"Now you know," Alice pulled Aro out of his seemingly dark thoughts, "that's your future. Unless you decide on another course."

Caius stepped forward from my side, not that Aro seemed to react. "We cannot alter our course. The child still poses a grave threat," he insisted.

Rolling my eyes, I tugged Caius back towards me and kicked him in the shin again to which he did growl very quietly. Marcus turned around to him and laughed under his breath.

"But what if you were sure she could remain concealed from the human world? Could we leave in peace?" Edward asked from across the field.

Caius scoffed and gave Eddy a judgemental look. "Well of course, but that cannot be known." That time I didn't kick him, because that little bitchy scowl was everything.

"Actually, it can," Edward responded bluntly.

Even Bella turned to face him as if he was actually stupid. Well, he was incredibly stupid but that wasn't the point. Apparently this whole thing had been Alice's doing as she turned around to face him and they both smirked at each other knowingly.

I watched the tree line as two figures appeared in the field. One of them had a heartbeat, a strong one, just like Renesmee's. That same guy was also half-naked, as if this day couldn't get any weirder.

Assumingly for dramatic effect, they walked through the snow ridiculously slowly, each pathetically small stride taking a whole second, which added up to quite a bit of time after a while. I glanced up to see that Aro and Marcus were watching their approach intently, while Caius seemed like he was debating meeting them half way and carrying them over to save time.

2 painfully long minutes later, both of Alice's witnesses were stood in front of us. Yep, definitely half-naked, not just my eyesight going.

I moved to Aro's side and held his arm which he had crossed over his front. He glanced down at me very briefly before averting his attention back up, but he made no attempt to shake me off.

"I've been searching for witnesses of my own," Alice announced, "among the Tekona tribes of Brazil."

"We have enough witnesses," Caius snapped.

Aro held up his hand to silence him. "Let him speak, brother."

The man took a step forward slightly. In his defence, he was very attractive, definitely not a human.

"I am half human, half vampire, like the child," he explained. I glanced over at Renesmee and smiled at her, and surprisingly she smiled back warmly. "A vampire seduced my mother, who died giving birth to me. My aunt Huilen raised me as her own. I made her immortal."

Now that I saw it, the woman beside him did have red eyes and was unnaturally gorgeous, her dark brown curly hair tumbling down her back.

Bella stepped forward. "How old are you?" she asked him.

The pair spun around to Bella. "150 years." I could see the absolute relief on Bella's face, since I'd imagine she would've been pretty worried for her daughter's life span.

"At what age did you reach maturity?" Aro questioned.

"I became full grown 7 years after my birth," the man answered. "I have not changed since then."

"And your diet…?"

"Blood, human food. I can survive on either."

Marcus spoke up for the first time, and I was surprised that my introverted baby was actually paying attention. "These children are much like us."

"Regardless, the Cullens have been consorting with werewolves, our natural enemies," Caius argued desperately.

That did it for me. I kicked him as hard as I could in the shin and he took one slight step away from me with a warning scowl. I simply winked at him and averted my attention back to what was happening, moving to stand holding Marcus' hand.

Aro placed a hand on Caius' shoulder and shook his head. He then turned around to address all of our guard and witnesses behind us.

"Dear ones," he began softly, "there is no danger here. We will not fight today."

I sighed of relief, a broad grin spreading across my face. I watched as Caius was the first one to spin around on his heel and strut off out of the field, followed by the elite guard and then the witnesses gradually.

Marcus tugged me along by my hand but I stayed rooted to the spot. "I have some things to sort out first," I murmured.

He nodded in understanding and let go of my hand to follow after Caius. "I will wait for you in the trees, tesoro."

"That's not creepy at all," I giggled under my breath.

The remaining Volturi guards disappeared into the forest in a blur, leaving only me and Aro. He turned to glance over at Alice and Bella.

"Such a prize," he hissed, quickly kissing my cheek and vanishing into the trees.

I finally had the opportunity to start forward towards the Cullens. The shape-shifters began growling at me, a few at the front snapping their teeth.

I stopped in my tracks a few metres away and held up my arms in surrender. "I come in peace."

"She's with us," Carlisle defended me. "She's harmless."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Wanna test that theory? I almost kicked Caius' ass once and I ripped Aro's arm off."

"You ripped Aro's arm off?" Bella questioned in disbelief.

I nodded with a smug smile. "He was so grumpy after that, sat there in his quarters with a frown and everything. Anyway, I'm back, did you miss me?"

The wolves all simultaneously growled threateningly. "I wasn't asking you doggos," I teased.

A pair of arms suddenly wrapped around me, and I realised Irina was hugging me. "Thank you for saving me," she whispered.

I lightly hugged her back. "I'm gonna have to pay for that later so don't make me have to do it again." I pulled away from Irina to face the Cullens. "As I was going to say, CULLENS! WHY THE HELL DID YOU GHOST ME FOR MONTHS AND HAVE A SECRET BABY?! Who can I just say is adorable."

Carlisle held his hands up in mock surrender. "This was not my idea."

"Whose was it then? Whose..." I remembered that there was a child present, "…butt do I need to kick?"

Warily, he pointed towards a smirking Edward. "Right," I hissed as I stomped towards him. As soon as I reached him, I slapped him hard across the arm, causing him to groan in pain and Renesmee to laugh quietly.

"Eddy boy, you've gone and done it again, why?! Goddamn it—and yes I know you're Christian, but no I'm not sorry if I offended you by using the Lord's name in vain—don't you realise that this whole thing," I motioned to all the confused-looking witnesses around us, "could've been avoided if you would've responded to my calls in the first place?! We could've arranged a private visit and sorted this whole thing out."

He shrugged. "Thought you would bring your guard down on us. I was just trying to protect my daughter."

I scoffed. "I swear to God—again, not sorry—if I find out that you had a baby shower without inviting me, I will kick your ass to the moon here and now."

"Bella was too ill for a baby shower, Eli," Alice reminded me.

"Oh yeah, how did you get pregnant? I mean, I know how, but, like…" I trailed off.

"Isle Esme," Emmett responded with a grin.

"Did you break anything?" I raised a teasing eyebrow.

"Oh, they trashed the place," he laughed.

Bella quickly moved to cover Renesmee's ears with her hands. "Not an appropriate discussion to be having around children."

My gaze moved to all of the confused vampires who didn't even know me yet. They seemed to have warily backed away from me, even though they'd already been informed that I wasn't a threat in any way.

"Oh, people who don't know me," I clapped my hands together, "I'm Eli, I'm the mate of the three dudes at the front, I used to have a pet cat, and I'm afraid of bees."

"You're the mate of all three Volturi?" one of them questioned.

I nodded. "True mate, actually."

"Congratulations on becoming one of us, Eli." Esme smiled her usual warm and motherly smile. "You look incredible."

"Aw, shucks." I flipped my hair back and batted my eyelashes.

Bella's eyes suddenly widened in…horror. "Your eyes, they're red, they're not gold."

"I was wondering how long it would take you to notice," I giggled. "I'm helping the dwindling wild animal populations as well as the overpopulated human issue."

"That is a strong moral belief," Carlisle acknowledged.

"Thanks. Either way, that animal stuff is vile." I grimaced at the memory of when Irina gave me some of hers to try while she was still at the castle. "How do you lot cope with it?"

Carlisle sighed. "It takes practise."

I began to pace forward towards Renesmee. Jacob stopped me by pushing me backwards with his nose so that I stumbled onto my ass. With my eyebrows drawn together, I glanced up at Edward.

"He thinks you don't have any control and doesn't want Renesmee getting hurt," Edward translated.

"Calm down." I waved my hand nonchalantly and stood up again. "I fed before I came here. Besides, my control isn't brilliant, but it's not that bad, give me some credit."

Jacob began growling threateningly all of a sudden and I jolted back towards Carlisle warily.

"He wants to know where you hunted. Hunting in this land isn't allowed. You may have broken the treaty," Edward said.

I sighed. "If you must know, I brought a flask of blood with me on the plane here, and there are refill jugs back at the house."

"You drink blood from a flask?" Bella questioned.

"I mean, not usually, but it makes things easier while we're still travelling and when there aren't many humans around," I responded, edging closer to Renesmee now that Jacob had taken a step back. "Hey Nessie."

"Renesmee," Bella corrected.

I glanced to Renesmee. "Which name do you prefer?" I asked her.

"Nessie works fine." She smiled, showing all of her perfectly straight teeth. "Is Aro always that…?"

"That…?"

"…scary?" she asked cautiously.

"Oh, honey, he's not scary once you get to know him. He gets very excited whenever he finds something or someone knew. Best way to compare him is to a small, excitable puppy dog. He needs constant attention and gets overly excited about everything and new friends," I explained with a giggle.

"I thought you had an extra 3 years until your transformation," Bella said.

I sighed heavily. "There were some complications, like you."

She gasped. "You had a baby?!"

"No! The hell I didn't have a baby! A baby didn't happen, you crazy child, the Romanians did…" My sentence died out. "Alice, Edward, and Carlisle know what happened."

"What happened?" Nessie asked.

"Well, I was kidnapped while I was staying with the Denalis." I pointed to the guilt-stricken group of vampires. "The Romanians tortured me to the brink of death and then changed me just before I had the chance to die. My mates broke in and rescued me fortunately, but now I can officially say that the Romanian scum are my creators."

"Who are the Romanians?" Bella asked Edward.

"They're the Volturi's oldest enemies." I responded for Edward. "They used to rule the supernatural world, but that was not a fun time to be a human in, I can tell you that much. They used them as slaves and didn't even attempt to conceal our identity from the mortal world. Anyway, they're gone now, I killed them."

"When did this happen?" Carlisle questioned. "You killed Vladimir and Stefan? How?"

"It was a few months back when they ambushed Volterra. I used my gift to execute them and their new coven."

"Gift?!" they all said in unison.

I nodded. "Want to see? You can look, but don't touch unless you want to die."

Still knelt in front of Nessie, I placed my hands together in front of me and pulled them apart slowly, revealing a swirling ball of glowing white dust, like a bright planet between my palms. The gasps only fuelled me to show off, so I held the sphere in one hand and tossed it across the field so that it made impact with the trunk of a tree and dissipated in every direction.

Nessie gasped and clapped her hands. "Cool."

"No, no, not cool, you can kill people with that stuff?" Bella panicked.

"Oh pah-lease, I have full control over it." I paused. "But yeah, I filled a room with it and killed the Romanians."

Eleazar smiled. "So that's what your gift was."

I winked at him and placed my black leather gloves back on now that I knew I definitely wouldn't need to use my gift anymore.

Behind me, I felt a tap on my shoulder and watched as everyone tensed up completely. "Tesoro? We must leave now. Caius is still very antsy after everything that happened. He and Aro are already back at the house." Marcus helped me up to my feet and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. "It is wonderful to see you again, Carlisle."

Carlisle nodded politely. "Likewise, Marcus."

"I guess I'm leaving now." I crouched back down to Nessie with my arms held open. "Do I get a hug?"

To my surprise, Nessie launched herself into my arms so hard that I almost tripped backwards into the snow. She had a comfortable warmth in her temperature as well, like a nice hot water bottle or something.

She climbed back off of me and whispered into my ear secretly. "You're my new favourite auntie."

"I heard that!" Rose chimed in teasingly.

Marcus took my hand and began to drag me away from the Cullens, chuckling as he did so. "Goodbye all."

"'Bye, remember I still hate you all with every fibre of my being!" I yelled behind me. "Oh, and especially you, Eddy, you dumb-" I thought '-ass son of a bitch' in my head, knowing that he was listening to my thoughts.

Edward didn't even try to hold back his laugh. "Jacob and all of the other wolves in the pack say 'we hate you too'!" he called back.

"Aw, I get the feeling I'm going to become good friends with the Chihuahuas!" I shouted across the field.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: We're getting close to the end here guys. Next chapter will be the final chapter :(

As you can see, I didn't want Eli to instantly be all happy with the Cullens or whatever, but as some people have pointed out, she's pretty chill so she's not, like, being an absolute bitch to their faces, but she's understandably still a little snappy and bitter towards them.

And the wolves! I know there's the whole thing of the wolves and the vampires being enemies for all of time, but I just thought it would be funny if instead of Eli hating them, she just constantly takes the piss and calls them 'chihuahuas'.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading, be sure to leave some feedback because I love reading through your comments, stay safe, and ily lots!