Chapter Eighty Nine

Aro

I think I had always known I wasn't going to get personal revenge on Caius, not with all those in the queue ahead of me but I was determined to see justice done as far as the other rebels were concerned. Taking them back to Volterra was a pointless exercise and we had a ready made execution site here. I decided the best thing to do would be to allow everyone to leave and hunt. The show trial was set for a week hence and Hunter and Darius set up a video conference so the larger covens could watch justice enacted Volturi style.

To see The Major and his double side by side was quite something although when you saw them standing together it wasn't difficult to tell them apart, individually though it would have been much harder. Their mannerisms were so alike, the way they talked, the way they moved, was almost identical. It was easy to see how Caius had been taken in, why he thought it was the double he had working with him. I wondered if either of them would consider a place in the guard. With The Major it would bring in Bella's gift and with Jay, Alice's, it was a win win situation.

While The Major and Bella left after a rather interesting encounter with The Captain the rest stayed on including Carlisle and his family, all of whom would be acting as jurors, invited as they had been by Marcus who seemed only too happy to see Caius destroyed.

"Now Aro perhaps we can invite someone new to join us on the ruling council."

I was instantly suspicious,

"Oh? Did you have anyone particular in mind?"

"No, but you can forget The Major or Jay joining us if you had that in mind, they both have too much spirit to live in Volterra."

"True Marcus, Alec would be a good choice, he is alone now his sister is dead and he understands how things work in Volterra."

"Then why not give him some extra responsibility, let him run the trial here. You have your jury, the Cullens, the Whitlocks, The Major and his mate, Hunter, Darius and Jay, in fact some might call it unfairly biased."

Jasper

I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw my mate. She was beyond beautiful as a human but now as a vampire she took my breath away. Of course with the ongoing battle we didn't really have much time to do anything more than kiss. But it gave me extra strength to get the job done and over with.

Having watched her as she fought beside me and the others made me proud that she was mine. It also made me understand that I should make sure that I'm never on the receiving end of her anger. While most others feared me and rightly so, at least those that didn't know me personally there was now one vampire that I feared myself. That is my mate of course.

The real trouble started right after the battle was over. It began when Aro announced that it would be a week before the trial started and I along with everyone else would have to be here. There was no way I could wait a week to be with my mate and I refused to make her do anything with all of these ears listening. Of course there was also Peter to contend with.

Aro was gracious and had said that we could all go our separate ways but to make sure that we were back before the trial started. My plans were to take Bella and go into the desert until I realized that even though it wouldn't bother us nor would it keep us from enjoying our time together, I still didn't like the thought of being out in the open for anyone to see. Here we would be as there's not really any place to hide because it's all so flat.

There was also another problem or three. My mate no longer smelled of me. No, right now she smelled strongly of Caius and any other vampires she had killed. But unfortunately we had things that needed to be done so she would just have to continue to smell of them until I could get her alone, cleaned up, and claimed properly this time. It would be soon, of that I was certain.

I knew something was up when Peter kept close to both Bella and I. Of course we had official business to take care of in the form of making sure that all body parts were accounted for, for those that had fought with us so that we didn't destroy wrong ones. Once that was taken care of then we wanted to help those that were still alive but needed to be healed. We owed them that much.

I could tell that there were gonna be problems. Some of the people killed today were leaders besides Caius and they would need to be replaced and quickly. There was also the fact that I now knew that my mate understood completely the depth that I had to go to in order to trick Caius. I did my best to not look into her eyes, I didn't want to see the pain that I knew would be there because I was now killing humans to feed off.

I made sure to make myself busy so that I wouldn't have to face her disappointment. It was easy to do as there were many that needed help to heal. The first real problem came when some of them couldn't hunt in their own right now so some of the Volturi guards were sent out to find and bring food to them.

I did my best to be busy when a truck load of humans were brought in but the thirst after fighting was making it hard. I hated what I had been forced to do but I wouldn't change it because in the end it saved the vampire world, as well as thousands of humans, which would have been the outcome with Caius in charge.

Bella tried to talk to me but I just didn't want to face her. Yeah, for the first time I felt shame and fear that I might lose her because of the things I had been forced to do. Aro did want to speak to me so I was able to busy myself with him but I also noticed that not only Peter, but Char, Hunter, Darius as well as Bella were watching me. Even Jay and Alice were watching me.

Bella came over to try to talk to me again but I felt so ashamed by my killing of humans and vampires alike that I just carried on with making sure everyone was alright. I did feel her hurt by me brushing her off but I just couldn't face her right now.

At the same time I was feeling the same need that had caused me to almost kill my friends before I was able to bond with my mate and I knew that eventually it would probably overcome the guilt I was feeling.

Peter

I didn't have to be an empath to know what was going on with the Major and neither did his mate. Especially when the truck load of humans showed up and we watched as he tried to distract himself. He stayed far away from them and refused to look in their direction and he wouldn't talk to his mate either. He just kept telling her that he would talk to her later.

I had a feeling that I would have to step in shortly if he didn't pull his head out of his ass soon. Bella had just tried to get him to stop moving long enough to talk to her but he told her once again that they would have time later. She came back over to where we were now all standing just watching my brother acting like a jerk.

Jay was having a really hard time keeping from going over there and just ripping the Major a new one. He decided that it was a good time to try reverse psychology and started to comfort Bella. But sadly she didn't want or need comfort, she needed her mate.

She tried one last time to get him to talk to her and the idiot ended up pushing her away from him and growled at her. With that she started to cry as much as a vampire can cry. But I'd had it with his shit and decided enough was enough. So I walked over to him and punched him right in his face.