Cara and I dated for two years before she moved in with me. Two more years passed before she first raised the topic of children – a question that could have been innocuous but that was anything but.

“Have you ever wanted children of your own? Not… what do you call them? The vampire thing? Childer? I mean, you know. A real child.”

“My Childer are real,” I remember replying, but I was only delaying and she knew me enough to see that. She didn’t say anything and simply waited for an actual answer. I just wasn’t sure how to respond. What did she want to hear? She knew that it’s physiologically impossible for vampires to have children. Why raise the question at all?

“The short answer is yes,” I finally said, resorting to simple truth. “Back when I was human, I did want to have kids.”

Her eyes widened a little, already gleaming with a little flame I wasn’t sure I liked at that moment, and I hurried to add, “But I knew what I was getting myself into when I allowed my Sire to turn me, and I never looked back. It’s not something I can have regrets about.”

I’ve often wondered over the years what would have happened if I had said that I didn’t want children. Would she have tried to find a donor? Or left me, maybe, and found someone who could and would have a baby with her?

But I said yes, and from that moment on she made it clear that there was no alternative for her. She wanted a child, and she wanted it to be my child. She was so stubborn. So convinced that there was nothing she couldn’t achieve if she put her mind, her heart and her magic at work. Jacob reminds me a lot of her in that regard.

At times – no, most of the time – I feel guilty about it all. Not only did I not ask her to stop trying, but also by answering yes to that first question I started her on the path that led to her death.

But at the same time… I can’t imagine her leaving me to find a father for her child. And I can’t bear the thought that Jacob would never have been born if I had said no.

For better or for worse, she asked, and I answered. It transformed all our lives – transformed the entire world, maybe, if the demons really did came from this incredible feat of magic.

And it may be selfish of me, but I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world.