I think I've lost my writing ability. If anyone finds it, please send it back to Charlie c/o CharlotteGryffindor. Many thanks.

Breaking Dawn, Chapter 4

Carlisle returned an hour later, appearing in the doorway as Carys stepped out of the shower. His gaze roamed. She pursed her lips and shooed him away. He poked his tongue out at her, the only indication that he'd taken note of her reaction. Carys placed her hands firmly on her hips - which made him grin - and huffed - which made him redirect his attention.

He whined when she wrapped a towel around herself. "Did you have to do that? I was enjoying the show."

Carys giggled, wagging a finger at him. "Not today, Mister Cullen." She brushed past him on her way to the bedroom, gathering clothes for the day ahead. "What happened with Leah and Matt? All squared away, or do I need to kill Matt for killing Leah?"

Carlisle remained in the doorway, having turned to lean against the frame, his arms crossed. "Leah and Matt are both alive and well, though I can't say it wasn't entertaining to watch them snap at one another." He pushed off and slowly sauntered towards her while she dried off and dressed, helping her despite her protests.

"I don't need-oh, fine."

Carlisle grinned triumphantly, reaching behind her to clasp her bra.

"Were there many injuries?" she asked, raising her arms for her dress.

"None," he said. "It was more of a playfight, I think. They seemed to be sounding each other out - seeing how fast the other was, how strong, such and the like."

"Did they come to much of a conclusion?"

"I'm not sure-hold still." Carlisle had Carys bend her neck as he secured her necklace and declared her: "Perfect." He stole a kiss, snaking his arms around her, tugging her flush against him. "We did discover one interesting tidbit, if you'd like to hear it?"

"Of course."

"The Packmind doesn't exactly stretch as far as the island."

Carys leaned back against her husband's arms to look him in the eye. "That's interesting..."

He quirked a single eyebrow. "Didn't I say so?"

"Yes, but, oh, you know what I mean!" She slapped gently at his chest. "It's good - otherwise they might know everything before we've told the others."

Carlisle hummed. "True. I say exactly because Leah says she had a few flashes here and there. Half a second at most, and not long enough for her to pinpoint."

"So... They wouldn't have heard anything either?"

"No. Leah thinks she might have been able to connect if she concentrated."

"Huh... What is it? Three thousand miles?"

"About fifty miles short of four thousand," Carlisle corrected.

Carys whistled.

"Precisely. Now... I'm guessing they've hoovered up the last of the breakfast and Matt thinks we should get going with the conclave sooner rather than later."

"Because they might kill each other otherwise?"

Carlisle sighed heavily. "I told you last night - they're more at risk of jumping each other's bones." He waggled his eyebrows. "At least, I think that's where it's going."

"But they hate each other - or they're on their way to it."

"On their way to hate and the desire to rip each other's clothes off might not be too far removed for those two," he chuckled. "Whatever it is, it's passionate. I also think Matt was impressed by Leah's abilities."

"That's one word for them," Carys said dryly.

Carlisle choked. "I can assure you, neither of us saw anything we weren't supposed to!"

"Good." Carys pursed her lips and frowned. "I suppose it might be a bit passionate... but I don't think we should talk about it too loudly, unless they think we're trying to get them together or something."

"What if we are?" Carlisle crooned. "What if my human best friend - who turned out to be a supernatural, and your human best friend - who turned out to be a supernatural, got together? Wouldn't that be romantic?" He shook her lightly. "We could double date!"

Carys snorted. "You've been reading too many romance novels."

"It's your fault for bringing them on our honeymoon. Well? Wouldn't that be fun?"

"He's five thousand and she's nineteen."

"Have you never read a fantasy novel?"

Carys laughed. "Alright, maybe a few centuries isn't the worst thing - gives you time to mature." She broke off with a laugh as he poked at her ribs. "Whatever happens, I'm not pushing Leah into a relationship. Who's to say she even likes dhampirs? Besides, didn't you hear him last night? He already has his fate - what if that's dhampir code for his mate?"

Carlisle became pensive. He remained so through the first couple of hours of the conclave, while Carys and he explained exactly what had happened over the past few months. Over the next couple of hours, Matt chimed in about London, Leah and Carlisle outlined their positions, and he and Matt outlined the current state of the vampires - as they knew it.

They were all far more open with each other than Carys has expected, and she added what she knew and surmised about each group, pleased by the situation. As it was explained to them all, Matt was going to hide their memories of the event. Only they would know what they had said and hadn't. Save for Aro - of whom he wasn't one hundred percent sure - he knew it worked against the most powerful of mind-readers.

It was after Leah had revealed the number of wolves and Matt the number of dhampirs: nine, though he was reticent to explain why there were so few now, when more than twenty had survived the war and at least one had been created afterwards. This was the only real time when anything was glossed over, and Matt followed it by admitting that there had rarely been a time when the dhampirs haven't had eyes on one vampire coven or another, though they had sworn not to interfere lest the crimes of the past were repeated.

"So dhampirs hate vampires," Leah concluded. "Nice, by the way. And you almost wiped them all out, but didn't, and you've been watching them to see if they slip up and make another one of you, ready to kill any who do?"

"Pretty much," Matt agreed.

She adjusted herself on her sofa, stretching out her legs, and adopted a therapist-like tone. "Why do you hate yourselves so much?"

Matt bristled. "We don't hate ourselves. Where the fuck did you get that from?"

"You need vampires to make you, but you want to kill them so they don't make any more of you," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm not complaining, just asking the question."

"We want to kill them to stop them from killing any more humans in their quest for perfection," he reiterated.

Her head tipped back and she narrowed her eyes. "But for food is different?"

"For food is different."

"Okay..." Her expression cleared. She had become more comfortable over the course of the conclave, sprawling out and relaxing into the Leah Carys rarely saw in the company of supernaturals. "And this original war started because of your mother?" Leah held a hand up to stop Matt from replying. "I mean your dhampir mother, not your bio mom."

He nodded. "Can I speak now?"

Leah lowered her hand. "Please."

"Good girl."

Carys' mouth dropped open and she emitted a strangled sound. Good girl? Was Carlisle right about the direction this was going in? Carlisle squeezed her arm as if to reiterate his hopes.

Matt continued before Leah could react: "My mut was-"

"Mutt?" Carlisle repeated sharply.

"Mut," Matt repeated. "One t. She was Egyptian - it's the ancient word for mother."

"Oh, right, of course it is, sorry - we had a bit of trouble with the word recently is all."

He waved him off. "My mut, Neithotep, was a powerful seer. The most powerful one I've ever met - likely the most powerful one to ever have walked this earth." He smiled fondly at the thought of her. "When she made a premonition, it wasn't based on choice, it was just the future as it would be. And her sight wasn't limited to the immediate future. It's what made her choose to be my mother - she saw she would be, and thus she was."

He held them in thrall as he stood and crossed to the patio door, staring sightlessly towards the water. "I had five hundred years with her, travelling between her homeland and mine, beyond them to lands my people didn't have words for. She was the brightest, kindest, strongest of us all." He cast a glance over his shoulder. "Until a little while before the end, she believed we could educate vampires, that we didn't need to kill them if we just taught them about their fallacy.

"They knew about us - back then." He turned away, adding to what Carys and Carlisle knew but Leah didn't. "It caused problems. Many problems. They grew power-hungry, wanted to create us, to take us when we were born so that they could mould us into their warriors. Many women died in their attempts. Frustrated, confused that it worked for some and not for others, they became more and more determined to force us to give up the secret whether we had the answers or not. Many of them had lost the ability, not that they accepted that as an answer.

"And so they started the war - I told you this - they started it."

"By killing your mother?" asked Carlisle.

"They killed Neithotep's mate Nanaya first."

Three gasps sounded in the brief silence.

"It was in the midst of the pain of losing Nanaya that she saw her sacrifice and what would come in its aftermath. She hid it from me, baiting them until they came for her, and when they did... When she saw me returning early from my hunt, she screamed for me to hide... And to my eternal shame, I listened - but only because there was nothing I thought I could do. She was already..." He inhaled shakily. "In that moment - her last moment - she gave me memories of her visions to fuel me: so that I knew there was nothing to be done; so I knew I would survive to rain destruction upon them; so I knew I would outlive the war and one day find a new place in the world."

"What were they?" Carys breathed. She couldn't imagine the pain he'd gone through, seeing his mother killed before his very eyes.

"The memory of losing a mate, the vision of her death, and..." He straightened. "And another vision. One of my future which I'm not ready to share at the moment." Facing them, his eyes shifted. "I gathered the dhampirs and united them. My fury burned through the world. I've lost count of the vampires I've killed, but Carlisle will not be one of them."

"But you're not sure one of the others won't do it?" Leah queried.

Matt's smile was dark. "Carys called Carlisle a king yesterday. The remaining dhampirs call me their leader, their prince. If I told them I'd made this decision alone, one or two might fight it, might question the decision, but it would be difficult for them to if the vampire involved had a human mate - Carlisle will remain with her. Having you on our side will mean there are no arguments."

"I'm not sure I can speak for the pack as a whole," Leah said dejectedly. "I'm-"

Matt interrupted. "My people will accept your word, Thea, as should your own."

"Will they call me by my real name while they do that?"

"Of course they will."

"Then why won't you?"

He laughed. "I am."

"You keep calling me Thea," she curtly reminded him.

"Like I said, your parents named you wrong."

Leah held her middle finger up.

Matt ignored it. "Now, we all know about each other, I assume we're all agreed that we'll protect Carys?" He had explained to Leah his position as a potential protector, providing the dhampir chose him, and so they understood the unspoken addition of: in the long term. "Who do we tell first?"

Leah looked at Carys. "You really haven't told the Cullens?"

Carys shook her head.

"You mean you really found all of this out and came straight to me?"

"Of course. In terms of a conclave, as much as I love Seth, I'd rather keep this between the best friends and adults for now."

Leah's face twisted. "I mean... Then... I guess the Cullens should know first, but the wolves need to know as well." She looked around her. "I should do it in person - I don't fancy being here when they all descend."

"The wolves?" asked Matt.

"The vampires."

"Ah. No, there's not enough room for us all on this island. It will take me a little time to gather the dhampirs and inform them that I've broken my own law and told our secret... Thea, if you're leaving, it would make sense for us to take that task together - to tell my people and yours. Seeing a dhampir in the flesh might persuade them to our cause. We can leave Carys and Carlisle to tell their family."

Leah raised dubious brows. "Why exactly would I go anywhere with you? Especially when it means coming across a bunch of dhampirs?"

Matt smiled. "If I'd known you existed, I wouldn't have foreseen any problems in this. They'll take your word, as I said."

"Yes, but why?"

"Because you're Thea," he said as if this was obvious. "You're foretold."

"Um... What?" Leah cast Carys a look of appeal, which Carys returned with a confused one of her own. Leah had been foretold? By Neithotep or someone else? "Me?"

"Yes, you."

"I'm waiting..."

"Thea, you're the. First. Female. Wolf-shifter."

"And!?"

Matt threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, this is rich. You really don't know, do you?" Pressing a hand to his stomach, he quelled his reaction. "Of course you don't." He leaned forward. "Thea, no one is unimportant in this world, but you happen to be far more important than anyone else."

"How so?" she demanded.

"You'll find out soon enough."

"How soon?"

"Well if you stop asking all these questions, we can get going and you can learn along the way. We should go to see Cassandra first. You like gold, I presume?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Matt chuckled. "Oh, this is going to be a very profitable trip for you. Cass has been gathering trinkets for millennia."

"The way you say that makes it seem like this Cassandra is going to give me some of them."

"Yes. Any and all you choose," he said seriously.

"Why?" she gasped.

"Because you're Thea."

Leah rolled her eyes. "I think you've got the wrong person."

"I haven't."

"How do you know?"

Matt shrugged. "Like I said, you were foretold."

"For what purpose?"

"Hmm?" His expression suggested he was as misunderstanding of the question as the rest of them were of his persistence in leaving them in the dark.

"What was I foretold to do?"

"Ah! Exist," he said easily.

"Yes, but for what? What am I supposed to do?" Leah asked.

"Exist."

"But to do what?" she snapped.

"Exist."

"That's not an answer."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not. You can't just tell me I'm foretold to exist and so I'm more important than anyone else and-"

"That's not what I'm saying." He shook his head solemnly.

"Then what are you saying?" Carlisle asked.

Matt sighed. "Thea, you are more important than other people, and that's why you were foretold."

"But why am I more important?"

"For one-"

"I'm the first female wolf."

"Yes and no. You were foretold as being the first female wolf-shifter, but that's not why you were foretold."

Leah rubbed her forehead. "Am I the only one tired of going round in fucking circles here?"

"No," said Carys. "I'm just as confused, but I'm appreciating the fact that you're some kind of famous person to a group of secretive supernatural beings."

"Yeah. I'm not." Leah sighed. "What are they going to do to me? Sacrifice me or something?"

"They won't hurt you or they'll die at the hands of the rest of us," Matt said. "You certainly won't die, if that's what what's worrying you."

"Now you're telling me I'm immortal?" Leah threw her hands up. "I'm a wolf, not a vampire."

"No." Matt thought for a moment. "Just, the vision hasn't happened yet, so you won't be able to die until it does. After that, who knows what will happen?"

"How do you know it won't happen on this trip?"

"It won't."

"Yes but how do you know that?"

"Because it won't."

"How do you know that?"

Matt tapped his nose.

"Yeah," Leah shook her head, flopping back against the armrest. "I don't trust you. I'm not going to go run into some trap."

"You have my word you won't be harmed by a single dhampir."

She listed off on her fingers as she spoke: "How am I supposed to believe you when you've been a jerk, won't call me by my name, talk about prophesies and stuff, and I don't even know where I'm going or who I'm going to see?"

"I've told you who you're going to see." Matt's eyes narrowed to slits, his voice deepening. "I can tell you where we're going if you agree to go. And I am calling you by your fucking name, Thea. You're being deliberately obtuse, which I do not appreciate."

"Maybe we should move on to something else for a bit?" Carlisle offered, looking between them. "If Leah doesn't want to go, she shouldn't be pushed into it, Matteo."

Carys chimed in that, "She's right that you're being an arse, refusing to call her Leah and such. Later sounds like enough time for you to learn a new syllable."

Matt hands curled into fists. "Or we could do this now, and I-" He stopped suddenly and in a flash was sitting back against the cushions of his armchair, his face blank. "Has anyone ever told you how infuriating you are, Thea?"

Disappointment tightened Leah's features. "Yes. Daily. Whether they want to or not. Nice to know I'm as infuriating to your kind as I am to my own."

Matt's jaw clenched. "I doubt it's the same kind of infuriating."

"I expect it is." Leah waved a hand. "Go on. Say it like you see it: you think I'm a bitch, just like everyone else."

"Leah!" Carys gasped. "You're not a bitch! Matt, I swear to god if you–"

But Matt wasn't listening. He was shaking, just as Leah did before she shifted, his eyes hard and cold, his body locked and thrumming with anger.

Leah shrank back, blinking owlishly. She drew her knees up to her chest.

"Who the fuck has been calling you that?" Matt hissed.

She didn't answer and so he raised his hand and Leah froze in place, her eyes glowing a light gold for two seconds before he released her.

"I think we should go see your people first," he whispered fiercely. "Not that there will be many left when I'm done with them."

"What?" Carys and Carlisle cried, an instant before a deep fog claimed them.


Carys thought it was strange that the sky flicked brighter in the instant after Matt finished talking. He had been telling them about his mother and the war and then, all of a sudden she felt as if she was just waking up from a dream, the sun was in a different position in the sky, and her belly was being kicked from within.

Leah appeared just as confused, staring out of the window beyond Matt's shoulder. Carlisle, on the other hand, sitting beside Carys with his arm slung across her shoulders, was glaring directly at Matt.

"Do not do that again," he said angrily.

"Do what?" Carys asked, looking between them as she smoothed her hand over her belly and the fluttering subsided. "What happened?"

"Matt erased something," he said. "Now I don't know what, but I will say you are never to do it again. Not to me, certainly not to Carys, and never to Leah. Understood?"

Matt nodded once. "Would it help to say that whatever it was, I removed my own memory of it as well?"

"No."

"Fair enough." He looked at Leah. "What was it?"

As one, they looked at Leah, who shook her head. "Not something I think you need to know."

"Do you know why I didn't remove your memory of it?"

"I have a fairly good idea, yes." She drew herself up. "Carlisle's right. Unless I give you permission, I don't want you messing about in my head, understood?"

Matt nodded. "Was there anything you think we should know?"

"Um... I guess... To summarise, we're all going to tell our people. Matt and I are going to see the dhampirs and then I'll take him to see the wolves."

"Wait a second... You're going to meet the dhampirs?" Carys asked, flicking her index finger between Matt and Leah. "I don't understand... Why would you do that, exactly?"

"I'm kind of a big deal to them - Matt says there's a prophesy about me so they're going to give me gold and stuff and then they'll help, no questions asked."

"Oh! That's cool..." It was cool but also mildly concerning. Would it really be as easy as that? "I mean, do you have to do anything?"

Leah shrugged. "Nope, just be myself."

"Awesome..." Carys stared at her friend. "You're sure you want to go? You don't have to unless you want to."

"I have an inkling I should trust Matt," Leah said, picking at an imaginary piece of lint on the hem of her dress. "When it comes to infuriating, untouchable badasses, I kind of have the market cornered so I think I'll be alright. And he got down on his hands and knees and begged forgiveness for being a jerk, so that got some sympathy."

"I did not!" Matt complained.

"Erm, which one of us remembers what happened?" Leah asked with a smirk.

Matt hummed, unsure. "It doesn't sound like something I'd do."

"Oh, but you did. You started crying as well - sobbing about how important I was to your people and how desperately you needed me on your side."

His lips drew down at the corners. "I don't think so."

"Maybe you shouldn't have erased your own memory then?"

Matt drew a breath. "Is any of the rest of it true?"

Leah nodded and grew serious again. "Yeah, you told me I'm foretold."

"You are."

"Wouldn't tell me what for though."

"You were foretold to exi-"

"Exist," Leah finished for him.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "So I did tell you. Gods, are you always this deliberately-"

"Obtuse?"

"Yes. Oh, so we've had this entire conversation before, have we?"

Leah sighed. "Not word for word, no."

"Yet you're still actively seeking to be the most-"

"Infuriating person you've ever met?"

Matt let out an angry sound when Carys grinned and Carlisle chuckled under his breath. "I thought you said we hadn't had this exact conversation before?"

"We haven't, just you've said those things already so I felt like you should know."

"Gods, you're annoying."

"Annoying enough to leave me behind?"

Matt's jaw clenched. "No. I'm going to need you." He rubbed at his eyes. "Carys, Carlisle?"

"Yes?"

"Conservatively, we should be gone for around a week, so-"

"A whole week?" Leah grumbled. "Kill me now."

"I can't - not until-"

"The prophesy."

Matt looked fit to explode. "Why don't you just let me know what I told you and stop this incessant need to interrupt with things I've already said?"

Leah moved, turning bodily away from him, resting her cheek against the back cushions of the sofa. "I'm never going to do that, so you can shut up and accept it. You were saying something before I so rightly interrupted?"

"Matt," Carlisle interjected before the dhampir could do just that. "Do you have a mate?"

Matt's lips tightened. "What's it to you?"

"Just wondering."

"I do, as it happens."

"That would be the mate you've had for four and a half thousand years?"

"The very same..." Matt looked askance. "And what does that matter?"

Carlisle lowered his chin a little. "I was just wondering if mates are the same for you as they are for us?"

"We have one. Only one. We can fall in love with others, but our mate is our mate. Once we've met them, there's no going back. No one else exists in that way to us."

"Ah... Well that's good to know," Carlisle said slowly. He met Carys' eye dejectedly as if to say, I really was hoping it was going somewhere. She rubbed his arm soothingly. "What are we to expect once you and Leah have rounded up the troops, so to speak?"

"Can I assume your coven won't attack them?"

"You can."

"Well then we'll bring them to meet you and Carys. The dhampirs, that is. They might not be happy, but they won't argue and they'll be curious about what they're going to find. They'll want to see with their own eyes that you two are mated and they'll want to meet Carys especially. After what I've seen, they'll be just as interested in your powers, Carys, as you want everyone to be; as I now am."

Pride lifted Carys from her seat a little. She made it into a little shuffle, muting her grin. "Happy to provide them with a distraction."

Matt smiled at her and then stared at Leah. "You're quiet... What's wrong?"

Leah shrugged, schooling her features into a mask of disinterest. "Nothing much. Just wondering how your mate feels about you running around with a foretold wolf, meeting all these dhampirs."

His brows flashed high. "I doubt she has a problem with it. In fact, I expect she's going to be happy about it soon enough."

"Interesting you'd say that, considering how little you seem to understand women."

"Excuse me?"

"I said what I said. Look, what exactly is going to happen once the dhampirs meet Carys? They're going to decide not to kill Carlisle, right?"

Matt nodded.

"So then what? They leave the rest of them alone?"

"I'm not going to attempt to understand you right now."

"Good," she declared. "Don't."

"Right..." He frowned. "Sorry, have I upset you somehow?"

"Nope."

"Okay... I'll pretend I believe that. The thing is, there might just be a war, no matter what the dhampirs decide. No matter what the shifters decide."

"I don't understand why there would be a war at all," she said.

"When the vampires learn what we are and what we've done, there may well be trouble at least. The Volturi seized control, took power over vampire kind in the thousands of years following our... cull."

"Attempted genocide," Carys whispered, then slapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry."

"Don't be," Matt sighed. "That, too, will be a source of contention with many of them. The Volturi won't take kindly to learning they've been watched all this time, nor that their existence relies upon our grace."

Leah scoffed. "You really think you could take them down? From what I've heard, they're pretty hard to beat."

Matt sank back in his chair, crossing one ankle over the other knee. "I could break them apart from within with a single memory. With the right players in place, we could destroy them soon enough. If they came for someone I cared about, I'd do so myself without a moment's hesitation."

"Then why haven't you?"

"I haven't had a reason to. The vampires seem to accept having rulers and it keeps them in line. If they come for anyone in this room, I'll have a reason to take them down." He raised a hand. "What will it be? Thea? Carlisle? Carys? This is the last call. Are you in, or are you not? I'm not talking about this stage - I'm talking about everything. If leaving this island and telling the others means risking a war, I need to know that we're all ready and willing to fight in it."

One by one, their hands raised. Even Carys, who was currently unsure she'd be of much use to anyone, was entirely sure of her place within the world - she would fight if fate required it.

"Good," Matt said. "We can stay here for a day or two while I make Cassandra aware of our visit. It will give us time to run through what Carys can expect for the next couple of weeks."

"I think it's time to make the call," Carlisle said to Carys. "I doubt they'll stay put for long once we tell them there's something to speak about, but we should tell the family now. We've left it long enough. Would you prefer to have them meet us here on this island or on the mainland?"

Carys looked at Leah. "Mainland if they come before these two leave. Island if they come after?"

"Actually, no," Carlisle kissed Carys' cheek. "Changed my mind. We'll meet them on the mainland and come back to the island alone. I doubt we'll get much time to ourselves once everyone else gets wind of it."

"And you'll need to find somewhere for Carys to be changed," Matt said. "When it comes to it, she'll need to hunt."

"Not near humans," Carys said quickly.

Carlisle agreed. "Carys is going to follow tradition."

Matt grinned.

Leah rolled her eyes. "Of course she is. If she was going to run around killing humans, I'd have to kill her. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, Carys?"

Carys shook her head in an exaggerated motion.

"Just as I thought." Leah crawled across the sofa, reached across, and patted Carys' head fondly. "Good soon-to-be disgusting creature."

Carys preened and chuckled, sobering as the thought occurred: "I thought you would have had to kill me either way."

Leah sat back on her haunches. "We're ignoring that for now."

"Are we?"

"Yes." The smile Leah turned on Matt smile was sickly sweet. "What do you dhampirs eat?"

A grumbling sound rumbled through Matt. "Animals and human food when we're in this form, usually human food when we're in human-esque form."

"Then I won't have to kill any of you, either." She rubbed her chin as if she was mulling it over. "Are any of the other dhampirs mateless?"

"Nope," Matt said quickly. "Nope, you're not going there. Keep your eyes off - they're not for you."

Why would that be, Carys wondered. It was interesting enough that Leah was open to the idea of dhampirs - in that way. Carys hoped she was genuinely interested and not simply asking so that she could annoy the wolves. Even as she had the thought, it was dismissed: Leah was the last person to toy with people's romantic feelings for the sake of her own amusement.

"How do you know?" Leah countered.

"I just do, alright?" Matt said, stone faced. "I for one haven't waited all this time for you to screw around and get people killed just for whatever fun you think you might have."

"I'm sorry..." Leah sat forward. "Get people killed!?"

"Yes," he said seriously.

She gaped. "By... by who, exactly?"

Conversationally, Matt said, "Me." He slapped his palms to his knees and stood up. "If that's all done, I say we call it a night. Don't worry about me for dinner, I'll catch my own. I'll be on the other side of the island if you need me - I have a house to build so Thea here doesn't have to listen to you two fucking every half-hour when we get back."

The sound Carys emitted was too high-pitched and horrified to be classified.

"I hardly think that's appropriate," Carlisle blustered. If he could have blushed, Carys expected he would have been bright red.

Matt said, "She got to sleep through it. Some of us weren't so lucky." He took off through the patio doors, calling over his shoulder, "It's your honeymoon now, but gods know it'll only get worse over the next couple of weeks."

Carys' mouth opened and closed. "Carlisle?"

"I will go and see what he means by that," Carlisle assured her. He stood up and then almost immediately sat back down. "Perhaps not just now. I... I expect it would be better to mull over the wording before I address it."

Carys patted his knee. She certainly wasn't going to go after Matt and demand answers. Something told her he'd already given them the information they needed, and if he was serious, she felt for Carlisle. For now, Carys was playing it all by ear. Carlisle, on the other hand... He would have far more running around in his mind. Poor thing, he'd be exhausted.

She covered her mouth, stifling a small laugh by turning it into a cough. Poor man indeed.

Leah avoided Carys' eye. Smiling politely, she excused herself from the room. A few moments later, the spare bedroom door closed behind her. It was followed almost immediately by a rich, raucous laughter that lasted - according to Carlisle - well beyond the time it was muffled by her pillows.

And later still, when the laughter finally subsided, a shout went up: "WHAT THE FUCK IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW!?"

Carys looked up from the saucepan into which Carlisle had just added the latest of her steaks and, though she doubted Leah could hear, said, "You're preaching to the choir there, my dear."

Matt: being annoying and confusing since 3000BC.

Thank you to BMBMDooDoo-Doo-Doo-Doo, NeonKat (well we'll get to find out about the family next chapter! As for Leah and Matt, I wonder what's going to happen after the revelations of your chapter...), and Momochan77 for your reviews!