Rejected by her family at birth, Aroura has spent her entire life in captivity, tortured and abused at the hands of one of the most brutal and cruel Hunter clans in America. But after a fortuitous accident, she manages to escape their clutches and runs off into the night. Little does she know, the path ahead is lined with hardship and betrayal, but also with friendship—and even love.
Age Rating: 18+ (Content Warning: Rape & Violence)
Below our Happy Home by Dawn Avril is now available to read on the Galatea app! Read the first two chapters below, or download Galatea for the full experience.
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1
Rejected by her family at birth, Aroura has spent her entire life in captivity, tortured and abused at the hands of one of the most brutal and cruel Hunter clans in America. But after a fortuitous accident, she manages to escape their clutches and runs off into the night. Little does she know, the path ahead is lined with hardship and betrayal, but also with friendship—and even love.
Age Rating: 18+ (Content Warning: Rape & Violence)
Original Author: Dawn Avril
The room was dark and freezing cold. The paint peeled off of the once blue walls. The floor was filthy and infected with mold. It was the only color on the floor. There were no windows and no other light source, just a large rusted metal door offered an exit.
A woman cowered into a corner, crying and screaming through her teeth. She was here alone and felt abandoned in this unknown room. She experienced pain as she never had in her twenty years of life. This she had to endure alone and in shame of what had happened to her.
She needed to rip that thing out of her. It was the only way that she would be let out of this nightmare.
“W-why me?” she cried weakly.
She was hunched on the ground with her arms over her head. Just then, she felt another contraction in her womb, and she was ripped out of her miserable thoughts.
“WHY ME!” she screamed with so much strength, not caring if her vocal cords tore apart.
Everything hurt. She could no longer tell where the pain was coming from. She wanted it all to end. She wanted that thing to be ripped out of her body. She wished to kill the child she carried.
But just aborting a child of rape was not enough for her family. Her family was anything but ordinary, honor, and pride were everything to them. The baby will not be aborted but will suffer for the rest of their life. Tortured until they begged for death.
This was not an ordinary child she bore in her womb. This was a child she was forced to conceive by a monster. The kind of monster that children were told stories about to scare them into obedience. The same kind of monster that her family dedicated their whole legacy to exterminate from the face of this world.
To carry and give birth alone was her punishment for being weak and being defiled by the enemy. Their honor was everything. That monster dishonored her family by forcing her, their only daughter, to carry a monster in her womb.
To regain their honor and take revenge on the monster who fathered the child, the family would torture the child their whole miserable life. Even monsters had pride and were angered when their spawn was harmed.
But they were only angered. They never come to reclaim their spawn from the hunters whose daughters they defiled. Despite fathering these wretched creatures, the children had a weak bloodline due to having a human mother, and so no effort was made to save them.
Decades of torture awaited any child born out of such union. The children's only reason for such agony was being born.
The woman's pain only increased as time passed, and the feeling of the child emerging strengthened her heart. She fought through the pain to continue to drag and push the baby out of her birth canal.
Minutes felt like hours, and hours felt like years. But then she had succeeded, and the baby was out. She was beyond exhaustion, drenched in sweat and blood. She suddenly began to laugh hysterically and cry.
She laid on her back and stared at the dirty ceiling above her. Her ears felt muffled as if they were underwater. Even her heartbeat sounded foreign and strange to her ears.
Slowly she turned her head to the creature that had emerged from inside of her. Disgust was the only emotion she felt and crawled away from it. She waited in the corner, feeling minutes like hours pass. She waited for someone to come and take her away from that thing.
Soon, the heavy metal door to the room opened and entered three men. All were heavily armed with guns. The three men were members of the Vaughan clan. A clan of hunters. They were dressed in black shirts and black cargo pants.
Behind the two younger men who entered first, was a much older man with a cold expression. He had a scar that ran from the left corner of his mouth to his hairline. Many other scars littered his muscular body. Each scar held a story about a hunt. He had a commanding presence, and the two younger men immediately made way for him.
“Is it done Ferwin?” The older man asked the woman who soon crawled to his feet.
“y-yes father!” The woman cried. Her face was a mix of tears and dirt.
“Good, you return to us now daughter, the seed of that filthy monster is no longer within you. You may return home now.” The older man put his hands on her head and stroked her hair.
“Thank you, father,” Ferwin cried in relief, her nightmare has now ended, and she can finally be allowed to go back home to her family and be with her beloved.
“I will take this thing back to the dungeons. Your brothers will help you home. Your mother was very anxious for your return, so go back quickly and take rest.” The older man's cold expression softened, and he helped Ferwin up and into the arms of her brothers.
The baby cried helplessly on the ground, but no one cared or even looked.
Soon they left the room, and the man's expression turned ice-cold again as he gazed at the bloody lump on the ground. The baby's cries never stopped. Upon inspection, the man found the gender.
“A fucking girl, huh? You will pay for forcing my precious daughter to give birth to you!” The man shouted in disgust.
He picked up the baby by her left foot and held her upside down. His gaze burned into her eyes.
“Cry and wail all you want, your monster of a father will not come for you, blame him for your miserable life. He should not have gotten involved with my family.” He growled at the baby, who did not understand and continued to cry.
With the baby's foot in hand, he left the room and made his way to the clan's manor. The place his daughter gave birth in was only a few minutes away from the manor. Clan members he passed did not stop him but instead looked in disgust at the child he held.
All around, there were whispers about their relief that the clan leader's daughter was now free from that abomination. She could now marry Hans, they had been sweethearts since high school.
He walked down a long hallway towards an old grey door. Behind it were stairs that led deep underground. He proceeded to go to the basement and into the dungeons. There, a dark and cold room was waiting to be claimed.
It will serve as the cage that would hold this child until the day she died. She will never know the light, only pain and suffering. At least that was its intention.
He left the baby on an old dirty rag that was left there on the cold cement floor. He then walked out of the jail cell and slammed the door behind him with a loud bang. The baby girl was left there in the cold and darkness. Caged for the years to come.
She will not die because she was no ordinary baby. She was to have half the strength of a full vampire. She had a vampire's cursed blood, as well as a hunter's blood. Both make her stronger than any human child. But this strength was a curse in this place, this meant that they could starve her longer and beat her harder without worrying she would die off early.
The child cried for a long…long time. She cried for years of the torment that members of the Vaughan clan gave her almost every day. She has beaten over everything that went bad in the life of the clan.
All that time, she was not told the big why. Why she had to suffer this way? They blamed her and called her a monster, accused her of a crime she had no knowledge of.
She became empty and soulless. Her thoughts were silent. She never saw the light, never known kindness or love. Her only knowledge of the world beyond this cage was that it was the domain of her torturers. Her hearing had become so sensitive, she could capture all the sounds occurring in the home above her even through her cold metal prison.
It was this way that she was able to hear the most familiar woman's voice. The woman was speaking very kindly to others.
'mama…' The little girl was too afraid to speak lest they hear her and come and beat her.
The little girl had no memory of the woman's face, only her angry and disgusted voice as she all but dragged her out the womb. That woman never came to beat the little girl. In fact, she never set foot in the basement in these five years since the birth of the little girl.
The only one who came to beat and torture her was her grandfather and uncles, who would always bring their friends.
The little girl could hear all that happened in the house, all the laughter, and celebrations. But also, the mourning as a member of the clan died. The little girl would always feel joy whenever someone dies in the clan. There would be plenty of fighting to lay the blame and the sound of crying. It also meant one less person who would come to beat her.
The cold no longer bothered the little girl who only had a sack to wear in these frigid conditions. She no longer felt her own body. She was like a silent ghost below a house that silently observed everything but could see nothing.
Only a month after the little girl got the sensitive hearing ability, she heard something that tore her already frozen heart. The sound of her mother's labored breathing as she was giving birth. There were several other voices around her mother.
All of them were encouraging and loving. Telling her to push harder and that she will be blessed with a beautiful, healthy child if she worked hard. And soon enough, the cries of a baby were heard.
“Its a girl! Oh, she is so beautiful Ferwin!”
“Oh, my sweet child! She looks just like you!”
“I say she looks just like Hans.”
The little girl was burning with jealousy, so hot it burned her eyes. Tears poured down her cheeks. She wondered why this child received such different treatment, they had the same mother and were both girls.
The little girl sank to her knees and dug her already broken nails into the ground enough to draw blood. She ground her teeth together. Anger made her see red in the darkness of the cell. Hatred filled her.
She had built a little fantasy in her head that her mother would one day forgive her unknown crime and take her to live with her in the upper house. But as time passed, that fantasy crumpled little by little. Today was the final blow that shattered to a thousand pieces.
“I will name her Gabriel.” The new mother named her baby girl and filled with joy, completely unaware that her actions had broken the mind of another child of hers.
The little girl was never named. She was only referred to as it and that thing. No matter how much she cried, nothing changed. Slowly she retreated and sank down into a corner of the dark room and waited. But she did not know what she was waiting for.
She did not see an exit, she could not imagine what death felt like and whether it would've felt better than living in this nightmare. She believed that she will continue to be locked here forever.
While she had never seen the sun or moon. She found ways to tell the time. At night, the majority of the house would become quite as the clan slept. During these hours, she would feel much stronger.
During the day, the house would be lively as everyone went about their business. It was during these times that she felt weak and sleepy. The clan would choose hours of the day to come and beat her while she was more vulnerable.
The older she became, the harder the beating she received and the fewer scraps of food she would get. No one bothered to explain to her why she was to be treated this way. And she did not speak a word in front of them.
She could only scream in pain as she took their beatings. They would blame her for the pain her mother endured. She was told this repeatedly until she began to believe that she was something evil and had done something wrong to deserve this torture.
One day, the clan leader came to the little girl's cell, who was now 7 years old. He came to beat her as usual, but this time he actually spoke to her. He may have had a slip of the tongue at that time, but he was smug when he saw the expression that emerged in the girl's face.
“The scraps you are thrown are the bits of food that my grandchild Gabriel doesn't want to eat, be grateful you filthy dog!” The girl's heart was shattered yet again.
A few more kicks in the stomach, and he left banging the door behind him. Her sensitive hearing caused her to flinch away in pain. She could only cower into the corner, nursing her freshest wounds.
The old ones did not yet heal, and yet more were added to them. More will be one the way soon. Her hatred grew more and more at a faster speed than her wounds.
This is how the little girl spent the next 8 years. Listening to the happiness of the family and the voice of her half-sister. Gabriel spoke with much love for her parents. Gabriel was now ten and her older sister, sixteen.
She was the older sister, but she was neglected both emotionally and mentally. While Gabriel spoke in fluent English, the older sister only knew how to scream. The older sister never learned to speak, read, write, let alone know what she looked like.
Gabriel never had a clue about what was taking place in the basement of her beloved home over the years.
As a tradition in the Vaughan clan, the children are taken on their first hunt at the age of ten under the supervision of the parents. What was meant as a family bonding and teaching experience ended in disaster. As the family returned to the manor, The little girl sensed the storm. There was a lot of shouting.
“Gabriel! I am so disappointed in you! These things may look human, but they are monsters! You let your guard down, and your mother got hurt!” Hans, Gabriel's father, shouted.
“This is unacceptable from a daughter of the Vaughan clan!” Ferwin shouted. She sounded like she was in pain.
“I am sorry, father, mother, but I can't do it. No matter how I look at them, they look human to me. They bleed the same as us and feel pain. She begged me not to kill he-” a loud crack was heard. The older sister suspected that Gabriel was slapped.
The little girl was overjoyed. Her mouth curved into a wide smile.
“Silence, you foolish child! They are murders, and it is the duty if this clan to purify the world of these abominations. The sooner you begin to understand that, the better. Now go to your room. I do not bear to look at you right now!” Hans shouted.
“But father I want to help mothe-“Gabriel pleaded, but her father cut her off.
“Go to your room NOW!” her father boomed.
The older sister heard Gabriel's feet running away, no doubt, to go to her room. At the sound of Gabriel's sobs, her older sister felt smug and happy. But that happiness immediately disappeared when she began to hear a pair of familiar footsteps walking on a route towards the staircase that led into the basement.
She felt fear in the pit of her stomach, and as the door opened, she crawled on the filthy floor backward until her back hit the cold stone wall. She knew that this beating would be different as she had never seen the clan leader's and Hans face so angry. And that anger will be vented out on her.
She swallowed, bracing for what's to come.
The whips they held shimmered with a silver liquid that slowly dripped on the floor. When she smelled it, she immediately hissed and tried to retreat further but failed as there was nowhere else run.
“Even this precious silver is a waste on your filthy body.” Growled the clan leader as he made the first lash.
Pain like she had never experienced sliced through her mind and body. She almost passed out as dark circles swam in her vision. Unfortunately, she remained wide awake.
Each lash tore her skin open, and the silver burned her. She was able to smell her own burning flesh but could only shield herself with her hands. She could only scream.
But then, something unexpected happened. Something that the two men had never intended.
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2
“What are you doing to that poor girl!?” Gabriel screamed from behind the two men.
They both froze at the same time, and so did their strikes against the miserable girl's body. Her body cowered and shifted into a tighter fetal position. She only breathed a sigh of relief for a brief moment before bracing for more pain.
“Gabriel, I told you to never ever come down here! Do you want to piss me off twice today? We've spoilt you rotten.” The grandfather sneered at Gabriel, who flinched back and began to cry.
His voice was full of poisonous rage, and it cut straight through her heart with its tainted blade. The young girl was not accustomed to such treatment by her family. Making their words cut twice.
She felt so confused about who she was. Becoming a hunter wasn't what she wanted. She didn't wish to see others suffer, let alone be the one to cause the suffering. Everyone around kept telling her that this was the right thing, but she felt so conflicted.
The older sister saw an expression never before centered on her. It was worn by Gabriel's little face. She could not understand it but didn't like how it was directed at her. The expression in question was one of pity.
“Look at her! Hear her screams! How could you do such a thing to another person? I will NEVER look at you the same way again. You always said that our duty was to exterminate the monsters of this world, but what are you now? You are the monsters.” Gabriel shouted at the two men she considered her family.
The older sister had never heard Gabriel talk back to her family, let alone fully shouting.
This was the first time in her entire life that the older sister had ever been humanized and cared about. Someone defended her. It brought a small warm feeling to her heart. She found herself hating her younger sister a little bit less. However, it was a mere spark inside of a frozen hollow cave with nothing for the brief spark to burn.
Their eyes met for the first time in their life.
'Gabriel was beautiful,' thought the older sister. She only knew Gabriel's voice but had never seen her.
Gabriel was again slapped for the second time that day. And just like that, the connection the sisters had was broken.
“You insolent child! How dare you speak to your elders in such a manner? After all, we did for you just for you! You want to spit it all back in our faces! You WILL be going to your room. Things will be different from now on. We raised a brat, but we can still fix you up.”
The clan leader shouted at Gabriel. His voice laced with all the dark promises he intended to keep.
Together the two men grabbed Gabriel by her arms and dragged her away back upstairs. Her struggles were futile, as her small frame was easily carried by the two larger men.
A mistake was made.
They left the cell door open. Too busy restraining Gabriel, who was kicking and screaming to remember to shut the door. It was then that a sudden feeling had overtaken the older sister's heart and made her whole body become alive. Her hair stood on end, and sweat beads began to form on her forehead.
A chance of escape lay right before her eyes. Her pain and open wounds were all forgotten. Perhaps it was adrenaline that powered her. But in an instant, she was on her feet and running.
Everything was a blur.
She ran and ran.
She ran through a home that she had never before laid eyes on but could only hear its creaks and shudders of its old wood for years. She did not stop for a second to admire the outside world. Her heart pounded with fear that her once in a million chances of escape would fail. She ran where she heard no voices nor footsteps.
And then out she broke free of the manor she was a prisoner of since the day of her birth.
Her bare feet touched surfaces she had never before felt in her life: grass and mud.
She ran into the thick forest that surrounded the manor, not caring about a destination. She had no actual destination. She just wanted to get away from her captors. Her eyes made contact with the sun for the very first time in her life.
She was so lost in it that she tripped on a branch and fell. She didn't even have enough time to process the pain in her knees when she began to hear people shouting.
“She ran away! Everyone on guard! Find this bitch now. She can't have gotten far in her state!” A man shouted as a loud alarm was sounded.
In an instant, she was on her feet and was running for her life. Her whole body was burning with pain, and it was adrenaline and sheer fear that pushed her and kept her legs from collapsing under her. Soon enough, the voices of her pursuers faded into nothingness. Only the sound of the forest remained.
When no human sound was heard, she allowed herself the luxury of rest. Breathing heavily, she let her knees give out as she collapsed on the ground. Only then she took notice of the world around her.
She was surrounded by thick trees where hundreds of birds sang. She was amazed by the open space around her. She had every right to be amazed after spending her whole life in a tiny prison deep in the dark.
Nearby she heard the sound of running water and quickly crawled towards the source, which was but a few yards away. She used her hands to gather water, and greedily drank it up. It tasted different and looked clearer than the water her captures would throw her. She kept drinking it until she felt like throwing up.
She was so uncertain, she kept thinking that at any moment they would find her and drag her back. She wanted to a least remember the taste and coolness of the water. With great pain, she washed her wounds from the blood and dirt.
She saw a reflection in the water and screamed, she whirled around to look behind her, but there was no one. She looked at the reflection again only to realize that the unfamiliar girl in the reflection was her. As she touched her face, so did the girl in the reflection.
Her hair was a white pile of tangles atop her head, eyes blue, frightened, and rimmed with red. Her bones were prominent, and the rags she wore hung off her small body, consequences of captivity. It was a hideous reflection.
She tried to wash her face, scrubbing it so hard as if to peel away the ugliness. But it only left her face redder and without dirt.
She heaved a sigh and got up to leave. Worried, she may never taste such clean water again. She decided to follow the creek in the opposite direction to where the clan manor was.
She walked for hours through the forest, stopping a few times to rest and drink. Soon the night came, and she was in the dark once again. But this darkness was different from the darkness of the prison. Light of the moon shone on her face.
She always felt stronger and more alert during the night, and she wondered why. She sighed in happiness as she took in the beauty of the moon high above. She preferred the sight of the moon to the sun. She thought it was more beautiful and hurt her eyes less to look at.
Suddenly her nose was assaulted by the most wondrous scent she had ever experienced. She felt so strongly compelled to follow it, and her mouth watered. As she neared the source, the smell grew thicker, and she whimpered, feeling a thirst burn her throat. She felt out of control.
She came across a deer that laid on the ground bleeding. She did not revel in the fact that this was her first time seeing such a creature. Her eyes could only focus on the blood that oozed from its side. She closed her eyes and took a deep whiff of the beautiful smell.
She couldn't understand what compelled her, but she knew that she wanted that red liquid so severely. With no control over herself, she lunged forward, sunk her teeth into the deer, and drank its blood with greed as she did the water ten times.
She growled as she drank, digging her fingernails into the deer whose heart no longer beat. She was afraid it would try to run and escape her. Just then, a sudden movement in the trees drew her attention.
Another animal stalked towards her and the deer. Her inner predator was claiming the deer as her prey. She hissed at the animal who cowered and ran away, sensing the unnaturalness about the girl.
The more she drank, the more she felt the pain of her injuries fade, and her strength increase. But, as the deer died and grew colder, the taste of its blood worsened. Starving, she did not seem to care. When she was satisfied, she removed her teeth from the deer and licked her bloody lips. Her mind and her senses felt sharper.
Back in her prison, she was never fed meat, although she could smell its beautiful aroma as the clan's members cooked and ate it. The smell would waft all throughout the manor and down into the basement. She suspects that they did not want her to accidentally have this delicious red fluid within the meat, which made her feel 10 times stronger.
'They wanted to make her weak so she could not escape,' she thought bitterly.
'I have done nothing wrong!'
Suddenly she remembered Gabriel and felt a slight sense worry, but she squashed the thought as quickly as it had appeared. She could care less about others right now. Surely they will not kill their beloved daughter, right?
Children got scolded all the time in that house. Plus, a few slaps were nothing. She had suffered much worse than that. Many questions swirled around in her mind, but the main priority was to find safety.
'And more blood,' a small voice in her mind said.
She smiled, remembering the sensation of the warm fluid as it filled her. The poor creature was most likely shot by hunters who never came to claim their prey. The injured deer crawled to the creek to have one last drink of water.
The deer's last drink of water became the girl's first drink of blood.
As she moved, something in the water caught her attention. She caught a glimpse of herself in the water and stopped dead in her tracks. It was almost as if another girl was looking at her. She had to look behind her to make sure she was alone. And she was all alone in the thick forest for stretches of miles.
The girl in the reflection looked so much better. Her eyes were no longer rimmed with red and looked clear. There was a youthful shine to her face as if she had aged backward 10 years. Her lips were no longer cracked and bruised but were soft and plump. There was a shine to her white hair as well. Her wounds had closed but had left behind ugly bruises and red blotches.
'What did I drink?' she was in disbelief at how quickly her appearance had changed, and injuries healed. But there was so much that she did not know about the outside world, and perhaps this was normal.
'Perhaps the hunters used blood to heal themselves too.' she thought foolishly.
***
Back in the Vaughan clan manor, chaos was unleashed. Its leader was busy smashing every breakable object in the living room. Anger was radiating off of him. Those who came forward to calm him recoiled and backed away as he exploded. Even his daughter would not dare approach him in this state.
“Why can't you find that weak little bitch? She's just a halfling! She did not taste a single drop of blood for over a decade and was injured with silver. So explain to me why you cannot find that thing“. He roared.
At his feet, 3 men sat kneeling with their heads down. They were afraid for their life. And if not for their life, they feared being thrown out of the clan. That, to them, was a fate worse than death. Since Cyrus became the clan head some 20 years ago, no one was let off for the smallest errors, and punishments were severe.
Cyrus was a harsh and cruel man both against his underlings and against the monsters he hunted. He never stopped until he got what he was owed. He exacted revenge without a second thought and in the cruelest ways possible.
The men felt pity for his granddaughter, she had just received the first beating of her life. However, that's the punishment for sympathizing with the enemy. She didn't just do it once, but twice in a single day. First, when she lowered her weapon away from a female vampire because she begged for her life.
Then the vampire bitch jumped on Ferwin and injured her before being killed by Hans. The second time, she tried to defend that bastard we kept locked in the basement. She was a foolish child who, if left this way, would not survive long in this clan. Cyrus will most definitely set her straight.
If Cyrus wanted, he could execute or banish them on the grounds of aiding the escape of that bitch without providing any proof. Cyrus's words counted above everyone's. He had absolute power over the Vaughan clan.
Inside, Cyrus was embarrassed that his mistake had allowed the escape of the girl. After all, he left the prison door open and underestimated the prisoner's ability to move. But he was never about to admit that he would rather blame someone else than hurt his pride.
And so that's what he did. He banished the three men from the clan on the grounds of helping aid the girl's escape. This way, he hid how she truly got away. Cyrus gave one look at Hans, who had been a witness, and he lowered his head and wished the ground would swallow him.
But since Hans was his daughter's husband, getting rid of him would hurt Ferwin and Gabriel's feelings. It would also look bad if his daughter and granddaughter were associated with a traitor.
“Pack your things and get the fuck out of here, filthy traitors. I took you in as boys after that rapid pack of werewolves tore up your families. I trained and fed you, and this is how you repay me? you helped the little monster escape, how else would she have made it out of the manor in her weak state?” Cyrus growled at them as he kneeled down to their eye level.
The 3 men were angry, they were innocent and falsely accused. But nothing they could say would change the decision to banish them. Their words against the clan head meant nothing. But Cyrus was always convincing. He had a way with words to make anyone believe.
What made Cyrus more convincing, was that these 3 men were to be on guard duty today. But they did not take their job seriously as they thought that no one would ever dare to attack the Vaughan clan. One had found a corner to sleep in, one got drunk, and another went to talk to friends. So naturally, Cyrus blamed them, and the clan believed him.
Anger was soon replaced with fear as they knew what was to come. Banished hunters were often the target of vampires and werewolves who lost family or friends to the hunters.
Their deaths would be gruesome, and in many cases, the hunters would be turned into the beasts they dedicated their lives to hunting. It always resulted in them taking their own life or getting hunted by their ex-partners.
As they collected their belongings and set out to leave their home, they swore an oath that they would find the little bitch that had ruined their lives and make her pay with hers. Perhaps they could earn their way back into the clan.
***
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