Disclaimer: I don't own Vampire Academy.

Ch. 17 Confession

"What is it?" Lissa's confusion grew as she tried to guess what I was going to tell her.

I looked her in the eye, and took another deep breath to steady it. I was just going to be straight with Lissa and not "beat around the bush." "Liss…I went to Russia…with Dimitri."

Shock ran through the bond and into me. Lissa looked like she was temporarily speechless. After a few moments of trying to choke out her words she was finally able to talk again. "You…went to Russia with your mentor?"

Why on earth would she have gone to Russia with Guardian Belikov? she mused to herself. Guardian training exercise?

I just sat and waited for her to piece it together. A few moments later, she got it.

"You're….you're….you're in love with Dimitri?" she asked, her voice and mind stunned.

I nodded. Although she'd been my best friend forever, I had no idea how she'd react when she found out.

Lissa's mind was rapidly working as she tried to work through. I felt her mind flash back to a shopping trip to Missoula that we'd gone on a few months ago. I'd been talking with Dimitri, and we'd both agreed that we wanted someone to kill us if we ever got turned into Strigoi.

Another strong memory flew through her mind. Last Christmas at the ski lodge, I'd been really rude to Tasha. Lissa hadn't heard about Tasha's offer to Dimitri until later, but now with the knowledge of my feelings for Dimitri it made sense.

More memories rushed through her, and she took a deep breath. "And…does he love you back?"

"Yes," I whispered, looking at the floor. "We've tried to stay away from each other, but it never worked."

"That's why you wouldn't date anyone for so long," Lissa murmured, her eyes distant. "You were in love with Dimitri back then, and you still are."

"We can't let our feelings for each other distract us from you," I said, still a little bitter. I remembered Dimitri had told me he'd try to get reassigned, but I didn't want to count on that possibility too much.

"But…you guys love each other," Lissa whispered. "You shouldn't let protecting me get in the way of your feelings."

"You're the last one left in your line," I reminded her. "As the last Dragomir princess, we have to protect you, no matter what."

A bit of anger coursed through her – not about her being the last Dragomir, but at me. "Why didn't you ever tell me?" she demanded. "I'm your best friend, no matter what. I wouldn't have told anyone."

I swallowed and looked down again. "I just…I just could never find the right time to tell you. I've tried, but you had other things on your mind."

Lissa's anger faded a little, and her eyes were apologetic. "Oh…I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," I said, shaking my head. "I'd wanted to tell you for a long time."

"When…when did you guys find out that you both loved each other?"

I sighed. That was an extremely hard question, and involved talking about the lust charm Victor Dashkov had put on us the night of he'd kidnapped Lissa. "Well…do you remember when Victor kidnapped you?"

Lissa's eyes widened with fear. "Yeah. What about that?"

"He wanted to distract me and Dimitri from going off to find out. That rose necklace he gave me….he put a lust charm on it."

"A WHAT?"

I flinched at Lissa's shout and she calmed down. Her emotions were going a bit high with the mention of that night. I willed her anger and fear to disappear…and it did. But I didn't know why it did.

"He put a lust charm," I repeated. "I think he was hoping that we'd be spending the whole night getting it on so we'd be too distracted to find you. But Dimitri figured out something was wrong with the necklace and chucked it out the window."

"How…how far did you get?" Lissa asked, her voice very small as she spoke.

I shivered as I remembered that night. "We came very close…It was really the last moment before he pulled back and realized something was wrong."

Lissa was silent for a moment. Then her face lit up. "I forgive you for not telling me about him. It would be a hard thing to tell anyone. But now you don't have to keep it a complete secret."

I laughed and we hugged. That was the thing about Lissa – when she got mad, she couldn't stay mad for too long, at least.

So…what are you going to do now? About you and Dimitri? she asked in my mind.

I sighed and played with my hair. "It feels better now that you know about us…but for now, we still have to stick to staying away from each other. If word gets out about us…" My voice trailed off.

"You guys will be in so much trouble," Lissa finished, her voice going a bit flat as she spoke.

I shuddered at the thought if anyone else found out. The fact that we were guardians already would make people look down on us for having a relationship. Add the student-teacher relationship part and we had a nice big mess on our hands. If anyone else found out, Dimitri could be arrested. At the very least, he'd be fined and maybe be temporarily suspended from being a guardian.

"Who else knows?" Lissa asked gently.

"Adrian," I grumbled.

Lissa gasped. "What? Are you serious?"

"Why would I be fucking around with this?" I asked in exasperation. "It's not like I publicized it."

"Then how the hell did Adrian find out?" Lissa asked, a little aghast that the guy who was hitting on me had found out.

I rolled my eyes. "He looked at our auras and knew. I kept telling him to stay the fuck out but of course, he would never listen."

"Typical Adrian," Lissa agreed, her voice dry. "But just hang on a few months longer. Three more months until graduation, and you'll be able to freely go out with Dimitri."

I smiled, thinking about what we'd be able to do once I'd graduated. "And my birthday is coming up soon, so they can't give me too much crap about this once we get out of here."

Lissa smiled too. "Oh yeah. Besides wanting to be with Dimitri when you guys went to Russia…why did you go?"

"His younger sister was in a car accident and went into a coma, and he wanted to be sure she was fine so he went on leave for a week," I explained.

"Oh my God! Is she alright?" she asked, concerned.

"Yeah, she woke up from her coma when we were there," I assured Lissa. Then I made a face, knowing I'd have to tell her about Tasha.

"What's wrong?" Lissa asked, reading the expression on my face.

"And while we were there…Tasha dropped in for a visit."

Lissa raised her eyebrows. "Tasha? What on earth would she be doing in Russia while Dimitri was there?" She was smart, having figured out there was some connection between them.

I grimaced, but told her the whole story. I told her about how when Dimitri and Tasha were still in school, Tasha had fallen in love with Dimitri. He'd only liked her back, and they'd shared a kiss his graduation night. They'd never made plans to formally be a couple because of how Moroi-dhampir relationships weren't encouraged.

Then came another hard part…telling Lissa about how Tasha had used compulsion on me and Dimitri. As I told her, the awful memories replayed through my head. Tasha is just fucked up and disgusting, I thought.

"EW!" Lissa yelled when I told her about Tasha trying to compel Dimitri into wanting her and forgetting about me. "That is just sick and twisted. Why the hell would she be that desperate?"

"She wanted Dimitri to love her back, at any cost," I said bitterly.

"I would never have pictured Tasha doing that in a million years," Lissa said, shaking her head in disbelief. "Using compulsion…"

"I still got the feeling her compulsion was nowhere as strong as yours," I said, "but damn, it was pretty strong. Especially considering how she doesn't even control spirit."

"Maybe she's been learning dark magic in order to become so strong in compulsion," Lissa said darkly.

I laughed at that. "That's hilarious, Liss. We both know there's no such thing as dark magic."

Lissa shrugged, and looked over at me. "Oh yeah. How did you get to Russia? Plane tickets aren't cheap."

I sighed, and twisted my hands together. "Well…Adrian got me the tickets to get to Russia and come back home."

Lissa's mouth became very round. "Adrian? I thought he'd want to prevent you from going to Russia at all costs!"

"I thought the same thing too," I said. "But…anyway, he overheard Dimitri talking to Alberta, and then he decided that he wanted to help me out. He said he knew I'd be really miserable without Dimitri and that's why he wanted to do it."

Lissa let out a low whistle and leaned back in her chair. "Wow. That's something I never would've expected of Adrian. Especially if you consider his partying, playboy ways…"

And how his playboy ways lead him to sleeping around with probably half of the female population, I added in my head. It was a mean thing to say, but there was no denying the fact that Adrian was absolutely notorious for sleeping around, and wasn't exactly known for always remaining faithful. I was surprised that so far, when we woke him up, we hadn't found any girls that had been sleeping in his room.

"Well, still, that was nice of him," I said aloud. I didn't really want to tell Lissa about the whole Adrian-basically-confessed-his-feelings dream. It was something I wanted to keep to myself a little longer.

Lissa stretched, and looked over at the clock. Six in the "morning" – classes would start in half an hour. "Should we get some breakfast?"

"Yeah, let's go," I said. We got up and started down the stairs.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you…he gave me a promise ring," I whispered to Lissa after we'd exited the dorm. The sun was still above the horizon, and it still felt pretty warm.

Lissa looked downright excited and nearly stopped in her tracks. "That's so cute! Can I see it? And does he have one of his own?"

"After school, and yeah, his ring matches mine," I told her, nudging her to get her to move towards the cafeteria. "If we don't hurry up and get breakfast, all the food's going to be gone!"

Haha this chapter was kind of short...Hopefully the next one will be longer. Now I have more writer's block, and I'm not 100% sure where to go with the story from here...