Two new stories and one update in one day? I'm on a roll! I know this has been done before, but I really wanted to have a crack at it cause I can't seem to get it out of my head!
Mason is alive. Ivan is alive. And so is Lissa's family, but Rose is still bonded to her, let your imagination run wild on how :)
One.
Rose POV
I picked at the tray of chips in front of me, swirling one in the tub of gravy accompanying them on the ghastly red plastic tray the academy cafeteria provided. It had been three weeks since the attack on the school, they had continued field experience up until a week ago, making it extremely hard for me to sneak around to see Dimitri, it had been a lonely two weeks, only being able to see him on my off days, they where the days I had to go and sit in Deirdre's office and attempt to make sense of her words until the timer would go off, and the rest of the day would be mine, whilst normally I would spend the rest of the day with Lissa and the gang, after my sessions I would be cranky and spend the day beating up dummy's and the Guardians until Dimitri's shifts where over and I could sneak off to the cabin, which we had stocked with various things we would need during our time there.
The guilt had been eating at me, every day I had to sit with my friends and pretend that I was in no way having an illicit love affair with my gorgeous older mentor, the same mentor who was my best friends Guardian, I felt as though I was gambling with her life every time I stepped into Dimitri's embrace. I had also had to endure Adrian and Mason's constant onslaught of flirtations and bad pick up lines.
Mason had acted weird ever since he awoke from his two and a half month-long coma a month ago, I could have sworn that Isaiah had snapped his neck, I remembered frantically searching for a pulse on his cold neck, only to come up empty-handed, but once the Guardians had shown up and dragged a distraught Adrian in their wake, they had suspected that Isaiah had knocked him out, and compelled me to see otherwise.
"Are you okay, Rose? You've been swirling that chip for the past ten minutes now" Lissa asked, concern and amusement painting her features. Another wave of guilt thrashed threw me, Liss was my best friend, my sister even, and I still hadn't told her about my relationship with Dimitri, it had almost been a month since we had given into our feelings, and she was still oblivious to my feelings for him, let alone that he held the same feelings for me.
"Yeah... I'm fine" I lied
"No you're not, you've been quiet for weeks, at first I thought that it was your way of grieving after the attack, but it has been three weeks, so it has to be something else, tell me what's wrong" we had attracted the eyes of everyone at the table, I took a deep breath.
"Meet me in my room after training" she nodded and turned her attention back over to Mia, who looked slightly annoyed about their discussion about the upcoming Macy's sale. Sighing, I checked the time and decided to head over to the gym, although practice didn't start for another forty minutes.
"Let me walk you to the gym, Little Dhampir" Adrian offered me his elbow as I raised from the table, I knocked it aside and continued towards the door, with him walking beside me. Once we where safely outside the building and walking over to the gym Adrian stopped walking and took my arm.
"Rose, do you have a minute?" he said, voice serious.
"Some things different with you, I've tried to put my finger on it for the past three weeks, Lissa has seen something different, but not what I've seen, I didn't know what it was at first, but then I saw you next to Belikov the other day and his aura was the same as yours" shit. This wasn't good, he already knew about my relationship with him, and I knew that he wouldn't tell anyone about what he had discovered.
"You slept with him, didn't you?"
"Damn it Rose! What where you thinking? Honestly?!" he exclaimed when I didn't answer
"I love him Adrian, I thought you knew that?"
"I do know that Rose, but he's older than you, he should have known better, if this gets out then he could get in some serious trouble."
"I know that! Why can't you be happy for me?" I asked in a small voice
"I am Rose, you know I am, I am ecstatic that you found the right guy for you, I am happy that Belikov is finally moving on from that fight he and Ivan had, hell, he is starting to be thankful for it, because if they hadn't then he never would have taken the job here and found you, and I want you to know that if things go south with Lissa tonight, I want you to come and find me, okay? And I'll go and talk to her" tears threatened my eyes
"Thank you, Adrian" I choked out.
Dimitri was already starting our warm up stretches when I arrived at the gym surprisingly on time. Back when we first started these trainings, he would stand there and watch me suffer, as though he was assessing how much he could make me suffer before I snapped, but after giving into our feelings he begun to always run my laps with me.
"Roza, stop." He said with authority, holding my clenched fist from punching a hole through the dummy I was currently assaulting.
"Whats wrong?" He asked as he led me towards the mats piled up against the back wall, we sat with our backs against the wall, and his arm snaked around my waist.
"I'm telling Lissa tonight… about us." He looked at me.
"Why are you worried?"
"I'm scared that she'll tell me that its wrong, I remember how she reacted to those two Dhampir's who ran from their duties to be with each other last November."
"She's your best friend Roza. I'm sure that she'll understand and be happy that you're happy." He looked away, guilt covering his face. I could understand where the guilt was coming from, he thought that by being with him he was taking opportunities away from me.
"Comrade… I knew what I was getting into that night in the cabin, and I don't regret it. I love you, nothing will change that"
"I love you too" he whispered, resting his fore head on mine.
I paced my room, hair damp from the shower Dimitri had let me take before practice finished, a rare occurrence for him, even rarer where the times where he joined me, it was a break in self-control, but he knew that I needed to be comforted and gladly took up the job.
"Hey." I spun around from my daydream of watching Dimitri do his rounds around the Dhampir dorms to see Lissa standing there watching me, placing her spare key back in her pocket, I had forgotten I had given her that, she and Dimitri both had one.
"Please don't hate me." I said as I joined her on my bed.
"Rose, you're starting to scare me."
"I just… I can't have you hating me, but you probably will after tonight. I've kept a huge secret from you Liss, like 'several people could be sent to jail' big. I've wanted to tell you for months, but I've been too scared of your reaction and chicken out at the last-minute. I don't want to lose you…" I trailed off, feeling as though I was in need of a paper bag to stop me from hyper ventilating.
"How long have you been keeping this 'secret' locked up?"
"Officially or not?"
"Both."
"Officially three weeks,"
"And the other?"
"Since we came back." She studied the air around me, reading my aura.
"You can tell me, I'll still be here for you, I'm sorry I haven't been that much of a friend lately, I've been too caught up in Christian and healing people from the attack to notice that you where struggling, but I'm here now."
"I've been seeing someone." Her mouth widened into a little 'o'. "We've had feelings for each other since we came back, but we didn't act on out feelings until three weeks ago."
"When you said that your secret was 'go to jail' bad, I wasn't expecting this" she half joked, I shot her a look.
"He's older than me." That shut her up.
"How older?"
"He's twenty-four and a Dhampir."
"I can see why that's bad, but why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it would be putting you in danger."
"I don't understand Rose. How could your relationship be putting me in danger?"
"Because we've let ourselves love each other, so if strigoi comes we'll throw ourselves in front of each other, leaving you exposed." A million things ran through her head, she was confused, the only other Dhampir that would throw themselves in front of her was Guardian Belikov, suddenly it clicked, she recalled the way I had changed since coming back to the academy, how Guardian Belikov was the only Guardian here I respected, how he could calm me down from a darkness attack, something she, even as my bond mate could just do.
"Wait-Guardian Belikov? You're with your teacher?!"
"Technically he's my mentor, not teacher."
"Woah. It's hard to imagine him with a social life, he just seems so stoic." I smiled. She wasn't angry.
"He is usually, but he's similar to me in a way, he likes sarcasm and joking around. And he loves food just as much as I do." She laughed.
"Does it show in your auras? Your feelings for each other?"
"Yeah, that's how Adrian found out."
"Adrian knows?"
"Yeah, we walked into some pretty intense fights between Dimitri and I back at the ski lodge."
"Why where you fighting?"
"About our complicated relationship, this was when Mason and I where dating, and he was contemplating being with Tasha. So it was pretty intense."
We dropped the subject after that, instead staying up until 2am gossiping, I awoke to my alarm blaring static beeps, the small neon green light indicating that I had only been asleep for an hour. Brilliant.
I reached the gym in record time, attempting not to wake Lissa, and for once was on time. With my trials approaching, Dimitri had decided we needed more time in our practices, thus morning training starting at 3:30 and our afternoon ending at 9.
"Are you okay, Roza?" Dimitri asked, pausing his stretches and examining the bags under my eyes.
"I'm fine Comrade, just a little tired." He nodded and led me out towards the track.
"Shit!" My knees scraped along the rough surface of the track, Dimitri's face floating in front of me.
"Rose! Are you okay?!"
"Which one of you is asking that?" He swore and picked me up.
"Whoa Comrade, the world may be swimming but I am 99% sure that the gym is that way." I said pointing behind me, another wave of nausea hit me, and I pushed myself out of Dimitri's arms, tumbling onto the grass and bringing up the food I had consumed at dinner last night.
"Make that 70% sure. I don't feel so good."
"I'm taking you back to your room, and I'll have Dr. Olendzki come up and look at you."
After Dr. Olendzki had left, leaving behind a small pack of Ibuprofen and instructions for me to take a bath and relax, I was laying with my back to Dimitri's stomach.
As it turned out I only had a bout of food poisoning, I blame that god forsaken gravy.
Dimitri kissed my neck and made small circles on my stomach, he was sure not to get his hair wet, as it would look suspicious if someone came knocking and he answered it with wet hair and me in the bath.
Which-as it turned out-happened, attempting to be as quiet and quick as possible, Dimitri dried himself off and pulled his shirt and work out pants back on.
"Princess, what can I do for you?"
"I was wondering if Rose was here?"
"She's in the bath at the moment, but you're all welcome to wait."
"Okay. Could you get her if she is almost done?"
The door opened slightly and I made quick to grab the bikini that always seemed to be by my bath, dunking it under water, Dimitri shot me a look of Appreciation, no more people could know about us, and him coming in here with me naked in a bath would be awkward to say the least.
"Are you alright Love?" He asked, too low for even the Moroi to hear.
"No." I gasped just in time to reach the toilet, Dimitri bent down beside me, holding back my hair and rubbing my back.
"Shh, milaya, I'm here. Shh, baby, its okay" he pulled me into his arms once I was done, tears falling down my face and throat burning.
"Lets get you dressed" he assisted me in pulling my clothes on and helping me stand as I brushed my teeth, taking my hair brush, he helped me walk into my room and settle onto my bed, my friends gathered on the bean bags and floor.
"Shit! Rose are you okay?" Mason was the first to speak, I relaxed into Dimitri as he begun to brush my hair for me.
"Yeah, food poisoning. What are you guys up to?"
"We where worried when you didn't show for any of your classes, and Dr. Olendkzi said that you where sick and that Guardian Belikov was watching over you when we went to the clinic to look for you." I smiled at them all, they where all so amazing, I don't know how they put up with me. It made me feel even more guilty for keeping my relationship with Dimitri a secret.
"May I?" He asked as he begun to pull unruly strands away from my face, I knew what he was asking, he wanted to braid my hair, I remember the first time he did it, he told me about how his mother had made him learn so that he could help her do his sisters hair when they had to go out.
"You know how to braid?" Adrian asked, smirking.
"I grew up in a house full of woman, it was bound to happen."
"You never speak very much about your self do you?"
"There is not much to tell."
"Well, you'll be my guardian soon, so you'll be hanging around with all of a lot, I don't like having my guardians hover around and be left out" also because you're dating my best friend. That last bit was unspoken between the three of us, four, if you included Adrian. "Tell us about your family." She prompted.
"I grew up in a small Dhampir community in Siberia, a days drive from Omsk. I lived with my grandmother-Yeva-my mother-Olena-and my three sisters. Karolina is the oldest of us all, she has two children, Paul, who is sixteen, and Zoya, who is five. Sonya is next, she is pregnant at the moment, four months along and already cranky according to mama." He smiled fondly at the thought of his family, he held the end of my braid in his fingers, searching for a hair tie, giving up, he pulled the one from his own hair and twisted it onto mine, strands of hair falling in his eyes. "Viktoria is the youngest, she turns seventeen next August. She hates that she is only a month older than Paul."
"Whats it like, the commune I mean?" Eddie asked.
"Its like any other town, a mix between Humans and Dhampirs, of course the more underground area of the town, where Moroi men look for Blood whores, but there is a lot of love there. It quiets down during the school year, when all the young Dhampirs are sent back off to St. Basils, All of my sisters and I all attended there, Vika is still there, much to her distaste, she wants to be a Guardian, I can thank Rose here for that, she has quite the influence on Dhampir girls becoming Guardians, stories about her and Vasilissa are quite well-known in the academy's over there, that's how my charge, Ivan, found out about the job over here looking for them, and encouraged me to take it, Vika is planning to move to St. Vladmirs soon, she wants to see more of the world, and do her senior year in America, unlike Paul, who is rather happy in Russia."
"See Comrade, even your sister agrees with me that Siberia is an arctic wasteland." There was a collection of gasps from around the room, as though they couldn't believe that I had just said that to him after he confessed his love of his country, but to their surprise he laughed fondly.
"Oh Rose, when will you ever believe me that Russia isn't an arctic wasteland?" I pretended to think about it
"Probably never"
"Well then, we'll have to fix that wont we? Maybe you'll have to come back with me one day? And see for yourself."
"I'd love that Comrade, I've always wanted to prove you wrong about something" I smiled broadly at him and he laughed, shooting me one of his Dimitri smiles, the ones that make the corner of his eyes crinkle and eyes sparkle.
I can see why you fell in love with him , Rose. Lissa broadcasted to me, her head spinning with thoughts about how cute we where together and how attractive Dimitri was and how lucky I was for him to love me.
"I've always known." I responded out loud to her, ignoring everyone's confused gaze at mine and Dimitri's exchange. Oh well, they'd find out soon enough.
And there we have it folks :) some Romitri moments and more bonding with her friends [I quite like the thought of Dimitri getting along with them all, and Mason being alive]] love ya all! xx