Alpha Dhampir~ On Hold

Chapter 23

Ivan Zeklos

I knew Rose was nervous as fuck. Today was the day, Natasha Ozera was finally going to answer for her crimes; too many if you ask me. But I guess there was a silver lining to all of her horrible misdeeds and inexcusable actions, there was no way on this earth that the Court wasn't going to find the Suka guilty. I do not know what she had to be nervous about, everyone would love her the moment they got to see the real her, not the one that had been centred around many a horrible rumour, ones that were sadly created by a member of my family.

I had joined Rose for breakfast after waking up in a still sleeping Dmitri's arms. Smiling I thought back on our reunion. It definitely was one out a romance novel, hell it was worse than Broken Back Mountain; but then again, Dmitri was definitely hotter than both of those men, no questions asked. Leaving moy lyubovnik alone in bed probably wasn't the best thing to do, but I had promised to be there bright and early for Rose, and yes while Dmitri and I had gone through a lot and were deeply in love with one another, Rose had been the one to revert me back. Now of course I wasn't worshipping the ground she walked on unlike Dmitri with that Dragomir Princess, but during the two years Rose had been away from Court, the two of us had gotten close, we had bonded in ways Dmitri, and I would never.

She had revealed to me all of her fears, all of her thoughts and feelings on everything that had happened to her. I felt so sorry for her, she couldn't remember anything to do with her life prior to being 'dumped' at the Academy by her mother, a mother that hadn't been bothered to come and see her before she ran away to protect the Princess. That was another thing, everyone saw her as an irresponsible, and ill-mannered child, but she wasn't. In her life, she had done what was thought to be impossible. As a novice, an ungraduated guardian, Rose had managed to kill twenty Strigoi. No novice had managed to kill a Strigoi before graduation, and here she was, the apparently unwanted and useless child of Guardian Janine Hathaway, accomplishing the impossible.

To have lived bullied and shunned by her peers for being better, and to be thought as unwanted, that was no life at all. I couldn't imagine her shock when she found out the truth. Yes, I may have been there with her, but having never been in a situation like that, I couldn't even begin to picture the sense of betrayal she would have felt. She broke down to me one night, curled up on the end of the bed while we were in Egypt.

"I was never wanted, not by my mother or my father. That was what I was told. I was always blamed for everything that others did because I was the unrespectful Dhampir."

She had cried and hid her face against my chest. Moira and Lucas were with us, and I could see what Rose was saying was affecting the both of them. After being restored, the three of us never let Rose out of our sights. You may call that possessive, but in reality, we cared for her and were petrified of anything happening to her.

"Finally, I found a family; Eddie, Mason and Lissa only for Christian to join us after we returned to the Academy. Just as I was settling into the flow of things, being back with people who cared about me, or at least seemed to, with the temptation of Dmitri clouding my mind- we lost Mason, we lost part of our family because I was too weak to save him. I was a failure and what hurt the most was that I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Even though she tried to hide it, I knew Lissa felt that way. She forgot that I could feel what she felt, see and hear what she does, and she admitted to Christian one evening, only for him to rip her a new one, defending me."

I remember feeling so angry at the woman they crowned as Princess. How could she ever feel as Rose hadn't tried her best. Her tears had soaked my shirt, not that I cared, with how hard she cried, how far she lost herself into depression. It took me and the Ozeras months to pull her from the brink of suicide. Yes, that's right, Rose had tried to kill herself a few times, but luckily one of us had been there in time to stop her. Some of them had been close, shaving the deadline, so to speak.