Epilogue

I am 21 years old.  I have been 21 for a while.  

After everything that happened, and with Jacobs death, it was Charlie who thought it was actually a good idea that I take some time in Europe after all.  Edward came with me, and we lived in Paris for a while, then in Rome.  The Cullens had disbanded for a while after losing Rosalie and Emmett, and I think it was difficult for everyone to see me for a while.  Alice and Jasper would visit, as would Esme and Carlisle but they weren’t living as a family anymore.  Bronte had been taken in by the Denali coven and was happy there for now.  So it was Edward and I on our own for a few years, and he would put off and put off the ineveitable change that we both knew was coming.   

We had agreed that there was no pressure now, with the Volturi practically nullified, and Edward had grown to trust himself more with me physically so I had the best of both worlds! So I was happy to exist with him for a couple more years, until the first wrinkle appeared anyway!

Then, fatefully, on a ski trip to Austria with Alice and Jasper, I had a bad accident, breaking my spine in a downhill run.  I knew I was dying, and so did Edward and so with all his love he bit me.  The pain was sweet, like a labour, to become reborn.  I became intoxicated by it, and Edward held me close as I scrambled against the venom and then as I embraced it, drawing it further and further into my system and finally to my gently beating heart which slowed and stopped and turned to stone.

Edward kept me locked away in the first few months, and I was tortured, my thirst for human blood drove me close to wild.  The claw marks in the walls of our bedroom are testimony to that.  But we got through it.  I remember the few cautious adventures into the world, and the temptations it brought.  I found a way to get through it, I learned to hunt carefully with Edward and eventually after a few years I could function alone.  Our new relationship was more powerful than before, Edward had a passion for me that he had never been able to properly express until now, and there was a few months that were mostly spent in our bedroom, Vampires don’t need sleep.  Eventually we moved to New York, blended in, Edward passing for the same age as me, and we enroled in college there.  We got married in City Hall with Alice and Jasper as witnesses, which I knew hurt my father but it was the best thing at the time.

I lost Renee to cancer, and Charlie died an old man in Forks, constantly remarking how “I still looked like a kid to him”, and a few years later we all moved back to Forks again.  Enroling in the local high school, I passed for a senior, and my life with the Cullens began properly.  I imagined all the things in my future, what I would see and what I would witness and I was excited.  

I had lost a lot, and I had suffered things that belong in only the wildest of imaginations, but I had Edward.  I had Edward, and he had me.  That was how it should be, and how it would be always.

Always...