Okay, here we go. This is the last chapter. If it hasn't gone the way you thought, I hope it went better.

I'll save a lot of the important stuff for the bottom.

I don't own Twilight, but I do own all three books in the Hunger Games Trilogy! It's Awesome!

Educated Guess

December, 1945

Edward

The time for Keira to go home came far too quickly in my opinion, and even though she was much better than she had been two days earlier, I was still cautious. Despite this incredible ability she'd developed and learned how to use to her advantage with the wolves, she was still so fragile. I was so worried for her safety, especially now that if something happened to her while she was at home or school, lies would have to be told of her condition to keep suspicions of her nonexistent.

Emmett drove us into town quietly, his mind calm as memories of his own family began to resurface the way they had when he'd first been changed. Astonishment flooded my body when I realized how much he considered Keira a part of his family now. It was so simple to him — as many things usually were, and his protective instincts were stronger now than they had been in ten years.

"This won't change anything will it?" Keira asked as we pulled through the streets to her house. "You'll still keep looking, won't you?"

I squeezed her against me. "Of course. Carlisle will work through the night, and I've already assured him that I would help. You need your rest, and school starts back on Wednesday, and things will go back to normal just like they're supposed to. Everything's going to be all right, Keira. I promise."

She laid her head on my shoulder and grasped onto my hand tighter. Her thoughts were more simplified than I'd believed they could be after everything that had happened, but I was grateful for this more than I thought I would be. No matter what she'd been through, it hadn't changed how she felt for me or herself. I wanted to tell her how much I cared for her, but it seemed like she already knew.

The lights on her street were just coming on when Emmett pulled into her driveway, but it was still early twilight, so I knew we were within the time frame her father had given us to return. I helped Keira from her seat and held her hand as we walked to the front door.

"I'm sure Fisher and Kyle will help you over the next few days," I said as we walked. "And it won't seem like so much time has gone by when the new year starts. You need to be with your family right now, and we'll have plenty of time to do whatever needs to be done when things have settled down."

Keira sighed softly, taking the steps to her porch slowly and smiling a little smile when I opened the door for her to go inside. "I'll find my grandmother's journals this weekend," she said, still smiling.

I tried to argue with her, but before I could, Annabeth came out of the dining room in her apron with an equally bright smile on her face.

"Oh, Keira, darling! You're home! Just in time too. Dinner's almost ready. It's wonderful to see you, Edward."

She blushed as she said my name, and I grinned.

"It's wonderful to see you as well, Annabeth. I should be going. Emmett's waiting."

"Don't be silly," she said. "There's plenty for both of you. Now, I won't take no for an answer. Go bring Emmett inside, and we'll sit down to eat."

She turned and left before I could respond.

I laughed nervously, trying desperately to come up with an excuse to leave, but Keira lifted her hand to my arm.

"It's okay," she said. "It's about time you sat down to eat with us." She leaned in closer and whispered so her mother wouldn't hear. "Don't worry. I'll help you."

Her smile was impossible for me to refuse, and I slowly turned to step outside and get Emmett. He was sitting in the driver's seat of the car with an apprehensive look on his face, and as soon as I was close, he spoke.

"Is this really a good idea?" he asked.

I tried to look as confident as possible. "It's all right. We do this at school all the time."

He rose out of the car reluctantly. "What about Carlisle and Esme? Rosalie."

"They won't worry. It's all right," I said again. "Just act normal."

No further argument came from him as we walked back to the porch where Keira was waiting with the door open.

"I think we're having pot roast with all the trimmings," she said as we stepped into the house, but her thoughts told me she was saying this for someone else's benefit. "I hope you're hungry."

Emmett smiled the way he always did. "Starving."

Annabeth came out of the kitchen a second time as we all stood in the foyer, smiling wider when she saw us and coming closer to greet us properly.

"Edward. Emmett. I hope you've all been doing well. This is a pleasant surprise. Keira, sweetheart, why don't you go get your brothers and Abigail?"

Keira glanced at me and bowed her head, moving to the stairs to perform her task, and Annabeth gestured to the dining room.

"You two boys come into the dining room," she said. "Make yourselves comfortable. The bread's almost done, and everything else is ready."

"Oh, well, I'll help you," I said, following her to the kitchen.

I didn't give her time to argue, and she solicited my help easily, giving me pot holders for the dishes that were hot so I could carry them to the dining room where Emmett was already sitting in a spot at the table.

The worry was gone from his face even though his thoughts were still a little hesitant, but he didn't say anything as I stepped into the room and set the dish in my hands down on the table.

Abigail and Keira came down as I was bringing in the last hot dish, and Fisher and Kyle were close behind. They all looked at me and Emmett, and their thoughts were indicative of anyone who hadn't been expecting extra company for dinner. Only Abigail seemed happy to see us. It appeared I still had a lot of work to do where they were concerned.

Annabeth brought in the bowls of bread, and a moment later, Walter came in from the parlor with a curious smile on his face.

"This is a surprise," he said, moving around to his chair which happened to be on Keira's right as she sat next to her mother.

She nodded for me to sit next to her, and even though I was still a little reluctant, I moved instantly to the chair beside her. Abigail sat next to Fisher, leaving Kyle to take a chair next to Emmett.

"All right," Annabeth said. "Guests first."

After passing around the food and settling in to eat, as Emmett and I aimlessly nudged the food around on our plates, Walter asked me about Carlisle and Esme, wondering where we'd all lived before coming here.

"We were living in Rochester," I said, pretending to wash down my food with the water in front of me.

"And your brother-in-law practiced medicine there as well?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir. He loves helping people. You could say it's his calling in life."

"Where are you from originally?" Annabeth asked.

I glanced at Emmett. "My sister and I are both from Chicago, but after our parents died, we moved to Rochester. That's where she met Carlisle. Rosalie is his sister, as a matter of fact. Emmett was thirteen when we met him — in an orphanage outside Gatlinburg. In Tennessee. We moved there when Carlisle got offered a position to work in a new hospital."

The looks of surprise on Walter and Annabeth's faces were hard to miss, but they did a good job of hiding it.

"That must have been difficult," Abigail said from her seat. "Moving when you were so young."

I shrugged. "I was nine. I had Esme, and Rosalie was growing on me."

Annabeth smiled. "Yes, your sister is very nice. And beautiful. So Emmett, are you looking forward to graduating this spring?"

"Of course, Mrs. Jones," he replied over his own food.

She laughed softly. "Please. Call me Annabeth. Are you going to college in the fall?"

Setting his elbows on the table, Emmett laughed with her. "That's the plan. I've already applied to a bunch of places. Carlisle put in a few references at Brown and Stanford, but I also filled out for Yale and Harvard."

Both Annabeth and Walter looked even more surprised.

"Yale and Harvard?" he asked Emmett.

My "older" brother nodded. "Yes, sir. They both have very good business programs, and all my teachers tell me I have a good eye for that stuff."

"Well, that's wonderful," Annabeth said, still laughing a little. "Kyle, you could take a page from Emmett's book. Get an early start by applying to college."

Kyle smirked. "Yeah, I'll get right on that."

But it didn't look like he had any plans of doing it at all.

Fisher on the other hand was already taking classes and seeing the school's counselor about his transcripts to start applying as soon as he started his senior year in nine months. He'd already redirected his plans of enlisting toward concentrating on becoming a lawyer like his father. The real surprise was that he planned on leaving Washington State as soon as he graduated, and he wanted to travel to the East Coast to live away from his parents. It was sad and a little disappointing, but he was worried about leaving Keira behind.

I was worried about this as well.

Dinner lasted a little longer than I would've liked, but a few minutes after Kyle excused himself, Fisher had to take Abigail home. It was my cue to suggest that Emmett and I also head home. There was no reason to linger, and after Fisher was gone, Keira followed me to the car to say goodbye properly.

"This was nice," she said. "We should do it more often."

I smiled as we arrived at the car. "It was nice. And perhaps after you've had a little time to be with your family, we'll fall back into a normal schedule."

She nodded. "Okay."

It got quiet, and she stepped closer to me, laying her hands over my chest and leaned up until her lips aligned with mine. There was no hesitation in my movements as I cupped her face in my hands to lean over the few centimeters separating us. She was warmer than she had been before, and her pulse was a little faster. The worry I'd felt over her condition faded a little, but it was still prominent in my mind as our lips touched for the first time in two days.

I didn't want to leave her, but I knew I couldn't stay.

"Ahem!"

Emmett's deep utterance startled me, and I released her lips to lay my forehead over hers. "Everything's going to be all right," I whispered. "It's all going to be just fine. I swear."

The little smile that had formed over her face faded a little, and she lifted her hand to my cheek. "I believe you."

A few seconds passed, and I stepped back, taking her hands and lifting them to my lips before I turned to slide into the car as Emmett turned on the engine.

Keira stepped back from the car, waving slightly and smiling.

I glanced at Emmett, and he shifted the gears to back out of the driveway and get us back to the house.

"This is much more serious than I thought it was going to be," Emmett said as he sped away from town. "You're not seriously thinking what it looks like you're thinking, are you?"

Images of me and Keira kissing filled his mind, but intermingled were memories of when Rosalie found him and took him to Carlisle to be changed. I realized now that he'd been thinking the same thing two days earlier when Keira had been hurt, but honestly, the idea of her being a vampire at fifteen had never crossed my mind. The thought of having her with me for all eternity was appealing, of course, but her body had begun to heal before I could even contemplate following through with such a notion.

"So?" he said, driving smoothly through the wet roads.

"No," I said instantly. "And it might not even be an option anymore."

He dropped the subject after that, thinking about what he was going to say to Rosalie when we made it back to the house.

Carlisle was standing on the front porch when Emmett pulled down the drive and then stopped in his usual spot. I was surprised to discover that he wasn't worried about us being out passed nightfall, but he stayed on the porch until we both stepped up the steps to face him to speak.

"I take it you were persuaded to stay for dinner," he said, smiling a little as he stepped aside to let us inside the house.

"Mrs. Jones made pot roast," Emmett said exuberantly.

I laughed softly, following my brother and father into the house, but with nothing to add, I simply took my path to the stairs toward my room. I passed Rosalie on the way, but we shared no words as she moved on downstairs and I continued upstairs. The inside of my room looked significantly different now that I'd spent the better part of the last two days watching over Keira as she healed from her injury. Esme had since cleaned the floor, and there was a faint pine scent wafting through the air as I made my way to the window that overlooked the woods where Keira had been hurt.

The memories played over in my mind constantly, and I could do nothing but think about everything that had happened. But more than that, I realized how different I was after this new development. Carlisle had told me once about how a vampire found their mate, and I always thought it would never happen to me. When I'd left him before he found Rosalie and Emmett, it had never occurred to me there was another way to exist except to be with him or on my own. Now that I'd met Keira, it all made sense to me.

This was no longer just about me. It had now begun to effect my entire family's existence.

Did I want that to change?

"You look like you need someone to talk to," Esme said now standing at the door to my room.

I turned halfway to see her, but I didn't say anything as she moved closer to me.

"The last few days have been very trying to say the least," she said.

I agreed by bowing my head, and she stepped closer to make me look at her.

"You're worrying about something you have no control over. And you know that. What else is bothering you?"

I tried to think of the right words to express how different everything would be for us all now. Even if we moved, we couldn't continue to live the way we had before this. Surely Carlisle had to know this as much as I did.

"This isn't only about Keira," I said softly. "It's about all of us. I feel something for her I've never felt before, but we all know something that could be just as dangerous for the town around her to know as anything she knows about us."

Esme lifted her hand to my cheek. "And we'll protect her. Of course we will. She's as much a part of our family as you or I are."

"And when the wolves decide we've exposed her to our kind long enough?" I asked, turning away to face the window again. "Or when they choose to ignore the fact that we've never hurt her or done anything to draw attention to ourselves from the people in town?"

"We've never given them a reason to retaliate against us," she argued.

"We wouldn't have to. And it wouldn't matter if we were careful not to expose what we are to anyone else. One wrong move, and they wouldn't give us a chance to defend anything that happened as a result — even if it was another accident."

She fell silent as my words sunk in, and she thought of everything Carlisle had told her about our meeting with Ephraim. The fact that I was right refused to surface in her mind, but it was written all over her face.

"If we live in fear of them, it won't help us protect each other. That's more important that appeasing them if we had a slip in the way we present ourselves to the people around us. I see the way you are with Keira," she revealed. "And I see how she is with you. That's all I care about. We'll deal with everything else as it comes. It's all we can do."

"Perhaps," I said.

But there had to be more I could do to make sure the peace between us and the wolves remained intact no matter what Keira's fate turned out to be.

"Whatever you're thinking of doing," Esme said, and I looked at her, "please be careful. You're as important to this family as Carlisle."

She didn't say anything else, touching my cheek again and then turning to leave.

I watched her leave without another word, turning back to the window as the night went on outside our house.

Wherever the answers to my questions lay, I wouldn't find them waiting for the sun to rise or a new day to dawn.

It was in that moment that I realized who I needed to speak to, and with any luck, he would hear me out before laying down a new law for us to follow.

I left my room less than an hour after entering, thinking of the path I would have to take to keep from alarming our neighbors to the north before I had the chance to formulate a plan of appeal. It was important that I speak to Ephraim alone, and I knew the others wouldn't appreciate my approach. But I couldn't risk them thinking I was weak or desperate. On the contrary, I'd never felt stronger, and I refused to allow a misguided law and an oversimplified prejudice to dictate what my life became now that I'd met Keira.

I stopped by the library where Carlisle had retired after Emmett and I had come home, finding him at his desk with one of his father's journals.

"I'm going hunting," I said. "I'll be back in the morning."

He didn't look surprised that I was leaving, but it was clear in his mind that Esme had already spoken to him in the time it took me to know what I had to do. "Be careful, son," he said.

I saw no one else as I left the house, and once outside, I pulled in as deep a breath as I could, smelling several things that would dictate which direction I ran. The air was cold and wet, and the trees were saturated with moisture, causing their woodsy scent to fill the air around me as fully as any other scent in existence.

But all these scents were to the east and the west. I knew these would cloud my ability to find what I was looking for, and without pausing to detect the presence of animals I might feed on, I turned to the north and ran faster than I had in days.

The night enveloped me as I sped along the forest floor, thinking of everything I knew and many things I didn't. I hoped Ephraim would hear me out, and with any luck, he would agree with me where Keira was concerned. I'd seen in his mind how he believed she was unique and needed to be protected. It was unclear, however, if he believed I was capable of keeping her safe, especially when a nomadic vampire had already approached her when she'd been alone.

I knew I couldn't be with Keira every moment, and it made me anxious when I had to be away from her. But she deserved a chance to live her own life. I owed her that much after exposing her to my kind, and it wasn't her place to sacrifice anything for me or my family. Surely, Ephraim would understand how fragile she still was even if she had developed this amazing ability that could very well prevent her from dying.

The tribe's territory was a little more than a hundred miles from our house, and it took me just over an hour to get there running at full speed. This gave me more than enough time to come up with a jumping off point for what I would say to Ephraim and the tribe if it came to it. Keira needed to be protected. That was the most important thing to me now.

The boundaries of the tribe's territory were easy to spot, and I smelled them before I saw them — all six of them. Ephraim was toward the tail of the group, closest to their land and the reservation of their people. Levi and Quil approached me first, the members of their troupe without the ability to transform between them and their chief.

"You're not wanted here, bloodsucker," Levi yelled.

"I'm not here to fight," I said calmly. "I came to talk. About Keira."

The sound of her name caused a noticeable reaction in Ephraim's posture, but he didn't move toward me as Quil spoke.

"The rules of our treaty stand," he said. "If you attempt to challenge us, we will retaliate against you."

"But don't you understand?" I pleaded. "I can't. You saw what I saw. Keira's as much a part of my family now as I am. We would never hurt her. But I need your help."

Levi spit at the ground the moment I said it, the glare in his eyes even more prominent. "You are not worthy of our help. And if you do not leave, we won't hesitate to defend our people."

"And if her presence in my life makes me worthy?" I demanded. "If her blood is unique and deserves to be protected, doesn't that make her worthy? Because her safety is all that matters to me."

"Then that is your problem now," one of the others yelled. "And she made her choice. It's not our place to protect someone who chooses death over life."

"That's enough," Ephraim shouted. "Caleb, Gene, Edmund, go back to the village. It's clear he isn't here to cause trouble."

Three members of their group, one of whom had just spoken, all turned to leave, quietly retreating to the reservation nearby as Ephraim moved to the front to face me with Levi and Quil behind him.

"You have risked too much to come here," he said to me.

"She's worth it. She's worth so much more than I am. And I didn't realize it until now."

Ephraim glanced at Levi and Quil, obviously telling them silently to leave him alone with me. They hesitated for a moment but then turned to leave without arguing. He waited to speak until they were far enough away to keep from interrupting us, looking at me differently than he had since we'd discovered each other.

"We should walk," he said, nodding toward the trees behind me.

I didn't pause, turning to make a new path away from the tribe's territory, and he followed me instantly.

"You're different," he said as we walked. "Even more than I saw a night ago. It's her, isn't it?"

I didn't mean to smile, but the thought of Keira causing this change in me made the most sense. I'd seen this change in Carlisle when he found Esme and fell in love with her, and it had also been obvious in Rosalie when she'd found Emmett.

"It must be," I said, still smiling. "It is the only thing I have any experience with. Is that bad?"

His thoughts centered on his one meeting with her, and it was clear he'd been impressed with her as a person more than he had been with her ability. "You say her blood is unique," he said, "and that may very well be true. But I think her uniqueness is more than just that. You can see her mind as you can see mine, yes?"

I nodded.

He thought about her blush and the words she'd used when telling him of her fall. I saw in her as I'd seen then how much she truly remembered about what had happened to her, and though I'd been saddened over this more than I realized at the time she'd awoken the first time, I'd known in those moments that I would do anything to protect her from something like that happening again.

"How can you not have figured it out by now?" he asked. "You care a great deal for her, and it was clear to me a night ago that your . . . father also cares what happens to her. In fact, it was very obvious that you all have something invested in her safety. So why do you need us?"

I left his thoughts as his words resonated inside me far deeper than any I'd ever heard in my life — human or vampire.

"It isn't that I — we need your help protecting her, though I'm sure Carlisle wouldn't be opposed to it."

"Then what is it?"

I formed the words in my mind before speaking them more clearly than I ever had to Carlisle. "I need your guidance."

The laugh the followed should've surprised me, but when he saw that I was serious, he stopped walking and turned to face me.

"You can't be serious," he said.

"Actually, I've never been more serious. And I can't say this to Carlisle. He won't understand. And it's because of Keira that he wouldn't understand. None of us really knows what's happening inside her, and I know what you saw. You understand, don't you?"

My words stunned him for a few moments, and he was unable to speak as he thought over what I said. He thought about the way his body had changed when he first transformed, and it was clear that he was at least familiar with the phenomenon of his wounds healing very quickly. I knew what was happening to Keira was somewhat similar to what he went through, especially since she also might have inherited her ability from her family's bloodline. The same could be said of Levi and Quil, but they were more resistant and didn't appreciate the position I'd found myself in.

The reason for this was only just becoming clear to me. Like me, Ephraim had someone in his life who made him different — changed his priorities and drove his actions.

Ellen.

"I understand," he said. "Probably more than I should. But it won't be as easy to guide you as it is a member of my own tribe."

"I'll do anything it takes to keep her safe. I would leave her if I could, but I think that would harm me more than anything else ever has. Please understand that I do not wish to bring any danger to your people. If possible, I would do anything I could to keep you safe as well. But I know you can protect each other. That's all I want for Keira."

In an unusual turn of behavior, he extended his hand and laid it over my shoulder. "Then I feel it's my responsibility to help you. Though you possess an old soul, Edward Cullen, it's obvious you still hold the insecurities of a child. But anything I tell you will be different from what you must learn from your father. I might know what will happen to her, but only he knows what will happen to you."

"I'll talk to him," I said, mentally assessing what kind of reaction Carlisle would have when he realized the same thing that had happened to him was now happening to me.

"You'll need to be careful with her," Ephraim said, continuing to walk further away from the reservation. "If this is all still so new to her, the next several weeks and months will be important for her to still grow to understand what it means for her."

"How can I help her?"

"When I first changed, there was still a part of me I couldn't control. My ability to transform is still tied to my emotions, but the part meant to heal me the way she heals herself is something I can't speed up or slow down. And it still leaves its mark on me," he said, showing his left forearm to me as a thin, long scar marred his otherwise smooth skin. Inside, I could see the bones misshapen and melded to the point that while it wasn't uncomfortable for him, it was obvious it had been painful.

"She'll want to test her boundaries in a way I never could," he said. "And you have to be there to make sure she doesn't permanently harm herself."

"I'll do anything she needs me to do," I declared.

A small smile crossed his face. "Then what I suspected a night ago has been confirmed. You are truly different."

I'd known it for the last several weeks since Keira and I had gone on our first date. I'd probably known it when we went to the Fall Dance together. The way I felt about her was even more obvious now than it had been when I'd asked her to go with me.

There was truly only one thing that could cause a permanent change in a vampire.

"I love her," I said aloud, in response to my own stream of thoughts.

Ephraim squeezed my shoulder. "It's a start," he said. "And it's definitely one I'll tell my children. The Cold One who loved the girl who could heal. The first thing you need to do is be patient. It might be difficult, but if she's so important to you — "

"I'm a vampire," I said with a smile. "I have plenty of patience. But I understand. I know she'll have questions. I want to be able to give her answers. And I'll be careful. You have my word, Ephraim."

Slowly, he lowered his hand and extended it to me. "Then you have mine."

"Thank you," I said as sincerely as I could, taking his hand in mine.

When we parted, I felt more confident that I'd made the right choice in confiding in him. He was more understanding than I'd expected, but he was right in saying that I needed to talk to Carlisle. If anyone would understand what I was feeling, it was Carlisle.

I only hoped he would be able to understand why I'd gone to Ephraim first.

I decided to hunt while I was gone, but it did nothing to calm my nerves. When I made it back to the house, I stopped on the steps without going inside, still thinking of what I would say to my father when he asked me the one question to which I knew he needed an answer.

The sun rose as I sat there, illuminating much more than the world around me.

"You've been out here a long time," Carlisle said, coming out of the doors from the front parlor. "I hope everything went all right with your hunt."

I glanced back at him, waiting until he sat beside me to speak. "It went much better than I could've hoped for."

"And you're all right?"

I nodded. "I'm all right. And I feel much better than I have in a long time."

He laughed softly. "Son, whatever you're trying to say, you can say it. I won't think badly simply because you're having trouble articulating it."

I smiled and bowed my head. "Then I must be truly transparent if everyone's seen it before I have. Perhaps the more I say it aloud, the easier it will be to accept it."

"And what is that?"

"I love her, Carlisle."

His response wasn't as immediate as I'd expected, nor was it as complicated as I'd thought it would be.

"I know," he said.

Though I was surprised, I was also relieved. I wanted him to know how I felt before anything else happened, and I knew that would be the only constant in our lives from now on.

Something else would happen to change our family.

And we would all need to be ready for it — no matter what the future held.

To Be Continued . . .

There you go! And I know it's open-ended. There's a reason for that. I still plan on continuing this. Will I post it? Dear Reader, that's up to you.

Now for the important stuff. All the tribe's name come directly from the Guide - even Ellen. Who would've thought?

I don't know how the Quiluetes would've really reacted to Edward - I'm guessing not good - but this is an AU story so things will be different.

And I'm making this one complete, so if you've been paying attention, you know what this means! I have a new story coming! Check out my profile for details.

It's been fun. Thanks to all my readers, and those precious few of you who reviewed, thank you even more.

Catch you on the flip side!