Better Late Than Never

A/N: This chapter (and probably the rest of this fanfic) is dedicated to ForrestersWitch. Also I absolutely give up on the country song titles, unless anyone has a suggestion for this chapter.

Jasper

"Major?" Pete called from the front seat, annoyingly cheerful for how completely fucked we were at the moment.

"Shut up Peter." He better be keeping his eyes on the road, like a good second in command. His job is to do all my thinkin' when I'm too busy to think. I honestly could not be bothered to care about anything else but Bella at the moment and falling back into crisis mode was far easier for me to deal with than the several decades of High School I endured living the human pretense with the Cullens.

"But Major..." He insisted, and I wasn't in the mood to have a conversation with him while I was holding my mate in my arms while she transformed into a newborn Vampire. I wanted to absorb everything, her facial expressions, how absolutely still silent she was. I've never seen anything like it, and I couldn't even tell you how many newborns I had made in the years I was in the Southern Vampire Wars. I just wanted to relish the feeling of her hand in mine, her skin becoming firmer, and her grip stronger with every passing moment.

"Peter, I swear if you don't shut up..." It was an empty threat, I just desperately wanted some silence to think about what to do next. Where to go, and how it all could go wrong, and it was then that it dawned on me that Peter and Charlotte didn't have to come with me for this, but they were. I never asked, and they never offered, but they were leaving their home and standing by me when I didn't even have any plans. That was more than being my second in command and his mate. That was family.

"Alice has been calling your phone non-stop since you left to go to Bella's." He spit out in a rush. I barely heard what he said before I understood that Alice had been calling. This was a disaster. She could only be calling for one reason. She saw, and now she was butting her pointed little nose into my business. I guess I was more set in changing Isabella than I originally thought. I thought it was rather spontaneous and thus escaped that little gossip's sight.

"Has she left any messages?" I grudgingly ask. Alice was not who I wanted to deal with right now. I didn't have all of my feelings sorted when it came to her, and though I knew it wasn't meant to last, the way she left it still stung me somethin' fierce.

"Of course not." I didn't ask how he knew if she didn't leave any messages. I had long ago come to the realization that the feelings Peter had, were always right. Though there was a time I had wondered about it... That time being the decades I spent with the Cullens. He never told me not to go with Alice, and he never tried to get me to leave with him unless I wanted to.

"She's calling again. She's not going to stop until you answer." Peter was holding the flashing phone over his shoulder wiggling it at me, trying to entice me to answer. I swatted it away with one hand, annoyed at his insistence.

"I'm sure my phone will die soon enough." I droned, taking note that the battery was already at forty three percent. We didn't have a car charger in Peter's truck, he hated cellphones, and would drone on about how they give you brain cancer and are causing the global bee population to die out. I wasn't sure if he actually believed any of the stupid shit he said, like Emmett, or if he just enjoyed saying stupid shit for the reactions he got from others.

"Do you want to deal with Alice in person? Because that's how you deal with Alice in person." Peter said, adding "I know I don't want to deal with her in person..." Under his breath. Which was a completely pointless gesture, because of vampire hearing, and the small fact they were less than two feet away from each other.

"So are you askin' me to answer, or beggin' me to answer?" I drawled, wishing he would just deal with her for me. The animosity between the two never made much sense to me, but it made a bit more knowing about Charlotte's gift. But then again, knowing about Peter's, why wouldn't he have said something? That was clearly a talk we would have at a later time.

"I'm telling you to answer, Major." He replied firmly, dangling the phone over his shoulder towards where I sat with Bella in the back seat. The phone starting to vibrate again, and the tone of his voice let me know that he knew I should answer, even if I didn't want to. I took the phone out of his hands just as we turned off the main road on to his private driveway. Charlotte hopped out to grab our go bags, speeding off faster than the car was able to on the riveted dirt roads. A vampire always had something they could flee with at a moments notice. Especially those of us who drank from humans, and had a plethora of enemies from years of murdering other vampires. Alice was speaking before I even put the phone to my ear.

"The Volturi are coming for Carlisle." She talked so fast, and forcefully that it was almost like the buzzing of a fly as it passed by too close to your face. I knew I heard her, but it sounded so absurd, I had to question it.

"Carlisle Cullen?"

"How many other Carlisles do you know, Jasper?" Alice said, with the same exasperation she saved for chiding someone on their terrible fashion sense. Fair enough, since I've never met another Carlisle in my life. The name is old. Like Ambrose. It should have dated him immediately, but his cheek bones and charming smile and bedside manner won over most humans.

"What else do you know?" I wasn't too pleased with the Cullen coven's patriarch at the moment, but there was no way I was going to leave him at the mercy of the Volturi. If they were cruel to their enemies, they were vicious with their friends. Examples would be made of the Cullen family, for whatever it was they are going after Carlisle for. And of course, when Aro touched any member of the Cullen family, and they had even the briefest thought about me flash through their minds at that moment, my cover would be blown, and they would know with absolute fact that not only is The Major still alive, but so is his second in command. Two vampires with powers and strength that most vampires who weren't alive for the Southern Vampire Wars assumed were myths, like Zorro. Until they met one of us, and saw our overlapping scars over 90 percent of our visible body.

"They're already here, I saw them land in Seattle. They don't know that they left and are living at the house in Ithaca. It wont take them long to figure it out. I don't know why they are here, I just know they are specifically going after Carlisle and Emmett gets in the way." The way she phrased that did not sound like things end up good for Emmett, and that I absolutely couldn't allow. The man was a walking smiley face, and his love and adoration for Carlisle for giving him the gift of Vampirism wouldn't allow him to tolerate anyone disrespecting him. Peter pulled up to the house long enough for Charlotte to throw some bags in the truck bed and hop in the front seat before we took off again. She looked nervously at me and Bella in the back seat, concern for both of us written all over her face and emotions. She didn't give a shit about any member of the Cullens, having spent little to no time with any of them. Her main concern was for everyone in this vehicle right now.

"Bella will sleep the whole way, she'll wake up a few hours after you're there." Alice spoke again, I suppose seeing Peter's change in direction and definiteness of his decision. "I can't see what happens after she wakes up, there's too many decisions to be made." I could almost see and feel her excitement at Bella becoming a vampire. She always did have genuine love and familial feelings for her. Wait a minute...

"You're not in New York?" I questioned her on her wording. 'They' are living in Ithaca. After you're 'there'. If Ithaca was not there for Alice, where was she?

"Me and Edward are in Brazil waiting for our plane to board, I don't know if we will arrive in time." She sounded like she was trying her hardest to force a vision, trying to think of different things to do to speed her journey, or ways to help from there, when there wasn't anything she could do.

"Please don't think too hard, Alice." I suggested, knowing it always annoyed her before when I thought she was trying to hard to force her gift into action. "Call me if there is anything else. I promise someone will answer." I said, hanging up before she could have a chance at saying anything else and handing the phone to Charlotte, which she promptly plugged into the phone charger on the front dash. She must've grabbed it out of my truck while she grabbed everything else.

"We're already on our way, it should take around 28 hours, according to the GPS." I gave Peter the exact address of the Cullen house in Ithaca so he could get a more precise estimate.

"What's going on?" Charlotte asked Peter, and he quietly explained what he heard of the phone call. "I thought he was friends with the Volturi?" I gave a dry laugh at that, they frequently turned on their allies when it benefited them.

"He's friends with them as much as you can befriend a rattler." I replied for Peter. "They have destroyed entire covens they were 'friends' with just to acquire someone half as gifted as Alice or Edward. Sometimes, not even for so much as that." I didn't need to add Charlotte's name to the list, I'm sure she and Peter were doing it for me. I saw them reach across and hold each others hands. Me, they would just destroy. If Maria couldn't keep her leash on me, the Volturi hadn't a chance at controlling me. Jane would torture me while Felix, or perhaps Aro himself, finished the job.

"Or Bella." Peter said sullenly from the front seat. I could see the worry in his furrowed brow in the rear view mirror. Something about it made me feel uneasy, let alone the words that he followed that up with. "She's going to be phenomenal, Major." It was a statement of fact, and while I wanted to be prideful that the fates gave me such a mate, but the danger we were all driving into kept anything but worry at bay.

another author's note: i started writing this in 2012. it's 2023. i bet i'll finish before winds of winter comes out. :D