He pounced on me like some great cat pinning me to the frigid earth. 

“Too easy,” he gloated while his hands tore at my chest. I managed to get my feet underneath me and pushed off the ground forcing his back into a boulder and sunk my teeth into his throat. He tossed  me away easily enough, but I took a huge chunk of him with me.

“Another time, then,” he promised with a salute and bound out of sight before I had a chance to comprehend his words.

I should’ve followed him, but as damaged as I was, I needed to feed.

While deer is in no way a delicacy, it will do in a pinch and the woods here were teeming with them. It took me minutes to find a heard of them, but the ringer on my phone frightened them away.”Damn it all to hell,” I grumbled while reading the name. “Alice.”

I hit the button and talked to my sister for the first time since Volterra. I’d made it clear that I wanted nothing more to do with the little back stabber but my wishes didn’t seem to matter to her all that much.

“What?” I growled not so much because I was mad, but because my throat was mostly torn out.

“Seems like you’ve gotten yourself into a pickle, dear brother of mine,” she chirped, but I could hear the worry in her voice. She’d had a vision. Of course she had.

“Indeed. Your point?”

“Testy, testy. I see your demeanor hasn’t improved.”

I groaned. There wasn’t time for this pointless chit chat. “I’m assuming you caught the highlights of what I’m dealing with here.” I waited long enough to make some sort of noise that should pass for confirmation. “Then you’ll understand that I’m just a little bit busy at the moment.”

“Fine, you grump. Emmett and Jazz are on their way. Should be in Forks in an hour. And…oh, looks like the Volturi are even closer.”

“The guys shouldn’t have come,” I mumbled not knowing how to feel about possibly seeing my brothers again.

She sighed. I seemed to cause that reaction in my family a lot. “Honestly, Edward, what will it take to make you see that we love you, that you’re our family and we’d do anything to protect you?”