𝑺𝑶𝑳𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑬 [𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑹𝒀 𝑷𝑶𝑻𝑻𝑬𝑹/𝑻𝑾𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻]

𝐿𝑂𝑉𝐸 𝐼𝑆 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐷𝐸𝐴𝑇𝐻 𝑂𝐹 𝐷𝑈𝑇𝑌

Bella's body was sleeping peacefully next to Edward, with feathers from their pillows laying all around her as he sunk his teeth into another one.

Edward breathed out a sigh of relief as he reached over for more Dragon Blood, satisfying his thirst as he had allowed himself to be vulnerable with Bella. He had pushed his sensations to the point of seeing her merely as prey for just a few seconds...

He truly had no idea how his Denali cousins had gotten so skilled at this without killing off the human men they fell in love with.

Edward stopped his train of thought as the blood allowed him to return back to his senses. The guilt weighing down heavily, drowning him into oblivion. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes as he attempted to focus, to recompose himself. But the guilt was too heavy, it was too much; threatening to make him fade out of existence.

Turning back to look at Bella, she looked so peaceful, so happy...The complete opposite of himself.

How could two people who once loved each other so much, be on opposite ends of the emotional scale? How could he have been so stupid, so callous to believe he could pretend through it all? How could he have believed it would get better, that he could get through it with time?

Edward frowned as he swallowed hard, knowing what they had just done left him feeling disgusted with himself.

He had mentally prepared for their wedding night, even speaking to Carlisle and his brothers about what to expect. Carlisle had explained it to be one of the hardest things he would have to get through, but in the end, the payoff would be great. His brother's described it as a sensation that rivaled drinking human blood...But for him? It made him feel more like a soulless cold monster made of stone.

A disgusting soulless creature that when he was in the middle of making love to his wife for the first time, he thought only of another. In that moment he should have been thinking only of Bella Swan, the sight that flashed before his face was another, as he used all of his might to not call out someone else's name.

"Love is the death of duty." He recalled Gwen's words in his head once more, as her face flashed across his mind once more.

Feeling a growing sensation of pain in his chest where is heart once beat, he knew he had to get out of the room. He knew he had to leave, anywhere!

Edward put his clothes back on, looking back to make sure Bella was sound asleep before he slipped out of the room and went back to the beach. He felt the warm sensation of the sand against his cold skin, breathing in the salt-like air from the ocean as he stretched his legs out and began to run.

Edward cleared through the palm trees and ocean, making rounds around the beach multiple times before he headed inland through the forest. He liked to run, he liked to push himself to the limit as the stretching of his legs and the blur of the natural objects passing by him made a wall between him and the rest of the world. It closed him in, let him be alone.

He kept running due east, over and through the mountains without breaking his straight course, even running and swimming into the water until he could see a the bright lights of Rio. He stopped before he touched the borders of human civilization.

But even with the distraction, the remorse and guilt of lying to his fiancee, to his family, and to himself of what he truly wanted, now burned with the thirst in his throat.

How pathetic was he, how truly pathetic that he judged his father for loving another woman, and being unfaithful, when he was doing the same? Maybe he wasn't flying across the sea to be with Gwen while married to Bella, but he still thought only of her.