Everything was supposed to have fallen into place. Victoria’s army of newborn vampires had been vanquished; the Volturi temporarily appeased with promises of Bella’s turning; that dog finally tucking his tail between his legs and no longer sticking his nose where it didn’t belong.

Everything was supposed to be perfect. In a month’s time, Bella Swan would become Bella Cullen. The inconsolable void that Edward had carried with him for over a century would finally become whole.

But, as Edward had so frustratingly learnt with his incessant run-ins with a certain mongrel, the Quileute tribe always had a penchant for stirring trouble. But just as they were reeking, irritating, and natural-born enemies…he could concede that they were also fiercely loyal. Warm. Blindingly bright and powerful like the sun. Completely at odds with both vampires and humans in an entirely new, foreign way he struggled to grapple with.

Between everything that had happened, Edward was too focused on Bella’s safety and Jacob’s competing to notice much else. That included the peculiarly female shapeshifter of the Quileute tribe, though he had distantly noted her prowess on the battlefield. But everything always fell away when it came to Bella. Bella, who had become a fixture in his life — his reason for living — before he had even realised. And maybe that sort of fiery, lethal romance burnt too quick and scorched too harsh. But with their upcoming marriage, it would cement that love as permanent.

It was supposed to, anyways. Until the Cullens and Bella were lingering on the edge of La Push’s treaty line, exchanging civility with thinly-veiled, generational hostility beneath it.

Edward had largely tuned it all out. It hurt his head, really, hearing the loud and brash thoughts of the shapeshifters. It didn’t help that the shapeshifters themselves had a mental connection with one another when transformed, causing his telepathy to tangle up in knots with no discernible start and end. He was more interested in getting back home with Bella, so fragile and delicate, tucked beneath his arm.

That was the plan, really. But then a member of the Quileute tribe joined the commotion, and when Edward’s eyes met hers, he found himself unbiddenly thrown into the catastrophic burst inside her mind.

A supernova. That’s what it was like; millions of indescribable emotions clustering together before bursting violently into an all-encompassing, blazing white. Suddenly and all at once, Edward had become the gravity that tethered this girl to Earth, the very air that filled her lungs and pumped her body warm of blood.

Oh. Fuck. The thought rung out. Edward was unsure where it came from him or her.