Despite their best efforts otherwise, Charlie left the house too. Carlisle had heard Bella plead with and beg Charlie to stay back with Sue and Billy and the three girls. But the tired, sleep-deprived man refused to ignore the request for assistance from his fellow policemen, even with an inkling that the issue at La Push was way beyond their pay grade.

"Stay safe, Bells," he whispered against his daughter's head and with a nod of acknowledgment to Billy and a soft peck to Sue, he drove off.

The sound of his cruiser turning on to the highway faded and gave way to the anxious footfalls of a pacing Sue Clearwater in the next room.

Last Carlisle had seen them, Emily stood beside Billy, Rachel and Kim sat beside their respective mates and Sue Clearwater paced the small nook in their living room, a distance away from humans, vampires and wolves alike.

"She's worried," Edward answered the question he never asked. "For Leah and for Seth too. Her mind is swinging from one to the other."

Carlisle nodded. The nervous energy in the relatives of the patients he operated on was nothing new to him. Agreed the mothers of his usual patients did not also have a son, and a boyfriend, running headfirst into what was quite possibly life threatening danger.

He sighed.

He had taken some time to set up the injured bones of the wolves with braces, slings or splints as needed, not bothering with implants or fixators. Their healing was far too accelerated to need any of it. Instead, he hooked them up with painkiller drips, trying to make them as comfortable as possible for the few days it would take them to get back to full health.

Edward and Rosalie, his two children with a medical degree had volunteered, a bit reluctantly in the latter case, to assist him during Leah's surgery. By the time he entered the dining room, they had prepped her up and already anesthetized her. He had frowned a little at the large amount of inhalational agents and high dose injections she was given but he did not pursue it further. Leah's body was burning the drugs off faster than any of his patients before this.

With a sterile field already set up, Carlisle washed up and got straight to the surgery. He did not have the equipments he needed for a laparoscopic surgery so he had opened up her abdomen, treating the injuries as he found them.

The erratic whir of the suction tube came to life in Rosalie's hand as he moved a loop of intestine aside to find a small pool of blood. Carlisle looked at his children again. Edward mouthed I'm fine at him and Rosalie's eyes were dark but still gold. She cleared the field and Edward stepped in, helping him ligate the bleeding artery.

I don't trust those leeches. Do you think Leah will be fine with them, alone? Paul's voice was audible to the four Cullens still in the house and all of his brothers even though his words were meant only for Rachel.

Be nice. His mate's hiss carried a hint of wariness as well.

"Ungrateful bastards," Rosalie spat out, not bothering to lower her voice at all.

"Rose, be nice," Esme's reprimand was amused as it floated down from a floor above.

His daughter rolled her eyes and continued her work on Leah. The three vampires worked at full speed, pacing through an otherwise hours long surgery almost ten times faster. And yet, Carlisle felt each second tick by with a deliberate, mocking slowness.

He was painfully aware of the fact that half his family was not in the house with him. Alice, Jasper, Emmett, Bella and Renesmee had left before they had shifted Leah to the adjacent room. None of them wished to put themselves to that sort of test. If he listened carefully past the beeping of the monitor or the whirring of the suction tube, he could hear them laughing. They stood at the edge of their auditory field, upwind from the house, beside the river. Far away enough to avoid unnecessary temptations, but close enough to rush back into the house should the need arise.

Closer still, he could hear Esme in his office, cleaning up the remains of the shattered table. She was humming softly to herself, working at a leisurely, human pace as she sorted his belongings from the splinters.

Will you let me know if any of them are in any danger?

His question was unnecessary. Carlisle knew Edward would, irrespective of his request. But his irrational worry demanded him to do so.

Edward nodded, his eyes not leaving the edge of the bodily tissue he held as Carlisle's quick hands sutured it.

Carlisle explored the entire abdomen, checking each structure for any injuries he might have missed. Not all of her gashes were deep enough to injure her innards. Her skin and muscles were a different issue all together that he would have to deal with soon. As he stared at the injuries he repaired, the questions he had vehemently avoided voicing weighed heavily on his mind.

What happened?

A group of agitated, teenage boys and not even one of them uttered a word about the events that lead to these injuries. Carlisle knew exactly what that meant. Jacob or Sam, perhaps both, had forbidden them. Whatever it was, they did not want his family to know of it.

And Carlisle was not one to delve deeper than one wished to share. But he could not get rid of the feeling that whatever it was, had the power to affect his family too.

Edward cleared his throat, lightly and Carlisle looked up at him. His son gave an almost imperceptible nod of head towards their backyard and a knowing look.

A promise of an explanation later.

Carlisle's gut tightened into an almost painful knot. Edward did not share overheard thoughts unless they were important.

His hands picked up speed.

The sun was just coloring the horizon on the east when he gently patted Leah's cheek, encouraging her to wake up. The surgery was over and he had taken the time to stitch up even the superficial injuries Leah sustained as neatly as possible to ensure the girl would not end up with unnecessary scars. He set up the post-op medications and fluid and shut off the anesthesia, replacing the ET tube with an oxygen mask.

Rosalie blurred around the room, picking up every instrument, bandage, equipment, suction jar, sheets and anything else with even a trace of blood and loading it all onto the stainless steel trolley.

Out in the backyard, he could hear Edward starting a small fire.

Leah groaned and he coaxed her to open her eyes. She mumbled something that he could not catch through the soft buzz of the flowing oxygen even with his advanced hearing.

"Beg your pardon?" he leaned closer.

"It stinks," she rasped out, deliriously.

Despite the situation, Carlisle had to suppress a smile. "My apologies," he said. "I'll step away."

He checked her vitals, and the sensations in all of her limbs before he decided she was well enough to be shifted with the other wolves.

Rosalie rolled out the trolley, and Edward and Esme came in with a clean pajama. He averted his gaze as Esme quickly put the clothes on the girl. Together with Edward, he carried her, the oxygen cylinder and the IV Stand out into the living room and placed her on to the empty bed.

The other two beds were covered almost entirely by the four large boys. Rachel had fallen asleep on the chair, her head down on her folded hands on Paul's chest. Kim was curled up in the tiny space beside Jared, held in place only by Jared's arm wrapped around her.

Even Emily had fallen asleep, sitting on the floor, her head resting against the small table that stood against the wall.

Only Billy and Sue remained awake and the latter rushed forward when they entered the room. She fretted, gasping at the sight of her daughter covered in so many bandages.

"She will be fine," Carlisle said, keeping his voice low enough that he wouldn't wake anyone even though he had given the four boys enough morphine they wouldn't have stirred if he had yelled. "She'll be in and out of sleep for a few hours still. But she will be fine."

Sue looked from her daughter back up at him and opened her mouth, as if to say something. The exhaustion brought out the aging lines on her skin and the area under her eyes looked dark.

"You should try to get some rest too," he said.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "All of you." She passed a ghost of a grateful smile to Edward and Esme as well. "And I am so sorry about all of-"

"Don't worry about any of that dear," Esme cut her off when Sue gestured vaguely in the direction of the shattered floorboard and the broken table. The place where Carlisle and Jared had crashed.

The tip of his wife's fingers almost touched the soft, brown skin of the distraught woman. Almost. Sue shuddered against the instinctive gesture Esme made and his wife pulled her hands back. The kindness of her smile did not dim. But Carlisle saw the hurt in her eyes. Anyone else might have missed it, but Carlisle couldn't miss anything that pulled at his wife's heart strings. He would see it even if he was blind.

"You should get some rest. You too Billy," Esme said softly and then turned back to Carlisle. He guided her and Edward out into the backyard.

His eyebrows pulled together and he clasped her hands in his, rubbing soft circles against her skin. She smiled up at him. It's okay. I am okay. She repeated the mantra silently at him through her eyes and through her smile till the frown melted from his face.

He took in a deep breath, inhaling a lungful of fresh air - it only had traces of wolf blood - and got to work. Rosalie was standing downwind from them near the small pit of fire Edward had created.

It wasn't the most appropriate way of disposing off medical waste, but it was the most thorough one. She had already emptied out the suction jar, washed it out, and filled it with bleached water. Carlisle stepped up to the trolley and put the rinsed out instruments in the bleach water as well. He took the rest of the things and threw it all into the fire. The air roared with the flames' fervor as it consumed the alcohol, and blood, soaked drapes. The irritant smell of burning rubber overpowered the scent of blood and soon enough, the fire consumed it all alike until there was nothing more left for it to devour. They put the fire out with the bleach water.

Esme covered the trolley, jar and the instrument with a generous coating of the pungest powder.

"That should be enough," she said, taking a step back against him and he held her there. She smiled up proudly at him and his eyes softened when he took in the happy gleam in hers.

Rosalie took a cursory whiff and her face contorted with distaste. "We'll have to burn the house down to get the dog blood stench out. Bleach won't cut it."

"Rose…" Esme laughed even as their daughter flipped her hair over her shoulder and with one big leap, jumped across the stream, running off towards the rest of the family.

"I can't believe I am saying this, but I have to agree with her," Edward chuckled as he ducked out of his mother's admonishing swat. Carlisle winced at the loss of contact when Esme lurched towards their son.

"Race you to Alice?" Edward challenged his mother with a big grin before he too bounded into the forest.

His beautiful wife did not take the bait, however, and came back to him, waiting. Carlisle took only a moment to listen to the five accelerated but even heartbeats before he caught her small hand in his larger ones and together, they jogged through the forest, following the laughter of their children.

In the few seconds it took the two of them to reach, Edward and Emmett were already in a wrestling match. Rose perched on a tree, Renesmee beside her. Alice, Jasper and Bella stood to a side, giving the two rough housing boys a wide berth as they looked on.

"Bella should shield my mind," Emmett grumbled as his flying fist met empty air. "Then we will see how tough you are."

"Mom will cheat," Renesmee declared from her seat, her place high up in the trees making her use her voice.

Esme laughed at her sons, looking at them fondly as she too kept her distance, avoiding the dust cloud they created. Carlisle ignored the playful fight between his sons. Instead his eyes followed his wife as she glided towards a tree, one that she seemed to favour above the others. She looked over her shoulder, her head tilted a little to the side as she invited him to join her.

It broke his heart every time he had to say no to her. Esme would understand. She always did. And yet, no matter how few in between those occasions may be, they remained painful

He sighed, longing to follow her as she lightly jumped from one branch to another, ascending higher up towards the heaven that he stole her away from all those years ago until she found a comfortable nook to tuck herself within.

Carlisle tore his gaze away from her and instead thought a single word.

Edward?

His son was beside him the next instant.

"How did they get injured?" Carlisle asked, aloud. His question had his entire family stir, turning towards them with anticipation. Edward took a moment, gathering his thought. His eyes darted towards the house for a second and unease crept, almost visibly in his demeanor. But he barreled through, deciding on revelations instead of courtesy.

"Sam and Jacob were with the others, following a trail of the wolves. They were over a hundred and fifty miles away when Leah, Jared and the packs here came across the scent of the vampires and they followed it. They found the vampires. Your creator, and a younger woman. The third pack had beat them to it though. The two of them were already cornered.

But when the current two packs reached, the younger wolves, I think, were startled. They turned and attacked them. Leah was trying not to hurt them and Sam and Jacob were trying to pin point the alpha. But he might not have been in the wolf form at that time because they never heard any reply. Most of these people got injured because they were trying to placate the younger ones, not fight them. Leah even turned into human form to talk to them. But the younger ones were vicious, and did not slow down their attack. She was forced to phase back and eventually so many of them were injured, she and Jared commanded the others to retreat.

Sometime during the fight, the vampires fled. They had two human captives that your creator took with him when he bolted."

Edward's narration was short, to the point.

Carlisle had, in a way, known these people did not have injuries that vampires inflicted. Yet he did not like the confirmation to his unvoiced suspicions. The third pack had injured them. A group of ten wolves, barely a day into this new life, had managed to injure some of the best fighters of their kind. Grievously so.

"Are you sure they got startled?" Jasper's voice brought him out of his reverie. He was looking between Carlisle and Edward, his hand, a firm grasp on Alice's waist.

Edward shrugged, "I am not certain. From the glimpses I caught in their head, and most of them are dedicatedly avoiding thinking about the incident around me, the other pack had the two vampires and the humans backed against a cliff. But they abandoned that hunt the moment these people approached."

Jasper looked at Carlisle, a thoughtful look in his face. If he was trying to convey something, his message eluded Carlisle. The patriarch instead looked at his first son for clarification.

Edward was looking at Jasper too, his brows pulled into a frown.

"What is going on?" Emmett burst out, exasperated and Carlisle was glad for the clarification sought.

"Tell me the order in which they were injured," Jasper barked at Edward, whose eyes widened at the trail of thought in Jasper's mind.

"Jared, Colin, Leah, Paul, Embry," Edward ratted out. "The others were injured too, but not so much. They healed on their own."

Whatever Jasper inferred from that answer, it distressed him.

"Jasper, Edward," Carlisle spoke, turning both his sons' attention to himself. "Explain, to everyone present."

The two exchanged a look, before Jasper stepped up to be the spokesperson.

"These wolves are young. Far too young to have caused injuries of this extent. Especially because the La Push wolves were also in large enough a number. But not all of the La Push wolves sustained serious injuries. Only some of them did," Jasper looked at Carlisle, a strange kind of reluctance towards his own words. "Only the senior most ones did."

"Colin isn't one of the older ones…" Bella whispered.

Jasper allowed Edward to speak. "Colin got hurt trying to defend Jared from the three wolves that were attacking him."

Then the veteran of their family continued. "Colin ended up being collateral damage. But the others…they are the betas and the third-in-command of their respective packs."

"What does all this mean?" Bella asked.

Jasper's answer sent a gripping wave of cold through Carlisle's spine. "The third pack didn't attack because they were startled. They attacked to systematically take down the highest ranking members of the packs."

"Jacob?" Renesmee's soft whisper floated down and Carlisle squeezed his eyes shut even as he saw Bella jump up onto the branch to her daughter. He could hear the words of comfort that Bella and Rose spoke to calm the youngest member of his family down.

But the words held no meaning to him.

The implication of Jasper's theory ran amok in his mind.

A third pack.

He could see Jacob and Sam working together. They would defend themselves. They would defend La Push. Perhaps that was what they were doing in that very moment. But they were fighting their blood brothers. They were fighting children that had been sired by the same man centuries ago.

He thought back to the young boy he had treated barely 24 hours ago. Rick.

Timid, shy. He did not look anything like the tall, bulked up shape shifters that lay resting in his house right now. He was small and scrawny, looking every bit the twelve year old that he was.

Twenty-four hours later this boy was a wolf, working to methodically take down the leaders of the other packs. The packs that should have been his found-family.

There were scores of questions that flew by in his mind. Why? How? Many.

He ignored all of them.

Instead, Carlisle looked at his family.

Edward, his son a new father himself, finally getting the time to relish the small family that he had built for himself after years of loneliness. Bella and Renesmee, his youngest daughter and granddaughter, who rocked their family from the moment they entered their life and then endeared themselves to everyone's heart to such an extent that Carlisle would not have it any other way. Alice, the young girl who had brought so much joy, enthusiasm and color to their family, truly embodying the word 'life' for them all. Jasper, the scarred man that had terrified Carlisle out of his wit when he first saw him and had slowly, tentatively, learned to first trust his family, and only then, started to join it. Rose, his daughter who had fought with him, hated him, spited him and yet loved them all enough to hate anyone who endangered them with a passion. Emmett, the loving, caring man who had softened them all with his happiness and melted even Rosalie's defenses away with the genuine warmth of his heart.

And Esme. His Esme. The woman who bestowed upon him the greatest gift there ever was on this Earth. The gift of her love. A gift that she happily and generously shared with all she came across and yet held a special little place in her life that was reserved just for Carlisle. He had brought her into his house, and she had built her home in his heart.

Carlisle looked at each of them and swallowed.

His mouth was dry and the air felt like shattered glass going down his throat.

He ignored all the questions running in his mind. There were far too many things he didn't know.

But there was one fact he was painfully and acutely certain about.

A pack that did not acknowledge, and even attacked, its brothers would certainly not honor the treaty.

A/N:

I apologize for the delay in uploading this chapter, especially because so many of you expressed appreciation for the quick updates. Work caught up and between 12 hour long shifts and 1.5 hours of travel each way, there is not much time left for writing. It's temporary though and my schedule will be back to its usual one in 15 days and I hope to squeeze in another chapter or 2 in between until then.

I do hope you enjoy the chapter. Do let me know your thoughts! Your reviews make my day!

Love

ZQ