"Look, Ash. I love you and God knows we were made for each other, but we're forcing this, " Mary-Lynette said. She was holding back tears as she tried to end it.

"Mary, why are you so intent on not being with me, " Ash protested. He gave Mary-Lynette a pained glance before dropping his gaze to the floor. "I'll die, you know, " he mumbled.

"No, you won't. Don't go there. You will live. If it was really going to work out, I would be a lamia, like you, and we wouldn't be trying this hard. It's not easy for us, like for Jade and Mark. Hell, I don't even think Rowan could pull this off. We both know Kestrel couldn't.

"I love you. Why won't you believe me?" Ash pleaded.

"I do. I do believe you, and I love you, too. But we both know this isn't working. I need to find somebody who can actually be with me. Can you imagine what they'd do to me if any of the other Redferns were to find out? They'd kill me! Can you live with that?"

"No, I guess not. But they don't have to know. I can take you to live with my cousin James and his wife Poppy. Or my cousins Thea and Blaise. They're witches. They could protect you. They have different rules. "

It hurt Mary-Lynette to see Ash trying so hard. When she first met him, she wouldn't have thought Ash was capable of feeling. He was a stone that couldn't be penetrated. He hated humans and all they stood for. Humans were nothing but food to Ash Redfern. If you had told him he'd find his soulmate in a non-dsitict human like Mary-Lynette, he'd have probably ripped your head off. After meeting Mary-Lynette, and working on the mystery of his murdered great aunt, he'd gone off to atone for all the misdoings he'd done, promising to come back in a year for Mary-Lynette. When he'd come back, though, Mary-Lynette had found that they could never truly be together.

"No, Ash. It really has to be over. You need to leave, now." Mary-Lynette opened her front door. Ash turned to leave. As he was walking out, he was overcome with a sense of over powering anger and grief. He couldn't stop himself, and he felt the distant feel of his muscles pulling in unnatural ways. The more he ripped, the greater the pain he felt was. Eventually he calmed down enough to see what he'd done. He fell to the ground sobbing, holding Mary-Lynette's motionless yet still warm body.

He pulled himself together and walked into the cold night air. He walked into the woods surrounding her house. He felt so much pain. It was if someone had pulled out half his heart and killed it. He felt he should be dead, yet somehow he wasn't.

"So, this is what it's like to have your soulmate killed?" Ash thought. He pulled down a branch from a nearby tree and plunged it into his own chest.