CHAPTER 9

"Edward, I need to know," I said and turned my hand so our fingers were entwined. "When I exact my revenge on the Volturi, do you want to be a part of it or not?" I locked him in my gaze. "Because if you don't, I can't tell you of my plans. The less you know, the more protection for you."

Ever since I found out about his ability to bypass my block, I'd been very careful not to think of my plans, so I felt safe he knew nothing about them.

"Protection from what?"

I sighed at the innocence he displayed. In many ways, he was very inexperienced in the world because of his lack of interest in politics. He couldn't understand how it was a matter of life and death. "You are my mate. One of the few people in the world I'd give my own life for. If that knowledge came out, and my plan fails, they'd go after you in a heartbeat."

He opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him before he could.

"No matter what, this will all end in death—mine or theirs. There won't be a peaceful solution. I will personally make them pay for what they did to my father and what they did to me."

He raised our entwined hands to his mouth and kissed my knuckles. "My place is with you. I'm not going to hide away while you put your life on the line."

A smile I couldn't hold back stretched over my mouth. "Then you need to know that my plan comes with a whole lot of baggage. Carlisle is a close acquaintance of the Volturi, so he can never know anything about any of this."

Edward shook his head in disagreement. "Just because he knows them well doesn't mean he agrees with their ways. He despises their lifestyle. How they don't have any regard whatsoever for the humans they feed off of."

"That doesn't matter," I insisted. "They trust him enough to loan him the most important book of our world." I gestured toward the codex. "If they even got an inkling of my association with you, your entire family would be branded as traitors, and they'd make sure the world knew your execution was mere justice. Just the way they did with my family."

He finally nodded after a long moment of consideration. "I guess you're right. But I don't like lying to my family."

"It will only be to protect them." Slowly, I untangled our hands and reached to open the codex. "Also, before I reveal anything else, you need to know what really happened when Aro first came in contact with my father."

For the better part of the day, I told Edward everything: my entire background, how my family was created before my parents met, how the villagers saw us, the differences between true vampires and the modern breed—I even showed him my transformed look, although reluctantly because I didn't want him to see me in my devil-like shape—and lastly, what Aro did with my father's blood and how that created his entire kind.

"The only thing the Volturi accomplished was to create a world less open to vampires. A world where we have to hide." I huffed indignantly. "A world of greed and pain because that's the only world they can control."

Edward sat on the couch, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers pressed against his lips as he processed everything I'd told him.

I gently placed a hand on his shoulder, fully prepared he'd flinch away from me, but all he did was reach up with his hand to squeeze mine.

"I hate to spring this on you while you're feeling so overwhelmed already, but I'm going to revive my father, and we'll take down those fiends together."

He froze and slowly turned his head to look at me. "Revive him? Is that possible?"

I nodded. "With the codex, it is. There's a ritual in there."

"And what does it entail?"

"Blood," I told him honestly. "And lots of it. But I don't know it exactly. If I'd known it by heart, I wouldn't have gone looking for the codex."

"Makes sense," he murmured and then resumed staring out into the air, and I stood up to lean against the wall opposite the couch and waited for him to give me some kind of reaction. He was a little too stoic, neither opposing my plans nor supporting them, and it made me nervous.

"I didn't want to have to tell you all of this," I murmured. "At least, not for a while." He directed his eyes at me but didn't say anything. "Even to someone like me, who knew mates existed, it's strange that less than forty-eight hours ago, you were no one to me. Now I've revealed all my secrets." I stared at the floor, almost embarrassed by the weakness my feelings for Edward had caused. "The power you have over me is terrifying. You could ruin what I have planned for a thousand years in less than five minutes by giving the Volturi one single call."

"Do you really think I would do something like that?" he asked but didn't otherwise move. "We might have met barely two days ago, but you know me, Bella."

"My name's not Bella though," I reminded him.

He moved quickly to stand before me and grabbed both of my hands in his. "And I've told you it doesn't matter if your name is Bella or Marya or Dragulia. You're my mate, and even though I don't fully understand the workings of true mating yet, I've inexplicably loved you since you first looked into my eyes outside the hospital." He cupped my face. "I know you, and you know me. I could never betray you." He captured my lips with his, pouring all of his emotions into the kiss, and my response was to wrap my body around him as much as I possibly could. I never wanted to be farther away from him than I was right then, no matter how impossible that need was.

Once we parted, he looked deep into my eyes, almost as if he were reading my soul.

"The picture you've painted of the world before the Volturi sounds too good to be true," he said. "That's the only reason I'm hesitating. And you know things can never be exactly the same."

I nodded. "Yes, I do know that. And I fully expect my father will have to adjust quite a bit. Humans don't believe in supernatural creatures like they used to, and that does complicated things," I agreed.

"Then how do you see the future?" he asked. "Let's say everything goes exactly as you want. What does that future look like?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes."

I sighed. "I don't really know. I've been so focused on my mission I haven't really thought beyond that point." I touched his cheek with my fingertips and traced them down to his slightly parted lips. "I'm hoping we can figure it out together."

His expression turned thoughtful. "We'll have to plan every step before you revive your father. Once the Volturi are dead, if there are no new rulers immediately after, vampires all over the world will go rogue. Too many of them are only kept in line because of the fear they have of Aro's wrath."

My heart almost stopped in my chest from the expectation. "So you're with me, then?"

He gave me the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen. "Every step of the way."

Just before nightfall and the hour before it was expected his family would start waking up, we walked quietly through the front door. As Edward went to Carlisle's office to put the codex back—we had already copied the pages we needed, and while I hated having to relinquish the codex again, it was necessary to keep suspicion at a minimum—I headed toward his room.

Hopefully, no one would notice we'd been gone.

Once back in his bed and underneath the covers, Edward stroked the skin on my hip before tracing down to splay his fingers over my lower stomach. I didn't need his ability to know what he was thinking.

"How certain of a thing is it?" he asked in a whispered tone—a precaution to keep his stirring family from hearing the conversation.

There were too few born vampires in the world for there to be any real statistic. Some had been born after me, but had unfortunately died in the aftermath of the war with the Volturi, and as far as I was aware, there had been no true matings since then, hence why there weren't any recent records of vampire births.

The modern breed had a failed attempt at creating children for themselves by biting actual children—when that first occurred, my blood had boiled with rage—but those were soon banned for eternity. However, not because of the pain they caused the children, but because of how unruly the children became in their inability to develop beyond their current mental stage.

Pain and greed and selfishness. That truly was the Volturi's legacy.

Now, I put my own hand over Edward's. "Every true mating has resulted in a pregnancy within the first week. But those mates were often so wrapped up in each other that they mated multiple times per day, so it's difficult to say." I turned in his arms so we could look at each other. "I want to have a child with you, but I'm not gonna lie, Edward. A pregnancy right now would be the worst timing in the history of the world. There's a war coming, and as soon as my father has his strength back, we'll have to head to Italy."

He nodded. "I understood as much when I heard your thoughts on the matter. But is there anything we can do to prevent it?"

"Apart from staying away from each other, you mean?" I asked, but then sighed. "After Mom had me, she used to chew an herb before she ate, but that herb has long since been extinct. I have no idea if modern contraceptives work on us."

"So it's a gamble no matter what?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

His family was fully awake by then, and we had to stop that conversation for the time being. We prepared ourselves to put on a show for the night to keep them in the dark and protect them from harm.