

“I named you…” He paused. “Something like Beauty in the Moonlight.”

The words hit me like a tide pulling backward—exposing all the soft, raw places underneath.

I blinked. “You thought I was… beautiful?”

“You were,” he said simply. “Even before we knew what you were. Even when you looked human. Even now. Always.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. The lump in my throat swelled. Human. That was always the word that made me feel small.

But not now.

Now, it was just part of the truth.

“I want to learn it,” I whispered.

So we dove.

And in the darkness below the surface, Charlie showed me how to say my name.

It was nothing like English. Not even like music. It was layered clicks and modulated hums, reverberated from my chest through the water, paired with the faintest shimmer of light along my arms and collarbone—bioluminescent accents that flickered like meaning in punctuation.

We practiced. Over and over.

Each time I got closer.

On the seventh attempt, it came out whole. Not perfect, but whole.

The water vibrated around us. That sound—that name—was mine.

And for the first time, I felt it.

I wasn’t just pretending to be something else.

I was becoming.

We drifted for a while in silence. Then I signed:

What’s your name?

He hesitated.

My first name was —he produced a dense string of sounds, layered and resonant, a song I couldn’t fully mimic yet— but names change. They’re given again as we grow.

He continued signing carefully: The elders get names by memory. By story. One of the old females still patrols the Northern Coast. Her name means She Who Remembers Stars.

The image stunned me.

And the young? I asked.

“There was a boy, barely full-grown. Saved a group of smallings from a hunting pod of orca. His name now is ‘He Who Turned the Hunter’.”

I felt something inside me settle. Or shift.

Maybe I would have another name one day too.

One earned. One chosen.

I glanced at Charlie. “What’s your name now?”

Charlie paused.

Then shrugged, just slightly.

“It’s… hard to translate.”

I frowned. Something was off. “Hard how?”

He offered a crooked smile, the kind that said not now, maybe never.

“It’s just old,” he added, turning for the rocks. “Not important. My name came from an event long ago, and impossible to explain without a lot of historical context. Just know most Meir’ha’dun think I’m awesome.” His bioluminscence blinked humor at me.

I laughed. I wondered how long he’d had it and if Meir’ha’dun really cared for it. “Can you say it?”

Charlie made a series of clicks and modulated hums that reverberated deep within me. He produced a series of bioluminscent flashes, that accompany the names of elder Meir’ha’dun. Too fast for me to pin point, but I sensed a certain weight behind it.

We surfaced together again.

He ruffled the salt from his hair, climbing slowly onto the low rock ledge where he’d left his flannel. He pulled it on over damp skin and glanced back at me, brows raised.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.

I wasn’t sure if it was a lie. But my dad’s dismissal of his name didn’t sit well with me. A ball of anxiety formed in my chest.

The sky was starless above us, heavy and still. The sea was quiet.

I reached for my towel, wrapping it around my shoulders. My voice was small.

“How did you get the name Charlie?”

He stilled for a moment, then gave a soft snort. “I’ll tell you next time.”

He stood and offered me a hand.

I took it.

The next day dawned gray and damp again. I dressed carefully. Neutrals. Layers. Something unmemorable. I pulled my hair back and stuffed my books into my bag with the calm resolve of someone preparing for a second Cold War.

Biology again.

Edward Cullen was already in his seat when I arrived.

He wasn’t glaring this time. Wasn’t blank either. Just… calm. Watchful. His eyes—no longer black—were golden. They caught the light strangely, like molten metal. He certainly appeared less haunted.

I hesitated at the desk.

“Hello,” I said, voice light, neutral.

Edward looked up. “Hello,” he said back, voice low and rich and shockingly polite.

I blinked.

So… round two, then.

Edward didn't elaborate right away. Just watched me for a moment like I might vanish if he blinked.

Then:
"I'm Edward Cullen," he said, with a strange formality. His voice was velvet-smooth, with that old-world lilt—like he was auditioning to narrate a BBC nature documentary.

I blinked. Was that his real name? I wondered what it would be like to introduce ourselves properly. Hello, I’m Beauty In The Moonlight, but please call me Bella if you’re as incompetent at echolocation as my mother. “Bella Swan.”

He nodded once. “I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself properly the other day. Things were... busy.”

I raised one brow. “Busy. Right.”

He had the grace to look faintly amused. “Sorry if I seemed rude.”

That was putting it diplomatically, but I decided to let it go. “No trouble,” I said lightly, folding myself into the seat beside him. “We all have off days.”

“Do we?” he murmured, almost to himself.

Mr. Banner’s voice cut through the tension. “Open your study books. Exercise twelve, page ninety-four. Work with the person next to you.”

I glanced sideways. Edward already had his copy open, long pale fingers resting lightly against the page.

“Shall we?” I asked.

His lips quirked. “Lead the way.”

We fell into a rhythm easily—faster than I expected. I answered one question, he followed with another, and before long we were trading lines from the book without needing to point.

“Rain again,” he said during a lull, almost as if to himself. “It never really stops here.”

“You say that like it’s a problem,” I replied, flipping a page.

That drew his eyes back to me. “You like the rain?”

I shrugged. “I’m not boiling alive here, so that’s a win.”

“You’re from Arizona, right? Phoenix?”

I hesitated, heartbeat steady. I didn’t want to lie. I wasn’t even sure if I could lie without it registering somehow. “Yeah. Couldn’t take the heat. Moved in with my dad.”

Edward was quiet a moment longer than necessary.

“That’s unusual,” he said at last. “Most people wouldn’t trade sun for overcast skies and mold.”

“I’m not most people,” I said, then flushed slightly. That sounded more dramatic than I intended. “Besides, I’m so pale, I don’t tan. I peel. It’s disgusting.”

But he didn’t laugh. If anything, his smile deepened, eyes warming a shade. “Fair. But you’re still not most people.”

I swallowed my nervousness. “That sounds suspiciously like a compliment.”

He tilted his head slightly. “It’s just an observation. But if it makes you uncomfortable, I can retract it.”

“Do you retract all your compliments?”

He smiled again, this one a little sharper, like he was caught off guard. “Only the dangerous ones.”

I blinked, unsure what to say to that. I picked up my pen again, partly to give my hands something to do, partly to cover the way my throat tightened.

“I heard your family moved here recently,” I said, pivoting the topic. “With Dr. Cullen?”

Edward nodded. “Carlisle. He’s our… father. Legally.”

“You’re all adopted?”

“Yes. Rosalie and Jasper were adopted together. Alice and Emmett came later. I was first.”

That little string of facts was delivered precisely, like it had been rehearsed. I supposed it probably had. I wondered how many times people asked them the same questions.

“I guess Forks is a good place for doctors,” I said lightly, twirling the pen between my fingers. “Low crime rate. No sunshine.”

His mouth twitched. “That last part helps.”

My heart stuttered for a moment. Could he be more obvious?

Maybe the myths about vampires had aged just as poorly as the ones about the Meir’ha’dun — or “mermaids,” as humans insisted on calling us. I wondered if vampires had their own word for what they were. Did they even see themselves as a separate species from humans? Was “vampire” something they embraced, or was it more like a slur? I knew Charlie had no patience for being called a mermaid — he'd flipped off a group of sailors for it more than once.

I thought about what he’d had told me last night: sparkling like disco balls. In all myths and stories, vampires didn't like sunlight.

Forks wasn’t just convenient. It was strategic. For both of us.

They were different. Like me.

Edward studied me like he could see the thoughts slotting into place behind my eyes. But if he was reading anything on my face, he didn’t show it.

“Why Forks?” he asked suddenly. “Out of all the quiet towns in the world, why this one?”

I hesitated. Not because I didn’t know the answer—but because I was wondering how much of it he might already know. His lack of heartbeat meant I had no idea what his emotional state was.

“Like I said, my dad lives here,” I said, keeping it casual. “Felt like the right time to try something new. Or maybe something old. I used to visit every school holiday.”

Edward nodded, slow and thoughtful.

“Does it feel like home?”

That question surprised me. It shouldn’t have, but it did.

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “Maybe. It’s... different this time.”

“Different is good,” he murmured. But he said it like a warning.

When the bell rang, I closed my book quickly, shoving it back into my bag.

“Have a nice day,” I said, tone casual.

Edward blinked.

Like the phrase startled him.

Then, slowly, he smiled. It was small, but unmistakable. “You too, Bella.”

As I turned to leave, I realized with a jolt: he really was beautiful.

Beautiful like glaciers. Beautiful like night sky seen from the bottom of the sea. Distant, cold, strangely sad.

And utterly inhuman.

The day slid in on a tide of rain and early morning fog, wrapping Forks in its usual soft grays and quiet. I moved through school like someone tracing a map—learning the names, the routes, the rhythms. It wasn’t difficult. High school hierarchies weren’t that different from pod behavior Charlie had described. Stick to the middle, don’t challenge anyone too obvious, and you’d be fine.

But I hadn’t expected to… enjoy it.

By Thursday, Mike Newton had declared me a “total natural” in gym, which I suspected was partially flattery and partially his way of trying to make sure I stayed on his volleyball team. He’d told at least three people that I “spiked like a machine.” I’d had to start deliberately missing shots just to tone it down.

In the cafeteria, I found myself sitting with Jessica Stanley, Angela Weber, and Eric Yorkie more often than not. Mike usually joined, as well as Lauren who sneered at me and Tyler. The seven of us made an odd little grouping, but it worked. Jessica was loud and liked attention, Angela was quiet and warm, and Eric reminded me a bit of one of the younger boys back in Phoenix—always eager to impress, constantly talking, but deeply curious underneath it all.

“You’ve seriously never seen The Matrix?” Eric gaped at me as I picked at a red apple. “Or The Sixth Sense? Or Donnie Darko?”

I shrugged. “My mom found TV boring. My dad doesn’t have a TV.”

Jessica nearly dropped her yogurt. “Wait, like—at all?”

“No cable, no internet either. We have books and radio. Very retro. He calls it character building.”

Mike blinked. “You poor thing.”

“It’s not that bad,” I said, grinning a little. “But yeah, kind of wild I’ve never seen most movies.”

Eric leaned forward, wide-eyed. “Okay, that’s criminal. You’re coming over one weekend—we’ll watch Fight Club, Memento, maybe The Ring. You’ll thank me later.”

“You’re just trying to convert her into a film geek,” Angela teased gently.

“Obviously,” Eric said proudly.

I found myself laughing—real laughter, the kind that made my chest loosen. I had to be careful. I knew that. Getting attached meant heartbreak later. If I had to leave suddenly, if the wrong person saw me shift or noticed something off… these friendships wouldn’t survive it. I couldn’t explain anything.

But still. It was nice.

During lunch on Friday, Jessica slid into the seat next to me with a suspiciously smug smile.

“So,” she said, drawing the word out. “What do you think of Mike?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“He’s been following you around like a lost puppy. You must have noticed.”

I glanced at Mike, who was across the table, arguing with Eric over whether or not Saw was better than The Blair Witch Project.

“He’s nice,” I said cautiously.

Jessica leaned in, lowering her voice. “Do not fall for him. Please.”

I blinked. “Why not?”

“Because I have dibs,” she said, mock-dramatic, then dissolved into giggles. “Kidding. Mostly. But seriously—he’s sweet, but I’ve known him since middle school. I’d die if he picked someone else.”

I smiled, surprised by how unbothered I felt. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to steal anyone.”

She looked relieved. “Good. You’re cool, Bella. It’d suck if we had to fight.”

I snorted. “Pretty sure you’d win.”

Jessica grinned. “You’d be surprised. Also, FYI? Lauren likes Tyler. Angela likes Ben, but he has no idea. It’s, like, a whole ecosystem. And Eric has been trying to get Katie’s attention for a while now.”

I blinked, trying to remember who Katie was. “That’s… actually helpful.”

“I’m basically a walking tabloid,” she said proudly. “Stick with me and I’ll keep you informed.”

And maybe I would. I could navigate this. A web of teenage emotions and shifting dynamics. Honestly, it wasn’t so different from what Charlie told me about pods and territory disputes and knowing when someone’s circling too close to your kelp nest.

I could play along.

I could belong—at least for a while.

That night, I sat at the kitchen table while Charlie gutted fish and talked about how tourists always got stuck in ditches around the lake. I told him about Eric’s obsession with movies, about Jessica’s commentary on the social circle, and about Angela’s thoughtful book questions.

He listened, nodding quietly, and handed me a plate.

“You sound like you’re making friends,” he said after a beat.

I chewed slowly. “I’m trying.”

Charlie met my eyes, serious. “You know it’s okay to have people. Even if it’s temporary.”

I didn’t answer. Just took another bite.

I didn’t know how to tell him that temporary hurt too much. That pretending to be human was easier when I didn’t start to want what they had—movies and crushes and lazy afternoons that didn’t end in danger.

But I was pretending. And pretending meant playing the part well.

So I smiled.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not so bad.”

The phone rang.

We both froze for a second. Then Charlie lowered his book and raised his eyebrows. “That’ll be your mom.”

He handed me the receiver with a look of parental resignation and terror at modern technology. “Tell her I’m feeding you vegetables.”

I took the phone and curled onto the couch. “Hello?”

“Bella?” came my mom’s voice, soft and just a little breathless—like she’d run to make the call. “Oh, honey. It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Hey, Mom.”

“I tried emailing, but of course your dad doesn’t believe in email—he just sort of grunted and told me to call the ‘landline,’ like we’re in a time machine.”

I smiled faintly. “Yeah. I’m just waiting for him to dust off the telegraph machine next. Look out for my smoke signals.”

She laughed. “God, I missed you. How are you holding up? Is it cold? Are you—” Her voice dipped. “Is it helping?”

I paused, glanced at the frost-blurred window. “Yeah. It’s helping.”

That was an understatement. Since leaving Phoenix, I hadn’t overheated once. The constant internal fever, the sense that my body was boiling from the inside out—it was gone. Forks was cold, damp, and overcast. And it was saving me.

But I knew what she wanted to hear. What would make her feel like a mom, not an exile.

“I’m going to school,” I said instead. “And it’s actually kind of nice. I’ve made some friends.”

“Oh, thank god.” She sounded relieved. “Tell me everything.”

I told her about Jessica and Mike, about Eric’s endless trivia and Angela’s quiet kindness. I told her about the snow, about the cafeteria spaghetti, and how we were planning a movie night on someone’s actual DVD player. I didn’t mention the ocean. Or the Cullens. Or how some mornings, I swore I still had salt in my lungs.

“And your dad? Is he…” she trailed off.

“He’s great,” I said honestly. “We’re getting along.”

There was a beat of silence.

“That makes me happy, Bells. Really.”

We sat in a small quiet then, just the rustle of the cord and the hum of distance.

Then she perked up. “So. Hot boys?”

I deadpanned, “The only good-looking people in Forks are dead.”

There was a pause.

And then—her laughter, quick and delighted. From the kitchen, Charlie cackled.

Only one of them was in on the joke.

“Morbid! But fair,” she wheezed. “What a place. Does Charlie still count as ‘alive’?”

Charlie leaned into the doorway, still holding his book. “Tell her I heard that. Rude.”

I smiled into the receiver.

“Anyway,” Renee said, once she’d recovered, “I wanted to let you know—I might not be around the house much for a while. I think I’m going to travel a bit. Go see some places I’ve always talked about and never actually visited. Clear my head. It’s just too quiet here without you.”

I bit my lip, heart twisting slightly, but I forced my voice steady. “That sounds good. You should.”

“I’ll send postcards,” she promised. “The weird ones.”

“You’d better.”

There was a pause, then: “I love you, Bella. So much.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“Call soon? I have a mobile, unlike the Lochness Monster.”

“THAT’S SPECIESIST!” barked my dad. My mother heard and snorted.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking with laughter. “I will.”

I hung up slowly and set the receiver down.

Charlie walked over and handed me a steaming mug of tea. “She okay?”

“She’s good,” I said, staring at the fog-paned window. “She’s flying.”

Charlie grunted. “Figures.”

We drank our respective beverages in quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “You gonna tell her about the ocean stuff eventually?”

“Eventually,” I murmured.

He didn’t push.

Outside, the fog pressed in close—soft and endless and oddly comforting.

We returned at midnight to the ocean to continue practicing my language skills. I could now say My name is Beauty In The Moonlight. The pride I felt was ridiculous for someone my age, but also, felt justified. I could say my name and introduce myself. Not in a foreign language. In my father tongue. Speaking with my father felt like a huge step forward in connecting with him, finally, as slow as my progress was.

But learning to introduce my father was trickier. It turns out the word to call you father ‘dad’ and the word to speak about your ‘dad’ to other people, were two different words. Which made no sense to me.

I reminded myself it didn’t need to make sense. I just needed to know the words and how to pronounce them.

Eventually we stopped and returned to the shore, sitting naked on the rocks.

Charlie suddenly spoke up, voice shifting again, quieter now. “We don’t often keep the names we’re born with. Not when we’ve changed. Some names… come from what we survive.”

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. The words lingered like a pressure drop in the deep sea — silent, vast, and unknowable.

I should have asked what he meant. But I didn’t. His refusal to tell me his name left me unsettled.

Because the look on his face wasn’t just distant — it was haunted.

Instead, I let the silence bloom between us, as wide and dark as the ocean.

After a few minutes, as he pulled his clothes back on, I looked up and asked, “How did you get the name Charlie?”

That brought him back. He blinked, then smiled — not a big one, but real enough to chase away some of the shadows.

“Ah. That one,” he said. “That name came from your mother.”

His voice went soft, fond. “She said I needed something more practical than clicks and whistles if I wanted to file taxes.”

I snorted, and the tension broke a little.

But as I turned toward the shallows, where the moonlight painted silver across the surface, I found myself glancing back.

Back at the place where he’d spoken my real name.

And I realized: for the first time, I wasn’t just pretending to be something else.

I was something else.

So was my father.

And the ocean was starting to whisper back.

Chapter Text

That weekend, Charlie and I hunted in the cold hours before dawn, the two of us slipping through currents like shadows, chasing squid and lazy halibut. Each time we shifted, my body adjusted faster—my tail stronger, my heartbeat slower. I was growing.

Dad swam us out farther than we’d ever been from shore to demonstrate what a burst of kinetic energy looked like. Due to the shape of our flukes, our species is built for long-distance swimming. But we can also channel kinetic energy, as Dad called it, for fighting or bursts of extreme speed and enormous strength. It’s not something the young can manage, which is why most children are born in pods—for safety.

I watched with delight as he whizzed past me at breathtaking speed, thinking that this was definitely the coolest thing I’d ever seen—and something I had to learn to do.

“Dad, can you breach while doing that?” I clicked, as he came to a stop before me. Learning new words became easier.

His bioluminescent lights blinked with excitement, silver-blue eyes wide with joy.
“Head to the surface.”

I swam up carefully, checking for boats. But there were none nearby, and land was too far to see. I took a breath of fresh air and looked down, scanning for him beneath the surface. I saw nothing. Maybe he’d gone deeper to gather speed.

Then I saw him.

A blur of blue and white rushed beneath the surface just a few feet in front of me—so fast it barely registered before he launched into the air. He breached high, far higher than I expected for his sixteen-foot length, easily reaching at least thirty feet. He spun twice mid-air and plunged headfirst into the sea with perfect precision.

I dove after him, clicking in a burst of excitement.

“Please, please tell me I’ll be able to do that! That was amazing!”

He glowed a rich blue—always a positive color.

“Always wanted to show you,” he clicked. “You’ll be able to do it eventually.”

When we reached the shore, we toweled off and dressed quickly.

“How long until my body can do that?”

“It depends on the individual. Normally, it’s adulthood. Young can’t do it—just like they struggle with a lot of other things. Some can develop kinetic energy in moments of great stress, but it’s better to develop normally. But when it does, you must never do it on land.”

“How old were you?”

Charlie froze, still bent over to dry the bottom of his left foot. He sighed—quietly, sadly.
“I was fifty.”

It’s incredible to me that our kind can remember so far back. He’s so old—fifty must feel like a week to a six-thousand-year-old creature.

But the knowledge of our species caught up with my awe and his sad tone, replacing it with something colder. “Fifty?”

He still wouldn’t look at me. “Yup.”

A feeling of dread bloomed in my chest like a squid inking. “So… you were a smalling. Based on what you’ve told me about our development, you were physically and mentally younger than I am now.”

Charlie straightened, his brown eyes dull with age and memory. “Our pod came under attack. Humans grew jealous and wanted more of the catch we used to share with them. We let our guard down and the weak got too close. So they attacked. And I survived.”

He slipped on his shoes, picked up his towel, and walked away.

A strange numbness settled in me. I knew that in human terms, fifty was equivalent to maybe eight or ten years old for a Meir’ha’dun. He would’ve needed to live another 50 years before being considered an adult. I tried to picture him then—a smaller version of the sea creature I knew, trying to escape angry humans, spears and arrows slicing into the water. Maybe even nets.

I pulled on the rest of my clothes and chased after him.

He sat in the cruiser, staring off into the distance. I wondered how many died that day. How many of his pod the humans killed over fish and territory.

Sliding into the seat beside him, I shut the door. His expression was sad—and strangely lonely.

Before he could start the ignition, I reached over and wrapped my arms around him, squeezing as tightly as I could. I wanted to tell him, without words, how sorry I was—and how proud I felt that he could come ashore and have a child with the species that drove his own into hiding.

Dad gripped me back just as tightly, tucking my head under his chin, rocking us gently. How could he have made peace so easily and had a child with a human?

A slight feeling of dread filled me, wondering what extremes humanity had pushed my father to. What he’d had to do just to live. My thoughts turned to the mass beaching last year, after the military tested new sonar. My father forced to hide bodies.

If I’d grown up the way he had, in the ocean instead of on land… would I have survived? Or would I have cracked instead of sharpened?

I cleared my throat quietly, needing a distraction. “What did you mean when you said to not use kinetic energy on land?”

To my surprise, a bubble of laughter escaped his chest. “My first year as a cop I chased a kid who’d robbed a store. I went to jump on him and ended flying 20ft into the air straight into someone’s house, through two walls. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork involved to explain that. Also, I was really sick for days afterwards. Do not do it. It’s worse a hundred times worse than echolocating with your melon above water.”

I winced at the memory and watched the passing trees as we drove home, glad I was able to relieve the tension a little. Whenever he wasn’t shifting gears, we gripped each others hands all the way home.

On land, snow came in quiet sheets and settled on the mossy rooftops of Forks like powdered sugar. As Monday came around, I watched it gather in the seams of Charlie’s truck and the school’s chain-link fence. The cold didn’t bother me. I could walk barefoot in the snow and barely feel it.

The Cullens, true to Charlie’s prediction, kept their distance—but too precisely. Every hallway pass was exaggeratedly casual. Every breath they took near me was tightly controlled, like I was made of sulfur. Alice and Jasper looked the most miserable, still glancing at me with matching frowns. Frustrated. I didn’t know if it was because I’d disrupted something or if they were just uncomfortable with mystery.

Either way, I didn’t care. Not much.

The humans at school were easier to be around. Safe. Harmless. I could see every beat of their blood. Mike and Jessica had settled into something like a social rhythm around me, and even if the dynamics were a little obvious—Mike liked attention, Jessica liked being seen—I still appreciated the effort.

But I couldn’t help but feel like a guest at a play. Their words were too loud. Their intentions too simple. They were fine. But forgettable. Kind.

And very, very human.

That afternoon I headed to biology and I half-wondered if Edward would speak again.

He did.

"Cold enough for you?" he asked as I sat down beside him.

I snorted. “Please. This is practically summer.”

His smile came quickly, like it surprised even him. He looked better today—happier, unlike his siblings addicted to sniffing me in the hallway. Fed, apparently. Less corpse-like. Still unnaturally still, but… better.

“Another Arizona native converted?” he teased.

“More like exiled.”

We both turned to the assignment as Mr. Banner barked directions from the front of the room: slides, microscope, cellular structures. Nothing exciting.

Edward and I fell into the task. He took notes with exquisite old fashioned handwriting while I adjusted the fine focus. At one point, he passed me a new slide. Our fingers brushed.

His skin was cold—colder than snow, colder than my own by several degrees—and I jerked slightly.

He froze too.

I didn’t look at him.

He noticed.

I could feel the moment he realized. How unnaturally cool I was for a supposed human. How my skin didn’t give the usual warmth. His kind might have every sense honed to precision—but this wasn’t something subtle. It was obvious.

For the rest of the period, his movements were slower, more deliberate. He said nothing about it, as I said nothing about his eyes changing color, but I could feel his gaze flick to me, and away, and back again. Measuring. Assessing.

He was a predator, and I was the ever interesting puzzle.

He asked about my mother, my life in Phoenix. I made sure to return the favor, trying to glean as much out of him as he was out of me. Even though he was technically dead, it seemed as though he led an interesting life. He talked about how they regularly went camping, their love for baseball and how his siblings annoyed him but he couldn’t imagine life without them. We both seemed to purposefully avoid dangerous questions, like body temperature, what was on our food chain, etc.

Eventually, we turned to the small things.

“The roads are going to be icy this weekend,” I said, more to fill the space than anything.

He tilted his head slightly. “Not a fan of ice?”

“It’s hard to pretend you’re graceful when you’re skidding sideways across a parking lot.”

His laugh was soft. Real. It made my chest ache.

I glanced up and found myself staring. At the tiny curves of his lips, the way the light hit the planes of his face. He was beautiful—elegantly, unnaturally so. There was a symmetry to him that felt carved. Not human.

And not for me.

Even if I wasn’t a Meir’ha’dun hybrid—an ocean-dwelling creature in a land-locked life—even if I’d been human in every sense, he still wouldn’t have looked twice. He belonged to some untouched world. One that shimmered, aloof and immortal. And I…

I had no real skin. My true body was sleek and strange. Hydrodynamic. Pale, flexible, water-built. No hair. Just sharp teeth and a voice made for sonar, not speech. My eyes were too big, my form too alien. His family would probably slaughter me at a single glance of my sea-based form. I wasn’t beautiful. Not to a human, or former human.

I was engineered.

He had four vampire siblings and two vampire parents. I had a human mother who didn’t understand the child she had birthed and a father who probably wished his daughter was a little less human. I was alone.

The thought hit harder than expected. A crack in the armor.

Too human for my father. Too alien for my mother. Too strange for vampires. Too fragile for the sea.

I turned away from Edward and went quiet. It was better that way. He didn’t press. He just looked at me, curious. Concerned.

But I didn’t give him anything else.

When the bell rang, I fled.

The knock on the door came just after sunset.

Charlie didn’t even bother to check who it was. “It’s open!” he called, still in his flannel and socks, one hand occupied with a forkful of uncooked fish.

Billy Black rolled in a moment later, maneuvering his wheelchair through the front door with practiced ease. He was bundled in a heavy coat, cheeks red from the cold. Jacob followed, tall and lanky, still shaking off rain from his hoodie.

“Evening, Chief,” Billy said.

Charlie stood, wiped his hands on a napkin. “Billy. Jacob. What brings you by? I’m still coming over next week.”

“Just wanted to see how Bella is settling in,” Billy’s voiced muffled slightly as my dad hugged him.

Jacob grinned. “Dad made us skip dinner.”

Billy shot him a look. “You think Sue Clearwater’s casseroles reheat themselves?”

I stepped all the way out of the kitchen, nodding a quiet hello. “Hey, Billy. Hi, Jake.”

Jacob perked up. “Hey! You remember me.”

“Of course I do. You had shorter hair and a mean Lego game.”

He beamed.

I turned to Billy. “Thank you for the truck. It’s perfect. Drives like a boat, but I haven’t hit anything yet, so that’s a win.”

Billy laughed. “Glad it’s holding up. You managing okay at school?”

I shrugged, settling on the arm of the couch. “Yeah. It’s fine. The kids are nice. I’ve made some friends—Mike, Angela, Jessica. There’s this one guy in bio—Edward—”

Behind Billy, Charlie—mid-sip of his water—choked.

His eyes flew wide as saucers. He began shaking his head at me with urgent, cartoonish desperation, mouthing a frantic “NOPE” as he waved both arms like a drowning man trying to land a plane.

When I didn’t stop talking, he launched into a full-body “time-out” sign, followed by a bizarre “cut it!” throat-slash motion, then threw both hands dramatically over his face like he couldn’t bear to witness the car crash.

Too late.

“Cullen,” I said, slowly, already committed, and too astonished to stop myself.

Billy went still.

“The Cullens?” he echoed, voice gone low and grim.

Jacob, who had been perusing one of our dusty unread book stacks, groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Oh my god.”

Billy turned fully toward me. “You need to stay away from them. That family—”

Charlie, behind him, immediately shifted into mimic mode.

He raised one hand to the ceiling like a prophet calling down thunder and began silently mouthing along to every single word, wide-eyed and solemn, like an over-the-top stage actor in a badly lit community play.

“—isn’t what they seem,” Billy said darkly.

Charlie cupped his hands to his face in a theatrical gasp.

“They’re not like us.”

Charlie put both hands on his chest and staggered backwards like he’d been shot.

“They’ve fooled this town into thinking they’re harmless, but we know better.”

Charlie dropped to one knee, slapped the wall, and did a finger-gun salute to the heavens, followed by jazz hands mouthing “ We. Know. Better.” like he’d just remembered all the lyrics to Bye Bye Bye and was ready to perform them solo.

“They’re dangerous. All of them.”

Charlie’s eyebrows nearly vanished into his hairline as he threw both arms out wide, looked directly at the ceiling, and silently screamed “DAAAAAAANGER” like a man who had finally found the apocalypse in his backyard, in the form of a mother-in-law who’d joined a cookout uninvited.

Jacob was visibly shaking now, trying—and failing—not to laugh. His shoulders trembled, face bright red as he wheezed into his sleeve, tears running down his face.

I didn’t dare make eye contact with either of them. I bit the inside of my cheek and forced my expression to stay neutral.

Billy had no idea. Still completely serious.

“They may smile, but a wolf can wear sheep’s clothing.”

Charlie began howling silently, rocking side to side like a lunatic at the moon.

By the time Billy finally stopped, I wasn’t sure if my lungs still worked. I could feel tears in the corners of my eyes. From laughter. Suppressed, barely managed laughter.

“Thanks,” I said evenly. “I’ll… keep that in mind.”

Billy nodded like a man who had just passed on sacred truth.

Jacob wiped his face desperately, schooled his face into something almost neutral and pushed off the wall, smirking. “Okay, time to go. Let’s not wait around for the part where he starts quoting Raven legends and pointing at weather patterns.”

Billy wheeled himself toward the door, satisfied. “Be careful, Bella.”

“Always,” I said sweetly.

Once the door closed behind them and the engine sputtered to life outside, I turned to Charlie, who was casually polishing off the last of his meal like nothing had happened.

The moment the rumble of Billy’s engine faded down the driveway, I lost it.

Laughter erupted out of me in a violent, gasping fit—half-wheeze, half-howl. I staggered into the kitchen counter, arms braced against the edge as I dissolved into unfiltered hysteria.

“Oh my god,” I choked, doubled over. “What—what was that? You—your face—”

Charlie didn’t even flinch. He casually scraped the last bite of halibut off his plate with his fork, then popped it into his mouth with the smugness of a man who knew exactly what he’d done.

“You okay there, kid?” he asked mildly.

“You were narrating his monologue!” I wheezed. “Like some kind of… silent film version of Jaws!” I hadn’t seen Jaws. Eric had told me it was terrifying and I needed to see it.

“Seemed like the moment called for dramatic flair.”

“You howled at the ceiling!”

“I stand by that choice.”

I gasped through another laugh and collapsed into a kitchen chair. Charlie poured himself more water like this was all very routine. Which, apparently, it was.

After a few moments, my laughter finally sputtered to a stop. My ribs hurt. My eyes were damp.

Then I blinked, sobering a little. “Wait. What did he actually say?”

Charlie lifted a brow. “What, Billy?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know it was something about how the Cullens are dangerous and wolves in sheep’s clothing and how I should beware of the supernatural or whatever—but like… specifically? I literally can’t remember a single word.”

He sipped his water.

“Dad.”

He pointed at his fish. “I was eating.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Not my fault he says the same thing every time he sees an unsupervised teen.”

“You derailed an entire ancient warning speech with eyebrow choreography.”

“And you’re still alive,” he said cheerfully. “So I’d say it worked out.”

I groaned and let my head fall back against the chair. “We are not a normal family.”

Charlie grinned around his fork. “Normal’s boring.”

“You practically mimed the Four Horsemen.”

Charlie gestured grandly with his fork. “He said pestilence, I delivered pestilence.”

“I still can’t remember a word Billy said. Does he know what the Cullens are?”

Charlie didn’t even blink. “Yes. He’ll say it again next time. Probably with bonus spirit wolf metaphors.”

I wiped at my eyes, breath finally slowing. “You’re unbelievable.”

Charlie stood, brushing crumbs from his flannel. “And yet, here I am.”

I watched him walk away, heading up the stairs to clean up. As the laughter slowly faded from my chest, I wondered where the insane behavior I had just witnessed started, and where the sadness in his eyes over the past ended. He’d made Jacob laugh. I wondered if he’d have done that performance if Jacob hadn’t been here. He didn’t usually do go over the top for me. Had it all been an act — or had my real father slipped out, just for a second?

Part of me wondered who exactly was mouthing along — the sea creature… or the human disguise.

The laughter faded and the coldness from earlier wrapped itself around my throat.

The sea was calm that evening, iron-grey under the overcast sky, and the tide pulled low against the reefs as if holding its breath. I floated just below the surface, letting the cold water run along my spine and cradle my limbs, the deep pressure of the open ocean muffling my thoughts like cotton around my head. Above me, the sky was flat and pale, smeared with the last streaks of winter sun. Below me, Dad moved through the water like something older than the tide.

He swam slowly now, no longer showing off like he had that morning, his body relaxed into long, deliberate motions. His fluke moved with a lazy rhythm, half-gliding on instinct, only flicking with purpose when he needed to adjust his course. I hovered just above him, arms tucked close to my sides, eyes fixed on the slow curve of his back.

I could see the stripes along his shoulders—age marks, earned with time. They shimmered faintly, muted in the evening light, running parallel like rings on an ancient tree. Near his ribs, the elegant etchings of tattoos moved with his breathing: symbols of honors, stories inked in a language older than English, older than Forks, older than war. He’d once told me what a few of them meant. Defender. Hunter. Survivor.

But those weren’t what caught my attention.

There were others.

Dark, random marks scattered across his body, not symmetrical like the stripes, not deliberate like the ink. They dotted his skin like irregular stars across a chartless sky—some tiny, barely the size of my thumbnail; others broader, smudged like bruises made permanent. There was no pattern to them, no logic I could follow. They were on his back, his fluke, the curve of his ribs, and—most densely—along the inside of his forearms. Dozens of them, small and round, darker than the rest of his skin.

I frowned. I had no mirror in the sea, no reflection to study—just the way Dad looked at me, or the faint shimmer of my own pale arms beneath the waves. But I was sure I didn’t have any marks like those. Not yet.

Curiosity bloomed in me slowly, like a deep-sea jellyfish unfolding in the dark.

I drifted closer, letting my own fluke give a quiet twitch, circling gently above him. My gaze swept his arms again, then the back of his shoulders.

Not the kind of things you're born with. Not earned. Something else.

When we finally made it back to the beach, we were full and slow-moving. The sun had long since slipped behind the mountains, and the wet rocks sparkled with bits of salt and light from a sky nearly dark. We lay stretched out on the stone, bellies full of squid, sand crusting our ankles, skin steaming faintly as our bodies adjusted. I felt dazed in the way only cold water and too much food could make me feel—content, heavy-limbed, half-human again.

“Dad,” I said, voice low as the tide.

He hummed, half-asleep.

“Those marks on you,” I began. “The ones that aren’t stripes or ink. All the little circles and lines.”

He blinked and sat up a little, brow furrowed. “What marks?”

“The ones on your arms. Your back. You’ve got a lot of them. They’re… not like the others.”

He went still.

For a moment, he just stared at the horizon, his face expressionless but no longer peaceful. He rubbed his shoulder, then stood without answering and began to pace the line of wet rocks where the waves still reached.

I sat up slowly, watching him. A small trickle of fear bloomed in my chest—not from him, but from the silence. From how hard that question had landed. Why was it so bad just to ask?

He paced a little more, then finally turned and came back to me, lowering himself onto a rock beside mine with a heavy sigh.

“They’re not markings,” he said quietly. “Not the kind you earn, anyway.”

I looked at him, uncertain.

“They’re scars,” he said. “Old ones. When our kind heals, it doesn’t always leave clean skin. Sometimes it looks like that. Spots. Darker. Raised or faded.”

“Oh.” I was quiet for a moment, the realization sinking in. “How do you have so many?”

He gave a low breath that might have been a laugh, but it didn’t have any humor in it. “You live a long time, you get injured.”

I didn’t say anything right away. The waves behind us whispered over the shore, pulling at bits of broken shell and stone.

“Any of them from when you were fifty?” I asked softly. “When your kinetic energy kicked in?”

He was silent for a while.

Then he shifted—just his right arm this time, his skin sliding silver-blue in the fading light, allowing it to grow until the markings were visible—and lifted it. It looked almost comically long for his human form. He turned it palm-up, flexing the long, muscular forearm. A few inches below the elbow, I saw a cluster of dark blue circles, too round to be ink, too random to be natural.

“I was shielding my face,” he said, voice low. “Arrows. I was trying to get away.”

I stared at the marks. My chest tightened.

I shifted closer to him and pressed against his side, wrapping my arms around him without saying anything. He didn’t say anything either, just tucked his chin briefly against the top of my head.

We sat there for a long time, not speaking. I could feel the salt drying on my skin, hear the echo of the waves in the hollows of my ears.

But my mind kept drifting back. The other marks. So many of them.

“What hurt the most?” I asked suddenly, voice barely above a whisper.

I didn’t expect him to answer. I half-hoped he wouldn’t.

But after a long pause, he shifted again, lifting his arm once more. This time he showed me the inside of his wrist. There, around the joint, was a mark unlike the others—a jagged, uneven ring of darker tissue that spiraled like a warped cuff.

“I was harpooned once,” he said quietly. “Pushed into rocks. My arm was pinned, and I couldn’t break the shaft.”

He paused.

“So I severed the hand.”

My breath caught.

“You—” The word barely came out. “You had to—cut it off?”

I stared at his wrist, at the pale, twisted mark that curled like a seam. My stomach turned, not from disgust, but from shock. “And it grew back?”

He nodded, still watching the dark water.

“If the injury isn’t life-threatening,” he said, “almost anything can heal. Eventually. As long as you’re in the water.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how.

There was a strange quiet between us, heavy and real. Not awkward—just full. Like the sea holding its breath.

He stood not long after that, tugging his shirt on over salt-damp skin, brushing sand from his sleeves. His energy shifted—tightened.

“No more questions tonight,” he said gently, but with finality.

I just nodded and followed him toward the car, my steps slower, the gravel biting cold into my bare feet.

As we drove back through the trees, the road slick with rain and shadows, I stared out at the ocean in the distance. I kept thinking about the line around his wrist, how calm he’d sounded. Not proud. Not dramatic. Just… honest.

And I wondered how many moments like that the sea would ask of me, too.

In class, I paid attention. Took notes. Pictured my father being targeted with arrows as a child.

In the hallways, I ignored the Cullens.

Well, two of them. Alice and Jasper, I noticed, continued deliberately passing me between periods. Sometimes they’d loop a little out of their way. Alice looked like she was trying not to break something inside herself. Jasper looked like he was calculating the odds of lightning striking the same spot twice — and finding them too high. Neither looked murderous.

So: progress.

That evening, I told Charlie. His response?

He laughed.

“Maybe they’re just curious,” he said, not looking up from his dinner. “You’re different. Different gets attention.”

“You’re really not worried?” I asked.

“They haven’t tried anything. And you're not a snack. Honestly, I’m more worried about your English assignment.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m hilarious,” he said, around a mouthful of raw halibut.

I thought back to Billy’s speech. Had it all been an act — or had my real father slipped out, just for a second?

“Dad,” I slammed my fist down on the table. “They’re curious. Too curious. You said our people removed themselves from their stories. If they push too hard, what’s going to happen?”

Charlie shrugged, swallowing his mouthful. “We’ll have to make a treaty with them. Tell them to back off and we’ll keep quiet about them.”

“Dad!”

He blinked, finally registering my emotional state with his vibrational empathy. Took him long enough. “Bella.”

“What happens if they actually find out? You make it sound like a vital secret and then you send me to school with them! If they find out what we are, what’s to stop them from telling vampires that hunt humans? Can vampires—”

He leaned forward and grasped both my hands in his larger ones. “Bella. Humans aren’t supposed to know, yet I took the risk with one of the most brain-scattered, impulsive humans out there. Your mother has kept her mouth shut, for her own safety. The Cullens will do the same.”

“Mom kept her mouth shut to protect herself from danger.” Frustration bubbled in me. His behavior and words didn’t add up. It’s like this whole thing had become a game. “The Cullens aren’t going to be in any danger, they are the danger! You said they’re apex predators! And—”

Charlie’s lips twitched.

But they didn’t stop.

The corners of his mouth kept stretching back — too far, too precise. Not a smile. A presentation.

Something inside me went very, very still. The rest of my sentence died in my throat.

The man across from me — my father — was still handsome. Still calm. Still every inch the man who forgot to buy laundry detergent and once fell into a standing nap holding a live squid. But the face he wore now was a weapon. A disguise that didn’t slip — it sharpened.

His mustache, usually the butt of my jokes, did nothing to soften the effect. It only made it worse. Because it was so absurdly familiar. And that familiarity shattered something in me.

I knew, with total certainty, that this was no act. That look in his eyes was real, unlike his buffoonery act for Jacob.

The man across from me wasn’t pretending to be dangerous.

He was pretending to be human.

“Bella,” he said softly — too softly.

His voice hadn’t changed, but his presence had. Like a tide pulling out just before something catastrophic.

He leaned in.

The lines of his face didn’t warp. They didn’t shift or swell or grow sharp like claws.

But they changed all the same.

Tilted just slightly off axis. Like someone had slipped a human mask on backward — not enough to look wrong, just enough to feel like a glitch in the world.

His eyes… oh God.

Those warm brown eyes that mirrored mine stared at me now with a glassy, unblinking clarity that wasn’t human. Too wide. Too still. Too full of focus — the kind you only see in apex predators and elite soldiers.

Not fury. Not even warning.

Calculation.

I tried to pull back — just a little. A polite twitch of my fingers.

His grip didn’t tighten.

But I couldn’t move.

His hands held mine with the casual, immovable pressure of tectonic plates. Not hostile. Not even intentional.

Just final.

Then I felt it. That shift.

Like a continent moving under the waves. Something ancient stirring in the dark.

Something looking at me.

Not through Charlie Swan — as Charlie Swan.

Edward Cullen’s gaze couldn’t even match a fraction of the psychosis currently present in my father’s eyes.

Edward was a shark. Charlie was the wave that swallowed cities.

His smile widened.

“There’s nothing the Cullens could do to us,” he said, still with that soft, kindly tone. It was worse. Screaming would’ve been less intimidating. “If they tell anyone, I’ll remind the vampires what it means to fear the sea.”

And I remembered the scar on his wrist — the one from the harpoon. The way he’d said it, like it was just another Tuesday. Like sawing off your own hand to survive was a footnote in a long, bloody life. He hadn't even flinched.

He’d survived that. And so much more. Of course he wasn’t scared of vampires.

He said it like a father making a promise.

He said it like a creature singing a lullaby before the kill.

His head tilted a fraction more. His teeth remained perfectly visible. That neat, dad-next-door mustache framed a smile that did not belong on a man.

It belonged in a war.

And then it hit me: He wasn’t threatening them. He was remembering.

And what I saw in that moment — behind his steady gaze, behind the calm lines of his face — wasn’t anger or madness.

It was delight.

So they attacked. And I survived.

The flicker of something unhinged. The memory of blood. And the joy of it. Not joy like a thrill — joy like a scream that never stopped. The kind that comes when something inside you snaps, and what’s left is the part that survives.

And maybe it wasn’t even real delight. Maybe it was just his nervous system, still buzzing with the memory of surviving what no one else had. And when the buzz fades — as it always does — the sorrow will creep in again, quiet as tidewater, filling the cracks he keeps trying to seal and hide from me.

This was not the stare of a guardian.

There are no stories if there are no survivors. That’s what he’d said. When he’d first mentioned the Cullens.

It’d been a confession.

And I was staring into the eyes of the executioner.

They had attacked. And he had survived.

I’d wondered what extremes the humans had pushed him to, and now I was looking at it. This was the gaze of something that had survived not by avoiding death — but by dealing it out.

Without mercy. Without regret. Without end.

The kitchen grew quiet. Too quiet. The air didn’t just still — it collapsed. Like the room was caving in on us, drawn toward him.

And then —

He changed.

Not all at once. But slowly. Carefully.

The war behind his eyes pulled back like low tide.

The glimmer of madness dimmed, receding behind a familiar warmth.

His head straightened. His jaw relaxed. His hands — still wrapped around mine — eased their weight, though I wasn’t sure he even noticed.

And then, at last, he blinked.

Once.

The mask didn’t fall back into place.

It had never fallen off.

But now it was smiling more gently.

Charlie Swan looked at me.

Just Charlie. Just Dad.

I saw him — or the shape he wore — with new eyes.

The flannel. The laugh lines. The groomed mustache that made him look more like a tired park ranger than a god of the deep.

But I could still feel the monster curled just beneath his skin. Sleeping again. For now.

I pulled my hands free. Slowly.

He didn’t stop me.

His fingers remained open, hovering for a second in the space between us — like he didn’t even realize I was already gone.

I stood. My legs felt too light, my breath too loud. My heart pounded like it was trying to warn me.

I didn’t look at him. I didn’t run. I didn’t speak.

I just walked away — out of the kitchen, up the stairs — one step at a time. Like I was backing away from a cliff’s edge.

I shut my bedroom door and leaned against it, breath shallow. And shook.

My skin was buzzing. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

What did I just see?

I paced. Back and forth. Again and again.

My father. My dad. Charlie.

That was not … that was not my dad.

Except — it was. It had always been.

And I hadn’t seen it. Not until now.

For days I’d been worried about the Cullens. Worried they’d sniff me out, sense something strange, get too curious. I’d planned escape routes. Cover stories. I’d measured their threat like a scientist charting fault lines.

But now?

Now I couldn’t stop thinking about them for one reason only: They have no idea what they’re dealing with.

Charlie had talked about them like they weren’t even real predators.

And maybe, to him, they weren’t.

He wasn’t just unafraid of them. He discussed them like they were a joke. Like they were prey.

The way he’d behaved in front of Jacob, his calmness and politeness before others. His sadness whenever I asked about his past, his knowledge of times before, his refusal to discuss how he knew about vampires. His laughter when my mother called him names, versus the amount of times I’d seen him devastated whenever their separation was brought up. A child forced to develop kinetic energy to survive an angry horde of humans with bows and arrows who’d wanted more than they deserved.

The absolute delight I’d just seen in his eyes as he relived it all before me.

And for the first time, I wondered if that capacity for delight — in violence, in survival — lived somewhere inside me, too.

Push someone too far and they don’t break — they bend until they’re no longer themselves.

Where did my father begin and end? Were all other Meir’ha’dun like that?

Was I destined to become this?

A soft knock broke the silence.

“Bells?”

I didn’t answer. My body went very still.

There was a pause, then:

“I— I shouldn’t have done that,” he said quickly. “That wasn’t meant for you. Not like that.”

My hand hovered near the doorknob.

“I just wanted to show you,” he went on, voice thick and stumbling. “I wanted to prove that you didn’t have to be scared. That they’re the ones who should be careful. Not you. Not us.”

Another pause. I could hear him exhale shakily.

“I would never hurt you. You know that, right? You have to know that. I’d never let anything touch you. I— God, Bella—”

He was unraveling.

“I just… I thought if you saw it, you’d understand. That you’d feel safer. But I scared you. I know I did. And I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

His voice cracked.

His desperate miming behind Billy’s back. My sarcasm and dry humor to deflect the pain of my loneliness.

“I would never, ever hurt you.”

I opened the door.

He was halfway turned, like he’d already started to leave.

When he saw me, something flickered in his face — relief, yes, but also something broken.

I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him.

He froze for half a second — stunned — and then pulled me into a crushing embrace, arms winding around me like he could hold me back from the edge of whatever nightmare he’d just exposed.

“I promise,” he whispered into my hair, the words trembling. “You have nothing to fear from the Cullens. And especially not from me.”

I looked up into his face. Into those familiar, deep brown eyes.

They weren’t cold. But they weren’t soft, either. Not anymore.

They were the eyes of a man who had endured.

A survivor.

I was his daughter. And I’d inherited more than just his eyes. I’d inherited this too — whatever this was. Whatever this would make me.

What if surviving meant becoming something just like him — not a girl with sharp instincts, but a creature with no choice but to sharpen them?

Maybe he’d never wanted to become what he was. But he did. To survive.

And if that’s what it took… what would I become, when it was my turn?

What if, one day, I had to become the monster too?

I thought of the nights he stayed with me during first shifts, when the pain made me curl into a ball and cry into his flannel. The way he’d waited in the dark water while I learned how to use echolocation, never rushing me, never judging.

I remembered his joy when I got it right — not pride, not ego. Joy.

I remembered him singing to me in those strange, low ocean tones — vibrations I felt in my bones before I could even speak.

I remembered every step of the way he’d guided me, not just as a parent, but as a creature like me. Like us.

What I’d seen tonight had been a monster. No denying that.

But it was a monster forged in deep time — something the world had needed once, and might need again.

A monster who loved me.

And one who would burn the world down if anything tried to take me.

I swallowed against the lump in my throat and whispered, “I’m so lucky to have you.”

His arms tightened again. No more words. Just the sound of his breath in my hair.

He held me like I was the only thing keeping him anchored.

And maybe I was. Maybe I was the innocence and childhood he’d lost and that's why he was so protective.

God help the world if he ever lets go.

And God help me if I can't hold on.

Chapter Text

The morning air tasted of ocean salt and fear, still lingering from last night’s revelation. I hadn’t slept—not really. Even Charlie’s words, those twisted lullabies, echoed in my head as I followed him down to the beach. I needed something solid under my skin. Something real. So before the sun broke the horizon, we slipped beneath the waves.

The ocean was velvet-dark and endless, stretching in all directions like the inside of a dream. I moved through it with long, fluid strokes of my tail, each one slicing through the water in near silence. The only sound was the rhythmic pulse of my own movement, and Charlie’s steady shape gliding beside me.

He clicked softly, once—a curious sound that bounced forward and then came back, like a whispered question echoing off flesh and bone. I watched him tilt his head toward a school of silver fish. A second pulse followed. Then a pause.

Your turn, his shape seemed to say.

I tried to mimic the motion, dragging the vibration from the back of my throat and pushing it out through the water—a sharp click that traveled ahead of me, aimed not at the rocks or open water, but at a crab crawling across the sand below. The echo returned—but it was cloudy, a blurred sketch of movement. I saw the shell, but not what lay beneath it.

Charlie circled me slowly, like a satellite around a stubborn moon. Patient. Calm. He clicked again, this time aiming toward a distant seal swimming in the dark beyond us. The returning echo wasn’t just shape. I felt it—how the pulse hit muscle, organs, the steady thump of a beating heart. Not sight. Not exactly. More like intuition, or music, or how your tongue knows the shape of your own teeth without looking.

“Try again,” he said, though his mouth never moved. It was more in the rhythm of his presence—how it pressed against mine like a current.

I clicked again. Sharper this time. Focused.

And something changed.

I caught the hollow shape of ribs, the slick tangle of intestines, the tight drum of lungs expanding in the fish below. For a heartbeat, I saw it all.

Then the image scattered, lost in my own bubbles, and I growled in frustration. I angled upward and broke the surface with a sharp inhale, the night air cold against my cheeks. The stars above were faint and distant, dimmed by thick clouds. Forks’ coastline glittered with soft amber lights along the harbor.

Charlie surfaced beside me, his gills folding shut. “You touched it,” he said gently.

I shook my head. “No. I lost it.”

“You touched it,” he repeated. “That’s more than you could do yesterday.”

“I shouldn’t need to try this hard.” My voice cracked, too harsh. “This is supposed to be what I am. It’s supposed to feel natural.”

“It will.” He didn’t sound entirely sure. Or maybe he just didn’t want me to hear the guilt that coiled beneath the calm. But I heard it anyway.

I didn’t answer.

We swam back to the inlet without speaking. I dressed in silence, drying my hair with mechanical motions before pulling on my jacket. The morning was still gray and wet, everything painted in shades of cold.

Charlie leaned in the doorway as I shoved books into my bag. “You’ve got lunch, right?”

I nodded.

“Keys?”

I held them up silently.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Bella…”

“I’m fine,” I said. Too quickly. Too sharp.

He didn’t believe me. Of course he didn’t.

But he let me go. Just watched me with those deep, dark eyes that always seemed to know more than he said. I couldn’t look at him for long. The sadness there made my chest ache.

I opened the door.

“Be safe,” he said behind me.

I paused. Guilt uncoiled low in my stomach, wrapping itself around my ribs.

Then I left, without answering, the screen door thudding gently behind me.

By second period, my mood had evened out just enough to fake normal. Not cheerful—never that—but functional. I kept my head down, answered when spoken to, and pretended the weight of the previous night wasn't still dragging at my heels.

My viola case bumped gently against my hip as I made my way to the music room. The waterphone, tucked safely in its cloth bundle like some sea-worn relic, was heavier than it looked. I hadn’t planned to bring both, but something told me I might need them today.

Jack met me at the entrance, already grinning. “You came!”

I nodded, a little stiff. “You said today was open rehearsal.”

He gestured me inside. “It is. It’s just… usually less exciting.”

The “music group” was more like a handful of enthusiastic teens, most of whom hadn’t played outside of school band. There were two flutes, a clarinet, a keyboard, and someone with an electric guitar who looked vaguely apologetic. No strings. I clocked that immediately.

“This is Bella,” Jack announced as I set my cases down. “She plays viola—and something weird you’ve never heard of.”

I raised a brow at him. “Thanks.”

He grinned wider. “Am I wrong?”

Mrs. Lovell, the music teacher, perked up from her desk. She was in her late forties with round glasses and a scarf tied like she was auditioning for an arts documentary. “Viola? Oh, finally! We haven’t had a string player in three years.”

I gave a small nod as I opened the case. The polished wood of my instrument gleamed faintly in the school’s fluorescent light, looking a little out of place—too old, too real.

“I’d love to hear something,” she said warmly. “Anything you like.”

I hesitated for a second. Then pulled the bow free.

My hands knew the shape before my mind caught up. The moment the bow touched the strings, I was elsewhere. Somewhere salt-drenched and distant.

Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, just the first two minutes.

The sound wasn’t perfect—the acoustics were dull, and someone’s chair squeaked—but the room stilled around me. The opening notes swelled like a storm breaking, dark and precise, and I leaned into the vibrato just enough to let it ache.

When I finished, silence held for a beat longer than expected.

Then the room broke into quiet, awkward applause—like they didn’t know how else to react.

Mrs. Lovell’s eyes were wide. “That was… haunting.”

I set the viola down gently. “Thanks.”

Jack gestured at the bundle still resting on the table. “What about that thing?”

I unwrapped the waterphone carefully, pouring a small amount of bottled water into the base. “This one’s a little harder to explain.”

I held the frame loosely and let the bow graze one of the longer rods. The sound was eerie—like wind through deep caves, or the creak of an old ship’s hull beneath waves. I added a low pitch with my thumb and wrist, bending the metal just slightly. The room shimmered with the resonance, strange and cold and echoing.

“Whoa,” someone whispered.

Mrs. Lovell looked nearly giddy. “The drama club is going to fight over you. They’ve been trying to get atmospheric effects for the spring play.”

I gave a half-smile. “Happy to help.”

We wrapped up early. Jack made a few jokes, tried to convince me to join full-time. I didn’t commit. But for the first time since I’d arrived in Forks, I felt like I’d been seen for something real—something that didn’t need translating.

At lunch, I sat with the others near the edge of the cafeteria, still hauling both instruments with me like an over-prepared ghost.

“Is that what you were playing earlier?” Eric asked, pointing at the waterphone as I set it down. “That creepy metal… thing?”

I nodded. “Waterphone.”

He leaned in. “It sounds like every horror movie I’ve ever watched. You’ve never seen Alien , have you?”

“Nope.”

“Or The Thing?”

“Still nope.”

He laughed. “Wow, okay, but your soul has clearly seen them. Play something again!”

A few others looked over. Jessica perked up. Mike leaned in. Suddenly, a handful of people were watching.

And beyond them—farther, near the other side of the room—Edward.

Sitting with his perfect, pale family, half-turned in his chair like he wasn’t watching me. But he was.

I hesitated.

“Come on, just a little bit,” Mike said. “Like, something cool. Not horror. Or, okay, horror is fine too.”

I sighed, flushed pink, and reached for my waterphone. The haunting music drew a small crowd. All I could think about was the ocean and my father being hunted as a child. I stopped and received a small smatter of applause.

I muttered something about getting a head start on homework and grabbed an apple off my tray. No one stopped me as I slipped out of the cafeteria.

Outside, the sky had turned gray again. Rain kissed the edges of the parking lot.

I climbed into the truck and shut the door behind me.

The silence inside was welcome. Heavy. Like water pressing down from all sides.

I placed my instruments gently on the passenger seat and bit into the fruit.

For a moment, everything felt still.

And then it didn’t.

I’d barely made it five steps into the hall before I heard his voice behind me.

“Bella.”

I stopped. The sound of my name in his mouth did something strange to my chest. I turned slowly.

Edward Cullen was leaning against the wall near the science wing, arms folded, the faintest arch to his brow. His golden eyes held that unsettling stillness again—like they were studying me through glass. But there was something softer there too. Like maybe he wasn’t sure why he’d said my name, only that he needed to.

I swallowed, my throat already tight. “Hey.”

He straightened a little. “You’re early.”

I nodded, clutching my books too tightly. My knuckles were pale. “Didn’t feel like sitting through the cafeteria fog.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I don’t blame you.”

I moved to stand beside him, carefully keeping my shoulder just shy of the wall. I didn’t want to lean. Didn’t want to look like I needed support.

But I did.

The hallway was empty—one of those rare moments when the noise of high school faded and all you could hear was the soft hum of fluorescent lights and the echoes of lockers closing down the corridor.

“Rough day?” he asked, his voice low, almost cautious.

I blinked hard. “What gives you that idea?”

“You looked… distant,” he said. “Earlier.”

That was an understatement. I’d been floating half an inch outside my own body since yesterday evening. Every step I took today felt like I was wading through a version of my life that wasn’t meant for me.

I could have made something up. Shrugged it off. But something in his voice—something patient—unraveled the edge I’d been gripping since my father’s trauma had reared it’s ugly head.

“Have you ever felt completely alone?” I asked, barely more than a whisper. “Not lonely. Just… like no one else on the planet could possibly understand what it’s like to be you?”

My voice cracked on the last word. I clenched my jaw. Hard.

His expression didn’t change, but something shifted in him. An understanding behind his eyes.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I have.”

The ache that had been building in my chest pulsed sharper. Not from what he said—but how he said it. No disbelief. No awkward laugh. Just… understanding.

I leaned back against the wall, trying to ground myself. My heart was thudding unevenly.

“I’m not trying to be dramatic,” I whispered, “I just— I know I’m lucky, okay? I have a roof. A bed. A dad who cooks dinner and makes dry jokes and doesn’t ask too many questions.”

I exhaled sharply through my nose, trying to keep my voice steady. “But I still feel like I’m walking around in a life that doesn’t fit. Like I’m… wrong for it. Like I got assigned the wrong body, the wrong timeline, the wrong—everything.”

He didn’t speak.

So I kept going. My throat felt raw.

“I watch these people—my friends—and they’re so present. They care about midterms and snowball fights and who likes who. Popular movies. And I try, I do. But none of it feels real to me. I’m just… copying. Going through the motions. Faking it.”

He didn’t interrupt. His stillness made me feel braver.

“I feel like there’s this space between me and everything,” I said, quieter now. “Like I’m visiting my own life. Like I don’t know if I’ll ever… belong in it.”

I looked down, blinking fast. My eyes were burning now. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop the tears from winning.

He was silent. But it wasn’t cold silence—it was… present. He wasn’t just waiting for me to finish. He was there. Hearing it.

And somehow, that made it worse.

“What matters to you?” he asked, softly.

I blinked again, but a tear slipped loose anyway. I turned my face slightly so it wouldn’t fall straight down my cheek.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My parents, I guess. Being alone where I don’t have to pretend I’m someone else. People who don’t ask too many questions.”

My voice wavered. “People who… see me, and don’t flinch.”

He didn’t move. But I could feel something change in him, like a current shifting beneath still water.

“Do you ever think about the future?” I asked. “Like, really think about it? What comes next?”

He nodded slowly. “Sometimes.”

“And do you… look forward to it?”

He opened his mouth, paused like the words caught on his tongue.

“I…”

But I shook my head quickly, wiping at my face before he could see another tear fall. “Never mind. I don’t even know why I asked.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s a fair question.”

I clenched my arms tighter around my books. My voice dropped, barely audible.

“I have a future. Apparently. I just… don’t know if it matters. I don’t even know who I’ll be when I get there. Or if it’ll feel like mine.”

It was out. All of it. Floating in the air between us, too raw to take back.

I looked up at him.

His golden eyes weren’t cold. They were full of something sharp and heavy and quiet.

“I know that feeling,” he said. “More than you might think.”

The bell rang, slicing the air in half.

I inhaled, shaky. My body felt wrung out.

Edward pushed off the wall first. “Ready for frog cells?”

I huffed a small, broken laugh, wiping the last of the tears from my eyes. “I guess there are worse things than preserved amphibians.”

He smiled. Not just with his mouth—his eyes, too.

We walked toward biology side by side. Still not touching. Still not speaking.

But not alone.

Biology passed in a blur, but for once, not because I was dissociating.

Edward sat beside me, close but not close enough to touch. Our shoulders never brushed, but I felt him in every inch of the space we shared. His presence was warm and cold all at once—like sunlight caught in frost.

We worked in tandem without speaking, our microscope becoming the quiet center of some fragile new orbit. I adjusted the slides. He focused the lens. At some point, his fingers grazed mine again, and this time, neither of us flinched.

When we spoke, it was quiet. Careful.

“Do you like this class?” he asked.

I shrugged. “It’s fine. Better when I don’t feel like I’m being dissected along with the specimens.”

A small smile tugged at his mouth. “Was I that obvious?”

“You were basically taking field notes on me for a week.”

He looked… embarrassed. Genuinely.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel like an exhibit,” he said. “I just… I’m not used to not understanding someone. You’re very difficult to read.”

I looked at him for a long moment. “You don’t anymore? Because I don’t want to be an experiment.”

He held my gaze. “No. I still don’t. But I think I’m okay with that now.”

It hit harder than it should have—he wasn’t saying I made sense, but that he wasn’t afraid of not knowing me. Like maybe he didn’t need to have me all figured out to still want to sit beside me. He could live not knowing what I was.

A strange warmth bloomed in my chest.

“You ever wish you were different?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Not because you hate yourself. Just because… you don’t really know how to be yourself. Like there’s this version of you that’s supposed to exist, but you can’t reach him.”

Edward was silent for a breath.

Then: “I don’t hate myself,” he said. “But I struggle with loving myself.”

His voice was steady, but something in it felt brittle—like a violin string pulled too tight. Like he wasn’t completely honest about not hating himself.

I swallowed. “Same.”

We didn’t say anything else for a while. Just stared down at the microscope like it could make any of this simpler.

When the bell rang, I started packing my things slowly, hoping—ridiculously—that the moment would stretch longer if I didn’t look up.

But I felt him watching me. Not the cold stare from before. Something warmer. Something tentative.

“Bye, Bella,” he said, soft and sincere.

I looked up.

“Bye, Edward.”

He hesitated for a second like he wanted to say more—but then he turned and slipped out into the hallway.

Mike was already at the door, waving me down with an overenthusiastic grin. “Come on, Swan! Time to go kick ass in gym!”

I rolled my eyes but followed, letting him talk the whole way to the locker room. His voice was background noise, buoyant and eager.

But I was still somewhere else.

Somewhere between Edward’s smile and the echo of his voice saying my name like it mattered.

Gym passed. Then school passed. Then the sky turned the color of wet cement and the temperature dropped again. Snow swirled in delicate spirals across the pavement.

I stepped out of the building and paused.

Edward was a hundred yards away, already at his car. He moved like something cut from wind—silent, elegant. His family was clustered near him, all bronze, blonde and silver and sharp lines. They were beautiful. Untouchable. The picture of another world.

And they were his.

He had them. People like him.

I had a man who burnt cheese in silence and scared me shitless across the kitchen table. A man who believed he could kill all these vampires for sport.

I turned quickly, blinking too fast, and hurried to the parking lot. I climbed into my truck, slamming the heavy door behind me. The cab was cold, but I didn’t care.

I pulled my hood up to shadow my face, curled my fingers around the steering wheel, and let the weight of it crash down.

Tears came hard and sudden, hot against my cold skin. I didn’t sob—I shook. My shoulders trembled with it. The ache of being seen and then reminded, all over again, that I didn’t belong.

Not in the school.

Not in the town.

Not even in my own skin.

It wasn’t him. Not really. It was the reminder. That even among monsters, I was alone.

I pressed my forehead to the wheel and tried to breathe. In. Out. In again. Shallow. Rough. Slower.

I didn’t know how long I sat there before I finally swiped the back of my sleeve across my face and lifted my head.

And that’s when I saw him.

Edward.

Still in his car, engine running, eyes locked on me through the windshield.

Watching.

Not startled. Not smug.

Just… watching.

Like he’d seen everything. And wasn’t sure what to do with it.

My heart gave a terrible, traitorous lurch.

I turned the key in the ignition and looked away.

By the time I got home, my face felt raw from crying. My eyes ached, my head throbbed, and I still had the salt taste of grief in the back of my throat. I sat on the couch for a while, staring at nothing, the quiet of the house pressing in like the deep sea.

Charlie came home late, boots heavy on the floor, the door shutting behind him with a tired thud.

I stood in the kitchen, waiting. When he walked in and saw me, his expression softened immediately, but he didn’t say anything. He never pressed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He tilted his head. “For what?”

“For this morning. For shutting you out. For acting like any of this is your fault.”

He didn’t speak for a second. Just looked at me like he wanted to pull the grief out of my bones and carry it for a while.

Charlie stepped closer and gave the gentlest shrug. “You’re allowed to feel things, kiddo.”

I swallowed, then lifted my eyes to his. “I want to try again.”

He blinked. “Yeah?”

I nodded.

Within minutes, we were driving through the wet hush of evening, the highway dark and slick. Charlie took us to Rialto Beach this time—wilder, colder, open to deeper waters. I could feel the energy before we even reached the shore. The pull of the ocean. The rhythm calling me home.

We shifted without words and slipped into the surf, two shadows beneath a quilt of stars.

This time, it was squid we hunted. Fast and clever, with ink like smoke and quicksilver movement. We didn’t need to eat, not really—but the instincts liked the chase. It grounded us.

Charlie clicked once, but not just at the rocks this time. He aimed his sound at a distant fish, and the pulse came back layered with details I was only just starting to recognize: the wet flutter of gills, the flex of tiny heart valves, the subtle difference in tissue densities.

A few seconds later, he clicked again—faster, more focused, tuned like sonar built for seeing through skin.

“Try that,” he said, his voice shaped through the movement of sound waves, not through air.

I did. I pulled the vibration from deep in my chest and let it go—targeted and sharp. The echo returned a moment later, but it was muddy. The organs inside the squid—its central sac, beak, brain—blurred into a chaotic smear I couldn’t make sense of.

I tried again, narrowing my focus, but the feedback came back fractured, too many overlapping signals. I let out a burst of frustration that vibrated the water around me like a shudder.

Charlie circled me, slow and steady, signing rapidly. Bella. All Meir’ha’dun learn. Some things come instinctively. Others don’t. Doesn’t mean you’re broken.

I turned in the water, silence stretching wide between us. It feels like I should be better. More… natural.

He made a soft huffing sound—a kind of underwater laugh. I crashed into everything my first few months without my family. You’re doing better than I ever did.

That surprised me. I looked over at him. Really?

Really.

That helped. A little. I clicked again, and this time it came back with more clarity: the radial arms, the movement of a pulsing mantle, and—deep inside—the solid hook of cartilage and the rhythm of living breath.

Charlie sent out a pulse beside me, almost like applause, and I smiled through the water. I followed the shape, weaving through the current, tracing the squid’s internals as if they were lines drawn in invisible ink that only we could read.

We hunted in tandem, silent and graceful, two shapes gliding through cold darkness lit only by instinct.

The sun began to rise over the horizon, painting the ocean in dull gold. We returned to shore, our bodies aching with the effort but our minds lighter. I shifted first, wrapping a towel around myself and wringing out my dripping hair.

“Thanks,” I said.

Charlie smiled at me, the tired kind that reached all the way to his eyes. “Anytime.”

The rest of the week passed in fragments.

I went to class. I ate lunch. I smiled when I was supposed to. Mike invited me to some group hike on Saturday. Jessica texted me about trying on prom dresses "just for fun." I said yes to both and meant neither.

I was good at pretending. I'd been pretending since Phoenix.

But now the seams were starting to show. Everything felt one shade off—like I was wearing someone else's life and it didn’t quite fit in the shoulders.

Still, I tried.

At the weekend, I swam with Charlie in the cove near La Push. He taught me more of the father tongue—clicks, light pulses, muscle vibrations I had to feel to understand. Some of the words only made sense underwater, as if language itself needed the ocean to breathe. He demonstrated more of the kinetic energy, demonstrating how much faster and stronger it made him.

I was getting better.

But every time I blinked in the dark and saw my body glowing faintly beneath the waves—saw the shimmer of memory starting to tattoo itself across my back—I panicked.

Because one day, I wouldn’t just swim with Charlie.

One day, I'd meet a pod.

And I didn’t know if they'd see me as one of them.

Or a half-made mistake.

Monday came with a thin drizzle and dull clouds. The air smelled like wet moss and pencil shavings. I sat with my usual group in the cafeteria, absently picking at a banana and some leftover trail mix.

My viola case sat on the bench beside me. I hadn’t played it that day, but it felt better carrying something I understood.

Jessica was chattering about the spring dance again. Tyler kept insisting he was “just saying” Jessica should come with someone “interesting” and looked meaningfully at Mike, who pretended not to notice.

I laughed at the right times. I kept my head down.

When the bell rang, I stood up to throw my trash away.

And froze.

Edward Cullen was suddenly in front of me—so close I nearly dropped my tray. His expression was unreadable, eyes fixed on mine like they were trying to tell me something I wasn’t supposed to hear out loud.

“Biology’s doing blood typing today,” he said, voice low and casual in that not-at-all-casual way. “If you already know your type, you might want to skip.”

He didn’t blink. Just stared.

My chest went tight. Not from fear—just the weird pressure of being… seen. Again.

He definitely knew. Something, anyway. And had decided I was worth protecting.

I held his gaze. “A positive,” I said lightly, like we were talking about favorite sandwiches.

He grinned—just a flash. “O negative.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Rare.”

“So I’m told.”

He stepped back a half-inch, like the warning had been delivered and his job was done.

But I surprised myself.

“You skipping too?” I asked.

He tilted his head, faintly amused. “Of course.”

I shifted my bag on my shoulder. “Then... want to hang out?”

That caught him.

His posture went still—like I’d short-circuited something behind his eyes. It was subtle, but I saw it. For someone who’d just delivered a secret vampire-coded medical warning, this seemed to shake him more.

“I—” He paused. Then something softened. “Yeah. Sure.”

I blinked. “Really?”

A slow, crooked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Really.”

Something warm flickered under my ribs. Not heat. Something older. Something ocean-deep.

I nodded once. “Okay.”

Neither of us said anything else.

We just turned, quietly, and walked side by side toward the exit—shoulders never brushing, eyes ahead.

The doors swung open with a soft hiss, letting the gray light pour in.

And then we were gone.

Out into the rain-soaked air.

Outside, the rain was soft and whisper-thin, falling like mist rather than drops. The air smelled like wet cedar and pavement, sharp with ozone from the distant ocean.

We paused just beyond the double doors. Neither of us spoke right away.

“So,” I said, shifting my bag over my shoulder. “Where do ditchers go when they’re too mysterious for blood typing?”

Edward looked out across the courtyard, like he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Usually… somewhere quiet.”

“That narrows it down.” I smirked. “We could sneak into the library and be extremely rebellious by whispering too loudly.”

He actually laughed, a real one this time—low and sudden, like it startled him.

“I’m open to suggestions,” he said.

I tilted my head. “Well, if you don’t mind risking your mysterious reputation…”

He glanced at me sideways. “What are we risking it on?”

I shrugged. “Hanging out with someone who won’t flirt with you.”

That made him blink. “Won’t?”

I smiled, teasing. “You looked nervous. I figured you’d be relieved to know you’re safe.”

His expression twitched—caught somewhere between a smile and a wince. “Was it that obvious?”

“A little.”

He glanced away, embarrassed. It was endearing.

“I’ve heard… things,” I said, mock-serious. “Rumors. Tales of Edward Cullen being the subject of six different crushes and one oddly poetic anonymous note.”

His laugh this time was softer, but real. “That one wasn’t anonymous.”

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. “I could use a laugh.”

He shook his head. “It was stapled to my locker. In glitter ink.”

“Romantic.”

A pause passed between us, gentle and close.

Then I added, a little quieter, “For the record, you’re good-looking. Objectively.”

He turned to look at me, golden eyes curious.

“But I prefer personality over looks,” I said simply. “Pretty faces are easy. Interesting minds are rare.”

Something flickered across his face—something small and shy. It settled into a careful smile.

“I prefer that too,” he said.

The rain was light enough that it barely touched us. Just the kind of mist that clung to skin but didn’t soak. I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

“We could go sit in the library,” I offered again, gentler now.

But Edward shook his head, glancing toward the parking lot. “Your truck’s at the end of the row, right? The red one?” Like he didn’t know.

I blinked. “Yeah.”

He nodded toward it. “Let’s sit there. It’s quiet. And… I want to hear you play.”

I stilled, surprised. “You do?”

He gave a small shrug. “I’ve heard you’re good. And the viola is underrated.”

It shouldn’t have warmed me like it did. But it did.

“Okay,” I said softly.

We walked across the wet asphalt in silence, boots and shoes splashing through the shallow puddles. The lot was mostly empty, everyone else in class. My truck sat at the very end of the row, stoic and red and solid—like it had been waiting.

Edward hopped into the bed first and offered me a hand. I took it. His skin was smooth and cool as ever, but steady.

We sat on the edge of the truck bed, legs hanging over the side, facing the treeline. The forest loomed at the edge of the school grounds, its colors muted in the gray mist.

I opened the case slowly and cradled my viola in my lap.

Edward looked over. “Are you feeling any better?” he asked, voice low.

I didn’t answer right away.

“I don’t know,” I said at last. “Not really.”

He waited. Didn't rush me.

“It’s like… the sadness comes in waves,” I said. “Some days I can pretend the water's calm. Some days it pulls me under without warning. I never know when I’ll come up again.”

I adjusted the strings. My fingers felt clumsy.

“I’m tired of pretending I’m fine,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he said, soft but steady.

My throat tightened. “I don’t know you. I don’t know how to stop.”

He didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t say anything at all for a long moment.

Just sat there, with me.

After a while, I lifted the viola and tucked it beneath my chin.

The first notes I played were quiet. Not Ligeti or Bach—just something slow, something sad, something half-formed from memory. A melody that felt like fog and salt and quiet grief.

Edward didn’t speak. He just listened.

I let the notes say what I couldn’t. Let the sound stretch between us until the ache in my chest quieted for a while.

And when I finally stopped playing, lowering the bow with a soft exhale, he held my gaze.

“I think that was the most honest thing I’ve heard all week,” he said.

I blushed and looked away.

The rain began again, slightly heavier now. But neither of us moved.

We just sat there—in the bed of my truck, half-sheltered from the mist, not saying anything.

It wasn’t awkward. Just… still. Like we were letting the space between words breathe.

I glanced down, fiddling with the edge of my coat. “Can I ask something kind of dumb?”

“Only if I get to answer honestly.”

I smiled at that. “If you had, like… a whole year off. No responsibilities. Nothing expected of you. Just time. What would you do with it?”

He was quiet for a moment—not distant, just thoughtful.

“I’d travel,” he said. “But not in the obvious way. No ticking boxes off a list or rushing between cities. I think I’d go slowly. Quiet places. Mountains. Ancient towns. Somewhere with… stories still hidden in the walls.”

I watched his face as he spoke. Just remembering something he maybe hadn’t let himself think about in a long time.

“I’d walk until my legs... ached,” he continued, choosing his words a little too hesitantly. The thought of vampires with aching legs made me smile. “Sit in empty churches and listen to choirs rehearse. Read every plaque in every forgotten museum.”

I smiled, soft. “That’s incredibly specific.”

He laughed under his breath. “You asked.”

“I love that, though.” I leaned back on my palms. “It sounds peaceful.”

He looked at me then. Really looked.

“What about you?” he asked.

I exhaled slowly. “I think I’d rent a lighthouse. Not a trendy one. One that creaks. With storms and no Wi-Fi. Just books, soup, and sea fog.”

He tilted his head, amused. “Soup?”

I nodded, solemn. “Soup is very important. I’d master it. Learn every kind. Turn it into a personality trait.”

He laughed—really laughed this time. It was quiet and warm and real.

“I think you’d be good at that,” he said. “The lighthouse thing.”

“Yeah?” I smiled faintly.

“You have that… old soul quality. Like you’ve already lived through five storms before breakfast.”

I looked away, cheeks heating slightly. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

We sat in that soft hush again. The wind brushed my hair across my face and I tucked it behind my ear.

After a moment, he spoke again—this time a little quieter, a little more curious.

“Was there ever a book that… stayed with you?” he asked. “One that made you feel like… more yourself, even if you didn’t understand why?”

He didn’t ask it like it was casual. He asked it like it mattered.

I smiled faintly. “The Secret Garden.”

He looked surprised—and then intrigued. “Why that one?”

“Because it’s about finding a locked place inside yourself that everyone gave up on. And then watching it grow something alive.”

He was quiet. I wasn’t sure he’d respond. But when he did, his voice was gentler than before.

“That’s beautiful,” he said. “And fitting.”

We looked at each other, and something shifted. Like we’d both just agreed—without speaking—to stop pretending we weren’t drawn to the gravity between us.

“You?”

He didn’t even need to think about it. “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Dramatic.”

He smiled. “It is. But I read it when I was younger and thought… maybe there’s a way to survive things and still keep something sacred intact.”

That stayed with me. The way he said it. The quiet reverence.

“I don’t usually talk like this,” I admitted. “Most of the time, I’m sarcastic and emotionally distant. So enjoy it while it lasts.”

He smiled, but not in amusement. It was something warmer. Grateful, even.

“I like this version,” he said. “But I like the other one too.”

I swallowed hard. The ache behind my ribs wasn’t fear anymore. It was… the terrifying pull of being seen.

A gust of wind passed through, and I hugged my knees up a little instinctively.

“You cold?” he asked, already moving slightly, like he’d give me his coat without question.

“I’m okay,” I said quickly. Then: “But thanks.”

We sat a little longer. Not talking. Just breathing the same cold air.

Eventually, I glanced sideways at him. “Why me?”

He looked over, brows raised slightly.

“You could’ve... warned anyone,” I said carefully. I was mostly surprised he hadn’t used this as an excuse to find out more intimate things about my obvious non-human state. “About biology. But you picked me.”

He hesitated just a second too long.

“You seemed like you might need someone on your side,” he said.

And that—that simple answer—knocked something loose in me.

Maybe I wasn’t entirely alone. Maybe the space between me and the rest of the world wasn’t unbridgeable after all.

I didn’t smile. I just nodded, quietly. But I think he saw it anyway.

We didn’t talk much as we slid off the tailgate. Just the soft thud of boots on pavement, the hollow clack of the viola case snapping shut, and the distant rush of wind across the trees.

I slung the strap of my school bag over my shoulder, and Edward fell into step beside me without a word, hands buried in his jacket pockets. We walked through the parking lot like we’d done it a hundred times—like we’d been walking beside each other forever. It felt… easy. Still. Like whatever we’d found on the back of my truck hadn’t ended yet.

The school buildings loomed ahead, their windows catching the pale afternoon light, but the world still felt quiet. Like it was listening in.

I didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

But I could feel him watching me in those small sideways glances, like he thought I wouldn’t notice. Like he was still trying to figure out what I was, or maybe who I was. I didn’t blame him. I was still figuring that out too.

When we reached the gym building, I slowed.

“Well…” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “This is me. Time to get emotionally wounded by a dodgeball.”

He smiled, and it lit something behind his eyes. “Sounds terrifying.”

“You have no idea.”

We both stood there, neither of us quite stepping away yet. My fingers curled a little tighter around the strap of my bag.

I looked up at him.

“Thanks,” I said. “For earlier. For getting me out of biology. And for listening to me.”

He tilted his head, his expression unreadable but warm. “You’re welcome.”

“And for the company,” I added before I could talk myself out of it.

That made his smile shift—softer, a little crooked. Less polished.

“Thank you,” he said, “for letting me be company.”

I stared at him.

It wasn’t just the gold of his eyes, or the way his voice held stillness like a secret. It was the way he stood there, like I hadn’t scared him off yet. Like maybe he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

The space between us tightened.

He wasn’t touching me. But it felt like we were already holding something fragile between us. Something that hadn’t quite been named yet.

My chest ached in the quiet.

And then—

“Oh my god,” Mike Newton’s voice rang out like a rubber band snapping. “Is that Edward Cullen?”

I turned instinctively, heat surging up my neck.

Sure enough—Mike, Lauren, Tyler, and a few others from gym were grouped near the doors, all gawking like they’d just caught Bigfoot in a leather jacket.

Lauren tilted her head, full-on smirk mode. Tyler raised his eyebrows. I heard someone whisper behind their hand: “Are they, like… dating?”

I flushed. I could feel how red my face was turning. I took a half-step back automatically, heart suddenly pounding in my throat.

Edward didn’t move. He just exhaled slowly and looked toward the crowd—calm, collected, like it didn’t bother him at all.

But I could barely look at him. My stomach had tied itself in about three knots and a half.

He looked back at me, expression soft.

“Well,” he said, quiet enough that only I could hear. “Looks like I should go.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “See you around?”

His eyes held mine for one long, impossibly quiet second.

“You will.”

Then he turned and walked away, hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed, like he hadn’t just ruined my brain for the next twelve hours.

I watched him go. I couldn’t help it.

There was something about the way he moved—like he knew he didn’t belong here but walked like he did anyway. Like he was carrying the secret and the burden and the grace of it all at once.

And I couldn’t stop thinking:

Does he just find me interesting? Like a puzzle?

Or does he actually… like me?

“Bella!” someone called behind me—probably Mike again, trying to wave me toward the locker room.

But I didn’t turn.

Not right away.

Because Edward Cullen had just thanked me for my company, and looked at me like he meant it.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was too much.

I felt seen.

Even if I didn’t know what that would cost yet.