Chapter 1: Suffocated

Renesmee's POV

I inhaled deeply as I set out on foot toward home, allowing the air to fill my lungs and clear my head of all the day's thoughts. I love the air here. It's so fresh and dry. Every time I inhale a cool, cleansing sensation that courses through my veins. Living here in Alaska is going to agree with me. I just know it. Maybe it's just my liberation talking. No longer living in a house full of overprotective, though well-intentioned vampires has definitely lifted my spirits. I almost feel normal.

No, not normal. Someone like me could never be considered normal. Vampire hybrids, (half-human, half vampire), well… we are the opposite of normal to just about everyone. We fit in nowhere. But here… at least here I can breathe, really breathe the cool, dry air that was nothing like the moist and suffocating air of Forks. No more overprotective, overly sensitive mother wondering what I'm up to all the time and getting quietly upset about not being included. No more extremely intrusive, mind reading father monitoring my every breath. No more Dr. Granddaddy Carlisle tending to my every sniffle. Just me. And Jacob. Of course it's always been me and Jacob, Jacob and I.

From the time I was born Jacob has been there for me. Every time I needed a play mate, a hunting partner or someone to play a game with, Jacob was there. He was there through my home-schooling, the tedium of learning all the things that humans had to put on paper so that other people would acknowledge their intelligence. He was there when I went to my first real play-date with the new neighbor's children in Forks, walking me over and chatting with the Carol's, like parents do when their children play. He was there for every one of my guitar lessons and performances. He and I went everywhere together, did everything together. We talked about everything and anything. We shopped, watched TV, read and experimented with cooking together.

More recently and most importantly though, he was there to support me when I took my entrance exam to the University of Juneau against my parent's will. And he was there to support me when I fought with them to let me go, let me come here to Alaska to go to school, make friends and, well, really, to get a life. No one needed that more than I did. Jacob was there to rally for me, against my family, knowing that I just had to get out of Forks. I had to get away from all of the rules and pressure. I couldn't take it anymore.

My family doted on me like a princess and watched over me like hawks. Well, more like a coven of overprotective vampires to be exact. It was just so, so… suffocating. I had to breathe, and just be me, without all of the half-vampire craziness of my life getting in the way. I am half-human and I can interact and be with humans in a way the rest of my family never could. I could make friends, hang out, and be one of the crowd if I tried. I wasn't different enough from them to be suspected as anyone or anything unusual. I was never as fast, strong or solid as the rest of my family. My half-human genetic make-up blended my father and human mother's traits in a way that allowed me to have the best and worst of both worlds and choose between the two when I wanted to most of the time. I could easily keep pace with humans without having to worry about slipping up; it wasn't hard to control, most of the time. And Jacob, my best friend, and confidante had understood. For someone of a completely different species, he really "gets" me. Maybe it's because he knows more of what it's like to be half-human than my family does.

Jacob is a werewolf. Not the full moon, silver-bullet version of a werewolf you might see in movies or on TV. In reality he belongs to a Quileute tribe of shape shifters whose ancestors chose the form of werewolf to fight off and rid Quileute lands of the vampires that had come to prey upon their tribe. He lives in human form most of the time, only shifting into a wolf when there is danger near or if he gets angry to the point of losing control over his emotions. The emotions, anger, fear, protectiveness, they drive the change. So it makes sense that Jake knows more of what it's like to be me, easily shifting in and out of his normal human form to his supernatural. We are similar in so many ways. Both half-way human, both able to hide our mythical nature easily around humans, but not enough to put our families at ease with setting out on our own. No one wanted to see that. Jake had argued with his father Billy about moving away too. As the leader of his pack, Jake had certain responsibilities to take care of at home, and Billy felt he was neglecting those who needed him by leaving, even it was to take care of me.

I sighed with frustration as I thought about this, walking through the door to our little one-floor house. I set my book-bag down and wandered to the cozy kitchen with its bright yellow walls and mismatched appliances and furniture to start on supper. I threw my book bag and hoodie onto one of the chairs and got started. Spaghetti tonight. As I worked I felt the frustration work its way into a familiar anger. I flinched as I stirred the pasta sauce with a little too much zest and saw the splatters across the back of the stove and all over my shirt. Ugh, human food. It's always so messy, and bland. I hated the fact that we had to eat like this to keep up our charade. Our neighbours in this small town were welcoming, just too nosy. So we decided to "eat human" most of the time and hunt about once every two weeks. I hastily wiped off the mess and set a pot of water to boil knowing that Jacob would be home in about 20 minutes.

I couldn't believe it when my parents objected. I mean this was Jacob. Jacob, who was with me everyday, part of our family in almost every sense of the word. How could they possibly object to him accompanying me here? I knew a lot of the objection came from the fact that they didn't want me to leave Forks in the first place. I knew that part of it was that the Denali's would have been more than happy to take me in. But I couldn't live under their watchful eyes, reporting to my parents and the rest of my family in Forks about my every move. I had to just come here and be myself. Something that is not so easily done in a houseful of concerned and watchful vampires.

Something that is easily done with Jacob. I mean, at 23 he's certainly old enough to live on his own. He knows how to look after bills and the house. He's been doing it all for Billy for years because he's wheelchair bound. I also know how much of the objection from my parents probably came from my father.

Ugh, his mind-reading, all-knowing ass was just getting on my nerves! How dare he even suggest that I might have other motives for wanting to move out and bring Jacob with me? He was fuming over me wanting to move out of Forks, but was he was livid when I suggested Jacob and I go together. It made sense for Jake to come with me. He is my best friend, and that's all he is.

Yes, I thought wryly, that's all he is. And no matter what I said or did to try and change that, it just wasn't happening. I wish my father would see that. He must know, although he's never said, the way I feel about Jacob. He can read every thought I have. And although I'm able to control my thoughts around him for the most part, there are times when my raging, half-human, teenage hormones would get the better of me, and I would slip. I mean, I am half-human after all, not completely made of stone like the rest of my family. Any girl with an ounce of blood flowing through her veins is bound to have her heart skip a beat or two at the sight of Jacob; tall, dark skinned, and 6 foot 7 with a hard, broad muscular physique showing up on their doorstep soaking wet in nothing but jeans and a black t-shirt. I opened the door that night just over a year ago and there he was… and I, for once, let him in wordlessly, without our customary hug or fist-bump, not wanting to know where my heart-beat or thoughts would go if I actually touched him at that moment with my father standing not 25 feet away.

I thought my father's eyes were going to pop right out of his head when he heard my heart fluttering faster than usual that first time while I could think of nothing else but wanting see more of Jacob and less of that wet t-shirt. He'd all but thrown me out of the room, demanding that I go see Aunt Alice for a fit on my new wardrobe. He wanted me to help her choose some new things for him while he and Jacob discussed treaty boundaries and the other vampire-werewolf issues that Jacob came over to re-arrange. The announcement of the new housing development on the edge of our treaty lands was forcing the tribe and the Cullen's to re-work some of their ancient boundaries to accommodate for our family's hunting while maintaining a safe distance from humans.

That night I could hear my father and my mother out on the stone bench in the cottage's garden, talking late into the night. As I drifted off to sleep I wondered what my mother could possibly say to him to make him see that there was nothing to worry about. She always supported me. Especially when it came to Jacob. She seemed to know how to deal with our bond in a way that my father couldn't. Not that he was even trying to be reasonable about it. In the weeks and days before I left I had more rules and restrictions than ever, and they were increasingly involving my time with Jake.

But it was just Jacob, I'd thought at the time. Could I be… is it possible that I, after 5 and a half years of being with him every day as playmates, then the best of friends and now almost like brother and sister… could I be falling for Jacob?

I shook my head and chuckled quietly to myself, my long bronze ringlets quivering all around me. The thought was almost silly. Almost. I knew about the fact that Jake was tied to me by a bond called "imprinting". Many of the Quileute tribe members had imprinted by that point. But the wolves and their other halves were all older when it happened, and they fell in love. I was just a baby at the time it happened for Jake and I, although he was in his late teens. I've grown up with him, and we've bonded, needing each other absolutely, but never in a romantic way.

That night, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard my mother say, in a slightly raised voice, with a persistence she hardly ever uses when speaking to him,

"Edward, it's Jake," patronizing him, while my father just sighed.

After a minute he responded with a simple and exasperated "Bella, she's only 15…."

And even through the thick weight and fog of sleep that was pushing on me, I could feel the unspoken significance in what he was saying. He thought I was a child.

I placed the now ready and steaming pasta noodles in the pot with the sauce, stirred thoughtfully, and replaced the lid. Jake would be home any minute now, so I ran upstairs to get changed out my splattered t-shirt and into a clean one. As I changed in front of my full-length mirror in my tiny room I took in my own reflection. It hadn't changed much recently. The growing had slowed to a crawl last year and would soon be stopping altogether. My tall, slender figure, pale skin and long-bronze ringlets were the first things everyone noticed about me.

I've been told that I'm beautiful to human eyes. I certainly have been receiving a fair bit of attention from the boys on campus. My brown eyes sparkled back at me as I considered this. Boys liked me here. Not that they hadn't liked me at home in Forks, if they ever had the chance to see me. But here, I'm not Renesmee Cullen, sheltered, adopted, daughter of the young and reclusive Edward and Bella Cullen. Here I'm just Nessie. I felt a surge of hope at that thought. If the young men of Juneau thought I was attractive, if they saw something desirable in my slender hips and C cup breasts…then maybe Jacob could see me in a new light too. Maybe the change would affect Jacob too. This place, the people here, everyone thinks that I'm a young woman of 16, because of my body and level of intelligence and maturity. If the people of Juneau could see that, maybe Jake could too.

Maybe, I thought as I heard the door slam below… maybe I could be to him, in his eyes, what he had definitely become to me over the last year. I nervously smoothed my hair and said a silent thank you for the freak gene in my genetic make up that made my body temperature run at a steady 106 degrees. It allowed me to show a little skin during the freezing cold winter. My fitted tank top didn't leave me chilly in the slightest, and went well with my skinny jeans, showing off all the right curves.