With An Addition (VA Fanfic)

Repercussions Part 1

RPOV
It was incredibly difficult to leave Jenée with Lissa to analyse data about this second attack. One look at Dimitri while we walked into my mother's room told me all I needed to know. I wasn't the only one struggling to walk away from Jenée when she needed us most. Mom's room had been converted into a makeshift headquarters and numerous guardians were discussing strategy and collecting facts. My mother looked up and met my eyes when Dimitri and I entered, pausing her current conversation to start another one. With me. Well, me and Dimitri, but the stress of being thrown into and relied upon in a situation such as this one was just the same.
"Eight Moroi and five guardians are dead," Yuri said gravely but briskly.
"Three missing Moroi," added Mom. Dimitri handed me the clipboard that indicated this was a Drozdovs belated Christmas party in northern California. Two States away. By the time I was allowed out of here Moroi families would be fleeing. Royals especially. For many, two states was two countries too close.
I gulped. "The wards? Any sign of human involvement again?" I asked, my tone surprisingly akin to my mother's. Maybe I could stay more composed than I believed I could.
In a rare show of hesitation regarding anything guardian related Mom paused. She looked me dead in the eye and allowed me to see her fear for not only the lives of everyone in this lodge but also for Jenée's life and mine. "Yes. More broken wards."
I did my best not to let the fear in me show, or the anger. "And more Strigoi. There had to have been more Strigoi."
"More!" exclaimed one of the visiting guardians. "I still can't believe that first group of seven occurred. You expect me to believe they organized in a larger group still?"
"Yes," Mom and I snapped. "Rose, can you find the same patterns here that Petrov and I have?"

Mom handed me a clipboard that had a different range of facts to the one Dimitri had handed me. The focus on the kids. The message in blood. The mass grouping of strigoi going after a mass grouping of Moroi- royals, at that. The way they entered. All too similar. Dimitri and I had discussed how the guardians were postulating the possibility of another freak mass attack and how to respond. How We would respond with regards to protecting our baby girl. None of us had ever considered serial killings. It was too identical. And something about the kids being targeted was worrying me. There was a message. I didn't know what or why, but somehow they had gotten organized enough to be sending a message not just about the royals but the babies too. Only this message about the kids was being conveyed by the killings, not the words left in blood.

"Rose?" Dimitri prompted softly. "Is there similarities?"
I nodded silently, shocked. "Yes. Yes, and they've definitely upscaled it after being taken by surprise by our presence at the Badica's."
"Nine? Possibly ten?" asked Mom.
"At least," I agreed with a heavy heart. I never wanted Jen in this business. And I mean never. My eyes met Dimitri's. We wanted Jenée out of here.

We wanted to take Jenée and flee. But we couldn't. Not in the middle of this crisis. Maybe at the end of the year, when we were going to take Jen to Russia anyway. But for now, the only way we could truly protect her was by protecting those around her, by protecting the Moroi in this lodge and this part of the country.

We were as panicked as a number of the guardians around us, as panicked as my mother. I tried to emulate her control and composure, I tried to be the leader Dimitri believed I could be, the leader my mother was looking to to help her. I would be that leader, even if it killed me. For Jen, Dimitri, Mom, and Lissa, I would be that leader.

"First Badicas, now Drozdovs, they're going after royals," muttered another guardian I didn't recognise.
"They're going after Moroi," Dimitri returned in a voice that no one would dare argue with. It was flat, but it held immense power. "Royal. Non-royal. It doesn't matter."

I knew it hurt Dimitri to say those words, because I knew he too was seeing the threats again. I knew it hurt him to say it didn't matter what clas of Moroi they were going after because I knew he was sensing the deeper message, the unspoken threat to the children in those families. The threat to all the children. The threat that made our parental instincts regarding Jenée flare. Panic consumed me at the though of Jen being a targeted child and I searched the room with my eyes to find Dimitri's. He was standing beside me still.