Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Book one:
Bella and Edward are getting married! Soon! Bella drives through Forks in an exceedingly fancy gift from Edward, a half-million dollar Mercedes that is tank-proof at least. Why Bella needs that kind of car no one knows, and she finds it embarrassing, but her truck died… so what are you going to do? On her drive, Bella sees missing posters for Jacob put up by Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie since he doesn’t know that Jacob got so sad about Bella and Edward’s engagement that he decided to wolf through Canada. When she gets home, Bella calls Seth, Edward’s new tiny baby werewolf BFF, to see what Jacob is up to using his wolfmind powers, but all he knows is that he’s still in Canada somewhere being a wolf.
After talking to Seth, Bella reminisces about the time just a few weeks ago when she and Edward told Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that they were getting married. At first, he’s like, you’re preggers, but then they convince him that they don’t want to live together in college at Dartmouth without being married on account of Edward being a classy gentleman from 1918. Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie is totally fine with this, but decides that as punishment, Bella has to call and tell her mom. Renée is also totally fine with this and tells Bella that she’s always been a middle-aged woman, so it’s fine that she’s getting married already. She comes to Forks to help with the wedding.
Back in present day, you know, like two weeks later, it’s the night before the wedding. Bella and Edward are snuggling in bed and she asks about his promise to have sex with her while she’s still human and he still doesn’t want to do it, and he also doesn’t want to take away her ability to have a baby, but she’s not interested in that. Emmett and Jasper show up soon and take Edward away to his bachelor party where they plan to eat mountain lions and not strippers.
As she’s falling asleep, Bella thinks about the wedding guests and werewolves and humans and how beautiful all the vampires are and how she’s plain, especially compared to Tanya and Kate from the Denali clan, because remember, Tanya was maybe going to be Edward’s mate, but that didn’t work out. Then she remembers a story that Carlisle told her about Tanya and Kate and Irina, who still hates Bella and the werewolves because the werewolves killed Laurent. A long time ago, the mother of the Denali clan created an immortal child, which is expressly forbidden. The Volturi came and, much better told in the movie so we’ll pretend that’s exactly how it happens, Jane throws the creepily smiling baby into a bonfire and then they execute the mother. Bella dreams that night of an immortal child and the Volturi coming for it and she wants to keep it safe, but then she looks down and sees that the baby has eaten all of her human friends and family.
It’s wedding day! Bella is whisked away to the Cullen house and Alice and Rosalie help her get ready. Renée and Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie give her a wedding gift, her grandmother’s antique hair combs, and then they leave to let Bella finish getting ready. Bella’s curious about where Edward is taking her for their secret honeymoon, but Alice assures her that she packed everything she’ll need for the surprise trip. After seemingly no time at all, Bella’s walking down the aisle with Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie. The wedding is over in like three seconds of Bella practically drooling over Edward and him beaming at her and it’s a little precious, and then they kiss and it’s over!
At the reception, everyone dances and has a great time and it’s not as awkward as the movie with Emmett’s weirdly sexual speeches, but we can pretend that that did happen. Suddenly, Jacob appears! He wasn’t at the wedding on account of him being sad in Canada, but he decided to show up after all. Bella and Jacob dance and talk about the honeymoon, which Jacob jokes won’t be real because they won’t have sex, but Bella’s like, yeah we are, and Jacob gets mad. Some of the rest of Jacob’s pack show up to keep him from wolfing out in anger, then Bella and Edward drive away for their honeymoon and she hears Jacob’s sad sad wolf howls in the distance. Bella’s a little sad, too, because she resolves to never see her mom or Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie ever again, because after her trip, she’s going to be a vampire and will be very different and very dangerous.
After several flights and taxis and boat trips, Bella and Edward arrive at Isle Esme, a gifted island from Carlisle to Esme that she’s letting them borrow. Bella is super nervous because she’s about to have vampire-human sex with Edward. She showers and shaves and brushes her teeth and all sorts of human things, and then she wades out nakedly into the ocean to stand with naked Edward. As is expected, we fade to black and wake up the next morning with Edward staring torturingly at Bella’s bruised body, both of them covered in feathers. He’s ashamed of hurting her and she says she’s not hurt at all, but he refuses to have sex with her again until she’s a vampire. (Just let her get on top, geez!) Bella suddenly gets super hungry, so Edward makes her breakfast and she eats at least four dozen eggs.
To stop Bella from constantly wanting to have sex, Edward takes her on a lot of adventures around the island, which makes her super tired and super hungry. In between eating and sleeping and adventuring, Bella schemes ways to trick Edward into having more sex, even promising to stay human for a few more years, but he refuses… until he doesn’t. Bella wakes up from another immortal child nightmare, crying, and pities Edward into having sex again. This time he doesn’t hurt her and so they have sex a lot.
The cleaning crew comes one day and a woman, who is from the Ticuna indian tribe in Brazil, is frightened of Edward because she suspects he’s a vampire and that he’s going to eat Bella. He’s not, of course. That night, Bella has more nightmares about immortal children and the Volturi, but this time, she’s super protective about the immortal child and wants to fight the Volturi to keep the creature safe. She wakes up to a note from Edward that he’s gone hunting, so she goes hunting herself in the kitchen. She’s craving all the food, so she cooks a million things and eats lots of stuff and then starts vomiting. Edward arrives then and Bella realizes her period is late. Uh oh… she’s preggers.
Alice calls because she’s seen a vision of Bella and her suddenly defined baby bump that is already kicking. Carlisle takes the phone and tells them to come home immediately and Edward agrees, telling Bella that soon they’ll get that “thing” out of her. The cleaning woman comes again and sees that Bella is pregnant, puts her hand on Bella’s belly and declares in Portuguese that it’ll be nothing but death. Bella, who is already in love with this monster baby, calls Rosalie and asks her for help. We all know that all Rosalie wants is to have a baby, so Bella knows she’ll be on her side… and she is!
Book two: Jacob’s POV… what?!
Jacob and Paul are hanging out at Jacob’s house because, shocking to Jacob, Paul has imprinted on Jacob’s sister, Rachel, which yes, Jacob has twin sisters, they’re just grown up and out of the house. Since pretty much all of his werewolf buddies are imprinting, Jacob feels a little alone and still a lot in love with Bella. He spends some time thinking about how the Cullens are going to tell Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie that Bella “died” when she becomes a vampire. Alpha wolf Sam decided that since Bella was making the choice to become a vampire and since the Cullens have been so kind to the Quileutes, they will not attack Bella or the rest of the vampires for breaking the treaty. That’s pretty nice, but Jacob’s pretty mad about literally everything right now, so he goes for a walk on the beach.
And of course while he’s there he spots another of his friends, Quil, who was the one who imprinted on the toddler. They’re at the beach too, looking for wocks. Gween ones and wed ones and bwue ones. Jacob asks Quil if he’s going to try dating someone since, you know, he can’t and shouldn’t date a toddler, but Quil says he has no interest in anyone but Toddler Claire. Quil suggests that maybe Jacob would be happier if he tried dating someone, but no, he’s the same. He only has eyes for Bella. Speaking of which… Sam howls for the wolves to gather. He’s just learned that Bella called Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie to tell him they’ve come home from their honeymoon because she got an exotic illness. Jacob is convinced that this is how they’re going to explain her death, and then he wants to go and kill all the Cullens for transforming Bella, so he rushes off to their house. No one goes with him though.
When Jacob gets to the Cullen house, he’s completely surprised to learn that Bella is still human and she looks really, really sick and he notices that Edward looks really, really upset. Rosalie is also hanging around Bella, which is weird because Jacob knows they really, really never got along before. Jacob asks Bella what’s going on and she reveals that she is really, really preggers. Jacob gets really, really mad. Edward asks Jacob to accompany him outside.
Edward reveals that the thing inside Bella is killing her but she won’t get rid of it even though she’s definitely going to die and Rosalie is acting as her bodyguard. Edward begs Jacob to convince Bella to get rid of the fetus and even suggests that she can have a baby with him if she wants a kid that much. Jacob is pretty tempted but also thinks that Edward offering to let him impregnate Bella is pretty gross. He says he’ll try to convince Bella to abort the fetus and then Edward tells Jacob he can kill him if they can’t convince Bella to have his baby instead and she dies, which she totally will. Jacob is pleased with the thought of getting to kill Edward.
Jacob tries to convince Bella to end the pregnancy, but she is certain that she’ll be strong enough to keep her heart beating long enough to give birth and then Carlisle will be able to turn her at the last moment like he did with Esme, Emmett, Edward and Rosalie. Jacob then offers to impregnate her instead and she’s like, nah dog, and Jacob gets sad. He decides to leave and quit being in love with Bella. When he wolfs again, all the pack instantly knows about the monster baby and they also agree that it’s pretty gross and is definitely going to kill everyone since immortal children are insatiable. Sam declares that they need to kill it, and Bella, too, if need be.
Sam starts assigning the pack a member of the Cullens to kill, but Jacob and Seth, Edward’s werewolf bff, refuse. Sam uses his alpha powers to force them to obey, but then Jacob remembers that he’s a double werewolf and should technically be alpha, so he just is all of a sudden and breaks away from the rest of the pack as a lone wolf. He rushes off to tell the Cullens to prepare for imminent werewolf attack. He’s not a lone wolf for long, though. Shortly after he takes off for the Cullen house, he hears Seth’s thoughts and realizes that he left Sam’s pack and is now a part of Jacob’s. Together, they warn the Cullens and start a perimeter watch. This gets a little easier when Leah also joins the pack, even though literally no one likes her, which is pretty sad.
Carlisle and the rest of the Cullens are thankful to Jacob’s new pack for protecting them. Carlisle explains to Jacob that the monster baby is destroying Bella because it steals all the nutrition she takes in before Bella can absorb any. Jacob thinks that the monster probably just wants to drink blood and they all realize he’s probably right. They pour Bella a fresh glass of blood and she gulps it down, finding it delicious. Color starts returning to her face and she feels better almost instantly, but before we can celebrate too much, Seth and Leah howl for Jacob.
Jacob wolfs out of the Cullen house and learns that some of the other pack, including his friends Jared, Quil and Paul, are coming to talk to him. They try to convince Jacob, Seth and Leah to return to Sam’s pack and tell them that the elders don’t think they should kill the baby and Bella yet. Jacob, Seth and Leah aren’t sure that Sam’s pack is telling the truth, plus Jacob can’t go back to the other pack anyway, so they decide to stay and protect the Cullens. This makes Jared mad, but whatever. Jacob suggests Sam’s pack stay on their land so no one will be forced to fight, then he, Seth and Leah return to the Cullen house where Jacob finds Bella feeling much better. He informs them all that the imminent werewolf attack has been postponed.
Jacob and Edward go outside to chat and Edward tells Jacob that Esme wants them to move in, or to feed them, or to give them clothes or anything else they need since they’re keeping her family safe, but Jacob declines. When they go back inside, they learn that drinking all that blood has made the monster baby super strong and that it’s broken one of Bella’s ribs. She claims she’s still fine, though, and is pretty much just proud of how much the baby is growing even though it’s literally killing her. Most of the Cullens help Bella to Carlisle’s at-home x-ray machine, but Alice stays behind to talk to Jacob.
Alice reveals that she doesn’t like being around Bella right now because the fetus is clouding her future sight. For some reason she can’t comprehend, Alice cannot see the baby’s future and since Bella loves it so much, she is becoming foggy to Alice as well. Alice comments that it’s interesting that she can’t see the baby’s future and that it’s kind of like her not being able to see the werewolves. Hmm…
The next day, Jacob visits with Bella who is all taped up and claiming that she feels fine, so he decides to go hunting with Leah and will leave Seth with her and his bff Edward. Carlisle asks if they can go hunting, too, and Jacob thinks they can and that they should all go together, but they ultimately decide to hunt in groups just in case of imminent werewolf attack. Esme gives Jacob a bunch of stuff to give to Leah, but he doesn’t think she’ll want any of it. He tries to give her stuff though and is right.
Later, Jacob decides he’s going to tell the Cullens to leave Forks so Bella will be away from imminent werewolf attack, but learns that another of Bella’s ribs broke, so they won’t be able to move her away. Jacob also learns that Bella’s been talking to Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie about how much better she’s getting, which makes him super mad because she’s lying to him. Bella is just happy to see Jacob and says feels like her family is complete when he’s there, and he kind of feels that way, too, but isn’t happy about it, you know, since she’s probably about to die.
After Bella goes to sleep, Jacob talks to Edward about Bella lying to Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie. Edward says that Bella’s going to try to continue to have a relationship with Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie because he thinks that Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie will just make up his own conclusions about why Bella looks completely different. That is… interesting… and Jacob gets mad again. Edward shares that the monster baby might not be the only one and that there are legends from South America that might be about another human-vampire child.
After a conversation comparing the baby to Jacob’s werewolfing because it is growing quickly and that Alice can’t see the baby’s future, he decides to wolf out to patrol with Seth and Leah. Leah thanks Jacob for letting her stay with him because of how terrible she felt being Sam’s ex after he imprinted with Emily. Jacob wants to go lone wolf after Bella dies and wants Seth and Leah to go back to Sam, but Leah begs to stay. This conversion is pretty heart-wrenching and is all about Leah feeling like a freak who will never be able to have a baby because becoming a wolf messed up her insides. Jacob says he’ll think about letting her stay with him after Bella is gone, but that Seth really should stay in La Push, finish school, and keep his mom safe.
Back at the Cullen house after the patrol, Jacob tells Carlisle they can go hunting, but Rosalie and Edward refuse to leave Bella’s side. Suddenly, Edward realizes he can hear what the fetus is thinking and suddenly he loves it because he hears that it loves Bella. Bella tells them that she’s picked out names for the baby, Edward Jacob, EJ, if it’s a boy and Renesmee if it’s a girl, which is just ludacris, but everyone’s like, yeah, what a great name and swoons over the baby even more. Jacob thought he and Edward were on the same side, but now, he knows he’s alone. Edward realizes that Jacob is distraught, so he gives him keys to one of their fancy cars and tells him to go for a drive.
Jacob makes a quick eight-hour round trip drive to Seattle to try to stare at girls until he imprints on them. He meets a nice girl who is concerned about his well-being, but then he decides he’s just going to be in love with Bella and thus be alone forever. He heads back to the Cullen house where he learns that, while he was gone, Leah yelled at Bella for making Jacob miserable. Edward asks Jacob to try to keep Leah in line as her alpha, but he thinks he doesn’t need to.
Speaking of being the alpha, Edward asks if, as double werewolf and rightful alpha to the entire pack, Jacob will allow them to try to emergency vampirize Bella in order to save her life if she dies during childbirth, which he wants to happen as soon as Carlisle gets back from hunting. Jacob agrees to the emergency vampirization because he realizes they’re trying to save Bella’s life, not take it away, and we all know how he feels about Bella. Good thing, because the baby is coming now whether anyone wants it to or not. Bella stands, drops her cup of blood and immediately crumples to the ground as EJRenesmee breaks her back.
Rosalie carries a seizing Bella to Carlisle’s hospital room and Edward fills her full of morphine. Alice and Jasper get back from hunting before Carlisle and Esme, so Alice calls for Carlisle to get back immediately. Rosalie decides to cut open Bella’s belly to get the baby out but then, since she hasn’t hunted in a long time, decides she wants to eat Bella, so Jacob tackles her and Alice pulls her away and makes her stay with Jasper. Things get even worse for Bella and Jacob starts performing CPR while Edward bites through her vampire placenta to get the baby, Renesmee it turns out, out of Bella. Bella holds Renesmee for just a second, but then her heart gives out.
Edward demands that Jacob take the baby away so he can try to save Bella by injecting his venom straight into her heart, but Jacob wants nothing to do with it and suggests they throw it out the window. Rosalie comes to take Renesmee away and Jacob hears her tiny heart fluttering as he continues to do CPR on Bella, hoping to push Edward’s venom through her body to bring her back to life. It doesn’t seem to work and Jacob realizes she’s dead. Edward bites Bella all over to add more venom and continues to do chest compressions.
Jacob suddenly realizes he doesn’t want to be anywhere near Bella’s corpse, but has a pull to the tiny heartbeat in the other room. He wants to kill the baby because he’s decided that Sam was right and this thing is a monster. As he approaches, Renesmee looks directly at Jacob and Jacob sees that Renesmee has Bella’s eyes and his whole world shifts around. He’s just imprinted on the newborn baby.
Book three, back to Bella
We come back to Bella as she drops her cup and the baby needs to be delivered. She’s immediately morphined up, and you know, her back is broken so she’s probably paralyzed, so she doesn’t really know what’s going on except that she needs to keep her heart beating. She knows what’s going on sometimes, like when Edward hands her Renesmee and she immediately falls in love with her, but then the baby is taken away and everything kinda stops for a bit… except the pain. Wait… isn’t morphine supposed to stop pain? Apparently not when you’re becoming a vampire. Bella is burning on the inside, but remains completely still for the three day transition into a vampire.
Obviously the morphine wears off and Bella could move if she wanted to, but she doesn’t want Edward to know how much pain she’s in, so she doesn’t move at all. Edward thinks that he messed up and that the transition isn’t working, but it definitely is because everyone notices how beautiful Bella is becoming. Before the transition ends, Bella hears Alice say that they should keep the baby away from her, which is bothersome, but then she finally wakes up to her new vampire life… and realizes everyone is afraid of her. She’s a newborn vampire, super strong, super senses, etc., but she’s also… super normal? Like, not full of blood lust or anything! She looks at dust and kisses Edward and wants to see her baby, but Edward tells her that Renesmee is half-human, so they need to go hunting before seeing her. Don’t worry! Jacob’s got her! She’s totally fine. Bella and Edward jump out of a second story window and begin the hunt.
Bella and Edward frolic through the forest looking for elk and jumping over rivers, and Bella finds everything super easy, and pretty fun, too. She also finds Edward super attractive and keeps getting distracted by his sexiness, but then they see an elk and the hunt is back on. And then it’s off again because the wind shifts and Bella can smell a human and desperately wants to attack. Edward tries to stop her and she snarls at him! Embarrassed by her totally normal vampire actions, she wants to go back to hunting elk again, but then she realizes that Edward is so sexy and he’s like, wait, aren’t you thirsty? and she realizes she is. She dashes off and eats a mountain lion.
After her thirst is satiated, Bella wants to see Renesmee, so on the way back to the house, she asks Edward to tell her about her. Renesmee is warm-blooded and looks like the both of them and is pretty special. They arrive at the house and Jacob offers to face off with Bella first to see if she’s ready to see the baby. That’s weird, but Jacob decides that though Bella may look and smell a little different, she’s still his friend and has permission to see her own baby. Everyone is on high-alert, but Bella is completely fine. She notices that Renesmee is twice as big as what she remembered, so, like Jacob, she will probably be at least twelve feet tall in a matter of months.
Renesmee reaches out for Bella and everyone gets tense again, but then Edward tells them all how she decided not to eat the human on their hunt and so they all relax. Jasper is most surprised because he’s used to dealing with crazy, bloodthirsty newborns, not super tame ones. Renesmee cries and Bella’s motherly instincts take over. She holds her baby while Jacob also holds the baby, which is weird, but then Renesmee touches Bella on the face and shows her her memories of being born, which is also weird. Bella is surprised at her super-powered baby and kisses her forehead, which makes Jacob decide she’s done for right now. Uh oh.
Jacob takes the baby away and Bella’s like… what?! and then she looks at her friend and she looks at her baby and she looks at how her friend is looking at her baby and she snaps. She realizes Jacob has imprinted on the baby. Edward grabs Bella and makes Rosalie take Renesmee away. Seth and Leah arrive too, and they all prepare for the fight that they are all sure is about to take place. Bella is mad at Jacob because this is obviously weird and gross, but he tells her that she knows he can’t help it and that she herself said her family isn’t complete if he’s not a part of it. Bella doesn’t care though on account of how gross it is, and then when Jacob calls Renesmee “Nessie” she completely flips. The fight is on.
The only person that gets injured in the fight is Seth, who jumps in between to stop them, but he’s not mad at Bella because she’s a newborn vampire and couldn’t help herself. After Carlisle patches him up, he and Edward talk to Bella about everything that happened while she was transitioning. Everything’s cool with the werewolves because of the imprinting, but Bella’s still grossed out by it. They also tell Bella that Jacob and Sam, both alphas, can communicate telepathically with each other in wolf form, so that’s pretty helpful. Since everything is wrapped up nicely with the werewolves, Bella thinks about some other issues she’s been worrying about… Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and Renesmee’s rapid growth.
Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie has been calling non stop asking about Bella, but she’s pretty sure she won’t attack him when she sees him, whenever that may be. They decide that they should continue the facade of going to college at Dartmouth which worries Jacob since he probably won’t also get to go to Dartmouth and will have to be away from Renesmee. The entire Cullen family is kind of worried about a lot of things, like Bella randomly attacking everyone, which won’t happen because she has super-self control, and about Renesmee’s rapid growth maybe meaning she’ll have a short life, but maybe that won’t happen either. Her growth does seem to be slowing down slightly. Carlisle wonders if maybe Bella’s newborn control is her special ability. Well, that would be pathetic, wouldn’t it? But it could mean that Bella gets to see Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie sooner than she thought.
Later, everyone surprises Bella with birthday presents which she at first doesn’t really want because, one, she’s not aging anymore and two, she’s never ever liked receiving gifts, but when one gift is an adorable little cottage for her, Edward and Renesmee to live in, she actually appreciates it. The other gift is a new super fast and fancy car even though she literally just got a new super fast and fancy car like two months ago. That one was a tank to keep her fragile human body safe, this one is like, a ferrari or something, so decidedly less tank-like. Even though Bella doesn’t like getting presents, she at least can appreciate the fact that some of her human traits remained, so she really is almost exactly the same as before her change.
Left alone for a little bit in their new house, Bella and Edward get to have vampire sex for the first time and she’s super into it. She asks him if he misses her human squishiness and he says no and that she feels the same to him, and now he doesn’t have to deal with the scent of her human blood, or, you know, the squishiness. They can bang as much as they want to now and he probably won’t bruise her! The only thing she has to worry about now is keeping her priorities in line. She’s always going to want to fuck and she’s always going to want to drink blood, so she has to decide which is most important. Oh, yeah, there’s another thing she has to decide is important… you know… her baby.
They decide to go back to the main Cullen house to see Renesmee. Emmett laughs at them for having finished having sex so soon, but Bella tries to reign in her anger about that. She also learns that Jacob disappeared, which is weird since he’s so obsessed with the baby. Alice suddenly has a vision and she knows where Jacob has gone (even though she isn’t supposed to see any futures involving werewolves…). Jacob has gone to talk to Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie. Jacob arrives back at the Cullen house then and tells them that he didn’t tell Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie anything at all about vampires, but instead, he transformed into a wolf in front of him and told him that Bella’s different now, too, and also she and Edward adopted an orphan. Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie just wants to see Bella and is excited about the prospect of being a smokin’ hot grandpa, so he asks that no one tell him anything about what is actually going on.
Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie arrives at the Cullen house shortly thereafter. While they waited for him to arrive, they shoved brown contact lenses in Bella’s eyes to cover up her newborn red ones and taught her how to act like a human. The reunion is tough for both Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie and Bella. Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie thinks Bella looks weird and Bella’s thirst kicks into overdrive at having a human so close, but everything ends up being fine, even the introduction of Renesmee Carlie (yes, like Charlie plus Carlisle) Cullen goes okay, even though the explanation that she is Edward’s niece doesn’t really fly and he knows it’s all lies. Again, all Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie wants is to not know what’s going on and to just enjoy his family in ignorance, and maybe to watch some sports on TV and come back over and see them all again soon.
Time passes, more wolves join Jacob’s pack, Sue Clearwater, Seth and Leah’s mom, starts taking care of Charlie and Renesmee continues to grow. It’s only been like a week and she’s already walking and talking in complete sentences. Bella has a fight with Emmett to see who is stronger and then she beats up a rock and Renesmee laughs and crushes a rock, too. Everything seems to be going super well, though Edward and Carlisle are still pretty worried about how quickly Renesmee is growing. They begin to do more research, trying to find out anything they can about this remarkable little human vampire. Bella also gets worried because she remembers that the Volturi exist and they’re probably going to come check that she’s a vampire now at any moment and she can’t bear to have them learn about Renesmee before they figure out what exactly is going on with her.
Bella decides that she’s going to go visit the Volturi and Carlisle offers to go with her so Edward and Jacob can stay with Renesmee. They also decide they should go to Brazil because that’s where their research about Renesmee has led them. Bella, Jacob and Renesmee decide to go out hunting to prepare and while they’re out, they see Irina from the Denali clan. She sees them, too, but before Bella can speak to her, Irina runs off, seemingly angry. Bella thinks that because Jacob was with her and Irina knows he’s a werewolf, she’s mad because she still hates all the werewolves for killing Laurent even though he was going to kill Bella. It seems that Bella has completely forgotten that she has a magical child and that Irina’s mother was killed for creating immortal children.
Back at the house, Bella tells Edward and Carlisle about Irina, so they go off to try to talk to her, but they aren’t able to find her. Shrug. They all start talking about their travel plans again but then Alice has a vision. The Volturi are coming for them and bringing an entire army with them and they will arrive when the snow starts to stick to the ground, which will be in about a month. After an inordinately long time, they realize that Irina told the Volturi to come for Renesmee who they believe is an immortal child.
They scramble to try to figure out what to do. They’re pretty sure they can’t defeat the Volturi even if the werewolves join in their fight and Carlisle refuses to ask any of his vampire friends to fight with them. They do decide that they can all ask their friends to come and see that Renesmee isn’t an immortal child and they hope that having witnesses to her growth and her heartbeat will be enough to stop the Volturi. Alice and Jasper leave because Alice can’t see the future enough with Renesmee and Jacob around to figure out what’s going to happen with the Volturi, however… they don't come back.
Everyone searches for Alice and Jasper and they find their trail in the woods leading to Sam’s pack. Sam gives them a note from Alice ripped from one of Bella’s books that says they’re leaving and they’re not coming back and they shouldn’t come look for them, but they will send any friends they encounter along their journeys to help them witness for Renesmee. Edward doesn’t believe that Alice and Jasper would abandon them and thinks Alice knows something else, but has no idea what. Bella believes that Alice knows there’s no hope for any of them and that they’re all going to die. She does wonder why Alice wrote the note on a page ripped from one of her books though…
Bella goes to their cottage and finds the book Alice took the page from. Inside, she finds another note meant only for her with the name and address of someone in Seattle and the suggestion to destroy this information. Bella burns the entire book to keep everything secret from Edward, which is something only she can do. Later, Jacob tells Renesmee what’s going on which Bella is upset by, but Renesmee is smart and unafraid. Edward tells Jacob that he should stay away once other vampires start arriving to meet Renesmee because they’ll probably be afraid or angry at meeting a werewolf, too. Jacob agrees. While this conversation is happening, Renesmee tries to comfort Bella, who is freaking out about Alice’s note, everyone liking Renesmee and learning how to fight the Volturi. Bella never thought being comforted by her daughter would happen since she always coddled her own mother. Bella realizes she must keep Renesmee safe at all costs.
Edward tries to comfort Bella, too, wink, and then they talk about her learning how to fight. Edward tells Bella there’s no point in learning how to fight because if their encounter with the Volturi comes to a fight, they’re all going to be dead anyway. Nice. Edward tells Bella that Jane and Alec are the Volturi’s greatest offense since they both have mind powers that make everyone around them useless. We already know about the Jane Pain power, but now we learn that Alec has the power to take away people’s senses, so any fighter they come across will have no ability to fight back at all. Bella thinks that since Jane and Alec have mental powers they probably won’t be good physical fighters, so she plans to sneak attack them and take them out. Their powers won’t have any effect on her whatsoever.
Soon, the Denali clan arrives. Edward and Bella decide that they should have Jacob there just in case. Bella, Jacob and Renesmee stay in one room while Edward talks to Tanya, Kate, Carmen and Eleazar. He asks them to listen for the tiny weird heartbeat in the other room and smell the weird humanlike smell there, too. They acknowledge that something unique is there and then they are introduced to Renesmee. They all freak out a little, but soon realize that she is not an immortal child. Kate and Tanya apologize for Irina bringing the entire Volturi down upon the Cullens and offer to fight with them if that problem should arise. They all agree to witness to the Volturi though and decide they will do anything to keep Renesmee safe. Carmen then allows Renesmee to show her her gift and the face touching begins.
Eleazar has his own gift, the ability to discern other gifts and he once lived with the Volturi. He realizes that Bella’s secret mind is actually another type of gift. She is a shield and could potentially use her mind-shielding powers to shield other people’s minds, too. He says that Aro has a shield in his guard who can keep him safe, so it’s entirely possible Bella could do the same thing if she could expand it. Kate, who has the power of electricity, reveals that when she first discovered her gift, it was only in her hands, but with practice and training, she can now radiate the electricity all over her entire body.
Edward and Eleazar talk more about the Volturi and Eleazar reveals that they often wage wars in order to collect vampires they know have special gifts. It’s probable that they’re bringing everyone to Forks because they want to take someone home to Volterra with them. Maybe multiple someones. Bella realizes that that’s probably why Alice left, to avoid being forced to join the Volturi and give them her powers of future sight.
Soon enough, lots of other vampires start showing up at the Cullen house. When they meet Renesmee and she touches them in the face, they agree to join up with the Cullens against the Volturi. Well, most of them do. Garrett, a nomad vampire friend, is excited to fight against the Volturi and immediately has a crush on Kate and even agrees to try to be a vegetarian vampire with them. This makes Jacob happy since literally all the rest of them are going to eat people in the area, which is in direct opposition to his werewolf duties. Mary and Randall, some other friends, also agree to be witnesses. Zafrina, who has the ability to put images in people’s heads, and Senna from the Amazon love Renesmee immediately and also agree to help. The only one that seems wary is Amun from the Egyptian clan. He also seems super protective of his clanmate Benjamin who has the ability to influence the elements.
Even though they have a very large group of vampires to help them, Bella still wants to learn how to fight, so she works with Emmett. She also works with Kate to learn how to expand her shield power. Kate electrocutes Edward a bunch and Bella is eventually able to shield him, so then Kate moves on to Renesmee. This infuriates Bella, activating her gift even more. She’s eventually able to expand her shield to protect Edward and Renesmee, and some other friends, too, before she gets too tired and her shield snaps back in place around only her.
A little while later, still within the one month time span before the Volturi arrive, two more vampires show up, the Romanians. They are traditional vampires like the Volturi and they hate them for overthrowing their empire hundreds of years ago. They hope there will be a fight and they’ll finally be able to take the Volturi down. Carlisle assures them that there won’t be a fight, but they can always hope. They’ve been waiting for revenge for a long time, so they're not going to miss their opportunity. After the arrival of the Romanians, the Cullens now have seventeen vampires on their side, the largest non-violent gathering of vampires pretty much ever.
Bella decides to take Renesmee to see Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie, but she is actually going to drop her and Jacob off with him and then check out that name and address in Seattle left for her by Alice. Bella finds J. Jenks, a lawyer. When she meets him, she learns that he has worked with Jasper for a very long time and his associates have worked with him before Jenks joined the firm. J. Jenks provides illegal documentation for the Cullen family, like drivers’ licenses, birth records and passports. Bella realizes Alice sent her here secretly to get forged documents for Renesmee, and probably Jacob, too, in order to keep Renesmee safe from the Volturi. She requests documents for Jacob and Vanessa Wolfe that she will return for in one week, which she then puts into a backpack full of money along with a secret note meant for Alice that will allow her to find Jacob and Renesmee in the future if she wishes to.
When Bella gets back home with her “Christmas shopping,” she’s pretty sure that Edward knows she’s up to something, but he doesn’t know what. They spend Christmas at Smokin’ Hot Billy Burke/Charlie’s house with Sue, who is definitely his girlfriend now, and literally all the werewolves. Jacob gives Renesmee a promise ring which is vomit-inducing because we all know what promise rings mean and she’s literally… four months old? Bella’s not bothered by that much anymore since she’s made plans for them to run away together if the Volturi encounter goes badly. Edward is still grossed out though.
When they get back to the Cullen house, it is to find that one of their witnesses, Alistair, left and that Amun wants to leave, too, and take Benjamin with him. Benjamin however chooses to stay with the Cullens. The Romanians declare that they will fight with the Cullens if it comes down to it because they can’t allow the Volturi to get any stronger than they already are. This causes pretty much everyone else to agree to fight as well. Bella worries about her shield, especially when she realizes that Renesmee is able to use her powers on her with no problem at all, but Edward decides that either Bella’s and Renesmee’s gifts are are the same wavelength or Renesmee’s face-touching gift is so powerful that no one can avoid it.
The arrival of the Volturi is imminent, so Edward and Carlisle begin patrolling the area where they plan to fight them off. It’s the same clearing where they fought the newborn army in Eclipse… the sleeveless white unbuttoned button down shirt meadow or the super massive black hole baseball meadow? Either way, they’re there and ready for the attack. The night before New Year’s Eve, snow falls and sticks to the ground. It is time. Bella tells Renesmee that she loves her and that she and Jacob might have to run away soon, but that she’s prepared everything they might need to disappear and survive.
The Volturi arrive and, in addition to their army of like, thirty, they also have witnesses. There’s no way the Cullen’s smaller group of vampires can win the fight. Irina is among the Volturi and will have, intentionally or not, told Aro everything she knows about everyone, which convinces Edward that the Volturi are going to kill pretty much everyone except for the ones they want to keep. Soon, the werewolves arrive to the field, almost twenty of them, which evens the numbers quite substantially and seems to frighten the Volturi.
Carlisle approaches Aro and tries to explain to his old friend that they are not there to fight because no laws have been broken and that Renesmee is not an immortal child. This is obvious to everyone in the clearing. Aro brings Irina over and she admits that the so-called immortal child she saw was much smaller before. Aro then asks for Edward to come forward so he can touch him and read his thoughts. Bella notices Jane smirking and knows that she’s about to try something, so, full of rage, she throws her shield around him after Aro reads his thoughts.
Aro realizes after reading Edward’s thoughts that everything Carlisle said about Renesmee and the witnesses is true. He then asks to meet Renesmee. Bella brings her forward and, after complimenting both Bella and Renesmee, he sees for himself that Renesmee is Bella and Edward’s biological daughter and that they did not create an immortal child. He shares this with Caius (ARTIFICE!) who believes they have somehow been tricked. Renesmee then touches Aro’s face to explain her version of everything, and his desire quickly turns to the werewolves who he believes will make excellent guard dogs for the Volturi since Jacob does such a good job of protecting Renesmee. Edward shuts that down pretty quickly, so then Aro decides he must confer with the rest of the Volturi to decide what they’re going to do.
As the Volturi talk, Aro about them telling the truth and Caius not believing (ARTIFICE!), Bella stretches her shield around everyone on their side, just in case. Caius talks about the Cullens siding with the “children of the moon,” aka the werewolves, the vampires mortal enemies, but Aro dismisses this and tells Caius that the wolves here are not actual werewolves but instead they are shapeshifters since they are not controlled by the moon. This is interesting and seems like an afterthought to cover the fact that none of the wolves act like traditional werewolves at all.
Caius is mad and tries to get Irina on his side about the wolves, to bring a formal charge against them, but Irina won’t. She doesn’t have any ill will toward the Cullens and admits that going to the Volturi was a mistake. Caius, being mad, executes Irina on the spot. He rips off her head and sets her on fire. This of course causes Kate and Tanya to want to fight, but Garrett and Zafrina stop them. Aro then asks to speak to some of Carlisle’s witnesses which doesn’t really make much sense. Aro asks Amun if Renesmee is Bella and Edward’s biological child, which she is, and then Aro asks if Amun thinks she should be allowed to live, after all, they don’t know anything about what her future holds. This tactic doesn’t work either.
Garrett gets mad and declares that nothing they do is going to dissuade the Volturi from fighting because deep down, they just see the Cullens as a threat even though they are peaceful. Aro then decides to let the witnesses decide for themselves what they want to do while he and the Volturi convene again to make their decision. Bella obviously knows that the Volturi are going to fight, so she tells Renesmee to run away with Jacob when that happens. Edward leans over and tells them he loves them, calls Jacob his brother son, and tells his daughter goodbye.
Bella suddenly feels a weird fluttering against her shield and knows that Jane and Alec are trying to use her powers against them while Aro and Caius continue to talk. Apparently this is what they always do with any judgment they make. While they chat, Alec takes away everyone’s feelings and Jane tortures them into submission. Everyone starts divvying up who they’re going to fight, but then Aro tries, probably realizing that something is going on with Bella’s shield and Jane and Alec’s abilities, to convince everyone with powers on the Cullen side to join the Volturi. Nah dog. He finally says they would leave in peace if they could just determine Renesmee’s future.
Who should arrive then but Alice! She brings with her Jasper and some other vampires. Alice introduces one of them as Nahuel ((nah-WELL)) and one as his aunt, Huilen ((WEE-lynn)). It turns out that Nahuel is half-human, half-vampire just like Renesmee. He explains that, like with Bella and Edward, he was conceived from a vampire father and a human mother, but his mother did not survive his birth. He also says that he has three sisters and his father is out now creating more hybrids, and that he turned his aunt into a vampire. His bite has the power to do that, but his sisters’ do not. This is all very intriguing, as is the fact that Nahuel reached physical and mental maturity just seven years after his birth and that he is more than a hundred years old. Now that the Volturi have evidence that Renesmee poses no threat, they decide to leave, perhaps to go after Nahuel’s father.
Everyone celebrates the Volturi’s departure, but they all vow that if they should return for any reason, they would band together again to stop them. Not much later, all the visiting vampires leave, except for Garrett who stays with the Denalis, and Nahuel and Huilen, who want to know more about Renesmee, probably because Renesmee is the only other hybrid he’s ever met that isn’t his sister. Nah dog, she’s already creepily spoken for.
Later, after everything is settled down, Bella reveals to Edward that she has done more practicing with her shield than what she was able to do in the clearing. She removes her shield from herself completely, allowing Edward to finally be able to read her mind. She shows him every memory that she has of him and how much she loves him. Everyone lives happily ever after after that.
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