Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy and my imagination carried on for the ride...

Dimitri didn't understand the question, and before he could ask and clarify, Guardian Ershova's voice boomed, three triads behind him and to his left. "Guardian Nikitin!" Her voice, swallowed up by the poor acoustic of the cavernous space, still carried. "I think we're done for this evening, don't you?'

Nikitin bowed sharply in acknowledgement and turned away from Dimitri's group. He clapped his hands above his head, signaling the end of the class. Dimitri stopped mid-thrust, then deflected one last blow that Viktor wasn't able to check. Ershova had never ended class so abruptly, and never with time to spare on the clock. Dimitri turned to Nikitin, but he was gone, circulating among the other triads – their activity gradually slowing to a stop - on the far side of the gymnasium. He turned back to ask his partners, but saw only relief – not confusion – on their faces, so he bowed to them and began to gather his gear.

He could ask Nikitin later, but for now Zekloa and Malina were already making their way down the bleachers. He couldn't help but notice that even among the other Moroi they looked right together. They moved down the steps nearly in sync, slender and graceful as ballet dancers even bundled in their bulky coats. Their coloring was different but their features matched, pale and high cheek-boned and beautiful. Even he had to admit that they made an attractive pair. He just didn't have to watch them flaunt it.

He crouched next to his bag, ignoring the bodies of his novice classmates moving around him as they gathered their own gear and greeted their friends. More Moroi came down from the bleachers and joined the novices, and the buzz of their conversations filled his ears. He concentrated on packing his workout bag and the gray concrete floor, and the edge of the blue mat where the bag sat just slightly askew. Those distractions gave him a few more precious seconds of muted awareness, but his dhampir senses wouldn't let him completely shut out Zeklos and Malina. The pair walked toward him, unerring in their destination, while the rest of his classmates - both dhampir and Moroi - walked around him.

"Have a good weekend," Nikitin called out. Dimitri looked up and his sharp eyes – and intentional focus on anything else but the Moroi approaching him – caught Nikitin's last sidelong glance at Ershova. "Check your monitoring assignments and we'll see you first thing Monday morning."

Katya bounded past him, interrupting his line of sight, stopping just short of tackling Zeklos in her exuberance. She smiled up at him, ignoring Malina. "I can't believe it, I thought for sure she was going to keep us all night. If I'd known she accepted bribes I would have tried days ago."

"You didn't," Zeklos grinned. Dimitri looked back down at his bag.

"Nope," Katya agreed, voice cheerful, "but only because I couldn't figure out how to smuggle the model up to her apartment. I still may try it for next week. Do you think she'd like a weightlifter type or a cross-country runner?"

Malina laughed, sounding blissfully unconcerned, and Dimitri's hands tightened. He heard other movement among the group – Zeklos, Malina, and Katya had stopped just a few meters away from him - and he stiffened when he identified one sound as footsteps threading through the crowd to reach him. He kept looking down, unseeing, into his bag, and didn't look up when Malina put her hand on his shoulder.

"What do you want?"

She stepped back, immediately on guard. He usually sought her out: she made the effort to come see him to observe his class and he made sure he reciprocated the attention. But tonight he wasn't interested in good manners.

"Are you coming to dinner?" she asked cautiously.

He stood up then, invading her personal space, not caring that he was being obvious about it. His voice was low and – under the circumstances, he thought - controlled. "What did he say to you?"

Malina's stunned silence and the way their nearest classmates stopped to stare should have warned him that he was making a mistake, but his control had slipped too far. "What were you doing with him?"

Zeklos's voice, smooth, flowed over him from somewhere behind his left shoulder. "We were just talking. Don't give her a hard time."

The implication that he was being unreasonable stung and should have been his cue to back away but he kept going, his emotional momentum only gaining speed. He stepped closer. He didn't grab her – his control would never slip that far – but he came close. "Don't you even care that he's with Katya?"

Zeklos inserted himself between them but Malina was already moving. She snapped her whole body away. "If you still want Katya she's right here. I talk to who I want." She tossed her head back and forcibly took Zeklos's arm. "Sorry about that, cousin," she said, emphasizing the exaggerated familial term Royals sometimes used with one another. "I don't know what his problem is."

He didn't want Katya like that any more, she was twisting his words. But before he could formulate a protest, Katya stepped into the tension vibrating between them.

"He doesn't want me, you don't have to worry about that," she said, watching Dimitri closely like he was some dangerous, caged animal. Her voice turned carefully chiding, teasing, intentionally trying to lighten the mood. "But Dimitri, you don't have any claim on her. And even if you did, you know better than to push a woman around!"

His body burned, humiliation and anger competing. He did know better. Zeklos was making him irrational. Zeklos was making him crazy. It was all Zeklos's fault.

Katya stepped closer, mock-whispering, making sure everyone could hear. "You were never this jealous when we were dating, you must really like her."

"I don't find jealousy attractive - or flattering," Malina interrupted, her temper flaring again.

Ivan's voice was mild, calming, "I agree."

"I'm not jealous." Dimitri answered, subdued, frustrated, and embarrassed.

He wasn't jealous, not exactly. But seeing Zeklos with Malina simply reminded him too much of his father with his Moroi wife. He'd spent years fighting that envy, and he had obviously failed. He simply knew that his father would never hit or humiliate his Moroi wife like he did his dhampir mistress. He would never use his elemental control to choke his Moroi children as he had his dhampir offspring. Dimitri still had few, if any, friends with control over air. Moroi were meant to be with Moroi, any dhampir dalliances were just that. He knew that fact as clearly as he knew how to get a stake through a Strigoi's ribcage. It wasn't the rightness and social acceptability of the Moroi pairing he'd envied: he envied the safety he'd never had.

Malina narrowed her eyes. "I don't care what it was. You don't dictate who I talk to."

Dimitri knew he'd made a mistake - possibly a terminal one. "I was out of line," he said, finally. "It won't happen again."

Arm still entwined with Zeklos's, her green eyes flashed. "Then what the hell were you thinking?"

She wanted an explanation he couldn't give, especially with Zeklos standing with her and the audience they'd attracted. "I was out of line," he repeated. "I'm sorry." Her shoulders twitched. "Really. I'm sorry. "

"What about me?" Ivan's voice was light. "Do I get an apology too?"

The word itself was painful enough; Dimitri couldn't look him in the eye. "I apologize."

"Apology accepted," Ivan answered easily.

Ivan turned to the small crowd that had formed, drawn in by the drama. "Nothing more to see here, move along." Remarkably - or not-so-remarkably considering Zeklos's hereditary charisma – everyone did. When Dimitri and Malina stayed, facing one another, awkwardly frozen in a just slightly less tense standoff, Zeklos took charge again. "Come on, let's go eat."