A/N: Thank you to The Child of Time for pre-reading, and to thir13enth for beta-ing. You're both amazing!

Copyright belongs to Stephenie Meyer, not me. Seriously - not suitable not anyone underage or of a delicate disposition.

They say that there's a fine line between love and hate. I fully understood that. Well, I understood that since meeting Daniel. It was as if I was torn in two. I knew that I was falling in love with him against my will, and I knew that he frustrated me to no end most of the time.

I was so accustomed to seeing the bright side of situations, and Daniel only ever saw the gloom. He saw our burgeoning relationship as a bad thing, like I was shackling him into matrimony against his better judgment, when in reality I knew that I didn't want to marry him. Sometimes I could barely stand to be in the same room as him.

But then I would decide to walk away, and the visions which flooded my mind of my abject misery would make me stay by his side. It was a no-win situation.

"What's wrong with humans?" he asked in frustration.

I threw my hands up and paced the alley. "We were both human at one point. Does it not feel just a tiny bit wrong to kill them?"

"No. It's how we survive."

"But if there's another way, isn't it better to save a sentient life? I can't get over the fact that if I kill someone, there's a family who is missing an integral piece of themselves."

"So you kill Bambi's mother instead."

"It's not the same, and you know it! Humans don't think twice about being omnivores, but they sure as hell would object to cannibalism. It's just like that."

"Drinking from humans isn't cannibalism because we're not the same species."

I turned away from him, focusing on the red brick pattern before me. "But we were born human," I said softly. "That person you kill could be your own flesh and blood. They could be a family member."

"I don't have flesh and blood. Well…. there's no blood in me right now, but I plan to change that in a few minutes."

"You're impossible!" I cried in frustration, stalking back toward him until I was only a few feet away.

He just shrugged at me, a slight smirk on his face, as if he was pleased with how much he was pissing me off.

"Just try it. Please," I begged, looking up at him with the best puppy-dog eyes I could manage.

"No."

"Please, Dan? Just once?"

I stood statue-still in the middle of the alley, watching him. He crossed his arms as he glared at me.

"It's not happening, Alice. We're vampires. We hunt humans. It's simple."

The seconds ticked by as we stared at each other, twenty yards of animosity between us. The shadows from the surrounding buildings couldn't hide the darkness of his eyes or how his nostrils twitched as a human girl walked past the entrance to the alley. He broke our gaze to glance at the girl.

I stopped the brief vision forcing itself into my mind in its tracks, not wanting to see it, and I gritted my teeth. "I'm going back to the hotel," I informed him. "I'm not going to watch this."

He only nodded briefly and didn't try to stop me. His attention was on his prey. His prey, who held something more than a passing resemblance to me, was completely unaware that her life was going to be extinguished in a matter of seconds.

I jumped up to the roof and used the darkness of night to move undetected across the rooftops at full speed. I just needed to get out of there before I either became an accessory to that innocent girl's murder or attacked my own mate. Sure, I had seen Jasper kill many people, but ever since I had taught him how to hunt animals, his human meals had always been slips. Mistakes. Daniel knew exactly what he was doing. He knew there was another option and he still wanted to hunt humans.

I could hear a muffled scream as I ran, and I closed my eyes, shuddering.

I tried to force the thought of what he was doing from my mind as I entered my hotel room and flopped on the bed. I wasn't very successful, as I saw flashes of her black hair marred with her own blood. I could see the shock and pain in her eyes as he bit down. I could see her lifeless body on the ground as he took a cursory look through her purse for anything that might come in use.

I wished I could talk to someone. But my family didn't know why I was here, and it didn't seem like something I could tell them over the phone. Regardless, I picked up my cell about forty times, preparing to dial, before I would place it back on the nightstand.

I considered going out of the city to hunt myself, just to release some of my anger, but Daniel's Bambi comment had stuck with me more than I had expected. If it was wrong to randomly kill humans, then surely it was wrong to take out more of the animal population when I wasn't actually thirsty.

I flipped through the six hundred-odd channels on the TV, anxiety rippling through me. I hated Daniel for putting me in this position. Surely he should be thinking about his mate's concerns over his thirst. Surely my opinion should at least mean something to him. It seemed, however, that it did not.

Not paying attention to what was on the screen, I couldn't stop thinking about my predicament. I needed to find a way to convince him to at least try my diet. It was something I held dear, and one would think that what was important to his mate would at least be considered as an option.

The knock at the door came after several agonizing hours. With a sigh, I opened the door, already having smelled who was on the other side. I didn't like the way my heart leapt when I saw him standing there.

"Can I come in?" Daniel asked, looking directly at me, defiantly. I couldn't help but notice just how bright his eyes were.

I just shrugged and opened the door wider. I moved to sit on the bed while he leaned with his back against the door.

"This is who we are, Alice. You can't fault me for that."

"It's not who I am. I've worked hard to keep to my diet. It's not easy, but it's worth it. I can interact with people without constantly thinking of them as food. I can have friendships with them. I can go that little way toward not feeling like a monster every day of my life."

"It doesn't make you a monster when you're designed this way," he pointed out.

"A dog doesn't have to bite. He may have been designed as a carnivore, but a domesticated dog doesn't go snapping at every animal that goes past." My metaphor didn't seem to impress him.

"Are you calling me a dog?"

"Well you sure aren't acting very domesticated."

"I shouldn't have to change who I am, Alice. And you shouldn't ask me to."

"I'm not trying to change you… completely. I'm just making you aware that there's another way."

"God! You're so frustrating!" he exclaimed and marched across the four steps it took to reach me.

Confused, I didn't expect him to grab me by the arms, pull me to standing, and kiss me forcefully.

I had no choice – I couldn't stop myself from deepening the kiss, and when I did, I couldn't stop the growl that echoed through my chest when I tasted the remnants of human blood on his tongue.

I was disgusted with him. But even more, I was disgusted with myself for how much I loved the way he tasted. His natural scent—already such a draw for me—mixed with the taste of the girl's blood to make him almost irresistible. I could feel my body beginning to vibrate with need.

"No!" I gasped, using every ounce of self-control I possessed to pull away from him and fall back onto the bed.

He quirked an eyebrow at me. "No?"

"No," I said forcefully, looking him directly in the eyes.

He leaned closer to me, letting his breath wash over me. "I don't know what you're objecting to, Alice."

I didn't dare open my mouth to answer him. I knew that the second I did, I'd take in his scent - the scent which was drawing me in.

He rested one knee on the edge of the bed and leaned in closer still. "You know you want me, Alice. You can't resist the pull. Not even you with your holier-than-thou self-control can fight a mating bond."

I looked away from him, glancing anywhere but at his face. He was right, and I couldn't deny it. I was going to cave. He was my mate, and the urge to consummate the relationship was driving me crazy. And knowing that his mouth still tasted of blood wasn't helping one bit, either. My mind was at war with my body, my conscience with my heart.

He reached over and grabbed my chin. "Look at me," he demanded, and I cringed, knowing I was lost. I couldn't deny my want for him. I couldn't deny him.

Our eyes met. His were hard and unmoving. I knew that in mine he would be seeing resignation and pain.

I couldn't fight him. It went against everything in me, everything that went through me yesterday when I first saw him in the distance.

"Dan?" I knew that if I were human, it would have come out with a sob. I was a wreck. I both wanted and didn't want him equally, and I never knew which side I'd fall down on at any given moment.

His expression didn't soften. He grabbed my shoulders and threw me back so my head was resting on the pillows. He crawled up to rest on top of me and kissed me with ferocity, forcing my lips open and letting me taste the last remaining drops of blood lingering inside his cheeks.

I loved it.

And I hated myself.

There was no foreplay. There was nothing romantic or loving. He didn't even manage to get his jeans all the way off his ankles.

"You belong to me," he growled as he pushed inside me, and I couldn't refute it.

I was his. My body was completely his. He'd taken possession of my heart and soul.

As he bit down on my collarbone and began to move faster, I knew the only part of me that didn't belong to him was my brain. And eventually, that would fall, too. It was only a matter of time.

My body was soaring, finally united with its new mate after years of being alone, and I could feel myself inching closer to the precipice.

He kissed me forcefully again and pinched my nipple, and I was gone.

I had been through this before—consummating a relationship with a mate—so I knew what was coming. I knew how powerful my orgasm would be, and I knew to expect the rush of devotion and love spreading quickly through my body. I knew that he would bite down on my neck, and I knew I would feel our bond strengthening almost as if it were a tangible object.

What I didn't expect was how hollow I would feel. My brain—the traitor against my body, heart and soul—knew it could have been better if only we'd been in love. "In" being the operative word there – I felt love for him, but I wasn't fully there mentally. And conversely, I knew that without the mating bond, without forces beyond our control manipulating our emotions, Daniel could have easily walked away from me.

I rolled away from him and curled into a ball as he sat up to kick his jeans off completely and leaned against the headboard.

I couldn't put blame on him. I was sure if I had told him to stop, he would have. There were at least some things that were sacred in a mating bond. I had been just as into it as he had been, and could not refute that I loved it. That I loved him.

But not for the first time in my long life, I cursed my gift. I wished that I had never seen those visions of us together. I wished that I hadn't seen that he would be in Halifax. I wished that I could resist the demand from my body to go find him.

I wished we had never met.