AN: Now we get to learn about Sulpicia!

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth,

but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability.

My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

(Modern Version of the Hippocratic Oath)

…

CHAPTER 14: ANSWERS

Aro clasped his hands uneasily in his lap and avoided my eyes. "That is, I am afraid, a very long story." It was obvious from his aggrieved expression that this period of his life was something he still harbored a great deal of regret over. And that he would rather not speak of it.

But I wasn't about to just let this one go. Not when Aro knew practically everything there was to know about my romantic history.

"I don't have anything better to do," I reminded Aro with a shrug. "And it's not like I'm going to judge you for having a previous lover." I grinned sheepishly. "That'd be kinda hypocritical."

Aro, evidently deciding that I was right, took a deep breath before he launched into his tale. "As I mentioned before, my conspicuous lack of a mate in the 6th century generated some nasty rumors in the vampire community, not the least of which, was that I was an incubus," he began, straining to keep his voice matter-of-fact and devoid of emotion.

"While it is generally accepted that a vampire may take several centuries to find an appropriate match..."Aro went on in the same, stifled tone.

That's right, Carlisle didn't find Esme until he was well over two-hundred. And no one seemed to think it was strange that Edward was still looking,I internally acknowledged.

"...I was nearly two-thousand, when the Volturi rose to power in the 6th century," Aro finished with a reluctant sigh.

Two thousand? I thought, astonished by the news. That is a long time to still be looking.

"At the time," Aro continued, "Caius, for all his cruelty, was mated. And to many, that made him a sympathetic figure," he told me with somewhat of a grimace, as though he himself hardly understood how simply having a mate made up for all the white-haired vampire's sadism.

I couldn't help but agree. In fact, I found myself pitying the poor woman, despite never having met her. I knew that even the vilest of criminals were still capable of genuinely loving their wives, but the idea of anyone having to put up with a man who, to my knowledge, was always eager for more violence, sent a ripple of sympathetic terror down my spine.

"Marcus, on the other hand, had just lost his mate of several millennia," Aro revealed sadly with a bowed head. "And that made him even more of a sympathetic figure."

Was that why Marcus had looked so lifeless when I last saw him in Volterra? I mused. Because the love of his life was long dead? I considered bleakly. How awful.

"But I had no mate to speak of." Aro he revealed with an impish shrug. "And at the time, no real desire to obtain one."

I inclined my head at a forty-five degree angle in puzzlement to display my desire for Aro to expound on this idea. I guess, like the vampires he'd mentioned, I also struggled to comprehend the idea of spending two thousand years being single, without any real compunction to remedy that state. I supposed that Aro didn't have to worry, like humans did, that he would risk eternal spinsterhood if he waited too long, since as a vampire, he didn't physically age. But I still found it hard to believe that he wouldn't crave that deeper relationship that, say, Carlisle and Esme had, for that long.

I certainly couldn't imagine myself feeling that way.

"You never had… any err… relations?" I asked dubiously. "Until Sulpicia?" I added immediately, recalling that he'd mentioned that they'd attempted to mate (which I took to mean that they'd had sex multiple times, but because they never quite fully surrendered to each other, it never changed their venom).

I desperately hoped that the irrational jealousy I felt towards this mysterious woman for having had "mere intercourse" with Aro wasn't visible on my face. It was stupid. And Aro didn't need to know that my pregnancy hormones were making me super petty all of a sudden.

Aro exhaled in exasperation before he explained. "Bella my dear, I was just finishing my second millennia when I met Sulpicia," he reminded me in a patient tone. "Surely, you cannot expect that I remained celibate during all that time…"

My brows knit together in bewilderment at Aro's remarks. If he had been human, then of course not. Not all men were insatiable sex-machines. But from the few days I'd spent with Aro, during which he'd explained precisely how he found me attractive, it was clear that he possessed some libido. Libido I was certain he would have acted on by now, if he only had the typical human problems to worry about.

But Aro was a vampire. And given how, life-altering, the consequences of vampire sex could be, I could only imagine that if he didn't want a mate during those two thousand years, that the safest option was to be abstinent.

Am I missing something vital? I wondered.

It was true that Aro had mentioned that the two vampires having sex needed to completely surrender to each other—emotionally, physically, spiritually—and all that, to actually become mates.

But what if you get really comfortable and abandon everything on accident? I thought fearfully. Is that a possibility? How conscious, exactly, does this 'surrender' have to be?

Based on his earlier remarks, I gathered that Aro was surprised that he and Sulpicia hadn't been able to mate the first time, or during any of their subsequent attempts. So I got the sense that in the vampire world, couples normally became mates after the first or second try. And therefore, if no permanent relationship was desired, any sexual activity could be considered risky.

Am I wrong? I wondered uneasily.

"It is a common practice," Aro began, shaking me from my thoughts, "for vampires who are not yet ready to mate, to take temporary lovers," he elucidated slowly, so that I wouldn't miss a single word.

I leaned forward on the couch we shared to hear him better.

"As I mentioned before, it often takes a few centuries for our kind to find an appropriate match. And while some, like dearest Carlisle, are content to wait until they meet the one whom they choose to mate…"Aro disclosed in pleasant, if a bit envious, tones. "Others, such as myself, seek companionship in the interim."

I wasn't really surprised that Carlisle shared Edward's sexual restraint, given his staunch, Christian upbringing. Nor was I particularly surprised that Aro, given his radically different moral outlook, didn't share Carlisle's same reservations about pre-marital sex. But, perhaps because the only person I'd ever had sex with was someone I'd loved—and someone it scared me to realize I probably would have mated with, had the two of us both been vampires—I was still confused.

"Isn't that… dangerous?" I queried hesitantly.

"There is a certain degree of risk in the practice," Aro acknowledged in a warning tone. He wagged his index finger back and forth as if to suggest that it wasn't exactly the most advisable activity. "Even though both vampires must want to become mates for the ritual to be complete," Aro reminded me was a mitigating factor. "…emotions can run high during passionate moments, leading some couples to mate accidentally," he concluded, confirming my suspicions that vampire sex was not something to be embarked upon lightly.

"But during those first two thousand years of my existence I was much more concerned with overthrowing the Romanians and establishing my coven as the new, highest supernatural power in the world, than anything as frivolous as romance."

Aro tossed his hand in the air in a careless gesture. And he practically spat the word romance out of his mouth, like it was something particularly foul.

But afterwards, Aro's disgusted expression immediately softened. And he settled his hands adoringly over my wrists to let me know that his perspective had changed radically since then.

I blushed again at the affectionate contact. Radically changed, indeed, I thought, as I considered how utterly smitten the vampire beside me was now.

After a moment, Aro lifted away from my skin and nervously rubbed his hands together. "For those two thousand years I was so… embroiled in my own schemes that I would never truly surrender my heart to anyone," he gave as his justification for going through with the risky behavior anyway.

"Even if the person in question were to surrender completely to me, I knew I would not reciprocate," Aro announced with a bitter confidence.

His tone relayed the absolute assurance he'd had back then that his heart was impenetrable. But he grimaced ever so slightly at the end of his words, as though his own callous, calculative approach from that time unnerved him now.

"And therefore, I was safe," Aro announced. "Or so that was my thinking at the time," he quickly amended.

I nodded numbly to let Aro know that, at least logically, I understood his reasoning. But my toes wrinkled uneasily inside my socks. And I shivered at the thought of anyone being so cold, as to be certain that another's romantic feelings would have absolutely no effect on them. It was obvious Aro felt and acted vastly differently now... but sill...

"I was not, as my detractors insisted, completely heartless," Aro felt obligated to assure me. "As a gentleman, I determined that it was only polite to inform every person I propositioned of exactly the nature of relationship I was expecting. That is, a relationship that was amicable, and perhaps passionate, when the mood struck me, but never deeply romantic or permanent."

He told them all this? Right from the start? I marveled. Wouldn't that frighten some of them away?

"A significant portion of them did not believe me. Or rather, naively believed that I could be persuaded to change my mind," Aro admitted with a light chuckle. "However, my lovers were free to break off the arrangement whenever they wished," he added, to help convince me that, even a thousand years ago, he hadn't been the sort of man to use his clout to trap anyone in an undesirable position.

"And I took great care to ensure that each and every one who accepted my terms was happy for as long as we were together," Aro continued with a small smile on his lips, as though, despite the transitory nature of these relationships, and the fact that he'd never invested his whole self into them, they were pleasant memories.

"And those that did not accept, I never pressured or punished."

A breath I hadn't known I'd been holding escaped my lips as I realized that, even Aro's younger, more power-hungry-self had valued the concept of informed consent. Deception and coercion were never healthy in any type or relationship. And the green-eyed monster inside me was oddly quelled by the idea that Aro had really cared about each of his former lovers as real people, and not just toys for sexual gratification.

"Who?" I blurted out without thinking. I wasn't jealous anymore, just curious.

To my surprise, Aro didn't seem to mind my intrusive question. He smiled and delicately encased my hands in his own. "You most certainly would not know them, my dear," he assured me. "All of them left Volterra centuries ago. Theia, Penelope, Adalina…" he started to list. "They would be only names to you," he supplied as his justification for not finishing, what I got the sense was a very long collection of previous lovers. "Though, I consider them all unique and precious friends."

Friends. I guessed it wasn't too weird for Aro to still be friends with his former lovers. Aside from the fact that they occasionally had sex, that's what his previous relationships sounded like to me anyway. And the fact that he was still on good terms with most, if not all, of his former paramours was also another evidence of the fact that Aro saw them as real, complex and multi-faceted people.

Which I figured was a good sign.

It wouldn't do to fall into the trap of loving someone who was, in reality, only interested in what my body could offer. Again.

"How many?" I couldn't help but ask.

I'd only had one really serious boyfriend in my life, (who had become my husband) and, since I was considering instigating some kind of relationship with him, I was curious to know how much more experienced than I Aro really was.

How many lovers had Aro had? 20? 200? Over a thousand? Tens of thousands? Millions?

Aro's face fell as he heard this inquiry. Another heavy sigh escaped his immortal lungs before he reluctantly obliged me. "Including Sulpicia, two-hundred and fifty seven," he murmured in a voice that was just above a whisper, as though he was deeply embarrassed by the number, and didn't want anyone else to hear it.

I didn't have enough training in vampire sexual norms to really know if that was an exceptionally high or an exceptionally low number, given Aro's age. But given that I knew of humans whose numbers were a lot higher—Mick Jagger and Hugh Hefner, despite their mortality, were well into the thousands in terms of how many people they'd slept with. And so the fact that Aro's number was only three digits actually surprised me a bit.

To my mortification, however, I actually said as much out-loud, without even thinking about it.

Aro's eyes widened to the size of golf-balls at my assertion that 257 was smaller than I'd been expecting. "Truly? My history does not appall you?" he asked with the same sudden, fierce desperation he'd had in his eyes when he'd asked if I would agree to date him.

"Well… you are three-thousand…" I repeated his own words back to him while chewing on my own lips nervously.

"So is Caius," Aro rebutted with a minorly offended scoff. "And his number is nine," he told me with a jealous sneer, as though a part of him wished that he too could boast of a single digit. If for no other reason than it might intimidate me less.

But Aro really didn't need to worry about scaring me off with some number. Yes, the idea of Aro having over a hundred times more sexual experience than me was a daunting concept—but no more daunting than any of the other various obstacles in our relationship. I was reasonably certain that our differing stances on human murder were going to be a significantly bigger hurdle.

And, given how much of a doting gentleman he was now, and how honest he'd apparently been with all of his previous lovers, I wasn't particularly worried that, if the two of us did decide to get serious sometime in the distant future, that Aro would suddenly run off with someone else. That wasn't how the ancient vampire operated. Even if Aro had been, by his own admission, more interested in power than romance, given the relatively small size of the number, and because he'd promised me that he'd done everything in his power to ensure that his lovers were happy, I doubted he'd ever had multiple lovers at the same time. Or any meaningless, one-night stands.

Cheating and/or being a playboy wasn't his style.

So I wasn't worried at all. In fact, knowing all these facts about Aro's love life only made me feel a lot better about potentially dating the man. Even if we tried and something between us didn't work out, I had a reasonable assurance now that Aro would be affectionate and loyal all along the way.

"You're a lot nicer than Caius," I countered to make it clear that I thought Aro's personality was a lot more important than any number.

Aro beamed under my praise, and splayed an alabaster hand over his heart, as though my kind words deeply touched him.

I definitely would have smiled back, had I been paying enough attention. But I was too caught up in my own, fearful memories of my brief encounter with Caius, to concentrate on anything else.

Violent shudders ran through me as my vivid imagination conjured up the image of Caius—cruel, conniving, sadistic—in bed with some nondescript vampire female. I knew it was foolish to compare my experience of being sentenced to death for being a liability, and the Denali sisters' experience of nearly dying by his hands for a crime they didn't commit, to what the vampire did with his lovers. For all I knew, the white-haired vampire could be a completely different person in the privacy of his bedroom.

Gentle. Considerate. Loving.

But I just couldn't picture it.

"I pity those nine," I told Aro in a terrified voice.

A hearty laugh started deep in Aro's chest. It bubbled up in his throat, like a geyser preparing to erupt. And it escaped his mouth as a full-on guffaw.

"What's so funny?" I asked, bewildered by Aro's humorous reaction to something I frankly found horrifying.

"It is… simply hilarious that you deem gracing Caius' bed to be such an unpleasant experience that you feel sorry for anyone who has had to endure it." he said, his eyes almost teary with venom from laughing so hard. "Do you really suppose he is that incompetent?"

I blanched for a moment as I realized that Aro had interpreted my statement in an entirely different way than I'd intended. I pitied Caius' current, and former lovers because I assumed he would be cruel to them. But Aro seemed to think I pitied them because I believed Caius' sexual performance was... er... lackluster.

"I can assure you, he is not terrible enough to warrant pity…" Aro drawled with a mischievous grin.

Not terrible enough to warrant pity. I tried not to dwell on how Aro had obtained that information. The idea that he was probably privy to all of the white-haired vampire's sexual thoughts and memories, because of his gift, wasn't exactly easy on my stomach.

Instead I just shrugged, and tried to direct the conversation back onto its original course. "Anyway, you were saying… about you and Sulpicia?"

"Ah yes," Aro recalled, rapidly coming back to the present. "As I was saying, my detractors saw my lack of a mate in the 6th century as an indication that I was unfit to rule."

Aro scoffed, as though those who dared to question his authority back then were complete fools.

Once again, I had to agree. Based on the brief history lesson Carlisle had given me about the Volturi, on one of the nights before my wedding, I knew that they'd been completely ruthless their first hundred years in power, in order to fully establish their authority. So any that dared to challenge them were destined to lose.

And die. Violently.

"Several immortals implied that if I could not even manage to win the heart of one vampire, then it was foolhardy in the extreme to expect that I could hold any power over the whole world of them," Aro explained as his opponents' reasoning.

I felt like Aro's detractors had been overlooking something big, however. "Didn't they know you had lovers…?" I asked.

"Of course," Aro said with a wry smile, as though it was nigh impossible to keep any relationships secret from the vampire rumor mill. "Being a lover of mine was, in the mind of many, a highly coveted position," he explained with twinge of pride in his voice. "But if anything, the fact that I'd had so many, and yet never surrendered myself to any of them only made me more suspicious."

Oh. I suppose that makes sense, I decided. Given how Aro had mentioned that some vampires mated on accident in the heat of the moment, I could see the fact that Aro was somehow impervious to those flights of fancy, might strike other immortals as hinting at a deeper issue.

However, knowing the man a little bit myself now, I wouldn't suppose that incubism was the reason. Based on Aro's description of the mating ritual, I gathered that a couple had to be completely vulnerable with one another, and entirely let go of all control, in order for it to work out. But, from what I'd already seen, it was obvious to me that Aro didn't like the level of vulnerability and uncertainty that would require one bit. They weren't his native element at all.

When Aro had confessed his feelings to me, his entire body had radiated fear—an intense fear of my rejection. A fear of something that could potentially devastate him, and yet was completely out of his control.

And, having some awareness of his past bestowed on me from Carlisle, I knew that those same fears had driven him to create and enforce the laws of the Volturi in the first place. That when Aro saw that the supernatural world ran amuck, mostly unchecked, he was not comfortable in the slightest with the anarchy and potentially unsafe future that situation created. And so, in order to quell his fears, and, ultimately, to make the world a safer place, he seized control.

I wasn't sure whether I should laugh or cry at the irony that, contrary to his detractor's assumptions, the thing about Aro that made it difficult for him to mate (fear of the unknown), was the exact same thing that made him such an effective leader. Aro's compulsive need to know every variable, and have as much dominion over the outcome as possible, made it so that his organization never overlooked even the tiniest detail. Carlisle had once told me that the Volturi actually paid a lot of attention to current world events and human news stations, because war zones and cities experiencing violent crime hikes were often hotbeds of vampire misbehavior. Which was something I was certain Aro wouldn't do if he were the type that was more comfortable with the unexpected.

And as I mulled all of this over, suddenly Aro's lack of a mate for those first two-thousand years made a whole lot more sense.

It wasn't because the ancient was heartless.

It was because he was scared.

Scared of the vulnerabilities and unknowns that being in a romantic relationship inevitably entailed.

I felt a rush of electricity in my veins as I realized however, that, Aro was willing to allow both of those things around me. That my child was an enormous unknown—a potentially terrifying uncertainty—which he allowed to exist with remarkable grace. And that he was strangely quite willing, if still a bit paranoid that the outcome might be bad, to divulge so much of himself and to place himself at my mercy.

Both of these things were huge testaments to how much Aro really had changed over the millennia.

And how much I really meant to him.

My cheeks grew dark red as I realized that, once again, Aro's feelings for me were already deeper than I'd ever supposed. I'd already known that he wanted to pursue a serious relationship with me, and that, optimistically, he hoped that we might end up something like what Esme and Carlisle were, sometime in the distant future. But it hadn't really sunk in until now just how much of a leap that was for Aro.

To be pursuing me like a potential mate, rather than a temporary lover—which I was certain was what Aro was doing, given that I'd never been given the caveat speech he'd delivered to all the others—was a huge deal. In order for him to bypass his intense reservations against vulnerability, and fears of the unknown, Aro must want me very badly.

Aro chuckled, bringing me abruptly back to the present, before he continued with his story. "At first I laughed at those who dared to mock me, and continued to do as I pleased." He grinned, his teeth white and merciless. Then his voice rapidly turned serious. "However, once the rumors that my lack of a mate was due to a deficiency like incubism started to spread, I quickly realized that something needed to be done."

"As it turns out, very few vampires wanted to bow to an authority they suspected had a penchant for 'playing with their food'," Aro explained, making a nauseated expression. "As the rumors got worse—claiming, at their height, that I took immortal lovers as a ruse, and had a massive harem of humans hidden in our fortress that I alternately fed on and slept with indiscriminately—the number of crimes we had to punish rose with them," he indicated, raising one hand as if to visually display the uptick in unruly behavior on a bar graph.

"Vampires were disobeying the law against hunting in Volterra simply as an excuse to visit, so that they could revile my name to my face," he breathed out in exasperation.

I paled at the idea of anyone purposefully antagonizing the Volturi. I doubted that Aro's guard would have been any more merciful towards criminals then than they were now.

But for some odd reason I felt even worse for Aro than for the hundreds of idiotic vampires who'd dared to test the Volturi's resolve. Sure, they'd died. But they'd sort of deserved it. And it must have been horrid for Aro to deal with so many vampires threatening the secrecy of their entire kind over some salacious rumors.

Aro heaved an embarrassed sigh and buried his head in one hand. "It was a disaster."

"So what happened? Did Marcus really drive them all out?" I asked, recalling the ironic festival that was being celebrated in Volterra the first time Aro and I had met. The festival that dubbed the depressed ancient a saint for expunging the town of vampires. Despite the fact that at least thirty or so remained living in the city's labyrinthine underground.

Aro snorted, as though my assumption was totally hilarious. "He was instrumental in spreading the news that did the trick, but he did not physically drive them out."

I too snorted as I tried to envision the morose, elder vampire physically driving anyone anywhere. He was so devoid of life when I'd last seen him, it was hard to picture him having enough motivation to drive off even an insect that decided to take up residence on his person, let alone a whole cadre of furious, thirsty vampires.

"Ultimately, after a short century of being in power," Aro continued with a small frown, "I decided it was imperative that I quell the rumors about myself being an incubus by making it appear as though I took a mate."

I blinked in stupefaction at this pronouncement. "You… faked having a mate?"

Somewhat remorsefully, Aro nodded. "Nothing else besides my being mated would appease the rumors," he supplied as his justification for the deception. Though, based on the hearty sigh that followed, I surmised that even he recognized that rationale was weak at best.

"Since, at the time, I had no desire to have a mate in the true sense," Aro acknowledged. "...and I had doubly no desire to deal with a vampire using the false position as a power ploy," he contributed with a uncomfortable quiver. "...I selected a human who seemed unlikely to derail my ambitions, then transformed her to fill the position."

"You… selected a human?" His description sounded so cold. Like he was trying to hire a dutiful employee, rather than choose a spouse or even a lover.

Again, Aro reluctantly nodded. "Yes."

"A human?" I repeated, emphasizing a new facet of that astonishing announcement that had me puzzled.

Certainly Aro had explained that choosing a vampire could entail politics he didn't want to deal with. And that he hadn't done anything with this mysterious woman until she'd been transformed, but still… Wasn't picking a human, when one was being accused of being an incubus, a suspicious move?

Aro exhaled in exasperation before he explained. "I deliberated about the decision for a long time," he shared with his thumbs twiddling nervously in his lap. "I could not risk whoever I chose running off prematurely. For if my 'mate' were to abandon me, I would lose any shred of credibility I still had left," he revealed with a pained look in his crimson eyes that suggested that he'd felt totally trapped at that time.

A surge of pity washed through me as I tried to place myself in his shoes. He'd really only had two options—continue to fight off nasty rumors and hordes of disapproving vampires for at least another thousand years—or project a false image of matehood in order to establish peace. Given the number of deaths, both human and vampire, that had been prevented as a result of Aro's decision, I couldn't really blame him for choosing the latter.

"It was imperative that I select someone who was dependent on me, so as to discourage them from leaving." Aro winced as he said discourage, as though he felt a stab of guilt for having to coerce anyone into staying in what might be an unhappy relationship. "And since newborns are often quite reliant on their makers for the first few years, at least, I imagined having one as a 'mate' would work out quite well, in that regard," he said logically.

Though once he was finished, Aro looked away, his eyes shining with deep remorse. "It was… underhanded of me… to exploit Sulpicia's humanity that way…"

"Wait… this is Sulpicia, you're talking about?"

She was the human Aro selected to be his fake mate? I thought, puzzled. Didn't he say he attempted to make her his actual mate, at some point? Did that happen later? I wondered.

Glumly, Aro nodded. "In the beginning, she was the perfect candidate." He grimaced in what looked like shame for his reprehensible actions. "Pretty, demure, undemanding…" he listed in an emotionless, academic tone that told me he'd chosen her for entirely logical reasons, without a shred of heart in mind.

"And most importantly she was actually thrilled with the prospect of receiving all the perks of having a rich and powerful 'husband', without the obligations."

Once again, Aro's words were getting a little too oblique for me to follow. "Obligations?"

"When I first approached her, I only asked that Sulpicia look the part," Aro clarified. "At the time I had no intention of ever being sexually intimate with her," he exposed in another surprising bout of total honesty. "The potential for her to become dissatisfied, should she want to actually mate, and I not reciprocate, was too high."

I chewed my lip nervously as I processed this.

"I chose her, a conventionally beautiful woman, because I wanted my apparent choice to be believable to the rest of the world, not because I possessed any desire for her," Aro expounded. "But from the beginning, I was very adamant that she owed me nothing physically," he was quick to assure me. "And, initially, she was very happy with that arrangement."

My brow scrunched in confusion as I suddenly realized that something was missing from Aro's story. "But if you never… actually had sex with Sulpicia then how—?"

Aro cut me off before I could finish. "Whenever we made a public appearance, I made sure that we were lathered in each other's venom so it would smell like we were mates," he revealed with a somewhat sheepish expression. "My guard knew of our trick. But the rest of the world bought the lie," he said with a shrug, as though even now, he was surprised that it had worked. "And at once, the crimes plummeted as the world accepted the truth that I am no incubus."

I nodded to indicate that I understood Aro's story. Nevertheless, I was still a little puzzled by one thing the blond doctor had mentioned that night. "But you said that you tried to mate with her? And Carlisle said you claimed to love her? If Sulpicia was your mate in name only—? "

Aro held up a single palm to halt my barrage of questions.

Immediately I clamped my mouth shut to hear his response. He had said this was a long story, after all.

"By the time Carlisle visited me in Volterra," Aro started to explain, in answer to my question, "Sulpicia's enthusiasm for being a mate in name only, had waned," he informed me with a sour frown. "By the 1700s, she wanted more than I was willing to offer," he told me with two hands raised in rejection of her unwanted advances.

"On multiple occasions she tried to seduce me," Aro went on, sounding unnerved. "She was convinced that as a man, eventually I would cave to her feminine charms."

Aro rolled his eyes, as though the idea that he would cave to her pithy attempts at seduction was positively ludicrous.

"Didn't you already have..." I struggled to find the appropriate word. One that wasn't too judgmental. "...a mistress..." I settled on at last. It was the technical term, after all. "...for those sorts of things?"

Aro shook his head. "I had no mistress," he explicitly clarified. "For appearance's sake, I hadn't taken another lover since Sulpicia and I had 'mated'," he explained as his reason for temporary abstinence. "And therefore, Sulpicia was certain that her rather gauche attempts would sway me, in the absence of any other outlets."

His face looked pinched as he said the word gauche as though he was more scandalized by the reactions of those who'd been unfortunate to witness Sulpicia's attempts, then by the attempts themselves.

At once, I wondered what kind of things the formerly quiet and demure woman had done to try and entice Aro into her bed. Had she employed the use of lingerie, like I had with Edward? Did Aro think that was gauche? I worried, since that was pretty much the only seduction tactic in my arsenal. Or were her attempts much more tasteless? And potentially… public? I considered with lewd curiosity.

Aro went on, oblivious to my titillating wonderings. "Carlisle, who, like all the rest of my visitors, I'd told Sulpicia was my mate, was just as baffled by my reluctance to 'know her' in the biblical sense as I was by his reluctance to drink human blood," he told me.

Aro sighed. "While Carlisle insisted that he wanted to wait to indulge in that particular pleasure until he was legally married, he found it unthinkable that I was 'married' as far as the vampire world was concerned, and yet staunchly refused to consummate that marriage."

I could see how Carlisle might feel that way.

Suddenly, Aro laughed as he recalled something hilarious. "For a short time, Carlisle even tried to aid my 'wife' in seducing me."

I too couldn't help but giggle at the idea of Carlisle, of all people—especially at a time where he was still a virgin—assisting a woman in "scoring" with his friend. Urging Aro to take advantage of his marital status was the weirdest way to be a wingman. Not to mention that, due to Carlisle' lack of personal experience, he probably had some bizarre ideas about what might get Aro turned on.

"And in retaliation, I enlisted my guard to try to seduce him into drinking human blood," Aro purred in a devious, chocolaty voice.

I gasped at this. Carlisle never told me that the temptation was mutual! I thought, scandalized by the secrecy.

At least until I realized that it was a rather odd topic to bring up. While I was in Volterra, as a good male friend, I tried to get Aro laid, wasn't exactly something the doctor was going to admit to me.

But still… the fact that Aro had only ordered his guard to deposit bleeding humans in Carlisle's presence as long as Carlisle aided Sulpicia's banal attempts to bed Aro, shed a new light on their relationship. For the longest time I'd assumed that Aro was merely callous—that he had absolutely no respect for Carlisle's decision to hunt animals.

But it appeared that I'd been wrong.

Certainly Aro had worried in the beginning that animal blood was unhealthy, and no doubt tried to persuade his friend with his silver-tongued words that he ought to hunt humans instead. However, it made a lot more sense, given what I now knew of Aro's general respect for other people's autonomy, that Aro hadn't started to make Carlisle uncomfortable on purpose, until Carlisle effectively did the same to him.

I wondered if Aro had hoped that Carlisle would be so appalled by the corpses being delivered to the library while he was studying that he would stop helping Sulpicia. Whatever Aro had hoped to accomplish, it obviously hadn't worked.

"We tried persuading the other to no end. But as you know, eventually Carlisle couldn't abide the pressure any longer," Aro reminisced with a somber frown. "Despite the fact that he cherished having me as an intellectual companion."

"He left," I recalled aloud.

Aro nodded glumly. "Yes."

"And Sulpicia?" I asked.

Aro steepled his fingers in front of his chest. "Once Carlisle was gone, I attempted to have a proper marriage to her."

I gasped once more. He changed his mind? So soon?

"I felt it was only fair, after asking so much of her," he told me with an exasperated sigh, as though his decision was prompted more by a desire to get Sulpicia to finally stop nagging him than anything else.

My pink lips slowly shut and turned down at the corners as I struggled to comprehend the ancient's reasons behind his complete one-eighty on the matter.

Instigating intimate connections that were, what I guessed was the vampire equivalent of friends-with-benefits, was one thing.

But a relationship prompted purely by annoyance, or at best, obligation, didn't sound particularly healthy.

"Over the years, I had grown quite fond of her," Aro chipped in, to make sure that I didn't get the wrong idea. "I was not lying when I wrote to Carlisle telling him that I loved her. I did, in a peculiar way," he told me with a warm smile gracing his perfect lips. Though it was obvious from his voice that he spoke of her more like a friend or even a sister than a romantic partner.

"But it wasn't a happy arrangement for us," Aro admitted suddenly with a deep frown. "A short year later, I let her go."

My dark eyebrows lifted at this. "Let her go?"

"I rescinded our contract, and allowed her to leave Volterra in order to choose a proper mate," Aro clarified in a resolute tone.

I was astonished by how accommodating Aro was all of a sudden. Hadn't he made her promise to pretend to be his mate indefinitely? And he was… just going to let her go after it didn't work out? Couldn't that threaten his reputation very badly, since mates were supposed to be for life? I reasoned internally.

Did Carlisle leaving really impact him that much? I wondered, given that Aro had listed the blond's departure as his reason for even entertaining Sulpicia in the first place. Or was it Aro's guilt—the guilt he felt for not being able to give Sulpicia the love she deserved—that convinced him to let her go?

"And a few centuries after she left, Sulpicia did exactly that," Aro unexpectedly revealed, a proud, almost fatherly grin stretching his cheeks.

My insatiable curiosity gnawed at me again. "Who?" I had to ask.

Aro's grin grew even wider before he dropped the name of Sulpicia's mate. "Jonathan."

I could hardly believe my ears. "Carlisle's Jonathan?" I demanded.

Certainly he had to be talking about someone else. I mean, Jonathan is a very popular name—

"The very same," Aro confirmed to my utter disbelief.

"But he's in Canada!" I contested.

"And so is Sulpicia," Aro stated matter-of-factly.

I blinked in shock. For some reason when Aro said he'd allowed Sulpicia to leave Volterra I'd assumed she'd remained in Italy. Or at least somewhere in Europe. The idea that anyone who had once had an intimate connection with the Volturi leader was here on the North American continent was mind-boggling.

"And the rest of the world is just… cool with that?" I found a hard time believing that Aro's reputation as not-an-incubus was going to stay intact if word got out that his supposed "mate" had mated with another vampire in Canada.

Aro firmly shook his head to suggest that my assumptions were way off base. "They haven't the slightest inkling," he informed me. "I still receive shipments of her venom, so my scent has not changed," he said, gesturing toward his pulse points where he presumably applied the substance like a perfume. "And any who saw Sulpicia in Volterra would not recognize her now. She looks and acts completely different," he supplied to let me know why her identity had not been found out by the vicious vampire rumor mill.

"Sulpicia took a new name, and cut her hair in order to live with the love of her life," Aro explicated, to show just how far the woman was willing to go to live undisturbed with her mate. "And no vampire has any reason to associate her new identity 'Sarah', Jonathan's mate, with Sulpicia," he went on. "While she used to be silent, sad and demure, she's bold, vivacious and splendidly happy now."

Aro's lips spread in a paternal smile. He seemed genuinely pleased that she had found happiness.

"So, where do they think Sulpicia is?" I asked.

Aro had to have some excuse for why she was never seen by visitors at the Volturi fortress anymore.

"The world at large presumes my Sulpicia is locked in a tower."

"What?!" I shrieked, appalled by the idea of Aro keeping anyone, especially someone he was supposed to love, holed up like that. It sounded positively barbaric. "Why would they think that?"

"Because that is where Caius keeps his mate," Aro ground out in a low growl, suggesting his extreme distaste with the practice. "And they have not seen Sulpicia in hundreds of years. Or heard an announcement of her death. So logically, that is where she must be, in their minds."

I blinked in stupefaction. The idea that a Volturi leader's wife's place was to be ensconced away somewhere in a lonely tower, was totally primeval. For goodness sake, the Greeks had treated their wives better than that! And they weren't exactly known for being progressive!

Another surge of pity coursed through my body for the nine unfortunate people that Caius had taken as lovers. If that was how he treated his mate—the one he'd managed to give his whole self to somehow—I trembled to think of how he'd treated the other eight.

I shook my head to banish those grisly thoughts. There were more important things to focus on. "And… you never thought to tell Carlisle that you and Sulpicia broke it off, because…?"

"How was I supposed to tell him?" Aro demanded, abruptly sounding broken, like the reality that he hadn't been able to share this knowledge with one of his most cherished friends tore him up inside. "Any letter I might have sent could always be intercepted. And even if I were to tell him on the phone, or in person… if word were to get out that she…" he trailed off, his hands flailing helplessly around him.

But he didn't need to finish his sentence anyway. I got the gist.

Oh. Right. If anyone else were to come across a letter—one which revealed that Aro's matehood with Sulpicia was all a sham—or if anyone were to hear about it through the grapevine, that would be disastrous for Aro's reputation.

A disturbing epiphany suddenly occurred to me as I processed just how far Aro was willing to go to preserve the charade of being mated. "There hasn't been anyone else, after Sulpicia left, has there?"

It wasn't really a question. Since he'd apparently remained abstinent for the duration of his relationship with Sulpicia—which I'd surmised was almost a thousand years—in order to keep up appearances, I doubted he'd done anything since. He'd certainly demonstrated that he possessed enough restraint. Though there was always the possibility that he'd merely been extremely discreet…

"Not like before. Not formally…" Aro told me with a downcast expression. "The last seven, from the number I gave you before, were, rather clandestine affairs…"

His words brought another horrible realization to my mind, which prompted me to ask, "What do you plan to tell the world... about me?"

My heart sank at the idea of being in a relationship that had to fly completely under everyone's radar—to essentially be his secret mistress. The notion of having to conceal my feelings, if they ever did grow to that point made my stomach twist into complicated knots.

But, since Aro, in the eyes of the rest of the supernatural community, already had a mate, if we were to become something serious, he didn't really have the option to go public...

Before Aro could even begin to answer, suddenly, another disturbing thought occurred to me. "No one else, besides me, Carlisle, Esme, and Renata, knows that you like me, do they?"

"I have not explicitly told anyone else, no."

Aro looked down at our hands in shame for not being willing to more openly broadcast his affections, given the lie he had to preserve to maintain his good reputation.

"Though, shortly before I left to search you out..." Aro pulled his hands away from mine to wring them in discomfort. "...the members of my guard uncovered the truth for themselves…"

I bristled as I imagined certain members of the guard uncovering this piece of information. Marcus, I knew wouldn't care one whit. But I could imagine that others would be much less pleased with discovering that their master harbored deep affections for another vampire's human lover.

"How did they… react?" I fearfully asked.

"Poorly," Aro revealed with a heavy sigh. "Renata, of course…" he gestured to his subordinate, who was still standing perfectly still, and staring unblinkingly out the window, "….had no objections. Her only concerns are with my safety and happiness."

I swallowed as I realized the implications of him singling her out. "But the others…?"

"A few expressed their support," he weakly contributed. But the wavering timbre of his voice already told me that they were paltry in number. And even less in power. "But Caius, and the rest, were furious."

"Because I'm human? Because I'm a liability?" I asked, repeating the white-haired vampire's icy words.

Aro shook his head. "Caius knows that I would insist upon your transformation before I did anything physical with you," he replied with absolute certainty. "No, he and the others were furious because my feelings for you led me to make some very poor decisions."

I leaned forward on the edge of my seat as I heard his serious words. Poor decisions? Aro's crush on me had made him... mess up?

"We lost Chelsea because I was too busy making travel arrangements to prevent your wedding to realize that the Romanian brothers were planning an ambush."

Aro buried his head in his hands. His crimson eyes glossed over. And his shoulders quivered for a moment, traumatized with the knowledge that he'd been so careless. Evidently it stung to know it was his fault that the woman who served as the lynchpin in his organization had died.

"I sent her right into their trap," Aro moaned.

My blood ran cold at Aro's words. "Chelsea is dead?"

I didn't really want to rub it in. But based on what I'd been told about her function in the guard, I knew that her absence would be totally devastating. Chelsea's power was to manipulate relationships, which she used to ensure that, whatever conflicts might between individual guard members, they still remained loyal to the organization at large.

Carlisle had been very adamant that her part was vital. Without the influence of her gift, the Volturi wouldn't be able to weather the conflicts that would inevitably arise in a coven of that size. Without Chelsea forcing the group to prioritize unity, the Volturi would be torn apart over petty disagreements.

And knowing how negatively the majority of the guard had reacted to Chelsea's death, I feared they might already have.

"Is the Volturi still… functional without her?" I worriedly asked, figuring that the safety of the entire supernatural world depended on it, and therefore Aro's beleaguered feelings were secondary right now.

Aro's elegant eyebrows lifted in shock at my words. But he didn't say anything. Abruptly, he seemed to have turned to stone. He sat frozen solid in his seat and stared down into his hands with a lifeless expression that screamed, What have I done?

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Renata's shoulders stiffen in fear the same way they had when Aro had mentioned yesterday that Carlisle was "like a brother to him."

Apparently, I was on to something.

And it definitely wasn't good.

Was this what Carlisle was really worried about? I suddenly panicked, remembering how apprehensive the doctor had been when he'd talked to Aro over the phone. That Aro would actually lapse so poorly in his role among the Volturi because of his feelings for me that he would accidentally cause the entire organization to fall apart?

I swallowed guiltily as I realized the other half of the equation. Was I inadvertently responsible for the crumbling of a great, if somewhat ruthless, force for order and good?

Desperate for an answer—hopefully one that I was hopelessly off base, and that the Volturi were fine, thank you very much—I tried nudging Aro back into consciousness.

But no matter how much I prodded his arms, the man didn't move an inch. He didn't even blink, as I started to push with a lot more firmness. Nor did he breathe as he stared hopelessly down at his pale fingers, as if imploring them to somehow resurrect the deceased and right all of his previous wrongs.

As I continued my futile attempts to rouse Aro, another alarming epiphany struck me.

Was it one of the members of the Volturi who'd been the first angry caller? The person to call before Renata had called to ask us to pick her up? The one Aro had lied and told me was a telemarketer? I fearfully considered.

Was this why Aro was so nervous to answer the phone lately? Why he told us that first time that he "had trouble trusting many as of late"? I suddenly realized was the very sensible corollary to that thought.

Were the other Volturi looking for Aro? I wondered. Is that what Renata's doing at the window? Trying to dispel them?

It all made too much sense.

My son tumbled around inside me, not injuriously, but uneasily just the same, as he registered my tumultuous feelings. This was all so much to take in. And if my predictions weren't false…

Rapidly, I turned in my seat to face Aro. To implore him to tell me if any of my dark musing were even remotely true.

But before I could get out a single word, Renata unexpectedly moved again. At first, she was only dark blur in the corner of my vision. Until suddenly she appeared directly in front of Aro. And held out a hand towards him expectantly, wishing for him to take it.

With only a moment's hesitation, Aro broke out of his rocky reverie, and reached out to clasp her hand. His smooth eyelids fluttered shut for a moment as he processed a lifetime's worth of thoughts emanating from the petite vampire's inscrutable (to me, anyway) mind. And then, just as suddenly as they'd shut, his crimson eyes flew open in shock.

"Divert him," Aro abruptly commanded his subordinate with no other context.

"Master, I have already tried, but this one is persistent," she explained, frightened. "Eventually, he will wear me down," she explained with a panicked tremor racking her petite frame. "If you command it, I will try. But I cannot constantly be working to keep him away for four consecutive days…"

Renata gave a shaky bow to apologize for her inability to completely fulfill Aro's wishes, due to the limitations of her gift.

But Aro didn't seem surprised or upset that Renata's power had such finite limits. "Hmm. You are right," he hummed in acknowledgment.

"Wait, what are you guys talking about?" I demanded in a harried voice.

Was Caius here? came my first, terrified thought. Was he coming here to exact revenge on Aro for Chelsea's death?

I wasn't exactly sure how close the two immortals had been. But I knew that Caius was the unforgiving type and had a pretty insatiable thirst for violence.

To my surprise it was Renata who answered my question. "Your friend, the shape-shifter," she began in a low, calmer voice, in an attempt to soothe my frazzled nerves. "He is trying to come here."

"Jacob?"

He was the last person I'd been expecting to get involved in this mess.