My weekly weekend short story - 10/11 edition

This week's challenge was to imagine a scenario in which a character wrestles with a difficult moral choice. The story that unfolded contains some pretty big spoilers from the Nyx world, so read at your own risk. In other writing news, rewriting Avery is taking longer than I thought it would. I was sure I'd be able to cruise through the first books and be on to writing the last one, but I've already added over 10K words to the first one and still have ten chapters left.

Hopefully my work schedule will allow me a little more time on them and things get better as I go along, but I think I'll be spending the next two months in Avery's world. Once it's done, I'll be moving back on to the third books in my current three series. I'm already trying to decide which series to pick back up. What do you think?

survey solutions

I'm leaning one way and I'm curious to see if anyone else is too. Anyway, without further rambling from yours truly, here's this weekend's story.

A Changed Woman

To kill or not to kill

When you were raised as an assassin and had the devil for a mother, your moral compass didn’t always point in the right direction. For Nyx, the compass barely existed. She’d only recently learned the details about the maternal side of her DNA. It explained a lot when it came to how little she felt when she killed someone.

Finding and creating a family of her own had changed Nyx, and she wasn’t sure it was a good thing. A month prior, she wouldn’t stand around deciding whether it felt right to kill the sniveling weasel in front of her. She insisted it was the hormonal chaos that came along with being pregnant causing the dilemma, but at the same time, Nyx was still denying she was even pregnant.

“You’re going to be missed soon. I’d suggest making your decision quickly.”

Her mother’s voice wasn’t the one Nyx expected to hear. She knew it wouldn’t be long before Sebastian and Alex sent out everyone they could find to search for her, but Lucy wasn’t part of a search party.

“Please don’t kill me.” The werewolf Nyx had tracked down had made the plea a few times, so Nyx ignored him as she tried to figure out why her mother had decided to grace them with her presence.

“I’m not sure if I made this clear the first time we met, but I really don’t want to see you.”

Nyx didn’t bother turning around. She remembered the petite blonde with pale skin clearly. It was hard to forget the way it looked like you could watch her blood flow through her veins.

“I know, but I wouldn’t be who I am if I let other people tell me what to do. What are you going to do with him?”

The guy in front of Nyx rose up into the air. His legs and arms moved around frantically as he tried to fight off the force lifting him.

“I don’t know. He was sent after Alex and no one else has decided he’s a big threat, but anyone following around someone I care about is a threat in my book.”

“Then why isn’t he dead? You’ve been in this cute little alley for twenty minutes now and all you’ve done is point your gun at him.”

“He’s just following orders. Does that mean he deserves to die?” Nyx remembered when she thought killing the people the Collective wanted dead was a good thing. After her father and Alex made the list, she’d decided they were wrong.

“I’m not the person to answer that question. I think you’ve made up your mind, so why don’t you get back to your family. I’ll take care of making sure Lionel here is no longer a threat, and manages to live to see tomorrow.”

Having a solution that didn’t involve death, Nyx put her gun away. It wasn’t what she’d expected, but the excursion had made her hungry and somewhere there was a steak calling her.