Thanks for the rating and review! Haha....everyone wants happy memories. I guess the ones full of death and destruction aren't quite cutting it. She'll remember better things, I promise.

Thanks so much for reading, reviewing AND rating my chapter! I really appreciate it. I just emailed you a sneak peek from Chapter 4. If I screwed up, contact me through this site and I'll try again. It went a little wonky on me the first time. Hope you enjoy it!

Hey Kristell! Thanks so much for all of your contributions! Your review, your rating and your terrific title suggestion all put a huge smile on my face! Sorry to torture you with the wait. Hopefully, the next one won't be as long, but....I am watching an awful lot of Winter Olympics when I should be writing. I'm sorry, but they only come on once every four years and I'm an addict!

Well, you know, K, patience is a virture and all good things come to those who wait. :)

Thanks so much for reviewing and rating, angel! I really appreciate it. That was a particularly mean cliffy, wasn't it? Well, I couldn't keep going forever. I just run my mouth (or my fingers) too much to get it all said in a reasonably lengthed chapter. Lengthed? Is that even a word? ;p

The rules of the contest didn't stipulate the  characters had to be just like SM's. Sam didn't attack Jake just because of who he imprinted on, he also saw Jake as a traitor for raising against him and leaving the pack. Even though you didn't like this, I'm glad you still read and reviewed. Just for some peace of mind, this is the only OS/story where I'll kill a main character. I couldn't think of any other story line and something similar was playing in my head since the first time I read BD.

Hmm. Not sure why you would stick with a story that "bothered" you.

Breaking Dawn "bothered" me. A lot. I mean to the point of throwing the damn book at the wall in frustration at how OOC the characters became in that book. It "bothered" me in its ridiculousness how Meyer made me believe that Bella was going to be sacrificing SO MUCH to be with Edward. And she should - being a human is not a burden or a hardship, she didn't even have a difficult life! It was insulting! And becoming a vampire was not a magical answer for any of the other vampires (according to every vampire in the saga!), so why should it turn out that every myth, every sacrifice fell to the wayside for Bella? She got a baby, she had no bloodlust like a newborn, she didn't have to give up Jacob or Charlie, etc. Everything that was built up in the first three books were thrown aside for Bella and turned into a bloody fairy-tale! Because of all this, I have avoided writing post BD for two years. I like to pretend that the saga ended at Eclipse. I could accept Edward/Bella as end-game (although I thought Edward and Bella were horrible for each other, and though Edward's heart was in the right place he brought out the worst (obsessiveness, suicidal tendencies, low self-esteem) in a young, naive and emotionally disturbed girl), but I refuse to accept that Jacob - a werewolf - would imprint on their half-breed daughter, merely to accomodate Meyer's need to keep Jacob around as Bella's personal whipping boy and the Cullen's lapdog and baby-sitter. It was a cop-out solution that made no logical sense, whatsoever. Not to mention, I would love to see how Nessie would feel one day when she learned her mate was in love with, made-out with, and fantasized about making love to her mother. Yuck. Poor Nessie. They both deserve better.

As for the soul mate comment, I'm happy that you feel your husband is yours. I have been married happily for 25 years, but I still don't believe in soul mates. That implies perfection and magic, and I don't believe in those either. I believe in free will and hard work, and a great sense of humor. But that's just how I see it. I don't believe in a magical HEA (hence my whole problem with BD).

I've written about 23 Twilight stories, and this is a very depressing one. LOL I agree. Most of the others are much happier and even funny, believe it or not. This was a tough one for me to write, because I DIDN"T buy into the pat fairy-tale ending that Meyer left us with. But that's the wonderful thing about Twilight fanfiction - it is open for all of us to explore and interpret the different areas and nuances as we see it. And for that, I thank Stephenie Meyer.