I'D BEEN THINKING DEEPLY ABOUT WHAT ROSALIE SAID ABOUT ANDREI'S FERTILITY FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS. I'd always been blamed for not being able to conceive a child despite being in good health. He'd told Chrissy that she was at fault as well. Despite trying everything, from prayer to IVF, nothing had worked. The more that I remembered from our relationship, the tension around fertility was the worst part.

Never getting a break, always thinking about what I'd done wrong. Thinking that this is why he's mad and then telling myself that it's my fault despite the fact that nobody should have treated me like that even if I did struggle with infertility... How much of this had been for nothing? He was angry that I couldn't get pregnant, but it could have been him. I'd never imagined it before because he'd been so sure that as a man, he should have gotten me pregnant. And he was right, he should have, if he'd been able to.

Then came the reminder of every man in the building. All male vampires, some unmated. Could they be able to get a human woman pregnant? If so, what would that mean? Would could it mean for all of them? Would we have to tighten the rules, forbid human women to sleep with male vampires? What would happen to these children? Did they age like everyone else?

All of these questions for me to consider as I stayed in my quarters. I didn't want to see anyone. I moved my computer up to this desk in order to check on the emails coming in. Marcus wasn't too happy about it, but at least today, I don't need more stress. I don't want to see people when I'm reconsidering events that happened.

I can't even remember half of my relationship with Andrei, curtesy of his vampire gift. I didn't remember that he was a vampire. I remember some of the women he killed, but it gets blurry during the time I know he killed them. Those women, all of those women that pleaded for their lives when they were brought to our hideout, all dead because he was angry with me or Chrissy. He made me feel like it was my fault, too, because of course, murdering young women is totally the correct response to your girlfriends not getting pregnant or getting mouthy after you lock them up.

Just the reminders, this war, is enough to make my blood boil. His audacity to blame me. Always blame, never understanding who I am or what I wanted. I was invisible, yet he said I was everything to him. The most perfect angel he'd ever seen in a woman. Yet I always did things wrong and had to be punished.

Remolded, bent, broken, uplifted, nursed, and belittled.

His name didn't deserve to be spoken. After what he did, he needed to be destroyed. To be able to inflict such pain and torture in the name of love and family directly contradicts what people should be allowed to do. Andrei passed the line between person and monster and went further down into deplorable every time he doesn't get what he wants. There's no law he won't break to get to me, no person he won't kill or erase the memories of. Not even Aro, a man whose seen what he can do firsthand with Wren, understands what he will do.

That is the most frustrating part of it all. My history blinds me according to a few vampires around the globe. As if my history is not the key guide into why he shouldn't be alive. I hated being in charge of the emails some days, the days when I get an odd email telling whoever is responding that this war is over pettiness and we should just leave each other alone.

As if my fucking life wasn't in his hands, as if standing down was even an option when he treats people so horribly.

Completely alone in my experiences is what I am. Nobody here who has been in there with me. Chrissy is all the way in Forks, across the globe, and is busy enough that I don't want to bother her.

One or two vampires sending in emails shouldn't be getting to me like this. I should be able to put it all behind me and look at this war objectively as the rest of leadership. Yet, I find myself not being able to do it. Every time I get new information, I want to dig myself deeper into a hole. Aro is off, Caius is off, and Marcus is handling more than he should given his poor experiences during war. I'm the one manning the computers because I fixed the systems and they all want me to have an active role from a safe location.

A month into this war and I'm falling apart. So it goes, fuck me.

A fervent knock at the door threw me out of my abysmal mind.

"River, are you available?" It was Rose, thankfully. "Emmett and I wanted to talk to you privately about something."

"Come on in," I beckoned the two of them as they came into my private quarters. "I'm mostly handling the computers, so if it's urgent I'd go to Marcus to pass a message on."

"No, no, it's... uh..." Emmett trailed on as he sat uncomfortably in one of the loveseats I had next to my half filled bookshelf. "Baby?"

"I told you to say it," Rose snapped as she sat down with a sickly sweet smile. I could feel the daggers she was glaring into her mate and felt glad that I wasn't on the receiving end of her gaze.

"You sent out a message last night to look for Bella and Edward," Emmett looked towards the ground, "and Rose and I are a bit concerned that the newer guards are also going to go after Carlisle and Esme."

"You think they're going to go after Carlisle and Esme," Rose rebutted. "I think that they're going to call for open forum to drag Carlisle and Esme into the open to critique their lifestyle."

Emmett shook his head and muttered, "Not like a few haven't gone after him before."

"Come on-"

I cut Rose off before she could continue, "-We haven't decided on whether or not we even can do open forum. Allowing all vampires to come into the castle during a war could be an easy massacre for Andrei and any potential followers that he's gained. Most Covens have relocated away from the Americas due to how big the landmass is and how sparsely the vampire population is spread."

"A few people have been talking," Emmett explained, "Mostly online. A bunch of vampires have been in this Skype group, including me."

"They check who gets added in. Emmett's worried about what they're saying in the group about Carlisle and Esme since Edward and Bella have had a warrant out on them," Rose added.

Great, as if the email groups weren't already hard to deal with. I don't even have Skype on my computer.

"People are allowed to talk trash, even if I don't like that," I said. "I'll make an account. Tell whoever is running this thing to add me in, if only to make sure people aren't making threats or being shady."

---

GOD, THEY REALLY DID NOT LIKE EDWARD. Half of the messages since the warrant went out were about dunking on Edward. His face, his hair, his religion (which was a bit far), and his relationship. Some of the insults were so creatively vulgar that I'd might have thought Caius had some alternative account just to make them. The vegetarian vampires as a whole were adamantly disliked based off of the messages that were being sent, which at some point just felt like outright bullying. Yet, some of them raised good points as to why their diets sucked in the modern age, mainly being that animals were going extinct in areas that the Cullens hunted in and they were making it harder for human researchers and conservationists to do their jobs.

And the fact, which I did not know, that multiple of our sources in the United States Government have had to scrub video footage of the Cullens in their hunting ground. Conservationists were now attaching small cameras to trees to watch Mountain Lions and had caught Edward and Rosalie killing one. Emmett had been spotted by hikers.

A fucking nightmare that didn't show up in any of my files.

Any of the files.

No files on these incidences. The fact that this slipped Volturi leadership is astounding. Apparently it's been an open secret and hasn't taken off online in most vampire related forums, but those areas are getting bigger. Some humans do believe in vampires and if they see a pattern with vegetarians hunting animals...

"How bad is it?" Marcus asked from over my shoulder, having come to see all of the Skype messages from the vampire population that dominated this Skype chat.

"I'm more concerned that Aro has no idea that these videos even existed," I admitted, looking back at him before glancing at the new messages popping up. "He's going to be pissed that nobody told him and will likely end vegetarianism as an acceptable diet no matter the backlash."

Aro definitely gives more of a shit about people putting two and two together than making some vampires uncomfortable. The population of vegetarian vampires is quite small, though they are adamant about it's importance and are sometimes preachy like Edward. More and more humans are turning to a more plant based diet due to the impact on the world. Vampires eat too many animals for it to be safe if they're monitoring populations like they allegedly are now.

"Do you know how many videos Penny said she scrubbed?" Marcus hummed as he stared intently at the onslaught of insults coming Carlisle's way.

"She said it was 7 and she had to kill 4 people in order to keep this a secret. She barely got there in time for one who was about to tell his family." Imagine the tragedy of the whole family dying to keep their affairs in order. "Marcus, this is very bad. I don't know how Aro is going to react when we tell him."

Bullshit. He was going to crash out. Throw things. Scream at guards. Scream at Caius. Scream with Caius. Cry in his room. Cry on the phone.

"This is going to be an incident," Marcus mumbled as he stopped leaning over me. "Vampires being on the internet to pretend to be vampires is one thing, becoming American cryptids is another. Frankly, it is much harder to convince these humans that believing in vampires is crazy or that they really do burn in the sun. When there were accusations, we used to be able to go to church and preach. Society is largely secular now."

"Killing people used to be easier too," I said with a sigh, looking at the chat again. "People going missing in mountains is going to become a problem if they start adding cameras up there."

"We can usually throw money at that problem," Marcus reassured. "Conservationists have activists behind them. Much harder to convince fanatics. Park officials will take the direct deposit and erase the footage of us entering the park."

This whole war would run us dry in terms of funds if it went on too long. Fuck, I hated all of this. The knowledge of these issues didn't help at all with my mental state even if it gave me a distraction. There's too much at stake for a few photos to ruin our immortal lives.

"You need to get on this chat and manage the threats, Marcus," I said weakly. "I can't do much more of this."