Chapter 20

Trixie PoV

The next day, Alice, Reya and I headed towards Juneau to see about adopting a puppy or three. We had to take the long way and drive, as we didn't want to try transporting puppies in a plane or even with me and Reya flying. After a brief online search, we found a humane society that had just gotten in a litter of puppies that were a mix of four breeds that we liked. They were Great Dane, Irish Wolfhound, Golden Retriever, and Border Collie. "I feel like these puppies are either going to be incredibly smart or incredibly stupid," I remarked.

"Why do you say that?"

"Y'know how sometimes when a very handsome man makes a baby with a gorgeous woman and the baby is either just as beautiful as the parents, or looks like a truck? I think the same may apply here. These are all very smart breeds, and there's a possibility that all that smart could result in dumb." They both laugh, and sure I was trying to be funny, but it was a definite possibility. Maybe it was the 'looks like a truck' comment.

We arrived at the shelter and immediately all the animals started barking, hissing, and growling at Alice. Reya and I sent out subdued vibes as much as we could to calm the poor animals. Alice was a wreck, too. I knew she wanted to see the puppies, but she was worried that she'd have to go wait in the car or something.

Thankfully, our attempts worked, and the animals were calm when we started walking through to the kennels. "The puppies are just back here," the volunteer said as she led us to the back. "They were at a foster facility with their birth mother, but now that they've been weaned off of her milk, they were brought here."

Inside one of the larger kennels was seven puppies, all of different colors and fur types. Two of them had dark golden fur, another two a mixture of black, white and brown, and the other three were all black except for just white paws and a patch of grey on different parts of their faces.

"I think those three are it," Reya and I said in unison. We were both pointing at the matching trio.

"Well," Alice piped in. "Can you think of a reason why we can't take on all seven? We have plenty of room. and then we wouldn't have to break up siblings."

"Seven dogs, Alice? You want to raise seven dogs?"

"I know it'll be a lot of work, but look at how many people live in our house, and they're all super excited about the prospect of having puppies. Everyone will pitch in! C'mon." She looked like a little kid begging their parent for a new toy.

"Okay, but remember, Alice. Little puppies turn into big dogs. Yes our house will still be big enough, especially with the addition, but just remember, they're not going to be little like this for long. And given their parentage, they may very well get rather large. Hell, look at those paws!" All seven pups had huge paws, indicating they would grow in to giant dogs.

The volunteer seemed interested in our exchange and liked the idea of not separating the siblings, so they could grow up together. "We'll have to bring them to a vet to get fixed within the next few months, I'm guessing," I said to the girl.

"Yep, that's right," she agreed. "Then you'll need to have said vet fax us confirmation that you did so we can update our records." Good thing we brought the biggest SUV we had, I thought.

After filling out the paperwork, we got the pups on leashes, but then carried them out to the car. We each took two, while the volunteer gal followed us out with the last one. There were four girls and three boys. I knew Alice was going through names in her head and trying to see what the family would decide, but I wanted to wait and see how it played out, so I blocked her. She frowned at me, so I simply stuck my tongue out at her as we piled into the car.

Our next stop was to a pet store where we stocked up on puppy chow, dog bowls, toys, dog beds, blankets, and potty training supplies. Back at the house, Emmett, Jasper, Jacob, and Edward were busy building some kennels that we could use while training. After they were housetrained, I wanted them to be able to have free reign in the house, and never have to be cooped up in cages, but for the moment, they could prove useful.

The puppies whined and barked a bit in the car, but otherwise stayed calm, thanks to mine and Reya's influences. Once we got home, we let them out so they could potty in the yard and then carried them all inside the house.

"Um, last time I checked, the number that came after two was three… not seven," Carlisle said as we entered.

"They're all siblings," Alice whined. "How could we break up a family? We had to!" Carlisle gave her a look of consternation, but after seeing the pleading, puppy dog eyes of his daughter, he conceded and agreed to house the seven dogs with our family.

Everyone was convened in the living room as we entered with the many puppies. The puppies moseyed around, somewhat wary of their new surroundings, but still calm. So far, so good. A few shouted out possible names for the group, the heightened noise level was starting to make the little ones nervous so they started barking, which only made it worse. I sent a silent message to Reya to go get something big to write on.

Taking in a deep breath, I simply whispered, "shh" for the duration of the air in my lungs. Along with it I emitted a subliminal message to quiet down. Jasper was the first to receive it and helped me amplify it. Within seconds, the puppies stopped barking, everyone stopped shouting and the air was finally silenced.

"Thank you, everyone," I addressed. "Now that we're all calm and quiet, we can discuss the naming in a rational way. There are seven puppies and six couples, plus Kate. So I think we each should take responsibility for one of the little ones. Sorry Kate, didn't mean to out your singledom so bluntly." Tanya was off with Demetri god knew where, and Irina decided to return to Volterra with Caius, as she felt shunned by us, and rightly so. She thought she was justified in her decision to report us to the Volturi, despite the fact that Laurent was never her mate. But she betrayed her family when she did that.

"Just let me get first pick of the litter and I'll be fine," Kate replied with a smile. She stood up, graceful as ever and walked over to where the puppies were sitting, laying, and quietly playing with each other. She picked up one of the girls that was mostly golden and decided that was hers. "I think I'll call you Sasha, after my mother," she declared. "Her hair was just the same shade of gold"

"That's lovely, Katrina," Carmen commented. "May we pick next?" she asked, holding Eleazar's hand in hers. The rest of us nodded in agreement and they got up to pick out their new fur-baby. And thus, one by one, all the puppies were matched with their new mamas and papas. Edward and I chose one of the all black ones with white paws and a grey eyepatch on her face. After some deliberating, we decided to call her Bonney. Due to the eye-patch making her look like a pirate, she reminded the both of us of the notorious pirate Anne Bonney.

The other puppies were named Rebel, both for Jasper's affiliations with the Confederate army and Alice's love of actress Rebel Wilson; Bartólome, or Bart for short, after Carmen's brother that died when she was a child; Chessie which was short for Winchester, Emmett was a fan of some show with two brothers with that name. Carlisle wanted to name his Hippocrates, but Esme put the kibosh on that; they eventually settled on Sherlock. Reya and Jacob chose Shadow for theirs due to the grey coloring on his face.

We decided that we would each take responsibility for the training of our own puppies, but use communal training plans so all the dogs would learn the same commands. I remembered when I dog-sat for one of Renee's friends once and the couple that owned her used "no" and "off" for the same thing, and thought she was just untrainable. Turned out, they just weren't being consistent with how they each trained her.

Since they were still pretty small, we put the kennels together in one big corral so they could sleep together instead of separate. I had high hopes that we wouldn't even need to crate them after the first couple weeks, then they could sleep wherever they wanted in the house.

None of us had the gift of truly communicating with animals, but the puppies trusted me, Reya, and Jacob without question. They climbed all over us, while the others were mostly left alone. "I think it partly has to do with temperature," I offered when Kate seemed sad that Sasha wasn't more affectionate with her. "Once they're used to your not-so-warm bodies, they'll be okay. We'll help them, too."

We put some bowls of food and water in the puppy corral and then turned out the lights. Only three of us needed sleep, so the rest decided to hang out near the puppies, but leave them be so they could get their sleep. Edward and I retired to our room and made love before I decided I wanted to sleep. As per usual, Edward held me in his arms as I slumbered.

In the morning we received a report that the puppies had been brought outside twice to potty, with zero accidents, and then everyone started firing off ideas on how to train them. Once again I had to emit a calming message that Jasper helped to spread around.

"Everyone, we need to be able to do this calmly and rationally. The puppies will react to calmness better than us being over-excited or too loud." They looked sufficiently chastised and we were able to put together a training plan for the next few weeks that also included everyone's hunting schedule. No one wanted to be away from their puppy for too long. Emmett even wanted to take his with, but we thankfully were able to talk him down from that. He'd scar the poor thing for life if he did that.

And so it began. We spent our days playing with and training the dogs, and thus bonding as a family even more. Within a few months, we had seven beautiful, yet very large dogs that had the best lives ever. Bonney would often sleep at the foot of our bed, much to Edward's chagrin. She had a dog bed on the floor, of course, but preferred our company. Sometimes the dogs would nap together in one of the lounges, and they would run around the woods together like a pack, too.

We had to send proof to the shelter that the puppers were being treated well and that we had taken them all in to get fixed. So we sent photos of the lot of them all wearing their cones of shame, looking sad as ever. Then we sent a similar photo once the cones had been removed and they were happy as larks. More photos of them running around in the yard and playing with us. Needless to say, the shelter was very pleased with how we did.

Apparently the manager of the shelter wasn't happy when she learned the volunteer had let us adopt all seven pups. I guess that was indicative that we had nefarious plans or something. So she was happy to learn that we simply wanted all of them as we had a large family.

Caius sends us progress reports every so often on how the Volturi is faring after the regime change. Thus far, the Romanians are still in the dark, and the hope is that will remain to be the same. If not, Caius knows exactly who to call.

The End.

A/N: I know this story ended kinda suddenly, but I just had to get it done. I've got too many other stories to work on and needed to lighten the load. Chances are I'll be publishing some alternate story-lines for this one as time goes on. I had a lot of ideas popping up as I was writing this and could only go with one plot line. No idea if/when I'll get around to posting those, but keep following me for more updates. Thank you to my loyal readers and reviewers, you make this hobby so worthwhile!

An easy chart so you can remember the dogs' names, in case I write a sequel. A possibility I haven't ruled out, at least.

Edward Trixie – Bonney

Carlisle Esme – Sherlock

Alice Jasper – Rebel

Emmett Rosalie – Winchester

Kate (Garrett) – Sasha

Eleazar Carmen – Bartolome

Reya Jacob – Shadow