"No." Jacob's voice was becoming slowly frantic; Edward stared at me, frozen and terrified. Leah's sharp voice startled them both back in to action.
"Why? Because she's a woman?" She slapped Jake's back for effect and almost leaned on Edward's shoulder, falling back at the last second when his smell became too strong. He awkwardly swept away to stare at the black night out of the open doorway, but Jacob glared at Leah with a simmering fury.
"Of course not." The bottom note in his voice barely registered, it was so deep. "She's human."
"So are we. Sort of." Leah shrugged. Emily, the last one to appear in the room after the dinner rush ended, spoke quietly from beside her husband's wide body.
"Would you let me go, if I wanted to?"
"No," Sam and Jacob both replied bluntly, and Leah rolled her eyes and laughed again in a mirthless way.
"Then I'd buy my own ticket and meet you there," Emily said firmly, meeting my eyes across the table and nodding. "And if Bella wants to do the same, she can." It was a warning shot. I hoped Emily wouldn't be angry when she found out what defending my wishes really meant; I hoped if she was I would be alive to apologize for misleading her.
"It's beyond foolish—" Edward's rushed hiss was covered by the barreling growls coming out of Jacob, and Leah laughed her brutal, bitter laugh one final time and moved to stand beside me. As she crossed her arms the smile slid off of her face, and I could tell the fight was about to be over.
"She isn't going to go in to the damn tower, you guys. She's going to go where her heart is going"—here, she pointed at Jake, who bit his lip—"and she's going to be safe, and she's going to watch the little ones, like the freaky girl said." Leah looked at me, and I realized she knew something was up. She was supporting my presence because she saw, unlike the men, that something I couldn't say was drawing me to Italy. Our success might depend on it. Leah is very strategic. "I'll be watching her," Leah murmured, her black eyes locking on mine. "Nothing will happen to her." She understands war. I was afraid of her. If Leah caught me trying to leave and endanger my life, would she let me go? Jacob and Edwards' appraisal of her rational approach to battle aside, I knew Leah loved me now. She was firing her own warning shot, just for me, rattling through my mind.
No one spoke until the tiny alpha's voice piped up, clear and startling. "Thank you, Leah. I feel better knowing Alice's good friend will be there to take care of me and the pups." She didn't meet anyone's eyes. It sounded vaguely as though she was reciting something, but no one else seemed to know what to say, so she continued. "We must leave immediately."
"You're not going, and you're not fighting," growled Jacob.
"Yes, I am," the small alpha said, and the lilting, uninterested tone dropped from her voice. "You need us. You don't have enough fighters to take out the whole guard—we'll be five more on your side." Her blank expression never changed, but her affect became increasingly urgent. "And we're bigger than you."
"No you're not," Jacob said, staring at her.
"We have venom." She met his expression without wincing. He hadn't used an alpha command on her since the first night she'd appeared, but she couldn't have forgotten it's effect; her need to go with the pack to Italy was so great that she was clearly undaunted by the constant undercurrent of dominance Jacob exuded. "We can kill them much more easily than you can."
"And be killed much more easily." Jacob respected the child, but unlike the rest of us, he had seen the children of the moon fight vampires before. Sam, Leah, and the grown warriors did not enter the fray; they all seemed inclined to let the small, strange pack come along, almost as an experiment. Edward, on the other hand, pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled loudly. He'd become attached to the young girl and did not want her fighting, but he remained silent during tense exchange between alphas. I felt I had to interject; if the small pack didn't come to Italy, our whole chance at defeating the Volturi might vanish in to thin air. Never bet against Alice, I told myself.
"Let her go, Jacob," I said quietly. "It's not going to hurt anything—if you guys don't need them to help, then they won't fight. It'll be fine."
"It won't be fine," Edward hissed again, moving so quickly on his feet he blurred slightly, his white hands fluttering. "They'll be changed—they can't be anywhere near you, Bella, or any other human beings while they're changed—"
"We can," the girl interrupted. She stared at Edward, and he gritted his teeth. She was sending him thoughts directly, her eyes unblinking and her pale hands white knuckled in her lap.
"I don't care that you've always been this way, that you think you've mastered it, you've never been in a city with that many people before—"
"But we have to learn, don't we?" She now let the urgency show completely, vulnerable for the first and only time. One diamond shaped tear formed in the corner of her pale, blue eye. "To stay here, to be among these people…I cannot stay here and have children and a life if I don't learn how to be with humans." The tear teetered on the edge of her pale lashes, then disappeared down her cheek as if it had never existed, traceless. She continued to stare at the men and women around her, her hands finally relaxed and flat on the table as she waited.
These words changed everything in the room; a quiet swept across the pack, and Edward hung his head. It made a bizarre sort of sense, in a way. No one had confronted her about the knife, and Edward had never spoken of any confrontation between them about the dangerous nature of the children of the moon. But she had known that this future would come, and she'd spoken the truth. If the new children did not learn to become like the La Push wolves, they could not live among their people.
Jacob sat silently. It was the closest the girl and I, Alice's conspirators, would get to an affirmation, and we knew it. Our eyes met across the table, and I nodded slightly, loosely; Leah saw, her sharp eyes catching mine, but everyone else was already saying goodnight and she let it slide and followed them out. The girl ran from the room, Edward moving swiftly behind her after a brief exchange with Jake, and the wolf pack slowly dispersed until only he and I were left.
"I don't want you to go," he whispered. We were back in the room where we'd last fought. The sounds of the restaurant closing around us—banging chairs, the tinkle of silverware and laughter—dimmed and then ceased altogether. His hands were once again flat on the table, tension palpable between us, but now I knew there was no danger. I moved towards him and sat in his lap, pushing my face against his warm skin. His arms wrapped around me.
"I love you," I said. I hoped later, when the future had sorted itself, he could understand that was my motive, always. I loved him. If Alice saw this as the way, I would follow her orders to the letter.
"I love you," he whispered back, and we held each other that way for a long time before making our way out of the empty building, towards a restless, dreamless sleep, and our uncertain departure tomorrow.