A month outside the gates (a VA fanfic)ON HOLD

Chapter 75

Janine'sPOV

"Mom, Dad," Rose started nervously when we joined her, Dimitri, and our grandchildren for breakfast.

"Just spit it out Little Girl," sighed Abe while eyeing Dimitri so intensely I could almost see the holes Abe wanted to gouge out of him.

Dimitri was feeding Savannah with the usual ease and willingness which seemed to accompany any task required and requested of the very young child. So unlike Rose at that age. Meanwhile, Rose was trying to get Jeremy to eat. Emphasis on TRYING, because he was well and truly protesting eating anything. He wouldn't even take a bottle of formula and he'd been weened from her breastfeeding five months ago so he was well adjusted to said formula.

"Jeremy Mazur-Belikov, stop being a little ratbag and eat something!" Rose sighed and looked pleadingly at Dimitri.

They switched babies, testing if Jeremy was in an anti-Mom mood today. Apparently he was, because he started to eat everything Dimitri encouraged him to.

"You have Daddy's Touch today, Comrade."

Savannah was in a Momma mood today, clearly, because she giggled and smiled more with Rose than she had with Dimitri.

"You were trying to say..." I prompted. I'll admit, I was jealous of how successfully Rose and Dimitri had created a proper family life for the twins. I was beginning to see how Rose had grown to resent me, given how happy she was right now.

"Would you rather Jasmine Mazur-Belikova or Bernard Mazur-Belikov, or both?" asked Dimitri, still multi-tasking with Jeremy.

"Jasmine of cours..." Abe trailed off as the real meaning behind the question hit us. "Belikov," he growled dangerously, pointedly.

"Even two levels of protection can be fallible," Rose cut her father's protest off. Then she turned to face me fully, analysing my reaction. "Mom? Do you want another granddaughter or another grandson?"

"Either, Rose. Just not both again." I honestly didn't know what to feel or think. I'd barely adjusted to having twin grandchildren, I wasn't ready for the curveball of Rose having three under three before she was twenty-one. At least three under three, possibly four under three.

Rose laughed and smiled before shaking her head. "We've already had that checked out. It's only one baby this time, though we will be trying for the opposite gender later down the track."

"You said that about this one when you were tossing around the twins' names. This isn't later down the track," reminded a still-pissed-off Abe.

"As I said, Gramps, even double fencing doesn't always work."

Abe's cheeks flared red at Rose's nickname for him. He wasn't that old—she'd made him sound twice his age. At least.

We were too young to be grandparents; they were too young to be parents. But they'd made it happen, and now they were making it happen again. How had Olena coped being made a grandmother twelve years ago? I still couldn't wrap my head around barely being forty and having two one-year-old grandchildren, two grandchildren period, now I'm expected to adjust to a third being on the way. I just couldn't see it happening. I couldn't reconcile the image of the baby I'd held in my arms after hours of agonising labor with the wild and insubordinate then lethal and traumatised teenager I'd dealt with only a small collection of months ago with the young mother and influential though controversial Princess whose presence I had just left. I didn't understand how much one little, essentially human, person could evolve so dramatically in her short lifespan.

RPOV

By the time Dimitri and I learned we were expecting a second son, St Stephen's had been successfully merged with Rothwell's... and the program was being expanded overseas. Dimitri's old Academy was going to be welcoming the students and staff from two significantly smaller, barely financially and logically viable, Academies. From what Olena and Vika had told me and the paperwork I was currently urgently processing, almost all of Baia's dhampir community was returning to guard the expanded St Basil's. As were the dhampir constituents of five other communes closely connected to the merging schools. Nearly 220 of the 302 guardians of the expanded St Basil's were reassigned to charges in the field or returned to the old campuses with their new assignment. The only downside of so much activity, was that Strigoi were on the prowl again.

Bernard was born just mere hours before Holly told me about the ghost of her fallen ex-classmate pointing to the back of campus. The same area breached when I was a Senior. The exact same area.

"Go to Alberta, Hol, and tell her Groza. Tell her cave-fire and tell her Groza. She'll understand. Now, RUN." The Academy had to be in lockdown while the caves were scouted and cleared.

We'd done a rescue without higher clearance before, now I was telling them to go purely on the offensive. They normally needed permission from both Guardian Council and Moroi Council. But, given I was on campus, I was both the Queen's personal representative and in possession of higher authority than the entire Guardian Council. They had enough permission as they needed... and more. The delightful young Moroi royal Trevor Conta came to my now very squishy Guest Housing suite to meet Bernard. Narrowly escaping the lockdown whilst walking in my door. I had been swiftly released from the clinic but I was far from physically well enough to be of use... and I despised it. After the young Moroi magic mentor finally stopped admiring my new son, he immediately walked up to me and before I could anticipate his course of action, I felt the hot and cold tingles of healing Spirit magic. His serene smile halted my arguments before I was able to think them.

It was a startling moment of clarity when, as I instructed my body to go join the swarm of guardians doing their duty to protect the Moroi, my body and conscience refused. You just delivered your third child—you cannot leave your children royal orphans like Lissa was! Your place is right here, with them, protecting them if the danger comes close!

No, it was out there, with my colleagues, protecting them and all the Moroi on campus before the danger came too close. If I don't go, I am a bad guardian and a hypocritical leader.... If I do go, it not only made me a bad mother abandoning my own flesh and blood, I would be committing the worst offence a sitting Council member can make short of planning to abuse and manipulate a fellow Council member for personal gain. I just HAD to go... but my body refused to move. My body was determined to overrule my brain, and I knew that whatever I did or said, I'd face some of the worst backlash imaginable. Dimitri returned from Alberta's office with Holly in tow, and they went immediately to the sleeping twins and scooped them out of their beds, blankets and all, and Trevor grabbed Bernard before telling me they would protect the babies and to go help lead my colleagues through a successful mission and return home safely, myself included.

And so, though still heavily conflicted, I engaged my guardian brain—switching off my Princess and politician brain—to do my duty which I had been born, trained, and sworn to. Possibly making a grave mistake.