(Edward)
Portland, Oregon.
The city breathed differently at night.
I crouched on the edge of a concrete rooftop, toes resting on the lip as if gravity were only a suggestion. Below me, the streets glistened with recent rain, neon signs bleeding color into puddles that trembled with every passing car. It was late enough that the crowds had thinned, but not late enough for the worst of humanity to crawl back into hiding.
I could hear them all.
Laughter spilling out of bars. Slurred conversations. Music pounding through walls and skulls alike. Thoughts tangled with alcohol and impulse. Desire. Violence. Fear. Guilt. Anticipation.
Some minds were harmless. People celebrating, dancing, clinging to fleeting joy because daylight would demand responsibility again.
Others were not.
Crooks weighing risks. Dealers counting profit. Thieves scanning for unlocked doors or distracted prey. Rapists rehearsing justifications before the act even began. And deeper still, quieter but far more disturbing, the occasional murderer replaying memories like trophies.
Those were the ones I watched.
The worst of them always rose to the surface eventually. Monsters hiding behind money, influence, or luck. Men who slipped through cracks in systems built by other men. Criminals who had never faced consequences because no one had been strong enough, fast enough, or willing enough to stop them.
Sometimes, I intervened before it went too far.
Earlier that night, an alley had caught my attention. A young man, drunk and bleeding, curled on the ground while a group took turns kicking him. I had been behind them before their next thoughts could form, moving like a shadow detached from the world. A strike to the throat. A knee buckling the leg. A precise blow to the temple. Four bodies hit the ground in seconds.
The silence afterward had been almost comical.
The victim had lifted his head slowly, disbelief radiating from him as he realized the beating had stopped. He stared at the unconscious men for a long moment, then staggered to his feet. Before limping away, he kicked each of them between the legs with what little strength he had left.
I had shaken my head and smiled despite myself.
Humans were strange that way.
Now, my attention was elsewhere.
Across the street, just outside one of the largest nightclubs downtown, a man leaned casually against a brick wall. He looked unremarkable. Mid-thirties. Clean jacket. Confident posture. The kind of person most would ignore or even trust.
I knew better.
He sold drugs, yes, but that was not why I was here. I usually left dealers alone unless their thoughts turned violent. This one's had.
His mind was sharp, calculating, predatory. I had heard it earlier, the moment a young woman laughed and thanked him after buying Molly. I had heard the way his thoughts followed her as she walked away, how he marked her size, her unsteady steps, the friends she was not with.
I'll catch her later. She won't even know.
Hearing that thought in his head alone would have been enough for me to act.
But beneath it was something worse. Names. Locations. A network. A red thread connecting him to others like him. Human trafficking disguised as nightlife, drugs used as bait, clubs used as hunting grounds.
He had done this before.
And tonight, he planned to do it again.
So I waited.
Perfectly still. Patient. Listening as his thoughts drifted between greed and anticipation. Waiting for him to move, to lead me to wherever he took his victims. Waiting for proof, not that I needed it, but because I preferred certainty.
If the police were not going to do their job, then I would.
I would be justice for those who never saw it.
And vengeance for those who could not be saved in time.
The man pushed himself off the wall at last, straightening his jacket as he scanned the crowd.
I smiled faintly in the dark.
Come on, show me where you take them.
…
While I waited, perfectly still, my thoughts betrayed me and drifted north.
Denali.
My family was there now, sheltered among the Denali coven. Carlisle's calm voice blending easily with Eleazar's quiet insight. Esme doing what she always did, smoothing the edges, making even a place of ice and stone feel like a home. Emmett loud and restless, pretending he wasn't shaken by everything that had happened. Rosalie standing close to him, fierce and watchful. Alice, inevitably knowing more than she said, her silence louder than words. Jasper trying to keep himself steady, surrounded by emotions that weren't his.
Were they thinking about me?
Did they miss me as much as I missed them?
I knew I should call. I knew Carlisle would want to hear my voice, that Esme would worry, that Alice would already know I was avoiding them. But I kept my distance anyway. I always did now.
Because of what I knew.
Because of what Mike had confirmed.
The truth sat inside me like a hollow cavity, an absence I could never ignore again. A soul. Something humans carried without thought, without effort. Something I no longer had, if I ever truly had. The knowledge poisoned my thoughts, made every interaction feel dangerous.
I couldn't risk slipping. Couldn't risk letting that truth surface while my family was listening, or worse, letting it shape my words around them. They would hear it. They would understand.
And it would destroy them.
So I stayed silent.
And silence brought me back here, perched above a city, hunting humans in the dark.
Bad humans. Monsters who hid behind laws, money, or anonymity. Men who ruined lives and slept soundly afterward. I told myself that distinction mattered.
But they were still human.
And I was still a predator.
My mind drifted again, this time farther south, to a place that still felt like a wound that refused to scar over.
Forks.
Bella.
The thought of her name alone was enough to unravel me. Did she still remember me? Or had time, merciful and cruel all at once, dulled the edges of what we had been? Had she tucked me away as a strange, painful chapter of her life, something unreal, something she could eventually move past?
Or worse, had she forgotten entirely?
I exhaled slowly, the sound barely audible even to myself. She had lived. Truly lived. While I existed in this static, endless state, pretending eternity was a gift instead of a curse.
I wasn't alive.
And that difference mattered more than I had ever allowed myself to admit.
Then my thoughts turned, unwillingly, to Mike.
Gratitude and resentment twisted together until I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. I owed him more than I could ever repay. He had saved lives. Protected my family. Stood against horrors without hesitation.
And yet, part of me wanted to curse him.
Because he had confirmed what I had always feared. He had stripped away the last illusion I clung to. If not for him, I could have stayed willfully ignorant. I could have lied to myself a little longer. I could have remained with Bella, pretending I wasn't fundamentally wrong for her.
She had been the only thing in this cursed existence that made me feel alive.
And now I knew I had no right to stay.
Because I knew her. I knew that eventually she would ask. She would choose me. Choose eternity. Choose to give up her fragile, irreplaceable humanity just to stand beside me.
And that would be the same as killing her.
No matter how intoxicating the thought was. No matter how deeply I ached at the idea of centuries with her smile, her voice, her presence. I could never condemn her to this half-existence. Never strip her of her soul simply because I was too weak to let her go.
Loving her meant leaving.
And that was the cruelest justice of all.
…