Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Immortality doesn’t make time stop—it just makes it feel slower. Days stretch like glass in Forks. The rain smooths every hour into the next, and the silence becomes more than background noise. It becomes everything.

That silence is where I first noticed her.

Bella Swan was not remarkable to anyone else. Not at first. A new student, awkward in the way all new students are, polite in the way some girls try to be. Her thoughts were silent—her mind completely sealed. And that silence struck me harder than it should have. Not just because it was rare. Not just because it was unfamiliar. But because it was peaceful.

That, more than her scent or her soft-spoken words, is what unnerved me the most. The peace of it.

I told myself it was the mystery that pulled me in. I told myself I was analyzing, protecting. That her proximity to our family posed a threat. That her silence was a danger I needed to solve.

It was a lie I found strangely easy to believe.

I returned to Forks High after a week away—Carlisle had agreed to a longer hunting trip, sensing I needed it. I had insisted. But I wasn’t sure anymore whether I had wanted the space or just the excuse to delay something I couldn’t name.

When I walked into the cafeteria again and saw her, sitting alone with her tray of untouched food and her gaze half-lost out the window, something tightened in my chest.

Not desire. Not really.

More like a thread being pulled taut, attached to something I couldn’t see yet.

She looked at me that day. Really looked. No fear. Just calm, curious observation. And that was all it took for the stillness in me to change from relief to tension.

We shared a lab table in biology, and I pretended to ignore her. I let my voice stay cool. I overcorrected, trying to give my questions the tone of boredom instead of fascination.

She didn’t push. But she stayed.

And every time she looked at me—every time I caught the smell of her skin or the flicker of thought I could not read—I felt myself tip slightly off balance.

Why her?

I asked myself that so often in those first days. There were thousands of girls with open minds, easier targets, clearer motives. Bella’s silence should have frustrated me. Instead, I returned to it like a wound I couldn’t stop pressing.

I didn’t tell Alice, though she knew something had shifted. Jasper, I think, sensed my agitation, but said nothing. Rosalie, predictably, scoffed at every small deviation I made in routine. Emmett, bless him, thought I had simply become moody again.

But it wasn’t mood.

It was motion.

Inside me, something had started moving—and I didn’t know what direction it would take.

At home, I sat alone in the corner of the living room while the others passed time the way they always had. I tried to reread one of my old books. The words blurred.

My mind returned to Bella’s questions, to her laugh when Mike Newton said something awkward, to the way she walked with slightly unsure footing, like she hadn’t yet adjusted to the rain.

She was ordinary in so many ways.

So why did I keep thinking about her?

One afternoon, I passed by her truck in the parking lot and caught the faintest trace of another scent—earth, cedar, something faintly sun-warmed. It vanished before I could place it, too diluted to study.

It meant nothing. A friend, perhaps. Someone she spoke to in passing.

I told myself that.

But the scent lingered in my head for hours afterward. Not for what it was—but for what it reminded me of.

Billy Black.

And by extension—Jacob.

The thought was harmless. The boy was nothing to me. Still human. Still soft.

I told myself that, too.

When I closed my eyes that night, I expected to see Bella’s expression as she tilted her head at me in lab—half suspicion, half fascination. But instead, I saw a flash of someone else. A laugh echoing across the forest line, from years ago. A boy I hadn’t thought about in any meaningful way since he’d started to become a man.

And then I saw nothing.

Just silence again.

Chapter Text

The dreams weren’t mine. That’s what I told myself. I hadn’t dreamed since I was human—there was no scientific reason I should. My mind didn’t wander into sleep, didn’t slip into hallucination. I existed in waking memory, perpetual and uninterrupted. And yet, something strange had been seeping into my stillness. Not dreams, exactly, but fragments. Hints. I would close my eyes and instead of silence, I saw fog curling through the trees. I saw the silhouette of someone I couldn’t reach. Always retreating, always just out of grasp. Sometimes I thought it was Bella. Sometimes I wasn’t so sure. But I always woke—or rather opened my eyes—disoriented, and strangely affected.

I told myself it was just the stress. That being near her again had triggered some emotional reflex I didn’t recognize. Her presence was unsettling. Her mind, closed and quiet, continued to vex me. It wasn’t natural to be unable to read someone. It created an imbalance I didn’t like, and even worse, an allure I couldn’t shake. Every time I thought I had created enough distance between us, some small moment—an accidental glance, a quiet murmur in class—pulled the thread tighter. She wasn’t doing anything. She wasn’t trying to draw me in. That, perhaps, made it worse.

~~~

We returned to school on Friday. The others tried to act as though things had returned to normal, but I knew Alice had seen something. Her thoughts were sharper, more careful than usual. She was shielding them, even from me, which was rare. I watched her from the corner of my eye as we entered the cafeteria. She was too composed, even for her. Her smile didn’t meet her eyes. Her mind hovered over an edge I couldn’t peer across.

Bella sat alone at her usual table, picking at her food while Jessica rambled about something forgettable. Her eyes lifted when we walked in—not toward me, but toward Alice. It was a passing glance, but it lasted just a second too long. Enough to make me notice. And enough, I realized, to make Alice notice too. Her thoughts flickered, hesitated. She laughed quietly at something Jasper said, but her mind wasn’t on him anymore.

Something was changing, and I didn’t like that I wasn’t the one initiating it.

Later that day, I saw them together. Bella was walking to her truck, backpack slung over one shoulder, moving with that tentative, inward rhythm I’d come to associate with her. Alice called her name. Her voice was light, casual. But the moment their eyes met, everything shifted. I paused at the edge of the parking lot, pretending to inspect something in my trunk, and watched them speak.

I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I didn’t need to. I knew Alice. I could see it in her posture, in the way her head tilted, the slight softness in her smile. She was revealing something. Not everything. But something personal. And Bella—Bella was listening. She wasn’t shrinking back. She wasn’t overwhelmed. She was intrigued.

That was when the first thread of discomfort wound itself through my chest.

It wasn’t jealousy—not in the way Emmett would define it. Not the kind that came from rivalry or romantic frustration. This was something else. A displacement. A wrongness. I had assumed I was the anomaly in Bella’s life—the one drawn to her for inexplicable reasons. But now, it appeared I wasn’t alone in that. Alice had seen something. Maybe in Bella. Maybe in herself. Either way, I didn’t like it.

That evening, I found myself standing just beyond the tree line outside her house. I hadn’t done that in a long time. Not since the first week, when my curiosity had gotten the better of me and I’d watched her sleep. But this wasn’t about fascination anymore. It was about uncertainty. I could see her light on through the window. Her silhouette moved slowly behind the curtain, a brief shadow against the pale yellow glow. She wasn’t alone. I heard Charlie’s voice downstairs, soft and indistinct. A human life. A quiet one. She belonged to that world, and I had no right to want anything more from her.

~~~

The next day passed in a blur. I kept my distance, even from Alice, who was clearly trying not to think too loudly around me. She wasn’t hiding guilt—but something close to it. A desire not to be interrogated. I respected that. For now.

But when I passed Bella’s locker later that afternoon, and saw Alice already there, standing just a little too close, my restraint faltered. I didn’t approach them. I didn’t listen. But something coiled tight in me. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Bella was supposed to be a puzzle only I was trying to solve. She was supposed to be safe from the rest of us.

That night, I sat alone in the woods outside the Cullen home. I didn’t want Carlisle’s advice or Rosalie’s disdain. I didn’t want to answer Emmett’s questions. I just wanted to understand. Why did Bella matter so much to Alice all of a sudden? And why did it bother me so deeply that she did?

I’d convinced myself my feelings for Bella were about connection. About mystery. About the temptation of a silence I couldn’t read. But the truth was harder to face. I didn’t know what I felt. I didn’t trust the clarity I’d claimed to have.

And worse still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that this was the second time in a week that a memory I hadn’t invited returned to me unbidden. The first had been vague—a beach, a name. But now it was clearer. I saw the faint image of a younger boy, a dark braid trailing down his back, laughter rising as he ran barefoot down a rocky path. A name brushed against my thoughts again.

Jacob.

I hadn't seen him in days—barely at all since Bella arrived. And yet his name kept surfacing like driftwood, carried in by some tide I didn’t remember stepping into. It wasn’t desire. It wasn’t anything I could define. It was just there. I pushed it away.

When Alice came home later that night, she moved through the house silently. Her sketchpad was tucked under her arm. I caught a glimpse of it—figures in a clearing, trees arching overhead like cathedral spires. A girl with long hair. A second figure beside her, hand outstretched. Alice’s mind stayed guarded.

I didn’t ask what she’d seen.

But I knew she hadn’t stopped dreaming either.

Chapter Text

The days passed like fog moving over glass—slow, blurring everything they touched. School continued, students rotated through their routines, and the world outside the Cullen house moved forward as though nothing had changed. But I could feel it. Beneath the ordinary rhythm of human life, something had cracked open. A fracture, barely visible, but deepening with every passing hour.

It wasn’t Bella’s presence itself that unsettled me. I had grown used to her silence in my mind, her calmness in my periphery. She was no longer the volatile threat I had once feared. No—what unsettled me now was the direction her gaze was turning. It had tilted, shifted slightly, but perceptibly. It was no longer aimed at me.

It was aimed at Alice.

They hadn’t been spending large amounts of time together. Not openly. But it didn’t take long to notice the pattern. Alice would vanish more often. Her thoughts would stutter and blur, never fully absent but unreadable in their careful restraint. She was hiding something—not with guilt, but with protectiveness. When I tried to follow her intentions, I found only shadows. Trees. Rain. And Bella.

They had begun to orbit each other.

~~~

One afternoon, after biology, I found myself watching Bella pack up her books. Her movements were quiet, efficient. She didn’t rush, didn’t linger. She moved like someone who had already begun to internalize the rules of our world—someone who sensed there were unspoken things at play. I knew I shouldn’t be staring, but I couldn’t stop. Not because I wanted her, exactly, but because she no longer seemed to be waiting for me.

She stepped out into the hallway just as Alice rounded the corner. Their eyes met for a beat, and though no words were exchanged, something passed between them. Not electricity. Not tension. Recognition.

I stiffened.

There had been a time, not long ago, when I believed Bella and I were on the cusp of something significant—an emotional reckoning, a choice she might make, one that would draw her toward our family and, in turn, toward me. I had convinced myself that I was protecting her. That the distance I maintained was for her benefit. But now that she was drifting from me entirely, I felt the tremor of loss.

And that loss was unearned. I had not claimed anything. I had only observed. It was my own fault.

Still, I reacted badly.

I caught up to her outside the classroom one afternoon and stopped her in the hallway. My voice was low. I didn’t mean it to sound accusatory, but the edge had slipped in anyway.

“You’re spending a lot of time with Alice.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn’t flinch. “Yes. I am.”

I had expected hesitation. Maybe defensiveness. Instead, I was met with calm certainty. She wasn’t ashamed. She wasn’t trying to explain herself. She had nothing to defend.

“She’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” she added.

I had no answer to that.

I wanted to say something about caution. About danger. But the words tangled behind my teeth. I could not justify the warning without revealing my own contradiction: that I had spent weeks convinced Bella and I shared a bond—and yet, I had not trusted her with anything real. Alice had. And Bella had responded.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” I said instead, knowing how weak the words sounded.

She held my gaze without blinking. “I’m not new to danger. And Alice… she’s not like anyone here. Not like you.”

I felt the weight of that comparison. Not an insult. Not even a rejection. Just a truth I wasn’t prepared to hear.

I turned away before I could say something I would regret. The conversation stayed with me all afternoon.

~~~

That evening, Alice disappeared again. Her thoughts vanished into a curtain of instinct and impulse. I tried not to follow. She had made it clear—without saying anything—that her time with Bella wasn’t meant to be watched.

But I was already watching. I had been for days.

Later that week, I saw them sitting together at the forest’s edge behind the school. Bella’s posture was open, uncertain but unguarded. Alice’s face was tense. She was telling her something. I could only catch a few images through the flicker of Alice’s mind—trees, fear, glimpses of a future she could not name. The emotional current between them hummed with more than possibility. It hummed with intimacy.

They didn’t touch. But I felt like I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to.

That night, the house was quiet. Rosalie had gone out, Emmett in tow. Carlisle was with Esme in the study. Jasper kept his distance. Even he could feel the shift in me.

When Alice returned, she didn’t speak. She moved through the living room silently, her sketchpad in hand. I glimpsed it again: a clearing, two figures, the hint of fingers brushing.

I didn’t ask.

The silence she left in her wake was suffocating.

The next day, I walked Bella to her truck. I don’t remember why I did it. Maybe I was trying to reclaim something. Maybe I wanted to remind her that I was still here. That we had once shared something charged, even if it hadn’t solidified.

We talked briefly, the way humans do. Surface-level conversation. She smiled politely. But her attention was already elsewhere.

“Be careful,” I told her.

She tilted her head. “Is that a threat?”

“No. Just… advice.”

I wasn’t sure if I meant it. I didn’t know if I was warning her about us, or about herself. Or about Alice.

I didn’t know who I was warning her about anymore.

Later, I overheard Alice and Bella at the Cullen house. Carlisle had invited her for dinner, an informal meeting the rest of the family was half-committed to. Bella had sat quietly during the meal, asking questions, listening. Esme adored her. Jasper was distant but tolerant. Emmett joked, and even Rosalie refrained from saying something cruel.

But Alice—Alice watched her like she was memorizing something.

That night, after Bella had gone, I followed Alice into her room and asked her what she was doing.

“Nothing you don’t already know,” she said.

“Then say it.”

“I don’t have to.”

I left before I lost control.

~~~

I stood outside Bella’s house again that night, unseen. Her bedroom light was on. She was reading. Calm. Human. Unaware of how deeply she was being watched by more than just me.

She had become the center of something she didn’t understand.

And I was no longer sure if I was part of it—or standing at the edge, trying to stop it from forming.

For the first time in nearly a century, I felt powerless.

And beneath that powerlessness, something else stirred. Not anger. Not heartbreak. But recognition. An understanding I hadn’t yet reached.

I thought I was mourning something between Bella and me.

But what I was mourning hadn’t happened.

And what I feared—truly feared—hadn’t even begun to name itself.

Chapter Text

Bella's heartbeat never changed, not when she walked beside me into the trees, not even as the silence lengthened and the path narrowed. She moved beside me with the same quiet as always, a patience I didn’t deserve. That, more than anything, made her different. Other people clung to noise—to questions and commentary and emotion that spilled out like overfilled cups. Bella held her silence like it was part of her. And for someone like me, who had lived a century drowning in other people’s noise, it felt like something close to a miracle.

But miracles didn’t happen for people like me.

We had left her truck parked just off the main trail. The forest swallowed us as we moved deeper, sunlight slipping between moss-covered branches in narrow gold ribbons. She didn’t ask where we were going. She didn’t hesitate. I wondered, not for the first time, whether she trusted too easily—or if she was simply braver than most.

I had brought her here to tell her the truth. Or some version of it. I had watched her long enough, withheld enough, that the imbalance had become unbearable. She deserved to know. But beneath that clarity, something twisted tighter: a selfish hope that once she knew, she wouldn’t run.

That she would stay. Not for me, I realized. But for Alice.

The meadow appeared suddenly, as it always did—an opening in the forest so pristine and unexpected that it still caught me off guard. The sun struck the grass like flame, and I hesitated at the edge, just for a moment. Bella stepped past me without fear.

I followed.

Her eyes were on the wildflowers, but I watched her instead. Her face was tilted slightly toward the light, her fingers brushing the air as if she could feel something invisible.

"This is your place," she said, not as a question.

I nodded. "One of them."

She turned to look at me, and there was no fear in her expression. Only waiting. I stepped into the sun.

It was always strange, revealing what I was. The shine of my skin, the unnatural sharpness of it—it repelled people. It was supposed to. But Bella didn’t move. She stared for a moment, eyes wide, and then simply… accepted it.

"You’re beautiful," she said.

The word struck me like a stone. Not because I hadn’t heard it before—vampires had a way of drawing in the shallow and the reckless—but because she meant it. She wasn’t just talking about the surface. She saw something and called it beautiful, even as I stood there, monstrous and wrong.

I had no words for that.

We sat together in the grass. I watched the way the light caught her hair, the way she tilted her head toward my voice. I wanted to believe that something in her belonged here beside me. That we could find balance in this breach between worlds. But I had always known better. I was the interruption. She was still whole.

She asked me questions—carefully, always respectfully. She asked about Carlisle, about how we lived, about the rules we followed. And I answered, slowly. I let the truth out in increments, knowing that each word carried risk. But she didn’t flinch. She took in the strangeness of it all without shrinking back.

She even asked about blood.

I could barely look at her when I answered. I spoke in clinical terms. I avoided detail. But she nodded, as if it made sense. As if this, too, was part of the story she wanted to know—not for her own sake, I realized, but because she wanted to understand what Alice was.

The wind shifted. I caught a new scent—faint, distant, but unmistakable. It pulled at something I hadn’t realized was already raw.

Jacob.

Not here, not close. But nearby. On the edge of the reservation, or possibly along the trail behind the ridge. His scent was caught in the wind like a thread.

Bella didn’t notice. But I did.

And I hated how my thoughts faltered.

He had nothing to do with this moment. Nothing to do with Bella and Alice, or this quiet, impossible truth I was sharing. And yet, the scent lingered like static under my skin. My mind conjured him as a boy—laughing on the beach, carefree. Then older, his voice deepening, his shoulders broadening. A presence I could feel even when he wasn’t near.

I swallowed the distraction. Turned back to Bella.

She had moved closer. Her hand was inches from mine in the grass.

"Do you ever miss it?" she asked. "Being human?"

I considered lying. I considered simplifying the answer. But she deserved more than that.

"Sometimes," I said. "But it’s hard to miss something I barely remember. What I miss most… is not knowing."

She tilted her head. "Not knowing what?"

"Everything. Mortality. Limits. The feeling of time running out."

"That sounds terrifying."

"It was. But it also made things… urgent. Real. Now I have forever, but everything feels further away."

Her expression changed, softened. And in that moment, I saw something shift in her. Not pity. Not even empathy. Something closer to resolve.

She wanted to understand. Because of Alice.

I looked away. The light was fading, and with it, the illusion of safety. I could already feel the danger returning—the edge in my voice, the temptation just beneath the surface. I shouldn’t have brought her here. This was too much. Too fast.

But she reached out, finally, and touched my hand.

It was barely contact. But it anchored me.

Her hand was warm. Mine, cold. She didn’t pull away.

I wanted to believe that meant something. That this bridge between us could hold. But I also knew what I was now.

And somewhere beyond the trees, Jacob Black’s name was still echoing in my thoughts.

Her fingers grazed mine again, a more deliberate gesture this time, and something stirred in me that wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t longing either. It was memory—something elusive, like a flicker of warmth behind a cloud. She was here, now, offering connection. But my reaction didn’t feel like desire. It felt like obligation, or maybe rehearsal. I could almost feel myself stepping into a role I had already been preparing, without knowing why.

I looked at her face again—soft, open, searching—and wondered if I had done this. If I had built her into someone I needed, not someone she truly was. The idea brought guilt with it, fast and hot. She didn’t deserve projection. She deserved truth. She deserved Alice.

She lay back in the grass beside me, eyes half-closed toward the canopy above. The gold sunlight painted lines across her cheekbones. She was breathtaking, but in the kind of way that felt sacred—untouchable, unreachable. I felt like a ghost beside her.

And still, Jacob’s scent lingered on the air, insistent.

I closed my eyes.

What was it about him that wouldn’t leave me? Not desire. I would have known if that were true—wouldn’t I? I’d known thirst. I’d known temptation. This wasn’t that. It was something older, harder to define. Something that lodged beneath the surface, too deep to name.

I forced myself to speak again, if only to reclaim the moment. “I wasn’t supposed to let it get this far.”

Bella sat up. “What do you mean?”

“I told myself to stay away. For your sake.”

“And now?”

I looked at her. “Now I’m not sure what I’m doing.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes were steady. “Then I guess I’ll figure it out with Alice.”

I nodded, quietly ashamed that I’d ever thought I could insert myself into something that didn’t belong to me. That maybe never had.

We walked back slowly, the light dimming with every step. She stayed close, but I could feel her thoughts were elsewhere. Her heart was steady, her breathing calm. She wasn’t overwhelmed. She wasn’t shaken. She was only moving forward—toward Alice.

At the truck, I helped her into the driver’s seat. She lingered for a moment, as if waiting for something—an answer, maybe. I leaned against the door, trying to read her expression. She looked tired, but not scared. Confused, perhaps, but not uncertain.

She trusted me. Not as a partner. Not as a suitor. But as someone who could protect the girl she actually chose.

I wasn’t sure I deserved even that.

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded. “Be safe.”

She smiled—just slightly—and drove off.

When the taillights disappeared down the road, I turned and ran. Not toward home, but into the forest, toward the reservation line. I didn’t cross it. I knew the rules. But I stood at its edge, staring into the trees.

Jacob was somewhere beyond them.

And I hated that a part of me wanted him to find me there.

Chapter Text

The hunger had nothing to do with blood. That’s what I kept telling myself as the hours after the meadow passed. I wasn’t thirsty—not dangerously so. I had fed recently, and the fire in my throat was dulled to an ember. What I felt wasn’t physical craving, but a sharper, more abstract ache. Something I couldn’t place.

It started as I watched Bella walk into the school building the next morning. Her gait had changed, subtly. She carried herself with more certainty, as if a piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. Alice greeted her at the edge of the courtyard, her smile quiet but immediate. Their fingers brushed briefly as they fell into step, and though no one else noticed, I did. It was a small thing—a glance, a shift in posture—but it rang with familiarity.

They had shared something. Or begun to.

Alice’s thoughts were guarded, cloudy in that way that told me she was actively choosing not to think near me. A skill she had honed over years, and one I hated more now than ever.

Bella’s mind was still locked. Silent as stone.

The hallway felt colder than usual.

I sat through my classes with the appearance of calm, but I was no longer focused. I watched from across the cafeteria as Bella leaned toward Alice, their heads close, expressions open. Alice rarely showed that much vulnerability. But she was showing it now. Her posture wasn’t playful—it was reverent. I could feel Jasper’s discomfort from the other end of the table, though he said nothing. I didn’t dare look Rosalie’s way. Emmett, blissfully unaware, continued his conversation with a senior boy about football and spring tournaments.

"You're sulking," Emmett said to me later, grinning. "It's weird."

"I’m not sulking," I answered.

"You’re definitely sulking."

I didn’t respond.

By the time the day ended, I had decided to follow Bella home again. Not because I thought she was in danger—though that was the excuse I used internally—but because I couldn’t get the meadow out of my mind. Her voice, her questions, the soft way she’d said Alice’s name while we spoke. That hadn’t been about me. She hadn’t been comparing us, or torn between us. There hadn’t been a triangle.

There had only ever been a path. And she was already on it.

I watched her from the trees. Alice walked her to the truck. They talked in low tones I couldn’t make out. When Bella climbed in and drove off, Alice remained behind for a few moments. I stepped from the shadows.

"You’re spending a lot of time with her," I said.

Alice didn’t flinch. "I thought you were okay with that."

"I never said I wasn’t."

She turned to face me fully, arms crossed. Her mind was a fortress.

"Then what do you want from me, Edward?"

I didn’t have a good answer. Because I didn’t want to take Bella from her. That wasn’t what this was. I didn’t want Bella’s affection, not in the way I once thought. What I wanted, what I feared, was that I’d misunderstood myself completely.

That Bella had been a mirror I used to hide from my own reflection.

And I was starting to think Alice had seen it all along.

"I just want to make sure she’s safe."

Alice tilted her head, studying me. "She’s safer with me than she is with you."

That hurt more than it should have. But she wasn’t wrong.

I left before the conversation could curdle into something worse.

Later that night, I stood outside the Swan house again. I could see Bella through the window, curled on the couch beside Charlie, flipping through a book. She looked peaceful. Her thoughts were inaccessible, but her body language spoke plainly. She was content. I could almost hear Alice’s laughter echoing in the spaces between pages.

It was then, unbidden, that Jacob’s face surfaced again in my mind. Not sharply. Not with urgency. Just a warmth. A recollection. I remembered how he’d looked at me that day on the boundary line—confused, maybe, but open. And the memory struck me not as a warning, but as something else. A question. An invitation.

I turned away from the window and ran. The woods blurred beneath my feet. The wind lashed my face. I didn’t know where I was going until the scent hit me.

Salt, smoke, earth—La Push.

I stopped at the boundary line. There was no movement. No sound but the crashing tide beyond the trees.

I crouched low, the soft earth giving under my boots as I reached out for the scent again. Jacob. It lingered along the border like a marker etched into the air. Not strong, not recent, but present enough to raise the hairs on my neck.

He wasn’t here, but the ghost of him was. Inhale by inhale, the edge of him wove through me—not hostile, not threatening. Just present. Inescapable.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. I wasn’t foolish enough to step over the line. I had no excuse, no reason. But I stayed, staring across the divide as if something in me was waiting to be caught.

My fingers curled into the dirt. The moss was damp. The air carried salt and cedar. I closed my eyes.

What would happen if he found me here? Would he speak? Would I run? Would I finally admit what had been pacing just beneath my ribs for weeks now?

I didn't have the answer. But the question itself shook me.

Eventually, I turned back. My body moved swiftly, instinctively, but my mind stayed behind.

Back at the house, I sat at the piano bench in silence. The keys remained untouched beneath my fingers. Music couldn’t help me now—not when I couldn’t even name the feeling gnawing at me from the inside out.

Carlisle passed through the room at some point, his presence a calm shadow behind me.

"You’re unraveling," he said, with no trace of judgment.

I didn’t deny it. There was nothing to deny.

He didn’t press. He stood beside me, letting the silence stretch. It wasn’t uncomfortable. It was something closer to understanding.

Finally, I asked, “Is it possible to love someone only because they distract you from someone else?”

Carlisle was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was gentle.

"It’s possible to think that’s love. But what you’re describing isn’t love. It’s fear."

I let his words settle. I didn’t respond.

The room was still. And in that stillness, I thought of Bella—her heartbeat, her steady gaze. And then, impossibly, unavoidably, I thought of Jacob. The way he’d looked at me that day. The space he continued to occupy, uninvited, in the corners of my mind.

I pressed one key on the piano.

Then another.

Then I closed the lid, letting the silence return.

The hunger remained.

But it had changed shape.

And I still didn’t know what it wanted from me.

Chapter Text

The scent came first—metallic, startling, wrong. Before I even registered the shuffle of bodies and the muffled gasps from the biology room, I already knew it was her blood. Bella’s. Fresh. Close.

It wasn’t enough to endanger her, but it was enough to make every nerve in my body stand on end. Even after a century of discipline, the scent caught in my throat like smoke. My instincts bristled. My control hardened around them like a steel trap. One wrong move, one lapse, and the line I had so carefully drawn could collapse.

I was out of my seat before the thought had fully formed. I heard Jasper’s breath catch two rooms away. His thoughts sparked like flint. But it wasn’t Jasper who moved first—it was Alice.

She was already at the door of the biology lab, frozen in place like a figure carved from obsidian. Her fists were clenched at her sides. Her jaw was locked. The tension in her body made the air itself feel brittle.

I reached the room in seconds. Bella sat hunched on a stool near the counter, her hand wrapped tightly in a wad of paper towels. Mr. Banner stood beside her with a vaguely concerned expression. "She nicked her thumb on a slide," he said, oblivious to the chaos sitting in Alice’s stillness.

Alice hadn’t moved.

I stepped between them quickly, keeping my voice even. "I’ll take her to the nurse."

Bella blinked up at me, surprised, but didn’t object. Alice still hadn’t spoken. Her eyes met mine just once—sharp, bright, stricken.

"Alice—" Bella began softly.

Alice cut her off with a breath that shook. "Go with Edward."

Her voice was paper-thin.

I took Bella’s arm gently and led her into the hallway. Her blood lingered in the air behind us. Even outside the room, the scent still tugged at the edges of my focus.

"It’s not that bad," Bella said, though her voice trembled slightly. She looked up at me. "She didn’t look like herself."

"She’s trying harder than anyone realizes," I replied. "But this isn’t about strength. It’s about instinct. And that’s harder to master."

Bella nodded, subdued, and followed me quietly to the nurse’s office. Once she was inside, I stayed outside the door, jaw tense, trying to steady myself. The scent was fading. But the image of Alice—motionless, silenced by proximity to Bella’s blood—was not.

I had seen Alice in countless battles. I had seen her move through chaos like a dancer. I had never seen her afraid of herself.

When Bella emerged, her thumb was wrapped in gauze. She smiled faintly at me. "Is she okay?"

"She will be."

We returned to class in silence, but Alice was no longer there. She had vanished, taking her thoughts with her.

That evening, I found her behind the school, perched on the low ledge near the science wing. Her posture was tight. She didn’t look at me as I approached.

"You stayed longer than you should have," I said.

"I needed to know if I could."

Her voice was flat, but not cold. She looked tired.

I sat beside her, watching her out of the corner of my eye. "You’ve always been able to."

"No, Edward," she said, turning to face me finally. "I’ve always been lucky. There’s a difference."

We sat in silence for a long moment. Then she added, almost in a whisper, "She’s not afraid of me. That’s what makes it worse."

I didn’t know how to answer that.

Bella’s trust in Alice had always been unwavering. But I had begun to wonder if that trust had become something deeper—something that changed the rules.

"You think you’ll slip?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "But that’s not the same as knowing."

Her fingers were locked around her elbows. She looked smaller than I’d ever seen her. And that—more than any vision—unnerved me.

"I’ve watched you face worse," I said.

"Yes," she agreed. "But not while wanting something this badly."

That stopped me.

I opened my mouth, closed it again.

Alice stood slowly. "I’ll see her tomorrow. I’ll be fine."

I wanted to believe her.

I watched her walk away. Her steps were graceful, composed, but she was unraveling just as surely as I was.

That night, Bella called. I heard her soft voice drifting through the phone line to Alice. Laughter followed. Alice smiled for the first time all day. It was small, but it stayed.

I stayed outside their conversation. But I listened. Not to the words, but to the cadence—the familiarity that was no longer forming, but fully formed.

Bella trusted her. Alice needed her. They weren’t teetering toward something anymore. They were already in it.

And I was still standing on the outside.

Later, I went to the forest again. I didn’t plan to. My legs simply carried me. My thoughts were full of Alice, of Bella’s cut thumb, of the closeness I couldn’t reach. But when I stopped, I wasn’t near Forks.

I was at the treaty line again.

The scent of Jacob was faint, but recent.

He had been here.

And I felt it—deep, irrational, and raw.

I wanted him to come back.

Not because of a threat, and not to settle some unknown challenge.

I wanted to see his eyes again. To hear his voice. To test a boundary I still didn’t fully understand. There was no logic to it, and yet it was as real as the air in my lungs. His absence made something inside me tighten—not with anger, but with anticipation.

I crouched by the roots of an old cedar, my hands clasped together as if in prayer. The ocean’s hum was distant but present. I let the silence sink in around me, pressing in against my thoughts. That silence no longer felt like peace. It felt like pressure. And in that pressure was the shape of a truth I wasn’t ready to speak.

What if this was never about Bella?

The thought came and went like lightning, gone before I could hold it.

I pressed my palms into the dirt. It was soft, damp. I could feel the heat of the day still clinging to the ground. Jacob’s scent was woven into it—faint, but undeniable. He had been here. Possibly only hours ago.

I didn’t move for a long time.

When I finally stood, the air had grown colder. The sky had begun to pale with early morning light. I turned away from the boundary and ran, not toward home, but into the deeper woods, where no lines had been drawn, where the air smelled only of moss and fog and pine.

Back at the house, Carlisle was waiting. He stood in the doorway of my room as I entered, the concern in his expression soft and wordless.

He didn’t ask where I had been. He only asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head. "Not yet," I said.

But the truth was closer now, hovering on the edge of my awareness.

And it was getting harder to ignore.