Chapter 010
The walk back into the house felt like moving through water.
Edward kept distance between us now—not far, but enough that our hands didn't touch, that the emotional connection remained muted. I felt the loss of contact like a physical ache, but I understood why. After what had happened on the deck, after I'd accidentally projected my feelings into him so intensely that his control had nearly shattered...
Distance was safer. For both of us.
Jasper looked up the moment we entered the living room, his golden eyes sharpening with immediate concern. Alice was beside him on the sofa, and even Emmett had abandoned whatever he'd been doing upstairs to join them. Only Rosalie and Carlisle were absent.
"What happened?" Jasper's southern drawl was more pronounced, the way it got when he was tense. "I felt..." He paused, studying us both carefully. "Edward, your control slipped. Significantly."
"It wasn't his fault." The words tumbled out before Edward could speak. "It was me. I did something. Something I didn't know I could do."
Alice tilted her head, her expression shifting from curious to knowing in an instant. "You projected onto him."
I stared at her. "How did you—"
"I didn't see it coming, which is frustrating." She made a face. "But I can see it now, retroactively. The two of you, that kiss, the feedback loop of emotions..." She trailed off, her eyes distant for a moment before focusing again. "You're not just empathic, Maya. You're a conduit. Two-way."
"A conduit?" I moved further into the room, my legs unsteady. "What does that mean?"
Jasper stood slowly, his movements controlled and deliberate. "It means you don't just receive emotions. You can transmit them. Force them onto others." His expression was grave. "Maya, do you understand how dangerous that is?"
"I'm beginning to." I sank onto the edge of a chair, my hands trembling. "When we kissed, when I was feeling everything so intensely, it just... flooded into him. I didn't mean to. I didn't even know I was doing it until—" I stopped, heat flooding my face.
"Until my control nearly broke." Edward's voice was tight, carefully modulated. He stood by the windows, maintaining that deliberate distance. "She made me feel what she was feeling. Her certainty, her lack of fear, her..." He couldn't finish.
"Her love for you," Alice supplied gently. "And you felt it as intensely as if it were your own emotion, because she pushed it directly into your consciousness."
The weight of that hung in the air. I'd forced Edward to feel my love for him, to experience it as his own. The violation of that, even unintentional, made my stomach turn.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "Edward, I'm so sorry."
He turned from the window, and the look on his face stopped my breath. Not anger. Not fear. Something softer, more painful.
"Don't apologize," he said. "Not for that."
"But I forced you to—"
"You showed me the truth." He took one step closer, then stopped himself. "Maya, I've spent eighty years listening to other people's thoughts, knowing their desires and fears and secrets whether I wanted to or not. I've never been on the receiving end of that kind of... intimacy. And yes, it was overwhelming. Yes, it threatened my control. But it wasn't unwelcome."
"Edward," Jasper said carefully, "we need to focus on the practical implications. If Maya can project emotions onto vampires, especially emotions as strong as what you just experienced, she could destroy someone's control entirely. She could make a vampire feel bloodlust so intensely that they'd lose themselves completely. Or rage. Or fear."
"Or she could calm them," Alice offered. "Project peace, control, safety."
"Only if she learns to do it intentionally." Jasper's eyes met mine. "Right now, it's purely reactionary. Triggered by intense emotion and physical contact. That's incredibly dangerous for someone who can barely shield themselves from incoming emotions, let alone control outgoing ones."
I felt the weight of it settling over me—not just the danger to myself, but the danger I posed to others. To Edward especially, who'd already saved my life twice, who was trying so hard to protect me.
"Then we train harder," I said, forcing steel into my voice. "You said you could teach me to shield. Can you teach me to control the projection too?"
Jasper exchanged a look with Alice. "I can try. But Maya, I've never encountered another empath who could project. My ability is different—I manipulate emotions that are already there, I don't create them from nothing and push them into others. What you're doing is..."
"Unprecedented," Alice finished. She was smiling slightly, like this was exciting rather than terrifying. "Honestly, you might be one of a kind."
"Great," I muttered. "Special and dangerous. Exactly what every girl wants to be."
Emmett laughed from his position by the stairs. "Hey, join the club. We're all dangerous around here. At least you've got a good excuse."
Before I could respond, Alice went rigid.
The change was instantaneous and absolute. One moment she was smiling, her eyes bright and focused on me. The next, she was frozen, her face blank, her eyes unfocused and distant. Like someone had paused her mid-thought.
"Alice?" Jasper was at her side immediately, his hand on her arm. But he didn't try to shake her or break whatever was happening. He just waited, tense and alert.
Edward's entire body had gone still, his eyes fixed on Alice with an intensity that made my skin prickle.
"What's happening?" I whispered.
"Vision," Emmett said quietly. "Alice is seeing something."
I watched, fascinated and frightened, as Alice remained perfectly motionless. This was different from the empathic connection I shared with Edward and Jasper. This was something else entirely—she was somewhere else, seeing something that hadn't happened yet, experiencing a future that was still unfolding.
Then she gasped, her eyes snapping back into focus. The fear on her face made my blood run cold.
"They're coming," she said, her musical voice strained. "Now. They're already on their way."
"Who's coming?" Edward moved toward her with that impossible speed. "Alice, what did you see?"
"The men from the road. Not all of them—the one Edward threw, the leader. He went to the police." Alice's words came fast, tumbling over each other. "But not the normal police. He has connections to people who deal with... unusual situations. Supernatural situations. They think we're a threat. They're coming to investigate."
My stomach dropped. "Because of me? Because you saved me?"
"Because someone saw Edward move impossibly fast, lift a grown man like he weighed nothing, and display features that weren't quite human." Alice looked at me, and I saw apology in her golden eyes. "They're bringing weapons. Silver, wooden stakes, things that suggest they know what we are. Or what they think we are."
"How long do we have?" Carlisle's voice came from the stairs. He descended quickly, his face calm but his movements urgent. He must have heard everything.
"Twenty minutes," Alice said. "Maybe less. They're driving fast."
"We should leave." Rosalie appeared beside Carlisle, her beautiful face hard. "Take Maya somewhere safe, far from here, and let them find an empty house."
"Running makes us look guilty," Carlisle said. "And we haven't done anything wrong."
"We exist," Rosalie shot back. "That's crime enough for people who hunt our kind."
"They're not hunters." Alice shook her head, her brow furrowed with concentration as she focused on her vision. "Not exactly. They're... investigators. Trying to determine if we're a threat. But they are armed, and they are scared, and scared people with weapons are dangerous."
Edward moved back to the windows, his body tense. Through our muted connection, I felt his conflicting emotions—the urge to protect me warring with the need to protect his family.
"I should go," I said, standing on shaky legs. "If I leave, if I'm not here, maybe they'll—"
"No." Edward's voice was absolute. "You're not going anywhere without protection. If these people are investigating us because of you, they might be looking for you too."
"Edward's right." Carlisle's calm voice cut through the rising tension. "Maya, you're safer here with us than anywhere else right now. But we need a plan. We need to control this situation before it controls us."
"I could show them," I blurted out. "My abilities. If they're investigating supernatural activity, if they want to know if we're a threat—I could demonstrate that I'm the one who's different. That you were just protecting me."
"Absolutely not." Edward was across the room before I could blink, his hands gripping my shoulders. The contact sent his emotions flooding into me—fear for my safety, fierce protectiveness, and underneath it all, that desperate love that made my chest ache. "You are not revealing yourself to strangers who might see you as a threat to be eliminated."
"But if it protects your family—"
"My family can protect themselves." His golden eyes bored into mine. "You can't. Not yet. Not from humans with weapons who think they're hunting monsters."
"We don't have time to argue," Alice said urgently. She was on her feet now, pacing. "They'll be at the access road in fifteen minutes. We need to decide. Now."
Carlisle moved to the center of the room, and everyone's attention shifted to him. He had that quality—quiet authority that commanded respect without demanding it.
"We'll meet them," he said. "Calmly. Openly. We'll answer their questions honestly where we can, and we'll demonstrate that we're not a threat to anyone. Maya will stay inside, out of sight. If they ask about her, we'll say she's a friend who was visiting and has already left."
"They won't believe that," Rosalie said.
"Perhaps not. But it's better than any alternative." Carlisle looked at each of us in turn. "Everyone stays calm. No displays of speed or strength. No abilities unless absolutely necessary. We are a family having a quiet afternoon at home. Nothing more."
"What if they don't accept that?" Jasper asked quietly. "What if they come in armed and aggressive?"
Carlisle's expression hardened slightly. "Then we protect ourselves and our home. But we don't strike first. We don't give them a reason to see us as the monsters they're looking for."
Alice's eyes went distant again, just for a moment, then snapped back. "It could work. I see... multiple outcomes. Some good. Some very bad. But there's a path where we all walk away from this."
"Then we take that path." Carlisle looked at me. "Maya, you need to go upstairs. Esme's study, last door on the left. Stay there, stay quiet, and do not come down no matter what you hear. Understood?"
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist I could help, that I wouldn't hide while they faced danger because of me. But Edward's hands tightened on my shoulders, and through our connection, I felt his desperate plea.
Please. Please just stay safe.
"Okay," I whispered. "I'll go upstairs."
Edward released me reluctantly. Alice appeared at my side, guiding me toward the stairs with gentle hands.
"It'll be fine," she said, though her voice lacked its usual certainty. "Just stay quiet, and we'll come get you when it's over."
I climbed the stairs on numb legs, each step taking me further from Edward, from the family that had risked so much to protect me. At the top, I turned back to look down at them.
They stood together in the living room—Carlisle and Esme (who'd appeared from somewhere), Edward, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and Rosalie. A family. United. Beautiful and terrifying and absolutely inhuman.
And they were about to face armed investigators because of me.
Alice met my eyes from below and mouthed two words: Trust us.
Then I heard it—the distant sound of engines approaching through the forest. Multiple vehicles, moving fast.
I ran to Esme's study and closed the door, pressing my back against it, my heart hammering.
Downstairs, I heard Carlisle's calm voice: "Everyone remember—we are not the monsters they're looking for."
But as I stood there in the dark study, listening to vehicles pulling up outside, I couldn't shake one terrible thought:
What if we were?
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