A/N-Hola. Another belated update but we’re busy. Hopefully the time will clear up soon and we’ll be able to post more. Ciao.

The day passed lazily. I was in and out of consciousness in Isabella’s closet, a dark dress over my head to shield my eyes from the sun slitting through the bottom of the door. I was bored when I was awake and plagued my nightmares when I slept. It was rare for my breed to have nightmares but I often dreamed of my indescribable fear of Sebastian and if I don’t feed off my preferred prey.

Occasionally I could hear Bella moving around and once, I thought I felt the crushing weight of Landon’s presence around me. I knew he couldn’t be there. He hadn’t been invited in, but it terrified me all the same. I wasn’t used to being locked up. It was something we all held a supreme distaste for. Confinement was something a vampire could not handle. Our senses became limited and I couldn’t help but press my cold face against the wooden door several times, trying to hear what was happening outside the house instead of the occasional quips from Bella’s sisters about ‘the charming young man from the ball last night.’ I assumed the said man was the raving lunatic I had swept her away from the night before because she called him a “vile pig.”

I crossed and uncrossed my arms, crossed and uncrossed my legs, and eventually tested myself to see how absolutely still I could become. I normally didn’t test myself. It was futile. I could really get no better at the arts of concealment and sitting still was certainly one of them but I did it anyway.

I was awake when Bella finally opened the door to retrieve the exact blue evening gown I was hiding beneath. “Nicholas, keep your head out of my skirts, please?” she asked, teasing and moving so that I could stand. I did so fluidly and she seemed shocked.

“What?” I asked, glancing over myself. There was nothing wrong with me, as usual. My inhuman nature seemed to inhibit me from becoming too dirty or too unkempt.

“You just stood. You’ve been curled up like a cat all day and you stood as if you’d always been standing. You weren’t stiff or anything…that’s just rather odd,” she explained, slowly pulling the dress down from the closet.

Was it odd? “You don’t know me very well. You’ll grow used to it, I suppose.” I stretched and smiled to make it seem more human. I didn’t know what else to do. She grinned.

“I suppose I’ll have to, huh?” Then she stepped into the closet and shut the door behind her.

I was slightly more than shocked. I didn’t remember, even when I’d been human, seeing someone actually step into their closet as if it were a room. “Bella? Are you alright?” I asked, pressing my palms to the door. I could hear her moving around and giggling at the same time. Then, the door opened and she toppled out into my arms, wearing the blue gown.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she answered, standing. I had lacked human contact so long that I almost wanted to keep holding her. She was warm and I was so constantly cold.

“You could have asked me to leave…or rather, told me. I have to do what you tell me to, remember?” I said, somewhat annoyed by the human instincts she was bringing out in me. Human instincts could be the killer against other vampires. We tried desperately to dispose of all of them but my compassion seemed to have stayed with me as Sebastian’s depression had stayed with him.

Bella nodded and opened the door of her bedroom. I instantly sank into the shadows, fully aware of the other humans in the house. They always recognized those that didn’t fit in. I would have been immediately ostracized and cast out, if not dusted. “What are you doing?” I hissed from my concealing shadow.

The girl turned around, eyes wide. “We’re going out. Isn’t that what you do at night? Go out? Hunt.” She said the word accusingly and I scowled, which only made her laugh. I mumbled curses at her under my breath.

“We cannot walk out into your house…full of people…humans…and expect to be alright. They will notice me, Bella. For the sake of God, I almost glow in the dark!” I snapped.

Bella smiled. “You do glow in the dark. You look dead, of course, you are dead. But I want you to meet my brother. He’s so very interested in you.”

My stomach dropped. She had told her brother about me. She had mentioned my name to him. I flashed my teeth in a quick growl and if she hadn’t had such power over me I would have killed her right there. Unfortunately, the curse forced me back into my shadow. “Dammit, Isabelle!” I swore, running my hands through my hair.

She looked utterly confused. “What do you mean? What did I do wrong?” she asked. “I thought it was okay for me to do what I wanted about you.”

“You told your brother my name!”

“No. I told him I had a friend I thought he should meet and I told him what you were.”

I was panicking, and there is no other word for it. I was breathing heavily out of human habit and obsessively clenching and unclenching my fists. This put her entire family in danger. If Landon so chose he would kill them all if they were close to me. I knew he would, I knew he could. He often killed people he felt were too happy when they were just humans and he didn’t even know them. He knew me, he hated me, and he would realize I made these people happy and if they were happy, so was I. It was a precarious situation.

“Bella…” I groaned. “You have no idea what kind of world you have entered with me.”

A look of concern flashed across her face in an instant but it was replaced by a sarcastic smile. “You’ll protect me, Nick. I know you will.”

“You don’t know anything about me. You never asked,” I corrected quickly.

“Well then tell me about you.”

An order. I had to do it. My mouth twitched, I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted my freedom back but that would come eventually if I lived. Bella was human. She couldn’t go on forever like I could. “Sebastian was my sire. I’m a felony; you see…he never asked the elders if he could sire me. He just did it.”

“Why?”

“He loved me.” The admission was open, out there; raw and festering like an old wound. Sebastian had loved me more than a friend and more than a son and more than a brother. He had loved me in some immoral way that I hadn’t found at all appropriate. He terrified me. He had seen a beauty in my face that women had seen in me since I had turned twelve. He, however, had been unable to let go.

Bella stared, gaping and losing composure fast. Her cheeks turned scarlet and her fists clenched. “Did you—”

“No!” I snapped, pressing myself into the wall even further, hoping I could disappear instead of being the clumsy, pathetic excuse of the undead that I was. “Nothing happened with Sebastian and I. I was drunk and he’d been following me for several months. He wanted to feed off of me and he went too far. He didn’t think he could live without seeing my face everyday and I was dying so he changed me. I left him as soon as I got up.”

“And what about now? What is he like now?” She was standing beside me now and she had closed the door, locking us in her room. I didn’t like being alone with her. I felt vulnerable somehow, which was ridiculous.

“He…is the only one that ever stands up for me against the elders,” I was speaking to quickly, letting my anxiety take over. “He…he’s not…he’s not bad. He’s not like the others. Like Landon.” I shuddered when I said his name, knowing full well he would know I spoke it. That was his gift. He knew when he was being spoken about just as I could slide into the shadows as if I were part of them.

“Landon? That’s the one from last night. The one that was…what did you say, torturing you. Why?”

“He’s an elder. He hates me. He voted to have me destroyed when the other elders found out I existed. The vote was turned down but Landon and a few others still wish to carry out my death sentence.”

Bella looked appalled. “How incredibly disgusting! They really have no right!”

“They have every right. I’m the baby.”

“You are not a baby. You are no different than them. Now come along. Christopher will only wait so long before he grows tired.” It was an order, so I had to follow not that she gave me much choice by grabbing my hand and tugging me out of the room. I didn’t resist. I knew as long as I remained in Bella’s house I was safe. Outside…outside we were both in trouble. I could feel it. Landon was watching and so was Sebastian. It was only a matter of time before one of them struck.