The pregnancy was unexpected, welcome, terrifying. Asher walked through the months in a daze of preparation and fear, designing the nursery, reading every book on parenting, waking at night with nightmares of becoming his father.
"What if I don't feel it?" he asked Arora, five months along, her belly rounded with their child. "What if I look at our baby and feel nothing? Or worse, what if I feel what he felt—the need to control, to possess, to destroy?"
"Then you tell me," Arora said. "And we get help. And you choose, again and again, not to act on those feelings. As you've chosen every day since we met."
"But a child needs more than the absence of harm. A child needs love. Real love. What if I can't—"
"You can," she interrupted, taking his face in her hands. "I know you can. Because I've seen you love. The birds at the sanctuary. The women at the shelter. Me. You're capable of love, Asher. You just had to learn the language."
He held her, feeling their child move between them, and wept. Not from fear, finally, but from hope.
Their daughter was born in spring, during a storm that cleared to rainbow. They named her Elena, for Arora's mother, and Asher held her for the first time with trembling hands, waiting for the darkness to rise.
It didn't. Only wonder. Only the terrifying, beautiful realization that he would kill for this child, die for her, live for her—anything but harm her. The design was broken. The pattern changed.
He was a father. He was free.