"So, little dhampir, did you miss me?" Adrian asked sliding onto the seat beside Rose in the cafeteria at breakfast. Suppressing a groan by shoving a donut into her mouth, Lissa responded on Rose's behalf.
"Adrian! Welcome back. I didn't think you'd be back until tomorrow?"
"There's such a thing as too much of a good thing," Adrian said, thinking about Court and the never-ending line of eligible Royal Moroi young ladies his mother and aunt had set him up with over the holidays. While normally he wouldn't object to meeting pretty young women, these were all strictly off-limits—the only way he'd get one of them into bed was to marry her first. Since that wasn't on his agenda, Christmas and New Year had been a bust as far as Adrian was concerned.
Sure, he'd reconnected with a few 'old friends' of the female variety, paid and otherwise, but it hadn't been enough to take his mind off Rose Hathaway. In fact, the whole break he'd been coming up with ways to interest Rose in him and his bed.
"What did you get up to over Christmas?" Adrian asked Lissa, disappointed that Rose was more engaged with her food than with him.
"Not a lot. Christian's aunt came to stay until New Year. Most of the time we've been ice-skating, playing pool or hanging out. Natalie got back the day before yesterday, and she's bought heaps of new clothes, so yesterday we cleaned out our closets," Lissa continued. Rose watched Adrian's eyes glaze over in boredom as her best friend recounted sorting clothing into throw, donate, swap or store.
Dimitri was seated at a table on the other side of the room with Matthews and Chaung. Rose felt a surge of his anger through their bond when Ivashkov sat down beside her. Trying for the first time to send a feeling through the bond, Rose projected loving, happy thoughts to her mate. The anger dissipated almost immediately, and Rose made a note to ask Dimitri later whether she'd been successful.
Adrian continued trying to draw Rose into conversation, with limited success. Her one-word response, "Training," was his only reward when he asked about what she got up to over the Christmas break.
Lord Ivashkov's attentions toward Rose weren't irritating just Dimitri. From his seat beside Eddie further along the table, Mason was shooting the Royal Moroi Lord daggers. Knowing his best friend didn't stand a chance with Rose, Eddie did his best to distract Mason from his visual evisceration of Ivashkov. There was no point Mason offending Adrian when it would not help his non-existent cause with Rose.
Everyone seemed relieved when Lissa stood and suggested a trip to the feeders. Across the room Celeste stood, ready to accompany the Royal trio. Now classes were back in session, Dimitri would be back to taking part in morning Novice combat training, then guarding mixed Moroi/dhampir theory classes in the afternoon. Combined with training, it meant he and Rose got to see one another for most of the day, albeit with no privacy or opportunity to interact meaningfully. Still, Dimitri considered it a far better prospect than sitting watching Adrian and the Princess experiment with their Spirit magic, so he'd count his blessings where he found them!
"Doesn't Ivashkov drooling over you get old?" Mason asked Rose indignantly as the group walked to their first class Advanced Guardian Combat Techniques. "I swear he was trying to undress you with his eyes. Seriously, some guys just don't take a hint!"
Following behind them and overhearing his remark, Dimitri's lips twitched, while Eddie outright laughed. Rose, likewise, could see the funny side of Mason's statement. Being an old friend, though, she wouldn't hurt him by pointing out the irony of his words.
"It is annoying," she admitted. "Since I'm not interested, I just ignore him."
"Still someone needs to set him straight…" Mason argued, sounding as though he was prepared to volunteer to be the one to do the job.
"Leave it, Mase. There's none so blind as those who don't want to see," Eddie said, patting Mason on the back and distracting him while Meredith shot Rose a commiserating glance. Dimitri said nothing, limiting himself to a silent chuckle Rose sensed through their bond.
"I can't believe I got an A for Moroi Culture Four!" Mason said, still staring in awe at his returned quiz from just before Christmas. "I think it's the first A I've ever got!"
Mason had done well on the exam. They all had, thanks to Dimitri, and to a lesser extent Adrian. Sitting at lunch, the dhampir were congratulating one another. Now their other friends had returned to campus after the winter break, Lissa and Christian, were lunching with the Royal Moroi. Not that Rose was complaining. Since Adrian ate with the Royal couple, it gave her respite from his amorous attention. Yeah, it still left Mason - but he was subtle in his attentions. Well… Most of the time!
"Eddie is studying with Meredith after your training with Belikov," Mason said leadingly. "You and I could hang out and study after dinner?"
Rose knew Liss had already planned a catchup with the Royal Moroi girls in the larger Moroi Common Room, so she couldn't use her as an excuse. With Eddie and Meredith otherwise engaged, she was struggling to find a reason to refuse Mase.
"I thought you were doing extra training with Guardian Matthews tonight?" Eddie said, throwing Rose a bone.
"Yeah! I'd planned to work out with her, but I'm tired. I feel like a night on my own," Rose said. Tempting as it was to use Celeste as an excuse to avoid time alone with Mason, Rose needed to make her disinterest clear, once and for all. "Mase? You should see if Chelsea wants to study… She's so into you! I appreciate you want to spend time with me, but you're seventeen—you need to be spending nights off with available girls instead of with an old mate!"
"And you're not available?" Mason asked, his voice quivering just a little. While on the surface of things he was checking whether she was free to study, they both knew what he was really asking.
"Maybe once I find the right guy? When I find him, I'll let you know!" Rose said lightly, hiding her grimace as Mason's heart cracked in front of her. Eddie shot Rose a sympathetic smile. It needed to happen, and short of saying 'thanks but no thanks,' Mason had to be told.
"I can include him in our study session tonight," Eddie volunteered in an undertone when Mason left the table to visit the bathroom for a moment.
"Don't," Rose said. "He doesn't want anyone's pity. Give him a chance to ask Chelsea."
"You think she's into him?" Meredith asked, overhearing the conversation.
"Big time," Rose giggled, beckoning Chelsea over to the table before excusing herself to go to her dorm to collect books for her afternoon classes, the whole time feeling horrible she hadn't shared that one reason she wasn't interested in Mason was that she had already been spoken for.
"Mason and Chelsea are going to study together tonight," Eddie announced during their weight reps in afternoon training. While he was standing slightly apart from them, Rose felt Dimitri's satisfaction through the bond but ignored it. She was pleased for Mason. Still—Dimitri needed to learn no other man was a threat. Rose loved him and only him!
"Glad he asked her!" Rose said with a grin, spotting Eddie as he lifted.
"Actually, she asked him," Eddie replied. "He was moping around after you left lunch, and Chelsea asked whether he wanted to study pre-calculus with her tonight."
"She's top of the class in pre-calc…?" Rose replied.
"I don't think Mase knows that!" Eddie said, happy that his best mate was moving on from his one-sided interest in Rose. Eddie smiled up at Rose from his place on the bench. "Thank you for letting him down easy…"
"He's my friend, too," Rose said with a sad shrug. "I love him. Just not in that way. I want him happy…"
"He will be. He needed to know it won't be with you. That it will never be with you."
Eddie stared at Rose in a way that made him wonder what he knew. But since saying anything would confirm what she couldn't speak about, Rose smiled, zipped her lip, and continued to spot for Eddie while her mind ran at a hundred miles an hour.
"Rose—can you drop by my office after you've eaten?" Alberta asked as she walked through the cafeteria at dinner time the next day.
"What have you done now?" Eddie asked facetiously.
"Yes, little dhampir, I hope you haven't been getting into trouble?" Adrian said in a bawdy tone of voice. While Rose wanted to smack him, she ignored Adrian and his offensive inflection.
"It's probably about your next evaluation," Lissa said. They evaluated Novices every six months, and it was coming up to Rose's turn.
"Makes sense," Eddie said. "Alberta met with me a few days ago." He wasn't sure why he lied, other than he sensed that Adrian's interest in Rose wasn't innocent, so he felt the need to protect his friend wherever he could.
"Yeah probably," Rose replied, keeping it low key. But by the time she reached Alberta's office she was worried!
"What's up?" Rose asked as soon as she stepped into the head of Guardian's office.
"Nothing," Alberta said. "I just wanted to see how you're feeling?"
"How I'm feeling?" Rose was almost perplexed.
"Within a few short weeks, you've met your mate and discovered you're Omega. Both are big changes in how you thought your life would be. How are you going with it?" Alberta asked, not even pretending to be emotionally uninvolved right now.
Rose paused. She and Dimitri had been so focused on getting through each day, she'd not really stopped to think, so she said as much. "But so far so good."
"You care for him?" Alberta questioned. She still felt uneasy she'd all but handed Rose to Dimitri on a platter when Rose had her first estrous. It had been the best of a bad bunch of options, but what if she'd made a poor decision?
"Very much," Rose admitted with a grin. "Until it happened to me, I would never have believed in being fated to be with someone. But now I do. I feel I belong to someone and they belong to me. We're starting to form a pair-bond," Rose admitted proudly with a smile. Once she got over the shock of sharing her feelings with her mate, Rose started to enjoy it. Learning they could send feelings to each other, many nights they lay on their separate beds, trading loving thoughts and feelings until they fell asleep. Yeah, it wasn't as good as falling asleep beside one another, but other than one night Dimitri had remained vigilant since their return—and vowed to be even more so Adrian was on campus.
"And he treats you well?" Alberta checked.
"He treats me like the most precious person in his world," Rose stated, meaning every word.
Alberta smiled. Rose was so smitten. Paired at seventeen is not what she would have wished for Rose, but if she was happy and in love, then that was fine. The opportunity for love and a family was more than most dhampir could hope for. If that's what Rose wanted then Alberta wanted that for her.
Adrian bided his time, asking Lissa questions when she was side-tracked. He'd already deduced Rose did not attend the Yule Ball, which was odd given it was the social event of the season, and precious else happened on campus over the Christmas period. Rose missing the opportunity to dress up and dance was out of character. However, even distracted, Lissa was smart enough to deflect specific questions about Rose, which is why Adrian hung back as Lissa and Christian, then Eddie and Meredith left dinner leaving him and Mason sitting at the cafeteria table. An unlikely couple, Adrian used this opportunity to his advantage.
Mason's interest in Rose was obvious—as was the fact Rose had side-lined him into the 'friend' category. The only place where Rose and Mason would ever be a couple was in the dhampir male's imagination. Adrian was also aware Mason considered him a rival for Rose's attention and hated him because of it. But angry people often let their guard down in unexpected ways…
"So, I bet you loved dancing with Rose at the Yule Ball," Adrian sneered, attempting to raise Mason's ire. He didn't have to try too hard.
"Rose wasn't at the Yule Ball," Mason said glaring at the Royal Moroi.
"Really? I wonder why she didn't go? No one special there she wanted to dance with, I guess?"
"Actually, Rose was off-campus visiting her mother," Mason grit out.
"Guardian Janine Hathaway?" Adrian said, dropping his attention from Mason altogether now he had this nugget of information. Because he knew it to be a lie. Guardian Hathaway had spent the holidays at Court with her charge Lord Szelsky. On duty at almost every function Adrian had attended, there was no way Guardian Hathaway spent the holidays with her daughter. Returning his attention to Mason, Adrian commented: "That's a pity. Was she gone long?"
"Five or six days, I think? She doesn't get along with her mom, so didn't want to talk about it."
"Well, you can choose who you want to have as a friend but you can't choose your family," Adrian replied with a loaded glance.
Mason flushed before muttering under his breath, "And as Rose's friend, I know she wouldn't choose you to be either!"
By the time Thursday came around, it was as though winter break had never occurred. Rose and Eddie were settled back into training, classes were in full swing, and homework and assignments were piling up thick and fast.
Standing to one side of the gym during third period Weight Training and Conditioning, Dimitri watched Rose and Meredith spar. The most graceful fighter Dimitri had ever seen, despite being Omega Rose could more than hold her own in combat. Even had she not been his mate, Dimitri would have chosen her to be part of Vasilisa's guarding team.
Pushing off the wall, Dimitri wandered around the room, correcting a motion here, hanging back to check form there. He'd completed a half-circuit of the room when Townsend called out for partners to switch. Half those sparring traded with half those using the weights, pairing Rose with Shane Reyes.
"Hey Rose, long time no…" Shane's eyes met Rose's in shock. Taking a step forward, Rose noticed him take a deep sniff of the surrounding air.
"And that's not creepy!" she joked, keeping a sassy face while alarm and panic flooded her system. Dimitri had warned Rose an Alpha could smell him in her scent—indisputably marking them as mates. While she'd done her best to avoid Shane where she could, since they were in so many classes together, this had been inevitable.
Rose felt Dimitri's presence before he appeared beside them, wordlessly responding to the alarm he'd felt through their pair-bond. Looking up at her mate, it surprised Rose to see how different he looked. Taller. Stronger. Almost scarily dominant and powerful. But Dimitri wasn't looking at Rose, right now. His eyes were locked on his fellow Alpha.
"Is there a problem here, Reyes?" Dimitri asked his voice low, the threat of a growl chasing his words.
Shane glanced between Rose and Dimitri, confusion in his eyes before understanding colored his expression. Dimitri raised an eyebrow in silent challenge. At over six foot, and recently declared Alpha, Shane was no small specimen, but compared to the manly Dimitri he looked like a colt yet to grow into himself.
"Um. No. No problem Guardian Belikov," Reyes replied composing himself.
"Glad to hear it," Dimitri replied, leaning back against the wall and gesturing for Rose and Shane to spar. It was embarrassing, really, how easily Rose bettered Reyes. Light and lithe, she flitted about Reyes getting hits in left, right and center. With his bulk, Reyes could not respond as quickly as Rose moved.
"Reyes—you're not using your size to your advantage. Hathaway? You and Castile can take this afternoon off training. Reyes, meet me in the gym at five am. I'll run you through some drills and show you some tricks that will help."
Shane nodded. It wasn't a request it was an order, and they all knew it.
"Keep going, you two," Dimitri replied, before going over to watch Dean Barnes spar with Ryan Aylesworth.
"Is everything ok?" Rose asked Dimitri breathlessly. The first two to arrive for the weekly Moroi Culture lesson in the smaller Moroi common room, Rose wanted to know how Dimitri's 'training' with Reyes had gone.
"Everything is fine, Roza" Dimitri replied, running his nose along the side of Rose's face and kissing her hair before purring. "He will not concern us."
"But he knows?"
"Yes, he knows. He also understands an Alpha can not choose where or when they find their mate. Don't worry my love."
The sounds of the others approaching down the hallway caused the couple to step apart—Rose to peer out the window, Dimitri to stand near the front of the room in the 'teaching' position.
"Belikov? To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?" Adrian asked as he walked in with Lissa and Christian. It irritated him enough to see Rose leaving the cafeteria as he arrived; now finding her here in Belikov's company pissed him off even more.
"I am guarding Princess Dragomir this evening," Dimitri explained.
"And Belikov's been helping us more studying for Moroi Culture," Mason said, pulling out his text and placing it on the table between two chairs, before holding one chair out to Chelsea. "He really knows his stuff," Mason taunted Adrian, at that moment his dislike of the Royal Moroi overcoming his mistrust of the Alpha Guardian.
"He really has been amazing!" Meredith agreed, seating herself at the table, pulling out her text to share with Eddie. With Lissa and Christian seated, Rose wandered over to the table to sit at one of the two remaining places.
Adrian was all but shaking with fury. He was the one with the exhaustive knowledge of Moroi history and politics, not that overgrown, over-muscled meat-head. Hoping that if he gave Belikov enough rope he'd hang himself, Adrian decided to be the better man and leave Dimitri to it. It didn't hurt that the only seat remaining was beside Hathaway. He lowered himself into the chair, but not before moving it as close to Rose as decorum allowed.
"So the next part of your text is…" Rose ignored Adrian, and his annoyingly close proximity, as she listened to her lover's voice discuss the early years of the Royal Court in Pennsylvania, including the Spanish Flu from 1918 to 1920 and its confluence with an outbreak of Romanian Measles.
After their two-hour study session, Dimitri had to walk Lissa back to her room and guard until Chaung relived him at midday. Mason and Eddie used the opportunity to, separately, walk Chelsea and Meredith back to the stairs leading to the female Novice dorms, so Rose found herself stuck with Adrian who insisted on doing likewise.
"You haven't told me much about your Christmas break," Adrian said, trying to extract information as he dawdled, keeping them out of the other couples' earshot.
"There's not much to tell. It's boring as hell at the Academy over Christmas."
"There's the Yule Ball," Adrian replied, getting nothing other than a shrug from Rose in reply.
"But you didn't go to that," Adrian murmured, almost to himself. "I heard you were off-campus?" Rose silently freaked out. What did Adrian know? And more to the point, what did he want to know? "Why were you off-campus?" he pressed.
"I was visiting my mother," Rose said in a tone which suggested he drop it.
"No, you weren't. Your mother was at Court with Lord Szelsky. So if you weren't on campus, you weren't with her…"
Rose was freaking out. If Adrian learned she'd really left campus, and with whom, it spelled trouble for Alberta, Rose, and Dimitri.
"Fine. I didn't go off-campus. I just wanted some time to myself so I hid away in an old cabin near the edge of the wards and told everyone I went to see my mother," she lied. There were such cabins dotted around the periphery of campus. Completely falling apart, several even lacking roofs, she doubted Adrian would bother checking the veracity of her claims.
"Why did you lie to spend time alone?" Adrian asked, stopping to look at Rose.
"I just did…"
"Rose? Why did you wish to be alone?" Adrian repeated, catching her eyes and adding a decent amount of compulsion.
Rose's mouth opened, and she replied, unable to stop herself.
"Because I was in estrous."
