~*~ Author's Note ~*~

Gah, I know. Don't hate me too much for taking so long to update. I decided to take two summer courses that just started up. Now that I have them sorted out, I really am going to try to update more often.

As a side note, there are probably only a good 5-6 chapters left to the story. Mucho action: werewolf, Volturi, Victoria, Denali, and Cullens to come. Oh hell ya, it'll all come together and make so much sense *claps hands* Too excited for some BAMF fight scenes.

Oh, and Aro tells me to tell you to please review, as he almost got a cameo in this chapter. Hooray and bon-bons for everyone!

Agh, long AN, but a P.S. This chapter is slightly depressing, but it's what I had been hoping Edward and Bella's reaction had been sort of like. Read if you're severely happy and nothing can get you down, or if you're already slitting your wrists and need to haggle up some more tears, lol.

~*~Groovy Steering Wheels and Tearless Sorries~*~

"Argh!" I gurgled blearily as I woke up to someone shaking my shoulders rapidly, making my teeth chatter together. Lifting my head out of my pillow enough to open my left eye, I stared into the darkness at the small figure in front of me.

The weight against my stomach lifted as Edward pulled away from my blanket-cocooned form. Bent boundaries or not, he had still insisted on making sure I was warm enough throughout the night.

"Alice!" he whispered harshly, "You're going to hurt her. What, in the name of God, are you doing here? It's five in the morning. Unless-" He cut himself off of his hurried, quiet lament.

Edward's face hovered inches away from the back of my head, and I propped myself on my elbow, turning to squint at his expression in the darkness of the room. He stared above my head, his eyes dilating slightly with each passing second.

"I'll hide her," he stated quietly and fiercely over the top of my head.

"You can't do that. You know their strength, their power."

"Then we fight. Fight them off."

His words sent chills up and down my spine. His usually perfected voice was gritty, full of anger and hatred. I had only heard him use that voice once before. As it was right before a ravenous, sadistic vampire was about to kill me, I had a feeling Alice bore no good news.

My head was spinning with the information Edward had told me about the Volturi. Guards; governing vampires; keepers of the law. I had allowed Edward to consume me, to wrap himself back into my life, and in doing so, I had broken their only rule: Discretion and secrecy.

I tried to calm myself down as my heart began to palpitate within my chest cavity. I knew Edward and Alice would have already deciphered the shift in its beating, but the last thing I needed right now was to fall to pieces before I knew what was going on.

"You've been through worse, Bella," I told myself in my head, trying to take deep breaths and fighting the vomit that had begun its slow trail up my esophagus. "You lost him, and you got through it. You'll be okay. Everything will be okay."

As if he knew what was going through my mind, Edward pulled my disheveled hair in one long lock and tucked it over one of my shoulders, caressing the back of my neck slightly, slowly rubbing back and forth.

Edward was here. I was strong. We could do this. We could get through it, although I hadn't even a clue what "it" was.

After what seemed like an eternity, with Edward still cradling my neck with his hand and me forcing myself to breath in and out, I saw the shadowy form of Alice's head tilt slightly downward.

"We would lose, Edward. You know what I've seen. The vision that will come to pass. The sooner you accept it, the better we can prepare for-"

Before I knew what was happening, the weight on the left side of the bed had lifted, and the touch that I longed for so much was gone. I blinked furiously into each corner of my old bedroom, wondering if I had merely awoken from a bad dream.

Then I saw that my bedroom window had been opened.

I flipped the covers off of me rapidly, shoving my sneakers onto my feet without bothering to unlace them. The heels of my feet dangled dangerously out from the back of them. Throwing a tee-shirt on over my undershirt, I opened my door quietly.

Within three steps, I promptly face-planted into the hallway carpet.

"Damn it!" I swore under my breath, flicking the precarious tennis shoes off, pushing myself off of the ground, and bending down to grab them in my right hand. At that time I was gratefully thankful that Renee was a sound sleeper. I could still hear her light snores from the nearby bedroom, and I continued my trek through the familiar house.

I held the front doorknob firmly, and pushed it out and away from me, hoping that it would choose not to creak. The hinges were in my favor, and I sighed deeply as I closed the door quietly and raced barefoot to the side of the house where my window was.

There was no one to be found.

My hair whipped around me as I turned full circle trying to find a clue to where Edward and Alice had disappeared to. I had begun to feel again as if I had mistaken the whole situation for a dream. At that moment, I would have given anything for it to be just that.

But as my head turned once more towards the pavement, I heard a thud and a sound of glass hitting rock. I spotted the rented car that Edward had purchased after our flight had landed a few feet down the road. My heart sank into the bottom of my stomach, and I ran full force to the vehicle.

I could vaguely make out two figures in the driver and passenger seats of the car. As I reached the back end, I flung out a hand and pulled forcefully on the door handle. The door flew out quickly, and I regained my footing as I threw myself into the back seat.

Blinking with all of my might, my eyes bugged out of my head from the scene in front of me. Edward was in the driver's seat and Alice in the passenger's, but both of them were leaning in together, their arms right above the middle console.

Edward's arms were flexed, his muscles protruding from his shoulder, down to his cocked elbow, to the clenched fists that held Alice's wrists. Alice's arms kept flailing, mere inches from Edward's face. Both turned away from each other and looked at me at the same time.

My heart threatened to burst, it was beating so fast. The look on the faces of the person I love and the person I consider my best friend were hauntingly animalistic. Their pupils took over the amber color in their eyes, making them seem hollow and fierce. Each of their mouths were gleaming, showing teeth as a dog might in a fight.

For those few, horrifying seconds, my human instincts were screaming at me to get out of the car and as far away as I could.

Whether by the expression I wore, or the way my arteries were pulsing copious amounts of blood into my body, both made contact with my eyes. Edward's hands dropped from Alice's. Alice whipped both of her hands through her spiky hair, looking down at her lap as she did so. Edward sunk back into his seat, facing the road before us.

Edward raised a shaky hand to the steering wheel. There were indentions all along the steel, and his fingers fit perfectly into the grooves. I took inventory on the rest of the car. Alice's seat was missing an armrest, the rearview mirror was nowhere to be seen, and I gasped as I noticed that the driver's window had been shattered.

"Are either of you going to tell me what the hell is going on?" The scene was ridiculous. I sat there looking like a tempestuous child, holding my sneakers in my right hand and wearing my over-worn sweats and an old Arizona State University tee of Phil's.

I waited, feeling my anger fill up each second I was in the dark. The days were gone where I had no decision over my fate. I wanted to know what I was up against, and I wanted to know while I still was alive to know it.

Alice fidgeted in her seat, looking to her left at Edward. He stared forward into the night, not even making the effort to blink. His jaw was clenched and his hands were still sliding over the grooves that his fingers had left moments earlier. I saw him give a slight nod. Without warning, he opened up the car door and stepped outside.

I watched his graceful figure slide into the darkness ahead.

"Bella," Alice began slowly, effortlessly hopping over the console and into the back seat with me, "I'm sorry you had to see that. Edward and I… we usually get along. You know, we're probably the closest in the family that aren't coupled together. It's just… well, with certain things…"

She let her voice carry off. She took my hands in hers and looked down at her lap again.

"What is it, Alice? Please, just tell me. I can't stand not knowing. I know it has something to do with me, and I have a right to know what's going on."

She looked me square in the eye and said, "Bella, the Volturi were really lenient. Well, as lenient as the Volturi can get. My visions kept changing up until an hour ago. Two of the three of the head Volturi, Caius and Marcus, I believe, were all up for killing you and ridding everyone of what they deemed "Edward's curious little problem."

She scowled to herself at reliving their words, and I couldn't help but smile slightly at Alice's indignation.

"But in the end, Carlisle was able to convince Aro that another path could be taken. It took a lot of persuading, but the others agreed in the end," she looked hesitantly out the window to the place where Edward had disappeared to.

So I wasn't going to die. I would be alright. I could be with Edward, and Charlie, and Renee, and get to go on with life, experience it fully as I should have been since I moved to Forks. The slight smile on my face grew as the knot in my stomach unfurled.

"The other path," she said, snapping me out of my current daydream of accepted applications to colleges in the northwest, embarking on my own able to begin my life with everything I held dear in it.

I looked at her with a startled expression. What could the Volturi do, if not either kill me or leave me be?

"is to change you."

Less than a year ago, before Edward left, I would have given anything to hear those words. I had begged for those words to come true. Wished beyond reason to stay forever with Edward.

I still wanted to stay with him forever, I knew that. But the lump in my throat cutting off my breathing, and the stinging tears in my eyes, seemed to contradict my feelings. I had not been prepared for forever to come so soon.

"When?" I squeaked out, begging my eyes not to give way to the torrent of tears they now held back.

"Carlisle was able to convince them to wait awhile. After graduation. He told them that it could be less conspicuous that way."

A month and a half. Six weeks. Forty-five days. No more Charlie. No more Renee. No more hopes of college, of English professors to abhor or finals to cram for, of growing older, of family, of anything else normal in a human life. All of it I would have to give up.

And I was willing to give it all up. I had made that choice when I had realized exactly what Edward Cullen was. Had made it when I kissed him, when I begged him to stay with me, when I forgave him and took him back.

I just hadn't realized that in order to be with him, I would have to say goodbye to my human self. In essence, I would have to die in order to stay alive.

It was then that a few tears escaped my lids, trickling slowly down and settling into the groove of my mouth. With a small creak of a door hinge, the person I most needed to be near me clutched me in his arms forcefully, more strongly than he had ever dared before.

He cradled me to his chest, pulling me into his lab and kissing the tears from my face.

"I won't let it happen. I promise you, Bella. Bella, I promise you that you won't have to make that choice."

Alice looked incredulously up at Edward and back to me. His fingers jerked against my arms, a reaction most likely to the visions in Alice's head.

And I thought back to everything I had been told about the Volturi. I thought of the wrath they could induce on the family that I had come to accept as my own. I thought of the safety of Charlie and the danger I would be putting him in if we decided to fight.

I looked into Alice's face, and a look so sure, so decisive was pouring out from her. If she knew this clearly, and from so long ago, it had to be so. I could make it easier, more predictable, planned.

As I chose deep within me, accepting the consequences and weighing the odds, I saw a glint in Alice's eye. She smiled slightly, then kissed the top of my forehead before leaving out the right side of the back of the car.

"I chose," I said in a faint whisper. I was aware that he knew my choice, but a part of me had to say it out loud. I waited for him to say something to me, to fight against me or to begrudgingly accept.

The only action that came from him was a slight shaking. It quivered through my back, which was still resting on his torso. He buried his face into the side of my hair, grabbing at my arms and enveloping me into him. Gasping breaths came out of him, and each stifling sob seemed more painful without being able to release a single tear.

"I'm sorry," he gasped shakily, lacing one of his hands through my hair as he shook. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"

He held me to him as we sat until the sun came up in the back of the torn rental car, as I shed enough tears to cover the both of us.