A/N: This one's a little on the shorter side but the drama is starting to pick up a bit more. I believe we're coming to the end, guys. Maybe that will free up some time for other fics, who knows. As always please leave me some love! It's the only reward I have for spending time on this!

Chapter 13

BPOV

She had me won over with her insistence. I agreed to go back to Jake's with her, talk it all out, explain what I really meant, what I'd begun to refer to as Bella's Breakthrough. I knew I still had a chance, however slim, and with Jake it was worth taking. I'd groveled and begged once already tonight, what's once more in the scheme of things.

"Wait here a sec, I'm gonna go behind that tree and phase and I'll be right back." She pointed to a wide tree trunk several yards away and I nodded absently, deeply involved in creating the apologetic monologue I'd be delivering to Jake in mere minutes.

I turned my back to her to be polite and give her some privacy. I heard footsteps behind me and was surprised by her quickness. I started to speak, "Back so soon?" but my mouth was deftly covered by a frozen hand, stifling the words and the emerging scream. I fought against whatever had a hold on me, a vampire, I knew that much, but it was useless, like arm-wrestling solid steel bars.

In the next moment I was shuttled upward at a nauseating speed, branches and leaves flying past me whipping me harshly in the face. As we settled into the top of the tree, I finally got a large enough breath to fill my terrified lungs. My mouth was covered so I inhaled through my nose by default. The oxygen carried the sweet, peppermint scent I once loved but now feared. I knew without having to look. Edward.

My eyes went wide and I turned around to face him, his red irises immediately chilling me to the bone. Blood red. I knew what I had heard from Alice but to see it confirmed in person paralyzed me. He placed a finger to his sinister grin and motioned for my silence. As if I could bring myself to speak in my terror.

"Bella?" Leah called my name from far below and it echoed up to us eerily. My heart was pounding in my chest when I felt a warm drip down my forehead. Please god, don't let me be bleeding, not now, not now!

Edward's hand was still firmly clamped over my mouth and he held me perfectly still. Not even the leaves were trembling as he clung to the flimsy branches. We both watched as Leah ran around, obviously searching for me. She also clearly didn't smell anything out of the ordinary and the hopes that she'd find me quickly faded.

"Bella! Bella, answer me!" Her voice was more concerned now, bordering on distress.

She jogged further away from our perch, and I could have cried as her figure shrank. I suppose her distance gave Edward some assurance that she wouldn't hear his voice, so he whispered, "If you scream or make any noise, I will drop you from this tree, do you understand? Nod if you do." I nodded as much as his iron grip would allow and awaited his next words.

I wanted to believe this was part of an awful, vivid dream and I'd wake up with Charlie hovering over me, worry knitting his brows. It was beyond anything I could have ever imagined, that Edward would become my worst nightmare overnight.

He placed a kiss to my forehead, inhaled deeply and groaned his enjoyment; I whimpered in terror. He'd found the broken skin on my face and savored the scent of my blood. I was his singer, after all.

"Love, I've decided to give you what you want." He smiled at me, a wide expectant smile that didn't quite reach his devil's eyes. "I'm going to make you one of us, Bella. Tonight."

JPOV

Leah hadn't come back with the rest of us and I was beginning to take it as a sign of disrespect. I knew I hadn't exactly acted in the interest of my people but if anyone could understand being ruined by what I was beginning to consider a botched imprint I figured it would be her. Everyone was arriving back, milling around on my porch waiting for us all to get here so we could get our plan together for finding Cullen.

While I aimlessly paced around in the grass Paul showed up looking pissed off, his nose slightly swollen and bruised. He didn't say a word as he walked past me to take a seat on the step. I felt like a dick for hitting him, and told myself it's either now or never for the apology he was owed.

"Paul, I'm sorry about before."

"Don't worry about it, I shouldn't have said what I said about Bella. We all know how people get when their imprint is insulted so let's just drop it, alright?" I was shocked by his diplomacy but nodded and began my pacing again. This Bella shit really had me out of my head and I was walking, trying to expend some nervous energy as I unsuccessfully convinced myself I didn't care about her. The growing uneasy knot in my stomach I associated with leaving my imprint behind, not having any idea the emotion I felt was from another source entirely.

Finally I heard rustling in the woods behind the house and turned to see Leah sprinting up toward us, tearing up the grass like a bat out of hell. In the dark I couldn't see her expression so I figured she was hustling because she was the last to arrive, but when she yelled out to us from halfway across the yard my heart stopped.

"Bella's gone! They took her!" It wasn't so much what she said but the panic laced in her voice that cause me to react in kind.

"They who?" I demanded.

"I'm not sure, definitely vamp. I think it might be Edward. I caught a slight scent but it wasn't much so I didn't think anything of it. I only turned around to phase, I swear to god, Jake, she was there and then she wasn't. It was like she disappeared into thin air."

"What do you mean? You caught a scent and then you still left her alone? What the fuck Leah, you know better than that!" I thought about Bella, alone with that maniac, who aside from being a run of the mill psychopath is also a bloodsucking vampire freshly back on his people-eating diet. What was it she'd told me about them once, that her blood sings to him? I growled and punched the wall, leaving a softball-sized hole depressed into the side of the house.

"I thought it might have been one of the other ones that was there for the meeting! I didn't think about it until she was gone! The scent didn't even leave a trail behind! It was just, I dunno, there!" Her hands roughly pulled at her hair in frustration.

"We have to find her, where did you last see her? Show me!" I made every last attempt to calm myself or I felt my fury would cause me to spontaneously combust. I tried not to blame Leah for this but I knew that if anything happened to Bella I would never forgive her, just like I'd never forgive myself. I'd left her there with those bloodsuckers in the first place. I just walked away like she meant nothing. Her last memory of me would be watching my back recede into the shadows, leaving her alone and vulnerable to whatever creatures lurked in the dark.

We took off running toward the woods with Leah explaining the exact location as a bright red sports car came speeding down the road. It must have been going a hundred miles an hour but it whipped into my narrow driveway fluidly, throwing rocks and dust around in a cloud. The last two people in the world I'd ever expect to see pull up to my house were in the sedan.

Blondie was brutally dragging that little pixie leech out of the car and out to the pack, screeching at her all the way.

"Alice, so help me god, you better tell them. Tell them NOW." Blondie was menacingly manhandling the psychic one, and when she didn't start talking fast enough for Blondie's liking she gave a violent shake and the pixie's teeth clacked together loudly.

"Edward has Bella and he's decided he's going to turn her as soon as he can get her somewhere alone."

"He's already got her alone!" I grit out, throwing a glare at Leah.

"He hasn't done it yet, I know that much." She looked terrified and with good cause; all of us looming over her, not even her own sister to defend her. Her eyes kept jumping back to watch Blondie, unsure of her next move.

"Where are they?"

"He's taking her back to the campsite where they stayed the night of the newborn fight. He didn't think I'd tell you; he saw Bella screaming at us so he's being careless with guarding his decisions."

"Emmett's already on his way, but we don't have much time. He'll only be able to distract Edward temporarily if he has no one to help him." Blondie surprised the hell out of me. From what I remember when Bella used to talk about them, I thought they hated each other. I wasn't sure if I should trust her just based upon the fact that she's a leech too, but the determination in her voice and her abusing her sister convinced me just enough.

"What do we do if we find the leech then? Let him go on his merry way like you said before? Or do we get to actually get to do the one thing that's the reason for our existence?" Paul asked, the sarcasm dripping from his words.

"Leah you're sure about what you heard?" As much as it might go against my born and bred beliefs, I couldn't hurt Bella by letting anything happen to Edward if I knew she still wanted him.

"Positive. She told them to leave!" Leah yelled.

Blondie nodded as well. "Heard it with my own two ears," she smiled. "Now do you want to stand here and waste more time or can we get moving?"

"Let's go, everyone, now!" I took off at a sprint and phased on the fly just before reaching the tree line. I waited to answer Paul's question until the leeches couldn't hear me.

Paul, like I said earlier, that leech is not to be harmed.

Jake, for fuck's sake! You can't just –

EVERYONE LISTEN UP! I want Cullen found and I want him in one piece when he is brought to me. I growled a satisfying, dominant growl before I continued, He's mine.

A/N: Do I have to say it again? Please review! ;)