I couldn't leave my readers hanging on that cliff after the last chapter. I just had to update again.

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Enjoy!

Rose POV

I felt myself crying as the memory subsided. I was once again wrapped in Dimitri's arms. Dimitri isn't strigoi. He couldn't be. Could he? I met his chocolate brown eyes. There was no trace of red. His skin was tan, not pale like a strigoi. He looked and seemed every bit of a dhampir as he had the day we met. Did I imagine it?

I pushed myself out of his embrace and stood up.

"Rose, you-" Dimitri began, but I cut him off.

"I'm not leaving. I just need a few minutes to myself." I rushed out if the room and locked myself in the bathroom.

There was a war going on in my body. My heart was shattered all over again while my mind argued that it wasn't possible. Dimitri was clearly a dhampir, but he WAS a strigoi. I just know that it was true. What happened? I didn't know that it was possible to save a strigoi. Was it?

I'm so confused. So I paged Lissa, and unlocked the bathroom door.

She walked in and sat beside me on the floor. She didn't say anything while she waited for me to start talking. When I found my voice, I wasn't really sure what to say.

"I - I remember the attack on the academy, fighting along side of Christian, the hostages taken, getting help from Mason's ghost, and the..." I couldn't make myself continue. She understood.

"The rescue mission?" She offered.

I nodded. "He didn't come back from that, did he? They turned him. He - he was..."

Again, she knew. She nodded. "He was turned into a strigoi against his will. Could you imagine my surprise when I found out that the love of my best friend's life had been ripped away from her so violently? I-"

"How?" I interrupted. "How is he a dhampir again? It's impossible and unheard of."

She smiled. "I've told you before, and I will tell you again. You are special. You are the only person in this world that I know that can make the impossible, possible. You left and came back with this crazy idea that spirit could save a strigoi. We went to crazy lengths to find out if it was true, and to our surprise, it was. We saved him."

I just started at her. My mind was reeling with memories but I couldn't focus on them. I didn't want to.

Could Dimitri turning strigoi be what was haunting him? Knowing that he left me heart broken?

He's here now. He's not strigoi. He's safe. That's what matters. Lissa interrupted my inner babble.

"Come on. There is a lot more to tell you. Sydney gets to tell you how you two met, finally."

I composed myself and washed off my face. I know that I look like crap. My eyes were puffy and red from crying. Nevertheless, I followed Lissa back to my friends, and the first thing I did was crawl into Dimitri's lap. He wrapped his arms around me and I buried my head into his neck.

"I'm so glad that you are here with me. You're safe." I murmured.

"what's the last thing you remember?" Dimitri asked.

"Finding out that you were strigoi from Mason. My heart shattered and I woke up in your arms."

He still looked like something was haunting him, but he didn't say anything. Adrian was the next one to speak.

"Then I guess it's my turn to talk, considering that I was the only one who really knew just how broken you really were after that night." He paused, and everyone just listened to him as he started to continue. "Rose, you holed yourself up. You didn't talk to anyone, you barely ate, if you ate at all. No one really knew what was wrong until Lissa found you in the church. That's when she figured out that you and Belikov were more than just a mentor and student. A couple of days later, you showed up on my doorstep. You told me that you were leaving the academy, and you were going to find Belikov to fulfill the promise that you both made. You were going to kill him and release his soul from its undead state. Reluctantly, I agreed to help you by funding your trip and getting you off campus."

As he talked, the memories flowed through my mind. I thought back to meeting Sydney in Russia. When Adrian finished talking, I spoke up.

"That's when I went to Russia, and met Sydney." I turned to look at Sydney. "You followed me from a night club one night when I was hunting strigoi. Eventually, you took me to Baia where I met Dimitri's family and my father, Abe. Right?"

Sydney nodded, and Adrian spoke up.

"From what Viktoria has told me, you finally left Baia after running off that creep that was trying to use her. She said that she later found out that you went off to hunt strigoi with the unpromised."

The memory of the night I left Baia flooded my mind. I had thought Viktoria had hated me after that night. I nodded.

"I remember hunting with them, but I don't remember anything after that."

That's when Dimitri spoke up. I noticed that he looked really uncomfortable and nervous. He's finally going to tell me why he thinks I'm going to abandon him. That's when it hit me. When he was strigoi, he killed innocent people. Is that what he thinks will run me off? It won't. When he was strigoi, he was not himself.

"Roza, I love you. Just remember that." He paused. I felt a memory trying to pull me under, but I pushed it away. I needed to hear what he had to say. I focused on him as he continued talking.

"I know what happened after that because I-I kidnapped you, and held you captive for several weeks." He was disgusted with himself. I don't know if anyone else could see that, but I could. He hated what he did. "When I kidnapped you, I...I wasn't myself. That's what you kept telling me when you forgave me, but I couldn't forgive myself. At least not until you gave me an ultimatum. Well, I forgave myself, but I still hate what I did to you. Especially now that you might have to relive the memories all over again-"

I interrupted him. "Dammit Dimitri, just tell me what happened and stop rambling. I feel a memory coming on, but I want to give you the chance to tell me before I remember." I was starting to feel anxious from holding off the memory. Almost like I would have a panic attack. He quickly started telling his story again.

"When I kidnapped you, it wasn't because I loved you. I couldn't feel love, but I could feel obsession. I became obsessed with having you as my immortal mate. I wanted to use you and your skills to help me take over the strigoi world. I tried to persuade you to join me willingly by keeping you weak. I fed from you. Every day. I made sure that you couldn't fight back. You became addicted to my bite. You begged for it, not in words, but in your actions. My boss, if that's what you could call her, gave me an ultimatum. Kill you or turn you. The same day, another strigoi at the combound tried to attack you, so when you asked me to stop feeding from you so that you could gain some of your strength back before you agreed to turn, I agreed. Little did I know, you were planning your escape." He paused to regain his composure. I knew how badly this was bothering him, but I couldn't find it in myself to blame him. That wasn't MY Dimitri. That was strigoi Dimitri. He continued. "You somehow managed to break a chair, and use the leg to stake me after you got the door codes from the human that was tending to you. When you staked me, it didn't kill me because the chair was wooden. It just incompacitated and stunned me for a few minutes. That was enough time for you to get away from me and convince another human to take you to the vault to get a real stake. While you were trying to find a way out, you stumbled on my boss, who attacked you. Luckily, I got there before she killed you, but then I was pissed because you belonged to me. I didn't want anyone to touch you except me. You helped me take out my boss, therefore signing everything of hers over to me. While I was fighting several more strigoi that came to defend my boss, you escaped the compound. I followed you. By then, I just wanted you to join me and I would've done anything to have it. When I found you, you fought hard. It was like a game of cat and mouse." He paused again. This story was taking a lot out of him. I grabbed his hand and intertwined our fingers, hopefully giving him strength to continue. It did, so he continued once more. "When we got to the river, I was sure that I had you, but you somehow unleashed a ton of ghosts on me. They slowed me down, but didn't stop me. We got up to the bridge and scuffled some more. You managed to stake me, but it wasn't too deep. You asked me one last time why I wanted to turn you. When you told me I had the wrong answer, I realized then that you would never willingly turn for me because I didn't - I couldn't love you. You shoved the stake deeper, cutting my heart, but not staking it thoroughly, so I survived. I went back to my new estate, and planned on how I would kill you. By that time, you were headed back to the academy."

Just then, my control snapped. My last thought before the memory consumed me was that he wanted to kill me. The memory replayed everything that Dimitri had just told me, only in my point of view. Except after the bridge incident, the memory kept going. I remembered thinking Dimitri was dead, finding out about possibly restoring a strigoi to their original state, Abe sending me back to school, founding out that Abe was my father, reenrolling at the academy, the day that I found out that Dimitri was still alive, well, undead, every letter he sent me, threatening my life, my graduation, going to court, breaking Victor out of prison, meeting Robert Doru, encountering Dimitri in Vegas, being punished at court, Dimitri kidnapping Christian and Lissa, the rescue we planned and executed, and finally, Dimitri's restoration. The last memory that played in my mind was Dimitri laying in Lissa's lap, crying.

After that, I woke up. I was in my bedroom, laying on my bed. I noticed Dimitri pacing back and forth at the end of the bed. He hadn't noticed that I'm awake.

"Dimitri..." I croaked out. He jumped at the sound, but rushed over to me and pulled me into a hug. His phone started ringing.

He answered and I heard a frantic Lissa on the other end. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but he agreed with something she said and hung up. He got up and grabbed a bottle of water for me out of our mini fridge. I greedily drank it, and noticed how distraught Dimitri was.

"What happened? Why are you so upset?" I questioned.

"You blacked out. Normally, when you black out, you wake up just a few minutes later. This time... this time you were out for almost 6 hours. I freaked out. Adrian couldn't reach you in your dreams, Lissa couldn't heal you because you weren't physically hurt. It was like you were back in a coma." I noticed the tears that traveled down his face. I pulled him towards me.

"I love you, Comrade. Forever and always." I wiped a few of his tears away, and his face lit up at my words.

"I love you too, Roza."