AGH THESE CHAPTER TAKE SO LONG NOW AHHH. ALL OF WHAT I WANT TO WRITE NEEDS ALL OF THIS SET-UP AND BLAH.
Anyhow, we're coming closer to the end! I've got one final question for you: for an extra, I was thinking of doing either an 'Ask the Characters Anything' style piece or a timeline. Any preferences? Review or PM me please~
REPLIES:
Arabella Whitlock: Well, there's not too much new content or anything haha. Also, not sure if 'greaking' is a real word. Typo? Nahuel was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but whatever. It adds TENSIONNNN
Alice Alessa: YAY A USER TO PUT TO THE NAME. I kinda suspected that, since I think my foreshadowing is as subtle as a cloud raining fish on my school. I love Bree as well :D She's kind of based on my friend, whose name also happens to be Bree. On Kristen's patience, it really sometimes matters. But yes, Kristen and Edward is indeed an accident waiting to happen. As I imagine Kristen a more adventurous, curious girl than Bella, I can easily imagine that she wouldn't be a virgin if she asked Edward to have sex with her, which was fun to write, I must say. Will canon Renesmee happen? Maaaaybe, maaaaybe not. Finally, on the mate thing, I did not imagine this story to have so many reviewers asking about mates when I thought up the plotline. To be completely honest, Isabella's mate plays literally no role in this story whatsoever; TLoaP was written to be a story focusing on the siblings' relationship, which is why it is classified as a 'family' and not as a 'romance'. In fact, Isabella didn't have one in my original manuscripts; I just decided to add the mate in after I got about 50 reviews asking after him. So while he does begin to shape Isabella's personality a little bit more, Isabella's mate will not be too key a factor, and the character I have chosen to be her mate will not be defined only by the fact that he is her mate. He will have a personality that shines out more, like how Demetri is known as a skilled tracker with a sardonic streak thicker than Alec's before he is known as Jane's mate (hopefully). And I always loved the Amazonians. They were much more put together than the Cullens were, if you ask me. And before I went through and rewrote vast swathes of this chapter, it was the most inane thing I have ever written. Not too sure about what your P.S. is supposed to be, though.
IAILA: Thanks!
Birdy1210: Happy (belated) birthday! Fun fact, I updated on my birthday once as well, but not on purpose xD I just happened to have a chapter done at the time.
YunaNeko: Thanks again.
Goddess Cure Mystic: Shit just got real.
Happy. Death. Executioner: Kristen might know that she has a warrant out for her death, and she plans to flip it the bird every single time. That girl.
BadAssTwilightGirls: W A O W
Guest: At least you didn't have to wait too long.
Rinlovesyou: Thanks! Descriptions are the easiest part, to me.
VampireHaruhiMadokaOuran: Indeed.
Rusky01: Well, I've already answered your questions, so I'm just going to say here that you're asking the right questions.
Guest: The Denalis have already been mentioned. Back when Sasha and Vasilii were killed. You can see Isabella's reaction there.
Aaron walked through the hallway, holding his hands behind his back and lacing his fingers together. He was admiring the artwork that covered the walls as he walked down; the Volturi were always commissioning artists in the neighborhood to draw whatever they felt would work in the Castle, and the mortals always tried their hardest after being chosen by their rulers and paid a hefty sum too. It was a win-win situation.
After staring at the paintings for a sufficient amount of time, Aaron found himself in front of the door to Aro's office. He took a deep breath and gently pushed the door open.
Aro was inside, drawing something on a sheet of paper. Aaron watched the pen in his hand dart about, adding details and shading wherever necessary. He saw a forest next to a village, with shabby looking houses beneath a hill that the viewer was standing on, and a couple tendrils of smoke swirling from between the buildings. Aaron wasn't too sure about the meaning behind this picture; why was Aro so interested in such a dilapidated collection of houses, with maybe someone's fireplace going out of control?
Aro finally noticed that Aaron was standing in front of him, completely still. He fluidly dropped the pen and stuffed the paper into a drawer of his desk, as if hoping that Aaron didn't see it. Aro stood up and smiled benevolently to Aaron.
"I was wondering why you took such a long while," the king said pleasantly.
Aaron bowed almost out of habit, muttering apologies underneath his breath.
"Aaron, stand up straight. I do not blame you for anything. I merely state that I expected you a while ago," Aro admonished. The guard immediately straightened back out and stood stiffly. Aro shook his head at the dramatic gesture but just continued onto what he was going to say.
"Aaron, as you should know, the Cullens are being rather stupid as of now. We have made a public decision to go investigate their case in a couple of months, in the dead of winter, but I have been harboring the notion that we could go earlier, as in maybe in a couple of weeks. Your task is to think of this yourself and have Isabella cloak us all away from that clairvoyant of theirs, so they can't be too prepared by then. Afterwards, I need you to come back so we can begin to discuss our strategy of taking these animal-drinkers down."
"Yes, sir," Aaron barked out, a smile beginning to form on his face. He never liked anyone who thought so highly of themselves, like the men he once had to serve who thought that God Himself would lick their feet because of their easily sunburned skin.
"Thank you, Aaron," Aro said, dismissing the former slave with a wave of the hand. Aaron nodded before leaving the office and walking down to the elite guards' typical game room.
As he made his way down the hall, he heard a shriek from the room he was trying to get to, followed by Jane screaming, "John! Really? Was this fucking necessary?!"
Aaron hurried himself up to get to the room. He saw Alec, Demetri, and Felix all on the ground and laughing openly, almost immobilized by their howls. Isabella was rubbing her temple while she sniggered under her breath, caught in between exasperation and elation at the sight. Jane was practically livid, but even she saw the hilarity of the situation.
Someone had taken the furniture from the room and flipped it upside-down, securing it onto the ceiling somehow. It was a perfect mirror image of the room as well; the only difference was that the furniture, the game sets, even the deck of cards, had been carefully glued to the ceiling. Even the carpets had been secured with some sticky substance. Aaron found himself chuckling with the other guards.
John stuck his head around the corner, eyes glinting in mischief. Aaron could clearly see the wicked smirk that was plastered across his face.
"Like my bit of interior decorating, do you, Jane?" he shouted down before sprinting away as Jane darted after him, still shrieking at him.
"It's better than the golden-eyed woman's, I'll tell you that," Alec muttered, still laughing to himself.
"That's rude of you to say," Demetri said, sounding almost insulted.
"Yeah; that woman doesn't even do the decorating. It looks as though the male took her previous designs and changed them for his own purposes," Felix added in.
"I stand corrected," Alec said with a shrug.
Isabella finally noticed Aaron. "So sorry, Aaron; did you have something to say to us before this?" she asked, gesturing at the furniture on the ceiling and sending her brother and the two other male guards into hysterics again.
"Uh, yeah, I did, actually," Aaron said, regaining his focus and his breath at the same time. "Aro had some strategic things that he wanted me to relay to you; something about casting a barrier between our minds and the golden-eyed clairvoyant's in order to block her from being able to see what we do. He's already laid out the bait; they're expecting us to be there around the solstice. We're actually going to be there on the equinox."
"That's in literally two weeks, Aaron," Alec dead-panned.
Aaron shrugged. "I don't make the decisions around here. That's boss-man's job."
"'Boss-man'?" Felix repeated. "I'm calling him that the next time I see him."
"You didn't hear it from him," Isabella interjected, gesturing to Aaron.
They all laughed again, the tension of the situation destroyed by the ridiculousness of the upside-down furniture. Speaking of which...
"So, how are we going to get all of those back down?" Demetri asked casually, pointing at the ceiling of the room. "I don't know about you, but I don't think that card games will work when gravity's working against you."
Isabella sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it out of her face. "Well, we're going to have to take it down now, aren't we?" she said with a sigh.
"Or we could wait for John to come back and do it for us," Felix added.
"Lazy ass," Demetri jeered. Felix shrugged. Isabella smacked Felix on the shoulder.
"You're tall enough to help. Get in there," she said, pushing him into the room. Felix fake-glared at the two of them before shaking his head and slowly taking all of the furniture off of the ceiling.
Isabella watched him work, shaking her head slightly. Only in Volterra would furniture on the ceiling matter more than a possible war breaking out, she thought to herself wryly.
A couple of hours after Jane finally caught up with John and got him to take the furniture off of the ceiling in his wolf form, Isabella walked into Marcus's office, preparing for a day of writing countless epistles.
The messages were for nomads and covens alike, informing them that yes, the Cullens were doing something suspicious in their neck of the woods, that no, they would not be going to execute them and steal their gifted vampires if necessary. Aro may have once done this for his own benefit, but no more. He had long since outgrown the power-hungriness that the rest of the world unfortunately still attributed to him.
She signed one off anonymously, saying that it was from 'The Castle.' Everyone knew the moniker anyhow; it was useless not to use it. She read through the letter, one meant for a Garrett in America:
Garrett,
We are writing to you from Italy to ensure that you know exactly what is to happen. The Cullens are involved with a legal matter pertaining their newest member. Though she is now a vampire, they did not keep their promise to change her at the end of last year. As this shouldn't concern too many others, we don't know if they will contact you to try and make you into witnesses for their side. In case of that circumstance, know this: we will not harm a single hair on your body. The only vampires to be punished on that day are guilty members of the Olympia coven. If you are there, you will witness, yes, but you will not be punished for doing so. Let this letter be our promise to you.
-The Castle
It wasn't the fanciest of messages in the most eloquent of words, but it would do. Isabella quickly put it into an envelope for Jamie or Lilianna to deliver. Those two were almost running ragged from all the tasks they were asked to perform, but they weren't too worried about it. It was their duty to serve, after all.
Isabella glanced at the list to see who was next. She had to reread the list to ensure that she didn't misread the first time, as unlikely as that was. The words were in Marcus's elegant script: Denali coven.
She hadn't really talked to the Denalis recently; their contact with the Cullens was the main source of their estranged relationship. She wrote out the standardized message before hesitantly taking another sheet of paper and writing another message.
I hoped it wouldn't come to this. Hello Tanya and Kate and Irina, and from what I hear from Demetri, hello to you Carmen and you Eleazar as well. I hope there isn't too much bad history between us; I wish every day that Sasha didn't change Vasilii as much as I'm sure you do as well. It is too bad that the Cullens had to flout the laws one time too many; while we can overlook the oddities of drinking animal blood, we cannot overlook leaving a hormonal human teenager behind, full of secrets and pent-up rage. I'm surprised that Kristen herself didn't spew the knowledge to the humans at the first chance she got. I would have expected her to.
I wish that I could contact you with better information. Alas, there isn't much else I can say to you. I hear that you drink animal blood to throw the Cullens off of your tracks whenever they come up to visit. That sounds like torture of the greatest kind to me. Eleazar, not much has changed in the Castle. There are new members of the guard, yes, but not too many that you should worry about. I hear that Aro is letting others come watch the trial, but whether or not this is true is a different question. Demetri says that he is still somehow able to stay in contact with you; I pray that we can continue to communicate through this route.
If you ever need us, remember that the Castle will always try and help what you want.
-Isabella
She didn't bother rereading the letter before folding it and putting it into the envelope with the other message. It wasn't something that she wanted to look at again; she didn't expect a reply at all. It was a spur of the moment thing that she decided to send on a whim, after all.
She closed the envelope, making sure to run her fingernails over the fold of the thick paper, and set it on the stack of letters she had already prepared. They were organized by continent, though there were only five piles as shapeshifters in Africa tended to scare vampires away and Antarctica wasn't hospitable enough, what with a limited human population making penguins the only food source. America and Europe had by far the most letters, though there were a fair few for Asian countries.
Isabella was tired of this game. She didn't want to have to do all of this just for one little human who couldn't help but fall for the immortal world and the vampire who strung her along as a plaything as he prepared to murder her.
Stupid little girl, couldn't just fall for another mortal, happily procreated, and died; no, she had to fall for a being so dangerous to her that he hungered for the very substance pumping through her veins.
Isabella picked up another sheet of paper, glanced at the list again, and began writing another letter. To Makenna and Charles...
"Jake, really, go back to Lizzie!" Kristen groaned.
Her shifter friend shook his head obstinately. "I promised you that I would care for you, even if you ended up not being my imprint," he said stubbornly.
Kristen tried to get up to smack his arm, but her inflated body didn't let her. She had been bedridden for days and a strong case of cabin fever was starting to wash over her. She didn't really care; what she did care about was that her idiotic, jackass, wonderful friend was refusing to stay with his love, which would in turn cause him spasms of internal pain. She knew of the strength of the imprint bond. Once, she longed for it herself.
"Do it for Lizzie, then," she croaked. Jacob had been so upset by Kristen's pregnancy that he had driven to a mall, seen the red-haired girl, and promptly fell in love with her. She was funny, loyal, and could talk about cars with him for hours. What more could he want? More importantly, why wasn't he with her?!
"Kristen, you were my friend before I met Lizzie, and I promised to stay here before I imprinted on her," Jacob repeated, pushing her back onto the sofa gently. "I'm not leaving you."
Kristen sighed before she leaned back. "Can you pass me the cup?" she asked in a tired voice.
Jacob nodded, passing her the opaque white cup filled with blood, wrinkling his nose as she drank out of it thirstily. "Geez, I don't think I'll ever get used to you doing that," he muttered. She hummed in response, still swallowing the red fluid.
"I wish this stupid baby just kept its cravings to something more normal, like ice cream or something. Who doesn't love ice cream? Or brownies. Even some shitty vegetable, like broccoli or something. Why does it have to be fucking blood?" Kristen grumbled.
Jacob grinned at her, showing off his pointed teeth. "Not my fault you hooked up with a leech," he sang out.
"Shut your face," Kristen muttered around the straw, sucking up every last droplet of blood from the cup. The once disgusting rusty taste had mellowed out into a salty-sweet flavor. She relished it now, though the scent had once triggered her gag reflex. Pregnancy was weird.
"Do you mind asking Rosalie to nab me another?" she asked, holding the cup out. Jacob made a huge show of gingerly holding the cup between the tips of his fingers and wrinkling his nose again.
"HEY, BLONDIE!" he shouted, turning his face towards the kitchen. "WE NEED SOME MORE HUMAN JUICE OVER HERE PRONTO!"
"THAT'S THE STUPIDEST NAME FOR BLOOD I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE, YOU DISGUSTING ANIMAL!" Rosalie responded. "WE'LL GET YOU SOME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, KRISTEN!"
"'KAY!" Kristen yelled with a hoarse voice. She loved these exchanges, though they never had them when Edward was around. He was too much of a buzzkill to take part, and he ended up forcing the others to stop the screaming.
Alice was the one that brought the cup in after their 'conversation', holding it much more comfortably but looking completely uncomfortable as she smelled the intoxicatingly alluring scent.
"Take it, Kris, take it!" she said frantically. Kristen leaned forward to take the blood, but her fingers when rigid the second they brushed the edge of the cup.
"A-Alice?" she whispered, looking down at her stomach. She had heard something. She had felt something.
"What is it?" she asked, putting the cup down on the table and leaning forward.
"Did you hear-" Kristen's words cut off with an inhuman shriek. Alice and Jacob exchanged panicked glances. They had heard a ripping noise followed by what sounded like chewing.
Kristen threw herself back and lay prostrate on the ground, looking up at the ceiling, biting her lip to hold the screams back.
"I think it's coming," she whimpered.
"ROSALIE! ROSE, GET CARLISLE AND A TOWEL!" Alice shouted. "Dog, hold her head steady, make sure that she doesn't injure herself."
Jacob didn't shoot an insult back to Alice as he would have normally done, choosing to do as the vampire said and hold Kristen down.
"Jake, I'm scared," the human whispered, shivering as she took in Jacob's warmth and the pain in her stomach.
"It'll be fine," Jacob said through his teeth.
He had no clue how 'fine' it would be.
Rosalie burst in, holding a soft, black cotton towel in one hand and dragging Carlisle along with the other. She laid out the towel and frantically placed Kristen on it, holding her head still.
"Dog, get Esme, please," she begged, staring only at Kristen and the rapidly enlarging pool of blood under the surface of her skin. Something was very wrong.
Jacob immediately bolted, following the scent of the maternal vampire, and when he returned with her in tow, they saw Kristen screaming, a part of the towel shoved into her mouth to prevent her from biting on her tongue or lip, Alice trying in vain to hush her, Rosalie carefully ripping parts of her shirt back, and Carlisle frantically trying to perform a Caesarian section.
"The baby's stuck in the membrane," he ground out, still sawing away. He injected more morphine in the area. "It's trying to bite its way out."
Kristen whimpered again, grabbing Alice's hand with hers and squeezing. Alice kept whispering comforting words.
Jacob didn't know quite what to do. He decided just to hold Kristen's legs down to prevent any other damage.
"We have to be as calm as possible," Rosalie said in a low voice. "The baby is more intelligent than we think. It needs to understand that it shouldn't be hurrying the birth, that we're going to help it."
"What's going on in here?!" Edward's loud voice cut into what Rosalie was going to say. He walked in at the sight of his father figure putting a scalpel against his wife's bloated womb, the dog holding her legs down as they twitched, Rosalie holding the shirt back and trying to say something, and his other sister holding his wife's hand. Edward pushed Alice away, dislodging their hands in the process. The second that Alice was torn away from her, Kristen yelped and tried to reach for her again.
"It's alright, love, I have you now," Edward purred, putting his hand in Kristen's frantically jerking one. Kristen recoiled almost immediately; his hand was too hard, his skin too cold, the shape just wrong. She wanted the other one back.
"Edward, get back," Rosalie said with a warning voice. Edward didn't know why until she nodded to Carlisle, who took a deep breath, held it in, and cut through Kristen's skin.
Immediately, blood welled at the surface of her stomach. Edward's head spun as he smelled the undiluted scent, one more tantalizing than anything he had ever smelled before. He was reaching for one of the fallen droplets before he realized what was happening and forced himself to sit back down. His mouth started to water, filling with venom, but he swallowed it back with difficulty and held onto Kristen's hand.
"I need one of you to bite it open," Carlisle managed to say with his limited air supply.
Jacob looked at them all in a panic. "Why do you need to bite it out?" he asked.
"Our teeth are the only thing capable of cutting through vampire skin," the doctor replied in a choked voice. Almost immediately, Alice dashed out of the room. They heard her take a huge breath before she ran back in, knelt next to Rosalie, and carefully sliced the rest of Kristen's stomach open with one of her canines.
"Alice, I should do it, she's my mate," Edward tried to say, but he had to cut himself off upon smelling her blood, tasting the smell.
"You can't, you'll kill her before you could," Alice growled back before finishing the deed, parting the womb carefully, and pulling out the blood-soaked baby. She tapped it on the back carefully, and it gave a harmonious sounding cry. Rosalie ripped off a portion of the towel and handed it to Alice, who wrapped the baby girl up in it before passing it to the blonde vampire.
"It's a girl, Kristen," Alice whispered, looking over at her adopted sister before gasping.
Edward was preparing to bite her throat, not able to stand the bloodlust any longer. Alice could see him extend his fangs, almost pierce the skin-
She leaped at him, pushing Edward into the sofa and sending it skittering across the room. Edward snarled loudly, his irises pure black. He was lost to the call of her blood.
Kristen began to scream in kind. He had bitten her. He had put a single drop of his filthy venom in her.
Alice immediately tore off Edward's hand, breaking the fingers off, and threw the entire bundle out the window. As her brother writhed on the ground in pain, she raced back, giving a desperate look to Jacob.
"Please, Jacob, please understand, I have to do it, she's already started, I have to finish this!" she gasped out. Jacob's eyes widened as he understood. He staggered backwards at the implications before nodding and leaving the room.
"I can't watch," he said raggedly.
Alice closed her eyes, took another breath, taking in the blood scent, and carefully bit into Kristen's neck, feeling the blood spurt against her tongue, tasting the ambrosia. She immediately leaned back, unable to let herself feed off of the poor girl. Kristen's screams redoubled as Alice's venom fought off Edward's and began the transformation. The clairvoyant grabbed Kristen's hand again, preparing to wait three long days.
Kristen was turning into a walking gemstone, a jewel amongst humans now. She was becoming one of them.
And Alice hated herself for it.
Rosalie wasn't sure what to make of the newborn child. She was growing at a rate that outsped human children, which worried everyone, but she was still the joyous being that everyone expected her to be. Edward was still sulking because he didn't get to change Kristen (something about not being able to taste his singer) and Kristen was drifting away from Edward every day.
She grew closer to Rosalie and Alice at the same time, ignoring Edward's pleas for her to come see their new home and choosing to chat with the future-seeing vampire instead. She had only gone to the cottage, taken a look around, and then promptly left, finding the scent of a mountain lion to be far more attractive than the little cottage.
Rosalie thought she knew why, too, but she wasn't going to disclose it. She didn't even let it be a thought in her mind. The only thing she concentrated on was helping Kristen train herself so she could project her shield. The shield was a surprisingly unsurprising development; Kristen had always been able to defend herself against Edward's ability, so what else could it be? It wasn't too advanced; Alice could still see her future, after all. But it was better than nothing.
The blonde vampire felt the small figure in her arms thrash about slightly. Kristen called her Renesmee, some sort of amalgamation of Renee and Esme, her two mother figures' names, but the child didn't seem to take to it as readily as anyone thought it would. It responded better to Nessie, as the dog had been calling her. Speaking of which, the dog had left a while ago and never returned, probably with his mate or imprint or whatever she was called.
An image of a bottle formed in her mind. Rosalie glanced down and saw the tiny hand pressed against her face.
"Want another bottle of blood, Renesmee?" Rosalie cooed at the copper-headed baby in her arms.
"Not Reh-neh-meh. Ness," the baby grumbled back, her brow furrowing and her lower lip sticking out.
"I'm sorry, little one," Rosalie said with a sigh. "Do you want another bottle of blood, Nessie?" She emphasized the name change. Immediately, Renesmee's face lit up and she nodded gleefully.
"Where momma?" Nessie asked. Rosalie felt herself freeze up in the middle of selecting a blood bag.
"She's not here right now, Nessie," Rosalie responded slowly; Kristen was out avoiding Edward, as usual.
"Momma never come back to me," Nessie mumbled. "Was I bad as baby in her belly?"
"Oh no, of course not," Rosalie reassured. "She just..." didn't want you to begin with.
Renesmee squirmed in her arms, gleefully unaware of Rosalie's inner turmoil, staring happily at the blood as it splashed out of the plastic it came in and into a baby's bottle for the little dhampir.
hi yes i can make jacob not-renesmee's-imprint with no regrets thank you very much. I actually really liked Lizzie for the half-a-page she was featured, so.
Review if anything confuses you! Thanks for reading~
-Shriayle
