My new story has finally arrived! I have had this idea in my head for a while now and it is only recently I began to write it.

I just want to say a MASSIVE thank you to my beta :xx-RedRoseBlackThorn-xx She has encouraged me so much and has been fantastic so far! If you haven't already check out her stories 'His Redeemable Soul' and 'I Want To Experience Love'. They are both truly amazing!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Vampire Academy series, Richelle Mead does!

"What are you watching?" Oksana asked, sitting down onto the brown leather coach beside me. I gestured for her to move closer to me so we could spread the blanket round both of us. Even though it was almost March the temperature was still harsh and cold.

Our house in Washington was perfect for us, not too big and no neighbours to check up on us. The back of the house overlooked Commencement Bay which was perfect for summer, but for winter it just made our house colder.

"I'm not really sure." It was a black and white film, made sometime in the 1970s. It was about a married woman who was actually in love with another man. Funny how you were in this situation just a little while ago Rose, I thought to myself. I sighed. Why did everything have to revolve around love?

We watched the rest of the film in silence. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, it was actually reassuring. During the months we had lived together, Oksana and I had formed a bond of sorts in which we didn't need to communicate by words.

Lissa and I once had a very special bond. I could feel her emotions and occasionally I got pulled into her head and could see and feel what she was doing. We still have our bond but I do everything I can to keep a wall up so I can't feel any of her emotions.

The bond I have with Oksana is different from the bond with Lissa as there is nothing magical about it. We just simply understand each other and know when the other wants to talk or when they should stay away.

Eventually the movie came to an end. The woman's husband died, and while she would always love him, she was happy at the thought of spending the rest of her life with the man she truly loved.

I chuckled inwardly to myself. Even death couldn't keep me away from who I wanted.

The clock above the fireplace indicated that it was 11pm. This was the time he was usually waiting for me.

"Goodnight, Oksana," I said giving her a hug.

"Goodnight, Rose," she said.

Nothing more was said as we both set off to turn off the appliances, clean up our mess and parted ways. We both knew that the other wasn't going to sleep. We both knew that we were going to do something that was most likely illegal in our world.

I slipped quietly into my bedroom and was immediately grateful for my large en-suite. Imagine if Oksana and I had to share a bathroom; that would be messy and well, awkward. Not that if I had to share a bedroom I wouldn't, because I defiantly would. I would do anything to see him.

Filling the bath up to the top, I poured some of my favourite bath lotion in there. It smelt of mango and passion fruit and produced plenty of bubbles. Even though I wasn't in the bath for relaxing time, it's thought that counts, right?

I slid of my shirt and stepped out of my jeans, before I slipped into the bath, and the hot water against my skin made me let out a moan. I laid my head back against the back of the bath and sighed in full bliss, knowing I would see him soon. My hand reached over to the side of the bath and picked up the smooth, sharp object that had become my friend since the incident.

I traced my fingers along the lines of the knife, admiring the way it felt.

Suddenly I swept the blade quickly along my wrist, applying enough pressure to let the blood be released. At first I gasped at the pain of the cut, but after a second the pain disappeared and was replaced by a feeling of content.

All the emotions I had been bottling up inside me for years came flooding out and I was finally free. I felt like a butterfly, beautiful and free. I shut my eyes and felt myself slipping, slipping, slipping...

When I opened my eyes I was disorientated at first. Nothing felt or looked the same. That always happens to me though... Every time. However when I took in my surroundings I realised immediately where I was and smiled.

It was the meadow like usual. We had been to the forest, to town and many other places before, but something about the forest just did it for me and he always seems to know that. There was something about the green that went on for miles around you, and the odd tree in the middle, the willow.

The willow! He was sitting underneath the willow, eating an apple. Oh gosh, he was so gorgeous. I ran towards him, eager to spend as much time as possible with him today. After falling down a couple of times, I remembered that in this world there was no need to run. I simply let myself float towards him, my feet a few inches off the ground, being pulled to him by our love.

His red hair was tousled today in a way that did him justice. And his green eyes sparkled in a way that made me never want to look away. He had on a plain blue T-shirt and dark jeans, his toned body showing through his clothes.

I saw him looking at my body admiringly and I looked down at my naked body. I couldn't bring clothes when I came here, but why did I need them when I was just going to be with him? The logic seemed very simple to me.

With no time to spare, I sat down and started kissing him passionately and avidly, resuming what had happened last night and all the nights before that.

When I first came to meet him, I couldn't fight the light long enough to even look for him. Even once I found him; it was weeks before I could actually get close to him. Now, I had enough darkness in me to let me stay for at least a couple of minutes. It may not be much, but a little is better than nothing. And I... needed to be with him.

His soft hands stroked my body gently, his hands lingering on my breasts but not for long before he then stared massaging them tenderly. I let out a moan and said his name filled with lust. "Mason."

He couldn't talk as his lips were on my neck, but I could tell he liked this as much as I did from the look in his eyes. I had managed to get his shirt off, and his hands had slid down to my thighs when I felt the tug.

No, no! I thought, not realising I had actually said that aloud until Mason stopped caressing my body and frowned at me.

"Rose? No! It wasn't long enough. I need more time. I need to..."

His words were cut off as I was jolted into the very real and very evil human world. I opened my eyes, not surprised by what I found around me. The bath water was red from my recent cut and blood had splashed along all the walls of the bath. My hair was wet, meaning that at some point I had sunk down into the bath.

Even though it had felt like two minutes with Mason, I was aware it had actually been just under an hour. Spending a day in the real world was about equivalent to an hour in the shadow land. As I was getting out of the bath, I slipped into a lace camisole that hugged my curves and was very comfortable to sleep in.

I didn't bother cleaning the bathroom; I knew Darota would clean it in the morning. Though I did feel guilty for leaving some bad blood stains tonight. She didn't speak one word of English and never seemed to be suspicious at what she found every day. I guess if you worked for Moroi and Dhampire's long enough that is what happened to you. I swear, she must have seen a lot in her time.

I stepped into my room which was mostly empty. Everything had been sent back from but I didn't put anything up in my room. In fact all of the boxes that had been sent were still sitting in the garage waiting to be opened.

My king size bed sat in the middle of the room, and while crawling into it, I noticed how big and empty it was for one person. I curled up in a ball; bring my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. I tried to imagine Mason was in bed with me hugging and kissing me tenderly.

Tomorrow. I thought. Tomorrow you will see him again. Tomorrow you will be happy.

Repeating my mantra over and over in my head I eventually fell into a deep sleep, filled with nightmares of dead people.

-...-

Deidre my councillor looked up at me and wrote something down in her notebook. I tried to sneak a glance at the book, but she had it tilted in a way I couldn't make out what any of the words said.

"How's life?"

It was such a simple question yet the answers were definitely not simple. How do I tell her I prefer being half-dead than living? And how do I tell her about my cutting each night? There was no way so I just said, "Fine."

"Oksana okay?"

"Yup, she is fine." Again that word 'fine'. It meant that nothing was bad but nothing was good either. You were just coasting.

Following Mason's death a whole load of shit went down. Without any fuss I went back to the academy, yet once I was there that was when reality sank in. I would never see him again. Touch him. Hear him. I refused to go to any of my lessons, didn't attend my training sessions with a man I once claimed to love. Some days I would just lock myself in Mason's room and not do anything, just sit and stare.

Lissa tried to help for a while. She brought me food, told me all the gossip, she tried everything she could possibly do to bring me out of my state. I knew nothing would work though. When Mason died, a part of my soul went with him and there was no way that I could get it back. It was lost... gone... in another realm. Lissa eventually realised that too and backed off. It wasn't anything personal towards her; it just became too hard to look at things that reminded me of Mason. Deep down I knew Lissa knew that too, but I could see the hurt on her face.

When the school realised I was never going to change my new behaviour, they were stuck as what to do. My mother couldn't keep me with all of her guardian duties and well, who actually knew where my father was? So that is when they decided to keep me in a safe house with Oksana. Oksana, like me, was shadow-kissed, emphasis on the was. Her lover, or 'soulmate' as she liked to call him, died in a tragic incident a couple of months ago, and was in the same situation as me. It was her who introduced me to the cutting. A new drug, you could say.

One of the terms of this arrangement was that every month I had to have a meeting with a counsellor to discuss how I was feeling. Which is how I found myself sitting in a small room at St. Vladmir's with the school counsellor, Deidre.

Moving out of the school I returned to a human schedule and found it strange making an appointment so late in the day. It was 7pm here so it was too early for all the students to be up yet. That was definitely a good thing. I couldn't handle all the talking now... Not after I left.

"Have you thought about Mason a lot?"

Yes. Every single day. "Sometimes."

"How do you feel when you think about him?"

Happy? Thrilled?I wish I could spend every second of the day with him in the Shadow World and hated coming back to the academy? All not appropriate answers. "Sad." That was kind of true. When I wasn't with him I was sad.

"Have you been keeping up with your guardian training?"

"No." The first true answer I had said. I stopped training as soon as I killed those two Strigoi back in Spokane. I hadn't even gone to receive the Moljina marks yet.

Deidre sighed. She wasn't getting anything out of me and she knew it. "Fine. You are free to go?"

Shock must have been all over my face. She was letting me go? She usually kept me here till the end of the hour, trying as hard as she could to press some information out of me.

"Well Miss Hathaway, it has become obvious that I am not going to get any information out of you and so there is no more I can do. You can only get out of this by yourself now."

I grinned. It wasn't like I didn't have to go to these meetings anymore, but it was certainly better knowing she wasn't going to keep asking so many questions.

Without glancing behind me I walked out of the room and into the cold February night. Wrapping my scarf around my neck I marched quickly towards the front gates. There, a car was waiting to take me straight back to my house where I could be with Mason again.

When I was nearly at the front gate I noticed movement to the left of me. As part of me was half Moroi I had strong senses and the guardian side of me was always on the lookout for danger. Though I instantly knew it wasn't danger that was approaching me.

What I found surprised me. It was Lissa. She was wearing a jumper with the school logo on her pyjama bottoms. Noticing her makeup free face and her knotted hair I was guessing she had only just woken up. She shivered. She was more affected by the cold than me. Maybe I should give her my scarf?

Her face was a ghostly white and her blonde hair was blowing in the wind. Her eyes were fixated on my face and her mouth was open like she was going to say something.

"I was just leaving." I really didn't want to talk to her. After the incident I blocked off anyone from my old life, even the Russian.

"No," her voice was cracking. "Please don't go."

She stared at me and I felt my heart do a jump. I loved her. We were best friends and I still trust her more than everyone else in the world. Yet the darkness in me was making me keep secrets from her, keeping my emotions bottled up inside.

Her voice had a pleading tone and I instantly was suspicious she was using her compulsion on me. As Lissa was a spirit user she could use it more easily and much more powerfully than other Moroi. I mentally scalded myself for thinking that.Lissa wouldn't use compulsion on me, would she?

"I'm sorry Vasilisa," she winced at her full name but I wanted her to get the message to leave me alone. I didn't want to talk to her... I didn't want to talk to anyone, but Mason, right now. "But I really have to be back." It was true. Mason would be expecting me in an hour.

Hurt flashed all across her face and also through the bond. She was feeling like I had abandoned her, that I didn't love her anymore. I did love her, more than she would ever know. But I wanted indulge on me telling her, it was best if she thought we had no more connections. I still loved all of my friends from this school. Well except one... But it was just easier for me and them if they forgot about me.

"Fine." Ah, the dreaded word! "But let me just tell you this. For some reason there has been more Strigoi attacks going on lately. It's been bad, real bad." Tears started forming in her eyes and I knew that somehow someone she knew had been hurt. I wanted to comfort her, but I held my ground and stayed put.

I paused, waiting for her to give me more information. I guess I was learning something from Deidre after all. Who would have guessed?

"E-e-ddie is dead." This news brought a pang in my chest. Eddie was a great guy, he didn't deserve to die. However I would not let any emotion show. Perhaps I would go visit him tonight, if I got enough time.

Lissa stared at me, shocked at my lack of feeling. She was starting to yell now, something she only did on rare occasions. "Do you not care Rose? Do you not feel one bit of sadness? We used to be your friends before you ditched us! And then you just left us and never came back to say goodbye! You don't even check up on us! Did you know that Adrian is engaged? Do you know Christian and I have been fighting? Did you know Dimitri left to become Tasha's guardian?"

Dimitri. Even his name being mentioned created a flood of emotions inside me. My first thought was that he was away from danger before I could mentally slap myself. He was the reason that Mason is dead. He does not deserve to live. I hate him.

I stood in the cold for a minute staring at Lissa. It was all too tempting to run back into her arms and say that everything was okay, but I will not break. I stared her levelly in the eyes before taking a big breath and spinning around, facing the front gate.

"I'm glad you're safe," was the last thing I said before walking to the front gate.

When I reached the front gate, I swear I could hear a voice saying "I miss you Rose."

How did you like the first chapter? Please review and let me know what you think

Why does Rose hate Dimitri? What will happen with Mason? Keep reading this story to find out ;)

Also due to exams and other forthcoming events I might not be updating this story that often. I promise you thought that I will write at every possible chance I get and every chapter will contain something to keep you going