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Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shook my head. The friendship that had sprung up between Edward and Seth was something that still boggled my mind. It was proof, though, that things didn’t have to be this way. That vampires and werewolves could get along just fine,
“We’re going away to Dartmouth together in the fall, Charlie,” Edward reminded him. “I’d like to do that, well, the right way. It’s how I was raised.” He shrugged.
Early marriage was higher up on her blacklist than boiling live puppies.
It made no sense when he looked at me that way. Like I was the prize rather than the outrageously lucky winner.
He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or his glorious body.
Only to stagger to a halt as I got a clear view of the hillock that he sat upon. It was not earth and rock, but a pile of human bodies, drained and lifeless. Too late not to see these faces. I knew them all—Angela, Ben, Jessica, Mike.… And directly beneath the adorable boy were the bodies of my father and my mother. The child opened his bright, bloodred eyes.
Charlie took my hand and, in a symbol as old as the world, placed it in Edward’s. I touched the cool miracle of his skin, and I was home.
“Then I suppose you don’t realize how utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful you are tonight. I’m not surprised Mike’s having difficulty with improper thoughts about a married woman. I am disappointed that Alice didn’t make sure you were forced to look in a mirror.”
“Kind is my middle name,” a husky familiar voice answered from the black night. “Can I cut in?” My hand flew up to my throat, and if Edward hadn’t been holding me I would have collapsed. “Jacob!” I choked as soon as I could breathe. “Jacob!”
He treasured every one of my heartbeats, knowing that they were numbered.
How did people do this—swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had—with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me? If it weren’t Edward out there, if I didn’t know in every cell of my body that he loved me as much as I loved him—unconditionally and irrevocably and, to be honest, irrationally—I’d never be able to get up off this floor.
Fire and ice, somehow existing together without destroying each other. More proof that I belonged with him.
“Impossible,” I whispered. I had absolutely no experience with pregnancy
And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.
So what are you going to do when Bella fights with them, Jacob? Huh? Seth demanded. She’s not Bella anymore. You gonna be the one to take her down? I couldn’t stop myself from wincing. No, you’re not. So, what? You gonna make one of us do it? And then hold a grudge against whoever it is forever? I wouldn’t.… Sure you won’t. You’re not ready for this fight, Jacob.
Her face turned pink. The color was so beautiful—it twisted in my stomach like a knife. A serrated knife, rusty and ragged. I was going to lose this. Again.
the compulsion to follow orders felt like puppet strings hooked into all of my muscles. One foot forward, now another.
I turned my back on him, and a chorus of howls tore into the air around me. Digging my nails into the earth, I raced away from the uproar I’d caused. I didn’t have much time. At least Leah was the only one with a prayer of outrunning me, and I had a head start.
Looks to me like separate packs aren’t linked. Huh. Guess there was no reason for our fathers to know that before. ’Cause there was no reason for separate packs before. Never enough wolves for two. Wow. It’s really quiet. Sort of eerie. But also kinda nice, don’t you think?
My eyes quickly caught a small change in the now-familiar scene. There was a stack of light-colored fabric on the bottom step of the porch. I loped over to investigate. Holding my breath, because the vampire smell stuck to the fabric like you wouldn’t believe, I nudged the stack with my nose. Someone had laid out clothes. Huh. Edward must have caught my moment of irritation as I’d bolted out the door. Well. That was… nice. And weird.
Almost like it was related to her expanding belly—as if by getting bigger, she was gaining gravitational force. For a minute I tried to look at her from a distance, to separate myself from the pull. I knew it wasn’t my imagination that my need for her was stronger than ever. Why was that?
“The f—” He swallowed. “It… the baby likes the sound of your voice.” There was one short beat of total silence. I could not move a muscle, even to blink. Then— “Holy crow, you can hear him!” Bella shouted. In the next second, she winced.
Some kind of dead end that shouldn’t be passed on to another generation. Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line.
I wasn’t going to be able to fall in love like a normal person. Not when I was bleeding over someone else.
I didn’t look at him or it. I watched only Bella as her eyes rolled back into her head. With a last dull ga-lump, her heart faltered and went silent.
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart. “My venom,” he answered as he pushed the plunger down. I heard the jolt in her heart, like he’d shocked her with paddles.
I blew more air into her mouth, but there was nothing there. Just the lifeless rise of her chest in response. I kept pumping her heart, counting, while he worked manically over her, trying to put her back together. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men… But there was nothing there, just me, just him. Working over a corpse. Because that’s all that was left of the girl we both loved. This broken, bled-out, mangled corpse. We couldn’t put Bella together again.
My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning. It was a glowing.
The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood. It was the baby girl in the blond vampire’s arms that held me here now. Renesmee. From upstairs, there was a new sound. The only sound that could touch me in this endless instant. A frantic pounding, a racing beat… A changing heart.
Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.
I tried to separate them. Non-reality was black, and it didn’t hurt so much. Reality was red, and it felt like I was being sawed in half, hit by a bus, punched by a prize fighter, trampled by bulls, and submerged in acid, all at the same time.
Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn’t live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist.
EVERYTHING WAS SO CLEAR. Sharp. Defined. The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright, and yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.
I would not lose them over time. I did not want to forget one minute I’d spent with Edward, even now, when eternity stretched in front of us. I would have to make sure those human memories were cemented into my infallible vampire mind.
“That’s not really a good idea. She’s half human, love. Her heart beats, and blood runs in her veins. Until your thirst is positively under control… You don’t want to put her in danger, do you?”
Maybe this was the part of me that I’d brought forward to be intensified in my new life. Like Carlisle’s compassion and Esme’s devotion. I would probably never be able to do anything interesting or special like Edward, Alice, and Jasper could do. Maybe I would just love Edward more than anyone in the history of the world had ever loved anyone else.
“I was out just two days?” I gasped, disbelieving. The stranger-child in Rosalie’s arms had to be weeks, if not months, old. She was maybe twice the size of the baby in my dim memory, and she seemed to be supporting her own torso easily as she stretched toward me. Her shiny bronze-colored hair fell in ringlets past her shoulders. Her chocolate brown eyes examined me with an interest that was not at all childlike; it was adult, aware and intelligent.
My memory face was twisted, ravaged, covered in sweat and blood. Despite this, my expression in the vision became an adoring smile; my brown eyes glowed over their deep circles. The image enlarged, my face came closer to the unseen vantage point, and then abruptly vanished. Renesmee’s hand dropped from my cheek. She smiled wider, dimpling again.
I puzzled over it, watching him stare at my daughter. Staring at her like… like he was a blind man seeing the sun for the very first time. “No!” I gasped.
steps forward toward Jacob. “You didn’t,” I snarled at him. He backed away, palms up, trying to reason with me. “You know it’s not something I can control.” “You stupid mutt! How could you? My baby!” He backed out the front door now as I stalked him, half-running backward down the stairs. “It wasn’t my idea, Bella!” “I’ve held her all of one time, and already you think you have some moronic wolfy claim to her? She’s mine.” “I can share,” he said pleadingly as he retreated across the lawn. “Pay up,” I heard Emmett say behind me. A small part of my brain wondered who had bet against this
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“It’s not possible. Do you remember how much you wanted me around three days ago? How hard it was to be apart from each other? That’s gone for you now, isn’t it?” I glared, not sure what he was implying. “That was her,” he told me. “From the very beginning. We had to be together, even then.”
“C’mon, Bells! Nessie likes me, too,” he insisted. I froze. My breathing stopped. Behind me, I heard the lack of sound that was their anxious reaction. “What… did you call her?” Jacob took a step farther back, managing to look sheepish. “Well,” he mumbled, “that name you came up with is kind of a mouthful and—” “You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?” I screeched. And then I lunged for his throat.
“Charlie’ll be here soon,” Jacob said to me casually. “Just a heads-up. I assume Alice is getting you sunglasses or something?” “You assume way too much,” I spit through my teeth. “What. Have. You. Done?”
Edward’s lips were like a shot of some addictive chemical straight into my nervous system. I was instantly craving more.
I could see the movement of the blood in his neck under his skin. I could feel the warm vibration of it. So could Renesmee. She smiled and reached one pink palm out to him. I held her back. She pushed her other hand against my neck, thirst, curiosity, and Charlie’s face in her thoughts.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” I reminded him, and then I smashed his hand into the boulder. A deafening crack echoed off the trees. The rock shuddered, and a piece—about an eighth of the mass—broke off at an invisible fault line and crashed to the ground.
“What an amazing creature she is,” Edward murmured, almost in agreement, as if Jacob’s comment was meant as a compliment. He was both dazzling and dazzled.
I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.
The tapestry of family and friends that wove together around me was a beautiful, glowing thing, full of their bright, complementary colors.
