***A/N: So, my theory is that if I actually post the start of this fic, it'll pressure me to actually finish it, unlike the many unfinished ones which currently sit on my hard drive. Good theory? *shrugs* I can tell you that I'm currently in the middle of NaNoWriMo, so nothing will get done for at least a couple of weeks. But here we go with a new fic, regardless!

I apologise in advance to anyone who actually does speak Romanian. I'm most likely butchering your language. I think of it as I've coined a new word, which only exists in this AU, which just has roots in Romanian. That's how I'm legitimising it, anyway.

So... you guys already know the deal. Like any other writer, reviews make me write faster. Nothing is different here.

Enjoy!***

Chapter One

Alice

As soon as Carlisle made the decision to return to Forks, the visions began to bombard me, the force of them bringing me to my knees.

"Alice, darlin'?" Jasper cooed, rubbing my back. "Are you okay?"

Edward was looking at me with a confused expression. Like me, he couldn't keep up with the ferocity of the scenes. He was just as confused as I was.

"I'm going hunting. I'll be back soon," I told my family, kissing Jasper on the cheek quickly before racing out into the forest. He tried to protest, saying that he wanted to come with me, but I waved him off quickly. He couldn't be around me.

Once I was out of Edward's range, I sank to the forest floor, and let the visions come at me. It took almost an hour before the painful images began to make sense. My head fell into my hands in despair when I realised just what was going to happen. If there was ever a time that tears were needed, now was it, but of course they never appeared.

The images desisted eventually, and I started searching my own future. I desperately needed to see something positive. Sobbing tearlessly, I curled into a ball, letting what I had seen be absorbed.

When I returned to the house late the next afternoon, Jasper was pacing impatiently, creating a path across the yard. Esme's poor daphnes hadn't survived his fretting. He stopped the second I stepped through the treeline, and locked his gaze on mine. We never did need many words to be spoken between us.

I halted directly before him, and he cupped my cheeks in his hands, sending me his concern, his eyes full of questions. I smiled sadly up at him, and covered his hands with my own.

"I love you, Jasper, and I always will," I whispered, my voice hitching in a completely human way. He silently let me feel his correlating love, which broke my heart even more. "When it happens, though, just remember that I have no regrets. There's nothing I would change. And …" I breathed deeply, calming myself. "… I'll be here for you. I'll support you fully, no matter how hard it is."

He breathed in my scent, centering himself. "What's happening, darlin'? Tell me, and we can find a way to change it."

"No," I sighed. "This is the way it should be. I'll be okay eventually."

He opened his mouth to protest, and I cut him off with the most passionate kiss I could muster. It hurt me to pull away, but pull away I did.

"It's okay," I reminded him. "When it happens, you don't need to fight it. It's inevitable."

I grasped his hand tightly, pulling him towards our room. I was going to make the most of the time I had left.

Two years later

Jasper

I didn't pay attention to it all morning. When you'd been to as many high schools as we had, a new kid just didn't register on the radar. Sure, I felt the excitement rippling through the school, but it didn't really mean anything. One human was just like the next. As much as my conscious mind tried to debate it, my subconscious saw them purely as food. They were weak and insignificant; why would I pay attention to a new face in the swarm?

As we collected our prop food, or what apparently counted as food to humans, I could hear Jessica Stanley telling the new girl about our family. Her words spoke of how conceited and superior we apparently were (superior – I wouldn't disagree with her on that one), but her emotions were giving off jealously and slight awe. I couldn't help my lips twitching in mirth at how she tried to act like she didn't care about us at all.

We seated ourselves at the table we always did, but Alice and Edward seemed to linger slightly before sitting, having one of their frustrating internal conversations. Alice would think something to Edward, and then Edward would just have to decide what his answer was for Alice to see it. They didn't do it often, because it took twice as long as a normal conversation, so I automatically knew that it had to be something that they didn't want us to know. When Edward nodded at her, the seeming end to their 'talk', I turned to my mate, waiting for her to sit, so I could shuffle closer to her. For some reason I felt the need to be closer to her for just a minute.

Instead of sitting next to me, however, she stepped behind, allowing Edward to take her usual place. She tiny hand gripped my shoulder, just for a second, and she squeezed slightly. Her countenance was filled with resignation, which confused and panicked me. I looked up at her in question, but she just smiled sadly. It was that same haunted look that had filled her so many times recently; even last night as we had been making love.

I took a leaf out of Edward's book, and decided to ask her if I'd done something wrong. Her eyelids fluttered ever so slightly as they always did when she received a fleeting vision, seeing my decision. Her lips pursed slightly, but she shook her head at me, smiling sadly again as she took Edward's traditional spot across the table.

A group of freshmen came stumbling into the cafeteria, laughing to each other at the expense of some fellow student, and the door took four seconds longer than normal to fall closed, getting caught by a sudden gust of wind. That breeze floated through the crowded room, frustrating Rosalie when it blew her hair into her face, getting some strands caught in the sticky lip gloss she was wearing.

Our whole table instinctively took a breath in. It was a reflex I had noticed vampires possessed – the wind blows in your face, you breathe in. My theory was that it forced you to scent the new air for potential threats. The second the air flowed through my nose, everything stopped. Something changed, and I didn't know if it was just me, or if something had affected us all. My chest was aching all of a sudden, and I had absolutely no idea why. That was the sweetest, most satisfying scent I had ever come across, yet I wasn't feel even an ounce of the burn.

Contrastingly, I could feel Edward's bloodlust spike out of control. "Mine," he growled lowly, thankfully keeping it in check enough to not let the humans hear him.

I knew that he was a threat, and we should get him out of here. He needed to hunt; as far away from here as possible. We couldn't have him slaughtering the whole school. But for some reason, I couldn't move. All my body knew was that I had to find that scent. My eyes flicked to the new girl. That had to be where it was coming from. Once I laid eyes on her properly for the first time, not the generic glance I'd given her earlier, I couldn't pull away. She was … everything, and I had no idea why. I took in every detail of her, from her thick brown hair that lay in waves across her shoulders, down to the way the edge of the table pressed into her pliable stomach, pushing the blue blouse hiding beneath her open, bottle green winter coat, slightly askew. I took in each curve and pore of her face, ending at wide eyes, the colour of the fur right near the jugular of a brown bear – which I hadn't hunted for over three months now, due to hibernation.

She had been looking in fear at Edward's reaction behind me, but slowly her gaze moved to connect with mine. I was at once torn between keeping her gaze in mine, and standing to move closer to her.

The seconds were both an eternity, and not long enough, at the same time. All that I knew is that I have never felt anything like this before. What I feel for Alice, though real, and my whole world, was tiny compared to my need to be near this human girl. A girl whose name I hadn't even bothered to learn. Most disturbing, was that I didn't know why.

I was assaulted with her confusion, the emotions of the rest of the room becoming whispers in the background. From what I could work out, she was confused about the way in which I was concentrating on her. Her secondary emotions vacillated, but were mostly centered around inferiority. Why couldn't she see how perfect she was?

Her gaze flickered back towards Edward, who was struggling against Emmett's grasp. She was frightened by him – his reaction was completely unwarranted for a supposed simple high school student. That speck of fear was what forced me into action. She needed me to remove the threat to her wellbeing. That, I could do.

I whirled on my brother, almost forgetting to limit my speed to be somewhat human, a warning growl echoing in my chest. He growled lowly back at me, a battle of wills. Between Emmett and myself, we quickly removed him from the building.

"Breathe," I commanded him once we were out of the building and her scent was no longer around us. The scent that I was already missing.

His refreshing breathing brought Edward back to us slightly, and the monster receded enough that we could reason with him.

I turned to Emmett and Rosalie, replacing Rosalie's hands forcefully from where my own grip Edward's arms. "Get him away from here. Make him hunt. I'll stay as the last defence in case he escapes from you and attempts to return."

They nodded tersely, checked that nobody is watching, and flashed past the treeline.

"Mine!" Edward growled again, louder this time, as he was forced away from the meal he so desperately wanted.

The immediate threat gone, my legs failed me, and my body crashed to the ground in relief. "No, mine," I sighed, not even sure what it means.

Alice looked down on me sadly.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded, more harshly than I ever spoke to my mate.

"Bella is Edward's singer," she explained softly. She had a name…. Bella. My mind repeated it over and over in the background.

"I worked that out," I replied distractedly, fighting the urge to return to the cafeteria. "What happened to me?"

Alice slid her body gracefully down the side of the building so she was sitting next to me. "You want me to tell you? Or let you work it out yourself?"

"Tell me, dammit!"

She looked down at her fingers, touching the light pink nail-polish she applied the day before.

"Sufletul pereche."

My head snapped up. "That's just a rumor. A vampire fairy tale. They don't exist."

"It's very rare, sure, but they do exist. I mean, if there is truly only one person in existence who is your true soulmate, what are the chances that you'll be in existence at the same time, and in the same place? It's just so rare because the probability of ever finding your pereche is so low."

I glanced over toward the cafeteria, wondering whether Alice could be right. "But… YOU are my mate."

She shrugged lightly. "Pereche trumps mate. Always will. You can't fight this, Jasper. Trust me; I've tried my hardest to find a way, and it never worked."

Realization hit me. "That's why you've been so resigned and desperate the last couple of years. You knew this was coming."

She nodded, snuggling against my body and inhaling my scent. This must be unfathomably hard for her – she was losing her mate. Logically I knew it would happen, no matter how much I didn't want to give Alice up.

"I love you, Alice," I whispered, nuzzling her hair.

She sighed. "I love you too, so much. But you need her. I'm not your future."

"I want you to be, though," I told her, strain evident in my voice. I couldn't imagine life without Alice by my side. But… would that be fair? To make her watch me around my pereche?

"I'll still be here, Jazz," she said softly. "You're still the most important thing in MY world, even if it's not going to be reciprocated for very much longer. Even if we can't be together anymore, you're still my best friend. I won't leave you unless it's what you want. Or probably more likely… if it's what Bella wants."

My body protested. "I don't care who she is to me, she can't make me give you up." Even as I said it, something in me knew it wasn't true.

Alice just petted my knee and sent me a combination of regret, love, and understanding.

"Okay, so say I accept that she's my pereche. Why did she not feel the same for me?"

"She's human. She doesn't have the capacity to feel it. She feels a connection, but doesn't know what it is." She paused, her emotions part-apprehension, part-mirth. "You're going to have to court her – she's not going to just fall at your feet like I did. It will be difficult."

I pulled away slightly to frown at her.

Her eyes fluttered slightly, and then she giggled.

"What?"

"Nothing," she smiled. "I take back the comment about her not falling at your feet, though."

I looked at her in confusion.

"Don't worry; you'll see soon enough."

I tried to work out what she meant by that.

"There's something in your favour, though," she smiled.

My eyebrows rose urgently, trying to prompt her to reveal what she knew.

"Most people don't have the assistance of their wife in wooing their new love."

I chuckled, and pulled her back against my side.