(Edythe POV)
The house welcomed me the way it always did, with warmth, quiet, and the familiar stillness of my family settled into the wood and walls like it belonged there. The one place we didn't have to hide who and what we were.
I stepped inside and paused, not because I needed to orient myself, but because I needed the first second to be mine.
I already knew Alice had been listening earlier. I'd heard her, clear as day, call Thomas "bossy" from the living room, delighted and offended at the same time. The memory sat in the back of my mind like a pin: small, sharp, impossible to ignore.
Then the pin twisted into something heavier.
Thomas.
Walking into a room full of wolves and elders and old overblown pride.
I set my school bag on the entry table with more care than it deserved.
Alice was on the sofa like she'd been placed there by a spring-loaded mechanism, perfect posture, perfect clothes, perfect focus, and the moment I crossed the threshold her head snapped toward me.
"You're here," she said, not asking. Her eyes flicked over me in a single, rapid inventory. "And you didn't bring Bossy in with you."
I didn't blink. I didn't smile. I just took a slow step farther into the room and let my voice stay level.
"He's going to the meeting."
The brightness in Alice's expression didn't disappear, but it tightened at the edges, like someone had pulled a ribbon too hard.
Esme appeared from the kitchen doorway, hands already drying on a towel she didn't need. Her face was soft, but her eyes went straight to mine.
"Is he alright?" she asked.
"He's himself," I said. It wasn't comfort. It was truth. "Determined to be reasonable where other people aren't."
Carlisle walked up behind her, calm as always. If I chose to focus on his mind I'd find the same measured current: risk, probability, a doctor's refusal to panic. But I didn't need to. I could see it in the set of his shoulders.
"You're staying here," Carlisle said, not an order, not a question. A statement made to protect everyone.
"I am," I agreed.
Alice tipped her head, eyes narrowing. "I can't see it," she said, irritation clipped into the words. "Not cleanly. The moment Thomas is too involved, everything goes…wrong. Like someone smeared ink over the path. Anything to do with the pack just makes it worse."
I knew. All of us knew.
Alice's gift wasn't broken. It was adapting…and Thomas was the variable that made it stumble.
"Then don't chase the path," Carlisle said gently. "Plan for what we know."
Alice huffed, then snapped her attention toward the stack of papers on the coffee table like she could physically wrestle the world back into place.
"Fine," she declared. "Wedding planning. Because if I don't have something I can control, I'll start redecorating the future."
Esme's lips pressed together in a fond, long-suffering way.
"Seating," Alice said, flipping a page. "Music. Timeline. Emergency contingency plans for human panic."
Esme lifted her chin slightly. "I was thinking about Renee," she said softly, latching onto the practical. "If I reach out first, just a call, she might feel welcomed instead of…surrounded."
Renee was an unpredictable weather system wearing a smile.
"A call is safe," Alice agreed. "A call is normal. A call is…"
"One call is dangerous," I interrupted quietly, and all three of them looked at me.
I kept my posture calm. I kept my voice gentle. But I didn't soften the meaning.
"Renee loves loudly," I said. "And she fears loudly. If she feels excluded, she will compensate. If she feels included, she will compensate. The only difference is how much collateral damage happens in the process. If we involve her, we need to plan to contact her often now that we know she is coming. We need to make her feel included on purpose, not as an afterthought."
Esme's expression didn't change, but her thoughts, if I'd chosen them, would have warmed with sympathy for the woman she had never met and already wanted to comfort.
"We'll do it carefully," Esme said.
Alice's eyes flicked over me again, sharper. "You're wound tight."
I didn't deny it.
I had spent years being calm because calm was useful. Calm kept my family safe. Calm kept the humans from seeing teeth and hunger and the thin edge beneath our polite masks.
But calm was not the same thing as gentle.
"And you," Alice went on, voice brightening as if she could force it, "are going to sit down and look at these swatches because if you start thinking about Thomas too loudly I will…"
"…throw you out a window?" I offered, still calm.
Alice blinked, then laughed once, sharp and pleased. "See? That. That's you."
Esme's gaze slid to mine, careful. "Edythe…"
I heard what she didn't say: Don't let the worry turn into something you can't control.
I exhaled slowly. "I'm here," I said again. "I'm not going to make this worse."
I meant it.
But I also knew what I would do if Thomas didn't come back safe.
Not because I lacked control.
Because when I loved, I loved with teeth.
Alice slapped a page down like she was physically pinning the conversation back to the wedding. "Invitations," she announced. "We need to finalize who is and isn't going to be there."
A pause, and then her eyes flicked to me.
"The elders," she said, tone carefully casual. "Are we…doing that?"
Esme didn't look away. Carlisle didn't intervene. They were letting me answer, because they understood what this was.
Not etiquette.
Strategy.
And, worse, symbolism.
"I've been thinking about Leah," I said.
Alice's head snapped up. "Leah Leah."
"Yes."
Esme's voice stayed gentle. "Would that help?"
Or would it read as provocation? A vampire wedding invitation to a wolf who had become a symbol of resistance and pain and pack politics?
Carlisle's voice was calm, clinical. "It depends on who interprets it."
"The elders," Alice said flatly.
"And Sam," Esme added, softer.
"If Leah comes," I said, "she comes for Thomas. Not to support me. Not to support Bella. Not to make peace with the Cullens. Thomas."
Alice's eyes narrowed, curiosity sparking. "That's…"
"Complicated," I finished for her.
Esme's expression softened. "Would Thomas want her invited?"
"He would want the choice to be hers," I said. "And he would want it handled in a way that doesn't turn her into a message."
Alice made an impatient sound. "Everything is a message."
"Yes," I said, and my voice stayed mild. "That's why we're being careful."
Carlisle nodded once. "We can wait on that decision. We don't need to decide tonight."
I didn't like waiting.
Waiting was helplessness dressed up as wisdom.
But I forced myself to nod. "Fine."
Alice's attention suddenly went distant, eyes unfocusing for the briefest flicker, her gift catching on something that wasn't here yet.
Then she snapped back with a grin.
"Katrina," she said.
Esme straightened. Carlisle's focus sharpened.
"Kate?" I asked.
Alice nodded. "She's coming, she will be here in the next couple of days."
The name landed with a strange, familiar weight.
Not unpleasant.
Not entirely comfortable, either.
Kate was a sharp line in my past, bright, electric, and too honest in ways that made it impossible to pretend I was only what my family expected. For a time, she'd been…relief. An answer to loneliness I'd never admitted to out loud.
And now she was coming into a house full of wedding plans, old wounds, and a future balanced on a treaty line.
Esme's voice stayed gentle. "Just Kate?"
Alice's grin faltered by a fraction. Not guilt. Annoyance. The kind that meant the future wasn't giving her what she wanted.
"Just Kate," she admitted, as if the words tasted wrong.
Carlisle didn't ask why. He didn't need to. He only said, calm and measured, "Then we plan with that in mind."
Alice flipped a page with too much force. "Fine. Denali section: one."
Esme's brows drew together. "But Tanya…"
Alice cut her off with a sharp lift of her pen. "Don't. I'm not getting anything useful when Thomas is involved and the pack is involved and the word wedding is involved. It's like the future is doing that thing where it smiles politely and shuts the door in my face."
"That's called consequences," I said mildly.
Alice glared at me. "Don't be wise. You're only wise when you're worried, and it makes me want to throw pillows."
"I'm worried and wise," I agreed. "It's a package deal."
Esme's mouth twitched, almost a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes.
Because Thomas was still out there.
And even in this warm, familiar room, my mind kept reaching past the walls like a hand searching for something it couldn't quite touch.
"Okay," Alice said briskly, forcing brightness back into her tone. "Guest list. Humans first, because humans are fragile and they need to feel important."
Carlisle's gaze shifted to me briefly, quiet permission, quiet reminder.
Stay calm. Stay here.
I stayed in my chair. I kept my posture loose. My face was composed.
And under it all, part of my focus was watched the windows for Thomas's truck.
"Charlie Swan," Alice said, tapping her pen on the page.
"Renee and Phil," Esme added immediately, and I heard the warmth in her voice, the careful, deliberate kindness she offered strangers because she couldn't stop herself.
"And Bella," Alice continued. "Obviously."
"Angela Weber," Esme said, softer, like she was naming a kind thing she wanted to protect.
Alice scribbled. "Ben Cheney."
Then her pen hovered. "Mike and Jessica?"
"No," I said at the same time Esme said, "Maybe"
Esme blinked, then gave me an apologetic look. "I just don't want Charlie overwhelmed."
"He'll be overwhelmed by Renee," I said calmly. "Mike and Jessica will be unnecessary damage. Just make sure to give him an invitation for a plus one."
Alice's eyes lit with vindication. "Thank you."
Esme sighed, but she nodded. "Alright. No Mike, no Jessica."
"Good," I said, because the last thing Charlie needed was Jessica Stanley sniffing for scandal like it was perfume.
Alice made a satisfied noise and moved on. "The wedding party…"
"There is no wedding party," I reminded her.
Alice's eyes flashed. "There is always a wedding party."
"There is a bride and a groom," I said. "And a collection of witnesses trying not to terrify the minister."
Carlisle broke into the conversation, "Speaking of that… Who is going to officiate at the wedding, do we have an idea on that?"
The room paused.
Alice's pen hovered above the paper. Esme's hands stilled where they'd been smoothing an invisible wrinkle from the edge of a seating chart. Even the quiet in the house felt like it leaned in, waiting.
For a moment, no one spoke, because naming a person meant inviting them into our orbit, into our secrecy, into the thin strip of normal we were trying to lay down like a runner over broken glass.
I didn't let the silence grow for long and blurted out my first thought.
"What about you?" I said, the words simple because the solution was. "You could get ordained online nowadays."
Alice blinked once, then her face lit like someone had just handed her a new set of blueprints.
"Oh," she breathed, delighted. "Oh, that's perfect."
Esme's eyes widened, then softened. "Carlisle…"
Carlisle went still, not startled, not offended, just caught in that familiar pause where he weighed the ethics, the logistics, and the humanity of it all in the space of a heartbeat he didn't need.
"It would," he said carefully, "eliminate several risks."
"It eliminates all of them," Alice declared, already moving, already rearranging the world in her head. "No strangers. No awkward questions. No minister trying to make small talk about how pale everyone is."
Esme's mouth curved, a quiet, fond thing. "Alice…"
"I'm just saying," Alice insisted, but she was smiling. "Carlisle officiates. Bride and groom. Witnesses. Done."
Carlisle's gaze shifted to me, calm and steady. "Would you be comfortable with that?"
I kept my posture composed. I kept my voice gentle. But I didn't soften the truth.
"I'd be comfortable with family," I said. "With someone who understands what this is, and what it isn't."
Esme's expression warmed, and for a second the worry in her eyes loosened. "Then we'll do it properly."
Alice snapped her pen down like a judge's gavel. "Settled. Now, back to invitations. If Carlisle is officiating, that changes placement. Sightlines. Timing. The processional…"
"There is no processional," I said.
Alice's gaze snapped to me. "There is always a processional."
"There is walking," I corrected, still calm. "From one point to another. Ideally without tripping."
Esme's mouth curved, quick and quiet. Carlisle's expression stayed composed, but there was a softening around his eyes that meant he was amused and pretending he wasn't.
Alice stabbed her pen toward the page. "Fine. Walking. Who walks with you?"
"I do," I said. "I have legs. If you don't trust me to be steady on them, then… Carlisle can do that too. He is my father in this life after all."
Alice's eyes widened, just a fraction, surprise first, then delight, like I'd handed her a new ribbon to tie around the whole event.
Esme's expression softened in a way that made the room feel warmer without anyone moving. Carlisle went still for a moment, not because he didn't understand, but because he did.
"You don't have to…" Esme began, gentle.
"I know," I said. "I'm not obligated. I'm choosing."
Alice recovered fast, pen already moving again. "Okay…okay. Bride escorted by officiant-father. That's… actually more perfect." Her eyes lit with the kind of certainty that only Alice could manage. "Symmetry. Family. Minimal stranger risk. Also, it will make Charlie feel like this is normal, because humans love father-things."
"So do vampires," Carlisle agreed quietly.
Esme's gaze stayed on me. "Would that make you comfortable?"
I didn't let my voice sharpen. I didn't let my face change. But I didn't pretend this was only logistics, either.
"It would," I said. "It's honest."
Carlisle inclined his head once, a small acknowledgment that carried more weight than a speech. Esme's fingers tightened together briefly, like she was holding onto the warmth of the idea.
"Front row," Alice said, tapping the paper. "Charlie and Bella together. That's non-negotiable. Renee and Phil…"
"Close enough for Renee to feel included," Esme said softly, "but not so close she can… redirect the day."
Alice wrote quickly. "Renee: aisle seat, quick exit, line-of-sight to Bella."
"And Phil next to her," Esme added. "He steadies her."
"Good," I said. "Because if Phil isn't there to absorb her energy, she'll attempt to recruit strangers."
Alice looked up, eyes bright with grim delight. "I love when you talk about humans like they're storms."
"Humans are storms," I said, mild. "They just think they're sunshine."
Esme sighed, half amusement, half resignation. "We'll call her. More than once."
Alice added a note in the margin. "Renee contact schedule."
"Don't," I warned her without looking.
"I'm doing it," she said, cheerful and entirely unrepentant.
Carlisle's gaze slid to the windows, then back to me, quiet reminder without words. Stay here. Let Thomas handle what he chose to handle.
I just sighed internally and focused on the wedding details again.