A/N: I adopted this story from It's Always Wednesday. I hope I do it justice.

Prologue

I would never forget that day. It had been the worst day of my entire young life. The day I watched my older brother walk out the door and go to his death. I had idolized him and he walked away from me, leaving me with a promise he could never keep.

FLASHBACK

"Please don't leave, J!" I yelled as I watched my older brother, Jasper, start to walk out the door.

He turned to look at me, a tender look in his eyes. He opened his arms as I ran to him, clinging to him once I was wrapped in his arms.

"I have ta go, Bells." he told me, sighing.

"No ya don't, J!" I responded back, close to tears. I felt them burning my eyes. It was hell for me. "Yer gonna die out there. I can feel it! I'm never gonna see ya again! Please don't leave me alone, J. Ya are the only family I have left. The one and only person that has been with me through thick an' thin. Please don't leave! Please!" I sobbed out.

He held me harder before he let me go. He brought his hands to my face and cleared away my tears, allowing me to see the budding tears in his blue eyes that were identical to mine. He kissed my forehead and smoothed down my wavy blue-black hair whispering sorry as he let go.

"No!" I shouted. I tried to run to him but Mr. and Mrs. Applegate, our neighbors, held me back.

I watched as he put his confederacy hat on and mounted his horse. "We'll see each otha again, baby sis. I promise." Then he rode off.

He had no clue how long it would take him to fulfill his promise. Or how much hell the two of us would go through before he could.

FLASHBACK ENDS

Would he ever know that I would count every single day until I saw him again? I doubted it.

I had been only sixteen and Jasper only 18 that fateful day. But Jasper was real good about sending letters on a regular basis for the longest time.

Just after my eighteenth birthday, not quite two years later, Jasper's letters stopped coming. I watched for the mail to arrive every day but I never saw another letter from the brother that had loved and cared for me for so long.

A month later, a letter was delivered to my door that changed my life forever. As I stood there in the kitchen, reading the letter, feeling my heart break inside my chest.

Dear Ms. Whitlock,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to inform you that your brother, Major Jasper Whitlock, was sent to assist with the evacuation of Galveston from which he never returned. We were informed by a surviving soldier that he had seen Major Whitlock's dead body laying on the ground. He said that he had not been able to retrieve the body for return to you for burial due to the fact that he was escorting more refugees from Galveston to Houston.

When we were able to send a party to the location described by the soldier, Major Whitlock's body was gone. We assume it was dragged off by wild animals for food.

Our sincerest condolences and apologies on this day of most profound sorrow. Please know that your brother died a hero in the service of his country. He will be always remembered as such.

General William Wirt Adams

I dropped that letter on the floor of the little kitchen and ran out the door. I didn't scream or anything. Just dropped the letter and ran. I wouldn't be able to live there knowing all of the memories of Jasper that would haunt the entire house. But it would be worst of all in the kitchen. That was where we'd started all of our days together before he had left to join the confederate army.

I could hear Jasper's words to me the day he decided to join up. "I may not agree with everything the South does, Bells, but I do believe in her right to live the way she wants to. I don't believe that the North has the right to tell us how to live. Even though I agree that slavery should be abolished."

"But, Jasper, how can you fight for the South when you don't agree with their philosophy?"

"We live in the south, baby sis. We have to defend our home." Well, when he put it that way, how in the hell could I argue with him?

But now there was nothing holding me in the house. That's why I ran. I couldn't deal with all the memories of Jasper that would confront me every single day.

I knew that I had to run and run quickly because otherwise Mr. and Mrs. Applegate would come to check on me later in the day. They would try to comfort me and then I would be stuck. They probably wouldn't even let me stay in my house at that time. I'd have to pack my things and leave the house where I had grown up this far and where I had said my final goodbye to my beloved older brother.

We lived on the outskirts of a lively town in Texas, but it was easy for us to stay off everyone's radar. No one paid attention to what went on out there unless it was shoved under their noses.

I didn't think about it right then, but part of me didn't think anyone, other than maybe the Applegates, would ever notice I was even gone. I didn't know just how horribly mistaken I was at the time.

I ran blindly at first, my heartbreak only convincing me that I had to run far and fast. I headed straight into the wilderness and, before I knew where I was going, I had hit desert territory.

Sweat was running down my face and even into my eyes. But I wasn't about to stop. I had resigned myself to dying all alone in this world.

I had no way of finding water so I was pretty certain that I would never survive the desert, no matter how badly I wanted to. Stopping in the middle of nowhere, I looked around me and realized that there was nothing in sight but a mid-sized dust cloud that seemed to be moving right toward me.

Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Not that I thought my legs would support me for long if I tried to run. I just collapsed.

Next thing I knew, there were people with bright red eyes looking down at me where I lay on the floor of the desert just waiting for my death. I just didn't want to live if Jasper were gone. I had no one else that actually cared for me.

"Dear ones, see what we have found," one of the men spoke up. Although I'd never seen a man with hair that long.

"Are you hungry, Master?" one of the others asked. He was a bigger burly man and I was a little frightened by his size. That one picked me up like a piece of meat and offered me to the one with long white hair.

"Dear child, are you lost?" the white haired one asked me. His voice was almost kind and he didn't look as dangerous as he felt. He reached out a hand and I felt as though I had to take it. He held it for a moment and just looked at me as if he were looking for something. "Dear ones, I can hear nothing. What a puzzle! Jane, dear."

The young girl with them stared at me and stared hard as if expecting me to react in some way. I didn't know what she expected but nothing happened. She looked at the white-haired man. "Nothing, Master. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault, dear. Alec, your turn to try." The boy who looked to be a twin to the girl stared at me just like she had. I don't know what they were expecting me to do but nothing happened.

The boy just looked at the man and shook his head. The man nodded and looked to the tall lean one standing next to him. "Demetri, could you track her?"

"No, Master. It is as if she doesn't exist. I can see her and smell her but I can not track her."

"How is it that you can not track her if you can smell her?"

"Her scent changes. It changes rapidly. One moment she smells like a forest just after a rain, the next like a magnificent orange grove. It would be enough to confound me were I trying to track her right now."

The one they called Master seemed quite pleased. "Felix, could you carry her in the process of changing?"

"At your command, Master." With that, the white-haired one bent his head and bit me. I don't remember much of the next several days except pain.

When I woke up, I saw everything differently and felt everything differently. It was strange. I don't know how we traveled but I know that we weren't in Texas anymore.

Jane told me that we were in Volterra and far from Texas. I had apparently gone through the most excruciating pain for 10 days as we traveled without making a sound. Highly unusual.

Of course, as I was told several times in the first 100 years, I was the most unusual newborn any of them had ever encountered. I had not made a sound during the changing. My eyes were still what I called 'Whitlock blue', a shade of cerulean that was nearly unmatchable. Of course, I believed at the time that I was the last of the line. And never to meet another.

How mistaken I was I wouldn't know for a very long time.