The Willing by Aila Cline

face.
“William's child? You have William's child?”
    Luka's slight sigh from behind me did
not escape my attention, but the room suddenly felt colder. “Yes. I
want the protection he is owed as your grandson and my own assured
also.”
    Shrewdness crept back across her face.
“I owe you nothing. However, I will see this child.”
    I folded my arms across each other. “I
did not offer.”
    “You seek the sanctuary of my House and
still act this way?” She clicked her tongue. “Leave now then. Do
not return. I do not care what you think you have.”
    “You are bluffing,” Luka said
carefully. “I know what Will's child means to you. My father has
told me how you longed for grandchildren, of how you still mourn
Will. There is no one here to see your weakness.”
    Maria's face was practically purple
with rage.
    “Luka...” I began to silence him before
he could say something incriminating.
    “No,” he growled at me. “By the gods,
you interrupted my life and now have interrupted hers. We will
settle this here.”
    “You are trying my patience, Luka.”
Maria's calm had returned, but her tone was still dangerously
sharp.
    Luka spoke to me even though his eyes
stayed locked with the matriarch’s. “Emily, bring her
Micah.”
    I wanted to fight him on this, but he
had brought me this far. I felt I owed him this one act of
obedience. Besides, this was Mexico. This was the Clan. A Lycanti
Changeling obeys a Lycanthrope no matter what. I nodded once, then
left Maria and Luka to exchange their heated glare.

    I watched Micah sleep for a moment
before disturbing him. The fullness of his lips reminded me of all
I had lost and gained. My baby did not look like the iconic cherub;
rather, his dark eyes and smooth skin were the embodiment of a
promise, which has infinitely more emotional satisfaction than
simply gazing at a heavenly picture.
    The plane ride hadn’t bothered him. He
had already been on one when we came home from Alaska. That shift
from dry cold to damp heat had given him a cold, but other than
that he had adjusted well to Southern California. Mexico seemed to
agree with him, too.
    His breaths rose and fell steadily,
with only a brief wheeze from the cold. The quietest moments in my
life happen with Micah. I think I love him selfishly for the peace
I gain in his presence. It’s one extra reason I did not want to go
through with my plan, but Micah deserves a better life than the
suffered existence of a werewolf—terminology be damned. Years from
now, if anyone were to find out he walked as a wolf at least one
night a month, they wouldn’t care what to call him.
Experimentation, exploitation, death or all three would be his at
their hands.
    I love Micah, and now I realize why the
Clan doesn’t trust humans. God knows, I trust few now. I’ve seen
what they become when made into Lycanti; the brute hunger of a
Changeling when combined with human passion is a singularly unique
danger.
    I hate that everything you hear from me
comes from the past or reflects a negative present. But I’ve
learned to live in the moment. When you live so angrily and so
violently, holding your breath to let the hot, stale air fill you
for moments at a time, you tend to not look forward too much. All
you concentrate on is the next breath, and especially the motion of
that breath.
    So it’s hard for me to give myself a
future.
    But I know what I want for
Micah.
    I want him to be human.
    I don’t want the action of living
breath to sticky breath to be his only life—I want him to be have
normal dreams of being a doctor, a lawyer, maybe even a bored,
scholarly teacher. I want him to have dreams of light.
    Not dreams of blood.
    Never dreams of blood like
mine.
    He should never have to experience the
tearing pain of his skin’s rebellion; never break open his own
organs whenever involuntarily called by a celestial body he may
have previously taken for granted.
    Never for Micah.
    Only forever for me.
    I sighed. It was time for him to