CHAPTER FOUR
ᴛʜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʀᴏᴜʙʟᴇ ʙᴇɢᴀɴ

The peace was soon broken. 

The knife that cut through the serenity came in the form of Aro's sharp words.

I so look forward to seeing the new Mrs Cullen in person.

They should have been reassuring. Bella was an immortal now. Gone were the flushes of flesh and sound of pounding blood, replaced in favour of the glass-like skin of a vampire. Her eyes were a flaming red: a sight that would have delighted the Volturi. But still, the Cullens could not help but fear them.

There was an unexpected variable now too. Renesmee, with precious blood running through her veins and an insatiable hunger for a vampire's diet. She was supposed to be impossible, and yet here she sat at the kitchen table, hands outstretched in communication, her body the size of a nine-year-old. She was the unknown the Volturi feared, and in return, the Cullens feared what they would do to her, should they find out.

As Bella set down the decadent gifted jewels in favour of picking up the letter for the third time, Edward shuffled to stand in front of her, head shaking. It was as if he could read her thoughts. Though I supposed their sort of bond left them with an ability to know each other inside and out, without the aid of intrusive gifts. It was like a synchronisation- when he moved, she moved in parallel. I knew that feeling well. Sometimes Alice felt like another part of me- a part I hadn't realised was missing.

"You're not going alone," Edward said, hand soothing down her arm.

Her eyebrows furrowed, creasing smooth lines around her piercing eyes. "They won't hurt me. They have no reason to. I'm a vampire now."

"No. Absolutely not."

"It's the only way to protect her, Edward."

When Alice's predictions of a visit from Irina finally materialised, we were not there to see it happen. Emmett had dragged Rosalie, Alice and I to his most recent favourite hunting spot, which he wished to show off. It was mid hunt, as Emmett tracked a bear, that Alice stopped mid-sprint, making us halt with apprehension. Irina had visited but did not make it far, having seen Jacob phase beside Bella and Renesmee. 

When we returned to the Cullen residence, Alice's view of Irina came in glimpses and little more. For the week after Irina had fled from Forks, I could tell she was tense. Often, I found her with her eyes glazed over, eyebrows knotted, and lips downturned in a frown. She tried to hide it, but after all this time, I could read her like a book.

She was moving slowly across the living room when everyone else finally noticed her sluggish movements. Alice had spent half an hour, moving the furniture around, only to return it back to how it was when she'd started. Her hands moved as robotically as her legs, clasping around the neck of a clear vase, arms shaking as she stopped in the middle of the room, fingers tightening into fists around the glass, letting it shatter into a thousand tiny pieces on the floor.

"What is it, Alice?" I asked, crowding to her side as Edward appeared in the doorway.

He let out a staggered gasp, eyes meeting her pained expression.

"Alice..."

She would have cried if she could. "They're coming for us. All of them. The Volturi."

"All of them," Edward echoed, jaw tightening.

"Why? How?"

As if summoned by the name, Emmett, Jasper, and Rosalie appeared from the garden, faces slack with worry. Alice was still shaking her head, eyes burning holes in the wood floor as if she could find her answers there.

"When?"

"Not long. There's snow on the forest, snow on the town. Little more than a month," Alice said, and then her eyes connected with mine. There was meaning behind that look, the way she held it and then fluttered back- a meaning that I could not decipher.

"Why?"

"They must have a reason. Maybe to see..."

"This isn't about Bella. They're all coming- Aro, Caius, Marcus, every member of the guard, even the partners."

"That never happens. Not even when the south rebelled. Not when they were hunting the immortal children," Jasper said, arms folded over his chest. Even he had been too caught up in worry to stretch his gifted hand around the group, placing immediate comfort upon us all.

"They're coming now."

"But why? What have we done to bring such wrath down upon us?" Carlise muttered.

"There are so many of us. They must want to make sure that..."

"That doesn't explain why."

"Go back, Alice. Look for the trigger. Search," Jasper urged.

Panic had set. Alice's face curled in pain, her hands clenching by her sides. I was moving before she'd even begun to drop to her knees, catching her with arms around her shoulders. She was stuttering, trying to get the words out as she saw them.

"It came out of nowhere. I wasn't looking for them..."

"You were looking for Irina," I said, and realisation seemed to settle on all of us.

"She decided to go to them. Irina decided to go to the Volturi. They're going to decide... it's as if they're waiting on her. Their decision was already made, they're just waiting on her..."

"Can we stop her?" Jasper asked, face lowered into a blank look, his gifts only now stretching over the room to calm.

"No. She's almost there."

"Think of what she saw this afternoon. To someone who lost their mother because of the immortal children, what would Renesmee look like?"

"An immortal child."

But Bella shook her head. "But Renesmee isn't like those other children. She was born, not bitten."

"It doesn't matter. Aro has enough evidence in Irina's thoughts. It's not the kind of crime they hold a trial for," Edward said.

"But they're wrong!"

"They won't allow us the chance to prove that."

"So what do we do?"

"We fight," Emmett said singularly, his shoulders squaring, making him seem even bigger than he already was.

"Their offensive weapons are too powerful. No one could stand against Jane," Jasper said.

Alice, stuck in her expression of despair, nodded in agreement. "Alec is even worse."

"We can't win."

Emmett wouldn't allow us to give up. "There are options to consider. We don't have to fight alone."

"We don't have to sentence the pack to death either, Emmett!" Bella shouted, voice ringing hollowly against the bare walls.

"I didn't mean the pack," he said, arms crossing over his chest. "But do you really think Sam and Jacob could ignore an invasion? Even if it was about Nessie."

"Aro knows about our affiliation with the wolves now anyway. He wouldn't spare them," I said, watching as Bella's face fell in defeat.

"We have other friends."

Carlisle shook his head. "Friends that I won't ask to fight for us."

"Not fight. Witness," Edward said, sharing a look with Alice. "If enough people knew the truth, then maybe we could convince the Volturi to listen."

"We'd need quite a show of witnesses," Rosalie said bitterly, face drawn into a frown.

"We can ask this if our friends. Just to witness," Esme said, not hearing the sarcasm behind her voice. "We'd do it for them."

"They have to be shown carefully."

"Shown?" Bella asked.

Alice nodded as she held onto my arm, pulling herself from the floor, chin held high. She blinked, as if forcing the visions away, and nodded again.

"Tanya's family. Siobhan's coven. Amun's."

"Peter and Charlotte?" Jasper asked.

"Maybe," Alice said.

All red-eyed vampires. I hated to think of what that meant for the town, for the pack... Once, against Jacob's instructions, Seth had told me about his first shift. It'd been painful, but the confusion, the fright had been the worst thing. It'd flipped his whole world upside down, all triggered by the presence of vampires.

"And our friends in Brazil?"

"I can't see," Alice said. Her voice was suddenly quick, moving from her lips so swiftly that they were almost not comprehensible. "We'll have to split up and hurry. Before the snow sticks to the ground. We have to round up whoever we can and get them here to show them. Ask Eleazar. There is more to this than just an immortal child. There is so much. We have to hurry!"

"Alice, that was too fast. I didn't understand," Edward tried to say, but she was shouting again seconds later.

"I can't see! Jacob is almost here."

"I'll deal with-" Rosalie began.

Alice cut her off. "No. Let him come."

The Cullens began to move, speaking in pairs about who would go where, about where they could start and when they would leave. Bella was in the middle of it all, struck with a deadly stillness as she no doubt tried to absorb it all. I went to move toward her, but Alice grasped onto me before I could.

Her soft hands were pulling me from the door, beckoning me to follow. My feet carried after her without needing to be ordered. We were like magnets, drawing each other in without ever trying to. But this wasn't like those other times, when her grasp would find me moments later, wrapping an arm around my waist, eyelashes as fluttery against my neck as her kisses were. Unmoving and undetectable, Alice's face held an expression like stone. It was that same expression I'd come to realise she only made after an inarguable revelation that came with her visions.

Hands found her shoulders in an attempt to calm her down, but Alice's eyes flickered up, wide and revealing, so transparent that I almost felt like Edward, seeing into every image she pondered over. I could feel her panic, feel the regret so much so that my own face fell with worry. But then she pulled my head closer, kissing me as if she had never felt the touch of my lips before, clawing me closer as if she was afraid I'd crumble away to ash in the wind. It was a desperate kiss. One that left her cool breath tickling my nose, a feeling that could make my legs go weak. And yet it had not been comforting. The nerves still rendered me speechless. Her face was still etched with precise alarm.

It was then, that the dreaded words were spoken.

"We need to leave," she gasped, hands snaking further up my neck, threading through my hair and landing on either side of my face.

I let out an incoherent stutter before my own response was finally formed. "You can't just kiss me and tell me we're leaving."

Her thumbs pressed against my eyebrows, soothing the knot that tied them with stress. I shook my head as she stared at me pleadingly, begging for my understanding.

"We have to, Elide," she said, blinking up at me, almost on the tips of her toes. "It's the only way any of us will be able to survive this."

☾

I hope this doesn't feel too rushed! I really just wanted to escape the structure of the actual book so I could get onto my own plot lines for the second half of breaking dawn! I really hope you all like what I have coming!
Thanks for reading <3