Breaking Dawn

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Copyright © 2008 by Stephenie Meyer All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Little, Brown and Company Hachette Book Group USA 237 Park Avenue, NewYork, NY 10017 Visit our Web site at www.lb-teens.com First eBook Edition: August 2008 Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group USA, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group USA, Inc. Epigraph for Book Three from Empire by Orson Scott Card. A Tor Book. Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. Copyright © 2006 by Orson Scott Card. Reprinted withpermission of the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. ISBN: 978-0-316-03283-4

3 Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my ninja/agent, Jodi Reamer. Thank you for keeping me off the ledge. And thanks also to my favorite band, the very aptly named Muse, forproviding a saga’s worth of inspiration.

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BOOK ONE
bella CONTENTS
PREFACE 1. ENGAGED 2. LONG NIGHT 3. BIG DAY 4. GESTURE 5. ISLE ESME 6. DISTRACTION 7. UNEXPECTED

5 Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Edna St. Vincent Millay

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PREFACE
I’d had more thanmy fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn’t something you ever really got used to. It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked for disaster. I’d escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back for me. Still, this time was so different from the others. You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactionswere geared toward those kinds of killers—the monsters, the enemies. When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?

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1. ENGAGED
No one is staring at you, I promised myself. Noone is staring at you. No one is staring at you. But, because I couldn’t lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check. As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I peeked to the right—in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she didn’t drop her gaze or look ashamed. Itwas still considered rude to stare at people, wasn’t it? Didn’t that apply to me anymore? Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I’d caught her looking. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t really staring at me, just the car. My car. Sigh. I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrianswere frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate-glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he didn’t have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet. The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal without thinking—the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevytruck moving. Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine. “Arg!” I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway. I couldn’t bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as to...