I am so excited to be writing this story again! For a while there I just wanted to take a break from everything, including writing. I was just super stressed. Now, I am in a place where I am comfortable and ready to start everything up again. I am going to try my hardest to update this story ASAP. Enjoy!

"Rose, where are you?" Adrian asked. We were in a meadow filled with small trees and flowers. Adrian was wearing some jeans and a tight brown t-shirt with horizontal white stripes on it. It actually looked really good on him.

I looked around. "Uh, I'm not sure. Where are we?"

Adrian took two big steps toward me and looked me over. I noticed that I was wearing the same dress I was wearing in the real world. You could easily see the gash in my leg. "What happened?" he asked as he pulled me into his chest.

"Oh, it's not a big deal. We were…" I stopped because I remembered what Lissa had told us about the driver. "Actually, it kind of is a big deal. Some guy killed our original driver and then posed as him. He drove us for maybe fifteen minutes and then he crashed the car. He died, but the rest of us are okay. I got the worst of it." I gestured toward my leg.

Adrian took a deep breath and let me go. "I'm glad everyone is okay. I'll let you go now."

"Adrian? What's wrong?" I asked. He didn't really sound like he was glad everyone was okay. He sounded sad.

He shook his head and looked at the ground. "It's nothing. Where are you right now? Outside of the dream."

"We're on a jet. I don't know how long it will be until we get there." I shrugged. "But what's really going on with you?"

Adrian grabbed my hand and twirled me around. It hurt my leg a little, but I didn't say anything. "I'll see you soon, little dhampir."

I didn't know how much time had passed since I passed out. I could hear beeping from somewhere before I even woke up all the way. I wanted it to go away. I wanted to sleep more. It felt like I had been asleep for a very long time, but I didn't care. I was comfortable. I felt extremely relaxed.

Unfortunately, my mind decided on its own that it was time to wake up.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked to the right, where the beeping was coming from. There was a machine monitoring my heartbeat. There was another sort of sound coming from it. It sounded like someone beating a drum under water. I assumed it was the baby's heartbeat.

I looked around the rest of the room. I was in a big white bed with a red comforter and pillows. There were two guardians in the room. One was at the door, and the other was at the window. The room was pretty bare. It had white walls and a couple of abstract paintings hung up.

"Excuse me?" I asked…well, pretty much either of the guardians.

"Yes?" the one at the door replied.

I cleared my throat. "Where am I?"

Neither answered, but the one at the door opened it and said, "She's awake."

A doctor rushed into the room. She looked pretty much like Dr. Stephens, except she had brown hair and was a bit shorter. "Hello, Rose. I am Dr. Klaus. I will be taking care of your medical needs throughout your pregnancy. I can't stay long. I have to go back to the hospital. You are fine. The only reason we have you hooked up to these machines is because we wanted to be absolutely sure that you and your baby are okay. Now that you are awake, I know that there was no serious damage done. I will be coming back in two weeks to check up on you. It seems that you have had a pretty unlucky start to your pregnancy.

"I want you to rest as much as you can. It'll not only help you with your stress level, but also your leg. The stitches should dissolve by themselves so you don't need to worry about that. I do have to ask something, though." Dr. Klaus sat down on a stool that she pulled from the side of the bed. "Do your parents know that you are here, and that you are pregnant?"

Well, no. But why would I tell her that? She would just want me to give her my mom's number so that she could call her and tell her what exactly it is that I'm doing here. I knew what she was thinking. She thought that I had run away from home with my baby's daddy and was staying here until I had the baby. "Yes."

Dr. Klaus gave me a look. "And what do they think?"

"Well, I've never known my dad. He left when I was little. My mom isn't happy about it, but she realizes that there really isn't anything we can do about it. I don't believe in abortion, and we're still trying to decide if we want to keep the baby or not. She's actually the one who wanted me to come here. She told everyone I was going to visit my aunt. She's a little ashamed, and I hate that I've put her through this, but, again, there is nothing we can do about it." I explained.

Apparently, I lied really well so she told me when to take what medication, unhooked me from the machines, and left. I seriously needed a shower so I got up to find the bathroom. The living room was right outside the room I was in and it was huge! It seemed like the entire house was decorated in some kind of plain cabin-like feel.

I started walking towards the hallway when something swept me off my feet.

"I thought you were supposed to be resting?" Dimitri said with a giant smile plastered on his face.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and nestled my head into his neck. "I am. But you know me, I never follow the rules." I looked around. "Where is Lissa?"

"She's swimming in the pool right now."

"There's a pool?" I almost leapt out of his arms.

He laughed. "Yes, but I'm afraid I won't let you go to it. You really are supposed to be resting."

"Not fair." I pouted. "I was going to take a shower…"

Dimitri put his lips right up to my ear. "In that case, I'll join you."

[BREAK]

"Okay, this was all good in the beginning, but I'm bored! I want to go into town or something. Pleeeaasseeee?" I begged.

Dimitri practically burned a hole into my forehead with the stare he gave me. "Do we have to go through this every day, Rose? I already told you, we were sent here for a reason: to keep you and I safe. We don't even know what town we're in. We're in the middle of the woods! There could be Moroi and Dhampirs in this town, and they definitely know who we are. Besides, look at you. You know that if we had to hike to town, we would get halfway there before you started complaining about how bad your feet hurt."

I propped my feet up into his lap. It took me a moment because my stomach was so big. We preferred not to know the sex of the baby, but I could feel it move inside me. It also liked to snug it's feet into my ribs, which was not fun. I was due any day now, and Dimitri was probably right. "In that case, would you rub my feet?" I gave him a sweet smile.

"Rosemarie Hathaway, what am I going to do with you?" he joked as he started to rub my right foot.

I moaned before I said, "Love me?"

"Ick. You guys, cool it. At least while I'm in the room." Christian said, with a glass of orange juice in his hand. He had arrived the after us. It was just the five of us: Me, Dimitri, Lissa, Christian, and Adrian. I barely saw Adrian anymore, and when I did he was drunk. We had all been doing pretty much the same thing since we got here. A lot of making out and…other things, watching TV, and doing anything that would preoccupy us. Lissa and Christian left frequently to go look at colleges, but I wasn't allowed to leave.

"If you don't want to see it, then don't look!" I stuck my tongue out at him.

"Oh, believe me, if –" Christian was cut off by loud knocking on the door.

Dimitri picked me up – quickly but carefully – and carried me into our bedroom. "Stay quiet." he whispered. I nodded. He put me down on the bed and walked over to the door. It was cracked so that he could hear what was going on.

It felt like I sat there forever looking for a sign in Dimitri's posture that something was wrong. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. My stomach was in knots. I knew I had to calm down for the sake of my baby. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Dimitri finally walked back over to me and picked me up.

"Ouch!" I hissed. I guessed the way he picked me up hadn't suited well with my stomach.

"Are you okay?" he asked as he walked out of the room.

I held my stomach with one hand and wrapped the other around his neck. "Yeah, I'm okay. This huge stomach of mine just doesn't agree with me sometimes."

Dimitri laughed and kissed my forehead as he sat me down on the couch. "I love you."

"I love –" I was cut off by a warm wet feeling. I felt my eyes go wide. My hands automatically went down to my stomach. The wet feeling just kept coming and coming. I had so many thoughts running through my head.

"Roza? Sweet, are you okay?" Dimitri seemed to ask me that a lot since I got pregnant. He kneeled down beside me and put one of his hands on my stomach, the other on my leg.

"Uh, I think you need to go get some towels." I told him.

A small smile formed on his face. "Why is that?"

I took a breath and then said, "Well, I'm pretty sure my water just broke."

The smile dropped instantly. I had expected Dimitri to go right into action. To pick up the phone, call the doctor, get me in the gown my doctor had left for me, get me in bed, and start helping me get ready. I didn't get that. Dimitri stopped breathing and looked everywhere as if he didn't know what to do. It was strange to see him so confused. When going into battle, Dimitri didn't have a single hesitation. When having a baby, he looked like he was going to throw up. It just didn't make any sense.

"Well, go call the doctor!" I urged. I got the response I wanted then. He jumped up and started toward the phone. "Lissa!" She ran into the living room from the hallway. She saw Dimitri running around like a mad man and gave me a confused look. I mouthed, "baby".

"Oh my God!" Lissa ran over to me and grabbed my hand. "Do you want me to help you into your gown? What can I do? Do you need some sort of medication? I can –"

"Liss, calm down! If you'll go get my gown and help me into the bathroom, that would be wonderful. I think Dimitri has everything else taken care of." I told her. She started to go off, but a contraction hit me and I let out a little groan. She put a hand on my shoulder and closed her eyes. I knew what she was trying to do. "Liss, that won't help either of us. Go!"

Eight painful hours later, I was holding my beautiful baby girl named Maya. I had thought that I would want to sleep, or eat after I had her. But all I wanted to do was hold her and love her the rest of the night. She was born with a head full of dark hair, like her father's. Dimitri cried with a smile on his face the first time he held her. She seemed to like being in her daddy's arms.

"She's absolutely beautiful. You did a great job, Roza." Dimitri whispered while holding Maya.

"We did a great job." I replied. I moved over a little – it was hard because I couldn't feel my legs from the epidural – so that Dimitri could sit next to me.

"Hey, you two. Look over here." Lissa said as she came in the door. We did, and she snapped a picture of us. "First picture of the family." Lissa had a smile as long as a mile when she looked at us. She went to Dimitri's side to look at Maya. "Wow. She is definitely the product of you two."

Dimitri and I laughed at that. After an hour of spending time with my brand-new daughter, a nurse came in and told me that I needed to get some sleep. Dimitri went with the nurse so he could spend some time with Maya. I fell into the heaviest and happiest sleep I had ever had.

[BREAK]

"Roza!" Dimitri smacked my arm. He had said my name three or four times already and I was trying to ignore him so that he would tend to Maya. It seemed that he would call me Roza instead of Rose when he was half asleep. I knew it was my turn to tend to her, but I was tired. They had given us a new room in the house to stay in because it had another room attached to it. We turned it into a nursery with the supplies the queen had sent. Maya was supposed to be sleeping in her basinet, but apparently she needed something.

"Okay, okay!" I got up and yawned. Maya was only a week old. I hoped and hoped that Maya wasn't hungry. That little girl would latch onto my boob for what seemed like hours. I never thought that I would actually wish to be woken up to change a dirty diaper. But, then again, I never thought I would have a baby at eighteen.

It seemed that babies, although they slept a lot, knew when day was and when night was, so Dimitri and I had to get on a human schedule to match Maya's. She slept more in the night than she did in the day. It was dark when I opened my eyes, but I could still see.

I put on my slippers and got a sip of water before getting up. I shuffled into the nursery. I was still half-asleep, so what I saw confused me. Once I digested what I was seeing, my heart started racing. I thought so many things in one second. I didn't know what to do. Why hadn't I felt any nausea?

Rosemarie Hathaway! I thought to myself. You are a dhampir, and what do dhampirs do? They fight and protect. So, do it! Think!

"Hey!" I yelled to the strigoi. "Get your gross, undead claws away from my baby!"

It did exactly what I thought it would. It turned its attention toward me instead of Maya. I had to lure it into my bedroom. I couldn't fight it in the nursery; we might accidently run into the basinet and hurt Maya. I also didn't have my stake with me, so it would be difficult to kill it.

I turned and ran into the room. "Dimitri!" I yelled as I ducked. I had a feeling that the strigoi would jump at me from behind, and I was right. It went right over me, but it was quick. It turned back toward me and grabbed my neck. It shoved me up against a wall. My oxygen was automatically cut off.

"We want the baby, and we will have it." it snarled. I wanted to ask it why, but with no oxygen came no words. The strigoi came in closer to my neck. Suddenly, I wished he had broken my neck. Instead, he was going to drain me. I could only hope that I would pass out from the lack of oxygen before he finished.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for the bite. Suddenly, I could breathe and I was falling to the floor. I saw stars for a moment before I saw Dimitri and the strigoi facing each other in fighting stances. I was torn. I wanted to jump in and help Dimitri. Two dhampirs fighting a strigoi had a better chance of taking it down than one. At the same time, I wanted to run into the nursery, grab Maya, and get her out of there.

I was also worried about Lissa. I reached through the bond for just a moment to find that she was with Christian. They were watching a movie in their room. Good. That meant that if a strigoi did find them, sparky could set it on fire.

I looked back and forth between the nursery and Dimitri. I decided Dimitri needed my help more at the moment. I was about to get up to try and get a stake, when movement out of the corner of my eye got my attention. There was another one in my daughter's room!

Oh, that's it. I thought.

I got up, ran into the nursery, and punched the strigoi as hard as I could in the face. It shot back about two feet and then recovered. It took a swing at my face, but I moved back just in time. It shot out again and got my ribs. Ouch. I knew I couldn't give in to the pain right then. I launched my entire body forward and hit the strigoi with all my might. It actually fell into the ground. Right then was when I got how a mother could turn into a beast when it came to her children.

The strigoi rolled and wound up on top of me. I grabbed it's waist – leaving my face open for a moment, which isn't a good idea – and threw it to the side. I was on my feet the same time it got to its feet. I was in between Maya and the strigoi. We dodged from side to side. It was trying to get to my baby, and I wasn't going to let it.

"Rose!" Dimitri yelled. I looked over just in time to see him throwing a stake my way. I caught it, and gave a big smile to the strigoi.

It punched me in the ribs again, and that time it really hurt. I almost doubled over and it got behind me. I turned, quick as lightning, and shoved the stake into its back. It yelled in pain. Maya shrieked even louder than she had been the entire time. I grabbed the strigoi by the back of its shirt and pulled it back, my stake going through the back of its ribs and into its dead heart.

I got the stake out just before it dropped. I ran and picked up Maya. I didn't know where Dimitri had gone, so I ran into the room. Tears were streaming down my face. I was mumbling something about never letting Maya go again when I ran into Dimitri. Lissa and Christian were behind him. He had gone to check on them.

"Where's Adrian?" I asked.

"I haven't seen him since…the third." Lissa replied. "Three days before Maya was born."

No one had seen Adrian, but we had all assumed he was in his room. When Maya was about to be born, Christian had run up to his room and knocked on the door. No one answered so he tried to go in. The door was locked. Christian said that he yelled that I was going into labor, but Adrian just yelled at him to go away.

"Dimitri, take Maya. Christian, come with me. If we run into a strigoi, I want you to fry the bastard, got it?" I explained. He nodded. I turned to Dimitri and Lissa. "We'll be right back. If we aren't back within five minutes, come looking for us."

We didn't get three feet when we heard, "Calm down. I'm right here."

I ran into the kitchen – which was about fifteen feet from me – and punched Adrian right in the arm. "Ow! What was that for?" he shrieked.

I punched him with every word, just not as hard as the first time. "You. Had. Me. Worried. To. Death!" I stopped punching him and hugged him. "Where have you been? Adrian, why are you acting like this?"

I pulled back and looked at him. His face went soft. He put one hand on my cheek. "I'm sorry, Rose. I know I haven't been…the best friend I could be lately." He sighed. "Rose, I just…"

"He's upset that you and I had a child together." Dimitri snarled.

"Dimitri! Let him talk." I snapped right back. I looked back at Adrian.

Adrian shook his head and then looked at me. "He's right. I was jealous. I still am. But…I can see how much this is hurting you. I'm sorry, I really am. I just don't know if I can be just your friend, Rose."

"You can! Please. Adrian, you are one of my best friends! I want you in my life." I pleaded.

He didn't say anything for a long moment. He just looked at me. It was as if I could see the battle playing in his head. Should he suck it up and just be my friend so that he can be in my life? Or should he tell me that he didn't want to be friends so he could mend his heart and forget me altogether?

"Okay. Can I see…?"

"Her name is Maya." Lissa interjected with a smile. I gave her a big smile. I looked over at Dimitri, and he didn't look happy at all. Maya had calmed down so I held out my hands to him.

He came to me, but he was reluctant to give me Maya. "Please, comrade." I said with a big smile. It was almost the same thing that happened with Adrian. His eyes went soft, and he handed Maya over with a kiss to my forehead. I walked over to Adrian and gently handed him the baby.

"Oh, wow." he said. "She's so…so…"

"Beautiful?" Lissa said.

"Like her parents?" Christian chimed in.

Adrian shook his head. "She's so…tiny!" We all laughed.

We all wound up sitting in the living room and talking for a little while. Adrian explained to us where he had been going all these months, and how he had made some friends in town. He also told us that the queen had told him that we would be in town for five more weeks before going back to the school.

Eventually, it was dawn, and we all needed to get some sleep. Dimitri and I agreed that we would take turns handling Maya so that we could get back on a vampiric schedule. We all agreed that it would be better if we decided to sleep in one room because of the attack. Lissa and Christian's room was the biggest, it had one extra bed that the queen insisted they have, and it had a couch that could pull out into a bed, so we decided to sleep there.

I went to bed with all my loved ones, and I couldn't have been happier.

Little did I know that things wouldn't be that simple again for a long, long time.