Edward's POV.
"We're going where?"
To say Edward was in shock would have been an understatement. The rumors being spread regarding the newborn activity near the Seattle area weren't recent after all; the Cullens always had an ear to the worldwide news channels, and this outbreak had been dragging out for months. The patterns were too perfectly in line with newborns. People, mostly dregs and the less prominent citizens, were going missing rather than being found dead, large and discreetly secluded homes all along the outskirts of the city were being burned to the ground one after another, and the carnage was growing exponentially as if whoever was causing this were rapidly increasing their numbers. "Someone's creating an army," Jasper murmured one afternoon while the family sat gathered around the plasma, the reporter on the screen mopping his brow in an anxious sweat as he glanced around nervously while giving an on-scene broadcast where yet another mansion, complete with a large, expansive basement big enough to house at least two dozen people, had been burned to the ground. His blonde brother would be the most likely of the Cullens to have insight into this matter; he'd come to them from a history of servitude in a Southern immortal army himself and knew the workings behind such a movement. "The Volturi will be sure to step in if things should get out of hand," Carlisle had soothed him. "I'm sure they already know. Aro has eyes and ears all around the globe. If things progress, they'll step forward and do their part."
But it was now Carlisle, the patriarch of the Cullen Coven, who stood before Edward and addressed him with somber eyes, depicting his plans to relocate to the Seattle area. "The Volturi, for whatever reason, have chosen not to intervene. And we're closest, son. Someone needs to take action before this situation gets any more out of hand."
"Tell me that you're not forgetting where Seattle is?" Edward asked incredulously.
"I've already put in my transfer with the hospital and have my starting date at Seattle Hospital." Carlisle spoke with a crystal clear, assuring logic that on any other topic would have eased Edward's apprehension. Any other topic besides Bella Swan.
"We can't GO." Putting his fist through the granite had not been his intentions, but the countertop could not endure the sheer force with which he brought his hand down. "It's in Washington, it's less than an hour away. We cannot go. I refuse go back there. I left for a reason Carlisle, don't tell me you've forgotten."
"It's very likely she may have packed up and moved on by now. I wouldn't fret too much, the chances she's still even in the area-"
"She's in Seattle itself now," Edward interrupted, a pleading leaking into his voice he hadn't meant to be there. "I-I've been keeping track. She's a nurse at the hospital now. She hasn't moved on. She's right in the thick of it."
Though they shared no blood or biological relation, the understanding with which his creator and mentor shared when their eyes met was so powerful, so tangible, it made the bronze vampire's resolve quake. "You still haven't moved on either, have you Edward?"
It only took a matter of three days for him to be facing her now, and the façade he'd put up in her absence came crumbling down. She was nothing short of radiant, even now. It pained him to see how the years had caused her to age, and how he compared it to the reflection of himself he caught a glimpse of in her eyes as he approached - still the seventeen year old boy she'd met in high school, never growing, never changing. "Bella." His voice was quiet, muted by the screaming in his own thoughts as he nodded politely in her direction.