Author's notes: Thank you so much for the nice replies. I have been in the process of moving, which has been exhausting, but i'm totally into this story!

*Four months ago*

"But ... you just said you love me. That you want to be with me."

"And I told you: I'm not going to pursue another man's girlfriend. You want to talk honor? There it is in its purest form."

My body desperately wanted to approach him, to run into his arms and tell him everything was ok because he loved me. It wasn't ok. No declaration of love could replace the fact that he didn't choose me. Again. He chose his guilt over me. He chose Adrian over me. He never chose me.

I could tell Dimitri was beginning to become unsettled with my silence, but what could I say? "Ok," I keep my voice even, devoid of any emotions.

"It's better this way." His voice sounded determined, but his eyes were filled with uncertainty.

"Ok," was all I could offer. Unable to look at him anymore I turned away. I walked over to the dingy chair and sat in it sideways, throwing my legs over the armrest and concentrating on the cool feel of the wall's touch on the side of my face.

"Rose," he began again, but I couldn't hear him. I could only feel the coolness of the wall and my heart as I made a vow to never allow him or anyone else to make me feel this way ever again.

*Current*

I didn't know where I was going, all I knew was that I had to get away from there. I was tempted to head to Lissa's, but I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to involve her yet. She was the Queen now, she can't so easily get caught up in one of my messes. Not sure who to turn to, I walked around aimlessly for hours and tried to get a hold of my thoughts. I mentally went through a list of all the people who knew of Victor's death and felt certain about the culprit.

I needed a plan, plain and simple. I would head back to my building and see if I could get a hold of the security footage. After tomorrow's meetings I could head to Court Security and get a list of visitors within the past four months. One of them has to be him. A small voice in my head told me to go to Dimitri, but I ignored it. Not unless it was absolutely necessary at least.

I tried to school my face as I walked back towards my building. He could be anywhere watching and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me shaken. In fact, I had rushed out of my apartment almost immediately after opening the envelope. I could play it as if I hadn't even opened the envelope yet. I also need to check my room for bugs.

I was so caught up in my plan that I didn't even realize I had collided with someone. Fortunately that person had amazing reflexes, and I found my shoulders held gently between strong familiar hands. I tilted my head up, falling into warm brown eyes.

"Let me guess," he smiled, "you're testing Court security." I was immediately brought back to the time he caught me outside past curfew at the academy. At that time I would have given anything to go back to simpler times. Somehow my life managed to get even more complicated. Back then I had felt like I had blood on my hands with Mason's death. Little did I know that I would go on to actually murder someone.

"I'm actually doing an experiment to see who moves out of the way when I walk onto their path," I retorted. "Congrats on being one of the bold few to move me out of the way." I tried to put my Hathaway bravado into, but was coming up short.

Dimitri immediately sensed it. "What's wrong?" He hadn't removed his hands from me yet, and I could see the concern written all over his face.

I was again filled with desire to tell Dimitri about the unpleasant surprise that slipped under my door. We may not be together, but we had a history and as Lissa and Christian's guardians we were civil with each other, putting duty before our emotions. Dimitri had been increasing his attempts to strike up conversations with me, but I always kept my replies short and polite, unwilling to open myself back up to him.

Besides, this was my mess to clean up. "Nothing's wrong." I tried to keep my tone neutral as I stepped out of his grip. "I had a bunch of errands to run after my shift and I'm kind of dead on my feet right now." I gave a small smile, "I was just headed home."

"You're still a terrible liar Roza," he fired off. As I began walking, Dimitri surprisingly followed me. "I'll make sure you get home safely."

"That's really unnecessary—"

"If you're going to lie, you have to let me walk you home," he interjected gently but firmly. I knew I wasn't going to be able to get away from him.

We quietly made our way to my building, Dimitri glancing at me every few seconds of the way. I began to give him a thank you once we made it inside, but before I could get the words out, he spoke. "I've been waiting for the right time, but I was hoping we could talk."

I took a glance at the office-like door to the right. It looks like Matt, our building manager, wasn't there. I would have to ask about the footage tomorrow. "I umm, sure what do you want to say?"

"I was hoping we could have some privacy," he said, glancing at the stairs. Right now my room was feeling very unprivate with pictures of Victor's dead body spread across my living room floor.

I faked a yawn. "Um now isn't really the best time, um I…Adrian will be here any minute," I blurted out.

Dimitri's eyes fell, "Oh…I'll just…I'll see you soon then."

"We can talk later," I added a 'comrade' in there to soften my words.

"Yea…good night, Rose."

"You too," I replied. I could tell he was waiting until I went up to my room before leaving, so I made my way to the stairs. Usually I could easily walk to the sixth floor, but today's events were finally catching up to me.

Finally reaching my door, I pulled out my stake before getting out my keys to open the door, not sure what was waiting for me. Fortunately, the apartment was empty.

Finally, I picked up the photos and put them back into the envelope, placing them in a drawer in my bedroom for now. I started looking around the place, searching for hidden devices. Once I was satisfied I took a shower and changed into pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt. I was expecting a restless night, but fell into a deep dreamless sleep almost immediately.

—

Valentin leaned back in his chair. In his hand was a small remote that he used to go to the next slide in his presentation. "These are the top 10 largest dhampir communities in the states," he pressed on, pausing just long enough for us to quickly read off the names before going to the next slide. There was only a small group of us this time, just Lissa, Valentin, Hans, and myself.

"These are the top places we have found ex-guardians to reside in strictly human communities. Interestingly enough, we found that about 23% of ex-guardians find work as security guards and 28% enter in a security related field," he said. I found it interesting that even when escaping our world, they could not fully shake their career path. I supposed guarding was the only real transferable skill they had. Honestly I had no clue what kind of work I would be able to find if I wasn't a guardian.

As Valentin began to rattle more stats about the former guardians, my mind began to drift towards the unwelcomed gift still at my house. I would need to get rid of those pictures, but first I needed a plan. Of everyone that knew about Victor's death, Robert Doru, Victor's insane half brother with the gift of spirit, was the only one who has cause and capability to pull off such a stunt. I needed to find out where he was, and what his aim was. If he wanted to see me go to trial for Victor's murder, he would have gone straight to the court circuit office. There has to be some type of clue or message that he left behind.

I must have missed two or five slides because now Valentin was talking about the dhampir communes. "Ages 15 through 19 are critical years for girl dhampirs, about half either do not complete guardianship training or drop out of the field within their first year," he explained,and continued working through his slides my thoughts once again wandered off to my dilemma. Worst case scenario —

"-Rose?" A voice interrupted my thoughts. Apparently Valentin asked me a question. "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," I offered. The look on his face told me he knew I stopped paying attention. "Lissa," he emphasized, "mentioned how you spent time in a Russian dhampir commune. I was hoping you could provide some insight."

I thought back to my time in Baia. "The dhampirs are very…close knit and protective of each other. It will be difficult to get information out of them as outsiders."

"A common pattern," he clippedly responded. I could tell he was still a little miffed with me. Great, I have another person that doesn't like me.

As we continued to talk, Lissa continued to nod in understanding, eyes never leading the screen as she ingested the abundance of information. "We need a small pilot group," she finally said, her brow furled and she looked deep in concentration. "Rose, do you think it would be easier to recruit former guardians or those who never completed guardianship training," she asked.

My lips formed a small pout as I thought it over. "It's hard to say," I began, "Former guardians who have been living out in the real world may find the rules of our society too restricting, but if they work in security they may find it easier to slip back into old patterns." I thought about the other scenario, "There may be some who had to drop out of guardianship training due to personal circumstances such as…uh…pregnancy," I uncomfortably forced the word out. "I'm not sure about the guys that drop out." I continued to work things through in my head. "What if we took a percentage from each of our groups for our first round," I suggested.

Hans agreed, "we could set up an experiment of sorts to see which group we should focus more on in future runs."

Lissa smiled at the progress we were making, "Let's hammer out a few more things and present them to the larger group at the next meeting."

—

I quickly swapped off with Lissa's night guard and rushed towards the security building, hoping to find some answers.

"Is this a new trend where you pretend your exes don't exist," called out a familiar voice, stopping me halfway. I slowed my pace, turning my head until I could see jade green eyes that made me fully stop. "Adrian, I —"

He stopped me before I could get the words out, "No it's alright. I barely meant anything to you while we were dating, so it's not even a surprise really that —"

"—I was just in a hurry that's all," I cut him off this time. I couldn't tell if I had a crazy expression on my face, or if he saw something in my aura, but he paused and just looked at me.

"I know we…," he took another breath, "are you ok?"

I'm actually just barely holding it together, but thank you. "Yea of course," I managed to get out.

He lit a cigarette. "You remember I can read auras right?"

I exhaled. "I'm a little stressed, but I promise it will all work out, and I'm sorry again…"

Adrian held his hand up stopping me. "I can't…not right now. Your aura is getting dark, not as dark as it used to be when you and Lissa were bonded, but it's not looking great either." He took a puff of his cigarette and walked away before I could reply.

—

I had finally made it to the security building. I went over to the female guardian sitting behind a station. There were six mini TVs in front of her.

The closer I got, I could see that she was in a wheelchair. I gave her a smile, "Hi, I'm guardian Hathaway," I introduced myself.

She returned my smile, "It's nice to meet the other Hathaway. I'm guardian Mackinzie." Of course she knew my mother. Maybe it would do me some favor.

"I was hoping you could tell me if Court kept its log of all visitors," I explained.

"We in fact do," she confirmed. "I had actually just entered yesterday's log into our system."

I was filled with hope. "Is it possible I could get a list of all visitors within the past four months," I asked.

She gave me a puzzled look. "That's not a common request." She started typing and clicking around on her computer, and soon I could hear the sound of a printer. She wheeled over to the printer, retrieving a stack of papers and made her way back to me. "Well, you would have to fill out this request form," she began, handing me a piece of paper. "There have been 312 visitors within the past four months, so you will have a lot to look through."

She handed me the sheets of paper once I returned the form. "Do you keep the original logs," I asked, thinking about handwriting. "Only for a year, then we purge them," she replied. Great, so I could narrow down my list then ask to see the originals.

"Is everything alright?" By now I had gotten used to lying. "Yea, really good, just going through an exercise from Hans," was all I said. I thanked her for her help and made my way back to my place. It was a possibility that Robert sneaked onto Court and bypassed the sign in process, but this was a decent start.