A/N: Here's a fun fact no one asked for: Last week it was six months from when I posted the very first chapter of Fate Unfolding. My laptop died at just about that same moment, so I've now posted one hundred and thirty-seven chapters, all written in the Notes App on my phone. Which, by the way, I wouldn't recommend. Autocorrect is a real bitch, especially when you have a character with the last name Swan. It changes it - every single time - to Sean. It's honestly a little bit of a miracle that any chapter comes out without a gazillion glaring errors, lol.

Anywho. I'm so grateful for everyone who has taken the time to actually read those hundred and thirty-seven chapters, and every single review you take the time to write makes me smile. Thank you:)

And More Speculation

Jasper tore his eyes from Edward and turned to Alice with a frown. "But that doesn't make sense. If she knows where we are, if she's coming here, you'd see that. You wouldn't just see her running or asking a nomad about our coven, you'd see her showing up here."

"Maybe she hasn't decided yet," Esme suggested. "We don't know when the vision in Utah will happen, so perhaps she's not on a direct course. Maybe she runs across someone else and they know us?"

"I don't know," Alice hesitated. "I think Jasper might be right. If Maria set off from her territory with the intention of finding us, that's a decision I should be able to see. Whether she comes straight here or roams the country until she finds someone who can point her in our direction, the end result would be the same. She'd still turn up here."

"But you don't see her there?" Peter asked.

Alice shook her head, even though he couldn't see her. "No. She might appear to be headed here but she hasn't made a decision to turn up on our doorstep."

"Is it at all possible that she's found out about your gift and how it works?" Charlotte asked carefully. "Could she know enough to keep you blind?"

Something nagged at the back of Jasper's mind in response to that question, but try as he might, he couldn't quite grasp it.

"I don't know how she could," Alice answered uncertainly. "We don't usually tell people about my gift and I don't think anyone who knows about it would offer that information to Maria."

"There is one person out there who's been keeping you blind," Peter said quietly.

"Motherfucker," Jasper cursed and spun back around to pin Edward against the wall again. "You arrogant little shit," he growled. "If your belief in your own infallibility has brought yet another fucking danger down on this family, you won't be able to run far enough or fast enough to escape me."

Everyone looked at Jasper a little wide-eyed at his renewed fury.

Everyone except Alice. "Victoria," she whispered.

Carlisle closed his eyes with a weary and regretful sigh before lifting his head and looking at Edward. "You told us you tracked her south. Through Mexico."

Edward merely nodded, too frightened to even utter a word. Not only was Jasper still furious about his disrespect towards Peter and Charlotte, but he took the family's safety and security extremely seriously and Edward had repeatedly acted in ways that threatened that safety. Now they were on the Volturi's radar as having broken the law, and his dismissal of Victoria as a threat appeared to have led Maria - the worst ghost from Jasper's past and a woman the whole family both despised and feared - to bring some new danger their way.

"You've been on this earth for over a fucking century. If you want to make it another hundred years then grow the fuck up," Jasper snarled. "You've put this family at risk time after time since you met Bella, and you're either too immature or too fucking stupid to realize that the world doesn't revolve around you. You seem to forget that you're not just creating drama in your life or Bella's, but that you have a goddamn family you keep dragging into your petty fucking drama," he growled.

Jasper opened up his mind long enough to show Edward just what he'd do to him if any of the people he loved were hurt as a result of Edward's actions. Fighting against the temptation to reduce the telepath to ash, he squeezed his throat a little harder and then let him go. Before he could second guess his decision to leave him alive, he walked down the stairs and out the front door, needing to get out of that house before he did something he could never take back.

He felt a flash of fury and then heard Edward let out a choked scream, and he didn't need to be in that hallway to know who'd gone after their pound of flesh. He also didn't fail to notice that neither Carlisle or Esme scolded her for it.

Jasper stopped in his tracks and turned around when he felt her approaching, and she didn't even slow down. Alice just leaped into his arms and held on tight.

"It's gonna be alright," he quietly reassured her. Alice pulled back just enough to glare at him, making him smile a little. "We've survived this long, it's gonna take a hell of a lot more than Maria or Victoria to bring us down."

"Peter and Charlotte are gonna try to run down some of their old contacts and see if they can learn anything," she said after a minute, though the words were muffled against his shoulder because she'd tucked her face away again. "Then they're coming up here."

Jasper just nodded. He'd already expected them to do that. Since Alice didn't seem too eager to ease up on the chokehold she had him in, he simply lowered himself to the ground and figured they could sit in silence for a while until she'd calmed down. No more than a minute or two passed before Rosalie and Emmett joined them.

Rosalie gave Alice - or at least the back of her head - a soft smile as she sat beside Jasper. "It's going to be okay," she whispered as she gently rested her hand on Alice's back.

Jasper laughed when Alice untucked her face again and glared at her sister. "Wrong thing to say, Rose," he told her.

Rosalie knew Alice was just scared for Jasper. She was too, but Alice was far more willing to acknowledge a perceived vulnerability than Rose was. She had a tendency to hide a lot of her fear behind anger. Not that she wasn't angry, because she was - she was angry at Edward, at Victoria and Maria, angry at Carlisle for listening to Edward when he said Victoria wasn't a threat, and even angry at Bella for being the catalyst that started it all, even if it wasn't directly her fault.

But underneath all that anger was fear. Mostly for Jasper - because even if he didn't see himself as being a victim of Maria's cruelty and abuse, Rosalie knew better - but also for the rest of her family. Less because she saw Maria on her own as a threat to their coven, but because she was perfectly aware of how cunning and ruthless Maria was. If she knew the lengths Jasper was willing to go to protect his family, she'd use anyone she could as leverage to get him to do whatever it was she wanted from him.

Rosalie recalled the conversation she'd had with Leah and Alice the day Leah found out Maria tracked Jasper down after he and Alice joined the Cullens.

"And she didn't try to kill him for deserting her and her army the way he did?" Leah had asked.

"Maria may be a skilled fighter, but she's nowhere near skilled enough to go up against a coven of seven on her own," Rosalie answered. "But she didn't actually come there to kill him, or even for a fight. Interestingly enough, she considers Jasper a friend. Or at least not an enemy. Which, as much as I loathe her, probably isn't a terrible thing. With how ruthless she is, having Maria as an enemy gunning for you would be a pain."

"Does Jasper consider her a friend?" Leah asked a little hesitantly.

"Hell no," Rosalie laughed. "He kept things polite when she found us, but that was less to do with how he views her and more to do with not wanting to give her an excuse to lash out at one of us. Jasper's protective, and he would've done anything at all to keep Maria's wrath from being aimed at us. Even be polite and civil to a woman who made his life a misery for seventy-five years."

"Anything except go back to the south," Alice corrected, then hesitated a second. "Although he probably would've gone if Maria had truly threatened us and meant it."

The thought of Jasper returning to a war zone just to keep his loved ones safe made Rosalie feel sick. She'd rather offer herself up to Maria than let her empathic twin suffer through that again, especially after he'd lived a peaceful life for so long.

Her thoughts started to spiral as Alice's words echoed in her mind and she felt the stirrings of panic and fear in her chest. But as she replayed the conversation again, she froze. Then she rewound a little further and focused on her own words instead of Alice's.

She didn't actually come there to kill him, or even for a fight. Interestingly enough, she considers Jasper a friend. Or at least not an enemy.

When Jasper gently touched the back of her hand, Rosalie inhaled sharply and turned her head to see him watching her with curious eyes.

"What if it's a warning?" she whispered.

Jasper just looked at her steadily for a moment. "What if what's a warning?"

Alice's head shot up and she turned to her sister with wide eyes. "But why?"

When no one said anything, Emmett groaned in frustration. "Would one of you please start making sense?" he asked. Seeing the hesitation and uncertainty on his mate's face, he swallowed back his impatience and reached for her hand with a gentle smile. "I'm sorry, babe. What do you think might be a warning?"

Rosalie hesitated for a moment before answering. She honestly didn't know if she was being ridiculous for even considering it. Seeing Emmett's encouraging nod, she took a deep breath. "What if Maria isn't trying to find us for a nefarious reason?" she asked. "What if she's coming to warn us? Coming to warn Jasper?"

As much as Emmett loved his wife, he still looked at her a little skeptically. "Why would she do that?"

It was Alice who answered. "Because despite what we think of her, Maria doesn't see Jasper as an enemy. Right?"

Rosalie nodded and looked at her brother. He looked surprised and a little taken aback, but not overly shocked. "Do you think it's possible?" she asked him hesitantly.

Jasper opened his mouth to answer but then closed it again. He hadn't even begun trying to work out the hows and whys of Victoria and Maria having some kind of alliance yet, so it took a few moments for him to untangle his thoughts so they'd come out in a coherent way. "You think Victoria happened to meet Maria when she traveled through Mexico? And she hatched a plot to use a newborn army to get her revenge against us?" he asked Rose. "And Maria is coming here, not to aid Victoria in some way, but to warn me that there's a threat against me, against my family?"

Rosalie nodded slowly. "Maybe. I know it's–"

Alice interrupted her. "It could be one of the reasons why Peter doesn't know anything."

Emmett shook his head. "It might explain why he doesn't know anything about Maria, but if there was a newborn army poised to take out our coven, wouldn't that be a thing he'd know?"

Jasper shrugged. "You know Peter doesn't always have relevant information about everything," he reminded Emmett. "I know it's easy to forget that he's not omniscient when it comes to issues related to my safety, but he doesn't know everything, even when it comes to Charlotte's safety, or his own. We're not still standing just because Peter's gift has guided our every step."

Emmett just nodded thoughtfully, knowing he was right. The Whitlocks were still alive because they were a scrappy little trio of badasses, not because Peter helped them steer clear of every danger aimed in their direction.

Alice climbed out of Jasper's lap and sat on the ground beside him. "Okay. Maybe we need to put aside everything we know about Maria's black and bitter heart for a moment and try to look at this objectively, rather than imagining the worst case scenario."

Rosalie nodded. "So let's assume Victoria did stumble across Maria in the most unlikeliest of coincidences. She's intrigued by the possibility of using newborns for her revenge scheme and they spend some time talking," she said, thinking out loud. "Victoria admits she has a grudge against a large coven and she says enough that Maria puts the pieces together that Jasper's part of the coven she wants to decimate."

"Before we get to that point, there had to be a reason Maria was even willing to talk to Victoria," Emmett said, thinking they needed to start further back than Maria realizing the coven Victoria was gunning for was the Cullens.

"True," Jasper agreed. "Maria's not in the habit of striking up casual conversations with random nomads."

"Couldn't it be as simple as finding out that Victoria is looking for revenge against the coven who killed her mate?" Alice suggested.

Jasper nodded, because that could absolutely be true. Before she became the south's only female warlord, Maria was part of a mostly peaceful coven of four in Monterrey - two older vampires she saw as parents, and her mate. All three were killed in one of the skirmishes of the Southern Wars, which her coven had tried to steer clear of, and their territory was taken over. Maria began plotting her revenge and decided that using a newborn army of her own was her best shot, and she became as ruthless as she needed to be to accomplish her goal.

"So Victoria offers up the loss of James first and it resonates with Maria, so she's willing to give her advice on how to create an army," Jasper said. "And it's only after she essentially hands Victoria a weapon to destroy us that she gives away enough information for Maria to realize it's my coven, our coven, Victoria is talking about."

"And then what?" Emmett asked, his brow furrowed. "She regrets giving Victoria that info? Her conscience finally makes an appearance after a couple centuries so she decides to warn you?"

"I mean... it's possible?" Alice said uncertainly after a few moments of silence.

"This just gets more far-fetched the longer we talk," Rosalie said with a scowl. She was of the opinion that Maria didn't even have a conscience. But it was her speculation that started this particular conversational ball rolling, so she forced herself to push her skepticism and doubts aside. "Alright, let's just go ahead and assume all those unlikely things are true. If she made a firm decision to come warn Jasper, Alice should be able to see that."

Jasper sat and silently thought through everything he knew about his sire. She may have been ruthless and undeniably cruel, but she was also smart. She was methodical and cunning and rarely put a single foot forward without thinking through the ramifications of her every move.

"If Maria eventually connected the dots that our coven and the coven Victoria was talking about were one and the same, she'd squeeze every possible bit of information out of Victoria without Victoria even being aware that she was giving out information that had the potential to stymie her plan. We all know Maria is a highly skilled manipulator, so it's not entirely unlikely - or not any more unlikely than everything else we're considering - that she learned about Alice's gift and how to get around it," Jasper said, then hesitated a moment and they all saw the disappointment and regret on his face. "I hadn't really considered that Alice wasn't seeing Victoria because she was purposely keeping her blind until Peter mentioned it," he admitted. "That was a failure on my part. I shouldn't have missed something so obvious."

Rosalie rolled her eyes and punched his shoulder. "Just because you have a strategic mind that overthinks and overanalyzes everything doesn't mean you failed just because you didn't make a leap of logic that none of the rest of us picked up on either."

Alice gave her sister a grateful smile, knowing Rose's reassurance would probably make more of an impact on Jasper than her own. Alice was a softie when it came to her oldest companion but Rosalie was honest almost to a fault. If she thought Jasper had let them all down, he'd know it.

Jasper aimed his own grateful smile at Rosalie. His thoughts were in line with Alice's, and he knew Rose wouldn't bullshit him just to make him feel better.

"So if she knows about Alice being able to see her decisions, how do we get to the vision of her meeting with a nomad but not her showing up on our doorstep?" Emmett asked.

All four of them took a few minutes to try and work out a plausible answer for that. Eventually Alice sighed in frustration. "What if all of our earlier speculations are a little bit right? Or partly right?" she asked. "Maybe she hasn't decided yet to walk up and knock on our door, and maybe she asks the nomad about the names Carlisle or Cullen because she wants us to think she isn't interested in Jasper specifically."

"Or maybe it's not so much that she wants us to think she's not interested in Jasper specifically but that she actually isn't interested in Jasper specifically," Emmett suggested.

Jasper nodded. That would definitely fit with the fact that Maria's every move was methodical. "In that case, her choice of wording with the nomad was deliberate, rather than an attempt to hide her true motive. She knows I'm an over-thinker and over-analyzer," he said, shooting a playful glare at Rosalie. "Maybe she assumes I'll do exactly what I'm doing right now, trying to decipher what her motives are."

Alice nodded and took that train of thought to its logical conclusion. "She's basically letting you know ahead of time in the only way she can that she's coming alone and not coming for a fight. She is looking for the coven as a whole, even if it's only the fact that Jasper's one of us that's leading her to come warn us."

"And she's deliberately not deciding to come knock on our door because she knows you'd probably see her as a possible threat, which means you'd be on the defensive right off the bat," Rosalie added.

"Or it could be that she's not actually planning on coming here," Alice said after a moment, looking at Jasper. "She could be thinking that I'd see her coming and she knows you well enough to know you'd never let her near your family. Maybe she assumes you'll find her before she turns up in Forks."

Jasper was silent as he thought all that through. They were doing an awful lot of speculating and coming up with an awful lot of what ifs, and if they were wrong, if Maria was coming to Washington to try and help Victoria wipe out his family, they would be putting themselves at a huge disadvantage if they greeted her as a non-enemy. After everything he'd gone through because of his sire, he knew he didn't see her through the most objective lens, and he definitely had a tendency to automatically ascribe a cruel and self-serving motive to everything she did.

His family knew some of what his life was like before Peter and Charlotte came back for him, that was unavoidable, but with the exception of Alice and Carlisle, they didn't know all the gritty details - Alice because she'd seen visions of him so often between her awakening in 1920 and their first meeting in 1948, and Carlisle because he had the most knowledge of what the Southern Wars were really like, and he'd heard rumors of Maria and the other warlords since shortly after he'd come to America.

Jasper had done a lot of healing regarding his time in the south over the past seventy years, and had come to accept that there was nothing he could do to change it, and at least he'd found Peter and Charlotte amid all that misery. But when he'd first joined the family, it had only been twelve years since he'd escaped Maria's army. Esme and Rosalie had immediately recognized the haunted look in his eyes when he told them about his past, but neither woman ever prodded him to share more than he wanted to.

Jasper had very deliberately left out a lot of the more gruesome tales of life in the south. Not only did he not want the rest of the family to look at him with pity, but he hadn't wanted them to know the kind of pain he'd lived through or just how cruel their world could be. The Cullens had been brought into this world by a kind and compassionate man who genuinely cared about their well-being and always strived to be a fair leader. He didn't want to be the reason they looked at the world through suspicious and fearful eyes.

Every single one of them, however, knew enough that, inside the Cullen home, Maria was considered the very devil herself.

While Jasper was wrestling with his thoughts, which Alice knew from experience could take him ages to sort through, she scanned the future to see if there was anything that might help them better muddle through whatever was coming. She gave a huff of mild annoyance when the immediate future of Jasper, Rosalie, Emmett, and herself disappeared. "Incoming wolf," she warned them.

Emmett looked at her in surprise. "Who did you see?"

"None of us actually, we all just disappeared," Alice laughed. "But we're in our territory, so it can only be Leah, Seth, or Paul."

Jasper looked at his watch to see it wasn't quite seven in the morning. "Seth has school in about an hour and I'm hoping Leah will be fast asleep for at least another five hours, so my best guess is that it's Paul."

The four vamps silently waited for the wolf to make its appearance, and as Jasper predicted, it was a large silver one that came into view.

"Morning," Emmett greeted him cheerfully. Even the possible threat of a visit from Maria couldn't dampen his excitement that he was friends with a shapeshifting wolf. Well, friends-ish, he conceded in his thoughts. Paul wasn't his friend yet, but he was a little friendly. That seemed like a pretty good start.

Paul stopped and looked from vamp to vamp, then met Jasper's worried eyes. He cocked his head to the side and used the method he'd seen Leah use when she wanted Jasper to feel her emotions without making him recoil at their intensity.

Jasper gave him an appreciative smile. "Nicely done," he complimented the wolf when he felt his curiosity and concern. It was pretty much the equivalent of asking what was wrong. "I don't know that there's anything wrong just yet, but there has been a development. We're still trying to interpret exactly what it means."

Paul immediately looked at Alice, who nodded. "Yes, I saw something a few hours ago," she told him. She wasn't at all sure she wanted the wolf pack as a whole to know what they'd been talking over, but Paul wasn't just a Quileute wolf, he was Jasper's mate's best friend. Besides, none of them would dream of keeping Leah in the dark, which meant the rest of the wolves would find out soon enough. "I'm happy to explain," she offered. "But I'd prefer not to do it until I know who else is listening."

Paul only hesitated for a moment - and from the way his emotions shifted, Jasper thought he was probably talking to whichever wolf was also on patrol - before phasing back to human.

"Jesus," Rosalie huffed, slamming her hands over her eyes. Jasper and Emmett simply turned their heads away while he pulled on the sweatpants tied around his ankle, and Alice shamelessly looked him over.

When Paul looked at her with a raised eyebrow, she just shrugged and smiled. "You're not too awful to look at."

"Thanks," Paul laughed as he tied the drawstring on his sweats and walked over to sit with them. "Quil was patrolling with me but his shift is about to end so he can get to school in time. Sam will be on in about an hour," he explained.

Alice nodded, then looked at Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett. After all three let her know they were fine with her being the one to tell Paul what was going on, Alice launched into the story. She started from Edward pacing the hall outside Jasper's study and told him everything that had happened since.

Paul's emotions were constantly shifting as he listened. He was everything from amused to furious to fearful. From Leah's memories of all the things Jasper had shared with her, the Quileute wolves all knew a good deal of his history. Paul was perfectly aware of who, and what, Maria was.

When Alice finished speaking, he looked at Jasper. "Call Leah."

"What? No, she's gotten like three hours of sleep in the last two days," Jasper protested. "She was dead on her feet last night and she actually gets to sleep in today. It's not like Maria's already at the state line."

Paul just rolled his eyes and looked at Rosalie. She seemed like the one to ask when you needed to be a little bit mean to get the necessary job done. "How about you? Or maybe you could just let me borrow your phone," he said, then shot a look at Jasper. "Should've just opened with that," he muttered under his breath, making Jasper smile.

Rosalie didn't honestly think the situation was critical enough that they couldn't let the girl sleep for a few more hours, but she respected that Paul wanted Leah to be part of the conversation from the beginning. She knew Jasper did too, but he was also balancing that with his concern for her emotional well-being, and being overly exhausted did no one's mood any good. She pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it over.

Paul wasted no time calling Leah's cell, though he did thank Rosalie while it rang, but it eventually rolled over to voicemail. Three more calls did the same. He sighed in frustration and dialed the Clearwater's number instead. When Sue answered, he apologized for calling so early but asked her to please go wake up her daughter.

"What's the matter?" Sue asked as they could hear her climbing the stairs.

"Nothing imminent, I don't think, but I promise I'll tell you once I know more," he assured her. If there was the potential of Victoria, Maria, and a newborn army descending on their corner of Washington, the elders needed to know about it. But Leah first. With this newest piece of information being centered around the woman who'd basically tortured her imprint for the better part of a century, she deserved to know before anyone else. It's why Paul didn't want to phase back and head directly to the Clearwater house. He didn't want to risk another wolf hearing it in his thoughts.

"You're not in any immediate danger, I take it?" Sue asked, and Paul immediately reassured her that he was fine. "Alright, give me a second."

They all listened as Sue tried to wake Leah up, smiling a little when she whined at her mom to please let her sleep in peace. It was hearing that Paul was calling that made Leah eventually take the phone with only a little bit of grumbling.

"What the hell is so urgent that you had to wake me up before it's fully light outside?" she asked in a voice raspy from sleep.

Paul tried to keep his voice calm so she didn't freak out before he could explain why he needed her to climb out of bed and go for a quick run. "Lee–"

Leah immediately cut him off. "Don't you dare use that tone with me, Paul Lahote. That's the voice you use when you have to break bad news and I don't need any more bad news," she snapped, then she sucked in a sharp breath. "What's wrong? Oh my god, is it Jasper? What happened? Did Sam do something? Paul! Why aren't you saying anything?" she shouted.

Jasper glared at Paul and snatched the phone from his hand. "I'm fine, sweetheart. Paul's just–"

Now it was Paul's turn to do some interrupting. "Which I would've told you if you'd let me speak before shooting questions at me without giving me a damn second to answer," Paul snarked in the direction of the phone.

"You know what–"

"Okay, this is stupid," Rosalie snapped and grabbed her phone out of Jasper's hand before Leah could start bitching at her bestie. "Leah, Jasper's fine, Paul's fine, and you seem to be fine, so maybe you should just get your ass out of bed and come meet us before this conversation that isn't a conversation breaks down any further."

There was silence on the line for a few moments. "Are you fine, Rosalie?"

"What? Why wouldn't I be fine?" Rose asked, her nose crinkling in confusion as she gave Jasper a look that very clearly conveyed she was wondering if she'd been overestimating his mate's intelligence.

"You said Jasper was fine and Paul was fine, and you're obviously with them but you didn't include yourself in that list. How the hell was I supposed to know you're fine, too?" Leah defended herself.

"You guys are all terrible at having conversations," Alice laughed as she took the phone from her sister. "Nothing is wrong at the moment, Leah, and I'm currently sitting with Jasper, Rosalie, Emmett, and Paul. All of us, myself included, are perfectly safe. Paul, however, believes it would be helpful if you could perhaps come meet us to talk about some things," she explained calmly. "Again, everyone in this little group is perfectly fine and there's no immediate danger."

Leah's voice was still a little suspicious when she started to answer. "What about–"

"Leah, everyone is fine," Alice laughed. "Your family is fine, the pack is fine, Charlie is fine, and our family is fine."

"I wouldn't say Edward is fine," Rosalie pointed out.

"True, he's probably not feeling so great," Alice agreed with a laugh. "He's still alive, though, which is more than he deserves at the moment."

"Did you take more body parts off him?" Paul asked her, absolutely loving the idea that the cheerful little pixie might actually be the most savage of all the Cullens.

Alice shook her head and gave him a sunny little smile. "Nope. I just broke his face a little."

"Uh, I'm definitely gonna want to circle back to that at some point," Leah said with a tired laugh. "So where is it exactly that you're all expecting me to come when I leave my warm, cozy bed?"

Alice handed the phone to Paul, since she didn't know where they were in relation to the Clearwater's house. He gave Leah their location and she promised she'd be there soon, but warned she'd be coming as a human. "I really don't want to deal with Sam if he's already on patrol."

"Perfectly understandable," Paul agreed. "Now hurry your lazy ass up and bring me something to eat," he said, then ended the call before she could respond and tossed the phone back to Rosalie with a thank you. Then he turned to Alice with a mischievous smile and rubbed his hands together like a cheesy movie villain. "Now, while we wait for Leah, tell me more about how you broke Edward's face."