Hope is a Four Letter Word - Complete

Chapter Eighteen

Dimitri looked at Rose, and all he could see was guilt and remorse on her face. She didn't have to tell him what this meant. His whole life as he knew it was over. But as he stared at the beautiful brunette who'd given him her heart, body, and soul he couldn't bring himself to regret it. Oh, he was sure he'd have time to repent in the future – but right now the only anger he felt was for a cruel society that treated Dhampir like slaves whose only value was to train, fight and eventually die in defense of Moroi. A society that had no place for two Dhampir who dared to fall in love.

"Don't panic, Roza," he said calmly, pushing down his own rising dismay. "First we need to get out of here. We need to get somewhere private before the change of classes."

Not knowing where else to take her, Dimitri walked back to the suite he shared with Adrian. He knew it would be one of the first places anyone would look, but they needed somewhere to regroup.

Adrian looked up in surprise when Dimitri let himself into the suite, Rose following close on his heels. One look at their faces told him disaster had struck.

"The video Tasha took is making its way around campus," Rose said in a wooden voice, responding to his unspoken question.

"How bad is it?" Adrian asked, immediately appreciating the enormity of the situation.

Rose reached into her bag, fishing out her phone. She had to scroll past half a dozen worried texts from Lissa, Christian, and Eddie before she got to the video that Lissa had forwarded. She pressed play; she, Dimitri and Adrian crowding together to look at the screen.

Rose was pressed up against the gym wall, her crop top wantonly lifted. Dimitri was mouthing one breast, his large hand covering the other, his thigh pressed against her core. He leaned in, and she snaked her arms around his neck as he lifted her higher up. She wrapped her legs around his hips before he pressed her back into the wall again, pushing his hips against hers while he kissed her neck. Rose's eyes were closed, but she was facing the camera, and there was no doubt that she was enjoying what he was doing to her.

Time and date stamped, the video was damning. In fact, the only things to celebrate were that Tasha didn't seem to have recorded the part where Rose had begged Dimitri to make love to her again and that Dimitri's head, hands, and back had obscured her breasts, so the entire high school population of St Vlad's hadn't seen her tits (even if they had witnessed Dimitri sucking them)!

"Fuck," Adrian said, walking over to the kitchen and pulling out a bottle of vodka from the freezer, pouring himself a generous serve before finding two glasses and doing likewise for Dimitri and Rose. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," Rose whispered. "This is too far gone to cover up."

"Can you say it was after he was my guardian?"

"No," Dimitri said soberly. "It's date stamped. I'll certainly be removed from my allocation. In fact, I expect I'll be charged."

"Charged?!" Adrian asked, his eyes bulging.

"Rose isn't yet eighteen, and I was technically in a position of responsibility over her at the time of that video. I could be charged with sexual assault. Even statutory rape of a minor."

"But you didn't rape me! It was consensual! I wanted what happened between us!" Rose wailed, suddenly appreciating this horror was even worse than she'd initially comprehended.

Dimitri had no words of comfort or hope to offer, so he did the only thing he could; take Rose in his arms and hold her.

Rose was standing within Dimitri's embrace when there was a knock at the door. Adrian looked at the two of them, holding his finger up to his lips and pointing to his own bedroom. Looking around quickly, he hid Rose and Dimitri's glasses of vodka in a cupboard and checked the two of them were out of sight before going to answer the door. It was Lissa and Christian.