You found her abandoned in a quiet alley. A bastard, you figured. A wanted child would never be thrown away like garbage. The mother was in too much of a rush to get rid of her that she did not even bother to clean the blood off her.

But bastard or not, she was an easy meal, and you had never tasted an infant before. So you brought her home and cleaned her up. It had been a while since you sat at a table for a meal. You were quite thrilled by it. Usually, your meals required a bit of a chase. It made you feel a little less like the animal that you are. The fact that you were about to eat a defenceless child was a minor detail.

That is, until she looked up to you as you washed the remaining soap on her tiny body, and she smiled, and you felt your heart beating for the first time in a very long time.

You remember cooing, and her hands started tapping away at the water around her.

You did not expect the words that later came out of your mouth.

"When you are a little bit older, let's go swimming."

Still, you laid her on your precious china with all the required utensils surrounding her, but you found yourself just staring, unable to imagine the cry she will scream when you sliced into her.

Finally, you wrapped her with the table cloth and brought her to bed.

Ever since then, you have had nightmares of her lying limp in your arms. Some nights, you wake up and rush into her room to check her pulse. She was more welcome to it when she was younger. When she entered adolescence, she did not appreciate it as much.

She would say wearily, "I am alive, mum."

…

You never hid who you are from her. It was difficult to keep it a secret when you were teaching her how to protect herself from you. She had been sleeping with a wooden stake underneath her pillow ever since she was three, but she only understood what it was really for when she was seven.

You were not supposed to go home that night. You were with James, and he always had a way of coaxing out the monster in you. Of course, you have always been a monster, but with James, you are somehow worse. He sees the darkest part of you, and he has no trouble in drawing it out. He likes it. It is possibly the only reason he befriended you, and it worries you, but when you are staring at a lonely eternity, you are reluctant to let go of the one person who can be your company.

You slipped. You told him about her.

"Christina?" he had muttered amusedly. "You named your pet. That is—"

"She is off limits," you warned him.

"Surely, she would want to meet his uncle."

"Surely, but he is buried six feet under."

"I am wounded."

"Better you than her," you said with a final tone.

Then you hoped upon hoped that Christina remembered everything you taught her, especially the part where your heart is, because nothing ends with James MacPherson until he decides so.

Christina missed by an inch, which would have been a fatal mistake if it had not stirred you awake from the bloodlust that James had tricked you into.

You lost your oldest friend that night.

And your daughter.

(She acquired more wooden stakes the next day just in case.)

She never looked at you the same way again.

(She knew now to fear you.)

…

It was for the best. It made it easier for her to break away from you.

On her eighteenth birthday, you asked if she wanted to be like you.

She said no, and you couldn't be prouder of her.

Then she left to live a life you never could.

You left too.

You did not want to wait for her to come home. You still had those nightmares, and you feared that she might come home a different person, and that could mean her smile, the smile of your precious little girl, was no longer enough to prevent you from sucking her blood dry.

…

The next time you saw her, it was at a nursing home. She was older than you.

She gave you one look and then placed her hand above your heart.

"It is really you," she said, "mummy."

A nurse came over and whispered how she had lost her mind.

"How could she when she remembers me?" you said, taking her hand that was on your chest. "My Christina remembers me." Then you winked, so the nurse would think that you were just a kind stranger who was playing along and leave the two of you alone.

"I tried looking for you," Christina said after the nurse left.

"I didn't know you wanted to find me," you told her. You were sure that the fear you saw in her eyes would have festered into hate after years away from you. You thought she would have forgotten how you used to sing her to sleep and only remembered how you once tried to kill her.

"They would have loved you," she said.

"Who?"

"Your grandchildren," you helped her up as she tried to stand. "And your great grandchildren."

You chuckled. Her knees shook, but she was eager to get somewhere. Her room, you surmised. It reminded you of the time when she was learning to walk. She kept falling because her feet moved too fast. She wanted to walk like you, with you.

"They're lovely kids," she said.

You wondered if they are so lovely, why had they left her here?

"I just forget sometimes," she said, "and they don't know how to make me remember when I forget. The people here are trained for things like that."

While she was telling you about her own little girl, Helena (she named her after you), she suddenly reverted into your little girl.

"Mummy," she said. "I know you wanted me to stab your heart, but I couldn't kill a beating heart."

You felt like such a fool then. She was not afraid of you. She just had the same nightmare as you, but instead of her, it was you lying limp in her arms.

…

In the end, it was her.

You brought her home. You could not let her be abandoned again.

When she was lucid, she became your company, two old ladies sharing stories of the long lives they lived. When she was not, she became your little girl, kissing you good night after you had tucked her in.

That was how you and her spent her last two months in this world.

That night, she wanted you to sleep with her. She was again that five year old who was afraid of a monster in her closet. You used to laugh at the irony, and when she asked you why, you said, "I am the scariest monster you will ever meet."

"No," she would say adamantly. "You are my mum."

That was it. That was her argument. You could not be a monster because you are her mother.

She said the same thing that night. It was her last words. You felt her heart slowed after she closed her eyes, and you sang her lullaby until it stopped.

…

You knew this was how it would be when you decided to raise her eighty three years ago. You would be glancing at her coffin as you give her eulogy.

Myka is here, sitting at the very front, in her wolf form. Christina liked her both in human and wolf forms, but wolf was her favourite. She insisted on attending the funeral that way in order to honour Christina's memory. Luckily, it was not hard to convince Christina's family and friends that she was a stray dog Christina befriended while she was staying with you. They were much too distracted with their distraught over Christina's passing.

As you bury your daughter, you think, this is how it would be for god knows how long.

This is the price of love for you.

It only ends with you burying it.