Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. It owns me. I have a collar and everything that says, "ashel-13, property of Twilight." It's weird, I know, but it feeds me well and cleans my cage so its fine by me.

SURPRISE!!! I know, I'm shocked too. But this is what happens when you finally get an idea. I have been so badly blocked with this story that I really just had to leave it until something came to me. AND IT DID! So I'm really excited that I have more direction in this story and I really liked this chapter.

This story is so different than any of my others. I hope you appreciate it's serious tone and the uniqueness of it. I feel I should try to write each of my stories differently to keep you guys from getting bored and to challenge my writing skills.

I would like to dedicate this to LIAD's number one fan, sanctuary-in-dreams, who got to read the chapter already. I hope you liked it.

Now, without waiting much longer (like the months while this sat on a shelf), I give you the three words that LIAD has not uttered in quite some time. ON WITH IT…

BPOV

The next month living with the Cullens had opened my eyes to what I had really wanted. I had yearned for the feeling of a family and though I thought I had had that with Aro, my creator and the rest of the Volturi, I was starting to realize that that was not what I had wanted and farther away from what I had hoped for.

While around the Cullens for the month I was granted, I felt nothing but love from them. Everything they would tell me and every activity we would do flood my senses with their undying love. They thought of me as a sister, and as a daughter, though I was neither of these things. I never thought I would ever be as close to them as they were to one another. They all shared a common thread that I had not….Carlisle.

Carlisle had changed each of them, none of them having the patience or practice to do so at the time. Some of them still doubted they would ever be able to generate the transformation for another themselves. When Rose had wanted to save Emmett for this death, she carried him to Carlisle and begged him to induce the venom that would lead to the change. He was what bound them all as a family.

I had been changed by someone else. Different venom flowed through my blood and that made me an outsider amongst outsiders. I had wondered, as Edward held me against his chest, if that made me any less 'good' then the rest of them. I thought it might. I had been having dreams lately.

They started only a few days after I had moved into the big, white, house and my belongings were carried to the black and gold bedroom I would be sharing with a special person. Two nights after my first hunt in Forks, two nights after I kicked Emmett's ass in hand to hand combat, the dreams came to me.

Edward and I had been lying in bed, and I had induced us both into sleeplike states. Carlisle had figured out, or had thought (it wasn't proven yet) that it we weren't really sleeping, but instead were in a state to be confused as so. When we 'slept' or eyes didn't close all the way and we never entered REM. But dreams still came to us, as if we had finally found a drug that may affect even vampires.

But while in whatever state it was we were in, I saw it. I saw everything. I was walking down the streets of Voltera alone, at midnight. The streets around me were empty and the night was silent, even to me. The lamp posts were lit, illuminating the square around me and the stars in the night sky shone more brightly than I had ever seen before. I became lost in them, not wanting to look away from the beauty I felt I hadn't seen in so long.

And then, a noise bounced off the ancient walls of stone and I spun around to find the cause, only to hear it echo off more walls making it impossible to see just where it had come from. But it didn't matter, all around me was empty.

"Bella…." A voice whispered against the wall of the city.

"Edward?" I called, feeling myself grow more and more afraid. I had my 'gifts' but I feared something catching me off guard like what had happened with Felix in the woods.

But he didn't answer and the tone in which my name had been said lacked the smooth and velvet sound that came from Edward's mouth when he spoke to me through love and admiration.

The sound of soft and even footsteps came from my right and by the time I jerked that way, I saw the entire Cullen family standing against a building with gentle smiles on their faces. They're clothing each fit their own personal style, but every article was bleach white and a glow seemed to illuminate from their skin.

I couldn't help but smile back as I examined each of their loving and gentle faces. But something seemed a little different about them. Perhaps it was the white, shimmering wings of angels that had been placed on their backs. Even while not in a dream like state, I had always thought of the family as angels.

I stood facing the caring family when I heard the rough clopping of unsteady feet at the back of me. Long longer paying attention to the family that had taken me in and cared for me as one of their own, I turned my back to find Cassius, Marcus, and Felix standing with Aro at the head of the group. They too smiled. But their faces held no love or devotion. No care or gentleness. They didn't smile…no, they sneered at me.

In Aro's right hand was a whip dangling down his side and coiled precariously on the ground. I was standing in the middle of my friends and what looked to be my enemy. It was strange that I had never referred to my creator and his minions as my enemy. I suppose some things just don't hit you until your subconscious takes over.

I looked between the two groups of people and there was no question as to which side I would chose. Between the two groups, there was one that contained the person I couldn't bear to live without and that made leaving impossible.

With a smile, I turned towards the family I had always wanted and took one step forward. Before I could lift my foot to take another step, something wrapped itself around my foot and pulled, making me lose balance and fall onto my face.

On the ground, and on my stomach, I turned to find Aro's hand outstretched and I followed his hand to the handle of the whip, down to the tightened leather that lay on the ground over the cracks of the ancient stone, to find it wrapped around my ankle.

I looked back to Aro to fine a sneering smile on his face as if he had gotten pleasure out of trapping me and not letting me choose my own way. With a fear creeping up my spine, my hands went down to my ankle, pulling and tugging on the leather, but with each tug and pull I made, the whip only continued to tighten around my flesh, feeling the normally durable skin to start to chaff.

I could feel venom start to pool in my eyes as I looked back at the Cullens and their grim faces. I let the liquid roll down my face, let it pour onto my clothing as I started to scratch at the binding material, trying in vain to tear it off myself.

But it continued you to tighten until it I felt Aro jerk it towards himself and the strip of leather sliced my skin before retracting back to its master. The pain was minimal but I watched in horror as I started to bleed. I wasn't supposed to bleed anymore.

But I watched as a red liquid leaked from my pale skin, staining it as it streamed down my ankle and to the cobblestone below. I noticed, as this red river ran from my marble flesh to the ground that it wasn't the usual red color a human's blood would be. Instead of the thick, crimson red, mine seemed to be almost a pink and I could see a clear liquid that didn't quite mix with the blood, flow on top of the normally crimson color.

I saw it fun into the cracks in the city floor and then pool in one of the cracks for a moment. The blood and venom flowed faster from my cut than should've been possible. When the one crack in was on started to become too much to stay in one place, I noted there were two ways it could flow.

There was a crack leading back to where the angels stood, smiling more intensely as if to call me to them, trying to bring me back. The other way was towards Aro and the rest of the devils standing there, sneering with grins as if they knew something I didn't.

Right to the way of darkness, and left to the way of dark. It seemed too important to allow to be handled according to a puddle of blood and venom on the ground. But I knew in my heart, the heart that I would always have, frozen in my chest, which way the scales would turn. Where the blood would flow.

I let my eyes let out one tear of venom before raising my head, attempting to take my fate head on. I could hear the small drop plop into the full puddle of blood, and then heard the small stream from my body, flow towards its intended direction.

To the left.

I turned towards the only people I could consider my family and found them sobbing tearless sobs as they held onto each other. Edward had fallen to the ground, groaning out in pain, but I couldn't hear them any longer. I could only watch as Felix came to pick me up from my spot on the ground. Cradling me bridal style, he started to follow his leaders as they walked away. I looked back, gazing at what I would've given anything to be my destiny, as they sobbed and became smaller and smaller as I walked away.

I had broken the fantasy of sleep, sitting up in the golden clad bed and in my doing so, breaking Edward from the spell sleep as well.

I was breathing deeply and unevenly as I sat in the bed, heaving as I tried to clear the images from my head.

"Bella? Are you alright?" Edward asked as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

"Fine, just a nightmare," I told him, trying my best to smile. I was happy that I was the one person who's mind he couldn't read. There was no need to get him worked up about something that had simply been a dream. Nothing more.

Or that's what I tried to tell myself.

But as each day ended and every night passed on, I found every time I induced us in that sleep like state, the dreams, the visions, they got worst. Always the same theme, but never in the same way. Every night my eyes closed themselves, and dreams swept me away, my blood flowed to Aro.

There was nothing I could do, but each day I felt the pull towards Volterra become stronger and stronger. I knew my heart was meant to stay in Forks with the ones I cared for the most. But with each passing day, I felt myself grow more and more weak as the days progressed and hiding the pain became increasingly difficult, especially with Jasper around to feel every ounce of physical and emotional pain I was feeling.

They had a sort of convention one day for me, all members of the family gathered around in the living area to try to pursue me to explain what was going on. After hearing the pleas and seeing the sincerity in their topaz eyes, I couldn't help but to finally give in and collapse in my confession to them.

While Carlisle admitted that he was fascinated by what I had been feeling, other members of the family shared different feelings. Alice was apologetic towards them and me as she glumly said that she had been so focused on looking for a plan of Aro's that she must've missed the decision of my keeping things from the family. Esme looked like someone had just punched her puppy and was saddened by what I had been feeling both mentally and physically. Edward, of course, took it the hardest.

At first I think he was more hurt by the fact that I had been keeping things from him. He had thought I didn't trust him and thus decided not to share my internal struggle. But that wasn't it at all. I was protecting him, trying so that he didn't feel the obligation to protect me.

But when everything was said and done, we decided that that the thing we needed the most, was a plan. So we put our heads together, thinking through all the things that would help us and ideas of what to do about what was happening, all the while I grew weaker, barely wanting to leave the house to hunt anymore.

It was Emmett who wanted us to "get up off our asses and fly to Volterra to confront the son of a bitches," of course only Emmett could phrase things so delicately. As idiotic as it had sounded at first, while looking deeper at the problem, and then again at my weakening physical state, along with the nightmares getting even more vivid and menacing, Carlisle, along with the rest of the family (excluding Edward) thought it might not be such a bad idea.

Edward wanted us to stay behind, and have no one but Carlisle, and perhaps Emmett, go back to talk with Aro. But had this involved anyone but me, I know his thinking would be quite different. He would be as enthusiastic to go and wreak havoc as his burly brother.

A private jet was once again attained, though this time, without the help of Aro and the rest of the Volturi. We wanted our appearance to be a surprise and it helped that he had no visionary such as Alice (try as he might).

I stopped trying to harness different gifts, realizing that it took away some of the limited energy I was starting to lack. No more sleeping, no more trying to pry into Alice's visions and no more trying to borrow any of the other gifts from the family. I had almost become useless as we began our journey back to the beginning. Where the nightmare had started and this life had begun. How things had changed since then.

Being only 6 pages I do realize that this is short, but it was SOOO important to the rest of the story and the direction it will now take. Not to mention I love the kind of creepiness that sometimes invades us in our dreams…lol. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did when I wrote it!!! Give me your thoughts, and I do apologize for being gone for SOOOOOO long!!!

Broadcasting live from WI,

ashel-13