Thank you to everyone who sent their good wishes for my recovery. I'm back now, if a little sore, so please bear with me as typing isn't easy, it was my right arm I had the surgery on. Jules xx

Chapter One

Bella

Being pregnant was wonderful but it was also tiring and with the baby growing so fast I needed plenty of rest, not to mention Jasper hovering over me like a mother hen together with Esme and Rose. The only way I could get any peace was to agree to a nap every afternoon, not that I minded, it gave me time to think about all that had happened to me over the years. I could never have dreamed my life would take the path it had. I had few memories of my parents, I had tried hard to forget them because whenever I saw them in my mind they were dead, covered in blood with their throats torn out by the monster who had come across us on our picnic. I could still feel the weight of the ax in my hands as I tried to fight it off, the sound as the blade slid across stone hard skin, making no impression at all.

As a child I expected the adults to keep me safe, the hikers who found me soaked in blood and still holding the ax were kind enough but it ended once they handed me over to the authorities. As soon as I told my story of the strange monster who looked like a man, whose skin was hard as stone and who killed them both by ripping their throats out their attitude to me changed. I had no idea how crazy my story sounded to them or that they would take it as a fabrication in order to hide the fact I had murdered my parents myself. Why would I do that? I loved my mom and dad, they loved me, why would I kill them? It didn't make sense to me but it's what they believed and because of this I was sent to a special facility for disturbed children, labeled a murderer.

My time in that hell hole was much worse than my later years on the streets. They believed that drugs or electric treatments would drive the demons from my brain when all they did were to make me feel wretched and terrified. I knew if I didn't escape that hell I wouldn't survive to reach maturity and eventually I managed it, hiding in a dirty laundry hamper. I hadn't understood I was being drugged in my food and drinks and I went cold turkey in the arms of another street dweller, Michael who became my savior and protector. He helped me escape Arizona fearing it would be too dangerous to stay with the authorities looking for me so we headed north.

If we hadn't found ourselves, eventually, in Portland I would be dead not awaiting the birth of my baby with a husband at my side and a family gathered all around me, and what a family they had turned out to be. Yet more of the beings who had murdered my parents, vampires, yet so totally different. As it was I skirted death by the smallest of margins and it was all down to Alice, Justin and Jasper.

I thought about Jasper's proposal and meeting his best friend Peter dressed as a Christmas Elf holding a knife in my hand as I opened the door! What I thought I was going to achieve against a vampire I had no idea, if an ax made no impression a kitchen knife was hardly likely to do so!

Our wedding was magical, the dress, the carriage pulled by two white horses and the festive themed wedding in the woodland clearing. I could still hear the song about the flying reindeer as one flew above our heads. I had thought the song made up until I found Jasper had put the original on my iPod. How Jasper's friends and family had been so kind and the way they all volunteered to help with my Christmas wishes, or Miracles as Carlisle wrote it on the huge wall planner.

I hadn't imagined for a moment that they would carry out so many miracles in such a short space of time and so spectacularly. There was poor Edith, suffering from dementia and believing her poor old cat Snowball was still alive. They found her daughter and she took her home, off the streets to spend her remaining time in the bosom of her family. Colin's tears when he heard Darius had traced his family, the children who just wanted their parents to stop fighting, the residents of the home who almost missed their Christmas concert. That made me think of all the acts the family had performed, Jasper, Peter and Garrett dressed as cowboys showing off their lasso tricks, the ventriloquist, Esme and Rosalie singing carols, everyone had done something.

There was Alexis the runaway who went back home to her parents, the disabled group Darius found a car and driver for after theirs had broken down and how we joined them to see the Christmas lights at the grotto. Sam's family who found a home just in time for their new baby to make her appearance and the drop in center named after me. All done by my new family and friends along with other Miracles and using their skills and money. If not for Darius I don't think many of these would have been possible. He worked night and day to pull the information the others needed, to fulfill the dreams and needs of ordinary humans, from the internet. Most of all I was happy because it made them look again at human beings. People like Peter who had seen them as a necessary evil, a food source, suddenly realized they were more than that, much more in fact.

Then there was Ethan, who arrived into this world in the house the Cullens had rented in Portland after the car taking his mom to the hospital skidded and crashed close by. It was a fitting backdrop to the news I had given my husband, that he too was going to be a father. His face, the joy and wonder in his eyes had told me this was the best present he could have wished for and now it was almost time for our own little miracle to say hello to the world and meet his or her family.

I had expected the family to go back to Forks after Christmas but it seemed they had other idea's. They extended the lease on the house in Portland and Carlisle commuted to work being determined to be on hand when his services were required and since I could hardly give birth in a normal hospital, I was carrying a vampire human hybrid after all, that was a good thing. Darius, Garrett, Peter and Charlotte had returned home but I suspected they would be back as soon as they heard news of our baby's birth and in truth I missed them. As much for Charlotte's calming influence as Peter's crazy antics, Garrett's gentle flirting and Darius quiet presence.

I wondered if it would be a boy or girl, like me or like it's father. Would it be so different from a human baby? Carlisle told me that in stories and legends hybrid babies grew and matured much more quickly than human children and if it was gifted that might manifest itself at birth or perhaps not until it reached maturity. Would it feed on milk or blood? Would it's eyes be red like a true vampire or golden like the vegetarian Cullens? I wished my own parents could be here to see me happy and settled. To hold their grandchild in their arms and coo over it trying to decide who it looked most like. That was the most painful thought of all. I had no one to be pleased for the next generation of my family, they were all gone. Perhaps there was an uncle or niece, nephew or aunt out there somewhere but I had no idea. I had vague recollections of one of my parents having cut themselves off from their family many years ago, that my dad was an only child, but I knew all my grandparents had been dead before my parents or I would have had someone to claim me, to fight for me when they called me a killer...but there was no one.