We stayed like that for longer than I would like to admit. Unmoving, I basked in the feeling, never wanting it to fade or dissipate. I had all but dispelled any notion of movement until I was broken by a heart wrenching shriek from the direction of Carlisle's impromptu laboratory.
I whisked her to the bedroom faster than was possibly safe for her. Taking a second thought to her conditions, I fetched one of my hooded sweaters from the clothes basket. I examined it close for any hint of dirt or grime but was pleasantly surprised to find it blemish free.
I quickly yet carefully pulled it over her head, tousling her curls even further. I smoothed her hair back from her face and pulled the blanket under her chin as she curled into my action. Resting my rigid palm against her smooth cheek for just a moment, I savored the action for what I could before starting towards the lab with every ounce of venom left within my body.
I had all but forgotten how close we were to answers, but now that I was reminded, I felt my undead heart throbbing in my chest with anxiety. I burst into the lab without warning to find Esme with her head in her hands seemingly having collapsed on the floor. Carlisle, partially blocking my view, most likely in protection of his mate, looked to me with a glimmer of a tear in his eyes.
"What?" escaped my lips barely audible. "What did you find?" I could barely force the question from my mouth, afraid of the answer…
Esme whimpered, crashing into Carlisle's chest.
I looked around, searching for the unspoken answers. Desperate for any clue to tell me how to feel.
My eyes fell to Edward in the corner of the room, hand running through his messy bronze locks. His face held mostly shock as he stared towards the floor. Slowly, his head tilted up towards me, a definitive smirk rising on his face as he did so.
"Is she? Do we need to…Is she mine?" I struggled to land on the most important question.
He simply nodded as he moved to console Esme.
I hadn't the slightest clue to which question he was answering, but the emotions rolling off of him were all that I needed for my heart to soar. He nodded at Carlisle, an unspoken question between them.
Carlisle then moved away from Esme, leaning her into their son. She grabbed tight to him, sobbing dryly into his collar. Her emotions described to me what I already knew of her life story. The loss, the mourning, the difficulties she had transitioning. The newness, the family she so desired, the indebtedness she felt towards Carlisle. It swam around her overwhelmingly, so much so that I could not break through and discern any one thing she was focusing on.
Carlisle rose and started towards his workstation as he motioned towards me, a glimmer still present in his eyes.
I darted yet again to him without any sense of warning. He acted instinctively with a crouch before quickly righting himself with an apologetic smile.
"Tell me," I choked out finally. A harsh demand saturated in two decades of fear and loss.
"She's ours…I can say that much for certain Son."
My hand shot to my mouth, all the while every last molecule of century long air rushed from my lungs in a strangled ancient noise.
My head now hanging, hair draping around me in every direction, "What can you not say for certain?"
He hesitated, "Her composition. It is much like our young Renesmee's. It is delicate and ever changing, yet it mutates at a rapid rate. It seems to be repairing itself a great deal faster than Renesmee's did just before her peak of maturity. Almost moving towards something, an end goal for the cells. Her genetics however, they…they are unlike Renesmee's…they are of us." He breathed out as he shook his head at his mounds of journals in front of him.
"Not human…" I whispered.
"No, not wholly. Though the chemical makeup of her genetics and blood are. It is unlike anything I have seen in my centuries on this Earth. I haven't the slightest idea what to make of it aside from the obvious positive aspects." He met my eyes with the most intense fatherly look about his face I had ever witnessed in my time with him.
"Are they so obvious?" I did not know what to make of it all. It all sounded similar to the ideals that once gave us sanguinity for my animalistic niece's future. This too now appeared different…this was a reoccurrence, not a birth.
"Brother…" Edward called as he broke from Esme's hold.
I looked to him, confusion I'm sure written plainly across my face.
"Brother, has Alice ever mentioned anything of her young life?" he inquired, brows furrowed, head to the floor.
"Not that I can recall, mostly generic background of experience in foster homes…"
"Yes, she has thought of those too…" he broke, looking up apologetically for his trespassing. "But has she ever said anything specific?" he pushed.
"I," I hesitated, truly trying to recall. True I had been most distracted as of recent, but surly I could never in my immortal life be so distracted as to forget anything.
Edward turned about the room. "Have any of us even given a second thought as to her origins? Absolutely curious as to her childhood?"
Esme peeked up from her slump on the floor, tears still shining impossibly in her black eyes. These did not suit her, I must admit. It was not often that we were able to witness this as she tried to spread herself among each of our hunting trips for bonding purposes. She looked to Carlisle, shaking her head, mouth-wide just as his too was.
Carlisle's face gathered as he looked to his books again. He opened his mouth once to speak but closed it soon after.
Edward shook his head, "Unbelievable…It is almost as if we have all been influenced to just accept her existence without question. Very much similar to the college's admission board as she mentioned to you Jasper…That is quite unusual don't you think? If it were truly that easy, we would have saved a fortune in Jenk's services."
I slammed my fist on the desk in anger for not having realized before.
"What does this mean?" Esme strained with dismay.
"For starters, I do believe this has disbanded any remaining thought of leaving that Jasper has ever entertained." Edward scoffed with a hint of a laugh riding on his vocal cords.
Though I am not a simple man, I could hardly comprehend the facts before me. There were too many possibilities, too many strategies in place by those who wished us harm, too many inexplicable existences within our nature.
"I have never in my time on this Earth heard of anything like this…" Carlisle reiterated. "Perhaps Eleazer…"
"It is them…it has to be. We know that now." I muttered.
"Brother, you don't possibly believe they would act so soon…" Edward stated in disbelief while testing the edges of my thoughts. I could feel his confidence waiver as he followed the train of my thoughts further.
"It's been two decades…"I growled between clenched teeth, anger surging through me in abundance. How dare they try to take her from me. How they tried to break my belief in my angel. I felt a dark pit in my stomach rising, an ancient ferocity coursing through me now, something long since forgotten. "We have to change her; we cannot wait like we have done before. It was too close." I rushed through the quick breath I drew between my teeth.
Carlisle's head whipped in my direction. "Son…" he warned.
"Jasper, we can't possibly know if that would work or destroy her" Edward softly guided. "I wasn't willing to take that risk with Nessie, and I know that you aren't either."
I swept the journals from Carlisle's desk into the nearest bookcase, sending splinters of woods flying to every corner of the room. The cold and metallic sound of instruments clashing and machinery grinding to broken halts filled the space.
"They will not take her from me as they have done before!" I bellowed in a shout that only reverberated pain through the room.
"None of us will Jasper, you have to see that." Esme begged in a marred cry.
Carlisle was at her side again; I hadn't noticed when that occurred. "Of course, he does my love." He shushed her gently as he rocked her in his arms.
I was gone then, fear consuming each and every thought within me, conscious and unconscious.
I was by her side in a fraction of the time it should have taken for one of our kind. I hadn't the space to consider the damage I may have done to the structure of Esme's carefully curated home.
I had her in my arms instantly, positioning her towards the stone wall of the space. I barricaded her in with my frame, shadowing her in what I perceived as protection from the very shadow of death itself. With the Volturi involved now, there was no telling their capabilities. If they were capable of changing her in the ways that they have, there was no end to the lengths they were willing to go for her.
I couldn't and I wouldn't let it happen. It all made sense now…Each scar that disfigured me now, it stood for this moment. Every battle that I had fought and won on my way to this Heaven…It was in preparation of the expansive protection I now afforded to Her. This was my purpose. This was the sole reason that I deserved her Grace in my damned existence. This now, made it all worth it. The darkness, the pain, the horrors…they were for her.
For even the Archangels of God and the Saints in Heaven have been through Hell for the betterment of protection and preservation of all in the sacred land.
Her name rung now deep within my consciousness, Alice's horror reverberating through every fiber of my being.
Maria.