"You kill him, you risk killing me."

He didn't say anything. Maybe he couldn't.

"Quinn, I don't want my soul mate. I don't like him, and I don't want to spend my life with him."

"He's your soul mate. Whether you like him or not is really irrelevant."

"That might be the case normally, but I am not normal. This whole situation is not normal."

Again he didn't answer.

"Damn it," I exploded. "Whatever my wolf feels, she is not the whole of me. And the part of me that is vampire wants you, not him."

He finally turned around to face me. There were tears in his eyes. Goddamn tears. For me. For us.

I scrambled off the bed and ran to him. He wrapped his arms around me and held me so tight I could barely breathe, but I didn't care.

I wanted this. Wanted him.

Wanted us.

"We have to face this together, Quinn. I don't want to go forward without you. I really don't."

"He's your soul mate-"

"But so are you! Damn it, the connection is there, and it's real, and I don't care if it isn't as deep or as strong as what I feel with my wolf. It's there, and I'm going to do everything I can to hold onto it."

He laughed softly. "What you or I want may not matter in the end."

"Maybe it won't, but we can still try." I shifted my head from his shoulder, looked into the gloriously emotional depths of his dark eyes, and whispered, "Please tell me you'll try."

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. "I've fought for a very long time to make you mine, Riley. It's not within me to give up now, no matter how impossible the odds."

The relief that rushed through me was so great that my knees felt like they were going to buckle.

He wasn't going to walk away.

He was going to remain in my life.

All I had to do now was hope fate let it stay that way.