I'm so sorry about the total lack of updates! But here it is and I hope that people like the high quality bonding time between Kai and Ali. I know I certainly loved writing about it!

Chapter 33

"You really are back…" he whispered and buried his face into the crook of my neck.

His arms wrapped around me tightly and I was pulled into an almost suffocating hug. I squealed in response as I was squashed against him and for several moments, I simply sat there awkwardly, waiting for him to pull away.

Eventually, he did and he held me at arm's length so that he could inspect me again.

"Ali, it's been a whole week already…"

"I know, little sky. I know. But that doesn't make this any easier to accept," he sighed. "You're the same person, but at the same time, I feel like I don't know who you are. I've missed out on so much. I've missed out on you growing up, Kalster and that makes things difficult. Sometimes, I don't know how I should act or behave. I still feel like you're the same kid from back then and I just react based on what I remember of you, but you're much stronger than that now, aren't you? Much, much stronger."

"I'm sorry for changing, Ali."

"Don't be. It's not your fault. It's mine for wanting to keep you all to myself. I used to know you the best, Kalster, and now… now you're opening your world more and I guess that I just feel a little lonely because you're so capable now."

"I'll always be here, Alster." I smiled and touched his chest. "No matter where I am, I will always have you and everyone in my heart. None of that ever changed, not for a single moment. No matter what I did, no matter what I worked for, I always thought about how my parents to react, how my family would react. Would they be proud? Would they chastise me? That was how I learned to be independent out there. I had to begin thinking more rationally. I had to take into account what would be crazy and yet still be reasonable and safe. The way that I am now is very much thanks to you all. If it weren't for you guys never giving up on me when I was younger, I would never have become the way I am now. You guys may not have been there to witness my development of becoming more confident, but it was made possible because of you guys and for that I would eternally be grateful."

"You always were great at sweet talking, Kalster," he smiled down at me. He reached out and brushed several loose strands of hair from my face and cupped my cheeks. "I love you."

I stared up at him in surprise at the sudden confession. I blinked profusely and I felt my heart speed up at the warm smile that he was giving me. The love that radiated from his smile was heart-warming and I couldn't help but smile back at him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged his head down so that our foreheads and noses touched.

"I love you too, Ali. Always know that. You'll always have a special place in my heart that no one will ever be able to replace."

"And the same to you, little Kalster. The same for you."

"Do you think you'll be able to get used to it?"

"The fact that you're no longer the cute little girl who used to follow me around most of the time six years ago? I think I can handle that fact soon enough." Ali smiled. "I'm sorry about how I behaved earlier, and for how I behaved last night outside of the Academy. I'm sorry for underestimating you because I still wanted to hold onto the fact that you were the same as six years ago. I think I managed to get my wake-up call today though and who you choose to trust is your decision. I trust you, Kalster, and I trust in your decision. I'll always be there to help you if you ever make a slip-up. I'll always have your back, no matter what happens."

"And I'll always have your back too, Ali. Always."

For several moments, we stayed resting against each other's foreheads without saying anything. Eventually, he broke the silence with a beaming smile and he suddenly burst into laughter, causing me to become confused once more.

"Um… Ali?" I glanced at him nervously as he broke down laughing even more.

He clutched at my shoulders and his head slowly sank into my lap as he continued to laugh. "I can't believe how childish I have been for the past six years. I can finally bring the box back out."

"The box?" I frowned.

"Yes, the box," he nodded.

He got off of the bed and tugged out two cardboard boxes from beneath his bed and I watched curiously as he began to unpack one. I felt my face warming by the second when I noticed what he was taking out from the box.

Pictures.

Stacks and stacks of pictures, in particular of the times from the time when I met him up to the time I ran away. I had hoped that he would keep a few pictures of us together, but I never would have thought that he would keep virtually all of them!

Not only that, but he pulled out another box which was filled to the brim with DVDs. DVDs that were unwatched and were still kept in their plastic wrapping. I was thoroughly confused with why he had so many DVDs and yet the majority of them were unwatched.

"Um… Alster? Is there any reason as to why you have so many DVDs that are still sealed?" I frowned as I crouched down and looked at the many different titles. I soon realised that each and every one of the sealed ones were the type of movies that both Ali and I loved to watch.

"Like I said, I was being ridiculously childish," he smiled sheepishly at me.

"Oh? In what way?"

"I couldn't bear to watch the movies without you being here, Kalster. It didn't feel right, and every time that I saw a trailer of these films, I couldn't help but think of how much you would love it too. It hurt too much so instead of watching these films, I just bought the DVDs and kept them in storage waiting for the day that you would come back."

"Why did you have to keep it under your bed though?"

"Because I couldn't bear to have them out in the open. Just seeing the title made me think of you, Kalster, and thinking of you hurt."

I thought about it for a moment and understood his reasoning. There were far too many occasions where I had broken down into tears outside of the Academy in the past six years due to seeing pictures of my family here and thinking of the memories that I had. I had to guess that Ali just couldn't handle the idea of almost bursting into tears every time he saw pictures of me.

"Is that why there are barely any pictures on your walls?" I asked.

"You've hit the bull's eye."

"You know, Alster, that is awfully petty of you."

"You never should have left. If you wanted to stay on my walls, you should have stayed here where you belong."

"Alster…" I stared at him in regret. "I don't regret being out there. I don't regret having left this Academy at all."

"Don't you?" he asked me bitterly and I could see the jealousy rising from the gleam in his eyes.

"No, Alster, I don't. Yes, I know that I have missed the last six years of your lives, and I have missed quite a few things that have probably happened while I was gone, but I definitely don't regret my decision to break out six years ago to live in the outside world. I needed that in order to grow up into someone I've always wanted to be. I've always wanted to be confident with myself, Alster. You of all people should know that I have, and I never would have been able to become the way that I am now without my experiences of the outside world."

"You could have grown into a normal fine girl here."

"No, Alster, I couldn't. You're just being stubborn and you know it. The other royals would have done whatever they could to shape me into the little heir that they needed me to be. They would have ruthlessly used me, tricked me and I would have been involved in their sick games starting from the age of 10. I didn't want to have to face that. I already had to face it for a week between the death and the actual funeral proceedings. I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle it for long so I knew that I had to break free."

"But you have changed so much…" he blinked at me and I let out a heavy sigh.

I tugged him closer to the bed so that he stood between my legs and I held his face in my hands. I stared up at him seriously and thought about what I could possibly say to help make him see that although I was different, I was still the same.

"Alster, just because I have grown more confident doesn't change anything. It doesn't change how you have to behave around me. I think that the only thing that changes is the fact that you no longer have to watch out for me like I was some kind of a helpless baby who couldn't stand on her own two feet. I can do that now, but my humour is still the same, my personality is still the same, the things I like and don't like haven't changed either. Yes, I have grown physically and emotionally stronger, but that doesn't mean that you have to change the way you want to behave around me. Just behave the way that you want to and don't try to over think this. Besides, I'm not the only one who's changed. Out of everyone else, you have changed a lot as well."

"No I haven't. I haven't changed at all," he protested. "In what way have I changed? Besides, how do you know? You've only been back a week and only started seeing me from Wednesday onwards. How do you know how I've changed?"

"I know because I've seen the way you fight and I can still remember the way that you used to fight before. You've grown so much stronger, Alster. You've covered a lot of the flaws that you used to have, and the way you see some things have become a lot more mature than you would've done six years ago. Things have changed, Alster, but that's something that's inevitable. It only seems so daunting because you aren't used to it yet. Give it another week or so and things will be fine again, I promise."

"How can you promise that? How do you know that you aren't going to somehow throw me into panic again with some kind of a crazy talent that you have developed?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm pretty sure that you've seen everything that I can do except for my true fighting and cooking skills, and two, I know because I remember that you used to take longer than everybody else to adapt to a new situation."

"How do you know that I haven't grown out of that?"

"I don't, but from the way that you reacted back in Martin's office, I think that it's clear to the both of us that you still haven't fully grasped the ability to adapt and get used to a situation as quickly as the others, Alster."

"Damn, you've gotten really smart with your tongue over the years…" he muttered under his breath.

"Alster, I've been smart tongued since I was born." I rolled my eyes. "It's in my blood from both Mum and Dad. I just didn't use to be nearly as vocal as I am now."

"If you had been as vocal as you are now, you never would have felt the need to leave this place. You would've torn down each and every royal with your words alone and then kicked their asses."

"I didn't used to be so strong either. I was terrible back then, remember? I used to end up in Rosette's office at least once a day covered in injuries because of the heavy training."

"And that's probably what kept you alive out there."

"You're certainly right about that. If it hadn't been for the lessons that my parents taught me, I wouldn't have had a single clue about what to do out there. I wouldn't have known the first rule of defence against Strigoi let alone how to fight them effectively. Yes it was hard for the few months since I was still trying to get the hang of being alone. But it somehow worked out and I finally put my parents' teachings to good use. If it weren't for the combat training that I used to have, I wouldn't have been able to come up with new training schedules of my own to fit around my normal everyday life."

"Out of interest, what was your training schedule that got you as well trained as you are now that you could beat at least two of our best Guardians and all four of the main royals?"

"Weights were the key ingredient in my schedule and then everything sort of developed around that. My speed and therefore my reflexes increased as did my overall strength. Then I just did as much martial arts training as I could whilst learning about all the sensitive points of a body made up of muscles and where to press to temporarily disable an opponent. Although Strigoi are much stronger and sturdier, the same rules of the human body still apply. The main difference is how long the disability lasts and I found that that varied from Strigoi to Strigoi. I think that it depended on how old and strong the Strigoi was. If they were freshly fed by Moroi blood then they were definitely a lot stronger and therefore a lot harder to incapacitate. Those who were in the middle of hunting were often more frantic and weaker and depended predominantly on primal instincts and therefore didn't think as rationally as they could've done which gave me the upper hand."

"You've learned to be able to tell differences between Strigoi and their state of mind and what made them that way?"

"I kind of had to. If I knew what state of mind they were in, it made it a whole lot easier to fight them."

"I never would've expected you to turn into some sort of a strategist. You used to be the type to just knock everything down with as much brute force as you possibly could without actually having the strength to resolve problems by sheer force."

"Oh thanks Alster, way to point out how pathetic I used to be." I scoffed.

"Does the whole being a strategist thing come from playing soccer for the past six years or so?"

"Nope." I smirked and let the 'p' pop. "I learnt that ability from having gotten involved in so many pranks of yours when I was just a kid and then I changed the purpose of that type of skill for something more practical instead."

"See, so those pranks did come in handy."

"I never once said that they didn't. If I recall, I had once declared that playing pranks on people with you was my best past time ever and that I never wanted those moments to end."

"The times when we used to plan how we were going to prank someone was amazing. I miss those days when we used to decide on a target, gather information about them and then execute the plans. That was the best time of my life."

"Oh? I would've thought that getting your first girlfriend had been the best time of your life?" I arched my brows. "I recall you saying something like that."

"Of course you would, you got so jealous that you refused to speak to me for an entire week and a half and even ignored and avoided me as much as you could. Then it took another week to be able to convince you that the girl wasn't an evil creature trying to take me away from you."

"Okay… so I was really childish back then…" I blushed and turned away from him.

I was surprised when he suddenly grabbed my face and turned me to face him. "Don't."

"Don't what?" I arched my brows again.

"Don't hide your face away from me," he told me seriously with such an intense tone that it made my breath catch.

Here it was again. This was the Ali that I had been catching snippets of since I first saw him again last week. This was the Ali that I didn't know. Yes, I knew that six years ago Ali was an incredibly caring person who was quite deep when it came to emotions. But I didn't know that he was capable of being so intense.

Seeing him like this scared me somewhat. I didn't know what to make of the fact that he directed this intensity towards me and I didn't know what the emotion that swirled so heavily in his eyes was. I had a feeling that I would need to figure that out soon because not knowing what that emotion was could potentially get me into trouble.

"I lost you for six years. You owe me at least six years' worth of company, Kalster."

"Wow… that's a long time, Ali. How on earth can I pay you back?" I grinned.

"You can start by sneaking out at night and helping me with my night patrols. They are so boring," he complained.

"You have to do night patrols as well?"

"Of course. I'm a Guardian working at this school not as an appointed Guardian to a Moroi here. Speaking of appointed Guardians, I was going to be assigned to you."

"Huh?" I blinked in surprise. "How would that have worked? You graduated way before me."

"Your parents never told you and neither did Martin and Juliet but they had all been thinking of making me stay at school after Graduation to help out with classes and then when you graduated, I was going to be assigned as your main Guardian."

"Basically, if I hadn't run away, we were pretty much going to be inseparable."

"That sounds about right."

I thought about it for a while. I thought about what it might be like to have had Ali by my side all this time. What would it have been like? What would have happened between us if he had stayed by my side and I hadn't left the Academy at all?

All of those question whirled around my mind but I came to the same conclusion no matter what question I asked myself. There was no point in asking the 'what ifs' since it was an irrevocable fact that I did leave the Academy and I had left it for six whole years if not a little more than that. Nothing was going to change that fact and nothing was going to change the fact that I had changed in a different way to the way I would have done had I stayed in this place. None of that was going to change and there was no point in trying to think about what might have happened had I never left. What was more important was to think about what I was going to do with the present and think about the future one step at a time. Anything was possible in this place so thinking too far into the future was a fairly foolish thing to try and do.

For all I knew, there could be an attack that might change my life entirely once more. No doubt, when my secret was out, which would be let out eventually since that was something that would definitely be inevitable my life would take a 180 spin as well. There were so many things that would undoubtedly happen in the future that would change my life and there was no knowing when these things might happen. It seemed that the best course of action would be to take things in stride and to just simply go one step at a time and take decisions as I went along. That seemed like the best thing to do at the moment.

"So, considering how I owe you six years' worth of company, why don't we start that now by watching a film?" I suggested as I picked out a title from the many sealed DVD boxes.

"Before we do that, we need to find somewhere where we can catch up on all the years that I've missed. We can't just go to each other's rooms anymore, not when I'm an official Guardian and you are for all eyes and ears just an undergraduate who has only just recently transferred here. If we are caught by someone outside of the family unit, there will be a lot of terrible rumours flying around."

"You know, Alster, six years ago, you would have simply said sod off to rumours and just disregard them."

"Yes, but six years ago I was still just a brat like you were who didn't need to care about rumours. Back then, neither of our futures and impressions were at stake. Now? Now everything is different, Kalster, and although I couldn't care less about my reputation but you? You have such a future ahead of you and I don't want stupid rumours to get in the way of that."

"I don't care about rumours."

"I know you don't, but I'm afraid the rest of the world doesn't really hold the same view." Ali smiled crookedly and kissed my forehead.

"Then what are we going to do? Aside from me tagging along with your night duties in secret which Aunty Jules can probably make up some excuse for anyway, how are we going to catch up on all these films?"

Ali seemed to hesitate for a few moments and I sensed the unease that seemed to suddenly consume him. I poked him to urge him to say what was on his mind and eventually, after staring at me for several long moments, he finally did.

"There is one place we can go but none of us were sure whether you'd be able to handle it just yet."

"Oh?"

"Your house," he stated bluntly and my mind was blown to oblivion.