Recap:

"You really should eat something." She said, but I paid her no mind, instead looking at my fingernails. They were exactly the same as in the dream. I studied them for a few minutes before Lyn noticed. She'd finished her meal and was leaning back in her chair when she saw them. Her eyes bugged out of their sockets and she grabbed onto my hands for a better look. I waited as patiently as possible for her to stop gawking at them.

About ten minutes passed before she swallowed thickly and gave me my hands back. I rubbed my wrists while looking at her, eyebrows raised. She started muttering to herself. I only got a few words. "So long. . . rare. . . be possible. . . lucky. . . tell her." Her eyes shifted and met my gaze before she told me that she'd explain when we landed.

Suddenly the long flight to Siberia felt that much longer.

Chapter 4

Story

I slept dreamlessly until the flight landed. I ignored the faces of the dead as I made my way off the plane. I had nothing with me except my carry-on bag, so I walked right past the luggage collection area. We stopped at the front of the airport where I turned on Lyn and demanded that she gave me an explanation to what the colour of my nails meant.

She sighed and started walking down a street. "You need to know that every doctor knows this, just in case, and Dr Litner only told me because she trusted me. Now, what's one of the biggest reasons why dhampirs guard moroi?" She turned to me.

"Because it's our duty?" She shook her head. "Because without them, we die?"

"Bingo. So, imagine if guardians found a way to survive without the moroi. Some of them would go off to make a family of their own, wouldn't they?" I nodded slowly, she continued. "Just keep that in mind." We reached a park, -similar to the one in mine and Adrian's dream, but still different- and Lyn sat on a park bench, I sat down across from her. "Now, I'm not very good at history lessons, but anyway, way back when moroi and dhampirs and strigoi first walked the Earth, they thought evolution was the same for all of them. But when dhampirs couldn't reproduce with other dhampirs, the complicated dhampir evolution theory was created and believed.

"It went on like that for quite a while. Then the royals system came into play, along with the guardian system. It took a while to get going, but eventually the royals controlled almost everything, and any problems or discoveries went to them first. Now, when a dhampir woman walked up to them with a baby she claimed was the offspring of two dhampirs, the court didn't believe her. When the child grew up and looked even more like his father, both of the parents explained to the court what had happened. The court believed them this time, but they believed it should be kept a secret, for the reason that guardians would abandon their charges and go make families of their own, making the moroi vulnerable to strigoi attacks.

"The court studied the family and found that they didn't act like a regular family did. Regular families had fights; they often broke up and found someone new. But this family did nothing of the sort. The parents were forever gazing into each others eyes, stealing sweet kisses when they thought no-one else was looking. They never had a single fight. The court found this highly unusual, and wrote it in a document for if a later case occurred.

"A later case did occur. Nearly 50 years later another family of dhampirs showed up on the courts doorstep. The documents from the last case were read, and the court found that the new family acted in exactly the same way. Still they did not tell the people, for the same reason as before. When the third case showed, 78 years later, an old man claimed that they must be dhampir soul mates. It would explain why so few accomplished the feat. Now they had a new reason not to tell the people -they would have dhampirs leaving in search of their soul mates everywhere.

"It was nearly 300 years later that a woman came to the court claiming to have blue nails. The king laughed at her and told her to leave, but she insisted he see them. He took her hands and looked; the pinks of her nails were a sky blue colour. He took the lady in, scheduling for her to have daily check-ups with the court's doctor. Almost immediately, the woman became ill. She started vomiting daily, eating more than usual and becoming emotional. The doctor was sure she was pregnant, but the woman insisted that she couldn't be; the only man who she had ever lifted her skirts for was a dhampir.

"Eight and a half months later, she had a beautiful baby girl and knew the full story of the decades of other women, just like her. She was the first dhampir woman to tell the court of the nail colouring. From then on, each dhampir who fell pregnant to her dhampir soul mate informed the courts of the nail colouring. No one yet understands why the nails change to a blue colour, but they do for nine months. When the baby is born, the woman's fingernails returned to normal.

"Each royal to take the throne has been told the story, likewise for every doctor. Some choose not to believe it, but that is their loss." She shrugged. "I've never fully believed until I saw your nails. I always doubted being pregnant could have that sort of effect on the human body, but it looks like its true. . . Are you okay?"

I could feel myself shaking, tears streaking down my face. Both of my hands came up and covered my face, sobs started making their way up my throat. Soul mates. Blue nails. Baby. Dhampir. Dimitri.

The last word was the only one that made sense in that moment. Dimitri, the one I'd fallen in love with. The one who'd been taken from me in the worst way possible. The one I was trying to find. The one who loved me back. The one I couldn't live without. The one I'd lost my virginity to. The one who understood me. The one who meant the world to me. The one who was now a bloodthirsty killer. The one I had to destroy.

The one who had gotten me pregnant.

I can't kill Dimitri. I can't kill the one man I ever loved. I realised that I never would be able to kill him. I would have stopped in my tracks at the thought of piercing his sweet, loving heart. Seeing his gorgeous eyes glaze over. I would kill myself before letting his god-like body fall to the ground. And now I couldn't kill him because I was pregnant. Pregnant women can't kill strigoi. I'd have to change my whole lifestyle. I couldn't kill a strigoi if I had a huge bulge in my stomach. And I couldn't leave a baby behind just so that I could guard some moroi. Even Lissa. I would not make the same mistake my mother had.

I began hyperventilating. I would have to abandon my mission. I would have to wait at least another nine months before I could go back to Lissa. To Adrian. Oh God, Adrian, what was I going to tell him? I promised I'd give him a fair chance. How was I going to do that if I had a baby? Would he ever forgive me? Would I ever forgive myself? This was sure to break his heart. But I would try to make it right, even if he hated me for it.

And what about Lissa? She had been so upset about me leaving her in the first place, how would she handle the fact that I couldn't come back? I'd have to wait a long time before I could show my face around her again.

Thoughts like that swirled round and round in my head for hours. By the time my eyes saw anything that wasn't my own tears; I saw that I was in a hotel room. I was curled up in a ball on a bed. A glass of water and some headache pills were sitting on the bedside table.

I drank the water, but left the pills untouched. Then I fell asleep, exhausted by my emotional breakdown.