AN ~ Sorry it's been so long, I've been busy and mostly put my ficcing time into my Doctor Who fics but I couldn't help myself anymore coz EEEP got my Breaking Dawn Part II 2-disc special edition yesterday! Pumped to watch it. That was by FAR the most gripping, heart-wrenching, at one point literally heart-stopping of the Twilight movies. Easily the best. I LOVED what they did with it. Can't wait to watch it again!

Also, so excited for The Host! Are you?

Chapter Seventy: Betrayal

Esme:

Staring out the back window, I slowly twisted the tea-towel this way and that in my hands, until it frayed so badly that it simply pulled apart and became the fourth of its unfortunate kind to join the growing pile of tartan fabric at my feet. But then I heard what I had been listening for; saw what I had been watching for. Edward and Carlisle were returning.

The family gathered around, watching too. I straightened, and tugged at my skirt and tried to appear less concerned than I was...but Edward and Carlisle were moving too slowly, barely faster than walking. And Irina was not with them. I looked at Jasper, and he swayed his weight from his left foot to his right, uncomfortable.

Edward was first through the door. He made a bee-line for Bella and Renesmee, and the others followed, firing question after question at him. Carlisle stepped through a few seconds later, crestfallen, his brow furrowed and his hands shaking slightly.

"We couldn't find her," he whispered hoarsely as I folded my hands over his on his chest. "I called Tanya...she hasn't contacted them either. They were distraught." He closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Carlisle." I leaned up on my toes and kissed him. "This is not your fault. It's a misunderstanding, that's all."

But a few days later, with the sound of a shattering vase, that misunderstanding would reveal itself to be the greatest threat that our family had ever faced.

"They're coming for us," Alice and Edward said; perfectly, eerily synchronised. "All of them."

.o.o.o.

Carlisle:

"The Volturi," Alice groaned.

"All of them," Edward repeated at the same time.

We stood, frozen, and tried to take it all in. I wasn't sure how to react – I guess nobody was. Four months with no problems. Four months of peace. Is that all we got? Our new family?

"Why? How?" Alice muttered to herself.

"When?" Edward whispered.

"Why?" Esme breathed. I wracked my brain for an answer. What had we done, what could we possibly have finally done to have called this down on ourselves? They could have come after us for letting Bella into the family, for even breathing a word of our secret to her – for letting her live, after having seen anything of what one of us could do. They could have hunted us down after we left Bella, knowing that our ties were broken and that, as a result, she would have no obligation to keep our secret except fear of us – and Aro knows I would never let any of us take a human's life for the sake of our protection.

"When?" Jasper pressed. Alice blanked out again, but only for a moment.

"Not long," she and Edward said together.

"There's snow on the forest, snow on the town. Little more than a month," Alice told us, speaking alone now.

"Why?" I repeated. With a chill, I remembered the concerns Alice and Edward had raised about the Volturi's conduct regarding Victoria and her army of newborns. I bit my tongue, scolding myself for not having listened earlier. I had too much faith in them; I should have recognised long ago how frayed our friendship had become. I should have intervened sometime, somehow; it was my responsibility to protect this family.

"They must have a reason," Esme insisted, her voice quivering with desperation. "Maybe to see-"

"This isn't about Bella," Alice interrupted. "They're all coming. Aro, Caius, Marcus, every member of the guards, even the wives."

"The wives never leave the tower," Jasper said flatly. "Never. Not during the southern rebellion. Not when the Romanians tried to overthrow them. Not even when they were hunting the immortal children. Never."

"But why?" I pressed, hoping I did not sound as panicked as I felt. "We've done nothing! And if we had, what could we possibly do that would bring this down on us?"

Jasper was right: the wives had not ever left the tower for anything potentially involving a battle. They were fragile creatures, as pale and flimsy as newspaper. If the wives were indeed coming, Aro was not planning a battle. He was planning a show.

"There are so many of us," Edward replied. "They must want to make sure that…"

"That doesn't answer the crucial question!" I objected. "Why?"

"Go back, Alice," Jasper pleaded. "Look for the trigger. Search."

"It came out of nowhere, Jazz," Alice said forlornly. "I wasn't looking for them, or even for us. I was just looking for Irina. She wasn't where I expected her to be…" Alice drifted off again for a long while. The rest of us waited with bated breath, until her head suddenly jerked up. Edward's breath caught.

"She decided to go to them," Alice explained bleakly before I could ask. "Irina decided to go to the Volturi. And then they will decide…it's as if they're waiting for her. Like their decision was already made, and just waiting on her…"

I drew breath again, trying to figure out exactly how I felt about this new development. I was worried – terrified, for my family. I was mad at Irina for what she had done, and feeling sorry for her, particularly over the loss of Laurent and how abhorrently unsupportive we had been of her. I did not regret my decision to passively defend the wolves – least of all not after what they did for us. But there was something else, too. Something I had never experienced before.

Betrayal. I felt betrayed.

"Can we stop her?" Jasper asked, taking the words out of my mouth.

"There's no way," Alice sighed hopelessly. "She's almost there."

"What's she doing?" I asked.

"She's in the mountains," Alice explained, staring through me into the future. "She's mourning. Same as before."

The room lapsed into silence once again. Esme's hands were shaking. Edward watched Bella sadly. Jasper and Alice stood and held each other. For once, Emmett and Rosalie were both stuck for words. Bella instinctively shielded her daughter. I cringed. How terrible it must be to lose a child so quickly.

But no! She is not lost. Surely Aro will hear reason. Renesmee is a fascinating child. Perhaps Irina would mention her, and Aro would be curious. She was certainly worth showing the wives; a new creature, a marvel to make a mark of interest on their long lifelines. As for the numbers - we were a large and empowered coven: perhaps he was deterring us from an attack, or ensuring the numbers to defend against us should we decide on that course of action. Especially if Irina had mentioned, or would mention, the wolves.

But, I recalled with a frown, the question remains of why Irina would do such a thing to us in the first place. Though she did not know the extent, she recognised that Aro hungered for the abilities our coven possessed. It was not a short leap, given their nature and history, to assume that he was willing to kill to acquire them if given the chance. For all Irina knew, she could be issuing our death sentences. It would be a sore reflection on my estimations of my friends if an incident such as Laurent's death could drive her to such lengths.

"Think of what she saw that afternoon," Bella suggested gravely, her mind already working on this problem; on the trigger. "To someone who'd lost a mother because of the immortal children, what would Renesmee look like?"

"An immortal child," I murmured. At first it seemed impossible, ridiculous, that Irina could have believed that Renesmee was such a creature...but as I thought about it, the mistake became easier and easier to justify.

I recalled Bella's moment of panic earlier, over Irina's actually bothering to cover up her trail. She hadn't just seen a change in the habits of a certain coven of vampires – after all, she knew us and our rarities well: not much we could have done would have struck her as surprising, least of all so surprising that she could not talk to me about it. But Irina had also seen a child. A beautiful, enchanting child hunting with her vampire mother. From her position on the ridge, it would have been very unlikely that she heard Renesmee's heartbeat or smelt her blood.

And what if, wringing her hands and emotionlessly trekking through the mountains, she had not been mourning Laurent, but us? She must have known what would happen. All of us did. Immortal Children were the greatest of curses on our history. The most sacredly adhered to taboo. The Volturi's reaction to the idea was immediate decimation – if not complete destruction.

But perhaps, with all the power gathering around us, she thought that we had – no, that I had grown confident enough to perhaps plan an attack of my own, or even simply wait until the Volturi became obsolete; that I thought nothing was beyond me. Not even Immortal Children.

"She's wrong," Bella went on, apparently waiting for some sign that we understood and believed the innocence of her child in this. We did, of course, but the Volturi would not. Esme watched carefully, wishing with all her heart that she could believe the Volturi would listen.

Nobody spoke for a long time, and when they did, I was not paying attention. As far as the Volturi knew, we had the numbers, the powers, the fighting prowess and the cleverness to threaten them if we wished it. Irina knew I had the heart that would make me sympathise with a dying child. She also knew it was my deepest regret that I couldn't give Esme a child. Even if he had been far more ignorant of my character over the years than I believed, Aro had but to touch her hand and know that too. How were either of them to reason that I would not have done it if I truly believed I could? That was all the proof they needed.

I was the condemning proof against my own family.

"What can we do?" Bella demanded.

"We fight," Emmett suggested calmly.

"We can't win," Jasper growled, a cry of frustration and a warning.

"Well, we can't run," Emmett muttered. "Not with Demetri around. And I don't know why we can't win. We don't have to fight alone."

"We don't have to sentence the Quileutes to death either, Emmett!" Bella snapped.

"Chill, Bella," Emmett shrugged. "I didn't mean the pack – be realistic, though: do you think Jacob or Sam is going to ignore an invasion? Even if it wasn't about Nessie? Not to mention that, thanks to Irina, Aro knows about our alliance with the pack now, too. But I was thinking about our other friends."

"Other friends we don't have to sentence to death." My voice was a solemn echo of Bella's shout. It was bad enough to lose my family…my friends did not have to pay for whatever mistakes had led to this tragedy.

"Hey, we'll let them decide," Emmett suggested. "I'm not saying they have to fight with us. If they'd stand beside us, just long enough to make the Volturi stop and listen. Though that might take away any reason to fight…" Emmett smiled slightly. He was reluctant to miss out on the fight, but he knew it was not the time to mess around. He could actually come up with some clever ideas.

But still…how many vampires would be willing to go up against the Volturi over the blackest crime in our history? Very few bonds of friendship were that strong.