Midnight Sun

her trust. And now I’d had to tell her exactly how

much I didn’t deserve it.

you didn’t hear what every human male in this school was thinking on your first day.”

Ah, the hope, the thrill, the eagerness of those thoughts. The speed with which they’d turned to impossible fantasies. Impossible, because she wanted none of them.

I was the one she said yes to.

Bella deserved better than a killer.

I’d spent more than seven decades trying to be something—anything—

other than a killer.

Bella deserved better than a killer.

I’d spent more than seven decades trying to be something—anything—

other than a killer.

Bella deserved better than a killer.

I’d spent more than seven decades trying to be something—anything—

other than a killer.

I struggled to find words to name the feelings that flooded through me, but I had no words strong enough to hold them. For a long moment, I drowned in them.

When I surfaced, I was not the same man I had been.

Because I could kill every spider in her home, cut the thorns off every rosebush she might one day touch, block every speeding car that got within a mile of her, but there was no task I could perform that would make me something other than what I was.

I won’t allow you to hurt Isabella Swan.”

Every life in this room was in danger while she and I were in it together.

Her scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment.

Instantly, I was transformed. I was nothing close to the human I’d once been. No trace of the shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak myself in over the years remained.

I was a predator. She was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.