A/N : Many have asked for a 'timeline' on how events played out in this story versus Canon. So here is the overview:

Jan 19 - Bella awakens from her zombie phase - CANON

Late Jan through Mid Feb: befriends Jacob Black, builds motorcycles - CANON

Feb 20 – Bella, Mike, Jacob to movies - CANON

Mar 4 – Bella meets Laurent in the meadow - CANON

Mar 13 – Bella spends day in La Push with Jacob driving motorcycles, has her accident that lands her in hospital; she learns of her condition - CANON until the motorcycle accident

Mar 15 – Has her emotional break- down with Charlie after returning home, resolves to reinvent herself and determined to cram a lifetime worth of experiences into whatever days or years she has left

Mid May – Edward Returns, and this story begins

Note that there is a very large difference from canon, as Edward, Bella, and Alice *never visited Volterra*. Thus, the Volturi are not predisposed to 'wait and see' what Victoria and her army do to the Cullens, as is intimated in the books and the Bree Tanner Novella (i.e - the Volturi were hoping that some of the Cullens would be killed during the battle). So the Volturi may act differently than expected from CANON, but that does not make them Out-of-Character; rather, they are Out-of-Canon.

Previously: We traveled this way for about two minutes before Carlisle hissed for us to halt. Jasper turned to him with a questioning look on his face, but Carlisle held up his hand and descended the tree, sniffing around the base of a nearby spruce tree that towered over two hundred feet high, rising above the surrounding forest.

His thoughts were in shock, because he recognized several of the scents, which were extremely fresh.

Volturi.

Chapter 21 – Taking the Pulse

We whisked through the forest like wraiths, the fog of the night swirling behind us as the wind of our passage left roiling eddies in the gray mist. As we neared our home, the mood was grim; everyone's thoughts were reeling with the knowledge that the Volturi had arrived, and that the entire situation had changed dramatically. The Quileute's had just returned to the Reservation to brief the rest of the pack, and Sam would be returning in the morning with his Beta to discuss this latest development.

After finding the scents of the Volturi, we had quickly departed the area and took a purposefully confusing trail. We ran through as many rivers and streams as we could, trying to confuse our back-trail and throw-off any possible trackers; we wanted to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to follow-us to our home.

By taking this roundabout and stealthy route, we fervently hoped that the Volturi would not be able to track us directly to Forks; though we knew that if -or when, insisted Jasper - they took some prisoners from Victoria's army and conducted an interrogation, they would learn of our Coven's involvement in this affair, and our location in Forks. And if they learned that Victoria had made this army to try and kill a human girl that had full knowledge of our world…well, under no scenario that I could imagine would Bella walk away from this unharmed or unchanged.

The inevitability of this made me pull at my hair in frustration, and I had to hold myself rigidly in-check; else I would have run to her house at that minute, grabbing her and trying to escape to somewhere far away.

The truly frightening thing for me was that - except for taking Bella, willing or no, and fleeing with her - I could not contrive a situation or probability that kept her off the Volturi's radar. And when they came for her, I would be put into the impossible position of having to defend her against the strongest Coven in our world.

Carlisle told us that he recognized the scents of three of the Guard: Felix – a hulking brute who was known for his strength and fighting skill; Demetri – the legendary tracker who, once he got within a certain range of someone and 'locked-in' to their mind, could then find them anywhere in the world; and most ominously, Jane – the witch-child who, like the mind flayers of myth, could torture you with the power of her mind. She was feared throughout the vampire world, and was generally considered to be cruel and unfeeling. She was certainly favored by Aro, and was among the highest ranking of the Guard.

The other scents were either not familiar to Carlisle or too washed-out to easily recognize. It did not surprise me that some of the Guards were not known to him, as he had not been to Volterra in over one-hundred and fifty years, and then only for a short visit. But we estimated at least another three Guard members were present.

Whether he recognized all the scents or not, the situation was dire. Six Volturi within a hundred miles of Forks were six too many.

I paced back and forth in my room, desperate to see Bella. My hands were clenched so tightly that my nails were almost piercing the granite skin of my palms. All thoughts of overall strategy I left to Jasper and Carlisle and the Wolves; I was too distracted to be of much use, and they could not understand the fear to the same level as me; after all, it was not their mates that were in the firing-line.

I was faced with a stark reality: no matter how this played out, Bella was going to die.

The only thing left to question was the manner of her death. Either she would be changed into an eternally damned creature, succumb to brain death by burst aneurism, be tortured to death by Victoria, or be executed by the Volturi.

If it was not so deadly serious, I might have laughed at the choices. They belonged in some Faustian horror story; not to a teenage girl in modern America.

The term 'danger magnet' didn't even seem adequate anymore. Stronger words, like catastrophe magnet or disaster magnet, would be more fitting.

My Bella. How I wished I could save her.

I eventually crumbled to my floor, and sobbed quietly into my arms, coiling my legs up under me and rocking myself back and forth.

Esme found me there some time later, and sat with me while I tried to pull myself together. I had to be strong, now. I had to go see her, immediately. I had to come clean to Bella, and tell her what was going on with the Volturi. I had to tell her that I knew of her condition. I had to tell her that her choices were limited. And I had to tell her that I wanted to change her and love her forever.

Time was running out for her, and I needed to act, now. I wasn't going to be given the time to slowly earn back her trust as I had hoped.

Even as I stood-up from the floor, my decision to seek her out firm and decided, I heard Alice suddenly gasp; and then I watched through her thoughts as a series of visions played out in a kaleidoscopic halo in her mind.

For once, Bella was clear of all the fogginess that had blocked her futures from being scrutable. And in Alice's mind, three visions stood out from a collage of countless others, defined with startling clarity.

In the first vision, Bella was a vampire; her eyes were a vibrant red, her hair rich and thick and lustrous, skin translucent like the inside of a shell. Her expression was fierce, and she was backing away from someone or something, until her back hit a wall of rock: perhaps the side of a mountain or cliff. Her expression twisted into a snarl, her hands came up, fingers bent into claws, as she prepared to spring. And then the vision went blank.

The second vision also showed a red-eyed Bella, but in this glimpse of some possible future Bella was relaxed; she was having a conversation into a small cellphone, her features soft and inviting. She was making airy gestures with her free hand, and laughed at something, her smile transforming her face into one of dazzling, stunning beauty. From the perspective of the vision, we could see that she was inside a rectangular room with blue-painted walls, and she sat on the edge of a large bed. She made to stand-up, and then the vision ended.

The final vision in Alice's tri-nocular focus was a very different scene; it showed a small room inside what had to be a church, with many people dressed in black, standing around a central dais. On the dais, a large, wooden coffin lay open, and in it lay a pale Bella, eyes closed, a peaceful expression on her pallid face.

This final vision cut-off then and I felt like my nervous system had been short-circuited; my legs gave way and I reeled backwards into the wall.

Through the roaring in my ears, I was only dimly aware of Alice's racing footsteps as she entered my room, or of Esme's calls of concern as she watched me shaking against the wall. I looked down into Alice's wide eyes, as we both struggled to comprehend the visions, and what they meant.

'Did you decide something, Edward? What triggered those visions?' Alice frantically asked me in her thoughts.

It took me a moment to get my bearings before I answered, and by then Jasper and Carlisle had joined us in my room, and I could sense Emmett in the hall, just outside. "Yes, yes," I muttered, catching my breath. "I made the decision that, with the threat of the Volturi hanging over her, I was going to tell Bella that the odds were good that they would either kill her, or, if they thought she might have a gift, take her with them and change her themselves in Italy. I was going to plead with Bella to let me change her, and for her to stay with me forever. I was going to tell her all of it."

After a beat of silence, where all the members of my family looked at me with questions in their eyes, Carlisle spoke, authority radiating from his voice. "What did you see, Alice?"

Alice explained to our gathered family about her recent vision, and I could feel Jasper trying desperately to combat the tension and stress in the air when Alice finished describing the third vision – the one where Bella was dead and gone, beyond my reach for eternity.

There was again an ominous silence when Alice finished, until Carlisle began pacing, his thoughts racing through the implications of my decision and the resulting visions that it had set in motion.

It was Esme, though, who asked the obvious question. "Why do you think these visions came through now? You have had such trouble seeing Bella lately?"

No one had an answer for this, and when Carlisle beckoned us to follow him downstairs, we went wordlessly.

Taking our places at the dining room table for our second family meeting in the past week – an unusual event, to be sure – Carlisle began the discussion with a brief synopsis of his time with the Volturi, his experiences with the various Guards, and what he thought they might do if or when they found-out about Bella.

"I think," he was saying, his hands crossed in front of him on the table,"that the decision of what will be done to her depends on how they find out about her, who is in charge, and what our reaction to their arrival is."

"How do you mean?" Emmett asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

"Well," Carlisle answered, his eyes far-away as his thoughts wandered through his remembrances of the Guard, "I presume Jane is in command. She has been with the guard since Aro found her and her brother Alec being burned as witches, during the dark ages in ninth century Europe. The twins have the strongest offensive talents in the Guard, and Jane is Aro's favorite." Carlisle paused for a moment, and I watched his thoughts as memories of Jane paraded through his mind.

"Anyway," he continued, "she will probably want to kill Bella right away. She is a stickler for the rules, it's true, but she seems to enjoy dispensing punishment, and is very harsh with rulebreakers."

Even as he was speaking, the moment he mentioned the words 'kill Bella' a red haze descended over my vision, and my hands crushed the arms of the chair I was sitting-in, reducing them to sawdust. "I won't let her near Bella," I snarled out, rising halfway from my seat.

I immediately felt a blast of calm from Jasper, and I sat back down in my seat, my anger not fully abated. "Of course we will protect Bella," answered Carlisle, as if I didn't interrupt, "but you must understand that we will be completely vulnerable if Jane turns her power on us. There is no withstanding it. So I think the best plan of action would either be to have Bella changed before they get anywhere near her, or convince her to leave Forks and go somewhere that they won't find her. Anything that keeps us from facing-off against the Volturi is preferable, because if we do fight them, then most likely not only will Bella die, but so will we."

His heavy words hung over the table, and everyone was busy thinking through the implications of what he had said.

I thought through the possibilities, my vampiric mind calculating odds and chances and probabilities.

Obviously, changing her immediately was my preferred solution, though part of me still cringed at the thought I would be ending her human life. But doing this now would not only protect her against Volturi intervention, but would make her much more durable in the event we had to battle Victoria's army. And, in Alice's vision, one of the two visions showed a happy vampire Bella talking on her phone. True, the other vision of Vampire-Bella showed her in some sort of confrontation – with whom, we did not know – but certainly that was still preferable to her being dead, and I would do everything in my power to keep her safe and keep that vision from ever coming to pass.

The main problem with this solution, however, was that Bella was not only unpredictable, but she was also stubborn. It was entirely possible that she would not agree with being changed right now, and she was never the type to run away and hide; especially if it meant others would be in danger.

And there were other factors to consider, as much as I did not want to. Bella would never agree to run if it meant leaving her father or friends behind to face danger. She had proven this beyond doubt when she went willingly to her death in Phoenix, hoping to trade her life for her mother's.

And therein lay the rub; we could not guarantee the safety of her father if she ran, as he would become a prime hostage target for the Volturi or Victoria. Depending upon what the Volturi learned from Victoria or her newborns, they could even see her father as a potential threat, seeing as how Bella lived with him and might have spoken with him about our secret.

And to further complicate the situation, the Wolves would certainly not stand aside and let the Volturi come to Forks and terrorize Bella or her father; and if it came to a fight between the Wolves and the Volturi, who would we side with?

These questions rattled around in my head, and similar thoughts were running through my family's minds as well.

What was the right solution?

"Alice," I whispered, my voice sounding weary even to my own ears, "can you see anything else? Would Bella agree to run?"

I watched her as her eyes de-focused, but nothing came through: just the same grey blankness. There was nothing to see, because key decisions had yet to be made.

I was frustrated. So I tried a different tack; "Alice, I am going to try and force a vision by making the decision for her. I am going to grab Bella, tonight, and take her away whether she wants to come or not; if she refuses to be changed, I will get her the stent treatment somewhere else, under a different name, and no one will know where we are." I waited a moment, hoping to see something come through.

And it did. Briefly, I saw a vision of me driving Bella away from Forks, and judging by her facial expressions, she didn't look happy; the vision continued for a short while, until suddenly it went black. Not grey, like the other visions, but completely black. Like we had died…or had been suddenly interfered with by the Wolves.

I met Alice's eyes, and I saw that she knew too. We would not be successful in getting her away by force.

"Well?" demanded Emmett. "Does it work? Do we take her?"

"No," I choked out. "The vision showed us leaving Forks at night, but it went black suddenly, while we were driving down a highway. The same kind of 'black' Alice gets when the Wolves become involved in our futures. "

"Goddamn mutts," muttered Rosalie. I lifted my eyes in surprise, and looked at my haughty sister. She met my gaze unflinchingly, and I saw the determination there; she was committed to helping Bella and I.

I nodded my gratitude at her, and she acknowledged me with a slight tilt of her chin before turning back to the discussion.

"Alice, what if you went to talk with her? Or Carlisle?" asked Esme. "Would she listen to one of you more than to Edward?"

Despite the pain this question caused me, I hoped that maybe Esme was right. Would Bella listen to Alice if she begged her to go?

Alice looked again at Bella's possible futures, but nothing was clear. "I don't know," she said at last, frustrated at the limitations of being unable to see around the Wolves, and having to deal with the general haziness that surrounded most of Bella's possible futures. "I cannot get a read on anything about her future. The only images I see are quick, fuzzy glimpses of things, but I cannot tell anything definite."

Jasper interrupted us then, asking a key question that we somehow had overlooked. "Can you see when the Volturi will encounter the newborns?"

I realized then that Jasper had just come upon a possible solution: what if we could take down Victoria and Riley before the Volturi got to them? This would reset everything, taking the Volturi out of the equation and giving us a good chance to end this without them ever becoming aware of Bella's existence.

Even as I began to voice my thought – which Jasper had already been thinking of – two new visions exploded in Alice's mind. The first showed our family in a desperate battle against a horde of newborn vampires; and then, suddenly, the vision suddenly went black, a sure sign the Wolves were involved.

The second vision was completely different; it showed Jasper, Alice, Emmett, and myself in a wide field, with Jane and a contingent of Volturi standing before us. The purple smoke and burning pyres of dead vampires were littered all around the field. My family looked battered, and Jane was talking to us about something, her lips moving quickly. As always, the lack of sound made the visions incomplete, but it was the best we had to work with.

Carlisle, Esme and Rosalie were not in view; had they stayed behind? Could something have happened to them during the battle? Could they have been destroyed during the fight?

The possibility of something happening to anyone in my family - especially Esme and Carlisle, my parents for all intents and purposes - filled me with a choking fear.

The vision ended with the Volturi turning and walking-off. I shook my head clear, and turned in my seat. Alice and I looked at each other, the fear apparent in our eyes and on our shocked faces.

"Tell them," I whispered to Alice.

And she did. All of it, with no editing or holding-back information.

When she finished, for one split-second, the thoughts of my family were blank; and then, as they thought of the dreadful possibility that three of us would not survive the upcoming battle, their expressions morphed. Esme's and Carlisle's faces were sad and disturbed; Emmett looked angry, and his thoughts matched; Rosalie looked horror-stricken, but her thoughts were determined; and finally, Jasper's face was a cool mask; but inside his mind he was already running through battle strategies, trying desperately to find one that would have involved leaving Carlisle, Esme and Rosalie out of the battle. Several possibilities occurred to him, and I grasped at them like they were lifelines.

And what of Bella in those visions? Would she survive if we took this path? The vision didn't show. She was not in any part of it. Was it possible that the three missing members of my family were guarding her? That was one of the possibilities that Jasper had considered to explain their absence from the battlefield.

Unfortunately, we had no real answers.

I clenched my fists in frustration, knowing I was not the only one feeling an almost manic desperation.

Were there any good choices available to us? Fight the newborns, now, to save Bella, but risk losing three members of my family? Change Bella and hope for the best?

What should we do?

I thought about the visions again: would I be willing to risk three members of my family if it meant that Bella might walk away unscathed? Even as my mind shouted 'NO!' my heart clenched and screamed 'YES!'; for Bella, I would sacrifice the world.

A rush of shame and guilt overwhelmed me then, and Jasper raised an eyebrow in my direction; his thoughts showed that he completely understood me; that he knew what I had been thinking about to cause such guilt. 'I understand, Edward. I truly do. I too would suffer any cost- pay any price - to save my Alice. It's the way of things for mates."

I barely listened as my family debated the visions for the next few minutes; I wanted to feel shame and horror at my willingness to sacrifice my family for my mate, but the emotion was distant, empty. It didn't feel real, like I was reading it in someone else's mind.

Our meeting finally adjourned at about 5am with nothing decided except that I would talk with Bella immediately after school today, and try to convince her to either change or run. And if she agreed to neither, then we would reconvene and discuss the option of launching an attack on the newborn army tomorrow, which would hopefully be before the Volturi had Victoria in there hands.

Our greatest fear was that Victoria or one of her cohorts would reveal Bella's existence and forbidden knowledge to the Volturi. Once that happened, saving her life would be difficult, and we would be in danger too for having revealed our secret.

As I left the room, one thing was becoming very clear to me: I knew that, in the end, I would do anything in my power to insure that Bella Swan still existed when this crisis finally blew over, no matter who or what I had to sacrifice or destroy to achieve that goal.

Even if that someone was myself.

A/N – This chapter was originally 8000 words, so I've split it into two parts. Next part is getting touched up now and should be up in a day or two (hopefully).