Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. All recognizable characters belong to SM.
In the Woods:
A Bella and Edward Story Part 4
"Masen, what do you think you are doing?" Bella demanded.
"What?" asked Masen, in an innocent tone that deceived no one.
Everyone turned to see Masen trying to feed Grace his dinner under the table.
"You need to eat your dinner." Bella said sternly.
"Yes, Masen come now, eat up. It's been lovingly prepared and is good for you," Elizabeth said in a perfect imitation of her mother's voice and expression.
The room exploded in laughter.
Masen kicked his sister under the table which sent her off in tears to find her father. Elizabeth was her daddy's little princess and always ran to him for comfort.
"Masen! You apologize to your sister this instant, young man." Bella scolded.
Masen glowered at her but apologized.
Then he turned back to his mother who pointed to his plate and insisted that he finish his dinner.
It was an unpleasant scene as Bella gave Masen the 'universal Mom stare' until he complied. Eventually, Masen scowled and stuffed the vegetables in his mouth and forced them down, amid hearty snickers from the grownups.
After the children were put to bed, the grownups reconvened in the living room.
"They are growing up so quickly." Bella lamented.
"Yes, they sure are. It's a good thing we don't age otherwise we'd all have grey hairs by now." Edward added.
That brought a smile to everyone's face but then the group got very serious.
"So Jasper, are you ready for tomorrow?" Bella asked.
Sensing Edward's and Bella's anxiety, Jasper sent out waves of tranquility to try to calm the couple. He understood why they were feeling this way and he empathized. Things were about to change rather drastically for their household.
Reader, in order to understand this upcoming change, I will need to take you back a month and fill you in on a discovery that Edward and Jasper made.
The men were going to hunt and fill thermoses for the twins. Before leaving, Edward kissed his wife and told her to keep his family safe. She assured him that she would. Masen assured his daddy that he would help too.
After an exhilarating hunt, the men returned and almost lost their minds.
As Edward approached the cabin, he heard nothing. In alarm, he turned to Jasper and found that Jasper felt no emotions at all coming from the cabin. They rushed in fearing the worst only to find their women playing with Grace and the twins.
Thoroughly perplexed, they explained what they had just experienced. Upon hearing this, Alice went outside and tried her gift and found that it also didn't work on the occupants of the cabin.
It turned out that Bella had taken Edward's words to heart when she promised to keep his family safe. With that promise, her mental shield, which protected her thoughts from Edward, had extended itself to protect everyone in the cabin.
Jasper was the first to point out that that made sense when it came to Edward's gift but not his. Bella's gift protected the mind from attack but not the body.
Masen looked at his uncle and frowned.
"Uncle Jasper, I promised daddy that I would help mommy so I did." Masen said in exasperation. He turned to Elizabeth and said, "Grownups never listen." Elizabeth nodded her head in agreement.
The shocked couples turned to the children and asked them to explain.
It was on that day that they discovered both twins also were gifted.
Masen, like his mother, had a shield but his was to protect him and those around him from the gifts of other vampires. It worked on gifts that affected both the mind and the body. Bella and Edward were relieved that no harm would ever come to their son thanks to his shield and the training he was receiving from his Uncle Jasper.
Jasper took his role of Godfather very seriously and as soon as the twins were old enough to roughhouse, he started training them how to fight in order to protect themselves from hostile vampires.
Elizabeth took after both her mother and father. She was able read minds but she also had a shield that allowed her to block the thoughts unless she wanted to listen. Edward was both happy for and envious of, his daughter's ability to choose what voices to listen to.
Shortly after discovering the gifts that would keep the family from harm, Alice started checking the future to see what would happen if they decided to contact Esme and Carlisle.
She found that the perfect time was approaching because Rosalie and Emmett had just left to go off on their own. They were heading off to Australia for their second honeymoon and had no intention of returning for at least a decade. With Rosalie out of the picture and the gift of the shields, she was confident that the Volturi would stay ignorant of their existence. Even if Aro had one of the guards try to track Carlisle, which he did ever so often to keep tabs on his growing coven, he wouldn't be able to find him.
Carlisle's friendship with Aro had always made the decision to cut him out of the children's lives an easy one. Now that the threat had been eliminated, she sat down with the others and they decided to make contact with Carlisle and Esme.
Jasper telephoned the lawyer and had him schedule an appointment with Carlisle and Esme under the pretense of discussing some changes that were being made to their identification.
While this topic came up, both Bella and Edward finally questioned Alice about the threat that Rosalie posed.
This was not an easy conversation but it certainly was a necessary one. The couple needed to understand just how dangerous she was and still could be.
Alice explained that she had seen that Rosalie would have been jealous of Bella for a number of reasons regardless of when they had met. A jealous Rosalie is a spiteful and vindictive woman.
When Bella was a human, Rosalie would have hated her because Edward hadn't shown any interest in her but ended up mating with a human she thought was less attractive than her. Her vanity knew no bounds.
She also would have felt that bringing a human around would attract unnecessary attention from the wolves and the town of Forks. She would have also constantly tried to guilt Bella about the Volturi finding out that a human had learned their secret.
Alice saw her making Bella's life a miserable one; going so far as to plot with Tanya to break up Edward and Bella because she couldn't stand to see him happy after his rejection of her and her beauty.
If she had found out about the pregnancy, she would have been livid that Bella was getting what she always wanted but could never have. She would have ensured that Bella suffered a stressful pregnancy always hoping that she would die in childbirth. If this were to happen she knew that Edward would never recover and she figured that she would get the babies and be rid of both Edward and Bella. If this didn't work, she planned to go to the Volturi and convince them that Bella had created immortal children in order to have the couple and the children destroyed. She didn't want anyone to have what she couldn't.
When Edward and Bella learned about this, they were more determined than ever to keep Rosalie from every coming near their children. Edward felt sorry that Emmett was missing out on their lives but the bad outweighed the good so those feelings were pushed aside very quickly.
When the lawyer had given Carlisle and Esme the option of reuniting with their family, they had gladly accepted. He made them aware that if they were to agree they would have to disappear from society for the next six and a half years. They still agreed. They packed their essentials to bring with them and put the rest into storage.
Tomorrow Jasper was going to pickup Esme and Carlisle and escort them to the Cullen cabin.
It was sure to be a very important day and would definitely mean drastic changes in the Cullen household.