The Doctor

||36||

Aro did not rejoin his anxious guard waiting on the north side of the clearing; instead, he waved them forward.

Edward started backing up immediately, pulling Bella's arm and Emmett’s. Emmett grasped Rose, and my father grasped Alex. The seven of them hurried backward, keeping their eyes on the advancing threat.

Jacob retreated slowest, the fur on his shoulders standing straight up as he bared his fangs at Aro. They reached us at the same time that the dark cloaks surrounded Aro again. Now there were only fifty yards between them and us—a distance any of us could leap in just a fraction of a second.

Caius began arguing with Aro at once.
“How can you abide this infamy? Why do we stand here impotently in the face of such an outrageous crime, covered by such a ridiculous deception?” He held his arms rigidly at his sides, his hands curled into claws.

I wondered why he did not just touch Aro to share his opinion. Were we seeing a division in their ranks already? Could we be that lucky?

“Because it’s all true,” Aro told him calmly.

“Every word of it. See how many witnesses stand ready to give evidence that they have seen this miraculous child grow and mature in just the short time they’ve known her. That they have felt the warmth of the blood that pulses in her veins.” Aro’s gesture swept
from Amun on one side across to Siobhan on the other.

Caius reacted oddly to Aro’s soothing words, starting ever so slightly at the mention of witnesses. The anger drained from his features, replaced by a cold calculation. He glanced at the Volturi witnesses with an expression that looked vaguely… nervous. I glanced at the angry mob, too, and saw immediately that the description no longer applied. The frenzy for action had turned to confusion.

Whispered conversations seethed through the crowd as they tried to make sense of what had happened. Caius was frowning, deep in thought. His speculative expression stoked the flames of my smoldering anger at the same time that it worried me. What if the guard acted again on some invisible signal, as they had in their march?

“The werewolves,” he murmured at last.

“Ah, brother…,” Aro answered Caius’s statement with a pained look.

“Will you defend that alliance, too, Aro?” Caius
demanded. “The Children of the Moon have been our bitter enemies from the dawn of time. We have hunted them to near extinction in Europe and Asia. Yet Carlisle encourages a familiar relationship with this enormous infestation—no doubt in an attempt to overthrow us. The better to protect his warped lifestyle.”

Edward cleared his throat loudly and Caius glared at him. Aro placed one thin, delicate hand over his own face as if he was embarrassed for the other ancient.

“Caius, it’s the middle of the day,” Edward pointed out. He gestured to the wolves. “These are not Children of the Moon, clearly. They bear no relation to your enemies on the other side of the world.”

“You breed mutants here,” Caius spit back at him.

Alex hissed and Dad placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. Katerina reacted the same and Jacob growled.

Edward’s jaw clenched and unclenched, then he answered evenly, “They aren’t even werewolves. Aro can tell you all about it if you don’t believe me.”

Not werewolves? I shot a mystified look at the wolves, whose animalistic expressions looked confused.

“Dear Caius, I would have warned you not to press this point if you had told me your thoughts,” Aro murmured. “Though the creatures think of themselves as werewolves, they are not. The more accurate name for them would be shape-shifters. The choice of a wolf form was purely chance. It could have been a bear or a hawk or a panther when the first change was made. These creatures truly have nothing to do with the Children of the Moon. They have merely inherited this skill from their fathers. It’s genetic—they do not continue their species by infecting others the way true werewolves do.”