Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.
a/n: Sorry I haven't updated for some time! I was busy last week, and perhaps even this week (you never know!). Well, I might not update for a time after this but not so much like a month. Maybe a week.
This is perhaps my longest which you may, if I'm lucky, consider the standard size. I hope you like this! Read and review, please! :D
Alice's face was contorted in to a look of concentration. She shook her head.
"No. I don't think so. I can't see them anywhere in the future."
Bella sighed in relief. That's good. That's one less thing to worry about. She shuddered as she remembered Alden Baden and his brothers. Judging from the colour of their eyes, they were not vegetarians like the Cullens.
But something inside her, like an intuition, told her to think otherwise.
Jasper crouched, leaning forward, getting ready for his tutorial. Anxiety crippled him; he had never thought werewolves before nor did he wanted to. Still, he had to. It was not his choice. For the sake of his sister (or who would soon be, for the matter), he would have to. There was really no other option.
"They're here," Edward said.
They all faced the direction where the werewolves were to emerge.
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He looked over at the trees and closed his eyes. In his mind, she was there. In his mind, she had never gone away. He breathed the scent of pine and in his mind he was breathing her scent.
He remembered that time, years ago, when they were walking by the woods. They need not talk; each other's presence was enough to make them happy.
"Our kind does not linger long."
"Like nomads?" she suggested.
"Yes," he nodded, "like nomads. It would be dangerous to stay at a given place for so long."
She looked over at the trees, not meeting his gaze.
"If I were like you . . .," she said dreamily.
"No!" he cut her off, his eyes filled with fright at the thought. "Don't waste your humanity for me. Being me, it would have been alright had I not met you but it's not. It's the barrier than separates my kind from yours."
"If I break the barrier . . ."
He shook his head vehemently.
"Please," he said. "Don't let me suffer at the sight of your pain. It would kill me."
He knew that at that time, she accepted whatever he said, and whatever he was. Perhaps presently, even, wherever she was, whatever she was doing. He wondered if she was safe, if she thinking of him as much as he was thinking of her. He wondered if she thought of him as a dream, as he frequently did. It was not right that anyone could have been so happy.
"That is more than enough. My son, Jasper, has experience in this area . . ."
He opened his eyes and looked over at the direction where that voice came from.
Bella Swan is extremely lucky, he thought. With a family such as that, and that boy always by her side.
"Captain," someone called.
He turned to face him and smiled bitterly.
"This was the place where we first met her," he said. He turned his gaze on a tree and pressed his palm on its trunk. He remembered that several years ago, she was leaning on it.
He turned to face him again, his eyes embedding a forlorn heartache.
Monte looked at him on the eye understandingly. "We must remember that we have come here for one reason."
"Alas, you do not know, brother, I have my own reasons aside from confronting Aro."
He looked at him, surprised.
"What do you mean?" he stepped back. "You don't say that you were . . ."
"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "I was hoping that I would see her. Perhaps she has come back? I do not know."
Frustration overwhelmed him and the agonizing fact that he had a weakness— his little Waterloo, that human girl. Such love would be laughed at by their kind, he knew. It was similar to Bella Swan and Edward Cullen's predicament.
He took a deep breath and turned to face at a direction where Monte could not see his eyes.
"Alden, I understand," he said quietly.
He looked up at the sky, his mind preoccupied by her voice, and stories she had told him.
"I know," he closed his eyes. "I know."
Pain overwhelmed him as he recalled their first conversations, the memories she offered him that short time they were together.
You're like lilies of the field . . .
Isn't that in the Bible?
Yes . . . it's natural for you, everything . . . you're beautiful in every way . . .
Let's not exaggerate things.
He opened his eyes to face his companion.
"It is time we prepare. They're coming. I could almost smell them."
Some things aren't so easy as they seem.
. . . Anna . . .
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In Volterra at the same moment, Jane was smiling at an abbess who was holding on to a rosary, chanting Hail Marys after Hail Marys as if by doing so would save her from what she was about to face.
"It's been long since I tasted a religious one," she mused.
Belief, she believed, was what led her to her death. Centuries ago, those beliefs were pinpointed directly to religion. Her dinner was a slight compensation of what had happened several centuries ago when she was still human, about to be burned at stake.
Screaming filled the entire fortress. Alec grinned at the girl at the corner.
"You missed a spot," he said, tapping his lower lip.
She laughed and pressed her lips together.
"That one tasted nice," she said.
He watched her and a tide of unexplainable emotion flooded in him. Perplex as he was, he did not stop to wonder why. His eyes were glued to the girl, the newborn vampire, the latest addition to their team.
"Tomorrow is the day," she said.
He looked at her with affection, seeming not to really care about the small talk. What was that feeling, he wondered? He had never experienced it all his centuries of existence.
"Yes," he replied gravely. "Tomorrow is the day."
