Rebirth (Twilight Saga - Pregnant with the next generation)

Chapter 23: "Those who fight monsters should take care not to become one"

Thudding, throbbing pain beat a tattoo against Esme’s eyelids as she lay on the thin mattress – drifting in and out of consciousness.

She fought the heaviness of her eyelids and forced her mind to push past the fog that clouded her tired mind.

Eyes still closed she breathed in and out slowly, lying still to mentally find out if she was severely hurt and where.

Her breathing hitched for a moment as her hands found her belly and found it still swollen, her baby rolling gently inside.

Her eyes filled with tears but the piercing pain they brought had her drying her eyes before the pain sent her back into the blackness.

Fire clawed her throat, peeling every inch of her skin with insatiable rage – demanding its thirst to be quenched. And just at that moment she smelled it – blood. Human blood…

She opened her eyes in search for the forgiving nectar- she sat up carefully, her eyes focusing the blurred grey walls of the room.

Her whole body ached, was purpled with bruises from where she had fallen as Jane had pitilessly battered her around like a rag doll, knowing Esme wouldn’t fight back because she wanted to protect her baby.

She was so weak she didn’t know if she could even make it up off the bed to feed. But if she didn’t her baby would die, her re-enervated blood could only sustain them for so long.

As she stood to find the source of blood she doubled over as she saw what it was, dropping to her knees clutching the cracked porcelain of the low sink as she heaved into it. The lifeless body of a pregnant woman lay broken in the corner of her room.

Esme crawled over to the corpse, reaching out with shaking fingers to see if there was any kind of a pulse. She pressed her ear against the woman’s bump and could tell instantly no life remained there either.

She slumped against the wall and cried. Cried for the woman whose life had been prematurely ended by the Volturi because of her, for the life of the baby who would now never greet the dawn or draw his first breath, for her own baby because she was so helpless and for herself.

But primitive instinct was drawn up from an unknown place inside her and she fell upon the woman’s body with fierce hunger, draining the stilled blood from her veins. Stepping back she felt immediately stronger, could feel her baby kicking more strongly inside her.

But the whitened eyes of the woman stared back at her in death and Esme could feel her meal sloshing around inside her stomach, churning with her own emotion and revulsion at what she had done.

Grabbing her belly, she moaned piteously. The more she thought about what she’d done the more she despised herself, despised what she had had to become.

In the middle of what she assumed to be the night she woke up ill, a sick sweat coating her body and soaking her sheets that she clutched in her hands as she writhed on the bed.

Wrenching herself off the bed she stumbled over to the toilet and violently threw up the stolen contents of her stomach – the nausea and cramping continuing even after there was nothing left to bring up.

With the tainted blood that had sustained her gone, she was too weak to lift herself up to the wiry bed so she hugged her arms around herself as she lay curled up on the damp, freezing cement floor.

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Sooo?? What did you think??? Tell me! tell me! tell me!!

Poor Esme - will Carlisle make it in time to save both of them? Still having trouble with baby names too :( So comment comment comment!!! Next chapter goes up once I see 10 comments <3 Send me some love <3 As ever, TLH