Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight.

A/N: I do not reread what I write because I'm insanely lazy. So there are probably lots of errors, please excuse and ignore them. Microsoft's spellcheck only does so much.

I leaned against a tree as I watched Athenodora pace back and forth in front of me. According to what we were told before we left the others, I was facing where the fight would be taking place. In between us and where the main fight was to take place, both Jane and Alec waited as well. They were placed as both a means to communicate between me and Dora and the main group. They also made sure to keep the twins within range of the main fight though, to make sure they could help, just in case; but their main objective was to get any newborns that somehow got passed the main group. I wasn't sure how far Jane's and Alec's power reached, but I was sure that Dora wasn't that far out of her hearing range of where the main battle would take place; that was probably why she was so anxious, because she was practically where the main event was.

"Are you okay?" I couldn't think of anything else to say, but I couldn't take the silence anymore. I knew that as soon as the actual fight started, Sulpicia very strongly recommended that I keep quiet because the newborns were going to have enough to energize them from just my scent, she didn't want them to hear me as well.

"Of course I am. I just want that stupid red head to get here so that I can kill her." Dora said as she stopped in front of me.

"You really like fighting don't you?" Even though it was a question, it sounded more like a statement.

I had been made all too aware of how much she liked fighting, being as old as she was, she had to have fought a lot to keep alive; especially with being in charge for as long as she has with the others. I guess I just hadn't figured that she would be this excited about the upcoming fight. She didn't have a grin on her face, if anything she actually looked like she was scowling. I could still tell though, she was definitely excited for what was to come.

"Of course I do, it's a great way to pass the time." Dora said as she took a few steps closer to me. She cupped my cheek with her hand and I instantly leaned into the touch. Dora took advantage of the extra space I provided by neck and nuzzled it right away as she kept her hand on my cheek. "That doesn't bother you, right?" She didn't sound insecure, but even without me knowing Dora as well as I would like to think I did, the question itself showed insecurity.

"No, you make me feel even safer." I answered.

I felt her lips press into my neck and I was preparing myself for what I thought was the situation about to get a little heated. Instead though, she jumped away from me, a step or two away and turned her back to me.

"It's started." Dora whispered.

I felt my entire body tense as I tried my best to be able to hear something, but there was nothing. Literally, there was absolutely no sound aside from my breathing. I couldn't hear any birds, small animals moving in the brush, nothing; there was no sound. Even the animals were too afraid to stick around here.

"It won't be long until we have visitors."

Dora's voice was tense; I could see her shift slightly, as if preparing to interject. She held her hand backwards, out to me as a silent invitation to move closer to her. I moved so that I was standing beside her, but she moved so that she was just slightly ahead of me, protecting me from something I couldn't see. In fact, I doubted she could see or even hear any threat to me at that moment.

Minutes dragged on and Dora didn't move a muscle, she wasn't even pretending to move so that I could have a small piece of mind that she wasn't a statue. I always appreciated that the vampires, the friendly ones, I had been around all always made sure to make small gestures, such as breathing or adopting nervous ticks, so that I wouldn't get nervous by standing around a nonmoving object. I was okay with them not moving, but it was nice to see that they were actually alive, it calmed my instincts I supposed. I almost wanted to ask Dora to move, but I knew she was 'in the zone' as she mentally prepared herself for the incoming fight.

I couldn't help but fidget as I waited for any sort of sign about the fight that was going to happen. I shuffled as close to I could to Dora. I was very careful to not touch her, even though I really wanted to have her arms wrapped around me so that I could feel that immediate protection. I wasn't normally someone who would cower; I did go to see James alone after all. But with the total silence, the knowledge that a fight was happening so that a bunch of newborns could get to, it was getting to me.

Just as I was about to ignore my mental protests at physically touching Dora, I heard her start to growl under her breath. In the blink of an eye Victoria and some brunette boy were standing in front of us. The boy didn't seem to be acting as uncontrollable as I was led to believe newborns did.

"Two of you? This will be fun." Dora said with a smirk. She crouched down, just slightly and seemed fully ready to charge both of the vampires.

"Go."

It was a simple order from Victoria, I had actually thought Victoria would have been like James and had a full speech ready. I had kind of hoped she would explain what her plan was and be distracted enough for Dora to make the first move. For some reason, no matter how much I knew it wasn't true, I wanted to think that if Dora made the first move it meant that she was in control of the fight and she was going to win. Foolish thinking, but at the time, that's what I had thought.

The boy moved too quickly for me to see and so did Dora. I heard the normal sound of vampires crashing together, signaling the two were fighting. That meant Victoria and I were, sort of, left alone. Even though I knew Dora would do all she could to make sure I wouldn't get, I could help but get nervous that Victoria just got her chance to kill me. Dora was busy with that other vampire, I wasn't sure how good of a fighter Dora was, but I knew she couldn't be in two places at once. She couldn't fight that vampire and defend me against Victoria, especially if that other vampire somehow managed to pull her far enough away from me.

"At last, I'll have revenge for what you did." Victoria sneered as she took slow steps towards me. I immediately matched her steps in moving backwards and was momentarily glad that I had, moments ago, moved away from the tree I was leaning against. At least now I could try to buy some time until Dora could get here.

"I didn't actually do anything though." I said in an almost panicked voice.

"If it wasn't for you, James would still be here. If you had just died like he wanted, he would still be with me."

I didn't bother to point out that if James hadn't tried to attack me when a large coven was clearly protecting me, he would still be alive. I knew that no matter how much logic I gave to Victoria, she would only see that James tried to get me and because of vampires protecting me, he was killed. She would only see that I was the common factor in what James wanted and ultimately, what caused him to die.

I had only managed to take a couple steps before I was backed into the tree I was previously leaning against. I started to try to inch around it, in hopes that I would be able to continue to move backwards and buy more time, but it didn't work. Victoria tsked at me and shook her finger at me. She smirked at me before she disappeared from my sight.

The first thing I became aware of was that Victoria's hand was inches away from my throat. She seemed to be going in to choke me. I didn't know if she planned to try and torture me, or if she was simply going to kill me right away. I honestly didn't want to know.

The next thing I noticed was Dora's hand grasped around Victoria's wrist. She was standing right next to me, almost pressed against me. Her other hand, that wasn't holding Victoria's wrist, was holding Victoria's fist. It looked as if Victoria had tried to punch either me or Dora and Dora had simply caught her fist. Dora didn't even seem to be struggling to hold Victoria's hands. Victoria though, she was definitely trying to get her hands away from Dora, but was having absolutely no luck.

"Thanks to Heidi, we knew what your power was. I was honestly hoping you would have put up more of fight." Dora said to the struggling red head. "I'm very disappointed that you didn't put up nearly much of a fight as I had hoped."

"Riley!" Victoria yelled; that must have been the other vampires name then.

"Oh, he won't be able to help you." Dora said with an almost sadistic smirk. "Did you really think either that boy or yourself would actually stand a chance against the Volturi? What pathetic wishing. Even if the Cullen's weren't here, we still would have been easily able to kill you all."

"No."

I saw fear flash in Victoria's eyes before she was wiped away from my sight. I assumed that was because Dora didn't want to kill someone in front of me. I think it's a bit horrible to admit, but I kind of swooned little at that. Even in the middle of a fight, she was still thinking of me. I really didn't want to watch anyone die, even though I was starting to think that I would eventually have to get over that after I was turned.

Not too far from where I was standing, and from in the direction I wasn't facing, I heard what sounded like two boulders being smashed together. I imagined that was the sound of a vampire's head being torn from their body. I didn't dare move out of fear, I was afraid that in some weird turn of events, Victoria won. I highly doubted that was the case, but I couldn't help think that as the fear slowly grew.

"Well, that wasn't nearly as fun as I had hoped; she didn't put up nearly as much of a fight as her theatrics with the newborn army suggested she might have." Dora said after she appeared in front of me. "Come on, the fight is nearly over; we'll walk your pace and it'll be over by then. Alec, burn these two immediately." Dora commanded.

Dora grabbed my hand; I didn't hesitate to thread our fingers together, and pulled me close to her. I wanted to cuddle next to her, but since I was walking, I didn't trust my balance enough to be able to pull that off; Dora would have to carry me so that I could cuddle and not fall and I wasn't about to ask her to do that. I didn't want to walk up to everyone else in Dora's arms; it would be embarrassing since there really wasn't a good enough reason for me to be in her arms.

We walked the entire way to the clearing in silence. I wanted to ask how easy Dora thought the fight was since from my perspective it seemed as if it was insanely easy for her since neither fight lasted long. I didn't ask though because as we continued to walk, she seemed to start to get more and more upset with each step. I didn't know what she was upset about, but I knew that it wouldn't take long for me to find out.

As soon as we were in the clearing, I was wrapped up in Didyme's arms with my chin on her shoulder. I had my arms wrapped around her right away, but I still wanted to see the damage to the area, so I sacrificed nuzzling my face into her neck in favor of looking at the clearing. There were patches of burnt grass scattered around the clearing from where they had burned the bodies of the newborns. Sulpicia had made it very clear before we had left for the clearing that any and all burning would only take place after the battle was over because she didn't want to risk anyone from our side getting flung into a fire. From what it looked like, vampires were more than very flammable as Sulpicia had put it. I couldn't see any bodies lying on the ground and I hadn't thought we had walked for that long, so perhaps getting burned was practically instant death to them.

"Are you okay?" I asked as soon as I realized it was Didyme that had me wrapped in their arms.

"Of course I am. The Volturi have had to deal with hundreds if not more, newborns during our reign, so this wasn't too much of a difficult fight." Didyme answered.

"It was a fun fight; gave me a chance to finally put my muscles to good use." Emmett said as Didyme slowly pulled away from our hug, but she kept her hand around my waist as Sulpicia came up to give me a hug herself.

"Even though I knew you weren't hurt, especially with Dora as your personal guard, it's still very comforting to have you in my arms again after a fight." Sulpicia admitted and I tightened my arms around just slightly so show that I completely understood what she was saying.

"What use were they Emmett? I had two more kills than you." Felix said with a smirk.

Sulpicia eventually pulled away and moved quickly to stand behind me since Dora and Didyme were standing on both my sides.

"Why must you always turn killing into a competition Felix." Heidi said in an annoyed tone, but her eyes gave away her amusement.

"Because I always win." Felix said with a huge grin.

Emmett looked like he was about to say something, probably to argue with Felix and defend himself from Felix claiming to have killed more than Felix, but didn't get the chance. For just a second, I was actually surprised that I didn't really care too much that at least two vampires here were talking about who killed the most. I wasn't even slightly disgusted by the argument. I didn't know why, but I assumed I was okay with it because it was either they kill the vampires, or they get killed. I would rather them kill than die any day.

"Why was Victoria not alone when she confronted me?" Dora asked in an authoritative voice. She was looking at Jane and Alec when she asked this, so I assumed she expected either of them to answer. They were the ones that were in charge to make sure no one, aside from Victoria, reached me and Dora, so it would make sense that Dora would turn to them for this answer; neither had the chance to answer though.

"Both Victoria and her friend went around our group; they had apparently predicted our set up." Carlisle answered in his normal soothing voice.

"They appeared in front of us, why did you not do something about when you sensed them?" Dora asked the twins, acting as if it was them that answered her, not Carlisle.

"I don't think that really matters." Edward cut in. "I'm just happy that you came out unharmed Bella." Edward said, his comments not sitting well with the queens.

"Why would I ask if it didn't matter?" Dora said with a sneer.

"We won, there's no use in talking about what could have happened." Edward persisted, annoying Sulpicia and especially Dora even more. "None of us were hurt; I think that's the main thing." Edward then gave his most charming smile that for once, made me want to slap him. I didn't if he even realized this or not, but he was being rude to the queens and I had no doubt they wouldn't bring that to his attention.

"Carlisle, dear friend, it seems you have lacked on teaching your coven members manners." Didyme said in a very pleasant tone that she was using to cover her annoyance.

"I'm not being rude." Edward defended, causing Rosalie to snort her disagreement and roll her eyes as she wrapped herself in Emmetts' arms.

Sulpicia raised an eyebrow in Carlisle's direction and I swear that simple action spoke more than any words could at that moment. Carlisle seemed to understand exactly what Sulpicia hadn't vocally said; Edward's indignant snort meant that he wasn't happy about whatever thoughts he was listening to.

"Edward, you know better." Carlisle said, as if he was talking to a child.

I didn't expect Carlisle to actually do anything, or even say anything particularly cutting. I used to love Edward, and well, love is blind. It wasn't until I was with the Volturi and away from his influence that I realized how much of a child Edward really was. He may be a century old, but he was forever mentally a seventeen year old boy. I was pleasantly surprised when Carlisle actually fully reprimanded Edward.

"Son, the Volturi hold a lot more experience than all of us together. If they wish to discuss the finer details of what happened and why, then they will." Carlisle said in the harshest tone I had ever heard him use. Well, it wasn't really harsh, but it was definitely stern. "You need to learn to not argue with those in charge Edward; there's a reason they are in charge. If something happens that you don't approve of, you can always discuss it, but there's a time and place to do so. Simply commanding others to do what you want is not the proper procedure."

"I don't command anyone to do anything." Edward said with a look of incredulity. "I'm simply saying what I believe to be the best course of action."

"It just so happens that the best course of action happens to be whatever you think and never what anyone else thinks." Rosalie said; her tone thick with sarcasm.

"If you wouldn't mind Bella, I believe we should leave the Cullen's to their discussion and I can take you to get lunch?" Didyme said as she slowly started to turn, but allowing me to stay put in case I didn't want to actually leave.

"Sure." I answered. A part of me wanted to stick around and listen to what Carlisle had to say to Edward. I also wanted to see what else Rosalie had to say because there was no way she would pass an opportunity to bring Edward down a notch or two. Lastly, I was curious as to whether or not any of the other Cullen's would say anything and what they would say if someone did speak up.

But, I didn't think it was good for me to stay. I technically wasn't part of their family. I would like to think I was at least still loved by them, I would think I was since they were more than willing to fight today. It wasn't my place to be there anymore though. I had aligned myself with the Volturi; not that I would ever actually turn my back on the Cullens; but my familiar ties seemed to be more with the Volturi than the Cullens. I would never forget, ignore or stop contact with them, but the Volturi were slowly starting to mean more to me than the Cullens.

"What about Sulpicia and Dora though?" I didn't want to sound clingy, but I liked spending time with all three of them. I would gladly admit that I wouldn't mind spending one on one time with them, but I didn't want them to think that I favored one of them more than the other.

"We're going to debrief, it will take some time because Dora's is very meticulous about these things. With having the boy, Riley, getting past Jane and Alec and the others for that matter, she'll want to do everything in her power to make sure that something will never happen again." Sulpicia explained.

"I just want to make sure that we learn from our mistakes." Dora said with a pout that she was failing to try and hide. "We didn't plan for Victoria to be with someone; what's the point of planning if nothing follows it."

"Unexpected things happen all the time though." I argued as Didyme picked me up bridal style. We were very far from any road, so we had to run here; well, they ran and I sat in Sulpicia's arms as she ran.

"Of course they do, and we need to learn from those unexpected events so that it can be planned against in the future." Dora said as she smirked at me; clearly she was happy to be talking about something that she was exceptional at. "That's a big reason we have stayed in power for so long. We never once think we know everything and we are always looking to learn something new."

"Sounds like a fun life." I commented; I was always up for learning. Admitting that makes me seem very nerdy, but part of being a bookworm like myself involves at the very least an appreciation for learning since very book contains something new.

"It's yours when you want it." Dora said with a smile before Sulpicia took off running.

I quickly picked up on her wording. The queens have always made it clear that they fully expected me to fall head over heels in love with them. They never doubted our connection. Hearing them say things like Sulpicia just had, saying when instead of if, meant a lot to me. Hearing it, hearing their confidence just added to mine. It made me fall a little more in love with them. Who wouldn't want to be with someone who knew from the start that they were always meant for you and that they were just waiting for you to realize it? It's absolutely romantic and no matter how much Dora denied it publicly, I knew that all three of them were very romantic.

I couldn't wait to really start our relationship, or at least move it forward. It wouldn't really move forward in Forks, we would wait until we were back in Italy; until we were home. I would always appreciate Forks since it was the place that led me to the queens, but I couldn't deny that Italy was my home now. The queens lived there and I knew they didn't want to move. So, of course since they lived there, that would be my home.

A/N: I always thought Carlisle needed to grow a pair, so to speak, and not let Edward run his coven. It always annoyed me that it seemed like Edward was always making the decisions for the coven instead of Carlisle and they were always stupid decisions. I do like Carlisle, he's a great person, a very good mentor to have as either a vampire or human, but the soft spot he had for Edward always irked me.