A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews on the last chapter! It's so good to hear from all of you again! I've missed you, you know! Here's hoping for a similar result to this one!

Stephenie Meyer owns it, you know that.

Chapter 27: The Ultrasound

BPOV

I laid on the table in the makeshift medical office Carlisle had set up in the guest room as the rest of the family filed in and found a place to sit. Alice stood next to me, helping me to push my shirt up far enough that it would be out of Carlisle's way while he performed the tests.

"You do realize that these clothes aren't going to cut it, right?" Alice said with a grin.

"I figured you wouldn't let me get away with it, but my own pants are just too tight already!" I explained, simply accepting the fact that Alice was going to go on a maternity shopping spree tonight rather than let me be comfy in Carlisle's clothes for another day.

"That's alright, Bella," she replied, a glimmer in her eye. "I will take good care of you." I had no doubt she would. And then some.

Carlisle came over at that moment, looking down at me with love and excitement showing in his eyes. I knew that, even though he could hear the baby's heartbeat all the time, this moment was no less exciting for him than it was for me. And I loved him just a little more because of it.

"Are you ready, sweetheart?" He asked.

"More than."

"Okay then," he said, pausing for a moment and looking out at our family. "We're going to listen to the heart first, before I do the ultrasound. All of us have the benefit of vampire hearing, which has allowed us to hear the heart beating for a couple of weeks already. I thought it only fair to let Bella hear it for herself now, so that we all begin the ultrasound on equal footing."

"That's fair," Jasper agreed. Everyone else nodded in assent as well.

Turning his attention back to me, Carlisle squeezed a tube of cold gel over my belly and then placed the wand in it, moving it all around. It took a moment, and several times moving the wand to a different location before we finally heard a sound that resembled hoofbeats. As the sound filled my ears, I was overcome with excitement and wonder. Was that it? Was that our baby?

"Is that it, Carlisle? Is that what you hear?"

He didn't answer right away, and I was shocked to see the furrowed lines of confusion marring his beautiful brow. He cocked his head a bit to the side and was quiet for another minute, then looked up at Eleazar, asking him a silent question.

"No, Bella," Eleazar answered. "It's not."

I looked up at Carlisle, not understanding. Was something wrong? What was that sound if it wasn't our baby? Was the baby alright? Why was my husband so confused?

"Carlisle? I don't understand. What do you mean that's not what you hear?" I asked.

"Sweetheart, all the vampires in this room can hear two heartbeats - one is yours, one is the baby's. Your heart, as I hear it, beats an average of ninety times each minute. Slightly higher right now, since you are quite obviously stressed. The second heart we hear, that of the baby, is much faster. A human baby tends to beat in the range of one hundred and thirty times per minute, but what we hear is a bit more rapid - one hundred and fifty beats per minute, on average. Do you understand all of that?"

I nodded. "And that's not what you're hearing with the doppler?"

"You hear the heartbeat with us now, through the doppler. Count the beats until I tell you to stop."

I did as he asked, counting each beat silently.

"That's enough. What was your count, my love?"

"Thirteen."

"That's right. We counted for ten seconds. Now we multiply that by six, and we'll have the number of beats per minute, which is seventy-eight."

"But that doesn't make sense. That's much slower than you said you are hearing," I replied, now extremely confused.

"I know. And I'm just as perplexed as you are, Bella. But I have the ultrasound machine here, and we're going to take a look right now. I have a suspicion, but I don't want to speculate, I want to know."

As I waited for him to prepare the ultrasound machine, I looked over at Rose, who was obviously just as mystified as the rest of us. My gaze caught her attention, and she stood and walked over to me, taking my hand and giving it a light squeeze.

"Don't worry, Bella. Everything is alright. We'll have this all figured out in just a minute," she said reassuringly. It might have been reassuring if it had come from someone else, but Rosalie has never been much of an optimist, so it kind of threw me for a loop.

I laid there, pondering everything that I knew so far, when suddenly something occurred to me.

"Rose?" I whispered, even though I knew everyone in the room would still hear. "Seventy-eight is about half of one hundred and fifty."

Every vampire in the room suddenly fell silent, ending their private conversations and turning to me. Several mouths were gaping, and Carlisle's eyes were wider than I could ever remember seeing them before. When my own eyes locked with his, I saw in them a mixture of disbelief, amazement, love, and what I was sure was hope. It nearly melted my heart to see this beautiful man, who had once been positive that he would never see his dream of having a child come true, now so utterly enraptured with his baby, now growing inside me. Or could it be his babies?

"Is it possible?" he whispered, as if afraid that saying the words out loud would make them less true.

I reached out to him, taking his hand with mine. "There's only one way to find one, Dr. Cullen."

The name helped to focus him once again, and he immediately wheeled the now-ready ultrasound machine closer so that it was next to the table on which I was laying. He once again squirted the cool gel on my belly, and pressed the wand against me. The room was completely silent as we all watched the screen, waiting for confirmation. Odd black and white images, none of which could be interpreted as anything, filled the screen for a moment, and then suddenly, time stopped.

There on the screen, as clear as anything I ever could have hoped for, was an amazing image. It was shaped something like a piece of pie with one bite already taken from its tip. There were two sections of closely-spaced white lines along the top and bottom of the screen, with the center being dominated by two big, dark circles. And, inside each of these two spheres of darkness was a fuzzy white silhouette of a person.

"Twins," breathed Carlisle in a low whisper. "We're having twins..."

The feelings that washed over me in that moment seemed to take me back to our first I love you, our wedding day, the first time we made love, and the moment I convinced him that I could carry our baby, all rolled into one. There was so much joy, wonder, gratefulness, and, above all, love, coursing through me that I probably could have drowned in it. Tears flowed freely from my eyes - tears of unparalleled joy. I could hardly believe that we had been so blessed, to not only have a child, but to have two! One look into Carlisle's eyes told me that he was feeling exactly the same way I was.

The ultrasound momentarily forgotten, he dropped the wand to the floor and grasped my cheeks gently between his cold hands. "I love you, Isabella! I love you, I love you, I love you!" His words were spoken in a reverent tone before they were swallowed by my lips, as I could not wait one more second to kiss him. I didn't care who was in the room or what kind of stir it might cause - this was simply a moment of unadulterated happiness, and there was nothing to do but kiss the man who gave it to me.

As we pulled away from the kiss, I felt my own happiness magnified as if it was a warm blanket laid over me. I smiled at Jasper, knowing that he was projecting for all of us to share. The gel all over my stomach momentarily forgotten, I was accosted from all sides by the family, all of them clamoring to hug Carlisle and me and offer their congratulations.

In spite of, or perhaps because of, the joy we were so caught up in, my thoughts turned to the two missing pieces of our family - Esme and Edward. I couldn't help but wish that they were here to share in this moment with us. I could imagine Esme's bright eyes, shimmering with the tears that could not fall, as her heart nearly burst from the happiness she would surely feel to know that our family would be blessed with two new souls. And Edward, who had always been so much more serious and morose, would finally see the truth of this existence - that surely the vampires had not been forgotten by God, not when they were so good. I decided, in that moment, that I wanted our children to carry some part of Edward and Esme with them, just as we all did. Perhaps we could somehow name them for our lost family members? I would discuss it with Carlisle tonight.

I looked back into my husband's golden eyes, once again focusing my attention on the present. "I love you, Carlisle Cullen," I said adoringly. "But do you think we might get back to the task at hand? I didn't get a very good look at our children earlier."

He grinned as soon as the word "children" came out of my mouth. "Of course, sweetheart. I too, want to get another peak."

I laid back down on the table and he took a moment to get everything back in order. As he prepared, everyone else settled back into their original positions. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Carlisle was standing next to me, the wand once again in his hand and a grin on his face, ready to begin.

I think I heard everyone in the room draw in a sharp breath as Carlisle touched the wand to the rounded flesh of my abdomen. He moved it around for a second, and then the image re-appeared on the small screen. For a moment, we all stared at the two forms that were living inside of me. With his other hand, he reached down and took mine, squeezing it gently and giving me a warm smile. The tenderness in his eyes brought tears to mine. He loved me - no, us - so much, and I was positive that my love equalled his in intensity.

"I'm going to focus in on each of them individually, now. I need to examine their anatomy and physiology, to see how they are developing. It will help me to understand more about what they are, as well as what we might expect from the rest of the pregnancy. Alright?"

I nodded in agreement. He changed the angle at which he was holding the wand, and suddenly there was only one body filling the screen. We all took a few moments to look at it before Carlisle spoke again.

"What we're looking at here," he said, gesturing to the image as he explained, "is the baby in profile. You can see the nose here, and the lips and chin. This flashing area here? That's the heart. You are watching it beat. It's holding onto an average of about seventy beats per minute, and I assume that may slow down some after they are born and begin to mature, just as a human baby's does. I suppose the combination of human and vampire DNA makes the babies use of the heart less than that of a human's. This, right here, is an arm, and there's the little hand at the end of it."

A chuckle slipped through Carlisle's perfect lips as the baby moved its arm in a way that made it appear to be waving to us. "Hello to you, too, little one," he said, speaking to my belly in an adoring tone that made me love him even more.

Turning back to the screen, he pointed out the legs and feet as well before moving the wand around a bit so that we could get a different perspective. He used the mouse on the machine to take some measurements, none of which he bothered to write down, what with his infallible vampire memory and all, and then changed our perspective once again. This time, I could make out two little feet up near the top of the screen. I squinted a little, trying to make out the rest of the shapes in the image.

"You see the feet up here?" He asked, once again pointing to the screen. "Then these are the legs, and here is the buttocks. And this..."

"You don't have to tell us that, Big Daddy," Emmett interrupted. "I may not be a doctor, but I consider myself an expert in this area. That, my friends, is a girl!"

My human vision wasn't sharp enough to catch the series of events that followed Emmett's statement. All I knew was that there were several loud crashes, a roar, a few yells and screeches, and a scream that I didn't even realize came from me until after I heard it. Once the scene had calmed, I saw the aftermath. Carlisle, his jaw tight and teeth gritted together, with his hands balled up in fists at his sides, was being restrained by Eleazar and Carmen on one side of the room. Lying on the floor in the center of the room, surrounded by broken pieces of wood that I assumed were part of the love seat, was a cowering and shaking Emmett, whose face registered shock. Rosalie was next to him, looking a mixture of angry and concerned. Jasper stood in between the two groups, his arms held out to either side, obviously trying to prevent either from making any further movements. His face was screwed up with concentration, and I assumed that was because of the extreme amount of calm he was projecting into the room. Alice was crouching over me on the bed, protecting me and the babies from being accidently hurt in the commotion.

I remained still and quiet as I watched Carlisle's breathing returning to normal and his fists unclenching. The others all seemed to relax as well. When Jasper's shoulders relaxed a bit, I felt it was safe to speak.

"Carlisle? Honey? Would you like to tell me what in the hell is going on here?" I asked softly.

My husband had the decency to look down at the floor, ashamed.

"I'm sorry, my love... It was instinctual. I didn't think..."

It was obviously that he felt awful about whatever had just happened, but I didn't understand. "Carlisle? What exactly happened?" I asked, hoping for more information.

He meekly looked up at me through his lashes, then back down at the ground. "It was what Emmett said, it set me off. I flew at him before even thinking. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. You weren't hurt, were you?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Yeah, me too," Emmett added sarcastically, his voice still rather tense. "Thanks for asking."

Carlisle growled. Jasper walked over to him and placed a hand on his chest. "Calm down, Carlisle," he ordered, his voice holding much more authority than I'd ever heard him use, especially when addressing Carlisle.

I reached a hand out toward my husband. "Carlisle? Come here," I said gently. Carmen and Eleazar both released him and he walked quickly over to the table where I still laid. "Honey? Jasper's right. You need to calm down. Whatever upset you so much, I'm sure Emmett didn't mean it."

"You're right, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. I just... When Emmett... God dammit, Emmett! That's my daughter!"

I was utterly confused - obviously having missed something here. My face must have shown my confusion, because I heard Rosalie heave a loud sigh.

"Bella, come on! Think for just a second. Emmett just made a comment, which could be considered sexual, about the image on the ultrasound. Papa Bear over there flipped out at the hint of his unborn daughter being a sexual being, and attacked the big-mouthed idiot," Rosalie quipped bluntly.

I gasped. Now I understood. I rolled my eyes at my big brother, now cautiously leaning against the love seat's largest remaining piece. "Emmett, you are really a moron," I said, shaking my head. "And you, Papa Bear," I said, addressing my husband, "Are going to have to get a hold on yourself. You've known Emmett for over seventy years. You know he has no filter! I love you for loving our daughter and wanting to protect her, but taking out Emmett is not the way, alright? No matter how much the idiot might deserve it. I'm sure Rose can help us with that anyways, right Rose?"

"Absolutely," Rose answered, reaching her hand up to slap Emmett in the back of his head.

"Sorry Carlisle," Emmett grumbled.

"I am as well, Emmett. Bella is right - I know better to behave that way. But please, son, try to monitor your commentary about my daughter in the future. I cannot promise a better reaction in the future, and truly, there are better ways to remodel the house."

That last comment brought about a bit of laughter from the room, and I sighed in relief. Obviously the crisis was over.

"Alright, everyone," Eleazar announced. "Now that the drama has passed, perhaps we could see the second child? We know there is a little girl coming into this world, but I do believe there is more to discover, ¿si?"

"Eleazar is correct," Carlisle said, taking a deep breath. "Bella, are you alright to continue?"

"Of course, honey," I said happily. I laid back down on the table and smiled up at Carlisle. "You know, we didn't even get to celebrate the fact that we're having a baby girl yet."

His entire countenance changed - it was now soft, with a hint of awe, and no longer was there any hint of anger. "A baby girl," he whispered. "Our daughter."

"That's right, honey. Our daughter."

He smiled with so much happiness that it was nearly blinding, then leaned down and placed a tender kiss on my lips. "I love you," he whispered as he pulled away.

Carlisle put the ultrasound machine back in position and once again covered my belly with gel. Placing the wand back on my abdomen, he moved it around a bit before the image of both babies came up on the screen again. Once he had it, he angled the wand the opposite direction as he had the previous time, and brought up the image of the second baby. We all took a moment to appreciate the profile, Carlisle once again pointing out to us each little detail. It was adorable to see him this way, his chest nearly swelling with pride when he counted five toes on one of the feet.

The baby shifted a bit, and suddenly we had a clearer view of the lower extremities. Suddenly, my breath caught in my throat. "It's Carlisle Junior!" I cried, recognizing a bit of my son that hadn't been present on my daughter.

Elly immediately ran up to my husband and clapped him on the back in a masculine way as they hugged. At the same moment, I was submerged in the arms of all three of my sisters. I could barely believe it - we were having a son and a daughter! Every dream we'd ever had was coming true!

Once we all separated, Carlisle caught me up in his arms, swinging me around once, not minding the blue gel that was now all over his shirt. He kissed me joyously, the light never leaving his face. When he pulled away, we looked out at the rest of our family. I could see that everyone was reveling in the wonderful news of the day.

"Oh! This is so exciting!" squealed Jasper as he jumped up and down, clapping his hands.

We all looked at him with eyebrows raised for a moment before doubling over in laughter. Obviously our collective joy and excitement had been more than he could take.

"Oh, fuck you all!" He said, feigning anger through his grin and stomping out of the room. "Come on, Alice!" He yelled from downstairs a second later.

Alice grinned and ran out of the room, calling her congratulations back to us one more time.

Seconds later, Eleazar and Emmett both announced their intentions to go for a hunt and invited their wives to join them. As they walked out of the door, Carmen called back to me, to remind me that tomorrow morning I was drawing another slip of paper from the hat. I half groaned, wondering what on earth my crazy vampire family would have in store for me this time.

"Well, we sure can clear a room, huh honey?" I joked, winking at my handsome husband.

"Oh, Bella, my love, they're just giving us some space so that we can celebrate our wonderful news. What do you say we go celebrate properly?"

His implications were not lost on me. I jumped off the table and directly into his arms. "Let's go, honey," I whispered into his ear. I placed a few open-mouthed kisses against his neck before speaking again. "But tell me, are there any vampire traditions for celebrating this sort of news?"

Carlisle groaned lowly, and chuckled. "You bet you ass, baby."

A/N: I've been planning this since before I ended the prequel, so I'm thrilled to FINALLY make the announcement! I hope you're all excited about the news? Leave me a review and let me know!