Lorena tried to keep herself busy to distract her from the slight cramp she had every now and then. She was feverish and helped herself with a few of the mild drugs she found in Stefan's mini clinic. He had provided her with enough food and toiletries to last her the year round but she was so alone.
Her pregnancy was now far gone but Stefan was nowhere to be found. She also knew the danger in trying to reach him. He would crush her head if she tried having a mental contact with him. She had tried to let him know that she was pregnant a few weeks earlier and he had almost killed her.
He hadn't even given her the time to explain. He hadn't even wondered why after a year she would try to reach his mind. But unlike the previous times, he didn't come back to assess and rectify the damage he had done. That was when it occurred to her that Stefan wouldn't give a damn if anything happened to her.
She had been sick for days, very worried about how her health would affect her baby. She wasn't sure if she could survive a miscarriage. She was supposed to be seeing a gynaecologist/obstetrician, wasn't she? She could barely stay on her feet and she hadn't been feeding well. She also had nightmares in which her father tried to abort her baby with sharp instruments.
She was trapped in the house with no way out and no access to a doctor. She had no idea what to do now that she was in the beginning of her third trimester. She had never felt so alone. She was alone in a massive house. What if something went wrong? What if she began to bleed?
She dragged herself to the bathroom where she took care of her needs with difficulty. She stood before the mirror over the sink and thought of how horrible she looked. There were bags beneath her eyes and her face was pale and gaunt. She had lost a lot of weight in the days since Stefan had almost knocked her out in his anger.
"Stay out of my head, Familiar." he had told her after he had almost crushed her skull.
After over a year he still referred to her as Familiar and that hurt. She was nothing to him. She was nothing to anyone. Her baby was all she had and it would kill her to lose her child. She was so lonely. This was the time when she needed her true mate most but she was now convinced that she didn't have one.
She had made the mistake of thinking that Stefan was her true mate. She had allowed her dreams to rule her senses. She had genuinely believed that he was her true mate but she was now convinced that she was wrong.
She wiped a stray tear. All her life she had been shedding tears for people. She had been hurt by the very people who were supposed to love and protect her. Her father had beaten her until he had broken her spirit. She recalled the weeks she spent on admission in the mini clinic in Sergei's lair.
Miguel had been hitting her since she was old enough to know the alphabets. She had kept out of his way while growing up, hiding at the sound of his voice. She had been so frightened that she could differentiate the sound of his footsteps from others. Yet he always found her and beat her up. Not even after she submitted herself for the experiments he was working on, her blood being drained and analysed without any explanation as to why.
He blamed her for everything that went wrong. He let her starve for days and locked her up in a closet. And when he released her, she was usually drenched in her own faeces and urine and very hungry. She had never had a toy to play with. The other Renegades stayed away from her except those times when they teased and taunted her.
She didn't know what it felt like to be hugged. She had never dated because her father had threatened the Renegades with mortal harm if they came close to his daughter and with Sergei as his back bone, no one dared challenge him.
It was so embarrassing to admit that in her mid-thirties, she had never felt the lips of another against hers.
Her father had worked on her emotions until Lorena blamed herself for her mother's death. If her Ricarda hadn't been pregnant, she would have been able to flee to safety. But she had been heavily pregnant. Lorena had borne that burden since she was a little child seeking the love of a father who hated her, a man who had tried to rape her once and had blamed her for it, calling her every name imaginable. He had made her seek for death without finding it.
Hilde had always been indifferent to her but once in a while, the vampire let her hang around. It amused the vampire to have Lorena around. She was an intelligent woman, but the Familiar was very naive. There were so many things she did not understand, so many things that she didn't see. She was an innocent in so many ways, but blinded by his hate, Stefan had not been able to see this.
Her head hurt and she felt as though someone had punched her in the guts. Was she losing her babies? Surely she wasn't due? She almost reached out to Stefan but knowing he would make her feel worse had her reaching for the last man she needed around her.
"Help me, papa," she cried to Miguel Banderas.
She had cut him off since Stefan took her away from Sergei's lair. She hadn't tried to reach out to him, but she felt so alone and needed someone to help her. She needed to see a doctor but had no way of finding one. She was hoping that her father would somehow be able to help her out. After all, he was a vampire as well as a scientist. Surely, he wouldn't say no to helping his grandchild!
She returned to the bedroom where she took an aspirin for her headache. She was grateful for the glasses Stefan had sent to her. They helped a lot. At least, she didn't have to strain her eyes. She felt a sharp pain and doubled over clutching at her stomach. It soon passed and she thought: "Dear Lord, please don't let me lose this baby. It is all I've got."
And at that moment, something slammed her on the bed with a force which knocked out her breath. The lights came on and she saw her father. She had summoned him and he had come in response. But as he stood there before her, she realised that she had made a mistake in summoning him.
"You betrayed me." he said.
She tried to move but found that she couldn't.
"I didn't have any other choice."
"You betrayed your people so you could mate with an Enforcer," he spat out, his eyes blood red with rage.
"He is my true mate."
"You are pregnant for an Enforcer," he continued as though she hadn't spoken. "Stefan hurt you while you were trying to communicate with him. He hurt you and didn't care what happened to you."
How did he know that?
"I would rather not talk about it. Please let go of me."
"You will. You made yourself into his whore. What did you expect?"
She didn't like his tone. She made to move away from him once more but he caught her wrist in a vice like grip and glared at her.
"Never try to walk out on me, puta." he told her.
"You're hurting me, papa."
"You deserve it. If you had wanted a man so desperately, you should have come to me or didn't you think I was man enough? If I had known you would waste your virginity on an Enforcer, I would have taken it a long time ago!"
He sounded like the father she had grown up with and he frightened her. He still hated her. The hatred in his eyes scorched her. Lorena struggled with the being above her. She screamed for help but it was of no use because she was alone. A sob burst from her throat and a sharp cry of pain as he jerked her body back against him and at the same time, he thrust his hip forward and drove himself into her.
She writhed against his hold, her lower body screaming in pain. Her head twisted frantically from side to side and she screamed over and over again. Her legs jerked up, her heels pounding on the bed, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. There was no one to help her and she couldn't reach out to Stefan.
He raped her over and over again, biting and chewing on her flesh, feeding on her blood but not enough to drain her. She was grateful when he finally gasped and threw his head back, his hand on her hips lifting her off the bed before he collapsed against her. He slid out of her.
"Get off me." she screamed. "I hate you. You had no right to do this to me. You are my father."
She sobbed.
"And I didn't know what I was missing."
"Let go of me."
"Save your breath. There's no one around to help you.
"I do not want a granddaughter from a bloody Enforcer." He swore. "He already has a brat from Marina. I don't need his brat in my family."
He shoved her legs wide apart. She screamed as he induced labour well ahead of time and within an hour her babies were out of her body. She hadn't even known she was pregnant with twins!
Her eyes widened in horror as he tossed one baby into the wall, a sickening crack greeting her ears. The other one followed. He had a sick grin on his face. She couldn't scream loud enough at the horror before her. Her cries were enough to wake the dead countries away.
"You are a disgrace to all Renegades. Did you really think I was going to let you bring the child of an Enforcer into this world?"
She was still screaming.
'Just to be sure there's nothing left in there,' he said, pushing his hand into her.
She passed out from the pain. It felt like her insides were being ripped out. She had never imagined the kind of pain that went through her at that moment. It was indescribable. Blood gushed onto the bed.