Starting with a little flashback.

Enjoy!

*Flashback*

I groaned over my textbook again, none of it made any sense to me as I stared at the numbers. I was on the edge of giving up and throwing the book out of my window.

My door was thrown open, and I heard one of my parents storm in; it wasn't the first time my mom had forced her way in to yell at me about something. When I turned, I was surprised it was my dad—he looked scared.

He didn't address me, instead, he grabbed one of my bags and started filling it with clothes from my closet.

"What are you doing?" I asked, panic slowly building. He was never like this, frantic and moving about like he was running out of time. "Dad?"

"Grab anything that you'll need for a couple of days," he ordered and dropped the bag on the bed. He marched into my bathroom and started grabbing more from there.

"What's wrong? Are we going somewhere?"

"You are."

His response made the panic bubble over. "What? Why? Where am I going? Dad, what the hell is going on!" Had I done something to piss him off? I could see my mom threatening to kick me out but not my dad.

I raced forward and tried to stop him. "Please, just tell me what's wrong. Did I do something? I know my report card was shit but I'm trying–"

My dad grabbed my shoulders, eyes pinched, but there was a look of guilt in them. "Rose, everything is alright." He maintained eye contact and his words eased the panic. His voice flowed around me, smooth like honey and I believed him. "You are going over to Lacy's tonight. You wanted to stay the night."

I started to nod. "I want to go to Lacy's tonight," I repeated.

"Everything is going to be fine. There's nothing to worry about."

The words fell from my mouth without thinking, "There's nothing to worry about…"

Abe nodded, a smile on his face, "Everything is normal."

"Everything is normal…"

He brushed my hair back behind my ear. "Good." The smile dropped from his face but his eyes never left mine, "If we don't come to get you by tomorrow morning, you have to get somewhere safe and stay hidden."

There was a part of me that wanted to ask what he was talking about, brows furrowed. There's nothing to worry about… repeated in my head and I forgot what I was worried about.

"You can't stay here," Abe ordered me. "Do you understand? You have to leave."

My head felt fuzzy, but I nodded, "I have to leave."

xXx

Present

"Rose! Are you listening?" Janine snapped with her hands on her hips, a look of exasperation on her face. I wanted to just pass out, bent over with my hands on my knees and trying to steady my breathing.

I had been right about her wanting to train me, though it felt more like she was torturing me. Nothing I'd done so far impressed her, each time she would turn and call Dimitri out for not teaching me something correctly and then make me redo it until I did it right. I could see it grating on his nerves as much as it was on mine.

She looked down at me, took a step forward and then changed her mind. "Do it again."

I groaned, "Are you serious? Can't I have a break for like five minutes?"

Janine raised her eyebrows, "A Strigoi won't give you a break when fighting. Do it again."

My jaw clenched and I hardened my glare at her. I straightened, trying to conceal my fatigue as I climbed back onto the obstacle course. It was my sixth time on it, the first five times weren't fast enough for Janine and I was wearing down. A crowd had formed as they watched me get ordered around.

People whispered about Janine like how they whispered about Dimitri—she was another god among the guardians. She felt like more of a devil to me.

I waited for her to call start before I began the course, a series of jumps and obstacles I had to clear. My arms burned from the monkey bars and from pulling myself over the ten-foot wall, and my legs felt like jelly from all the jumping and balancing. I also had to hit all the targets, a practice stake in hand that I need to hit the bull's eye with, all while not stopping.

My time was already fast compared to others, the first time I finished it in under three minutes, Dimitri was practically beaming. But according to my mother, I needed to shave a minute off. I was getting close by the third time, but not anymore.

Maybe if this was all I had done that afternoon I could reach her standard. Except Janine had put me through weights, sparring and weapon training. I was dead on my feet.

Janine held the stopwatch up, thumb poised. "Start!"

I pushed myself through the exhaustion, forcing my legs to move faster and my arms to swing me further. Each target I hit perfectly gained me a cheer from the crowd. I was nearing the end and might have actually reached the time she wanted, but I slipped. My foot missed the step and I tumbled down to the floor with a thump, I landed on my side and cursed.

"Rose!" Dimitri was instantly at my side and helped me to sit up. "Are you hurt?"

"I think it's just my pride," I moaned and rolled my shoulder tentatively, it would bruise, but that should be the worst of it. "I think I was close that time."

"If you had finished it, you might have been," Janine commented and I had to bite my tongue. "Take a break and ice your shoulder."

I didn't know what hurt more, the lack of concern in her voice, or that she didn't even try to check for injuries. I shook my head and climbed to my feet with the help of Dimitri. "Thanks," I bit out.

Dimitri led me to the storage room and I was grateful for the privacy. My pride was definitely bruised after that many people watched me go down. I gritted my teeth and kicked one of the mats against the wall.

"Sit down," he instructed me, pointing at the same chair I made him sit in last time. The memory made me smirk.

"Is it my turn to have you go down on me?" I teased, hissing through my teeth when I sat. Everything ached.

Dimitri didn't reply, face stoic as he applied the ice pack to my shoulder, whispering apologies when I winced. It was just the two of us in the room and Dimitri was more open with his affection, fingers brushing my hair from my face and trailing down to my neck and shoulder. "Does it hurt anywhere else?"

"No," I breathed and closed my eyes, enjoying the moment. "I'm exhausted. I think I'm going to need a full-body massage. If only there were someone who could take care of me."

"If only," he replied sarcastically. "You were getting faster, just need to watch your footing."

"Thanks," I scoffed. "You know, I never thought I would miss you training me. To think I thought you were a hardass."

"I'm sure she just wants to make sure you can defend yourself properly."

"Yeah," I drawled as I rolled my shoulder, "I can't be killed by some old guy if the training kills me first."

"Rose–"

"There you are." Dimitri was cut off by Abe's voice, he strolled in, looking very out of place in his three-piece suit. "I was hoping I could talk to you, kiz. It'll get you out of training for a while," Abe added with a wink.

It was like I was fifteen again and he was breaking me out of the house despite Janine grounding me.

Dimitri had shifted back from me as soon as Abe spoke. I wasn't upset that he put a distance between us, even I wasn't sure how my parents would react to us dating. I'd seen a lot of Moroi couples, and dhampir and Moroi couples, but there were very few dhampir couples.

It was like there was an unspoken rule that no one had gotten around to telling me.

I peered up at Dimitri and then looked at Abe, noting the hopeful look in his eyes. "I guess so," I finally answered, gingerly raising from the chair. Dimitri handed me the ice pack with a small smile.

"Take it easy. I'll be here if you need me." It didn't give too much away, but it was an offer to me to search him out afterwards. If this conversation went anything like yesterday, I would definitely be needing something to distract me.

Abe held an arm out to me, hand lightly resting on my back as he led us out of the gym and towards the elevators. "I see your mother is working you hard."

"Yeah, it's making me consider starting a union. Where are we going?" I asked as we entered the elevator and he pressed the floor of the apartment.

"I thought you could shower and change, and then we can get out of here for a while."

A laugh bubbled up, "You're breaking me out? I feel like that's going to piss off the warden."

Abe grinned, "That's only if she finds out."

There were still two hours of daylight so I didn't need to worry about Strigoi, but I still rested my hand on the stake I tucked in the pocket of my jacket. Of all places to choose from, Abe took me to a burger joint where we sat in the car and people on skates brought the food out.

He handed me a comically sized milkshake along with the stuffed burger, and fries balanced on the console between us. "I hope your appetite is still the same," he grinned.

My parents never complained about how much I ate, especially when Janine would eat just as much. It wasn't until I went to high school that I realised it wasn't normal for other girls my age. The lack of money when living on the streets made me eat less, though I was getting back up to the same appetite I used to have since I started training.

It was weirdly domestic getting fast food with Abe and it caused a stir of mixed feelings.

"So, what's with the jailbreak? Are you bribing me with food?"

A look crossed his face and his expression became wistful. "Is it working?"

I pursed my lips for a second, "Depends on what you are bribing me for."

We lapsed into silence, both eating. Abe's burger was much smaller than mine, something I had always noticed and now understood why.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" I asked. "If the Strigoi didn't find us, would you have told me?"

Abe considered my question, his fingers tapping on the cup in his hand. "We would have. I realise now that we should have been honest from the start, but fear makes you unreasonable. We both wanted you to have a normal life and not live in fear of what was out there, but instead, we just made you more vulnerable.

"We wanted to do more to help you once we found you, but…" He frowned. "When we lost you that night, so did the Strigoi. Once we knew where you were we tried everything to stop them from finding you." Abe folded up his half-eaten burger and tossed it out the window into the rubbish bin by the car. He turned in his seat to face me, "We tried to make it seem like you were overseas with us, and for a time, it worked. I just didn't realise how close we were to losing you."

I swallowed the last of my milkshake, cradling the cup between my hands and focusing on it rather than Abe. I hated that a lot of their reasoning made sense; I could understand why they did it, but that didn't make me agree with it.

"So is the food to bribe me to listen to you or do you think it's enough to make me forgive you?" There was no point beating around the bush, just like there was no point giving false hope, "I'm willing to listen to you, but I don't think I'm ever going to be able to forgive you. At least not yet."

"I assumed as much." Abe shifted in his seat again, "Your mother and I made a lot of mistakes, but we will do our best to make up for them," he promised me, hand clasping mine and squeezing before he let go.

His promise eased the pain. It was a start I guess.

"Okay," I nodded. "A good start would be telling me everything you know about this prophecy."

"Right," Abe started, he pointed at the glove box, "I thought this might come up. In there is my journal that has most of what we know in it."

I opened the compartment and took out the leather-bound journal, it was newer than the others but equally worn. Flicking through the pages, almost all of them had been written on. "This is a lot of information."

"It's a combination of research on the Ancients, and the prophecy, and about the Strigoi leading it all."

My eyes flicked to his. "Strigoi leading it? Isn't it all the Ancient?"

"They are still sleeping. From what we found, the Ancient wasn't killed but was just put into a dormant state and only a certain kind of blood can break them from that state. They have followers, Strigoi that have guarded their body for hundreds of years. Isaiah is the one running it all and the one sending the Strigoi to find you."

I had to take a breath and absorb all the information. There was always more.

I tapped my fingers on the pages of the journal, chewing on my lip. "What I don't get is that if the Strigoi want me, why did they try to kill me a couple of times?" Each time the Strigoi got close, they would mention my smell and then go in for the kill. Didn't sound practical if they needed me.

"Because the Strigoi are drawn to your scent. They didn't know of the prophecy, very few people do." Abe pointed out, brows furrowed, "I suspect that Isaiah didn't know you were here until recently, and now they do, the Strigoi working under him know to take you in alive."

I nodded, more in acknowledgement than anything else. I'm sure I would spend the whole night awake thinking over every part of this conversation. "Do you know why?"

Abe hummed, tilting his head at me in question.

I elaborated, "Why me? What makes me so special?"

"That I'm not sure about, but we have a theory."

"And that is?"

"I think it would be best if your mother told you that," he dodged the question, and then started the car when I started to protest. Abe glanced at me and gave me an encouraging smile, "She may come off as uncaring, but she loves you, Rose. You need to talk to her."

I read through the journal; curled up against the arm of the couch while Lissa watched some sad movie. When I first sat down with it she asked what I was reading.

"Something that will give me all the answers I need," I replied hopefully.

It was a lot of the same stuff I read in their other books, but this one had all the important bits compiled. There was more information on Ancients and the destruction they caused, nearly wiping out the Moroi and dhampir once before. It was because of them that we chose to live in compounds like this, easier to defend from the Strigoi while our numbers were replenished, and then it became a way of life.

Strigoi lost their ability to use magic once they were turned, but the Ancients didn't; it was part of why they were so dangerous. Moroi were guided by morals when using their magic, and the Ancients weren't.

Some pages were about the movement of Strigoi, Abe noting that there wasn't any activity around where we lived until I was sixteen and had convinced my parents to let me go to high school. Before that, they had home-schooled me, but I wanted the chance to make friends and begged them until they caved.

I paused when I reached the prophecy.

A sliver of fear went down my spine and made me shiver.

Part of me didn't want to read it—the foretold gibberish that said I was going to die.

Abe's handwriting covered the page, words written clearly but shaky unlike the rest of his writing that flowed together smoothly. I hesitated to read it, well aware that what was there would be no different than what Yeva had told me.

I didn't want to have it confirmed.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and wished Dimitri was here, but he was patrolling again. Lissa had gone to bed after her movie and now I was alone in the lounge room.

I was alone.

With a shaky breath, I made myself read it.

Under the Hunter's eye, the seals will break.

She will be drawn to the Ancient. Her blood will be spilt, and he will rise.

One will live or both shall die.

It didn't make me feel better.

Dread settled in my stomach like a stone, trying to pull me down into that dark place I had already clawed my way out of once before.

It felt like a waste. After everything I had survived, I had an expiration on my life that seemed impossible to get away from. I couldn't hide—they had already found me before, and they would do it again.

Sitting in the dark, I truly felt alone. I was stuck, and I didn't know how to get out.

I didn't want this.

Sorry for all of the exposition in the last couple of chapters, I really hope I managed to answer a lot of the questions while still keeping it interesting :)

Next chapter we will have some more Romitri moments and a little smut :D