"This is agonizing! I shouldn't be here!" Emmett snarled, moving up and down the path in quick twitches and jolting stops. "I should be up on the front lines to make sure that none of those flea factories goes crazy!"

His mind flashed only Rosalie as he passed by me anxiously for the sixth time. Pacing was definitely not normal Emmett behavior. I didn't have to read his mind to know that it had everything to do with the fact that he was here on a narrow deer trail as far away from the action as he could be, playing babysitter to me, while Rosalie was at least a mile further into the woods alongside Edward, Carlisle, Esme, and about twenty wolves, and right in the middle of a supernatural meeting of the minds.

"Calm down, Emmett," Alice admonished. "You're basically in the thick of it anyway. What has happened that Bella hasn't relayed?" Her eyes darted nonchalantly in my direction. "So far, I haven't heard anything that would require your life saving comedic relief skills, but if it were absolutely necessary, I'm sure that either Edward or Jacob would be happy to relay one of your terrible jokes to the other side."

Jacob snorted an approval, and I saw Edward smirk through several sets of wolf eyes. Emmett gave a perturbed sigh and resumed pacing, his thoughts turbulent. I frowned and focused on the conversation happening a mile away. In truth, I was trying very hard not to read Emmett's mind. It seemed that a good part of his anxiety tonight had less to do with the meeting between the two paranormal superpowers in Forks, and more to do with a certain confirmed rendevous with Rosalie later that night that was now looking more and more impossible by the minute. Still, Emmett's mind dove into his own lascivious memory tank every now and then as if he were making a list for later, making me wish for some sort of adult filter on my own mind reading abilities. I wondered how Edward dealt with so many sexual fantasies in so many heads and made a mental note to ask him about it later.

"Are the other two back yet?" Alice asked. She was frustrated too. She had agreed to stay with Emmett and Jasper to babysit me not because I had needed another security guard, but out of her desire to do something more practical than simply reaffirming previous visions of doom. If there was a fight coming tonight between the wolves and her family, Alice's powers were useless, but she could still see whether or not I was on the verge of a full-on newborn vamp attack and stop it in its tracks. That was something tactical…something productive...and yet it was still only babysitting.

"Not yet," I replied. I turned toward Jacob and tried to focus on his thoughts. They were more difficult to hear in his wolf form, jumbled…almost wild, but the link between him and the other wolves was strong, and if I concentrated hard enough, I could hear the thoughts of every one of them through Jacob's mind alone. "They're still patrolling the southeast."

"What good is a wolf patrol right now?" Emmett chimed in again. "Do they think the Volturi are coming for them tonight?"

It was meant to be sarcastic, but his imagination created a line of pale figures in the treeline, silent and smoke like as they descended on the sleeping residents of the twin towns beyond. I cringed, and Jasper sent a calming wave in my direction.

Specifically, Brady and Seth had been instructed by their angry alpha to be on the lookout for any humans that could accidentally wander into my new sense range. My newborn status was the primary reason for a meeting so far out in the middle of nowhere. It was in Cullen territory, according to the treaty, but in National forest according to the state of Washington, and as far away from any towns or humans as we could possibly be on such short notice. Everyone in the clearing a mile up the deer trail had either witnessed or heard the tale of my first hunting experience, culminating in my nearly killing Jacob, and no one was interested in testing my waning willpower again near Forks or LaPush. No one among the wolf party seemed interested in donating their wolf blood either, and thus had decided that I needed to be as far away from them as possible at the moment. I had agreed to stay back about a mile and a half, which seemed to be about the distance it would take for Jasper, Alice, and Emmett to stop me if my new, baser nature took complete control.

Whether from a lingering sense of personal sacrifice, or because of a direct order from Sam, Jacob had agreed to stay near me in wolf form, allowing me to use both his thoughts and Edward's to relay everything that was said in the meeting to all of my altruistic entourage. That was, of course, only if that entourage would stop behaving like a group of impatient toddlers. I sighed, and focused once again.

"…killed vampires for centuries before your family came here," Sam was explaining. "It's why we all went through the transformation in the first place. It's what we're made to do! We wouldn't even be wolves in the first place if you leeches hadn't decided to stay here," His thoughts curved bitterly toward Emily. The memory of his own new claws tearing at her face tinted every word he spoke with disgust. "Each of us had lives that would have been much easier without this burden, and it wouldn't be our burden to bear if there weren't still vampires in the area to protect our people from, so don't try to blame us for following our instinct and chasing that blond monster off of our land."

"Were you chasing her off of your land…or hunting her?" Edward. The question was unassuming enough, but it seemed to catch quite a few of the wolves off guard. I heard the uneasy shuffling of paws through Edward's ears.

"Is there a difference?" Sam replied, unapologetic.

"There was to Irina," Carlisle. "She had come at our invitation for the wedding, of course, but also to understand the creatures who had, in her own mind, murdered a being for which she had great affection and instead found herself…hunted down by those who had done it. Can you understand her hesitation? Her bias?"

"Murdered?" Sam repeated. I could feel the danger in this line of conversation without needing to be an empath. So could Edward. Sam's human form shimmered and he came the closest he had come that night to giving way to his wolf form. His pack responded in kind, all hackles up and all ears pushed back in aggression. "You can't be talking about the one we hunted down in your clearing and stopped before he could tear Bella to pieces. Because I don't have any memory of a murder in that situation. As I recall, it was a murderer against a girl who had been abandoned by the monsters who'd gotten her into that mess in the first place." His expression calmed then, and contorted into a gloating smirk. "I guess you're lucky that he wasn't as immortal as he thought he was."

Edward bowed his head in guilty assent at Sam. "You will never understand how much I regret my decision to abandon Bella," he said, and suddenly seeing the black memories of that time without me from his perspective for the first time, I thought that perhaps I could begin to understand. "We…I am eternally grateful to all of you for everything that you did to protect her from what I had exposed her to. Laurent is included in that statement." He looked into Sam's eyes, but he was really seeing Jacob through them. "I do not lament his death, nor do I feel that it was unjustified. You saved Bella's life…and my life in the process, however valuable that may seem to you."

They waited for a moment in silence as a reluctant acceptance washed over Sam and seemed to stabilize him, and then Carlisle stepped forward. "I apologize, Sam. My timing was perhaps not the most prudent, but my intentions were good. It behooves us all to understand the mindset of those who will be coming for us, and they believe that you…"

"We don't care about what behooves us," Sam snapped. "We didn't come here to understand the vampire mindset. We just want to know what the psychic one saw, when they're supposed to come, and what we have to do to stop it."

There was a moment of frustrated silence as all lupine heads turned expectantly up the trail in our direction.

And so it begins, Alice thought with regret. Edward stood fast.

"You know that your futures as wolves are too uncertain to see clearly," he insisted. "What she saw of you and your pack can never be completely reliable." It was a weak argument, considering what Jacob had already told them, and Edward knew it.

"Then let's pretend that you believe that whatever vision Jacob heard you talking about in your living room is pretty damn reliable," Sam replied coolly. "And let's pretend that all the dead wolves he heard you mention were us." He stepped boldly toward Edward, challenging him. "Now why don't you pretend that this is the reason we're all stuck here in the middle of the woods together right now, and just get the psychic to tell us what we came here to find out."

Sam's form shimmered once, slowly, and then was steady. With a reluctant sigh, Edward nodded.

"Alice?"

Beside me, Alice shrugged and took off down the trail toward the waiting wolves.

"Great," Emmett scoffed, moving into the position that Alice had just left vacant. "Everyone has a reason to be on the front lines but me." He glanced over at Jasper. "You want to head down there too, just in case her little death omens freak out a few wolves?"

A calm smile played at the ends of Jasper's mouth. "Oh, Alice can hold her own." His eyes fell to me and then toward a place through the trees where Forks lay. "I'm right where I need to be."

I smiled back at him gratefully and focused in again as Alice entered the circle of wolves and began her tale. The wolves listened with an intensity bordering on reverence. As I listened to their pack mind, it began to come alive, thrumming simultaneously through every line of thought each time that they sensed the danger to their loved ones growing until there was so much sound and vibration inside their collective brains that I couldn't make out whether they believed in the premonitions or not. Alice finished her confession wearily. The silence in the clearing when she finished should have been palpable. Instead, for me, it was buzzing with disbelief, alarm and indecision. Sam stared, motionless, at Alice for a long moment before finally asking the most prominent question in the pack-mind.

"How long have you been seeing us dead?"

"Not long," she had replied. "I saw the first visions of our deaths just before Bella was…" She had glanced back down the trial toward where she knew Jacob would be. "Just before the battle."

Her response was believable enough reflected through pack mind, and only Edward and myself were able to see it for the lie that it was. I frowned at Jasper, Alice's permanent partner in crime, just as his eyes shifted sideways in an attempt to avoid my inquiry. Alice had been omitting information in her version of things to come, true, but now she was outright lying. To the pack—that much was forgivable, given the unpredictable state of every wolf in the clearing—but she had been lying to me this whole time as well. Exasperated, I tried to probe her thoughts, but her curtain of Cubs players had come down once again like a vice to shut me out, accompanied by one word, clear and firm.

Later.

"And how many times have you seen it since then?" Sam's voice, insistent, brought me back reluctantly to the task at hand. "How many different versions of the same end?"

Alice flinched. "Four," she answered.

"And it changes every time? Whenever a new element is introduced?"

"That's what I said," Alice responded, her patience growing thin.

"So look again," Sam commanded. Through his eyes I saw both Edward and Alice tense.

"Excuse me?" Rosalie intervened. "Does Alice look like someone that you can force to obey orders? Or have you just become so accustomed to having a group full of lackies to do whatever you want that you've forgotten common courtesy?"

Sam looked simultaneously angry and taken aback. He managed to control both emotions and began again, as amicably as his own unsteady frame would allow.

"You said that it changed with every choice we made," he explained, as if speaking to a child. "You've made the choice to include us now. A new element has been introduced, and I'd like to know how our involvement has changed the outcome. Could you look again?" His mouth shrank into a tense line.

"Please," he added for good measure, and Rosalie looked entirely too content at the tension this courtesy caused him.

Alice hesitated and Carlisle stepped forward in her defense. "As I've mentioned before…Alice cannot see our futures when your pack is involved," he insisted. "Your decisions, as well as your own lives, hang too much in the balance to acquiesce to premonition."

"And yet she saw us all dead right alongside you in her last vision," Sam insisted. "So I don't see what we lose trying again to see if that has changed."

Easy for you to say, Alice sulked. You don't have to live the deaths of everyone over again.

Carlisle and Edward exchanged worried glances before turning to Alice.

"It's your call," Edward said.

Alice sighed deeply and gave Edward an apologetic look. "Bella, if you've really got my talent, this is going to hurt you as much as it hurts me. Jasper…you know what to do." Beside me, Jasper gave a quick nod and assumed what I could only guess was the best on-guard stance that one could take against a newborn vampire.

"Hang on tight," Emmett whispered, joining Jasper. I nodded shakily at both of them and I did hang on, my hands grasping one shoulder of each of my vampire guardians.

Do it, Jasper thought. Edward relayed his message, and then Alice's mind was searching…and mine went with her.

She was lost suddenly in a blur of color—the greens and greys of an Olympic evening, but the most prominent of all of them was still the deep crimson of blood. This time, it danced and flowed in swirls, mixing with ocean waves as dozens of corpses strewn across First Beach were covered by the incoming tide. Wolves phased and unphased. Humans known and unknown, and as I stood, feeling the surf around my own ankles, a tiny bundle of rags caught my eye. A body, too small to be anything but a young child, torn and bloody and reaching out toward the crushed form of a wolf—chocolate brown, with a face that would have been lighter, had it not been stained with his own life blood. Quil and Claire, both seeking the other even in their last moments.

The vision shifted then, to Forks, and instead of filling my own mind with more corpses, Alice's vision remained frighteningly empty. There was no blood. No bodies. No burning houses or shattered windows. This time, there was nothing. No humans, dead or alive, and no pyres to mark the passing of the Cullen family. The school was empty, the hospital abandoned. It was as if the entire population of Forks—anyone who had ever had contact with the Cullens, I supposed with dread—had simply been wiped off the face of the earth.

And Charlie?

The thought of my father was strong enough to pull me away from Alice's mind. Where was Charlie? Had he been mysteriously removed with the other humans of Forks, or slaughtered alongside the pack?

And suddenly, I was trapped on a new, dreadful vision path…my own this time. By thinking of my father's future, I had triggered a premonition of my own and now, I was about to discover exactly what punishment had befallen Charlie for having a daughter that had broken the Volturi rules.

With a start, I opened my eyes onto LaPush once again, far from the beach, but no more immune to the carnage. And there, on Billy's porch, lying beside Billy's empty, overturned wheelchair, was Charlie…not dead, but somehow so much worse. They had left him alive, his stomach open, and his intestines spilling out onto the old porch boards. As I watched, he lifted one arm and tried to pull himself onto his side, but even that movement caused him to scream out in pain…and someone else was screaming with him.

Not dead! I thought. Torn open because of me! Left to suffer for hours in agony because of me!

Some part of me recognized that the person that was screaming alongside Charlie was me. Some part felt the swell of panic that rose inside me like one of the bloodstained waves washing First Beach and its residents slowly away. There was even a minute piece left of me that could sense the wave of pure emotion that I sent out in reaction…watch it flow like an impact tremor in every direction. Jasper tried to take it in, but it barreled through him and hit the group of unsuspecting wolves a mile away at full speed.

"Jasper!" Carlisle hissed as all the wolves began to snarl in earnest. "What are you doing?"

"It's not me!" Jasper replied, his voice straining. "It's Bella…I can't stop it!"

And then everything around me disappeared again. Alice's vision…my vision…my two vampire security guards—all gone and I was suddenly racing into the forest, not inside myself, but watching myself from a distance as I ran, frenzied through the trees. Toward town. Toward Charlie. Toward all of those strangely fascinating beating hearts…

"Edward, now…" Alice's voice cut through the air. I heard it only as a distant whisper in the wind around me. A vision. It was only a vision. I had not escaped my guard. I was not on the way toward committing my first murders. My father was not dying on a porch in a puddle of his own….

Oh, but he would be. And oh, but the sight of the blood. So much…so freely flowing and so warm still as he melted away from this world…

"Jasper! Edward!" Alice's voice. Louder now. "We're losing her!"

Then they all seemed to react in choregraphed succession. Edward disappeared from the front line, followed quickly by Esme. Emmett and Jasper both moved instinctively between me and the path to Forks, which also happened to be the path between me and Jacob. I realized with only the mildest of insult that even my own positioning that night had been manipulated to avoid any casualties should my new savage nature win over, which, it seemed, was exactly what was about to happen.

Torn open!

Edward's thoughts echoed on the trail, growing more insistent as he approached me, but still too far away.

Splayed out like a dessert tray!

My mind was racing, nearly gone completely as I grasped both my brother in-laws like a lifeline. They held fast.

For me to find! For me to see! For me to…drink!

And that was all the further my sanity would carry me. My mouth fell open, and a scream like nothing I had ever heard before emerged. I tore forward toward Jacob and Forks, and I would have broken free of both of my guardians, had Edward not arrived at exactly that moment, his mind full of a cold, quiet calm that I could not push away. He took me in his arms as the strange mental sedative took affect and was carrying me away before I even realized that I was no longer in any of the three visions that had pushed me over the edge.

You're here, he was repeating again and again inside his head. You're here. You're unbreakable. You're still my Bella…

But just before we disappeared down the trail together, I looked back over his shoulder, and saw the shock and disgust in Jacob's wolf eyes. He was seeing a monster. The image was there in the forefront. I was unbreakable, yes, but I was no longer Bella, and that thought hurt me more than it had a right to.

My lips tried to form a weak, reassuring smile, and then Edward and I were heading away, further into the woods with Esme trailing behind to serve as my second guard and Jasper and Emmett headed toward the front line with Jacob on their tail, the picture of me uncontrolled and blood-thirsty painting his mind with the kind of revulsion that would now taint my memories forever.

The moon was sinking in the sky when the three of us finally entered the far end of the Cullens' yard, emerging from the forest like ghosts—mother, son, and new bride, all freshly energized and wild from a second hunt, their eyes a satiated gold, and mine a calm crimson. It was late now…almost morning. We had been in the old growth forest for an hour or more. I had spent the first twenty minutes of that running—just slipping wildly through the undergrowth, tiny upshoots whipping my face and arms and leaving nothing but a whiff of pine or sap. I had been fighting the irrational desire to turn around and head straight into Forks, right up my street and into my house, where my father no doubt was still awake, waiting for news of his daughter's death. How had I forgotten about him?

"How are you feeling?" Edward was striding beside me now. The apprehension in the aura around him took nothing away from his angelic features. For a moment, I marveled at the fact that his beauty could leave me breathless even when I didn't need to breath.

"I'm fine," I assured him. "I just needed…

Blood.

"…a moment." I flinched.

"You showed an amazing amount of control," Esme reassured in the most motherly tone I had heard in quite some time. Renee had never quite been able to come up with a full maternal mode in all of the time that she was raising me, and Esme's ability to adapt it to such a new addition to her family made me understand why she had been the one to accompany us into the forest again tonight. Mothering was a superpower all of its own.

"Thank you," I said, struggling for convincing smile. "But I've wasted enough time. We need to be back with the wolves."

Not anymore, came the response, not in voice, but in thought. I turned and saw Jasper and Carlisle standing together on the front porch, silhouetted in the light that poured out of the open front door, and I wondered how I had not heard their thoughts before seeing them.

The meeting is over. The wolves have gone back to LaPush.

"Where are the others?" I asked, disappointed.

"Alice is inside scouring her wardrobe for clothes you can't destroy," Jasper replied, eyeing my sap stained jeans. His lips tensed slightly as he continued. "Emmett and Rosalie went upstairs."

"It ended that badly?" I asked nervously.

Edward chuckled as his hand slipped into my own. "I'm not sure anything could have ended badly enough for Emmett to remain outside with us tonight," he said, and the images he sent to confirm that were graphic enough to make me wish I hadn't asked. It seemed that Emmett had gotten what he'd wanted the whole night after all. I cringed. Edward laughed, and his breath brushed my neck as he pulled me closer. "There's where that blush should have gone," he said, and kissed me just behind my ear in a way that left no doubt that vampires were still able to produce goosebumps.

Jasper and Carlisle shifted awkwardly, suddenly all too acutely aware that they were in the presence of newlyweds…a fact that was only now also dawning on me. I had to bite my tongue to stop my own sudden animalistic desire from showing. Edward felt that shift as well, and it was only with the greatest of effort that he managed to pull his eyes away and focus on his father and brother.

"What was decided in our absence?" he asked, his voice only slightly lower than usual.

"Nothing really," Jasper replied, distracted. Thoughts were flying through his mind at break-neck speed. Memories. Strategies. Lists and lists of possibilities in…out…around. "The wolves want to fight."

"But you don't?" It was a question asked out loud for courtesy's sake. Edward could already see the answer forming in his brother's mind, as could I.

"It's an option," Jasper responded. "Perhaps the only plausible one." He frowned and exhaled, offering up his mind to be poked and prodded by his omniscient little brother as if it were as common a task as basic hygiene. He glanced at me almost as an afterthought, and shrugged, offering me the same. With some effort, I focused on his thoughts, where options seemed to be lined up like soldiers waiting to be called.

There had been talk near the beginning of the Cullens leaving Forks altogether and moving elsewhere. Carlisle had been undead for a long time, and had, through a series of judicious investments and a patience that only an immortal could afford to have, acquired a number of comfortable properties in several different states and countries. Their ability to move at any moment was more a necessity than an option, and they had been pushing the limits of human believability as it was by remaining here. Carlisle had assured the wolves that he would agree to move across the country, or even the world if he thought that it would solve their current situation.

Surprisingly, it had been Sam that had put an end to that option, bringing up what all the vampires present had already known—that given Caius's history as a hunter, he would not be able to leave a known wolf pack alone. It was commonly agreed that if the Cullen's left, it would simply give the Volturi two targets to cut down instead of one, and make it that much easier to end both groups. That seemed to end talk of a separation of the two groups. Still, places and possibilities…moving companies and dark, back alley passport forgers flitted through Jasper's mind, fell into line, and were and were stored away for later examination.

The talk among the wolves had then turned to negotiation. It was the first tactic that had presented itself in my own mind as a solution…the only plausible way to avoid the deaths that I had already spent entirely too much of my new vampire life seeing, but it seemed to be the least plausible option to both wolves and vampires. Sam's pack had shown their unease at the idea of a meeting with the Volturi from the very beginning, and Jasper seemed to have agreed with them with surprisingly little persuasion. The list of negotiation tactics that fell into his mental deck of possible futures was surprisingly small compared to the other options.

"Wait!" I protested. "Why is negotiation such a terrible option? We've done it before. All of us has been face to face with the Volturi more than once and come out of it unharmed. Why not now?"

Jasper shifted awkwardly and his thoughts seemed to jerk away for a moment. "Without the ability to see what they will do, the LaPush wolves would not be trustworthy enough in negotiations," he said simply, and as I frowned and attempted to probe his thought further, he released a wave of frustration in my direction. I snarled and took it in as best I could, but it had the affect that he had intended. I lost his thread of strategy for a moment. It was only a moment, but it was enough for him to clamp down on his own thoughts. Jasper, it seemed, had spent way too much time becoming an expert at keeping certain family members out of his mind.

"Then we negotiate without the wolves," I insisted.

"No Bella," Alice said, appearing as a sudden silhouette in the light of the doorway holding a grey cotton blouse in one hand. "We won't be negotiating this time." Her voice was steady, certain, but her eyes reflected a strange weary glow that I hadn't seen there before. "Not with the wolves nor without. We've exhausted that option, it seems."

Edward frowned at this. Alice, ever the pragmatist, would not have been so firmly against any alternative measures without proof of its futility.

"What did you see then?" he asked, moving instinctively closer to me, and taking my hand. He never had to ask, of course. Now more than ever, I saw the ease with which he could slip into people's minds, and because of this, I now understood how grand a gesture it was to never enter a family member's mind without their permission.

Alice sighed, and let her latest trek into the future wash around us both. I felt Edward's hand tighten around my own as we found ourselves flying through Alice's memories and tumbling once again into the sitting room of the Volturi. Unlike the last time we were there, however, the pomp and circumstance reserved for special occasions was missing, as were all of the vampires of the Volturi entourage. Even Marcus was gone as Alice's vision lurched forward and two familiar figures came into view. Aro, skin translucent, dark hair covering half of his face, leaned in confidence toward his cohort—Caius by the fall of his snow white hair. The latter was shaking with what could only have been emotion since the cold had stopped affecting him eons ago. His voice was low, but indignant.

"Wolves, Aro! Of all of the creatures in heaven and Earth that your pets could have joined with, it had to be wolves!" Caius's flawless white features were curled into a snarl as he leaned back into his chair in frustration. "And an entire town of humans knows of them…accepts them! Treats them as if they were simple mortals! You of all people know that this must end."

"Indeed, a bond between humans and werewolves is unthinkable," Aro acquiesced. "But, after all, they are only humans, and incapable of thought beyond the reach of their own basic emotion." At this, Caius made a low hissing sound between clenched teeth. "But an agreement…a PACT…between our kind and theirs is another problem altogether."

"And all influenced by a human child!" Caius continued. "Honestly, Aro, why you let her pass through our doors alive in the first place eludes me entirely."

Aro's milky red eyes were distant, the secrets held in them almost tangible. "I saw enough in her future to spare her human life. She promised to be a formidable asset and I would not want to damage her as an immortal. There are several in Carlisle's little cabinet of curiosities that I would like to have with us. Strange that these…wolves were left entirely out of the vision I was given. Still, with their addition, I'm afraid I'm forced to consider a more…medieval approach to solving this problem.

Caius looked taken aback. "Medieval? In this age of constant vigilance? Surely you understand where the fault would fall if dozens…"

Aro's hand came up to stop Caius's speech. "A consideration, of course," he reassured. "I've decided nothing that their Alice will be able to see. Not until they…"

And as suddenly as it had begun, the memory of her vision had ended, and I found myself next to Edward on the front porch.

"He knows we're watching him then," Edward said.

"What medieval approach is he talking about?" I asked. "Why would it keep us from negotiating?"

Carlisle glanced guiltily at both Edward and I. "Please understand that my discovery of his use of such techniques during negotiation was one of the reasons that I chose to part ways with the Volturi so long ago. It is grave enough for us to rethink any strategy we must take with them going forward…including negotiation, and the reason that we could not end our meeting with a clear plan of attack."

"What approach are they talking about?" I repeated, trying to show the same amount of restraint as Edward toward looking into the minds of family members, but failing.

Carlisle shifted, and his gaze became a grimace. "It's children," he said. "A wall of dozens of human children, all glamoured and kept to be used as…motivation, should the negotiations not go the way the Volturi choose…or to lay down their lives should whoever the Volturi face be inclined to attack though the shield."

Edward hissed in disgust as an image appeared in his mind. A work of art that had adorned the landing of the main stairway into the Volturi receiving chamber. A painting…Byzantine, too ancient even to have perspective. A figure, almost heavenly…surrounded by children. I watched his memory of the painting transform as he added this new knowledge—noticed the subtle crimson in the divine figure's eyes; the blank stares on the faces of the children around him.

Christ, they laud their human sacrifice in plain view!

"How have we never heard of this before? How is it that no one in the vampire world has heard of such techniques?"

Carlisle blanched. "It is very much what Aro described…medieval. It's been centuries since they used them. Long before I was turned, according to their histories. I only came across it in my studies. There are those who possibly remember the Volturi using children as shields…most likely, there are a few from the Romanian covens that have survived that could testify but the Volturi's reach is far, and there are very few who would speak out against them nowadays."

He paused, face full of resignation. "I can't be absolutely sure that using children is the medieval approach that Aro is considering, but I am certain of how well he knows me. He knows the aversion that every member of my family has for the taking of human life…and after Alice offered her hand at our last meeting, Aro has seen every last weakness that he can use against us."

I sighed. "So where does that leave us?"

"We're working on it," Jasper replied. "It seems that with or without negotiation, whatever confrontation we have with the Volturi at this moment will carry with it the deaths of dozens of children. I'm trying to find an alternative to that, but…I'm struggling." He glanced over at Alice, who took his had sympathetically.

As I watched, string after string of causes and affects filed through his mind like cards, being archived or eliminated at a speed that I had never thought possible, even for a vampire. I realized that Jasper was compiling a list of possibilities to pass through Alice's potential futures, and I suddenly understood how they had fallen so easily together. The strategy and the possibility. They were perfect for each other.

"What would happen if only a few of us went?" I suggested. "Not to fight, but only to negotiate? Straight into the Volturi lair?"

Beside me, Edward tensed…stopped moving completely. "No."

"But if we don't pose a threat…"

"No!" he replied, and his tone left no room for compromise.

"It is also a possibility," Jasper replied as if he hadn't heard Edward at all. "Everything is at the moment."

I nodded.

"It's a discussion for a later time," Edward interjected, and took my hand, a little too tightly for comfort. I imagined that he would have crushed my mortal hand.

"Would you walk with me?" he asked. He was dead serious now, and so I nodded, grinning a little and squeezing back in the hopes that a friendly competition would change his darkening mood.

"Hey!" Alice called as Edward led me toward the treeline. She caught up quickly and slipped the shirt into the hand that was not occupied by Edward. "Could you at least try to keep this one clean?"

I rolled my eyes and conceded. What else was there to do when one was up against Alice?

Edward walked with me in silence for a bit, clearing the thoughts of others from his mind, and, I was relieved to discover, clearing them from mine as well. I watched in fascination, as each was pushed easily away or filed in one place or another inside a mind that was just as fascinating as the owner of it. I stared at him as his golden eyes wandered, completely lost in his complex internal dance. After some time, he stopped and turned toward me. I looked around and found that we had reached the far end of the property, marked by a series of outbuildings that separated the tamer, groomed trees from the more savage undergrowth of untouched National Forest. In any normal household, they would have been a line of sheds that held machinery and tools to carry out the proper landscaping of such a large, well-manicured property. In the Cullen household, however, it looked like a line of small, elegant cabins. I gazed up at Edward, confused, and found that he was staring down at me with an intensity that I had never seen before.

"Don't go," he said.

"What?"

"I don't need to read your mind to know your heart. Your self-sacrificing nature is one of the reasons that you led a human life of constant injury…and one of the reasons that I fell so deeply in love with you. You think that you can avoid Alice's visions if you go alone to the Volturi…that they won't find a need to sacrifice children if it is only you."

I bit my lip guiltily, but said nothing. How could he know so much of my soul when my mind was the only one closed to him completely?

"It won't work," he continued. "It won't change anything except the fact that you will be gone, so please stop considering it as an option."

I sighed and pulled away from him slightly. "Edward, you saw the vision as well as I did. You saw the options and possibilities going through Jasper's head just now. Any other action would result in a lot of people dying!"

"And this choice would result in you dying!" His voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. His anger was too strong…too certain.

"You don't know that," I replied weakly. "Alice hasn't seen that."

His eyes were shifting now, to the cabins, to the forest, back again…anywhere but to my face. I tried to think of a time when I had seen Edward react like this before and came up blank. "You are too important to me to rely on a vision that may or may not come until it is too late to change. You can't go. I won't let you."

My vampire reactions were too swift even for my own better judgement, and the laugh had left my mouth even before my conscience could snuffle it.

"I'd like to see you stop me now," came the retort, and I immediately regretted it. Edward's head fell into his hands, his fingers trembling. For the first time since I had seen him on the verge of causing his own death in Italy, he looked tired, exhausted even.

"No, I don't suppose I could anymore," he sighed. "I don't suppose I've earned the right to ask you anything after what you've been through in the past year because of me, but I'm asking you just the same." He crossed the space between us and pressed his lips to mine. His kiss was not gentle. Not careful, and suddenly, I was alive again, my imagined heart beating only for him in spite of my confusion. He broke the kiss with a visible effort.

"Please don't go."

My mind was clouded with the fog of his mouth on mine, and I was suddenly in no position to argue. I stepped toward him again, wrapping my arms around him, my fingers curling longingly into his hair. I had expected him to break away again, intent on his point, but instead, I felt him yield, pressing into my chest, his skin warmer than usual beneath his shirt. His lips grazed my forehead…my cheekbone.

"I don't want to lose you, Bella," he whispered, his breath tickling my ear. "I can't lose you, don't you understand that?" His eyes met mine again with an intensity that frightened me. "I only just got you, and I can't lose you now…not when we finally have forever."

I frowned. "But I thought you didn't want forever. You certainly took every measure to make sure that it didn't happen."

"I've always wanted forever with you," Edward insisted, undeterred. "My entire existence was treading carefully enough not to accidentally draw your blood. It was fighting off creatures, and natural dangers, and at times even everyday household items that threatened to kill you, for the sole purpose of having as much of a forever with you as I could preserve without stealing your soul. I couldn't justify my own selfishness for how much I wanted you. But I've always…always wanted you."

His hands slipped from my face to my shoulders, past my breasts gently, and came to rest on my waist as he studied me with longing. "And now I finally have you, and you can't do this! You can't take away our eternity…not even for something like this! If that has to be justified by my own self-indulgent influence, then so be it, but I need you to promise me that you will not go to the Volturi alone."

He paused, leaving me in stunned silence. This was not Edward…not poised, composed, always in control of everything Edward. Not my Edward, who would never have begged, but instead would have gone behind my back and undermined every attempt I made to sneak off without him. I had no idea how to react to this strange, vulnerable Edward.

"I…I don't understand," I managed. "You don't ask. You never ask. It's one of your most annoying traits."

His laugh came low and slow, but it was accompanied by that tantalizing crooked smile. "I thought after a while that you'd come to find it seductive," he admitted.

"Why change now?" I persisted, suddenly very aware of his body against mine in spite of everything that had occurred that day. Edward's abrupt bout of vulnerability was strangely seductive…in more ways than one. "Why no more stoics?"

One hand came up to my face again, fingertips sliding down past the curve of my jawbone. "Because you're mine now," he whispered, fitting his mouth to mine. I tasted pine and honey and blood…always blood…but something about the way he moved against me in that moment stirred an emotion in me that had nothing…and everything to do with hunger, and my body reacted instantly, melting into his. Pushing back against his lips and deepening the kiss. His mouth could not complete the explanation I had demanded, but his final thoughts came to me unhindered.

You're mine at last, and strong enough to be mine fully. And I have never wanted anyone or anything in this existence more than I want you now.

And then his hands were on me, no longer gentle, intent on their purpose. I felt them slip beneath my shirt and pause only momentarily to caress my breasts before they slipped to my back, pulling me tighter to him and deftly removing the upper half of my clothing. I sighed as my bra fell to the damp earth, leaving me naked to the night and distracted by a thousand new sensations. Edward paused then, and broke our kiss long enough to watch my reaction. Then his gaze slipped licentiously down the front of my body and his hands followed, slipping smoothly past the button of my pants…past the small line of satin below them.

"Mine," he repeated, out loud this time. I moaned and he stopped it with another kiss. Deep and full of a desire that I had never felt in him…had never been able to feel before my turning. He radiated his own strange heat as he slipped my pants off and began to fumble with his own belt, but his skin remained cold against me. I could have marveled endlessly at this strange contradiction, but as his bare thighs slipped against mine, I lost interest in conjecture, yielding to his desire instead.

Goosebumps rose at once where his hands touched my skin, and a flush of heat rushed up into my breasts as he picked me up effortlessly, and headed toward one of the cabins. I wrapped bare legs around his waist and let him take me, desire burning and heating my own cold skin. This was what I had been waiting for, what I had been meant for since that first kiss between a mortal and an immortal. I barely registered smooth painted walls, a window in the back with a picturesque view of old growth forest beyond, and a bed…oh, such a big, beautiful, advantageous bed.

Somewhere, there were vampires plotting the destruction of an entire town. Sometime in the future, hundreds would die, and it was all my fault. How could I be here, lying on a bed with a golden angel between my open legs and thinking only of my own desire to feel the full power of him inside me? How could he possibly make me forget all of the things that had happened…and would still happen in the short time that I had been immortal? I didn't think that was possible.

But then his mouth bent to mine once again and his hands glided to my breasts. He slipped into me, smooth and solid and no longer even the slightest bit cautious…with the sort of indefatigable joy that made me aware of exactly how long he had been waiting for this moment as well, and all thoughts of our uncertain futures faded away into insignificance. There was only him and me, and a rhythm that both of us were meant to meet together.

I could not say how long we moved together or how many times we parted, and then rejoined in tenderness or frantic passion. I could not tell if the night had passed into day, or if several days had melted away into our own frozen moments together, but at some point after our love had been spent, time did come back to us, and the memory of what we would soon have to do, and so we lay in the darkness, naked in each other's arms, holding off the future that would come for us in the morning.

"I won't go," I promised him. My voice sounded too loud in the silence of the cabin around us. Edward kissed my neck gently.

"I love you, Bella."

And as I lay in his arms, I knew that beyond a doubt.

Just a certainly as I knew that that love would be put to the ultimate test sometime around Christmas of this year.

It was September 3.