“I say we kill it,” Rosalie said, her nose upturned in disgust.

I sighed, “He’s just a child, Rosalie; no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. He’s just as uncomfortable with this situation as we are. The wolves’ minds work differently than others – they’re bound to do as their Alpha tells them, regardless of their personal feelings on the subject.” I turned to my mother, ignoring my sister’s raging thoughts. “I suspect he might be hungry, though; he’s been out there for a while. Is that soup you made for Bella still in the refrigerator?”

Esme nodded, her kind and motherly demeanor jumping at the chance to cook some more food – both for Bella and our unexpected guest. “Of course, yes. I just bought some chicken and pasta as well, so I’ll make some more dishes.”

“Are you insane?” Rosalie screeched, staring at us in raging shock.

“Rosalie,” Carlisle admonished her, upset that she was being so difficult. He briefly glanced over at me, asking silently if my sister’s screeching had woken Bella, and I listened carefully to my mate’s heartbeat emanating from two floors above me and shook my head slightly when I had determined that she was still sound asleep. Carlisle nodded and turned back to Rosalie, “Perhaps if we can gain the young man’s trust, the pack will leave us be; we have broken no rules of the treaty, so there is little reason for them to pursue us more once they realize that we are peaceable.”

“Like hell they will!” Rosalie shouted, stomping her foot childishly. “Edward said that that one mongrel has a crush on Bella. Do you really believe he’s going to allow her to be around his sworn enemy unsupervised? I say we start with this one – he’s a child, like Edward said; he’ll be easy to take down – and then we take down the entire pack. We’ll call in Tanya’s family for help.”

“And start a war?” Jasper asked incredulously. “What in the world has gotten into you?”

“And are you forgetting about Laurent and Victoria?” Alice demanded. “The wolves want to prevent innocent lives from being taken as much as we do – they could help us stop Laurent and Victoria. We don’t have to walk away from this forever enemies.”

“I would rather die than be indebted to those flea-bitten mongrels,” Rosalie snarled.

“Rose, you need to put your vain pride aside for a little bit and start thinking about the bigger picture, baby,” Emmett said gently, fearing his wife’s reaction to his words.

“Vain?” Rosalie screeched, rounding on her husband with a terrifying expression on her face. There was a thump from upstairs, and I listened intently to Bella’s heartbeat pick up as she awoke from her nap. “I am thinking of my family’s safety, and you call me vain? How dare you?!”

“You’re not thinking of anything but your own selfish desires, Rosalie,” I snarled, angry at both the unspoken truth she was lying about and the fact that her obnoxious screeching had woken my love from her much-needed rest. “You would just love it if everything went back to the way it was before Bella came into our lives, wouldn’t you? It’s completely heartbreaking for you to be without your mate, but it was perfectly fine for me to be without mine-”

“You could have had anyone,” she hissed back at me. “Anyone at all. Tanya was more than willing to give herself to you-”

“Yes, and anyone else with a Y-chromosome too,” I interrupted, sneering the words in disgust.

“At least she would have been better than that hideous human!” Rosalie screamed, and my last nerve nearly broke as I saw over Rosalie’s shoulder, Bella timidly peaking around the corner of the doorway, cringing at Rosalie’s words, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “You should have killed her that very first day, and then we wouldn’t be in this situation! Our lives would be normal again, and we wouldn’t have to deal with disgusting werewolves or that ugly, little whore-”

I lunged at her, my teeth bared, a vicious snarl tearing itself from deep in my chest.