Aro did not rejoin his anxious guard waiting on the north side of the clearing; instead, he waved them forward.

Edward started backing up immediately, pulling Bella's arm and Emmett’s. Emmett grasped Rose, and my father grasped Alex. The seven of them hurried backward, keeping their eyes on the advancing threat.

Jacob retreated slowest, the fur on his shoulders standing straight up as he bared his fangs at Aro. They reached us at the same time that the dark cloaks surrounded Aro again. Now there were only fifty yards between them and us—a distance any of us could leap in just a fraction of a second.

Caius began arguing with Aro at once.
“How can you abide this infamy? Why do we stand here impotently in the face of such an outrageous crime, covered by such a ridiculous deception?” He held his arms rigidly at his sides, his hands curled into claws.

I wondered why he did not just touch Aro to share his opinion. Were we seeing a division in their ranks already? Could we be that lucky?

“Because it’s all true,” Aro told him calmly.

“Every word of it. See how many witnesses stand ready to give evidence that they have seen this miraculous child grow and mature in just the short time they’ve known her. That they have felt the warmth of the blood that pulses in her veins.” Aro’s gesture swept
from Amun on one side across to Siobhan on the other.

Caius reacted oddly to Aro’s soothing words, starting ever so slightly at the mention of witnesses. The anger drained from his features, replaced by a cold calculation. He glanced at the Volturi witnesses with an expression that looked vaguely… nervous. I glanced at the angry mob, too, and saw immediately that the description no longer applied. The frenzy for action had turned to confusion.

Whispered conversations seethed through the crowd as they tried to make sense of what had happened. Caius was frowning, deep in thought. His speculative expression stoked the flames of my smoldering anger at the same time that it worried me. What if the guard acted again on some invisible signal, as they had in their march?

“The werewolves,” he murmured at last.

“Ah, brother…,” Aro answered Caius’s statement with a pained look.

“Will you defend that alliance, too, Aro?” Caius
demanded. “The Children of the Moon have been our bitter enemies from the dawn of time. We have hunted them to near extinction in Europe and Asia. Yet Carlisle encourages a familiar relationship with this enormous infestation—no doubt in an attempt to overthrow us. The better to protect his warped lifestyle.”

Edward cleared his throat loudly and Caius glared at him. Aro placed one thin, delicate hand over his own face as if he was embarrassed for the other ancient.

“Caius, it’s the middle of the day,” Edward pointed out. He gestured to the wolves. “These are not Children of the Moon, clearly. They bear no relation to your enemies on the other side of the world.”

“You breed mutants here,” Caius spit back at him.

Alex hissed and Dad placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. Katerina reacted the same and Jacob growled.

Edward’s jaw clenched and unclenched, then he answered evenly, “They aren’t even werewolves. Aro can tell you all about it if you don’t believe me.”

Not werewolves? I shot a mystified look at the wolves, whose animalistic expressions looked confused.

“Dear Caius, I would have warned you not to press this point if you had told me your thoughts,” Aro murmured. “Though the creatures think of themselves as werewolves, they are not. The more accurate name for them would be shape-shifters. The choice of a wolf form was purely chance. It could have been a bear or a hawk or a panther when the first change was made. These creatures truly have nothing to do with the Children of the Moon. They have merely inherited this skill from their fathers. It’s genetic—they do not continue their species by infecting others the way true werewolves do.”

Caius glared at Aro with irritation and something more—an accusation of betrayal, maybe.

“They know our secret,” he said flatly.
Edward looked about to answer this accusation, but Aro spoke faster. “They are creatures of our supernatural world, brother. Perhaps even more dependent upon secrecy than we are; they can hardly expose us. Carefully, Caius. Specious allegations get us nowhere.”

Caius took a deep breath and nodded. They
exchanged a long, significant glance. I thought I understood the instruction behind Aro’s careful wording.

False charges weren’t helping convince the
watching witnesses on either side; Aro was cautioning Caius to move on to the next strategy. I wondered if the reason behind the apparent strain between the two ancients—Caius’s unwillingness to share his thoughts with a touch—was that Caius didn’t care about the show as much as Aro did. If the coming slaughter was so much more essential to Caius than an untarnished reputation.

“I want to talk to the informant,” Caius announced abruptly, and turned his glare on Irina.

Irina wasn’t paying attention to Caius and Aro’s conversation; her face was twisted in agony, her eyes locked on her sisters, lined up to die. It was clear on her face that she knew now her accusation had been completely false.

“Irina,” Caius barked, unhappy to have to address her. She looked up, startled and instantly afraid. Caius snapped his fingers.
Hesitantly, she moved from the fringes of the Volturi formation to stand in front of Caius again.

"So you appear to have been quite mistaken in your allegations,” Caius began. Tanya and Kate leaned forward anxiously.

“I’m sorry,” Irina whispered. “I should have made sure of what I was seeing. But I had no idea. . . .” She gestured helplessly in our direction.

“Dear Caius, could you expect her to have guessed in an instant something so strange and impossible?” Aro asked. “Any of us would have made the same assumption.”

Caius flicked his fingers at Aro to silence him.
“We all know you made a mistake,” he said brusquely. “I meant to speak of your motivations.”

Irina waited nervously for him to continue, and then repeated, “My motivations?”

“Yes, for coming to spy on them in the first place.”

Irina flinched at the word spy. “You were unhappy with the Cullens, were you not?”

She turned her miserable eyes to Carlisle’s face. “I was." She admitted.

“Because… ?” Caius prompted.

“Because the werewolves killed my friend,” she whispered. “And the Cullens wouldn’t stand aside to let me avenge him.”

“The shape-shifters,” Aro corrected quietly.

“So the Cullens sided with the shape-shifters against our own kind—against the friend of a friend, even,” Caius summarized.

I made a disgusted sound under my breath. Caius was ticking down his list, looking for an accusation that would stick.

Irina’s shoulders stiffened. “That’s how I saw it.”

Caius waited again and then prompted, “If you’d like to make a formal complaint against the shape- shifters—and the Cullens for supporting their actions—now would be the time.” He smiled a tiny cruel smile, waiting for Irina to give him his next excuse. Maybe Caius didn’t understand real families—relationships based on love rather than just the love of power. Maybe he overestimated the potency of vengeance.

Irina’s jaw jerked up, her shoulders squared.

“No, I have no complaint against the wolves, or the Cullens. You came here today to destroy an immortal child. No immortal child exists. This was my mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. But the Cullens are innocent, and you have no reason to still be here."

"I’m so sorry,” she said to us, and then she turned her face toward the Volturi witnesses.

"There was no crime. There’s no valid reason for you to continue here.”

Caius raised his hand as she spoke, and in it was a strange metal object, carved and ornate. This was a signal. The response was so fast that we all stared in stunned disbelief while it happened.

Before there was time to react, it was over.
Three of the Volturi soldiers leaped forward, and Irina was completely obscured by their gray cloaks.

In the same instant, a horrible metallic screeching ripped through the clearing. Caius slithered into the center of the gray melee, and the shocking squealing sound exploded into a startling upward shower of sparks and tongues of flame. The soldiers leaped back from the sudden inferno, immediately retaking their places in the guard’s perfectly straight line.

Caius stood alone beside the blazing remains of Irina, the metal object in his hand still throwing a thick jet of flame into the pyre.

With a small clicking sound, the fire shooting from Caius’s hand disappeared. A gasp rippled through the mass of witnesses behind the Volturi.

We were too aghast to make any noise at all. It was one thing to know that death was coming with fierce, unstoppable speed; it was another thing to watch it happen.

Caius smiled coldly. “Now she has taken full responsibility for her actions.”

His eyes flashed to our front line, touching swiftly on Tanya’s and Kate’s frozen forms. In that second I understood that Caius had never underestimated the ties of a true family. This was the ploy. He had not wanted Irina’s complaint; he had wanted her defiance. His excuse to destroy her, to ignite the violence that filled the air like a thick, combustible
mist.

He had thrown a match.
The strained peace of this summit already teetered more precariously than an elephant on a tightrope. Once the fight began, there would be no way to stop it. It would only escalate until one side was entirely extinct. Our side. Caius knew this. So did Edward.

“Stop them!” Edward cried out, jumping to grab Tanya’s arm as she lurched forward toward the smiling Caius with a maddened cry of pure rage. She couldn’t shake Edward off before Eleazar had his arms locked around her waist.

“It’s too late to help her,” he reasoned urgently as she struggled. “Don’t give him what he wants!”

Kate was harder to contain. Shrieking wordlessly like Tanya, she broke into the first stride of the attack that would end with everyone’s death. I was closest to her, so I grabbed her arm to try and hold her down. Waves of electricity filled me and I fell to the ground. Carlisle reached out and pulled me up, holding me to him.

Emmett caught Kate’s arm and threw her down, then staggered back, his knees giving out. Kate rolled to her feet, and it looked like no one could stop her. Garrett flung himself at her, knocking her to the ground again. He bound his arms around hers, locking his hands around his own wrists. I saw his body spasm as she shocked him. His eyes rolled back
in his head, but his hold did not break.

“Zafrina,” Edward shouted.
Kate’s eyes went blank and her screams turned to moans. Tanya stopped struggling.
“Give me my sight back,” Tanya hissed.

And then Garrett was in command of himself again, holding Kate to the snow. I knew Bella was using her shield to help Garrett.

“If I let you up, will you knock me down again, Katie?” he whispered. She snarled in response, still thrashing blindly.

“Listen to me, Tanya, Kate,” Carlisle said in a low but intense whisper. “Vengeance doesn’t help her now. Irina wouldn’t want you to waste your lives this way. Think about what you’re doing. If you attack them, we all die.”

Tanya’s shoulders hunched with grief, and she leaned into Carlisle for support. I moved to let her. Kate was finally still. Carlisle and Garrett continued to console the sisters with words too urgent to sound like comfort.

And my attention returned to the weight of the stares that pressed down on our moment of chaos.

The Volturi guard no longer stood at disciplined attention—they were crouched forward, waiting to spring the counterstrike the moment we attacked. Behind them, forty-three witnesses watched with very different expressions than the ones they’d worn
entering the clearing.

Confusion had turned to
suspicion. The lightning-fast destruction of Irina had shaken them all. What had been her crime? Without the immediate attack that Caius had counted on to distract from his rash act, the Volturi witnesses were left questioning exactly what was going on here.

Aro glanced back swiftly while I watched, his face betraying him with one flash of vexation. His need for an audience had backfired badly.
I heard Stefan and Vladimir murmur to each other in quiet glee at Aro’s discomfort. Aro was obviously concerned with keeping his white hat, as the Romanians had put it. But I didn’t believe that the Volturi would leave us in peace just to save their reputation.

After they finished with us, surely they
would slaughter their witnesses for that purpose. I felt a strange, sudden pity for the mass of the strangers the Volturi had brought to watch us die. Demetri would hunt them until they were extinct, too.

For Jacob, Katerina and Alexia, for Alice and Jasper, for Alistair, and for these strangers who had not known what today would cost them, Demetri had to die.

Aro touched Caius’s shoulder lightly. “Irina has been punished for bearing false witness against this child.”

So that was to be their excuse. He went on. “Perhaps we should return to the matter at hand?”

Caius straightened, and his expression hardened into unreadability. He stared forward, seeing nothing. His face reminded me, oddly, of a person who’d just learned he’d been demoted.

Aro drifted forward, Renata, Felix, and Demetri automatically moving with him.

“Just to be thorough,” he said, “I’d like to speak with a few of your witnesses. Procedure, you know.” He waved a hand dismissively.

Two things happened at once. Caius’s eyes focused on Aro, and the tiny cruel smile came back. And Edward hissed, his hands balling up in fists so tight it looked like the bones in his knuckles would split through his diamond-hard skin.

I was desperate to ask him what was going on, but Aro was close enough to hear even the quietest breath. Carlisle glanced anxiously at Edward’s face, and then his own face hardened.

While Caius had blundered through useless accusations and injudicious attempts to trigger the fight, Aro must have been coming up with a more effective strategy. Aro ghosted across the snow to the far western end of our line, stopping about ten yards from Amun and Kebi. The nearby wolves bristled angrily but held their positions.

“Ah, Amun, my southern neighbor!” Aro said warmly.

“It has been so long since you’ve visited me.”

Amun was motionless with anxiety, Kebi a statue at his side. “Time means little; I never notice its passing,” Amun said through unmoving lips.

“So true,” Aro agreed. “But maybe you had another reason to stay away?”

Amun said nothing.

“It can be terribly time-consuming to organize newcomers into a coven. I know that well! I’m grateful I have others to deal with the tedium. I’m glad your new additions have fit in so well. I would have loved to have been introduced. I’m sure you were meaning to come to see me soon.”

“Of course,” Amun said, his tone so emotionless that it was impossible to tell if there was any fear or sarcasm in his assent.

“Oh well, we’re all together now! Isn’t it lovely?”

Amun nodded, his face blank.

“But the reason for your presence here is not as pleasant, unfortunately. Carlisle called on you to witness?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you witness for him?”

Amun spoke with the same cold lack of emotion. “I’ve observed the child in question. It was evident almost immediately that she was not an immortal child—”

“Perhaps we should define our terminology,” Aro interrupted, “now that there seem to be new classifications. By immortal child, you mean of course a human child who had been bitten and thus transformed into a vampire.”

“Yes, that’s what I meant.”

“What else did you observe about the child?”

“The same things that you surely saw in Edward’s mind. That the child is his biologically. That she grows. That she learns.”

“Yes, yes,” Aro said, a hint of impatience in his otherwise amiable tone. “But specifically in your few weeks here, what did you see?”

Amun’s brow furrowed. “That she grows… quickly.”

Aro smiled. “And do you believe that she should be allowed to live?”

A hiss escaped my lips, and I was not alone. Half the vampires in our line echoed my protest. The sound was a low sizzle of fury hanging in the air. Across the meadow, a few of the Volturi witnesses made the same noise.

Aro did not turn to the noise, but Amun glanced around uneasily.

“I did not come to make judgments,” he equivocated.

Aro laughed lightly. “Just your opinion.”

Amun’s chin lifted. “I see no danger in the child. She learns even more swiftly than she grows.”

Aro nodded, considering. After a moment, he turned away.

“Aro?” Amun called.

Aro whirled back. “Yes, friend?”

“I gave my witness. I have no more business here. My mate and I would like to take our leave now.”

Aro smiled warmly. “Of course. I’m so glad we were able to chat for a bit. And I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”

Amun’s lips were a tight line as he inclined his head once, acknowledging the barely concealed threat.

He touched Kebi’s arm, and then the two of them ran quickly to the southern edge of the meadow and disappeared into the trees. I knew they wouldn’t stop running for a very long time. Good riddance, in my opinion. If Amun was truly a friend to my husband, he'd have stayed.

Aro was gliding back along the length of our line to the east, his guards hovering tensely. He stopped when he was in front of Siobhan.

“Hello, dear Siobhan. You are as lovely as ever.”

Siobhan inclined her head, waiting.

“And you?” he asked. “Would you answer my questions the same way Amun has?”

“I would,” Siobhan said. “But I would perhaps add a little more. Alexia understands the limitations. She’s no danger to humans—she blends in better than we do. She poses no threat of exposure.”

“Can you think of none?” Aro asked soberly.

Edward growled, a low ripping sound deep in his throat. Caius’s cloudy crimson eyes brightened. Renata reached out protectively toward her master, followed by another sound of pain from Alex.

And Garrett freed Kate to take a step forward, ignoring Kate’s hand as she tried to caution him this time.

Siobhan answered slowly, “I don’t think I follow you.”

Aro drifted lightly back, casually, but toward the rest of his guard. Renata, Felix, and Demetri were closer than his shadow.

“There is no broken law,” Aro said in a placating voice, but every one of us could hear that a qualification was coming.

“No broken law,” Aro repeated. “However, does it follow then that there is no danger? No.” He shook his head gently. “That is a separate issue.”

The only response was the tightening of already stretched nerves, and I found myself shaking with anger at his lies, a sentiment Maggie echoed.

Aro paced thoughtfully, looking as if he floated rather than touched the ground with his feet. I noticed every pass took him closer to the protection of his guard.

“She is unique… utterly, impossibly unique. Such a waste it would be, to destroy something so lovely. Especially when we could learn so much . . .”

He sighed, as if unwilling to go on. “But there is danger, danger that cannot simply be ignored.”

No one answered his assertion. It was dead silent as he continued in a monologue that sounded as if he spoke it for himself only.

“How ironic it is that as the humans advance, as their faith in science grows and controls their world, the more free we are from discovery. Yet, as we become ever more uninhibited by their disbelief in the
supernatural, they become strong enough in their technologies that, if they wished, they could actually pose a threat to us, even destroy some of us.

“For thousands and thousands of years, our secrecy has been more a matter of convenience, of ease, than of actual safety. This last raw, angry century has given birth to weapons of such power that they endanger even immortals. Now our status as mere myth in truth protects us from these weak creatures we hunt.

“This amazing child”—he lifted his hand palm down as if to rest it on Alexia, though he was forty yards from her now, almost within the Volturi formation again—“if we could but know her potential—know with absolute certainty that she could always remain shrouded within the obscurity that protects us. But we know nothing of what she will become! Her own parents are plagued by fears of her future. We cannot know what she will grow to be.”

I winced at the lie. Aro had seen Alex's thoughts. He knew that she'd informed Bella and Edward of Alexia's growth rate. He would do anything to get his prized possessions, even ignoring the truth he'd seen.

He paused, looking first at our witnesses, and then, meaningfully, at his own. His voice gave a good imitation of sounding torn by his words. Still looking at his own witnesses, he spoke again. “Only the known is safe. Only the known is tolerable. The unknown is… a vulnerability.”

Caius’s smile widened viciously, making me sick to my stomach.

“You’re reaching, Aro,” Carlisle said in a bleak voice and I gripped his hand.

“Peace, friend.” Aro smiled, his face as kind, his voice as gentle, as ever. “Let us not be hasty. Let us look at this from every side.”

“May I offer a side to be considered?” Garrett
petitioned in a level tone, taking another step forward.

“Nomad,” Aro said, nodding in permission.
Garrett’s chin lifted. His eyes focused on the huddled mass at the end of the meadow. He spoke directly to the Volturi's witnesses.

“I came here at Carlisle’s request, as the others, to witness,” he said. “That is certainly no longer necessary, with regard to the child. We all see what she is.

“I stayed to witness something else. You.” He jabbed his finger toward the wary vampires. “Two of you I know—Makenna, Charles—and I can see that many of you others are also wanderers, roamers like myself. Answering to none. Think carefully on what I tell you now.

“These ancient ones did not come here for justice as they told you. We suspected as much, and now it has been proved. They came, misled, but with a valid excuse for their action. Witness now as they seek flimsy excuses to continue their true mission. Witness them struggle to find a justification for their true purpose—to destroy this family here.”

He gestured toward Carlisle and I and nodded at him. Garrett was a true friend.

“The Volturi come to erase what they perceive as the competition. Perhaps, like me, you look at this clan’s golden eyes and marvel. They are difficult to understand, it’s true. But the ancient ones look and see something besides their strange choice. They see power.

“I have witnessed the bonds within this family—I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire? I’ve made a little study of them in my time here, and it seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding—that which makes them possible at all—is the peaceful character
of this life of sacrifice. There is no aggression here like we all saw in the large southern clans that grew and diminished so quickly in their wild feuds. There is no thought for domination. And Aro knows this better than I do.”

I watched Aro’s face as Garrett’s words condemned him, waiting tensely for some response. But Aro’s face was only politely amused, as if waiting for a tantrum- throwing child to realize that no one was paying attention to him. The arrogance made me angry.

“Carlisle assured us all, when he told us what was coming, that he did not call us here to fight. These witnesses”—Garrett pointed to Siobhan and Liam— “agreed to give evidence, to slow the Volturi advance with their presence so that Carlisle would get the chance to present his case.

“But some of us wondered”—his eyes flashed to Eleazar’s face—“if Carlisle having truth on his side would be enough to stop the so-called justice. Are the Volturi here to protect the safety of our secrecy, or to protect their own power? Did they come to destroy an illegal creation, or a way of life? Could they be
satisfied when the danger turned out to be no more than a misunderstanding? Or would they push the issue without the excuse of justice?

“We have the answer to all these questions. We heard it in Aro’s lying words—we have one with a gift of knowing such things for certain—and we see it now in Caius’s eager smile. Their guard is just a mindless weapon, a tool in their masters’ quest for domination “So now there are more questions, questions that you must answer. Who rules you, nomads? Do you answer to someone’s will besides your own? Are you free to choose your path, or will the Volturi decide how you will live?

“I came to witness. I stay to fight. The Volturi care nothing for the death of the child. They seek the death of our free will.”

He turned, then, to face the ancients.

"So come, I say! Let’s hear no more lying rationalizations. Be honest in your intents as we will be honest in ours. We will defend our freedom. You will or will not attack it. Choose now, and let these witnesses see the true issue debated here.”

Once more he looked to the Volturi witnesses, his eyes probing each face. The power of his words was evident in their expressions.

“You might consider joining us. If you think the Volturi will let you live to tell this tale, you are mistaken. We may all be destroyed”—he shrugged—“but then again, maybe not. Perhaps we are on more equal footing than they know. Perhaps the Volturi have finally met their match. I promise you this, though—if we fall, so do you.”

He ended his heated speech by stepping back to Kate’s side and then sliding forward in a half-crouch, prepared for the onslaught.

Aro smiled. “A very pretty speech, my revolutionary friend."

Garrett remained poised for attack.

“Revolutionary?”
he growled. “Who am I revolting against, might I ask? Are you my king? Do you wish me to call you master, too, like your sycophantic guard?”

“Peace, Garrett,” Aro said tolerantly. “I meant only to refer to your time of birth. Still a patriot, I see.” Garrett glared back furiously.

“Let us ask our witnesses,” Aro suggested. “Let us hear their thoughts before we make our decision. Tell us, friends”—and he turned his back casually on us, moving a few yards toward his mass of nervous observers hovering even closer now to the edge of the
forest—“what do you think of all this? I can assure you the child is not what we feared. Do we take the risk and let the child live? Do we put our world in jeopardy to preserve their family intact? Or does earnest Garrett have the right of it? Will you join them in a fight against our sudden quest for
dominion?”

The witnesses met his gaze with careful faces. One, a small black-haired woman, looked briefly at the dark blond male at her side.

“Are those our only choices?” she asked suddenly, gaze flashing back to Aro. “Agree with you, or fight against you?”

“Of course not, most charming Makenna,” Aro said, appearing horrified that anyone could come to that conclusion. “You may go in peace, of course, as Amun did, even if you disagree with the council’s decision.”

Makenna looked at her mate’s face again, and he nodded minutely.

“We did not come here for a fight.” She paused, exhaled, then said, “We came here to witness. And our witness is that this condemned family is innocent. Everything that Garrett claimed is the truth.”

“Ah,” Aro said sadly. “I’m sorry you see us in that way. But such is the nature of our work.”

“It is not what I see, but what I feel,” Makenna’s maize-haired mate spoke in a high, nervous voice. He glanced at Garrett. “Garrett said they have ways of knowing lies. I, too, know when I am hearing the truth, and when I am not.” With frightened eyes he moved closer to his mate, waiting for Aro’s reaction.

“Do not fear us, friend Charles. No doubt the patriot truly believes what he says,” Aro chuckled lightly, and Charles’s eyes narrowed.

“That is our witness,” Makenna said. “We’re leaving now.”
She and Charles backed away slowly, not turning before they were lost from view in the trees. One other stranger began to retreat the same way, then three more darted after him.

I evaluated the thirty-seven vampires that stayed. A few of them appeared just too confused to make the decision. But the majority of them seemed only too
aware of the direction this confrontation had taken.

I guessed that they were giving up a head start in favor of knowing exactly who would be chasing after them. I was sure Aro saw the same thing I did.

He turned
away, walking back to his guard with a measured pace. He stopped in front of them and addressed them in a clear voice.

“We are outnumbered, dearest ones,” he said. “We can expect no outside help. Should we leave this question undecided to save ourselves?”

“No, master,” they whispered in unison.
“Is the protection of our world worth perhaps the loss of some of our number?”

“Yes,” they breathed. “We are not afraid.”
Aro smiled and turned to his black-clad companions.

“Brothers,” Aro said somberly, “there is much to consider here.”

“Let us counsel,” Caius said eagerly.

“Let us counsel,” Marcus repeated in an uninterested tone.

Aro turned his back to us again, facing the other ancients. They joined hands to form a black-shrouded triangle.

As soon as Aro’s attention was engaged in the silent counsel, two more of their witnesses disappeared silently into the forest. I hoped, for their sakes, that they were quick.

This was it. I turned to my sister, who was now loosening Alexia's arms from her neck.

"You remember what I told you?" Bella asked and I hated the tears that welled into Alexia's eyes.

"I love you." Alexia whispered.

Katerina watched in shock and walked towards the three of them. Bella whispered to Jacob, who looked horrified, as horrified as Edward did.

Alexia reached for Edward and he hugged her tightly.

"This is what you kept from me?" He asked and Bella nodded sadly, before glancing at me. "You knew?" Carlisle asked me and I nodded sadly.

"Alice?" Edward asked, looking horrified as the hopelessness Bella and I'd been feeling finally sunk in for him.

Jacob was growling quietly, a low rasp that was as even and unbroken as a purr. His hackles were stiff and his teeth exposed.

Edward kissed Alexia’s forehead and both her
cheeks, then he lifted her to Jacob’s shoulder. She scrambled agilely onto his back, pulling herself into place with handfuls of his fur, and fit herself easily into the dip between his massive shoulder blades. Jacob turned to Bella, his expressive eyes full of agony, the rumbling growl still grating through his chest. Katerina had tears flowing down her face and gripped Jacob's fur as well.

"You two are the only ones we could ever trust her with. I know you both can protect her." Bella told Jacob.

Bella looked as if she might cry if she was able to, and I knew she was feeling the same way I was.

“I know,” Bella whispered. “I love you, too, Jake. You’ll always be my best man.”
A tear the size of a baseball rolled into the russet fur beneath his eye. Edward leaned his head against the same shoulder where he’d placed Alexia.

“Goodbye, Jacob, my brother."

Jacob turned to look at me and I stepped forward, placing a hand on his fur. "Jake, you'll always be my friend. No matter what happens, I'll never forget our friendship. Keep my niece safe, okay?" I asked, my voice breaking.

Jacob nodded another tear escaped. I squeezed Katerina's hand before reaching up to hug Alexia. "I love you, sweet girl." I whispered and Alexia placed her hand on my cheek.

I saw her sadness, wondering why this was happening to us. She didn't want to leave us.

"I know, I know. I'll miss you."

Alexia nodded, tears running down her cheeks as I let go of her. I felt my breath shaking as I walked back to Carlisle, grabbing his hand.

The others were not oblivious to the farewell scene. Their eyes were locked on the silent black triangle, but I knew they were listening.

“Is there no hope, then?” Carlisle whispered. There was no fear in his voice. Just determination and acceptance.

“There is absolutely hope,” Bella murmured back. It could be true, I told myself. “I only know my own fate."

Suddenly, we were surrounded by murmured
goodbyes and I love you’s.

Rosalie and Emmett kissed quickly but passionately and I watched as Rose caressed her stomach with such a pained expression I had to look away.

Tia caressed Benjamin’s face. He smiled back cheerfully, catching her hand and holding it against his cheek.

I let go of Carlisle's hand to approach Bella and Edward. I hugged my sister tight and then hugged Edward. I moved down the line and placed my hand on Garrett's shoulder.

"Thank you for being a true friend to my family." I told him sincerely and he nodded. I smiled sadly at Kate, Tanya, Carmen and Eleazar before reaching Rose and Emmett.

I pulled Rose into a hug tightly and then Emmett. When I walked back to Carlisle, my father and Alex were there, also saying their goodbyes. Dad pulled away from hugging Bella and placed a hand on Carlisle's and Edward's shoulders. "Thank you for taking care of my daughters."

I felt the tearless sobs threatening to come as my father pulled Bella and I into a hug. "My girls. I love you two so much."

"I love you too, Dad." Bella and I both said, then stepped away to hug Alex. "I love you two. Thank you for giving me the family I'd been searching for." Alex stated, tears streaking down her face. I nodded, hugging her tightly before letting go.

Everyone settled back into their positions and I kissed Carlisle quickly.

It was then I heard Bella's intake of breath.

"Get ready. It's starting."