Edward Cullen
Bella and I left the nurses office but didn't go to class; we remained outside so we could hear what was going on. I felt protective of Clara, she was my great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, it didn't matter how many greats were in front of granddaughter; she was my flesh and blood and the fact someone had hurt her like that infuriated me.
"Edward we need to check on Jasper," Bella whispered to me.
"Alice took him home, I told her to take him away for a while to help him clear his head," I replied, I didn't want to leave Clara, she might have to be taken to Carlisle.
"What's going to happen? I mean I know you managed it with me but Jasper doesn't have your control," Bella was speaking in her 'concerned voice' she had adopted it after the birth of Renesmee; it was the mother in her concerned for Clara. I shrugged. Clara was Jasper's singer. He hadn't been close enough to her to realise until an hour ago when they were in the same corridor together. It had taken Alice, Emmett and Rose to get him away from her, I had hoped Clara didn't see it all but she had and she worried for Jasper. She reminded me so much of human Bella, clumsy, observant and selfless.
"He might have to drop out of school, I don't know. After recent events we have to tell Clara about us so she might be around a lot. I'll help him control it, like I did with Renesmee," I said to her and wrapped my arm around her waist. She was worrying and I didn't blame her, there was so much going on.
"When are we going to tell Clara?" she asked me softly.
"If she has to go see Carlisle I think we should tell her then, get Elijah to come with her instead of Axton and tell them both."
"They both like her don't they?" she asked.
"Elijah, yes, I don't know about Axton, as far as I can tell he's protective over her and seems to like her but since I can't read his mind I'm not sure about his true intentions."
"'His true intentions'," Bella laughed. "You're such a dad," she nudged me. I grinned down at her and shrugged.
"She's our flesh and blood Bella. I love her like a granddaughter."
"I know you do," she whispered softly just as the door of the nurses office opened, Bella and I moved quickly, we hid behind the wall of the corridor so no one saw us.
"Are you going to class?" I heard Axton ask Clara.
"Not now, there is only ten minutes left. We could go to the library," she said.
"Don't you want to go home?" Axton asked.
"You won't have a ride home if I do."
"I'll come with you," he answered and I could see in Clara's mind that he was smiling at her, she felt something for the boy and I wished I could read his mind to make sure he really liked her too.
Edward. Bella thought urgently. I looked over to her as if to say 'I know I know' Bella had become extremely good at reading my facial expressions over the decades together, we could almost have a full conversation without even talking now. Bella was panicking because we needed to get Clara alone with Elijah so we could tell them the truth but it didn't seem like Axton wanted to leave her alone.
I inclined my head towards the school exit and she sighed but nodded in agreement. We weren't going to get Clara on her own today; we'd have to try tomorrow. In the mean time we had a lot of other things to deal with. We passed by reception.
"Hi, Bella isn't feeling too well. I'm just going to take her home, is that okay?" I asked the young girl behind the desk, she was attracted to me so it wasn't hard to get her to agree.
"Oh of course Edward." She smiled, trying to be sexy. I just turned and wrapped my arms around my wife and walked out the door, not saying another word.
Bella and I reached the car and I could see Bella was particularly quiet, I leant over and reached for her chin, pulling it towards me and kissing her passionately in the car. She giggled as she pulled away, sooner than I originally planned.
"It's okay, I'm used to it," she winked. She was talking about the girl that was trying to hit on me but she knew I only loved her. "She knows we're 'dating', it just annoys me that she'd do it in front of me," she added. I kissed her quickly one last time.
"It doesn't matter," I told her, taking her hand and putting the car into drive. We raced home and I didn't let go of Bella's hand once. I knew she was worried about other things; it wasn't really the girl in the reception. Jasper had met his singer and it just so happened to be our granddaughter.
We arrived home and entered the house quickly.
"Where is Jasper?" I asked Esme who had come to greet us.
"With Alice, they're packing. I can't believe she's his singer," Esme said sadly. Bella hugged Esme.
"It will be okay," she assured her.
"I'm going to talk to him," I said and took the stairs two at a time to reach Alice and Jasper's room. I knocked slightly.
"Come in Edward," Alice said. I saw her throwing clothes in a bag and getting money and other essentials, Jasper was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands and he wasn't breathing. I sat next to my brother and put my arm around his shoulders. He wasn't really thinking, he was just concentrating on clearing his mind.
"You need to breathe Jasper," I told him, he shook his head. "Her scent is gone. You can't go the rest of your life not breathing just because you met your singer. You need to get through it." I coaxed him. He sighed and took in a breath. He relaxed immediately when he realised the air was clean from Clara's scent.
"I can still smell her on you," he sighed.
"Sorry," I mentioned. "But this is good practice." I told him, I've only touched Clara once so I only had a linger of her scent on me. He nodded, it wasn't bad for him, he could breathe in the air and be okay.
"You'll be ok Jaz," I tried to assure him.
"How did you even bear it?" he whispered.
"I loved Bella that's how I got through it and so will you, Clara is your descendant. You don't want to hurt her so you won't," I told him confidently.
"Of course I don't but I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself. I've never felt that kind of pull before, ever in my life," he almost wept.
"I know," I sighed.
"Edward!" I heard Carlisle call. I left Jasper with Alice and went down stairs to see Carlisle coming into the house. "Did you tell Clara?" he asked.
"No not yet." I sighed. "She sprained her wrist and went home with a boy. I couldn't get her alone without raising suspicion," I told him.
"Elijah needs to be told, we need to prepare him for the next full moon."
"I know," I sighed. The poor boy had been bitten by a werewolf, a true child of the moon not a shape shifter. He would turn on the full moon and not know anything about it. He was Clara's best friend and we had to help him. We couldn't let him join the pack that was in the city. He would be drawn to them but I didn't want Clara's best friend to become our enemy.
"It's important Edward. Zio wants to use the boy as a spy and if he gets to him before us I don't know what's going to happen."
"He what?" Bella nearly screeched. "He's a boy! We're not putting him in danger like that."
"It's Zio… he thinks like that," Jasper said coming down the stairs with Alice.
"Yeah it's something you would do, like father like son," Alice said wrapping her arm around Jasper.
"He is not using a sixteen year old boy as a spy for the Volturi; I don't give a crap who Zio is. Elijah is under our protection," Bella growled.
"I know Bella." Carlisle sighed and rested his hand on her shoulder. "We'll talk to him, he'll understand."
"Zio or Elijah?" Bella asked.
"Zio. He may be the most powerful man in the world but he's still my grandson and still a part of this family. He's just thinking about the war Bella. We can't fight the wolves, they're innocent human beings and whoever is controlling them knows that. Zio is between a rock and a hard place, let the wolves win or murder innocents and ruin his reputation."
"I know, he's under a lot of stress," Bella sighed. "But I will fight for Clara and Elijah to stay out of this. This isn't their war. They're innocent and they're children."
"They need to be told about it though; they need to be aware of the dangers so they stay safe. Madeleine is already angry at us. She thinks we brought the war here. I need to talk to her, we need to explain or they might get hurt," Carlisle said sadly.
"Then let's just go to her house. Explain everything together,"
"We'll do it tomorrow Bella; we'll find her at school and bring her home. We need to make sure no one over hears." I assured her. She looked at me for a moment and chewed on her lip before nodding.
"Okay," she sighed. I pulled her into my chest and she hugged me back. We separated for a moment from our family, Alice and Jasper were getting ready to leave and Carlisle and Esme went to speak alone in his study.
I miss our children. Bella sighed in her head. I kissed her forehead.
"I know," I whispered back just as my cell phone rang. I looked at it to see Renesmee's name on the caller ID. I smiled and showed it to Bella.
"I think she's clairvoyant," I laughed and answered. "Good afternoon Renesmee."
"Hey daddy," she answered happily. Bella instantly smiled.
"Is everything okay?" I asked her, my arms still wrapped around my wife.
"I thought you might have been in school, you're not using your phone in class are you father? I was sure I raised you better than that," she laughed.
"No, your mother and I are home," I laughed with her.
"I'm glad, I just wanted to hear your voice," she said softly.
"We miss you too."
"Jacob and I might come up there soon before we move back to La Push for a while."
"No Renesmee," Bella said urgently.
"Why?" Nessie asked.
"It's too dangerous here, I know you want to come see us and Chantelle but there's a war starting and I don't want you caught in the middle of it."
"I'll be fine momma," Renesmee sighed; I could almost hear her rolling her eyes at her mother's words.
"Please, just wait a few months until we have this under better control. We already have people to protect; I can't be worrying about you too."
"Who?" Nessie asked.
"Your great-great-great-great-granddaughter," I answered. "Her name is Clara; she's somehow weaved herself into the supernatural world and she's only human."
"Sounds like mom," Nessie laughed. I smiled down at Bella.
"It does," I smirked at her.
"Okay I understand. Keep her safe," Nessie said softly.
"We love you Nessie," I said just to make a point; I didn't want her thinking we were choosing Clara over her.
"Love you too," she laughed. "I'll call you tomorrow," she said and I heard her giggling, clearly distracted.
"Jacob seriously?" Bella asked loudly. I heard Jacob laughing.
"Bye Bells" he laughed down the phone before it hung up. I was smiling at Bella who was shaking her head.
"They're like teenagers"
"And we're not?" I laughed kissing her jaw and neck.
"It's the middle of the day!" I heard Emmett shouting. I groaned, I was going to take Bella upstairs but there was no point now. We entered the hall living area.
"Aren't you meant to be at school?" I frowned.
"Aren't you?" he asked. "What will the teachers say when they see you two ditched class to make out?" he asked.
"I think they had a little more planned than making out," Zac laughed, he dropped his tablet on the coffee table. As a teacher he probably had a tonne of work or something to mark.
"You came home too?" Bella asked, ignoring his comment about our sex life.
"It's two thirty bells, end of the school day," he said to her putting his feet up. Esme slapped his legs as she walked past us all and he dropped them to the floor. He turned the TV on and it was on the sports channel already. Zac and Emmett's favourite. Emmett slouched down next to Zac and they started talking about the game. Bella was wrapped around my side; I was half paying attention to her, half to my brothers watching the game.
"Bella!" Rose said coming into the room and grabbing my wife's wrist. I stood there as Rose pulled Bella out of the room; Bella looked back at me for a moment before following her sister out.
"We're leaving!" I heard Alice call through the house just as I sat down next to Emmett. I was on my feet again in moments and in the front hall where Jasper and Alice were with Esme, Rose and Bella.
"We'll be back soon, we promise. We won't leave Zio that long anyway," Alice was reassuring Esme.
"You'll be okay," I told Jasper who looked extremely down. I could see it in his mind, he was wondering how he would get through this, he thought he had ruined our plans to go to school together like old times.
I'm glad you have confidence in me. He thought, I smiled at him and hugged him.
"I'll give you a crash course on singers as soon as you get back," I told him with a pat on his back.
"We'll call you as soon as we reach the Denali's," Alice said, hugging us all.
It was moments before they were gone and we were down two family members. It seemed like there was always something in the way of us being a whole family again.
"Oh my god Zac, you're worse than Jacob," I heard Rose moan. Bella and I had stayed in the hall for a moment after Jasper and Alice left. We made our way into the living room to see Zac lounged across the couch, taking up as much room as he could. Zac was playing a video game and straining his neck to look around Rosalie who was standing in the way of his vision. "Move!" she barked at him.
"You move!" he yelled back.
"Zachary, let your sister sit down," Esme said entering the house. Rose stuck her tongue out at Zac and he sighed, moving his legs to let her sit down, he rested them back on the coffee table. Esme slapped his legs for the second time. To say Zac had settled in our family was an understatement. At the beginning of his life he was a childhood friend to my daughter but I saw him as my brother just as much as Emmett and Jasper. Time had made him lonely, and whilst he was still friends with my daughter they moved around a lot seeing their children and going on second honeymoons. Zac felt more comfortable with us than being Renesmee's third wheel. They still saw each other often but Zac was the latest in our core coven. He had no one, his human wife and children were dead and we were his only family now. He had grandchildren but he wanted to keep them out of our world and supported them anonymously like Carlisle supported my descendants.
"We need recliners, who doesn't have recliners this far into the future I mean seriously?" Zac exclaimed.
"You need a wife Zac. You're such a man," Rose sighed, crossing her legs and resting her tablet on her lap, flicking through a magazine probably.
"Go find me one then," Zac said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
"Maybe I will!" Rose argued back.
"Dude no you can't move out. Without Jacob or Zio here you're my best competition," Emmett said with wide eyes, also on the games console.
"I'm not going anywhere Em." Zac replied. "Come on Ed get the other controller!" Zac called out.
"Don't call me that it gets confusing," I groaned as Bella and I sat down together in the arm chair.
"Well when Eddie or Teddy isn't here you're the only Edward around so you know I mean you," he grinned cockily.
"You know, you wouldn't guess you're a teacher Zac. You're so immature." Rose chimed in.
"It's an act, didn't you know?" Bella asked. "Zac is too much like Eddie and Jacob. They're mature when they have to be but most of the time they're children."
"That's true," Rose said with a nod of her head. Zac scoffed.
"I was a married man with kids and I have a job. I am mature!" he defended himself.
"Let's be real, so is Eddie and Jacob but if them two are alone in the same room they're like a pair of girls," I told him. Bella and Rose burst into laughter.
"I'm telling them that" Zac said to me with a raise of his eyebrows.
"Go ahead," I grinned at him.
"Your son is stronger than you now, I don't know why you're so smug," Zac said.
"Eddie doesn't stand a chance against me," I said to him although I didn't actually believe it myself, my son was a special kind of vampire, one that got stronger with age and Eddie was coming up to one hundred and thirty.
Bella and I stayed downstairs with our family for most of the night. Carlisle and Esme joined us but it didn't feel the same without Jasper and Alice.
The next day the sun was extremely bright and it shone through the smog easily enough to make us sparkle.
"Edward," Bella sighed as she stood at our bedroom window.
"I know," I sighed and wrapped my arms around her waist.
"We still have to go," she said.
"We can't," I whispered.
"We can sneak into the library at lunch," she told me turning in my arms to face me, she was worried and I didn't blame her. We had managed to talk Zio out of using Elijah as a spy but I understood my nephew's frustration. He needed the upper hand on this before it became a war. It was like nothing we'd encountered before. The wolves were immune to our abilities and we couldn't track or find the person controlling them. Whoever it was had purposely placed the wolves in the city, they had brought someone over from Italy, where there was a perfectly controlled wolf population and spread the species into Chicago where the Volturi now resided being run by my nephew Pancrazio, the hybrid son of Aro, his son Matthew and grandson Benjamin. We knew that the wolves were being controlled because there weren't any deaths. The last time we encountered the children of the moon they were tearing themselves through entire villages throughout Italy, one day a month when the moon was full there would be slaughters but the next day the people didn't remember what they had done. The Volturi part of our family had tracked down every wolf and used my niece Chantelle's ability to control them. She forbid them to murder as a wolf and they had to obey her. The wolves were animals and they had no sense of their human's selves so we knew that the wolves in Chicago were being controlled by someone far more powerful than Chantelle, they had managed to give them immunity to our abilities, and even Chantelle couldn't control them here. Werewolves didn't travel in packs either, the wolves in Italy had been scattered and random killings, the wolves here had been together, as if they had an alpha commanding them.
This scared Zio and the rest of the Volturi leaders, it was clear someone was controlling them and after the attack on Clara and Elijah, Zio was even more wary. I had seen the attack in Elijah's head, that wolf had been going for Clara, it was like the wolf was completely aware of what was happening and it was following out orders, to bite a Cullen, someone everyone in our world knew were protected.
"Zio wants us at the mansion in ten," Zac told us as Bella and I made our way down the stairs to our family.
"Why?" Bella asked.
"He didn't say," Zac said and pulled on shoes. Carlisle, Esme, Emmet, Rose, Zac, Bella and I were all ready and running to the Volturi mansion in silence. It was the middle of the day which meant we had to put on the Volturi robes as we entered the headquarters my nephew worked from. Ariella greeted us first and handed out the robes before we made our way through the large ball/throne room to the conference rooms where our family was waiting for us. At the head of the table was the three leaders with their wives as well as Lizzy, Ariella went to stand with Lizzy and we all walked around the table so we were almost in a circle. I noticed most importantly Allesandra and Jonathan were here. They were never brought into Volturi business so I wondered what was going on. I was trying to keep up with everyone's mind, piecing together the story before they told us.
"What's going on?" Carlisle asked.
"We know who is controlling the wolves." Zio announced, "And Jonathan is here because he has information we need."
"Who?" Bella asked but I already knew the answer. I hadn't known Jonathan long; he was new to the guard, only joining last year after he met Allesandra. Bella and I had only moved to Chicago a month ago. After our daughters grew up, we stayed on Isle Isabella for a while together but it started to feel lonely, we had spent years with our youngest two daughters and being there without them, it felt empty. We decided to come back to America and live with our siblings again. Alice mentioned she wanted to go to a high school again and what better way to fill our day with a favourite old pass time? Bella was intrigued with the idea of joining the same high school as one of our descendants, just to see how they were and what they were like. We had a few descendants in the Chicago area but only one in high school. Clara had known who we were the second she saw us but at the same time didn't believe it.
"Who is controlling the wolves?" Carlisle asked for clarification.
"Quite possibly the most powerful witch that's ever existed… Liana."
I promise that Clara will find out about them next chapter! Hope this gave you a small insight into what is actually going on, there is still a lot more that the Cullen's don't know but I will switch to Edward's pov a few times in this story. Well done to those that guessed about Elijah and Clara being Jasper's singer!
