With One Look

Chapter 16

Isabella's P.O.V.

I headed south, to the two people I felt could help me. Not only with Jasper, but they could help me figure out what to do about my feelings for Carlisle. When I touched Jasper I saw where Peter and Char had set up housekeeping and that's where I was headed.

It hurt to be away from Carlisle, and it hurt more that he thought I had only came there to destroy his family. But what surprised me even further was how Jasper acted. Why would he think that I broke his bond with Alice? Something just didn't make sense, and I for one was going to figure out what the hell was going on, hopefully with Peter and Char's help.

Carlisle's P.O.V.

I didn't know what had come over me. To blame Isabella for what was happening was unforgivable. I knew this wasn't her fault, it was no one's fault. To find your true mate was a wonderful gift, so why did I snap at her, blame her for this? I have been feeling a little off lately, like I haven't been in control of myself. I don't know what it is, but it only started a few weeks ago. Well that's not entirely true either. I've been feeling it for a number of years, and it's just become stronger in the last few weeks.

When it started getting stronger, I couldn't explain some of the things I was doing. Like leaving in the middle of a scheduled work day and running home just to have sex with Esme. Not that I didn't enjoy spending time with my wife, but I never did things like that. My work was very important to me, and Esme knew this but welcomed it without complaint.

Things like this had been happening more frequently, things I couldn't explain. Like hurting my true mate. I didn't even think it was possible to do such a thing. I mean, when finding out that Isabella was my true mate I should have been soaring to the skies with happiness. I've loved that woman since we met in Volterra. My thoughts shouldn't have been so misconstrued. I should have known what to do without a million thoughts confusing the issue. It was true that I didn't want to hurt Esme, but this was my true mate. Esme would have understood, for that's what kind of woman she was. It would have hurt, but she would have stepped aside because she loved me and wanted to see me happy. So why was my head in such a fog? I didn't know, but hopefully I'd find out soon enough.

As I thought back to what had happened and how I treated Isabella, I cursed myself for the things I said, but I also realized what she had said about being in the same room with Caius when he found his mate. The pain she must have endured during that time had to be unbearable, and I just treated it like it was nothing. Damn, I was such an ass. What was I thinking?

I should have been there for her. Then another thought came to mind. If I had just stayed with the Volturi I could have been there for her during her time of grief. Maybe we would have found out a lot sooner that we were meant for one another. But noooo, I had to go into the world, become a physician and inadvertently start a family.

It also came to mind the way Edward had treated her while she was visiting in Denali. Edward had known from the very beginning how I felt about Isabella, for he was my first companion to whom I told everything. So why did he treat her so badly? Another question I needed answers to.

I knew they all love Esme, but you do not treat your true mate this way...Then it hit me. He knew, which meant Alice knew as well. They both knew Isabella was my true mate; Alice would have seen this happening and through her Edward would have seen it as well. Alice set this all up. She wanted Isabella to leave, to leave me, and although I commend that she was trying to save her family one does not stand between true mates No one does, well except Edward and Alice I guess. I cursed myself once again for spoiling those two, giving them anything they wanted, when I should have put a stop to all their foolishness, and I should have put my foot down when they began to complain about Isabella coming for a visit. I needed to speak to my family and needed to do it now! I pulled out my cell phone and rang Edward. When he answered I ordered him home now and headed to the house.

Once I entered the house I told them we were having a family meeting that evening when Edward arrived. No one said anything as I made my way to my office and slammed the door. I sat in my chair and leaned back and stared at the ceiling. I remembered the day I left the Volturi and how sad I was to be leaving the love of my life.

I remembered how badly I wanted to become what I was now, a physician. I studied hard and remembered how hard it was to abstain from drinking from the patients. I won that battle and the smell of human blood doesn't even bother me any longer. I became the physician I wanted to be, and without slapping myself on the back I'd have to say I was a damn good one.

I remembered when the Spanish influenza hit the states, I was in Chicago working in one of the local hospitals when I met Elizabeth Mason. She had lost her husband to the disease and she and her son Edward were dying of the same illness. Before she died she begged me to save her son. Whether she knew what I was or not, I didn't know. I did as she asked and made Edward my ward, my first companion and in doing this I found a friend, someone I could talk to, tell anything to and did. So yes, he knew of Isabella. But that's not the only reason he would have known about Isabella. I found out shortly after turning Edward that he had a gift, where he could read others' minds.

But a few years before that I was in a small town in Wisconsin. I had opened my own office and was dealing with patients who couldn't afford to pay much for a physician's attention. One day a man entered carrying a small child. She had fallen from a tree and had broken her leg. I found her to be a very beautiful child at the time and fixed her broken leg and sent her home with her family.

About a year after turning Edward I was in the same hospital. I was walking by the morgue when I heard a very faint heartbeat. Not that it wasn't natural to hear a heartbeat, we were in a public place, but there was no one in the area, so when I followed the sound I don't need to tell you how shocked I was that it was in the ice storage where they kept the bodies. I pulled back the sheet to find the little girl I treated as a child all grown up and still alive, but only just.

I called Edward explaining the situation to him and had him meet me at one of the doors that no one hardly ever used. After biting Esme and making sure the venom was doing its job I carried her to Edward who took her to a cabin we had mostly hidden out of sight of the humans and used when we went on extended hunts.

After he left with her, I did a little digging and found out what had happened to Esme. After she was found, the doctors I'm sure did all they could for the poor woman and with not hearing or showing a heartbeat on the scanner, proclaimed her dead and sent her to the morgue. Being a vampire with excellent hearing, I noticed she was not dead and saved her the only way I knew how when medical treatment failed.

To Esme, Edward was the son she had lost and tried to take her life over, by jumping from a high cliff, breaking almost every bone in her body. I set all her bones and left her to burn, knowing my venom would heal everything else including the bones I had just set after arriving at the cabin.

Esme was inconsolable for a while, but once she was past her newborn years she became better, mostly due to Edward's help, shortly after we fell in love and married. Well, she was in love with me, but I had to admit that I didn't love Esme. I was mostly content with my life with her as one of my companions, with only one difference. I was intimate with her, but I still constantly thought of Isabella.

It was many years later when I found Rosalie dying in the street. She had been severely beaten and raped. She was losing a lot of blood and I knew she wouldn't make it to the hospital, not alive anyway. I struggled with the decision of turning her and when the pro's outweighed the con's I bit her and took her home. I was hoping that she would take a liking to Edward. I felt bad for him being alone without a mate and hoped they would hit it off, but alas my hopes were quickly extinguished. Rosalie hated Edward and fought with him constantly. They even refused to be in the same room. Of course that corrected itself once Rosalie found her mate in a huge man who was dying from a bear attack in Tennessee .

She carried him home to us and begged me to turn him. Seeing that they were mates I had no choice in the matter. Now that was an experience in itself. He was so hyper as a newborn, and even after his newborn stage he was still hyper to a point, but he did love Rosalie I'd have to say, especially in the way they carry on in the privacy of their bedroom. We may be family, but we're vampires as well and if we didn't want to hear the two of them going at it we had to just endure it or leave for an undetermined amount of time.

He demolished many walls as well as items that sat around the house during his newborn year and even attacked and drained a girl whom we found to be his singer, causing us to have to move sooner than expected. Not only once but twice. Two singers within two years...It could only happen to Emmett.

It wasn't long after Emmett had control of himself, that two vampires came knocking at our door. They said their names were Alice and Jasper. Both had gifts, but it was Alice who obviously had the gift of seeing the future. She said she saw them being a part of our family. They said both of them wanted to learn our way of diet and pleaded with us to let them stay. Of course I couldn't deny a request for help, especially in learning our ways of feeding, so I let them stay, and they have been with us ever since. Our family had grown immensely in a short period of time. And I, who was once all alone in the world, have become the leader of a large coven - or family as we liked to be called. Probably the largest coven in existence, followed closely by Eleazar's coven.

I was brought out of my musing when I heard some commotion coming from downstairs and moved to find out what was going on. When I arrived in the living room I found Edward and Alice at each other's throats, with Jasper trying to calm them down by standing between the two of them sending out a calming emotion that was doing little to help.

"Enough! What is going on here?" I asked in a demanding voice, wanting to know why my family was fighting among themselves.

"Nothing," Alice said as she back away and into Jasper's arms.

"Nothing? Obviously it's something or you wouldn't be fighting!" I said. I was already upset that Isabella had left me. Not counting the pain I felt in my chest from her loss, this was the last thing I needed at the moment, especially since I had called a meeting to get to the bottom of what was going on with my family concerning Isabella.

"It's none of your concern, Carlisle. So just leave it alone," Edward said in a commanding voice. I furrowed my brow with the way he said this and approached him, getting into his line-of-sight, and spoke again, this time more softly, but demanding.

"Since when do you talk to me like that, Edward?" I asked as he looked over at Alice with a confused look. I continued, but didn't let what had just happened escape my mind. "I asked you a question and I demand an answer...what is going on?!" I asked again. He looked me dead in my eyes, like he was looking for something that he found out shortly wasn't there, and backed away.

"Alice and I just had a disagreement about...uh...about some clothing she wanted me to try out and I refused. You know how demanding she can be at times," he said with a smirk, thinking his explanation had gotten past me, but when I looked over at Alice I noticed that Jasper wore a frown as well. He looked confused about something and I decided to get to the bottom of this right now.

"Meeting. Dining room. Now!" I ordered as my family followed me to the dining room table where I sat at the head while the others moaned and took their seats around it. I was used to my family groaning about family meetings. They hated it unless it was something they wanted to talk about, but this was me and they knew I was upset about something.

I looked around the table once everyone was seated and scanned their faces. I found Alice and Edward in a staring contest and I knew they were having a silent conversation between themselves as they often do. I also found Jasper looking between the two of them, still looking confused at what was going on. Rosalie sat looking sadly at her hands that were lying on the table and Emmett was being his lovable self trying to console his mate - for what reason I was about to find out. Esme was also looking down at her hands, looking just as sad. Maybe they do know about what Isabella was to me, I thought as I cleared my throat and started the meeting.

"Alright. Something has been going on in this family for the past few weeks and I demand to know what it is," I commanded. After saying this I saw Edward and Alice look at me in shock. Their mouths were hanging open, probably wondering how I figured whatever it was out, which I had not...not yet anyway.

"How did you do it?" Edward asked.

I looked at him with one eyebrow cocked as Alice, said. "Edward!" telling him to keep quiet. I moved my eyes from Edward to Alice in confusion.

"How did I do what?" I asked. I knew this would tell them I didn't know what they were talking about, but I wanted to know and no one was leaving here until I found out, and I told them so.

"Nothing, Edward was just…" she said as I cut her off.

"Just what, Alice?" I asked, waiting for an answer but not getting one.

"No one will leave this table until I get answers, is that understood?" I asked. They all sighed and leaned back in their chairs, crossing their arms over their chests. All but Jasper and Emmett, who both looked around the table, confused, at their family.

"Is this about Carlisle finding his true mate?" Emmett asked bluntly. Not realizing he was letting the cat out of the bag, and exposing Edward and Alice at the same time...he was such a child sometimes.

"Emmett!" Edward and Alice yelled, mad at him for giving up what they already knew. Esme covered her face with her hands, which led me to believe she knew of this as well. I sighed as I remembered how I thought she would be happy for me, but I guess I was wrong, because it sounded as though she knew of this before Isabella arrived.

"How long have you known that Isabella was my true mate?" I asked simply, but no one answered. "Okay, then tell me this - how did you keep me blind to what was going on behind my back?" I asked and waited.

"Oh, that's easy," Emmett said as Edward and Alice once again yelled his name. He sat back and crossed his arms looking hurt that they wouldn't let him speak, but there was someone who could override even Edward and Alice's command. His mate looked at the hurt on Emmett's face and sighed.

"Just tell him, Emmett, he deserves to know," Rosalie told him. Emmett smile and sat up and faced me as Edward and Alice once again yelled but this time at Rosalie.

"Oh, shut up you two. You've done enough damage as it is. Just sit there and take your punishment that you deserve," Rose said hatefully. Alice started to say something but Jasper grabbed her and shook his head, daring her to say another word.

"Edward dazzled you with his allure that we used to placate our prey and made you stop thinking about Isabella. He also made you do what he wanted you to do. He and Alice felt it was time for a change in leadership in this coven," Emmett said with a smile.

"And they thought they could do a better job?" I asked. Emmett nodded his head.

"Yeah, but I didn't like it and told them I was going to tell you what they were doing, but Rose said I shouldn't - that if I loved Esme I'd keep my mouth shut. So, I...didn't say anything. It's not that I don't love you, Esme, because I do, but it's not right what they were doing to Carlisle. You saw how confused he seemed lately and that is just not our Carlisle," he continued.

"It's okay, Emmett, I understand and I know you love me as all of you do or you wouldn't have taken it as far as you have to protect my love for Carlisle," Esme said.

I looked over at Esme. I felt bad about hurting her, but I needed to know if she knew about all of this, and it was obvious that she did. "You knew they were doing all of this?" I asked as I watched her nod her head. "So you knew about Isabella even before even I did?" I asked, knowing the answer before even asking. She nodded again. I sighed and looked at my family before speaking.

"I can't believe that you used your allure to make me do things against my will, Edward, and if I know my family as well as I think I do I'd have to say it was Alice's idea wasn't it?" I asked. Edward lowered his head and nodded.

"That's not fair, you wanted this as much as I did, Edward!" She screamed causing Jasper to grab her and sat her down on the chair she just jumped from.

"Be quiet, Alice!" Jasper yelled as she sat back in her chair and pouted. Jasper only shook his head.

"Well, I was worried about how I was going to tell my family about Isabella, but it seems I am the last to know. I have to say that I am very upset with you three - or four I should say since Esme was in on this as well. I guess I didn't know her as well as I thought."

"I'm sorry, Carlisle, but I do love you...I just didn't want to lose you to that girl, the human drinker from the Volturi," she spat not even acknowledging that Isabella wasn't with the Volturi any longer or that she was changing her diet.

"I guess I don't really know you at all, Esme. I knew you'd be hurt, but I thought you'd at least be happy that I had found my true mate considering how rare it is. I never thought you'd judge someone who is ex-Volturi; after all, that is where I first met her."

"But you never harmed anyone, Carlisle. She's probably killed thousands just for the Volturis' pleasure," she said.

"Oh, Esme...It's sad that you didn't get to know Isabella, and not only you but all of you. Isabella is the most sweetest, kind person I have ever met. She would never take a life unless they were trying harm her or someone she loved. The fact that she has so many gifts doesn't mean she's evil, which she is not," I said looking around the table at my children and then back to Esme, whose shoulders were shaking as she dry sobbed.

"I am truly sorry for hurting you Esme, but you know nothing can be done once you find your true mate. As for the rest of you, do you realize that what you have done is against our laws?" I asked as the three of them gasped. "Oh yes. To keep a true mated couple apart for your own reasons is against our laws, not only that, but Edward you broke the law further by using your allure on a fellow vampire. That's a no-no in our world. If Aro ever found out, especially since he longs for you and Alice to join his coven, he would be within his rights to do so," I told them trying my best to frighten them.

"Isabella is not Volturi any longer, but like Eleazar she could be called back for their protection. Of course Aro can't read her but it doesn't mean that she wouldn't tell them what happened, and it's because of you she went away. She doesn't know you from Adam so why would she care what happens to you?" He asked as I watched fear cross over all three of their faces. Jasper had his hand over his mouth trying to hide his laugh. He knew I was only trying to frighten them and it was working. I knew Isabella would never turn them in if only because of me and how I felt about my coven mates.

"I think you should come up with a way to bring Isabella back. I think once she's here and realizes what you did was to keep our family together she will understand, and I think that once she gets to know you a little better she will find you as agreeable as I do, or did until you did this to me."

The three of them sat thinking about what I just said and Alice turned to Jasper.

"You knew her from before, do you think you could call her and make her come back?" she asked.

Jasper sighed and shook his head. "I'm afraid that I disrespected her as well, Alice. She's a little upset with me at the moment."

"You did, how?" she asked.

"That conversation is for another time, Alice," he said as he sat back in his own chair and sighed.

"We'll find away, Carlisle, and I hope you can forgive us for what we've done. We'll make it right, we promise, don't we guys?" Alice said. The others nodded their heads.

"What will happen to me, Carlisle? I can't stay here and watch as you and your true mate are together," Esme said brokenly.

"I do understand, Esme, and like I said I can't apologise enough for this, but I can't control how I feel. If you leave we will all miss you. Maybe you could go and befriend Marcus. He's lonely and would probably enjoy having you as his companion," I told her. She gasped at my suggestion.

"I can't go there, they are animals, killers," Esme said, horrified by my advice.

"They are no different from us Esme. Yes they drink from humans, but I fed from animals while I was there and I see no reason why they wouldn't let you as well," I told her. She thought about it for a minute, knowing she had nowhere else to go other than to Denali. She decided to go to Denali for a while and make a decision later on what to do.

I ended the meeting and started for my office once again while rubbing my chest, needing my true mate by my side. On my way up the steps I heard Alice and Edward talking about ways to get Isabella back. I smiled, but sadly realized I also had to come up with a punishment for my three children for all they had done. I couldn't let them think that what they did was okay.

As I entered my office I heard Esme dry sobbing again. I did feel badly about hurting her and I hoped she would find happiness again soon.

A/N: Bella arrives at Peter and Char for help, but she will run into another vampire she didn't expect to meet. I wonder who that could be? You'll have to read to find out. And yes, Peter and Char will be coming back into the picture...lol...thanks for reading, huggs.