Hi! Sorry for not posting for like, months! I've had so much school work and sports stuff...well I've just been really busy! I hope you like this, I'm pretty pleased, but please please pretty please RxR! You can never get enough of those! (Plus I like to know what you guys think:D)

Disclaimer: I do not own the following.

P.S. I saw Eclipse last night/this morning! Amazing!

Chapter 5

Five hours had passed since Aro had given me his offering, and for five hours I had contemplated means of disturbing the crowded streets of Volterra. There was so much I was capable of ruining, the Volturi lay like clay in my granite hands. So many options...an eternity to ponder; I didn't foresee my will lasting that long. I must decide today. The possibility of hunting in the city was tempting, but instantly, my mind answered with a resounding no. I weighed the disadvantages heavily—massive innocent causalities my rueful conscience couldn't hold. Unleashing my demons, my eyes would turn a deep burgundy and I would lose all conscious reason. Not that it mattered. Not that there was anything I would lose that mattered as penance; my life would be an atonement to the Volturi. Yes, the thought of hunting was alluring indeed.

The monster buried in the depths of my stomach growled in elation.

Content with my reasoning, I paced back and forth throughout the passage. There was no reason to hurry, no official decision had been reached yet, and I wanted the Volturi to writhe in a sense of restlessness for a while. They needed to know I wouldn't give in to bargaining, or bribing, or threats. I was not going to bend or break for the sake of soulless evils. I held the upper hand—my own fate—and there was never going to be a way that they would force be to relinquish it, these demons.

Bella's face appeared in my mind of my own will, yet it still knocked the breath from my lungs and had me kneeling on the damp cobblestones. In my mind, she didn't judge the monster I was becoming. There was no hatred in her eyes, and no terrified grimace in her expression. I never had deserved her, and I realized now that a small part of me had taken her love for granted, because a minuscule part of me believed I had deserved at least an ounce of it, if not all. I knew now that I was wrong, then and now. Because Bella didn't deserve a monster. She didn't deserve a man who couldn't face himself in the mirror and not be afraid of what he saw there. Bella deserved so much better, yet she had chosen me. And I had broken her; her heart, her life, and her trust.

My chest tightened, with what I didn't know. The air that circled my deadly still form was to thin to breathe in, and my taut fingers clawed at the ground for support. I let myself fall back against the tunnel's wall, and pinched the bridge of my nose, willing her face to go away. Her soft expression and her accepting gaze drove me mad.

This would have to stop.

My throat burned with a mild hunger, and the monster that lived in me let out a low snarl.

I would not become that person; the fiend that haunted the corners of innocent's homes and stole their lives. There would be no hunt to win the Volturi's hand in my death.

I was back to square one, alone and troubled.

They were so easy to anger; I knew there must be another option still remaining. Throwing a car through a brick wall wasn't what I had in mind, but if it came to that, I wouldn't hesitate. There were so many things that set us apart from humans, but unless I was going to hunt or throw things, I couldn't come up with something that set apart that was relevant. I dug into the corners of my head for ideas; one conversation stood out above all the rest.

The day I had told her everything about us.

We were in the car, and Bella was endlessly questioning me, curiosity burning fervently in her eyes where there should have been fear. This was wrong, and I knew that, but I wanted it, no matter how wrong it was.

"It makes me...anxious to be away from you," the word wasn't strong enough to show her how I actually felt, but it would have to do, "I wasn't joking when I asked you to try to not fall in the ocean or get run over Thursday. I've been distracted all weekend, worrying about you, and after what happened tonight, I'm surprised you escaped totally unscathed...well not totally."

Ah, this was after Port Angeles...and...dinner. A ghost of anger waved its way down my spine.

"It was a very long three days. I really got on Emmett's nerves."

Her face twisted in response to something to I had said. I suppose all the lies I had spun that she was only now beginning to see through.

"Three days?" there was a distinct edge to her voice, "Didn't you just get back today?"

"No, we got back Sunday." Her sharp tone puzzled me.

"Then why weren't you in school?" her endearing irritation was visible in the planes of her face.

"Well, you asked if the sun hurt me, and it doesn't. But I can't go out in the sunlight, at least, not where anyone can see."

Ah.

The sunlight.

It dawned upon me how thick I must have been to skip over that little detail in my notions of wreaking havoc.

To walk into the sunlight like that, in the middle of public, perhaps in the square of Volterra or under the clock, was the easiest way to defy the law, I now realized. Nobody would miss the way my bare skin shone under the sun's rays, like I was emitting the sun myself. A man made of not granite nor of flesh, but of pure crystal that shone like a clear pond. The entire city would know by nightfall, and the law would be broken; all hell would break lose if the humans found out the truth. That was what the Volturi did not want, and I would happily give it to them.

The monster in my gut quieted into a dark nothing.

I'll update ASAP! :D