"Haven't you heard anything I have said, sis?" Stefan asked, clenching his fists. "She is a desperate woman and a desperate woman is a very deadly woman."
"I agree with you but I feel sorry for her. It isn't easy to lose your mum and brothers and still have to fight for your father's affection."
"Geez, sis! Do you have to look for a good side in everything?"
"I can't help it, Stef. If Nik hadn't seen something good about me despite the nature of my biological parents, I might have ended my life a long time ago."
"You were not a Renegade." Stefan reminded her.
"Do you think for a moment that Nik would have let me go just because I was unfortunate enough to have been born on the wrong side? I think not. And you, would you have hated me for something that was no fault of mine?"
Stefan couldn't imagine doing anything but love his special sister-in-law. He had taken to her from the start, long before he had physically met her. He had shared Nik's memories of her even as a child. She had helped him deal with his problems with Marina. She had been there with her smiles and her unconditional love for her troubled brother. There was something about her which had endeared her to the Romanescu family from the moment she was introduced as Nik's true mate. Everyone would do anything for her including the patriarch Dumitru.
"Tell me Stefan, if I had been born a Renegade would you have hated me?"
"You weren't born a Renegade." He said, evading the question because he knew where she was heading.
"You didn't answer my question."
"No. I would have loved you still."
"Good. I knew that. The Familiar..."
"... is different."
"Why? She didn't choose to be a Familiar."
"No. But she chose to remain a Familiar. She is thirty-four. She stayed with the Renegades for thirty-three years."
"What if she wasn't able to leave? What if she was not allowed to? Remember that she is a mere mortal and unable to fight our kind. She did ask you to take her away, didn't she?"
"She did but..."
"You should cut her some slack. I don't expect you to trust her for I may be mistaken but you should give her the opportunity to prove herself to you. I wouldn't want us to end up regretting our treatment of her. It's possible that we may have misjudged her."
His lips parted in a quick protest.
"I am not asking you to take her out, just don't treat her like dirt just because she is a Renegade."
"She chose to remain a Renegade."
"Doesn't it seem strange to you that she never left the four walls of that building and not even for a breath of fresh air in all the years she lived in Sergei's home? I know this because I heard father say it. I once saw her in the palace gardens. There was this appreciation for the little things we take for granted. I also saw the claw mark on her neck and I figured that she may have gotten that for trying to escape."
"I met her before she got that scar and she was still wielding that syringe of hers. Give it up, sis. That Familiar is not worth it."
He didn't tell her about Lorena's meeting with the Renegades in the woods because he had confirmed that she had been telling the truth when she had said that it was coincidence.
"Then you should get rid of her."
"I'm not through with her yet. She serves her purpose and when I tire of her, I'll get rid of her."
"When she is way past menopause and unattractive enough to spend the rest of her life alone and miserable?"
"Yes."
"I do not believe that you can be so cruel."
"You do not know what they did to me."
"No, but I don't expect you to let them win by acting like a Renegade because what you proposed is exactly what can be expected from a Renegade. Have you no thought of what your plans would do to her?"
"She could always ask Sergei or her father to convert her. No, make that just Sergei because I intend to kill Miguel Banderas the moment I get hold of him."
"This sounds like a scene from a horror movie. The guy makes love to the girl and all the while he is planning her father's death. This is so unlike you, Stef."
"It has to be done."
"And if you knock her up in the process, are you going to tell your kid that you killed his maternal Bunic while or after he was conceived?"
"There is no chance of her having my child."
"If you have protected sex, I guess there is a little possibility of that happening. It is full proof when you practice abstinence."
He had never protected the Familiar and it had never occurred to him that each time he spilled his seed into her, there was a possibility that it might germinate. How could he be so stupid? He hadn't even thought that in his bid to get his Revenge on the Familiar, he could have unwittingly fathered a dhampir with her. So far, he had been lucky but there was a limit to one's luck.
Sharon was watching him closely and she realized to her horror that her brother hadn't been as careful as he ought to have been.
"You didn't use a protection on her, did you?"
His silence was enough answer.
"Oh Stefan, what were you thinking?"
He should have known better. He had allowed another woman take away his senses. With Marina he had been thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy. And now with this Renegade he had been controlled by his hate. He had been lucky thus far. He knew what he had to do.
"I have to go now," he told her leaning forward to kiss her forehead. "I'll see you later."
"Be careful."