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“What happened?” I asked.
“You collapsed. You’ve been unconscious for the better part of a week.”
“A week?” my voice rose sharply. “But Cassius…” I went to swing my legs out of the bed, but as soon as I made a sudden movement there was a swirling feeling in my mind, and I felt as though everything was all in the wrong direction again.
Dad placed a hand on my arm. “Willow, you need to listen to me. You need to forget about Cassius for the moment. I know it’s hard, but-”
“Forget about Cassius? You know I can’t do that. I love him!”
“I know you do, but you’re in no state to go chasing after him. What you’ve been through… you need to recover.”
“I don’t have time to recover Dad. I need to get back to Cassius. He needs me. He can’t fight back against Amara by himself. I need to help him. We promised we would always do everything we could to help each other. We’re meant to live our lives with each other Dad. This is my future I’m talking about. He’s the only man I have ever loved, the only one I want to love. He gave up immortality for me Dad. I owe him everything.”
“But he’s not the only one you owe,” Dad spoke slowly, trying to calm me down. I was breathing heavily, getting myself worked up and agitated. I looked into his eyes and tried to calm myself. “There’s something you need to know Willow. When you collapsed we had the healer look over you. At first I thought it was something as simple as you being overwhelmed with what had happened, but the healer found that something had changed within you. You’re going to have a baby. You’re going to be a mother.”
I couldn’t quite believe that it was real at first. I blinked twice, then three times. Cassius and I had been talking about this, but I almost hadn’t expected it to happen this quickly. I immediately reached down to my stomach, feeling across my womb. I couldn’t tell any difference, but the healer must have been able to.
“So you see, you don’t just have to think of Cassius now, you have to think of your child as well. I know this isn’t how you wanted any of this to pan out, but he left a part of you with him and that counts for something. I don’t think he’d want you to risk your child.”
There was a haze in my mind as I tried to reorient myself to this new information. In truth I didn’t know what Cassius would have wanted.
“But I can’t just leave him there,” I said weakly.
Dad wore a solemn expression. “Willow, Cassius made his choice. It might not have been the one you would have wanted him to make, but he made it all the same. Sometimes we just have to respect what people choose to do. You have to think about other things now. You’re responsible for another life, a life that can’t choose anything for itself yet, and sometimes that means sacrifice. I don’t know Cassius as well as you do, but he struck me as a man of honor and I think he did this so that you would be safe, and I’m sure if he knew you were with child then he would want the same for them as well.”
“But… but it’s not fair. This child isn’t going to get to know its father.”
“It will, through you. You’re going to tell them all about Cassius because you’re a good storyteller, just like your mother was. I know it’s not the same, and I wish that I could do something else to help, to change things, but the child has to come first. It has to.”
I felt sick inside. What he said made sense, but I almost didn’t want it to be true. Every instinct I had told me that I had to go and find Cassius and bring him back so that our child could know it’s father, but it was one thing to risk my own life, quite another to risk the life of the child. Anything I did now, I had to think about them too. It dawned on me that as much as I wanted a baby, I wasn’t ready for it. Panic flared within me.
“I can’t do this. I can’t do this by myself,” I said, shaking with nerves. Dad perched on the bed and wrapped his arm around me, holding me tightly. I fell into him, shuddering and glad of his presence. He kept telling me that I wasn’t alone, that I had him and Brandon and all the other wolves, but it wasn’t the same. None of them were Cassius, my rock who had taught me to love and to appreciate myself, the man who had shown me so much of the world and had allowed me to embrace my wolf.
And now I had to leave him to die.
*
The healer had condemned me to bed for a while as I regained my strength. It was a combination of exhaustion and stress upon my body. Pregnancy and a fight against a vampire were not conducive to a relaxing life, so I rested. But all I could do was dwell on everything that had happened. Thoughts raged through my mind, stampeding like wildebeests as I was pulled in every direction. Every moment I stayed in bed it felt as though I was letting Cassius down. He was back there in the castle, no doubt being tortured by Amara. I knew that time worked differently there as well. How much time had passed for him? Had he forgotten about me already? Was he upset that I hadn’t come to rescue him? If he had known that he was a father then perhaps it would have been different, but there was no way for him to know.
Not unless I went to him.
Eventually I became well enough to walk outside. The warm air caressed my skin and the breeze tugged at my hair. The air was sweet, the world bright. It was a far cry from the broken, dying world that Cassius and I had inhabited, and yet I felt a longing for that place. I considered that castle my home, even though I had grown up in this village, because the most important parts of my life had happened there. It was where Cassius was, and sometimes I wondered if it would have been easier had Amara killed him right in front of me. At least then I would have known his suffering was over, and I did not have to be lost in this limbo of not knowing what had happened to him. It occurred to me that Amara may well have planned it to be exactly like this, wanting me to experience something similar to what Cassius had condemned her to.
I tried to move on. I tried to picture a world without Cassius, a life where I could be happy without him, but I could not foresee this happening. There was a hole in my heart without him and it would never be filled again. I could live, I could smile, but it would all be tinged with a bittersweet feeling that he was not there to share the moments with me. Even raising my child would not be as fulfilling as it should have been.
Cassius had given up immortality for me. He had done so precisely because we wanted to have a family, and now he wasn’t even going to enjoy the fruits of his sacrifice. We were supposed to have decades together and watch our love flow through time until it trickled away and we became whispers on the wind. Instead we had been cruelly taken from each other, and if he had died then I could accept that there was no coming back, but when I knew that he was still alive I felt awful for not going after him. We had made strong promises to each other, but were those rendered moot because of the changed circumstances?
Dad had said that Cassius had made his choice and I should respect that, but was it really a choice if he felt forced into it? He knew how dangerous Amara was, and he didn’t want any wolf killed in his name. But that didn’t mean we should just let this be the end of it. Didn’t we have a choice as well? Did my wishes not mean anything?
But then there’s the child…
I found myself idly stroking my abdomen, trying to connect with this unknown life that was growing inside me, trying to think about what it might have wanted me to do. It was important to protect it, yes, but should I not try and set an example for it as well?
I thought long and hard, and eventually I went to see my father.
He was sitting with a book, looking pensive. As my shadow fell over him he looked up and caught my gaze.
“Dad, I need to speak with you, and I need you to listen,” I said, hoping that this time he wouldn’t turn me away as he had done before. His lips parted slightly, but then he thought better of speaking. He seemed to have learned from the past. He closed his book and showed me inside, closing the door behind us. I paced around the room, too nervous to sit down. I wrung my hands and tried to keep my voice calm, for the nerves were bubbling inside me.
