Hi there MsLessa!

I'm delighted to hear from you! Thanks so much for your feedback and kind words about the story. I've had a blast writing it. This is the part that I was crossing my fingers for hoping that folks would hang in there while I set up the plot to explain it. So posting these chapters has made me feel like I'm giving someone a present and hoping like heck they like it cause I made it from hand. :)

And I wouldn't continue posting the chapters if it weren't for readers like you. Thanks so much for your support. :)

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Dream Edward is blowing a kiss at you.

Hi there MsLessa!

If I can make just one person smile - then I've done my job. Thanks for making my day! I'm having so much fun with Edward's deluded world....and I'm delighted you are enjoying the ride. If you have a question that I can answer, you can always PM me. I may answer, I may not. But it never hurts to ask. :)

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Jugurtha is blowing kisses at you.

Hi there MsLessa!

I feel you are holding back. Tell me how you really feel about Edward. :)

Part of his problem is that whole ambivalence on his part. Research shows that when someone is ambivalent about breaking up, occasionally you will find that the person will get really mean to overcompensate as a way of forcing the decision to be one that he/she has to stick with. And to a certain extent you saw that with Edward - combined with those pesky wolf powers causing him to lose his temper. It's been a building source of frustration for him for weeks that Bella does not know the Real Me. You can think of his rant in a way as him symbolically trying to kill of Dream Edward. So when Bella told him that she loved him, at first he was floored, and then that little voice of doubt in the back of his head pointed out that Bella didn't know him because he hadn't given her the chance nor could he. And that to me is an ugly situation - for him (albeit in denial) to have these powerful feelings for Bella - and all along know that she doesn't really know or undestand who he is in his heart of hearts - and his fear that if she did, she would leave him. This does not in any way, shape, and or form excuse what he said.

He was downright mean as a snake. And he'll be reaping the rewards of those words. If you take a look at the front arc of the story in Lies, Dreams, and Schemes, he and Carlisle are in part talking about exactly what he did to her when he left her. Now you understand why he's so terrified of confessing about that whole bachelor party business because he's been walking on eggshells trying to get her to forgive him.

As ever, thanks so much for the review. :)

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Hi there MsLessa!

Sweetheart, you seriously made my night. To be honest, I cut four paragraphs from the snarky summary in this chapter because I worried it was too long and might irritate readers. I'm glad to know you enjoyed it. I'll try to keep them up. DumbWard indeed. Right now he's DumbWard and NervousBreakdownWard with a dash of ObliviousWard thrown in for spice. RepressWard, too.

I'm glad you are enjoying Marcus. Jasper has a man-crush on him. Totally. If they made warlord playing cards, Jasper would consider Marcus to be his prized one above Alexander the Great. And I suspect you are most definitely right about Marcus' plans. You'll find out about them in the next chapter(s).

Antibiotics are wonderful things and I am on the mend, thank you. :) The evil overlord thing went around by email and I never forgot it. So when thinking of Marcus of course I had to google it. And lo and behold, it exists still. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Working on the next installment.

Thanks so much for reviewing, making me laugh, and supporting my story. Jugurtha is blowing kisses at you.

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Well hello there MsLessa!

I am delighted to hear that in a story of this length, I've managed to keep you engaged. :) This has been a learning experience for me. This chapter in particular was hard to write. Thanks so much for giving me feedback and support. :) I've included a new picture for you. :)

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Hi there MsLessa!

What would be the fun in killing Edward. Then he would be dead. For good. :) I think that you might want to re-read the chapter scene with Mrs. Correlli with the following thought in mind. Edward is what we call an unreliable narrator. Just because he says something happened doesn't mean it meant what he thought it did. We've seen that several times - like that whole falling in love with Bella dealio. With Mrs. Corelli she's an administrator. And she's been watching Bella waste away for months fretting over her. And all of a sudden the girl disappears and her Dad keeps writing notes saying she's ill and now she shows back up in school still looking like death warmed over and that mute Cullen kid mortifies her in front of the entire school. Mrs. Corelli was amazed the kid spoke for one thing, but she also was terrified when she heard Bella had a heart condition - a serious one. She's afraid that Romeo could kill Bella from stress. So she tries to give Bella a sense of control in her life. Mrs. Corelli figures that Edward never talks in the first place, so her telling him that he can only talk to Bella once a day instead of punishing him, will actually encourage him to open his mouth and say something constructive and thought out. And if Bella answers? Then they can talk. But she felt she needed to do a bark is worse than it's bite kind of punishment. Edward's parents played along with it to remind their son that he has to blend in with the humans and if he acts out and can't control himself - and they know Bella is his weakness - then he won't be able to hang with the humans. That's the message they were trying to send to him. And it was a step forward for Carlisle and Esme because they've coddled Edward, treating him like he's a 17-year old when he's over a hundred. Mind you, Edward manipulated them into doing it, but still. And Mrs. Corelli has no way of knowing that they need to be close to each other and Edward has never been the type to plaster himself against Bella in public in front of others - at night is another story entirely - but he's proper. So him moving a few feet away from her in a room is not going to lessen the healing effects she has on him. The purpose of this chapter was to set up the next - to show that Bella is not passive any longer. I wanted to have a confrontation between the two of them that would spark them into talking to each other. And it made sense to have Edward because of the mate bond that is trying to work, becoming emotional about Bella's welfare and blurt something out completely forgetting that whole tact and diplomacy is best maintained with silence on my part rule he's lived by for decades. I also wanted to highlight the conflict that Bella has. There's no such thing as a vampire with a disability in the immortal aristocratic world. Not that they know about Emmett because the Cullens did not associate with the aristocracy. So now you have the problem of Bella. She's got all these immortals that are checking her out trying to wheedle their way into her life and yet at the same time they are looking at her like she's weak not only because she's not an immortal, but because she's a flawed human with a damaged brain. In their minds that makes them incredulous that Arria didn't just kill the girl to hide the family shame. Arria did not want to turn Bella precisely because of this. She did not want people looking down on her child. Edward mentioning she has a heart condition in public in front of the aristocracy gives them ammunition against her. And it angers her because she had tried talking to Edward earlier about some pretty hard subjects and this is what it gets her. While he's had a fumble with Bella, Edward has also done some huge growth in terms of how he sees himself in relation to his family in this chapter. He has always hid his expanded abilities out of fear that he needed to spy on his family to make sure they didn't want to make him leave. So here he sees Jasper with a knife flying in the air, and Edward actually is willing to sacrifice his secret to save his brother that he acknowledges that he loves. And he holds back not because he's being selfish, but because he realizes that he needs to also respect his brother, and allow him to handle his family business in private and to take care of himself. Jasper would have been irritated had Edward gotten involved. So here's Edward who thinks he knows more than everyone else in the world. Except of course for Marcus, actually treating his brother with love and respect. That was huge. I also wanted you to see just how Evil Maria was because she's coming and she's gunning for them all. I hope that answered your question. I'm not into needless torture or angst, and I hope you gain a better understanding of what my goals were. I'm still learning this whole writing business. If you have any other questions, please feel free to PM me. And thanks for the feedback, you have some serious funny business ahead. I'm giving you a teaser of the snarky summary:

Oh heck, let’s see what Mrs. Corelli’s diary has to say:

There are days I love my job and days I want to cry. Poor, poor Bella Swan. One of the Cullen kids – the one that looks like the love child of a tall thin version of Silent Bill, Bob, Bubba, whatever the character’s name is and Howdy Doody– flipped out in the cafeteria and all but chased her with a handful of pills she has to take. The entire school got to hear from him a reminder of how thin she is and how sick she’s been. She certainly looked like she was begging the ground to swallow her whole on the spot. So I dragged her and Mr. Would-Be Boyfriend and his brother into my office. Then I find out she’s got a heart condition. Poor thing looked like she was going to die in the chair in my office. The Cullens have never been troublemakers – although I’ve got my eye on that Jasper. He looks like he’s been around the barn a time or two and way too innocent. Which clearly means he’s up to something. He might allegedly be dating his adopted sister, but he’s been all but smoldering looking at some of the Eurotrash new students. So I bellowed at Cullen jr. about his oafish ways. Kid never speaks anyway so I limited him to talking to Bella once a day. Seeing as he never speaks, it might actually encourage the dope to say something meaningful. I hope this makes her feel like she’s got some kind of control in her life. Three more months and then I don’t have to chant my daily prayer about how seeing as I’m an administrator and all I can’t kill that bitch Lauren Mallory with a Jimmy Choo heel through her heart and burn her at the stake. I am professional. I am professional. I am professional. Fuck it, I’m totally making a voodoo doll of that bitch. I am professional. I am professional.

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Hi there MsLessa!

Hon, I'm sitting here getting all misty-eyed, brushing away tears of joy from reading your review. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your lovely words, and for supporting my writing. :) You seriously made my day. Send me some ideas for what you'd like to see as a one-shot and I'll see what I can do. I do have another story in the works - it's a short sick satire called the Stench Wars. Kind of CC AU. I plan on taking a bit of a rest before I start working on it, but it's already in a complete draft form. 

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lol Thank you :)