Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Academy

14 years later
I was sitting in the small kitchen of our house, my parents Rose and Dimitri Belikov were there too, with stupid grins on their faces. My mother was said to have been startlingly beautiful in her day. Both age and the after math of pregnancy hadn't seemed to affect her much. My father, seven years her senior still looked at her with so much adoration, I wondered if my mother even noticed half the time. Unlike her, his hair, cut close to his scalp, was now steaked with silver. He had changed from the pictures I had seen, with his long dark locks. Of course because he was a dhampir he wasn't really my father, but I had grown up calling him Dad and I was the closest thing he had to a daughter.

"You're what?" I asked, not believing the words that had just left their mouths.

"We are sending you to St. Vladimir's Academy" Mom said again. I looked at Dad, to see if she was really telling the truth, by the look on his face, she was.

"But…why?" I asked. Mom looked up at Dad, obviously he was going to take it from here.

"Jade, now that you're 14, most of the dhampirs your age are starting their training, and your mother and I believe that you would benefit more in a class room environment then with a private tutor." I looked at them in disbelief.

"Jade, honey, it's really for the best." Mom said, taking my hand in hers. "It'll give you time to live without us, and it'll give you time to just be yourself, and figure out who you are. It'll probably be the closest thing you'll ever have to college experience."

"I'm only 14!" I yelled getting up and crossing the room towards the door.

"Jade Elena Belikov, you sit down right now and listen to us!" Dad wasn't yelling but his deep voice boomed in the small kitchen.

I turned to look at them, "The guardian life may have suited you guys, but who ever said that I even wanted to learn how to fight."

Mom and Dad looked at each other before Mom continued speaking. "Jade, we never said that you had to become a guardian."

"No, I'm just learning to train because it's good for the soul." I replied sarcastically.

"You watch your tone young lady!" Dad didn't look happy.

"This doesn't have to be a bad thing, I had a blast at St. Vlad's and I started when I was only 5. I'm sure you will have fun there too, if you will just give it a chance." She gave me a look, and I sat down again.

"When am I leaving?" I asked.

"Tomorrow" Mom replied.

"What!" I jumped out of my chair again, but Dad gave me another look that made me sit down.

Mom sat down beside me taking my hand again. "Jade, we know it isn't a lot of time, but we feel that this is the best option for you. And if you still don't want to be a guardian by the end of the 4 years, no one will force you. You know that the strigoi are a bigger threat than ever, and the skills you will learn at St. Vlad's will help you live a relatively normal life."

"Okay," I looked down aware that I was sounding completely pathetic, and totally defeated. I looked back up to see Mom and Dad visibly relax.

I sat under my favourite tree with my best friend Hanna Dragomir. "That's not fair!" she cried out as I told her the news. "They can't do this to us…I mean…you." Her piercing blue eyes flinched at her own words.

I laughed at her response, "Nice to know where your priorities lie." I joked.

"Oh come on, who else is going to drive the royal tutors crazy while you're away!" I thought back to all the shared tutoring sessions we had where I repeatedly drove them crazy with my sarcastic remarks.

I laughed, "Oh and save you from your brothers," Hanna was the youngest of five, Mom always said that Aunt Lissa was so determined for a girl, that she probably would have had 20 kids before she gave up.

"That too, and who else am I going to hang out with around court," She faked devastation as she flipped back her blond hair, completely different from my own dark brown locks.

"Oh come on, you could always hang out with Lily Rinaldi," I laughed as Hanna made a face.

"No way, she's crazy." I laughed again as she did the hand signals for cuckoo.

"Okay, okay, but you'll find someone to replace me. I'm the one going out to the middle of nowhere. I will know absolutely no one."

"Right, you'll probably be the leader of whatever pack runs the place," She laughed.

"Oh yeah, more like the loser pack." I made a face.

"Oh come on Jade, you know that isn't true, and besides nobody could ever take your place."

"Aww, now don't get all sentimental on me… It's not like I'm leaving forever, I'll be back for thanksgiving."

"Promise?" She asked holding up her pinky.

"Promise." And at that we locked our two fingers.

"Hey, I'll help you pack."

"Mom, Hanna's staying for supper!" I yelled as I walked into the house.

"Does her mother know?" Mom called back from the kitchen. I looked at Hanna as she shrugged.

"No, but we'll call her." I replied.

"Don't bother, I'll do it." was Mom's response.

As Hanna and I crawled up the stairs she turned to me and said, "Your Mom's the one cooking?"

I looked at her and said, "What she's not that bad."

"Right and my mother isn't the Queen of moroi." she replied sarcastically.

"Alright, alright, but she has improved since the oven mitt incident." By that I meant the time Mom accidently left the mitt on one of the burners, and it quickly caught on fire. Good thing Uncle Christian was there to help put it out. He had given her a look and said, "Seriously Rose, it should be against the law for you to cook." To which her response was, "Oh shut up Sparky!"

"Okay, but we should keep the fire extinguisher close by just in case." Hanna said, bringing me back to the present. We finished our ascent up the stairs and made it to my room, and as per usual it was an utter pig sty.

"Eww, Jade you should really think about cleaning up."

"Hey not everyone has maids cleaning their rooms all the time. Besides that's what you're here for." I walked in and flopped down on the unmade bed.

"Oh no I'm not, I only said I would help, you got to do the rest." She threw a suitcase at me and started to work on the mess. I was half way through packing my sweaters when Hanna asked, "Hey shouldn't you wash those?"

I raised a brow than responded, "Do they have washing machines at St. Vlad's"

"Well I suppose…"

"Than their fine." I replied throwing more sweaters in the bag. Once we had finished packing most of my clothes, mom came in to tell us that supper was done.

We had made it downstairs to find that Mom had in fact ordered pizza. I laughed, "What happened to the food in the kitchen?" I asked looking at my mothers' tired face.

"Well," she started, "That would be a tale for another time, but the end result was, I decided I didn't want to give you food poisoning before your first day of school."

"Yes," Hanna said, "That would be frowned upon." They laughed but I made a face.

"So any other time it would've been okay to feed me bad food?" I cried out.

"Oh don't be so dramatic." Mom said throwing a paper plate at me.

We cracked open the pizza box and ate in the living room. Apparently we did not want to see the disaster that was the kitchen at the moment, and we put in one of my favourite movies. We sat there laughing and eating until Dad came home from work.

"Hey honey," he said plopping a kiss on my mother's forehead. Than he began to look around. "Roza, I thought you were making supper tonight?" he said using her old nickname.

"Well comrade, we decided ordering out was safer instead." me and Hanna giggled as Dad made a face, than he shrugged as if to say, I'm not even going to ask. He started heading towards the kitchen.

Mom immediately leapt up from her spot on the couch. "What are you doing?" She asked putting herself between him and the kitchen.

"Getting some water…" he said giving her another weird look.

"I'll get it for you," Mom offered, she turned to the kitchen, but Dad had managed to dance around her and walked in.

Mom looked down, apparently expecting the worse. There was silence and then, "Rose what did you do?!"

Before anything else could happen, Hanna butted in and said, "Well I guess that's my cue to leave." She got up from her spot on the floor, and started heading for the door.

"Hey," I called after her, you're coming back though right, I mean, for like a sleep over?"

Hanna looked at me than at my mother, "Only if it's safe."

Mom smiled and replied, "It'll be fine, just be sure to talk to your parents." Mom than took off into the kitchen, probably in an attempt to calm Dad down.

"See you soon," I said to Hanna as I got up off the floor as well.

"Yeah, later." She said shutting the door behind her as she left.

I than bravely entered the kitchen that had been so pristine before. Of course that was Dad's doing. Now that Mom had gotten a hold of it, it was a complete mess. The first thing that hit me was the smell, which surprisingly hadn't reached the living room at all. It smelt burnt and like something else altogether, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But boy did it smell bad.

The next thing I noticed was that there was flour everywhere. It almost looked like I had walked into a white blob. There was also a stack of dishes in the sink the size of Mount Everest. I was actually surprised that most of the dishes hadn't toppled on the floor yet, but by the looks of it, it wasn't too long now. The oven had smoke coming out of it, and stove had something green, bubbling in a pot on top. Of course Mom wouldn't have remembered to shut everything down when she finally gave up on the fiasco, but it still shocked the hell out of me. This was the worst I had ever seen the kitchen. It almost made me want to laugh.

"Rose," Dad said again, "Please explain this."

"Well," Mom started, "I wanted tonight to be special, so I decided to make Jades favourite foods. Pizza and brownies."

"Aww, thanks Mom." I cut in. Mom smiled back at me.

"And it wasn't as easy as it looked." Dad gave her a look that said continue. "I started with the pizza and the flour just wounded up everywhere, and we ran out so I decided to open another sack. Well that fell on the floor, and it poofed up into this giant cloud that coated absolutely everything and…" Dad had started laughing, which stopped Mom in her rambling. His laughter was kind of contagious actually, because I had started laughing, and pretty soon we were all standing in the kitchen, laughing like crazy people.

When we finally calmed down, Dad said, "How in the world did I ever get so lucky to have met a woman like you?"

Mom began to blush, "You mean a woman who completely destroys a kitchen that you have worked so hard to keep clean." She said sarcastically.

"No, I mean a woman who is willing to try so hard at something she is no good at, just to please the ones she loves." Mom began to blush more.

Dad started to lean in for a kiss, but I quickly cut in and shouted, "Eww no PDA." My dad gave me a look, but decided that he would put off the kiss for later.

"Okay I guess we had better get started on cleaning this mess up."

When Hanna came back the kitchen was pretty close to its usual perfection. Mom ran off to work and so Dad decided to help me and Hanna finish packing for tomorrow. When we were done, Hanna and I continued to talk all night, when morning came it was too soon.

We made our way out to the court runway, Mom and Dad were planning to go with me via private jet. Thanks to Aunt Lissa of course, we could use the jet whenever we wanted. When we reached the plane, there was another surprise for me, Aunt Lissa and Uncle Christian had come to say goodbye. They weren't the only ones to have made it, Hanna's 4 brothers Andre, Mason, Mark, and Eric came as well. Andre was the only one who had inherited his mother's green eyes but the rest all had their father's black hair. All of them had a fair amount of their father's snarkiness and their mother's kind nature. It was that perfect combination that made them completely bearable to be around. To me they weren't just my best friend's brothers, they were like my family too. And I hadn't realized until now how much I was going to miss them.

I began to feel the tears well in my eyes as I looked at them, I didn't want to speak because I knew I would give myself away. Somehow they knew though, and so every single one of the Dragomirs came up and gave me a hug at once. "I'm gonna miss you guys so much." I cried out. Once we pulled apart Aunt Lissa stood before me with a fancy bag in her hand.

"Here you go sweety." She said handing me the bag. "This is a gift from all of us. I hope you will use it responsibly." I looked in and saw a top of the line laptop.

"Thank you so much." I said, we finished our goodbyes and boarded the plane. When we left the ground I stared at the spot where they stood until I couldn't see it anymore.

Hi ho Hi ho it's off to hell I go.