The white rose sat on my nightstand for three days.
I told myself I kept it because it was beautiful—impossibly perfect, its petals untouched by the decay that should have claimed it within hours of being picked. I told myself the note meant nothing, that it was some kind of prank, that small towns had their share of bored kids with nothing better to do than mess with the new girl.
I didn't tell myself the truth: that I couldn't throw it away because it was from him. That every time I looked at those perfect white petals, I felt the echo of golden eyes burning into mine. That some part of me—the part that had always known I was different, the part that woke up screaming from dreams I couldn't remember—recognized something in Edward Cullen that it had been waiting for my entire life.
Aunt Cora noticed the rose on the second morning. She stood in my doorway with her coffee mug, her expression unreadable as she studied it.
"Boy at school give you that?"
"No." The lie came too quickly. "I mean, I don't know who left it. It was on my windowsill when I woke up."
Her eyes flicked to the window, then back to me. Something passed across her face—too fast to identify, but it made the hair on my arms stand up.
"Lock your window at night," she said. "This town isn't as safe as it looks."
She left before I could ask what she meant.
School became an exercise in controlled chaos. I learned the routes between classes, the faces of my teachers, the names of the students who sat near me in each period. Ben Chen remained my faithful Biology partner, chattering happily about everything and nothing while I pretended to care about cellular mitosis.
And everywhere I went, I felt eyes on me.
Not Edward's—he was conspicuously absent. The Cullen siblings didn't eat in the cafeteria, didn't cluster in the hallways between classes, didn't participate in the ordinary chaos of high school life. They appeared in classes, sat in the back, and vanished the moment the bell rang. I caught glimpses of them—Jasper's dark, watchful gaze; Rosalie's cold beauty; Emmett's easy grin; Alice's too-bright eyes—but Edward remained invisible.
It should have made things easier. Instead, it made everything worse.
By Thursday, I'd started scanning every crowd, every hallway, every corner of the parking lot, looking for a flash of copper hair or the impossible gold of his eyes. I hated myself for it. I didn't even know him. He'd warned me away, essentially told me to stay out of his life. And here I was, acting like some lovesick fool from a bad romance novel.
"You're looking for them, aren't you?"
Ben's voice made me jump. We were in Biology, ten minutes before the bell, and I'd been staring out the window toward the parking lot where I'd last seen Edward.
"What? No. I mean—" I stopped, sighed. "Is it that obvious?"
Ben shrugged, but his eyes were kind. "To me, maybe. I notice things. Most people don't." He pulled out his textbook, flipping to the page we'd be covering today. "The Cullens are like that. They have this... pull. Like you can't help but watch them, even when you know you shouldn't."
"You know something about them?"
"Everyone knows something about them." He lowered his voice, glancing around to make sure we weren't overheard. "They're weird, right? Like, not just regular weird. They've been here for, what, two years? And in that time, no one's ever seen them eat. They don't go to parties, don't date, don't do anything normal teenagers do. They just... exist. Together. Apart from everyone else."
"That does sound weird."
"It gets weirder." Ben leaned closer, and I caught the scent of his soap—something cheap and clean, utterly ordinary. "My cousin went to school with them in Alaska. Before they moved here. She said it was the same thing there—they showed up out of nowhere, kept to themselves, left after a couple of years. And there was this rumor..."
He trailed off, suddenly looking uncertain.
"What rumor?"
"Nothing. It's stupid. Small towns make up stories about outsiders, you know how it is." But he wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Ben. What rumor?"
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Just that something bad happened before they left. A death, maybe? No one would talk about it directly. But my cousin said there was this girl—someone who got too close to one of them, the blond one, Edward—and then she just... disappeared. They found her car abandoned on the highway, but no sign of her. Ever."
The room suddenly felt colder. "They think the Cullens had something to do with it?"
"People think what they want to think. Doesn't make it true." Ben sat back, clearly regretting he'd brought it up. "Look, I don't believe it. They seem... I don't know. Not dangerous. Just different. But you asked."
I wanted to ask more—wanted to know about the girl, about what happened, about why anyone would stay near a family with that kind of rumor following them—but the bell rang, and Ms. Chen started talking, and the moment passed.
But the story stayed with me, lodged in my chest like a splinter I couldn't remove.
That afternoon, I made a decision.
Aunt Cora worked evenings at the local diner—a 1950s-themed place called The Raven's Nest that served mediocre coffee and greasy burgers to the town's sparse nightlife. She'd be gone until at least eleven. That gave me hours of unsupervised time, and I intended to use them.
The public library was a small brick building two blocks from the high school, its windows dark and unwelcoming in the gray twilight. But the sign on the door said open until eight, and when I pulled on the handle, it gave way.
Inside, the smell was immediate and overwhelming: old paper, dust, and the faint chemical tang of preservatives used on aging volumes. A librarian with silver hair and reading glasses perched on her nose looked up as I entered, her expression a mixture of surprise and suspicion.
"Can I help you, dear?"
"I'm looking for newspapers. Old ones. From about two years ago."
Her eyebrows rose. "That's a specific request. Are you a student? Doing research?"
"Something like that." I smiled what I hoped was my most harmless smile. "I'm new in town. Just trying to learn more about where I'm living."
The suspicion didn't fade, but she nodded slowly. "Local papers are in the back, on microfilm. You'll need to use the reader." She gestured toward a corner of the library dominated by a bulky machine that looked like it belonged in a museum. "I can show you how it works."
Twenty minutes later, I was alone in the back corner, scrolling through two-year-old headlines on a flickering screen. The Raven's Peak Gazette was a weekly paper, thin and poorly laid out, filled with stories about city council meetings, high school sports, and the annual Harvest Festival. Nothing about disappearances. Nothing about missing girls.
I widened my search. Three years. Four. Five.
And then I found it.
The headline was small, buried on page three of the June 15th edition from five years ago: LOCAL TEEN MISSING, FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.
My heart stopped.
The article was brief—small town journalism at its most basic. A girl named Maria Sanchez, seventeen, had failed to return home after visiting friends on a Saturday night. Her car was found the next morning on the highway outside town, engine cold, doors unlocked, purse still inside. No sign of Maria. No witnesses. No leads.
I scrolled forward, searching for follow-up articles. There were several, each one shorter than the last. The police had no suspects. The family offered a reward. Months passed, and the story faded from the paper entirely, replaced by newer tragedies, fresher losses.
But one detail stopped me cold.
Maria Sanchez had been last seen at The Raven's Nest diner. The same diner where Aunt Cora worked. The same diner she'd been working at for fifteen years.
I sat back, my mind racing. It was nothing. A coincidence. Raven's Peak was tiny—everyone probably ate at the diner at some point. But the connection nagged at me, a thread I couldn't stop pulling.
I searched for more, scrolling through months of archives, looking for anything that might connect to the Cullens. They wouldn't have been here five years ago—Ben said they'd arrived two years ago—but maybe there was something else. Some pattern. Some clue.
And I found it.
Not about the Cullens. About me.
The article was from eleven years ago, buried so deep in the archives that I almost missed it. WOMAN FOUND WANDERING HIGHWAY, CLAIMS NO MEMORY OF IDENTITY.
I read it three times, my hands trembling on the keyboard.
A woman had been found on the highway outside Raven's Peak, disoriented and unable to remember who she was or how she'd gotten there. She had no identification, no belongings, nothing but the clothes on her back. The police had run her prints, checked missing persons databases, done everything they could to identify her. Nothing.
She'd been sent to a state hospital, then eventually transferred to a longer-term care facility. The article mentioned that she'd given birth approximately six months before being found—the physical signs were unmistakable—but there was no baby with her, and she had no memory of pregnancy or childbirth.
My mother had never told me this. Had never mentioned that she'd been found on a highway, that she'd lost her memory, that I might have been—
No. That couldn't be right. My mother was my mother. She'd raised me, loved me, done her best despite all the trouble I'd caused. She couldn't be the woman in this article.
But the dates matched. The location matched. And I knew, with a certainty that made me sick, that this was the missing piece of a puzzle I hadn't even known existed.
I printed the article, folded it carefully, and slipped it into my pocket. Then I left the library without looking back, stepping out into the cold night air with my heart pounding and my mind spinning.
The stars were out—a rarity in cloud-covered Raven's Peak—and they looked down on me like a thousand cold, indifferent eyes. I walked home through empty streets, my footsteps echoing off buildings that had stood for a hundred years, holding secrets I was only beginning to understand.
Aunt Cora's car wasn't in the driveway when I arrived. Good. I needed time to think, to process, to figure out what to do with this information that felt like a bomb in my pocket.
I climbed the stairs to my room, locked the door behind me, and spread the article on my bed. The paper was yellowed, the ink faded, but the words were clear enough.
Jane Doe, as she's been called by hospital staff, remains unable to provide any information about her identity or origin. Doctors report that her memory loss appears genuine and may be permanent. She has been transferred to Western State Hospital for continued evaluation and care.
Jane Doe. My mother. A woman with no past, no identity, no memory of the daughter she must have carried inside her.
I thought about all the times she'd looked at me with something like confusion in her eyes. All the times she'd forgotten things—important things, like my birthday, like the name of my school, like the faces of people she'd known for years. All the times her hands had trembled, and she'd blamed it on nerves, on stress, on the difficulty of raising a troubled child alone.
What if it wasn't nerves? What if it was something else? Something she didn't remember, couldn't remember, had been running from her entire life without knowing it?
A sound outside my window made me freeze.
It was soft—barely audible—but I heard it clearly: the whisper of fabric against glass, the creak of old wood, the almost silent thud of something landing on the porch roof outside my room.
I should have been afraid. Any sensible person would have been afraid. But instead, I felt something else: a pull, an attraction, a magnetic force drawing me toward the window despite every instinct screaming that I should run.
I crossed the room on silent feet—when had I learned to move like that?—and pulled back the curtain.
Edward Cullen stood on my porch roof.
His face was pale in the moonlight, paler than it had been in the classroom, and his eyes—those impossible golden eyes—burned with an intensity that made my breath catch. He was close enough that I could see the individual strands of his hair, the perfect curve of his lips, the way his chest didn't move with the rhythm of breathing.
"Ellie." His voice was barely above a whisper, but I heard it as clearly as if he'd spoken directly into my ear. "We need to talk."
I should have screamed. Should have run. Should have done any of the things a normal person would do when confronted by a strange boy on their roof in the middle of the night.
Instead, I unlocked the window and pushed it open.
The cold air rushed in, bringing with it the scent of rain and forest and something else—something sweet and strange that I couldn't identify. Edward didn't move, didn't step inside, just stood there watching me with those burning eyes.
"You left me a rose," I said. My voice was steadier than I felt. "And a note telling me to run. What changed?"
Something flickered across his face—pain, maybe, or regret. "You didn't run. You stayed. And now you've been to the library, digging into things you shouldn't dig into." His eyes dropped to my pocket, where the folded article rested against my thigh. "I can hear your thoughts, Ellie. Every one of them. Except—"
"Except mine." I finished the sentence for him. "You said that before. In the parking lot. You can read minds, but you can't read mine."
"You believe me."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "I don't know what I believe. But I know you're not normal. I know you're not—" I stopped, the word catching in my throat.
"Human." He said it flatly, without emotion. "I'm not human. Neither are my siblings. We're something else. Something that should terrify you."
"Does it terrify you? What you are?"
For the first time, his composure cracked. Just slightly, just for a moment, but I saw it—a flash of something raw and wounded beneath the perfect surface.
"Yes," he whispered. "Every day."
He stepped through the window then, moving with that impossible fluid grace, and suddenly we were standing inches apart in my tiny bedroom. The air between us seemed to thicken, to vibrate with something I couldn't name. I could feel the cold radiating from his body—not the cold of the night air, but something deeper, more permanent.
"Why can't I read you?" His voice was barely audible. "In a hundred years, I've never encountered a mind I couldn't hear. Until you. You're a wall of silence, Ellie. Beautiful, impenetrable silence. And I don't know if I want to break through it or just... stand here forever, listening to nothing."
A hundred years. The words should have shocked me, should have sent me running for the door. Instead, they settled into place like a key turning in a lock, like something I'd always known without knowing.
"How old are you?" I asked.
"Seventeen. But I was born in 1901." A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "I've been seventeen for a very long time."
I should have been terrified. I should have been screaming, crying, doing something other than standing here drinking in every word like water in a desert. But all I felt was a strange, overwhelming clarity—like pieces of a puzzle I hadn't known existed were finally clicking into place.
"The girl who disappeared," I said. "Maria Sanchez. Did you—"
"No." The word was sharp, immediate, filled with an emotion I couldn't quite identify. "We had nothing to do with that. We weren't even here when it happened. But I know about it. I know about a lot of things, Ellie. Things that are going to put you in danger if you keep digging."
"What kind of things?"
He was silent for a long moment, his golden eyes searching my face like he was trying to find answers in my features. Then he reached out—slowly, giving me time to pull away—and touched my cheek with fingers that were cold as stone.
The moment his skin met mine, the world exploded.
Images flooded through me—not memories, not exactly, but impressions. A forest at night, drenched in moonlight. The taste of blood, copper-sweet on my tongue. A woman's face, beautiful and terrible, with eyes like burning amber. And underneath it all, a hunger so vast and ancient that it threatened to swallow me whole.
I gasped, stumbling backward, and Edward's hand fell away. His face was shocked, his eyes wide with something that looked like fear.
"What was that?" I whispered.
"I don't know." His voice was rough, nothing like the controlled tones I'd heard before. "That's never happened. Nothing like that has ever happened. When I touched you, I saw—" He stopped, shaking his head. "I saw you. Not your thoughts—something deeper. Your... essence? Your soul?"
"My soul showed you a forest and blood and a woman with yellow eyes?"
"Amber. They were amber." He was staring at me like I'd just grown a second head. "Ellie, that woman—I know her. Not personally, but I know of her. She's one of the oldest vampires in existence. She's also completely, utterly insane. They call her the Crimson Queen, and she's been hunting for something for centuries. Something she believes will give her ultimate power."
I felt the article in my pocket like a weight. "What is she hunting?"
Edward's eyes dropped to my pocket, and I remembered—he could hear everyone else's thoughts. He probably already knew what I'd found.
"Your mother," he said quietly. "Or rather, what your mother was carrying when she was found. You, Ellie. The Crimson Queen has been searching for you for seventeen years."
The room spun around me. I grabbed the edge of my dresser to steady myself, my mind racing through impossibilities. A vampire queen. A seventeen-year search. My mother, found wandering a highway with no memory and a baby that had vanished—
"There was no baby," I said, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. "The article said she'd given birth, but there was no baby with her. How could the Crimson Queen be searching for me if I wasn't even—"
"You were there." Edward's voice was gentle, but it cut through my denials like a knife. "You were there, Ellie. Your mother wasn't wandering alone—she was running. Running from her, from the Crimson Queen. And somehow, she managed to hide you. To hide both of you. But the cost—" He paused, his jaw tightening. "The cost was her memory. Every memory of who she was, where she came from, what she was running from. She traded her past for your future."
I thought about my mother's trembling hands. Her confusion. The way she sometimes looked at me like she was seeing a stranger.
"She doesn't remember me," I whispered. "Not really. She tries, but—"
"She loves you." Edward took a step closer, then stopped, as if fighting some internal battle. "I can't hear your thoughts, but I can hear hers—from a distance, when I'm near her. She loves you more than anything in the world. She just doesn't know why. Doesn't remember the years before, doesn't remember what she sacrificed. But she feels it. Every day, she feels the absence of something she can't name."
Tears were streaming down my face. I hadn't noticed when they started.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you need to know." His voice was fierce now, urgent. "Because the Crimson Queen's agents are getting closer. Because there are others—factions within the vampire world—who would use you, control you, destroy you for what you might become. And because—" He stopped, and for the first time, I saw something vulnerable in those ancient golden eyes. "Because I can't stand by and watch you walk into danger unaware. Even if it means revealing myself. Even if it means breaking every rule my family has lived by for a century."
"What am I?" The question came out small, scared, nothing like the tough girl who'd faced down three attackers in a parking lot. "What am I, Edward?"
He reached for me again, and this time I didn't flinch when his cold fingers touched my cheek. The images didn't come this time—just the cold, and a strange sense of peace, like I'd finally come home after a lifetime of wandering.
"You're a miracle," he said softly. "A hybrid. Human and vampire, born not made. The first of your kind in five hundred years. And according to a prophecy that half the vampire world believes and the other half fears, you're either going to save us all or destroy everything we've ever known."
I laughed—a broken, desperate sound. "No pressure, then."
For the first time since I'd met him, Edward Cullen smiled. It transformed his face, made him look almost human, almost young, almost like the seventeen-year-old boy he appeared to be.
"No pressure," he agreed. Then his smile faded, and the ancient weight returned to his eyes. "But Ellie, you need to understand: the prophecy doesn't care what you want. The factions don't care who you are. To them, you're not a person—you're a weapon. A tool. A means to an end. And there are those who will kill you simply to prevent anyone else from using you."
"What do I do?"
"Run." The word was heavy with pain. "Run and keep running. Hide where they can't find you. Live a normal life, as much as you can, and never look back."
"Is that what you want me to do?"
The silence stretched between us, filled with everything we weren't saying. His eyes burned into mine, and I felt—I knew—that he was fighting some internal war, that every instinct he had was screaming at him to do something he desperately wanted and desperately feared.
"No," he whispered finally. "It's the last thing I want. But wanting something doesn't make it right. And being with me—being anywhere near me—will put you in more danger than you can imagine."
"Then why are you here?"
He didn't answer with words. Instead, he leaned forward—slowly, giving me every chance to pull away—and pressed his cold lips to my forehead.
The touch lasted only a second, but it burned itself into my memory like a brand. When he pulled back, his eyes were darker, hungrier, more human than I'd ever seen them.
"Because I couldn't stay away," he said. "Because you're the first thing in a hundred years that's made me feel like I'm not just... existing. Because when I'm near you, the hunger fades. The noise quiets. And for the first time since I was turned, I can almost remember what it felt like to be alive."
He turned toward the window, and panic surged through me.
"Wait—"
"I can't wait. If I stay any longer, I won't be able to leave at all." He paused, one foot already on the porch roof. "Be careful, Ellie. Trust no one. Not even me." A ghost of that smile returned. "Especially not me."
And then he was gone, melting into the darkness with that impossible grace, leaving me alone in my room with a dead girl's article and a prophecy I didn't ask for and the cold ghost of a kiss on my forehead.
I stood at the window for a long time, watching the empty night, feeling the weight of everything I'd learned pressing down on me like a physical thing. Somewhere out there, a vampire queen was hunting me. Somewhere out there, factions were plotting my future like I was a chess piece to be moved. And somewhere in this town, a boy who wasn't a boy was fighting his own nature because of me.
I should have been terrified. I should have packed my bags and run, like he said, like the note on the rose had warned.
Instead, I touched my forehead where his lips had been and smiled.
"Too late for running," I whispered to the darkness. "I think I'm already gone."
The next morning dawned gray and cold, as always. I went through the motions of getting ready for school—shower, clothes, breakfast—but my mind was elsewhere, turning over everything Edward had told me like stones in a stream.
Aunt Cora watched me over her coffee mug, her expression unreadable. She'd come home late last night, long after Edward had left, and I'd lain in bed listening to her move through the house, wondering if she knew. If she could sense that something had changed.
"You're quiet this morning," she said finally.
"Just tired. Didn't sleep well."
Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she didn't push. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, sliding it across the table toward me.
"This came for you. In the mail. No return address."
I picked it up with trembling fingers, already knowing what I'd find. The paper was heavy, expensive, the kind used for formal invitations or old-fashioned correspondence. And written across it in elegant script was a single line:
The Queen is coming.
I looked up at Aunt Cora, but her face gave nothing away. She just took another sip of her coffee and said, "Eat your breakfast. You'll be late for school."
I wanted to ask her how she knew. Wanted to demand answers about who she really was, what she knew about my mother, why she'd taken me in if it meant putting herself in danger. But the look in her eyes stopped me—a warning, clear and unmistakable.
Not here. Not now.
So I ate my breakfast, gathered my things, and walked out into the gray morning with a vampire queen's threat burning a hole in my pocket.
School was a blur. I went to classes, took notes, nodded at the right moments, but my mind was elsewhere. Ben asked if I was okay. I lied and said yes. Teachers called on me. I answered automatically, correctly, without remembering what I'd said.
And all day, I felt them watching.
The Cullens were back—all of them, including Edward. They sat in their usual places, moved through the halls with their usual grace, but something had changed. Now when I looked at them, I saw what they really were: predators wearing human masks. Beautiful, deadly, ancient.
And Edward—Edward couldn't stop looking at me.
Every time I glanced his way, his golden eyes were already on me, burning with an intensity that made my skin prickle. He didn't approach, didn't speak, just watched. Guarding me from a distance. Waiting.
For what, I didn't know.
It was after sixth period, as I was walking toward my locker, that Alice Cullen appeared at my side.
She was the smallest of them, barely five feet tall, with a delicate frame and dark hair cut in a sharp, modern style. Her eyes—golden like Edward's, like all of theirs—sparkled with something that looked almost like excitement.
"Ellie, right?" Her voice was musical, lighter than I'd expected. "I'm Alice. Edward's sister."
"I know who you are."
"Of course you do." She fell into step beside me, matching my pace effortlessly. "I just wanted to introduce myself properly. Since we're going to be spending a lot of time together."
I stopped walking. "We are?"
Alice's smile widened, and there was something in it—something knowing, almost mischievous—that made my heart skip.
"I see things," she said, as if that explained everything. "Not everything. Not always clearly. But some things are bright, unavoidable, like a lighthouse in the fog. And you, Ellie Vance—" She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a whisper. "You're the brightest thing I've seen in a century. The choices you're going to make, the paths ahead of you... they're going to change everything. For all of us."
"What choices? What paths?"
But she just shook her head, her smile turning sad. "I can't tell you that. If I did, they might not happen. Or worse, they might happen exactly because I told you. The future is fragile, Ellie. One wrong word and it shatters."
She turned to go, then paused, looking back at me over her shoulder.
"Oh, and Ellie? Edward thinks he's protecting you by staying away. He's wrong. The danger isn't just out there—it's inside you, waiting to wake up. And when it does, you're going to need someone who understands what you're becoming." Her golden eyes met mine, ancient and young at the same time. "We'll be there. Whether you want us or not."
Then she was gone, disappearing into the crowd of students like smoke, leaving me standing alone in the hallway with my heart pounding and a thousand new questions burning in my mind.
The danger is inside me.
What the hell did that mean?
I didn't go straight home after school. Instead, I found myself walking toward the forest that bordered the town, drawn by something I couldn't name. The trees loomed ahead, dark and ancient, their branches reaching toward the gray sky like supplicants begging for mercy.
I should have been afraid. Every horror movie I'd ever seen warned against walking into the woods alone. But the pull was too strong, too insistent, and before I knew it, I was under the canopy, surrounded by the silence of a forest in winter.
The air was colder here, sharper, filled with the scent of pine and snow and something else—something wild and ancient that made the hair on my arms stand up. I walked deeper, following a path that might not have existed, my feet moving without conscious direction.
And then I found it.
A clearing, circular and perfect, like someone had carved it out of the forest with intention. In the center stood a stone—a monolith, really, taller than me and covered in markings I couldn't read. They looked old, older than anything in this town, older than America itself. Celtic, maybe, or something even more ancient.
I approached slowly, my heart hammering, and reached out to touch the stone.
The moment my fingers made contact, the world exploded into fire.
Images flooded through me—faster than before, more intense. A woman with amber eyes, screaming in rage. A battle in a castle made of ice. Blood on snow, so much blood. And at the center of it all, a child—a baby, wrapped in white, held in the arms of a woman who looked just like my mother.
No. Not just like. It was my mother. Younger, stronger, her eyes filled with a desperate love I'd never seen in her before.
"Run," she whispered to the baby. "Run and don't look back. No matter what you hear, no matter what you see—run. I'll find you. I'll always find you."
The vision shattered.
I stumbled backward, gasping, my hand burning where I'd touched the stone. The markings on its surface were glowing—faintly, but unmistakably—a soft pulsing light that matched the rhythm of my heart.
"What are you?" I whispered.
And a voice—not in my ears, but in my mind—answered:
You know what I am. You've always known. The question is: what are you?
I spun around, looking for the source of the voice, but I was alone in the clearing. Alone with the stone and the trees and the weight of seventeen years of questions finally finding their answer.
I didn't know what I was. Not yet.
But I was going to find out.
The walk back to town was a blur. By the time I reached Aunt Cora's house, the sun had set and the stars were beginning to emerge, cold and distant in the black sky. The house was dark—she must have already left for the diner—and I was grateful for the solitude.
I climbed the stairs to my room, locked the door, and sat on my bed with the article from the library spread out before me. The woman in the photo—Jane Doe, my mother—stared back at me with empty eyes, a ghost from a past she couldn't remember.
What had she been running from? What had she sacrificed to save me? And what was waking up inside me now, triggered by a vampire's touch and an ancient stone in a forest clearing?
I didn't have answers. But I had questions now, real questions, and that was more than I'd had yesterday.
A soft tap on my window made me jump.
I crossed the room and pulled back the curtain, already knowing what I'd find.
Edward stood on the porch roof, his face pale in the starlight, his golden eyes burning with an intensity that stole my breath. But this time, he wasn't alone. Behind him, barely visible in the shadows, stood the rest of the Cullen family—Alice with her knowing smile, Jasper with his watchful gaze, Rosalie with her cold beauty, Emmett with his easy strength, and at the center, a tall man with white-blond hair and eyes the color of ancient gold.
Their leader. Their father. Carlisle Cullen.
"Ellie." Edward's voice was barely a whisper, but I heard it clearly. "We need to talk. All of us. About what you are. About what's coming. And about the choice you're going to have to make."
I looked at them—these impossible creatures, these predators who had lived for centuries, standing on my roof like they had every right to be there. I should have been terrified. I should have screamed, run, done anything other than what I actually did.
I unlocked the window and pushed it open.
"Come in," I said. "I think it's time I knew the truth."
Edward stepped through first, followed by the others in a silent procession that seemed to bend the very laws of physics. Within moments, my tiny bedroom was full of vampires—beautiful, deadly, ancient vampires—all watching me with those impossible golden eyes.
And at the center of it all, I stood—seventeen years old, completely human (or mostly human), and utterly unafraid.
Because somewhere deep inside me, in a place I was only beginning to understand, something was waking up. Something that had been sleeping for seventeen years, waiting for this moment, waiting for them.
Waiting to be born.
Carlisle Cullen stepped forward, his expression gentle, his eyes kind in a way that seemed impossible for a creature his age.
"Eleanor," he said, and his voice was warm, fatherly, nothing like the cold thing I'd expected. "Welcome to the beginning of your story. I'm sorry it took so long for us to find you. And I'm sorry for what you're about to learn." He paused, his ancient eyes meeting mine with something that looked almost like grief. "The truth isn't easy. It isn't pretty. But it's yours, and you deserve to know it."
I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of a hundred questions pressing down on me.
"Tell me," I said. "Whatever it is. I'm ready."
And in the silence of that small bedroom, surrounded by creatures of the night, I finally began to understand what I really was.
End of Chapter Two