True to his word, when we'd got a positive pregnancy test the following May, Dimitri had been over the moon. And he'd held me, and we'd cried together when only a week later I started bleeding. We'd been so busy in Baia the following month it wasn't until my breasts started aching that I dared test again. Nine months later Olena came over to America again - this time for the birth of Anya Dimitrievna Belikov. As anticipated, our gorgeous little girl wrapped her Papa around her finger right from the aft; as did Lydia Dimitrievna Belikov who surprised us when she arrived a mere eleven and a half months after her sister!
With three under three, Dimitri and I made the decision we were done. He talked about extending the cottage so Lydia could have her own room, but the girls were inseparable, so we never bothered.
It was at the Christmas before Lydia turned one that I came up with the idea that changed our lives. Dimitri and I were mucking around and sparring for the amusement of the adults and kids when someone commented that I was back in shape already. I'd laughed and said anyone would be back in shape and fit to work as a Guardian if they had access to training and support like I did.
A couple of hours later, and the idea was born. I wanted to start a program for Dhampir mothers to finish their training or retrain to rejoin the workforce. Celeste, Janine, Alberta and I sat at the kitchen table with a large piece of paper discussing what was needed, Abe, Art and Dimitri making the occasional suggestion. Lissa and Christian weren't with us that year – they'd married and were away on their honeymoon. Lissa was being groomed to become queen, so they'd wanted to marry before it had to be a royal wedding.
They only got back a week before our wedding. I'd finally said yes to becoming Mrs. Belikov, and we wed in a garden ceremony at the property. We'd done a midsummer's night dream theme, with the vows in a shaded bower at the setting of the sun, followed by dancing in a clearing amongst the trees with Russian folk music. The scene was magical with fairy lights wound around the trees, round after round of delicious food, and at the end of the evening fireworks. While we'd intentionally kept it small, by the time all our nearest and dearest were included, it was still quite a bash! Lissa had pitched a fit when I'd described how I wanted our wedding, but in the end, she admitted it was the most romantic wedding she'd ever attended.
I'd used my trust fund to finance the first round of my idea for Dhampir mothers. Run out of St. Vladimir's; it was a two-month intensive held over the summer months. Alberta had put the word out through the head Guardians at the other educational institutions. We'd hoped to get enough interested parties to run a trial group of ten. We'd ended up with over a hundred applicants.
We learned a lot from the first round, but at the end of nine weeks, we had seven qualified female Guardian mothers ready and able to take up positions. While the royal Moroi had largely proven resistant to accepting a Guardian who was a parent, plenty of non-royal Moroi families felt a live-in Guardian with a plus-one was better than no Guardian at all. Another two graduates were helped to re-enrol in their Novice studies, their children now being old enough to attend an Academy, and the one who didn't have what it took to be a Guardiann was helped to find suitable employment. So all in all, the project was considered a success.
The second round was more focussed. This time we took fifteen women, all former Guardians or Novices, and our results were even better. We found it helped to have female Guardians, and in particular mothers teaching, and I was stunned by the number of women Guardians who discreetly let us know they were interested in helping. There were a lot more Guardians who were mothers than I'd appreciated. Celeste was the first to volunteer. After that first Christmas at our place, Art had taken a second week of leave and driven to Virginia with Celeste to be introduced to her family. It was a whirlwind romance, but it had stood the test of time. Fifteen years on, and they were still going strong. Stella now knew the truth about her parentage and couldn't be prouder of her sister-mom.
Celeste had never needed to wreak her revenge on her ex. Patrick Moriarty, an alleged upstanding member of the Moroi community, had been severely beaten and left for dead by persons unknown when leaving a brothel at Court. His legs had been broken in so many places that once recovered he permanently needed the help of a cane to walk. At thirty-two, it was a blow to the keen amateur sportsman. And if rumor were to believed, his legs weren't the only parts of his lower anatomy to be permanently incapacitated. While his wife stayed with him for the sake of their children, the word was any trust or love between them ended with the public scandal of his infidelity. Art and Abe both denied any involvement, but I knew it was one of them. My money was on Abe; it happened only a few months after Celeste had shared her story with Janine and Abe and volunteered to help with my program.
The biggest surprise was when Janine volunteered. At forty-five she'd decided it was time to move into a less active Guardian role. We were now getting applications from all over the world; there was more than enough demand to expand the program. So we went to Queen Tatiana and asked for money and resources to make it happen. I would have gone in there and demanded Tatiana cough up, but Lissa had been invaluable, helping put together valid arguments backed up with quantifiable proof that the program worked, that there was a need, that it didn't encourage teenage pregnancy or promiscuity and it meant more Moroi families were protected.
At Lissa's insistence, we'd asked for much more than we thought we'd need; an entire family-friendly accommodation block on campus at St. Vlad's, a second gym, a crèche, money to employ a couple of senior Guardians to oversee a year-round program – specifically Art Schoenberg and Janine Hathaway – and finally funding for Dimitri and I to open a second trial program, this time at St. Basil's. And we'd got it! That's how with a two, a three and a nearly five-year-old we'd made the move to Russia for two years.
We'd lived at St. Basil's, but had transited to Baia every weekend. It had been hard work and at times scary; three times we'd been attacked on the road by Strigoi, but each time we'd lived to tell the tale. The kids adored their weekends with their aunts, cousins, Babushka and Prababushka, but especially the two summers we'd stayed in Baia and the visit to Turkey on the way back home. The kids became fluent in Russian, and even I became pretty good at it. Seeing Dimitri at home had been wonderful – and we made the commitment to go back regularly and also to send each of the kids for an exchange year to St. Basil's as part of their education.
The kids were six, seven and eight and a half when we had our first loss. We were back in Pennsylvania when we got the call. Mason. He'd been off-duty and in the wrong place at the wrong time. It had hit us all hard, but especially Christian. Over the years he and Mase had become close. Lissa had not long been Queen and was expecting her first child. All she and Christian had wanted to do was hide from the world and mourn the guy who'd become a part of their family, but they couldn't. She'd been so distressed they'd escape Court and come to the property most weekends, staying as a guest in Abe's house as together we grieved.
It had been a special time for Lissa and I. As a new Queen there were few people she felt she could trust, and none who were mothers. While I'd first been pregnant some nine years before, I knew Lissa better than anyone ever would, and we grew closer as she also became a mother. For probably the first time since I'd fallen pregnant with Ivan, it felt like we were truly sisters again.
Before we knew it, Ivan was heading to St. Vlad's. We'd made the decision to send him from Junior High as it was the major intake year for those who didn't do elementary on campus. I was nervous as hell, even though Alberta, Janine, Celeste, and Art all lived on campus and Dimitri, the girls and I visited for a total of six months that year. I did my best to stay on the other side of campus. I gave our son his space, and only insisted on a visit once a week for Sunday lunch. But I'm not too proud to admit I might have had almost every Guardian on campus reporting back to me about how our firstborn was going.
When it was time to send Anya, she refused to go without Lydia. Academically she'd always been the weakest of our kids, so we repeated her a year and sent the girls together. It made sense. While they weren't twins, they might as well have been, and the more outgoing Lydia helped her older sister. If I'd been worried about sending Ivan, I was petrified about sending my baby girls – so we'd moved to campus that year, teaching in the now booming program while Art and Celeste had spent the year at St. Basil's further expanding that program.
Which brought us back to the here and now. Sitting in the courtyard at Abe's house in Turkey, we'd stopped in for a quick visit on our way back to America. With the kids all settled at St. Vlad's, we'd gone to Russia for three months. Ostensibly to check the program at St. Basil's, it was really to see Yeva. She was getting on, and Dimitri and I both worried she wouldn't be with us much longer. Time seemed like it was on fast-forward, and I knew before we turned around twice Ivan would be graduating, the girls not far behind him.
The program at St. Basil's was going well, and there was talk of opening a third at St Christopher's. Janine had said she'd go to set it up. She was leaving in January, so we were coming home to host Dimitri's fortieth then a big family Christmas.
With Lissa's three kids and my own, plus the many others who'd grown to become our nearest and dearest, we'd outgrown the cottage for Christmases some time ago, so now we held it in Abe's main residence on the property. It seemed to get bigger every year, but Abe, Dimitri and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"What are you thinking, Comrade?" I asked. My Russian God still had his eyes closed, sitting in the sun.
"I was thinking of the first time I told you I loved you that morning before Alberta told me about my reallocation."
"When you slipped up and said you loved me you mean?!" I teased with a smile.
"It wasn't a slip-up. I wanted you to know, so I said it on purpose, I was just too nervous to say it more directly," he confessed.
"Why were you nervous? Surely you knew I felt the same way?"
"I hoped… But when you said you did, I knew that I wanted to be with you forever."
Sixteen years and the man still managed to surprise me. I was the luckiest woman in the world!
ooOOoo The End ooOOoo
Into the Ether - VA Fanfiction
Swimming the Same Deep Waters
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