Chapter 2
Three Months Before

The rain pounded down on the roof of the Volvo as we sat in silence. Dawn was breaking on the horizon but the sky was still a dark and stormy shade of gray. I looked towards the house that we had bought just weeks earlier. Before things we're complicated. "When are you leaving?" Edward turned toward me and his eyes quickly scanned my face for the anger that had been there moments before. "As soon as Alice and Rosalie get here," he replied and placed an almost shaking hand on my own. "You don't have to leave. This is not your fight," I said in a small but strong voice. I had only been married a month and already he was leaving. Worse yet, he was refusing to change me.

"If I don't go, they will come here. They will hunt you and they will attack you. They are not someone I can keep you safe from," Edward said. Tears stung in my eyes and as they slid down, he reached over and tenderly wiped my cheek. "I will come back."

"You don't know that. You can't know that," I said, finding it harder to breathe. My chest constricted and I forced myself to breathe steadily. "I do. This is not the end for us Bella. I promised you forever and forever is what we will have."

I shook my head and as he drew me closer to him, my resolve cracking. He held me in his arms until I finally broke away and looked him the eyes. "I lost you once and I don't think I can do it again," I said.

"You won't have to," he said gently and began to get out. Rosalie and Alice rounded the corner in Rosalie's SUV and pulled into the garage. Edward was opening my door before I knew what had happened. Edward scooped me into his arms and ran into the house with maddening speed. "Keep her safe!" He yelled as he released me onto my own two feet. "I'll be home soon," he said, kissing my forehead and turning. He was gone before I even got a chance to reply.

Alice and Rosalie were in the living room before I could collapse and it was Rosalie who caught me. She slid to the floor with me and stroked my hair as I cried the angry and hurt tears I had been holding on to since Edward had told me he was leaving. The sobs shook my body and I held tightly to Rose as she whispered words of encouragement.

He'd be home. He was coming back. Everything was going to be okay.

I woke hours later to the sound of screaming downstairs. I slowly descended the stairs to find Emmett clinging tightly to Rosalie who was shaking with anger. Jasper whispered to Alice, whose face contorted in a pain and sadness that she could never express with tears.

"What's happened?" I questioned. My grip on the banister tightened and my knees began to give as I looked from Alice's face to Emmett's. The sadness in Alice's. The regret in Jasper's. The pain in Rosalie's. The anger in Emmett's.

"Where is he?" I demanded, my voice wavering and the tears sliding back into my eyes. No one spoke and the panic deep inside swelled until I thought I might die. "Where is my husband?" I choked out.

Alice walked forward and took my hand, but spoke no words. It was then that I realized that Edward wasn't coming back. My world began to crash around me as the unbearable pain of losing my soul mate became a reality.

The next several days were a blur that I couldn't and didn't care to remember. Carlisle and Esme had shown up and a steady stream of Cullen's came in and out of my room, worry and sorrow etched into their golden eyes. All I wanted was to be alone. To grieve for my husband. To rail against the unfairness of death. To pray to God that my Edward would come home again.

The house went completely silent a week later and I stepped quietly into the hall. I found Alice and Rosalie sitting on the porch in silence. The door creaked as I pushed it open and they turned to face me. The dark circles under my eyes showed that, thought I had spent the better part of a week in bed, sleep had not been a friend. The nightmares had started a few days after the news and continued to plague my mind. Edward screaming, then silence.

Rosalie slid to the end of the couch she was sitting on and patted the seat next to her. "Where did everyone go?" I asked. The first words I had spoken in a week came out low and broken.

"The boys left last night to find Eleazar," Alice said quietly. The name sent waves of hatred down my spine. It was he who Edward had gone after. After living peacefully with Tanya and her coven for decades, the only male vampire had gone rogue. Tanya had found him feeding on a human and the fight that ensued left Tanya badly injured. Carmen left with Eleazar and they turned up, months later, in New York City.

The dead bodies began to pile up until it was no longer possible for them to stay there. Before leaving, they were spotted by a group of police officers. They turned them all. He moved west, going from town to town, turning groups of people before moving on. Carmen had left him somewhere around Chicago and returned to Denali, the quilt of what she had done becoming too much for her. Eleazar was last seen in his homeland of Spain. The Volturi were refusing to step in, for reasons unknown.

"When will they be back?" I questioned. "Carlisle said they were unsure but that he would call as soon as they knew something," Rosalie replied.

Alice stopped having visions after Edward died and the boys left. I think it may have had to do with Jasper leaving. Somehow her inner power was diminished when they were apart. Carlisle had called once to tell them that the newborns were now numbering in the hundreds and that they would be on the next plane out of Spain, where they had been for a week.

It had been almost three months since then. Alice and Rosalie had stayed with me. The Volturi finally stepped in when a high ranking government official was found dead with teeth marks all over his neck. They had been waging war with the newborns for almost two months. Countless trips to Italy and Spain were made in an effort to find Carlisle, Emmett and Jasper. but it was as if they had simply disappeared into thin air and no one knew where to even look anymore.

"Bella! Earth to Bella!" I jumped at the hand waving in front of my face and realized that my memory of how everything had happened had sent me into an almost trance. "Esme is here," Alice said, as she and Rose walked into the house and through the kitchen to greet Esme. Alice's phone began to ring and I grabbed it to see who the caller was and whether or not I should bother her with it. The number blinking was an unknown, so I simply opened it up and answered.

"Hello?" I said, staring back out into the rain which was still coming down in buckets. "Bella?" The voice on the other end of the phone sent my spiraling into a world of different emotions. "Bella. Oh God Bella, it's you," the voice breathed. My gasp of air brought silence to the other end of the line once again until I finally spoke. "Edward."