Charlotte

Chapter 11

"Everyone's talking about us," Lissa deadpans as she walks outside the feeder room. 

"I know. Ignore them," Rose stated. "You were smart not hanging out with them anymore." 

I'd noticed the stares this morning too. I'd had to skip morning practice yet again to spend it in Kirova's office trying to convince her not to kick me out. Dimitri had gotten an ass chewing too, for waiting until the morning to report the incident. He'd tried to apologize to me, but I had understood. Too many people saw me deck the bitch. In the end, Kirova had stated that she had more important matters to deal with than petty drama. Dimitri got a verbal reprimand, and I got detention. 

"I hate it!"  The emotion came on so strong, I didn't have the chance to try to throw up a mental block like I had been working on since I told Lissa and Christian about my weird psychic powers. Her aura flared, and the darkness overpowered the light, consuming it and leeching onto Rose. It caused a shooting pain through my head and tanked my own mood. Lissa saw me wince and shot me a curious and apologetic look. I almost felt bad that Rose had no idea what was going on with me, and that me, Lissa, and Christian had been trying to figure this out on our own, but Rose had enough to deal with and didn't need to worry about me, too. 

Classes were hell. Even the teachers had a hard time settling things down. There was constant outburst, and it didn't take me very long to figure out why. Some of them were congratulating me on finally being able to throw a decent punch and it felt kind of good to get some attention. Mia wasn't a royal...she was just some snobby blonde bitch who everyone pretended to like to her face, but really wanted to punch her themselves. But it wasn't all about me either. Somebody had let it slip that Rose had let Lissa feed on her when they were out in the human world. 

Later on, in practice, Rose was in a very bad mood. Neither of us asked questions. Dimitri just did his job and didn't make extra effort to get Rose to do hers, and I already knew why Rose was being the way she was. He set us up to practice sparring, and Rose waited for me to swing. I stepped forward and swung my first. Rose pushed it away with her forearm and kicked me away. I huffed out a forceful breath, but she didn't really hurt me. I tried again, this time with the other fist, and she caught it, twisting me around so that I landed on the floor. Rose went in for the 'kill', but I lifted my lower half and wrapped my longer legs around her, twisting my entire body so that I was on top of her. 

She hit my pressure point on my neck and kneed me off of her. My jaw locked up with the pain, but I recovered quickly, and we both jumped back on our feet. Rose swung, and I blocked, she swung from the other direction, and I dodged. I managed to kick my foot up while dodging her attack and nearly tripped her. She caught herself in the last moment and landed a punch to my back. I growled in frustration, releasing a barrage of fists. I hit her anywhere I could reach, and she shielded her head with her forearms. 

As expected, Rose ended up winning. Although she looked a little better than when practice started, she still said a quiet goodbye and left me and Dimitri. 

"You got sloppy there at the end," he comments. "You let your emotions cloud your judgment."

"What?" 

"The way you tire yourself out before doing any damage," he states as if it were obvious. "Think, what is something else you could have done to win that fight?" 

I paused, looking down to the floor in concentration. I replayed the fight in my mind. "Her side was exposed while her arms were up," I realized. I could have kicked her, or done something to cause her arms to drop, swept her legs, and landed on top again. I press my lips together in frustration.