Too Close | Rosalie Hale

Chapter 26

"It's going to be okay," Lex comforted a distraught Rosalie. They were sitting on the bed in their cabin to get a few seconds of peace amid all the chaos. As it turned out, the pack was not the biggest threat to the coven.

"How do you know that?" Rosalie asked. Her face was scrunched into a worried frown, her eyebrows furrowed with concern. "The Volturi are after us—after our family. You don't know what they're like. They'll kill us all without another thought. Don't you get that?"

"Ro, I've met them," Lex replied. "I understand who they are and what they do, but we have done nothing wrong. They can't punish us for that—it goes against the entire system of order that they've created, so yeah, I'm pretty confident that everything is going to turn out alright."

Rosalie said nothing. She reached for Lex's hand and squeezed it tightly, as if she were anchoring herself so she wouldn't get lost in her fear.

"And we have so many people on our side," Lex continued soothingly. "They want to help us. They came from all over the world to help us."

"Okay," Rosalie sighed with a nod, though her worry had not completely dissipated. They were at a serious disadvantage now that Alice and Jasper had taken off.

Rosalie was pissed with them—their entire family was in danger, and they chose to run away instead of fight. Nobody knew where they went or what they were doing, all they knew was that things were really bad if the one person who could see the future wasn't sticking around.

She had thought that the constant threats and danger would go away once Bella had been turned and Renesmee had been born, but they were worse than ever.

After Bella had woken up, things had been good for a split-second. And then Irina saw Renesmee; she hadn't stuck around long enough to see that Nessie wasn't an immortal child. Renesmee grew, her heart beat, and she was warm—all of those traits that vampires didn't have, Nessie had, but it didn't matter to Irina. She had seen Nessie, and immediately left to tell the Volturi, and now Rosalie and her entire family, the baby she had fought so hard to protect, were in danger. She wanted to bash some sense into Irina's stupid head.

Rosalie felt as if one problem just evolved into a new, worse one every time they thought that they had their shit together. She was exhausted. She just wanted to have time to be happy—to experience real life with Lex—without worrying that the people she loved were in danger.

It felt like it would never end.

"I love you," Lex said as she brushed some of Rosalie's hair out of her face. 

"I love you too," Rosalie replied, pulling Lex into a kiss. Moments like these were the only thing that kept her sane.

When they broke apart, Lex stood up and held out her hand as an offering to Rosalie.

"So, shall we get back out there?"

"Yeah," Rosalie nodded. If they were going to get the help that they needed, she was going to have to play nice with the horde of vampires that filled their living room. Every day, more and more vampires showed up.

Some of them were unpredictable—the nomads especially—and tensions were getting high between the shifters and the coven, yet again. Lex was sure that Forks had never seen this many vampires at once, not even with the newborn army. This time, however, they were on the same side—a fact that would be more comforting had they all been on the same page about diet.

The human-feeders had agreed to hunt far away from Forks, but the packs weren't happy that they were around at all. Because there were so many more vampires, it meant that more and more wolves were shifting. It was becoming a daily occurrence, and it made some of the Cullens a bit nervous about what could happen in the future should the wolves decide to end the treaty in the future—they were vastly outnumbered at this point.