The attention on him pressed like heat through a uniform—steady, suffocating, impossible to ignore. The hallways of the school were just another terrain to navigate, each conversation and heartbeat a pattern he had to track. Even after decades of practice, restraint cost him. The emotions around him—fear, envy, the low pulse of attraction—beat against his senses until every breath felt measured and deliberate.

The Cullens watched him too, careful, cautious. Their unease brushed against his awareness like the hum of tension before a storm. He understood it. One mistake in this place and the whole illusion would collapse.

That incident with Bella had proved what he already knew: one lapse was all it took to make them remember what he was. Now every classroom felt like a drill in discipline, every lunch period another exercise in control. Noise. Scent. Feeling. It all blurred into one long endurance test.

And then she walked in.

The static went quiet.

Her gaze caught his—steady, curious, entirely unafraid—and something inside him just…stopped. No threat assessment, no calculation, no need to brace. The silence in his mind was so complete it felt unnatural, like the moment before a command is given.

It wasn’t surrender; he didn’t have that word in him anymore. It was recognition.

For the first time since his rebirth, the constant readiness eased. He felt the ground under his feet, the air move without weight, the world settle into rhythm instead of tension.

In her eyes, he didn’t see the weapon Maria had molded or the liability the Cullens managed. He saw himself—whole, ordinary, and terrifyingly alive.

The quiet didn’t last. It never does.

Alice froze mid-sentence, that bright expression faltering for half a heartbeat before the practiced smile came back. She felt the shift first—the sudden still in me, the absence of pressure where constant control used to hum.

Edward’s head turned next, his expression tightening. He leaned forward like he was straining to catch a frequency that wasn’t there. For the first time in a long while, I gave him nothing. Not fear, not hunger—just blank calm.

He didn’t like that.

Across the table, the tension snapped taut. I could feel the others reacting before a word was said—Emmett’s confusion, Rosalie’s suspicion, Alice’s worry threaded with that sharp flicker of jealousy she never admits to feeling.

I kept my gaze steady, fixed on the girl who’d just walked in. Everything else—the noise, the heartbeat count, even the Cullens’ unease—faded into a distant blur.

Edward’s voice broke the silence, quiet but edged. “What did you just do?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t, really. Because for once, I wasn’t managing anyone else’s emotions. Wasn’t balancing, filtering, or shielding.

For the first time since the war—since Maria—the air around me wasn’t chaos. It was still.

And that stillness belonged to her.