I'm moving in a few weeks (again) and have some free time before school starts up, and there are a lot of half-written stories on my computer. So don't be surprised if I post more than usual for a bit. Anyway, this story might have a second chapter, but I'm not positive yet. I tried to capture Edward's voice during this specific time, which is why there's some repetition because, well, Edward waffles a lot.

Reviews are always appreciated. Enjoy!

Chapter One: Leave-Taking

Her blood on the air, her scent beneath my tongue. Fire and wonder and love and life.

The sky and the warmth of the sun on my skin, repentance and a soul and a second chance. Everything I could ever want or need in the palm of my hand.

I was thirsty, always so thirsty. My throat burned like acid and my vision swam. Her blood was just inches from my grasp. I could reach out and take it with unimaginable ease. I could live again, could have a second chance. The world at my fingertips…

Her world.

I didn't argue when they told me to leave, because I saw how frightened she still was. There was no comfort I could offer her. Not then.

And I was terrified that she would look at me and see only hunger written on my face.

So I stalked out of the house, biting my mouth hard and pretending that the pain would distract me from the scent of her blood. It had saturated the house with its cloying sweetness, was making me dizzy and nauseous with want.

The night air was cool and damp, a fine mist soaking through my hair and clinging to my skin. The full moon overhead flooded the ground with bare white light, leeching the colors from the scene and turning the forest into a looming wall of darkness to my left. I hesitated, feeling Bella's presence in the house at my back.

The thirst was devastating, fire searing up my throat and sending heat through my veins. The gnawing longing to just drink spreading through my mind until I could think of nothing else. I almost turned around.

Stop.

I shook myself as if that would dislodge the thirst and hurried into the woods, where the whole world was shadows and the warmth of the house almost seemed like a dream.

Jasper leaned against a tree a few yards in, methodically snapping a branch into pieces. He looked up at me through strands of falling hair, his lips turning up slightly at the corners in an expression the furthest thing imaginable from a smile.

I was unsurprised by the wine-red tint to Jasper's eyes. Of course he would have killed a human in his anger. A vagrant, somebody who would not be missed so that we were safe from the light of suspicion. Carlisle and Esme didn't mind so much as long as our family was kept intact, however much they claimed to revere human life.

"Jasper's very upset with himself right now, and I doubt he'll listen to anyone but you."

I always had wondered at Carlisle's idealistic view of our family. We weren't the saints he liked to think we were.

Jasper was furious, but not with himself. He was angry with me. He was right to be. I'd brought a human into our home and put everyone I loved in danger. I'd broken rules and crossed lines—lines that were not to be crossed.

Jasper glared at me, his red eyes dark, upper lip curled back to reveal bloodstained teeth. It was the most frightening sight some people would ever see.

I'd known so much worse.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I breathed, trying not to look at the accusation in his eyes. My family's thoughts were already screaming in my head, all of them, furious and betrayed. And now this nameless man. How many more people were going to die because I was too selfish to let her go?

Jasper sighed heavily and crouched down beside me. I hadn't realized that I was on my knees.

"Guess I'm sorry, too," Jasper said grudgingly. There was nothing he hated more. "For trying to kill her and all that." His voice went cold. "But it isn't my fault, you know."

I nodded, feeling the dampness of the ground seep through the fabric of my jeans. Her blood was still so close, so tempting. A stronger siren call than anything in the world.

Just a taste.

I knotted my fingers in the grass, as if that could possibly hold me back.

"It's my fault," I agreed in a low voice. "I had no right to bring her into our home." The one place that was supposed to be a safe haven from the world, and I had waved temptation right under Jasper's nose. I owed him more than an apology.

Guilt washed through me in waves until I could feel nothing else, and I knew that Jasper was amplifying the emotion. Let him.

Bella would never know how close she'd come to death tonight, how near she was to never reaching nineteen. Jasper's teeth had been a millimeter from the skin of her throat by the time I had managed to shove her away, the glass shards just inches from cutting an artery and bleeding her dry, her head a bare fraction from slamming against our plaster wall with enough force to kill her.

She had died in Alice's visions. Three times in three different ways and I had seen them, all of them, the memories printed in bold inside my skull.

I was so sick of watching her die because of me.

But what else could I possibly expect? That a human could survive in my hands, that her heart would keep beating when surrounded by people whose first instinct was to silence it forever?

Because I had brought her to our house of nightmares and horrors and expected her to remain unharmed. I had been so selfish. So stupid.

I could fight for her with everything I had, and it would never, ever be enough.

Jasper watched me quietly, his face gone soft and warm. "You shouldn't have fallen for a human," he said. "It's messing things up for all of us."

I nodded once, pulling back when his hand twitched and he thought about grasping my shoulder. The truth was slowly sinking in, a horror that I had up until then been mostly successful in pushing away, and the knowledge hurt like hell.

Bella was going to die.

Today or in a hundred years, what difference did it make? I couldn't stop it, I couldn't save people—and the thought made me laugh, right, as if I'd ever managed to save someone, as if I was good for anything but ending lives and fucking things up—nothing I could do would make a difference in the end.

She was going to die. She would go to a place where I couldn't follow her. And what would I do then? Would the world even spin on its axis when she was gone? Because she would die, she had to—it was either watch her die or change her.

The other option, the one that made me cold.

Damn her to burn for all eternity. Switch her warmth for deathly cold and steal all the good from her, everything that made her who she was, leech it out to be replaced by anger and pain and thirst.

It wasn't an option: it never had been. Because I loved her, and I couldn't do that to her. Because she didn't understand, and I—I didn't know how to make her.

Why didn't she realize how lucky she was to be human? And here she was willing to give up her life, this thing I would kill to be granted, she was willing to throw it away like trash. I was angry with her for a brief moment. How dare she be willing to just give it up?

Because Isabella Swan had every chance that we had ever been denied, and I didn't think I could stand to see her throw it all away.

So it was her choice, but wasn't it mine too? Whether I was responsible for doing that to her? The truth was that she didn't realize what she was asking for. Nobody could, not until they'd felt that first gut-wrenching horror upon looking in the mirror and seeing something dead staring back.

She couldn't know what it was like.

A distant part of my mind registered the change in conversation as inside, Carlisle offered to drive Bella home. I was back in the house before he'd finished the sentence.

"I'll do that."

They both looked up at me, Carlisle with his eyes gleaming flat gold in the lamplight, Bella's face soft and still a little stunned. She blinked at me, registering my sudden appearance. Surrounded by vampires, she might have been moving in slow motion.

Her pretty blue shirt was streaked with blood, and I swallowed hard.

Alice appeared in the doorway like a ghost. "I'll get you something less macabre to wear. C'mon, Bella," she said, and I wondered if Bella would hear the strain in her voice.

Bella was distracted, examining her bandaged arm as Alice led her upstairs, and Carlisle's posture changed in a moment to something stiff and predatory. He was thirsty, they all were, and I might as well have been taunting them. Dangling bait beneath their noses and telling them not to drink. Saturating the whole house with the smell of her blood.

His voice was tight and strained. "Get her the hell out of my house, Edward."

I stared down at the floor, unwilling to meet his eyes.

"On it," I said, trying hard to keep my voice calm. My throat was already bared to him and he would look for any weakness, any vulnerability to exploit. It wasn't that Carlisle didn't love us: he did, as much as was possible for our kind. But we were predators and we couldn't just push that fact aside.

Couldn't just be as soft and sweet and human as we tried to pretend.

Bella's heartbeat thumped from upstairs, the sound echoing off the walls, and I clung to it. A reminder that she was alive, at least for the moment.

Carlisle had stitched her up. And I would take her home. She would be all right.

But what Alice had seen—

She had been so close. So close to dying because she was with me. There could only be so many close calls before she died and that just wasn't an option.

I couldn't let this keep going on.

"I love you," I told her later that night, lying next to her and taking comfort from her deep, even breaths. Her warmth and her pulse and her heartbeat, tangible proof that she was there by my side.

I looked at her face, soft and watchful in the dim light, and felt as if the breath had been wrenched from my lungs. I loved her. That was the reason for everything I did.

Not good enough.

Because she was going to die and I was going to kill her and how could I do that to her?

Bella yawned and murmured, "Then change me." She was half-awake, her eyes slipping shut, pulse gone slow and steady as she drifted off to sleep.

I loved her. I would always love her. But I looked at her and felt helpless, wanted to crush things in my hands until I'd shaped the world into one that made sense.

How could she want this? Did she even realize what she was asking for?

Because if I had known—I would have really died rather than become what I was. Would have cut open my wrists and bled myself dry before a drop of Carlisle Cullen's venom could reach my veins.

She didn't understand. I wasn't sure if she could.

What it was to be something black and evil and soulless, to be so—so wrong that anything with a pulse was instinctively afraid, a killer that survived by taking life after life after life. To know that the world would be a better and brighter place if you weren't in it?

And she wanted to give up her life for this.

For me.

If I'd been human, it would have made me sick. But I wasn't, and it just made me angry.

That she would be willing to give up something so precious. As if we wouldn't have done anything, anything, to be allowed to live out our own lives.

I knew what it was to become a vampire, to leave the world behind and be trapped looking in from the outside. Living in a one-room cell with no way out for the rest of time.

I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Not her. Never her.

And then her heartbeat thumped once, steady and sure. I was doing my level best to silence that sound forever, wasn't I?

Vampires were so good at shaping the world around them, and if only I could use that for good. Because I would do anything, anything, to keep her like this—human and smiling and dreaming and living, waking up in the morning to the sunlight warm on her face and having a meaning and a future and a life.

Laughing and breathing and safe, safe, safe.

Bella smiled in her sleep, turning over so her back was to the wall, and I stopped breathing as the movement stirred up her scent. Warm air fell over me like a blanket and my throat began to burn more brightly than before.

Just a taste. A single taste.

I didn't realize how tightly I was clenching my fist until her bedpost cracked in my hand. Bella slept deeply enough that the sound didn't wake her, and her breathing continued, even and soothing. I swallowed back the thirst, levering myself up on my elbow to put as much distance as possible between us.

What if she died, I thought to myself almost dispassionately as I stared down at her dark, rumpled head. What if she died and I ended up destroying the only good thing in the whole damn world?

I wouldn't let that happen.

I couldn't.

And if hurting her was her only chance to live. If tearing out her heart was the only way to keep it beating.

Then that was what I would have to do.

I entered my room through the window, trying to put off the inevitable confrontation. Alice would have seen my decision, and she would be fuming. The others shouldn't be a problem. I'd seen the irritation in their faces, heard the thoughts they hadn't quite cared enough to hide.

Everybody was tired of having to clean up my messes.

I yanked the shades across the windows in a useless attempt to block out the light and kicked a few books out of my way, clearing a space on the floor.

Then I fell to my knees and threw an arm over my face and was still in the cave of darkness I had made.

If only I could be right for her. Safe. Good. But I wasn't, and it was time to stop playing games: time to stop wasting time with delusion and self-pity and pretending that I could be something I was not. The facts were simple. She was human.

I wasn't.

And there was no way to keep her safe with me in her life.

There was a mirror hanging on the wall to my left. I glanced over at it, saw an empty face and dead black eyes. And she wanted this.

I had never understood how humans could see us as appealing, how they could look at us and long for us and want to be close. We were white skin and fake bodies and dead silence where there should have been a pulse. Disgusting.

And Bella called us beautiful.

Right.

I reached out and pressed my palm flat against the mirror, hand to hand in a holy kiss, crumpling it in my hand like tinfoil so that I wouldn't have to look at myself anymore. It wasn't like my reflection would ever be anything but this.

She didn't know what that meant, did she? How important it was to be able to grow and change. I was tired of seeing the same thing. I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and see somebody different—older—instead of the seventeen-year-old that always stared back at me.

And Bella… She had everything I'd ever wanted, everything that was so precious once you'd realized it was gone. The thing about immortality was that vampires forgot what it was to have a life, but I heard the human minds around me, and I knew it all too well. I knew what we'd lost in the change. What she was so willing to lose.

Bella Swan was alive. She had a family and a future and—a soul. I couldn't let her give it all up.

Not for me.

Alice snagged me the next morning the moment I opened my door. She still wore her party clothes, a skirt and pink lace top, and the contrast between them and her pale, wan face was almost obscene.

"Edward," she said, her voice thin and tight with strain. "Before you make any decisions, there's something you should know. The vision—it hasn't changed. I still see Bella as one of us, and it's the clearest future I've ever known."

I didn't respond, the image in her head burning its way into my brain. She was right. It hadn't wavered at all. Bella, deathly pale, with eyes red as the setting sun as her life drew to a close. So I really was going to kill her. Leave her behind with nothing, nothing but a pretty face and glowing eyes and the memory of what once was.

I felt like I was trapped with no way out.

Alice reached out and caught my hand, twining our fingers together so tightly that it hurt. "You have to follow this path, Edward. Because if you lose her, if she dies—"

She was still speaking, but I had stopped listening. The words ran together in my head until they formed a meaningless jumble of horror and fear.

If she died if she died if she died.

I wanted to cover my ears. Wanted to block out the sounds until there was nothing left and I could close my eyes and there would be blackness and I wouldn't have to think anymore.

But that didn't matter now. Nothing mattered but her.

Alice looked at me with fierce sadness in her eyes, silently willing me to understand. "You won't survive losing her, Edward."

I realized she had led me into the kitchen, and looked up without surprise to see the rest of my family gathered, their expressions cold and hard. Alice released my hand and went to Jasper's side, slipping an arm around his waist, so I was left alone in the doorway facing six dark pairs of eyes.

We were all so quiet that the house was like a tomb. I didn't think anyone was even breathing, because the air—the smell was still so fresh. It would take weeks.

It was Rosalie who spoke up at last. "Edward and his human have put this family through hell and back," she said, her voice ringing clear in the silence. "It's high time we put an end to this, Carlisle. Either he changes her, or he snaps her neck." Her lips twisted up in a bitter approximation of a smile. "You know which choice I'd go for, Edward. Because you'd go for it, too."

I looked at her, skin pearl-bright against the whitewashed kitchen wall, hair like gold sheets draped over her shoulders and down to her waist. She was beautiful, and she knew it.

The way her smile turned the tiniest bit smug made me feel sick.

"That isn't going to happen." I fought to keep my voice under control. "Either of them." But the pictures in their heads—

I could see it so clearly.

Her body still and white and cold and no breath in her lungs, no color in her cheeks, and what did it matter whether she could still walk and talk? She would be dead, dead, dead and I would have, I would have—

I pictured it now, her face terrible and beautiful and immortal, and there could be nothing more frightening in the world.

Killing her. For me.

"Edward." Carlisle spoke softly, treading lightly so as not to upset me further, but I could hear the resolve in his mind. "This has gone on for far too long." His mouth pressed into a thin line. "The family is in danger. I am telling you to choose." He expected me to change her; they all did. They knew how much I loved her, how I couldn't be without her.

But then maybe they didn't realize how I felt about her after all. Because I loved her too much to kill her.

I hesitated for a moment too long, and anger sparked deep in Carlisle's eyes. "This family runs on loyalty, Edward," he said sharply. "It is a poor showing on your part to be consistently siding with a human woman against your own" —his lips twitched— "flesh and blood, as the saying goes." And then his voice hardened again. "You are either with us or you are not, Edward. There is no third option."

I looked at them all, their faces pale and cold, and all I really knew was that I loved them. "I'm not—" I swallowed hard. How could they think that, think that I… "I'm not against you. Any of you. How could I be—?"

When we were all each other had in the world.

Sadness flashed over Carlisle's face, brightening it so that I almost blinked, and he took my face in his hands.

"My son," he whispered, his lips barely forming the words. "Our family comes first. You know that. And I think that after tonight… we can all agree that the situation cannot go on as it is. We are flirting with disaster—for her, as well." He shot me a pointed look.

For her.

Jasper's teeth at her throat and the smell of her blood in the air and knowing, knowing that taking that blood would make everything all right, would thaw the world out into color and beauty and life and everything would be all right if I only drank—

I clenched my fists around the thick fabric of my jeans until it ripped.

But then I'd always known that one day I would have to leave her.

"Edward?" Carlisle prompted me when I didn't speak. "Son, you have to choose. This cannot continue."

If I hadn't already made up my mind, I thought, then this would be killing me. As it was, everything felt strangely detached, sounds muffled and colors muted like I was watching the world from behind glass. But if I was honest with myself, I'd known what I was going to do since the moment I'd seen Jasper go for Bella's throat.

No matter what happened, she was going to live.

"There's another option," I said quietly, and everyone stilled, their eyes fixed on me. I swallowed hard. "We can leave," I said, the words catching in my throat. "Leave here and never—never come back. At least until she's—" I couldn't say it aloud. They knew what I meant.

Emmett and Esme nodded immediately, but Rosalie scoffed.

Carlisle raised one fine eyebrow. "If the girl talks..."

"She won't," I said fiercely, trying to make them believe the words. "She won't talk. She'd never do that." They looked at me, still uncertain.

Let her live.

"And even if she did, so what?" I continued, spinning lies as quickly as I could. "The town isn't suspicious of us at all, and humans believe less in the supernatural than they ever have. You know as well as I that she wouldn't be believed."

Rosalie laughed again, more loudly this time. "You're kidding, right? Leave behind a source of possible exposure for the next—oh, sixty years? Fine, Edward, have your delusions," she snapped, already planning how she would double back and break Bella's neck.

So simple, so easy, the images clean and blood-free in her head and mine. I wanted to be sick.

"I'm sorry," I said preemptively, meeting her eyes. "But if you go after her, Rosalie—I'll fight you. And I'll do my best to kill you. You won't touch her."

Emmett jumped up with a snarl. "Talk to my wife like that and I'll tear you to shreds, brother."

Let her live. Keep her safe.

I looked at him evenly. "You, too, Em. If you even think about hurting her."

Speaking to my own family this way. God.

Jasper caught onto my guilt and spun it into fury. "Yeah? Let's see it then, kid." He grinned and sank into a crouch, teeth glittering in the bright kitchen lights. "You know I love a good fight."

I had taken a single step when Carlisle grabbed my arm and yanked me back. "Enough," he said firmly. "Enough."

I turned to him again, distracted from the anger, and felt it loosen its hold as Jasper's interest waned.

"She has to live," I told Carlisle, putting everything I had into the words. "She has to. I'll do anything."

His eyes flickered at my uncharacteristic bluntness. I always spoke carefully, quietly: watched my tongue.

"Anything," I repeated.

Because this wasn't about me. Bella didn't take it seriously, she thought vampirism was a joke, but I knew exactly what she had to lose.

I'd lost it.

And the thought of somebody making that sacrifice for me—it made me sick.

Carlisle's eyes were downcast, pale lashes shielding them from view as he thought. "Moving so soon will be a great inconvenience to us all, Edward."

"I know that," I said flatly.

"We have a good five years left in this town. If I agree, it is only because of the times you have moved for us without complaint. And the risk of leaving her to talk… This is an extremely large favor to ask of us."

I knew that, too.

"You know, I'm starting to warm to the idea. The human's melodramatic. Maybe she'll kill herself," Rosalie said, her face brightening at the prospect.

The images in her head made me shudder. Ridiculous when I'd seen so much worse. Still, there was a small, terrible part of me, no matter how I tried to suppress it, that thought—better.

Better than anything I had to give.

Alice looked up at me, her eyes dark pools in a white face. "Edward, are you sure about this?"

I nodded as if that would convince any of them, as if their sharp eyes couldn't see right past my façade. I couldn't fool them into thinking I was okay, not like I could Bella. "She needs to live."

"But what about you?" Esme's voice was soft and fragile with pain, as if she was seconds from breaking.

I had no right to be angry with them, but I couldn't help myself. That they were only thinking about my wants, my needs, when Bella was going to die because I was too weak and too selfish to let her have a life.

Carlisle and Esme claimed to revere humanity but it was us they cared about, keeping our happy family of monsters intact at any cost. No matter the consequences for the world around us.

"I'll be fine," I said, with an edge to my tone that made Carlisle tense.

Esme waved him away, watching me through narrowed eyes. "I don't think you will."

Of course I wouldn't. But that didn't matter, because she would have a life.

I clenched my fists more tightly, suddenly aching to get out. To leave this place and everyone in it, to run until I left myself behind and I didn't have to be anymore.

"So it's decided, then? We will leave her alone?" I wouldn't leave any room for uncertainty. Not when it came to her.

Jasper nodded, knowing that I needed an absolute. "We'll start packing and get out by tonight."

Nobody objected, and I felt a dizzying mix of horror and relief. This was the right thing to do. The choice that would save her.

It had to be.

Bella was reading Romeo and Juliet when I returned. I balanced on the windowsill for a moment, staring in at the room. Soft blankets and stacked books and it was—warm, here. Warm and safe and it felt like home. Nothing like the big white house built to cage us like animals.

I didn't belong in this place. Never had.

Bella looked up at me and gave a soft startled gasp, her cheeks flushing pink. My throat flared up. "Oh! Edward," she said, waving the book in the air. "I just got to the part where they get married. Just let me finish the act—"

I leaned back against the wall, crossing my arms so she wouldn't see how tense I was. "Go ahead."

Bella had compared us to the play's main characters more than once. I wasn't sure if she realized that the story was more about the dangers of lust and rushing into things than true love. It was a pretty good comparison, at that.

Because when it came down to it, wasn't that all love really was? Want and fear and nothing else? Maybe need. Maybe being so desperate that you would do anything, say anything, just to make somebody stay.

I wanted to stay more than anything. More than should be possible. And that was why I had to leave.

Because I could see it so clearly in sharp relief: I knew what would happen next as surely as the sun would rise.

She loved me, or at least the glitz and glitter of my vampirism—I didn't know if she saw past it. Didn't think anybody could. But she'd been drawn in by my predatory lures and I was too weak to stop myself from loving her right back, and she'd keep asking to be changed because humans were so stupid with what they wanted and what they were willing to give up.

And I'd fight her on it—I would never stop fighting—but Bella had a knack for getting what she wanted. Eventually, she would get her wish.

And then one day I'd be looking into red eyes and I'd know that I played God like I swore I'd never do, that I'd damned her to being cold and still and dead for the rest of time.

Bella snapped the book shut, and the noise made me flinch.

"Done," she said triumphantly. There was so much about her that I couldn't understand. Like why she liked that stupid book so much.

I looked at her, warm eyes and a soft smile lit by lamplight, and how was I ever supposed to let this go?

It was easier when I thought of what she had to lose. Her family and her friends and her life—she couldn't possibly understand what it meant to give it all up. She was only a year older than I had been when Carlisle found me. She didn't get it.

What it was to walk the earth without rest, to close your eyes and to know that you would never be anything, ever. That you should never have been born.

"Edward, would you like to stay for dinner?" she asked, smiling up at me with golden lights glinting in her hair. "It's been a while since—"

Like I could bear to spend any second away from her, now. "Of course."

The tension that had been building in her face vanished, and I felt cold when I realized how selfish I was being. How stupid, not to begin pulling away the moment I could. "Okay, great. I'll just be a minute—you can go on and wait downstairs."

Her father was already seated at kitchen table, trying not to fidget as his thoughts wandered back to the game on TV. He looked up when I entered the room, and it was almost funny, really, how his blood pressure rose each time he caught sight of my face.

I pulled up a chair, feeling every microscopic flaw in the wood as he silently stewed. The overhead light colored the whole room pale yellow, and the heat of the oven was suffocating.

"You know I don't like you seeing my girl, don't you, son?" Charlie asked abruptly.

My fingers sank into the wood. I let go immediately, dropping my hands into my lap. "I know."

He nodded and cleared his throat unnecessarily, one of those little human gestures that I would never understand. "Just putting that out there. You're no good for her."

I almost laughed. He didn't know the half of it.

If only he'd been there last night—blood dripping down her arm, skin bruising in the shape of my hands, because I couldn't even touch her without hurting her—

An odd feeling of curiosity made me meet his eyes, too briefly for his instincts to kick in. "You think I should leave her?"

Charlie snorted. "I'd like for you to go your separate ways, sure." He was picturing her face, strained and pale and—empty. I'd been in Canada for a three day hunt, and she'd wandered the house like a ghost in my absence. Like I'd scooped out her insides and taken them along.

Don't like what he's doing to her, Charlie thought. It's like he's got her soul.

I was squeezing the table again, digging my fingertips into the wood.

And then Bella came into the room, all fire and lightness and warmth, angling a smile over her shoulder as she went to wash up. I stared at my hands, trying to figure out a way to get through to her. A way to make her see how much she had.

But I'd been trying that all summer, and she still wanted me, and she still wanted to be changed.

She wasn't going to listen to me, I could see that now.

Not until it was too late.

"So, as per our agreement, the treaty will be maintained as long as we continue to return to this land," Carlisle said, his voice gentle and very calm. He was probably the only one on either side not hoping for a fight to break out.

The Alpha wolf crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to look more imposing. His name was Sam Uley, and his absolute hatred of my family meant that he was torn between relief that we'd be gone and disappointment.

He would have loved a fight.

"Do I even want to know why you're up and leaving so quickly, leeches?" Sam asked, leaning back against a nearby tree. "No, wait, let me guess—you killed someone and have to go into hiding to protect your sorry asses."

Another of the wolves laughed, standing in the shadows with the sun at his back so he was just a bulky silhouette.

The first thing Carlisle had done after we'd come to our decision had been to call a meeting with the wolves to inform them of our departure. He'd always taken the treaty with them seriously. Even when they didn't.

But Carlisle—he'd always liked to see the best in people. I didn't know how to explain to him that it wasn't as simple as the wolves needing a lesson in kindness.

They were right to hate us.

I glared down at the ground, scuffing my shoe against the dirt. Wolf odor mixed with the fecund smell of the forest made for an overpowering combination.

"We've merely decided to move on," Carlisle said, still using his most pacifying tone. "I wish you and your families all the best."

A third wolf snorted. Paul. "Yeah, sure you do. Freaks."

Sam opened his mouth, but then his eyes caught on me and he paused. "You're the one that's been seeing a human, right?" he asked. "The Swan girl?"

Her face in their minds. Bloodless and dead with my teeth at her throat.

I didn't answer, didn't know what to say, and they took that as assent.

"Are you fucking insane, leech?" Paul shrieked, all boiling blood beneath his tan. His fists clenched and unclenched as he fought the urge to phase. "Get your filthy hands off her, killer scum!"

I looked away. "I know."

When the meeting was over and there was nothing more to be said, everybody began filing off into the woods. I turned to go as well, but a small hand closed tightly around my wrist. Alice stared at me, her eyes dark and dewy in the shadow of the trees. She looked like she wanted to cry.

"You're not coming with us, are you?"

"No," I admitted after a moment's hesitation. "I'm not."

Her face crumpled, and then Alice started to sob without tears. "Edward," she said. "Edward. I can't see what happens. I don't know—" She broke off and met my gaze squarely. "But I can tell you this."

I saw where she was headed. "Alice..."

"If you leave her," she continued ruthlessly, "if you go now, you will never come back to us alive." Her breath hitched, and her lower lip trembled. "There's no question about it. If you leave us, Edward, then we will never see you again."

Her life for my—whatever it was. More than a fair trade.

I loved them, I did. But it wasn't a choice between my family and Bella Swan. It never had been.

Every choice had been taken from me the moment I'd met her eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said helplessly, and I hated being helpless. "Alice, I'm sorry. But if it were Jasper—if he had a chance to live—"

"Then I would change him so I could keep him forever!" she shouted through her sobs. "Goddamnit, Edward, stop being so damn noble and be selfish for once! You need her! You won't survive losing her!"

I was pretty much counting on that.

In the end, it wasn't even that hard. I had always been a good liar: no guilt, no second-guessing. They were just words. I'd done a whole lot worse.

All it took was the thought of red eyes, and the lies were flowing like water.

Bella, I said, let's take a walk. And I led her out into the woods, just beyond the outer fringe of trees. I knew how memories could stick to a room, could haunt it until the whole place reeked of misery. I wouldn't do that to her nice warm house.

She didn't spend much time in the woods, anyway.

Bella hardly fought. It had been what I expected—a little disappointing, maybe, that she wouldn't fight for us. But I was being stupid. It was so much simpler this way.

"You're no good for me, Bella," I said, and it had been almost easy up to this point, but suddenly the weight of what I was saying pulled me under with a crash and I forgot how to breathe.

When there had never been anything as good for me as her.

But she was going to die, I reminded myself, she was going to die, and nobody's happiness could be worth that.

Not even hers.

Bella was staring at me, mouth opening and closing as she tried to find the words to make me stay. She looked ridiculous. She looked beautiful.

I never wanted to look away.

So I closed my eyes and fixed the picture of her death behind my lids. Her drained and broken corpse. Then Bella in sunshine, laughing and smiling, living the life she deserved and wasn't going to have if I stuck around to drag her down with me into darkness.

I couldn't help it. I took her head in my hands and kissed her face and silently wished that she wouldn't let me go.

But she deserved a life.

Be happy, I whispered against her skin, too quietly for her to hear. She would hurt, I knew that, but she would heal.

And she would live.

I backed away from her, struggling to tear my eyes from her face, and started to run once I'd left her behind.

I knew who I was looking for—I remembered the tenor of his mind—but I was dizzy and the trees were spinning and I couldn't seem to concentrate on anything but her. I ran blindly in what felt like the right direction, instinctively avoiding trees and stones, and coming up short just before I crashed into Sam Uley.

I wouldn't have fallen, but he grabbed me automatically by the arm, and it took everything in me not to jerk away. His skin burned red-hot.

"What the fuck?" Sam's voice was half-human, already poised to attack.

Ridiculous, these wolves, tempers always just below boiling point. The hands steadying me immediately let go when he realized what I was. His thoughts went cold and disgusted and I didn't care, I could still hear her calling my name.

"What's your problem, leech?"

The air felt like lead in my lungs, and I was fighting longing so desperate that it made me feel sick. Go back go back go back—

Let her live.

I could barely get out the words.

"Bella Swan is in the forest," I choked out, "sixty yards northwest of Charlie Swan's house if you leave from the back door. You—you have to find her. Please." I grabbed his arms to make sure he would listen to me, blind to everything but the curve of her cheek when she smiled, the shape of her mouth, the color of her eyes.

If I stayed and those eyes turned red, if I took her life and her soul—

I would rather kill her and myself and the whole world than let that happen.

If she died—

He lurched away again, eyes glinting yellow like a real wolf's in the dappled green light that filtered through the trees. "Don't touch me, filthy bloodsucker." Posturing, but beneath that was real concern, and he would go looking for her.

Keep her safe.

And safety was anywhere but within my reach.

I should never have. I should never have touched her.

"Thanks," I said, and dropped my hands. I was going to have to entrust her to him. This man I didn't even know.

How could I.

But she would live. And she would be all right.

Bella started to cry, the sound tearing its way through me like a knife. I flinched back and almost fell, the ground unsteady beneath my feet. Sam watched with a calculating glint in his eyes.

What's wrong with him? If he's hurt—wonder if I could kill him alone.

I almost laughed. He could, hell, I would let him. Just—

"Not yet," I said. Victoria was still out there, but after that—well, I wouldn't be fighting back if it came to that. I'd promised her, but did it really count as suicide if it wasn't by my hand? So maybe I should just let this Sam do it now. It was tempting. So tempting.

Not yet.

Sam was staring at me and not bothering to hide it, unease slowly working its way across his face.

"So what's wrong with you, anyway?" he asked uncertainly. He'd read something in my expression that struck a chord with him. Something that made him almost—concerned. I saw through his eyes that it looked like I was falling, though my feet were on the ground.

My throat tightened, and I swallowed hard. Because everything was wrong with me, I was entirely wrong for her, and wasn't that the whole problem?

"Nothing," I said, clenching my fists until it hurt. "I—listen, please, you have to find her. She's out there, alone, you have to bring her home—" I trailed off, head tilting automatically as the leaves rustled ominously a few miles back.

Jasper and I weren't especially close, but he would fight the most for me to stay. For Alice's sake.

I left without a word, leaving Sam staring at the place where I had been, and got twelve seconds into my run through the forest before I heard him.

He came crashing through the trees with outstretched arms, barreling into me and sending us both to the ground. Jasper and I had only ever come to a draw before, but I was angry and that gave me strength. We came to a halt with my forearm pressing down on his neck, forcing out the air he didn't need.

"You can't stop me, so don't even try," I said, trying to use anger to cover the rest so that he would respond in kind.

It had always been hard to fool Jasper.

He squirmed, and I let him up, stepping back as if a little bit of distance would keep him from me. Jasper got to his feet with exaggerated slowness, hands outstretched. There was nothing but pity and warmth on his face.

I had preferred the anger.

"Edward, we love you. Don't leave us. Please."

So many people begging me to stay today, and I'd disappointed every one of them.

I looked away. "I wouldn't bother, Jasper. You of all people should know better."

Jasper's thoughts were a roiling mix of compassion and horror. Not over me, Edward, you can't do this—you need her like she needs air to breathe— But he knew I wouldn't be swayed. He tried a different tactic. "Losing you—it'll kill Alice."

I did smile then, looking up to meet his eyes. They still held a trace of red.

"It can't kill her. We're already dead."

Jasper's lips pressed together and his face went cold again, and that was better but not by much.

She was still crying. Charlie had just raised the alarm and Sam Uley was on his way. I just had to wait until she'd reached the safety of her home.

Then I could go. Leave and never, ever look back.

Jasper continued to glare at me, his hands curled into fists like he wanted to throw a punch, and then he turned around and left. I watched him go, my hand tight around a low-hanging branch because I felt like I needed it, the stability.

I was hurting them, all of them, and I didn't want to do that—but they had each other and they could handle it. And she might suffer, but it was nothing compared to what she'd feel if she turned. Thirst and exhaustion and blood on her hands and the unimaginable, unendurable agony of burning alive.

She didn't deserve to live like that.

I stood silently, listening to her breathing as the seconds ticked by. It seemed like hours before I watched through Sam's eyes as he found her, limp and miserable on the forest floor. The sight made my throat ache, and the longing to just go back burned my insides like fire.

I had known that she would be hurt when I left. I'd just hoped she'd be able to stand on her own.

Hey... Cullen, Sam thought with a strange hesitation in his voice. My head jerked up, and I stared unseeingly into the empty green woods surrounding me. I got her. She's fine.

So he'd recognized me as the mind reader. He must not have realized that I could see what he saw, too.

I felt something within me ease at his words, but my fist tightened around the branch until it snapped in two. The pieces tumbled to the ground beside me with a sound like breaking glass.

"Thanks," I muttered to the empty air, knowing he wouldn't hear me.

I'd been right to entrust her safety to him, I thought with a dim sense of relief. She would be all right.

And there were no more excuses. No more reasons to stay.

Her face and her eyes and the beating of her heart… all things that tied me to her. Reasons that I had to leave.

If I stayed, then those eyes would turn red. There was no question about it.

I could never let that happen.

I broke into a run, pushing my legs faster until I could no longer see the world surrounding me, until it had all been rubbed out into an empty grey blur. And then it started to rain, droplets streaking past me and stinging my face, and I could no longer hear her at all.

The realization hit me with startling force that I never would again, wouldn't hear her voice or see her face or touch her lips.

And then I couldn't, couldn't run anymore. Didn't think I could stand.

Go back.

It was only when I opened my eyes that I realized I was on my knees, in the shadow of an alleyway where the moonlight didn't reach. My hands pressed flat against the dirty brick ground as if that would anchor me.

I didn't dare turn around, not even then, because I could still feel her at my back. Just a few miles between us.

No distance at all.

I could be there in a blink and be with her and this would go away, all of the horror and blackness and pain, my instincts screaming down to the last cell to go back and find her and never let her go.

That I had found her and given her up, something so precious.

But I had to. For her.

Let her live.

I started to run again.