Just wanted to put a quick note thanking people for the reviews! I'm about 13 chapters into this book, so I can confirm the real action starts happening at about Chapter 9, but from this Chapter the slow burn start getting a bit more heated!

SEVEN

Rose

Rose had never considered that she might find the field experience frustrating.

She supposed she'd never considered she might be in this position in her life, either.

The field experience was supposed to be exciting—seeing what it was really like to be a guardian for the first time—but she'd had more than enough experience to know that. She'd spent two years in Portland on constant high alert, and then, when she should have been safe at St. Vlad's, she'd been partly responsible for her close friend dying.

Sitting in the library with Liss, Christian and Eddie and listening to Christian and Liss's circular conversations was actually starting to drain her. It was no wonder that Adrian seemed to be making excuses to spend as much time with them as a group lately.

She should have been grateful. She didn't want excitement, after all. The last thing she wanted was for constant attacks, or to need to feel paranoid and alert all the time, because one slip-up could mean Liss was the next person losing her life.

But the stakes weren't real here, either. She wasn't really learning.

The field experience should have been a constant stressor, showing what the worst possible scenario could be so people would be prepared for it in the unfortunate case that it happened. Fighting a guardian who was not subtle in their approach once every few days didn't prepare her for anything.

"Can you really not even consider Lehigh?" Liss asked, her frustrated whisper becoming less and less library appropriate with every word.

"I didn't say I wasn't considering Lehigh. I said I'd like to consider the University of Pennsylvania as well." Christian's whisper remained even, but she could see the fury behind his eyes.

This argument would end on a stalemate, and it would be ongoing until they'd both accepted college offers. Rose just wanted it to be over.

Liss and Christian were stability she didn't want to end. She wanted to dismiss this as a blip in the road, but she worried for Liss. The things Christian had issues with weren't just temporary problems they'd overcome. He was talking about integral parts of the rest of Liss's life, and she didn't have any answers for him. None of them did.

Rose's answer was that he loved her, more than anything, and that would always be enough, but she refused to get involved enough to share it.

"Going to an open day is so dangerous right now."

"If I don't go now then I never will."

"Is it really so important to consider another college that you'd risk your life?"

Christian ran his hands through his hair, leaning back in his seat, and, unconsciously, further away from her. His fire had been replaced by fatigue. "That's not fair. This is not about other people. It's about me."

"It's about us."

"That's not fair, either."

Rose and Eddie were staring at the textbooks they didn't need to be reading and resisting acknowledging the argument was happening at all.

Christian looked equally as exhausted by it. Liss was the only one with silver fury in her eyes.

"You keep throwing up barriers to every single part of my life that is set in stone," she accused. "The Queen herself has told me it's Lehigh. I wanted to go to the Uni of Pennsylvania too, but she said no."

"This isn't about you," Christian snapped, then immediately reined himself in. "I'm sorry, Liss. But Lehigh is exactly what the Queen wants. Half its students must be royals. It's court but on a college campus. They have their own discrete feeding room there. What do you think I'm going to get out of that? At the Uni of Pennsylvania I can still just about commute to college while living at court, while living with you, but I don't have to deal with people turning their noses up at me every five seconds."

"You read too much into everything! I've not heard anyone say a single thing." The frustrating thing was that Liss genuinely believed it. She might recognize that people didn't necessarily except Christian with the same openness they granted her, but she didn't think they were malicious, either. She wasn't trying to gaslight him into distrusting his instincts. She really didn't see that they were being rude, that they were intentionally slighting him, hoping for a rise.

"Someone doesn't have to tell me they think I'm going to be a Strigoi and they don't want me within six feet of them to let me know it's exactly what they're thinking." He shut the book he hadn't been reading.

Rose prepared herself to get up and have to stride out with him, even though Liss would want her comfort.

"Christian—"

"I'm not imagining it Liss." He glanced at Rose, and she resisted asking him with a pleading look not to get her involved in this. "Rose and Eddie were stood watching that entire breakfast with the Lazars."

Eddie shrank back into his seat, too.

Liss looked straight at her. "Rose am I really missing something?"

"Liss they purposely do it with the intention of you not seeing. It's not that you're just refusing to see it." It was a half-lie, but easier than saying, Yes, yes you're just really missing it.

Liss deflated a little. "Really?"

"It's like Christian says, it's not that they're coming out and saying it, they're just… refusing to be polite, and you know what that means in that kind of culture."

She ran her hands through her hair now, unconsciously copying his gesture. "I didn't realize."

"Maybe you should have trusted me."

Rose glared at him. She wanted to shout not helpful at him.

"But the only way they're going to see that there's nothing to distrust is to spend more time around you."

"That's not how those kind of people work."

"They're not those kind of people. They're just people. You're as prejudiced about them as they are about you."

Christian looked away. "This has gotten very off topic."

"This is always on topic. It's the only thing we talk about nowadays."

"Maybe it's the only thing I think about nowadays."

Christian stood up now, and the guilt was a weight in Rose's stomach as she was forced to stand with him.

Liss didn't look at her like she was being betrayed, there was no resentment through the bond, but Rose still wanted to slap herself. She struggled to keep a straight face.

The field experience was temporary.

She was Liss's guardian, and she shouldn't be disagreeing with her in front of anyone.

Christian strode ahead, and Rose trailed him, lost in her own self-loathing.

She'd undermined Liss, and she'd done it in front of her boyfriend and her other guardian. If she'd been any other royal, Rose would have been fired in an instant. The bond was the only thing keeping her there, and the only good thing about it right now was the fact she could feel Liss wasn't mad at her.

She was infuriated by Christian, though. Infuriated and scared. He was talking about it so much recently she worried he wouldn't be able to get over it. Going to the open day for the Uni of Pennsylvania was just one thing. What would follow? Deciding he wanted to work away from court, too? Deciding he wasn't going to come to any royal events?

It wasn't just that Liss was expected to do these things—she wanted to. She was good at it. She could really make a difference.

But she needed Christian by her side, and she was increasingly worried that he wouldn't be.

Rose had only added to that worry. She was causing her charge worry.

"Would you stop?" Christian snapped her out of her trance, coming to stop in front of her.

It was a good job there weren't any fake Strigoi around, because she was completely lost in her own thoughts. Doing another terrible job at the one thing she was supposed to be able to get right.

She came to a standstill before running into him in the corridor. "What?"

"Looking so guilty. You said one true thing to Liss. You don't have to feel guilty about that."

"I shouldn't be disagreeing with her."

"You're not some slave. You're her friend. You didn't even argue with her, you just said one thing that was true." His eyes blazed with frustration that she knew had nothing to do with her, really.

But it still irked her. He wasn't a dhampir, he didn't understand. "I'm her guardian."

"That doesn't turn you into a robot, you still have thoughts and feelings. You're still allowed to say them."

"Not to the person I'm guarding, not when I disagree with them on anything other than how to keep them safe. Especially not on around other people."

"Do you really think that's what Liss would want? Can you even imagine her face if you'd just said that to her and not to me?"

"She doesn't understand either."

Christian threw his hands up. She worried that he'd actually set something on fire if she wasn't careful. "That makes no sense. You're her guardian, I thought that what she wanted was the only thing that mattered."

"Keeping her safe is the only thing that matters. Keeping her safe from Strigoi, making sure I don't do anything to damage her reputation, or make her unhappy. All of it."

"It's ridiculous." He turned and kept walking. They were nearly at his room, and neither of them wanted this conversation to be overheard.

Christian shut the door behind them and Rose crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the wall of his room, waiting for another outburst. She didn't mind him taking out his frustration on her—for the moment she was his guardian, after all.

"I just don't understand," he said, but his voice wasn't raised anymore. "How your opinion on it all can have just gone a full one-eighty, like that."

She laughed. "Really?"

"Mason didn't die because you were his friend, and he didn't die because you weren't good enough."

Rose looked away. "That's not true. The last part, anyway. All of it was my fault in the first place, and then I wasn't good enough to save him."

"Becoming some sort of soulless guardian robot isn't the way to feel better."

"It's not about feeling better, it's about making sure no one gets hurt. Especially not Lissa."

"Rose I wouldn't have come to Spokane with you if I didn't feel safe with you, and what happened hasn't changed my opinion. As much as I'm loath to admit it, I'm glad you're here in the field experience, too. I think I'd have been a lot more worried about my mom if you weren't."

Now she definitely couldn't look at him. Her stupid, and very unprofessional, reaction, was to want to cry. She'd barely cried since Mason died and Dimitri left, and she'd been resisting it on purpose. She wasn't going to give into that weakness.

But no one had ever said anything like Christian just had. She'd been forced to give herself the boosts of confidence she needed to keep going—just trying to convince herself that she shouldn't give up and spare Liss the future of an inferior guardian.

"Thank you," she murmured. "That actually helps a lot." She pushed her hair out of her face and laughed awkwardly. "Sorry. Definitely not stoic guardian behavior."

"We've both had a turn at baring our souls now. No reason to do it again." He shifted his weight, scratching the back of his neck. "I meant it, though."

"Yeah, I believe you." And it did help. As much as she should have wanted to argue against him, to lay down the facts of how it was her fault, the fact he really did trust her to keep him safe helped.

"But I'm still annoyed about everything. Let's go and train."

She grinned. "You always know my response to that."

When they had just reached the excluded part of the campus they normally trained at, a small open area not too far from the wards, near Tasha's unoccupied cabin, Christian asked, "Do you think I'm being unreasonable? Should I not go to the open day?"

Rose only hesitated for a moment. "I think you should go. From a safety perspective it's probably a horrible idea, but from the other perspective… I think it's a good idea. You should go."

"Thanks, for being honest."

"If you ask me about that one in front of Liss, you can guarantee I won't be."