AN: Hello my loves! As usual, I am a slow updater. I'm so sorry for keeping you all waiting, but here is the next chapter! I'm about to go into a really crazy time at work so I wanted to make sure I got this up before then. Please let me know what you think! All the reviews from last chapter made me so happy. You all are all so kind!

After I got out of the shower, I heard a knocking at my door. My heart skipped a beat thinking it was Dimitri, but was just as pleased to find Lissa at the door carrying multiple large boxes.

"Liss!" I wrapped her up in a hug. "No Christian today?"

"It's been too long since we've had girls time alone with the field experience going on. I hoped we could get ready together!" She immediately started unpacking her boxes, laying out hair tools, make up, shoes, and dresses for us.

Lissa gestured to my desk chair. "Come on, Rose. Sit down and let me do your hair! We haven't been able to do this since Portland. Your hair is so gorgeous, I miss styling it before we went to parties."

I sighed as Lissa turned on the blow dryer, thinking of simpler times when Lissa and I could go to parties and flirt with boys without a care in the world, blending in to the crowds of humans.

I hadn't thought of Dimitri's request for me to visit his family with him after graduation when we argued in the geography classroom about Adrian at lunch so many weeks ago. There had been so much going on, but now I realized I needed to tell Lissa if we were still planning on going.

"Lissa… Lissa… LISS!" I shouted over the noise of the blowdryer. She finally shut the blowdryer off and laughed.

"Sorry. I'm finished anyways, what's up?" She looked at me expectantly as she brushed my hair out.

"I wanted to ask you about after graduation, when we get to court."

Lissa grinned broadly. "I've been thinking I would make sure we got apartments next to each other. At least for the summer, then after that, I'm hoping I get arrangements made for us to go to Lehigh still. Unless you'd like to share? I had thought about living with Christian, but we have all of our lives for that."

"Living next to you all is fine, Liss," I laughed.

She gasped. "Oh did you want to live with Dimitri? I bet I could convince enough people to look the other way at you moving in with your teacher." She winked at me.

"I think we best not do that right way." I snickered at the scandal it would have caused. "Actually, I was wondering if when I'm assigned to you, I could have some time off to travel with Dimitri to Russia… to meet his family."

Lissa squealed. "Oh my gosh, that's so exciting. Of course, Rose. You know you never have to ask. But how will we explain that one?" She winked conspiratorially at me.

"No one has to know that we are together, we could have time off to each do different things," I said with a smirk.

As it turned out, Lissa brought a few dresses for me that she ordered in my size so we had a great time modeling dresses for each other before finally heading off to meet everyone else at the party.

Even though Eddie's family couldn't make it to the trials, this was his celebration as much as it was mine so I grabbed him into a huge hug the moment we walked through the doors. We wouldn't get our official scores until graduation on Saturday, but Dimitri assured us that we had nothing to worry about so we weren't THAT concerned about celebrating early. Also, since Tasha would be arriving tomorrow, the day before graduation, this was my last night to really celebrate before real life kicked me in the face again.

After releasing Eddie, I spied Dimitri deep in conversation with my mom's mysterious friend. He had switched out his usual attire for a dark blue button down and khaki slacks and he looked delicious. Making a note to interrogate him about his connection to the foreign moroi and also to drag him into a closet and kiss him senseless later, I was swept up by my mom.

My mom gave me a brief hug which shocked me and handed me a small wrapped gift.

"Rose," my mom looked nervous which in turn made me nervous. "I know we haven't always had the best relationship and I hope we can keep working on it. Being a mother comes so easy to some people, but it didn't for me. I didn't know how to be what you needed and was so scared I was going to do something wrong with you when you were a kid. I let that fear keep me from being any kind of mother at all and I regret that deeply. I think back to how angry I was with you when you ran away with the Princess, but I was more angry with myself. If I had been there for you, maybe you could have reached out to me for help instead of feeling like you had to leave the academy. Your work since returning has made me so proud, Rose."

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I'd waited so long to hear something like this from my mom. I knew it wasn't going to erase the decade of hurt and abandonment I had felt, but Deborah always told me that I couldn't change the past and that I could only open myself up to good things that came to me now. This was definitely a good thing. I also felt like I understood my mom more since my miscarriage last week. She had only been 2 years older than me when she got pregnant, still way too young. When I thought about how my life would have had to change and how scared I was to possibly have a child now, I could understand what my mom went through at that age.

I pulled her into another hug and refused to let go even though I felt her stiffened in surprise.

"Thank you," I whispered and pulled away before I got even more emotional. "So who's your friend?" I raised my eyebrows at her and nodded toward Ibrahim and Dimitri still in tense conversation.

She smiled tenderly and my eyebrows climbed even further into my hair. "Ibrahim is a good friend from when I was younger. It's long overdue that you met him."

"How long have you known him for it to be overdue?"

"About 20 years. I met him when my moroi was traveling through Russia, which is where Abe works," She paused, taking a deep breath. "But he's originally from Turkey."

I froze at the word Turkey. The only thing I knew about my father was that he was Turkish. My mom hinted that, at one point, she had cared deeply for him when she gave me my nazar. It couldn't be… surely he wouldn't have shown up out of the blue at my graduation, would he?

"He's from Turkey? Like my dad?" I could barely get the words out.

"Exactly like your dad," she confirmed. I stared blankly at her.

"Holy shit… I mean are you serious? Why is he here now? Where has he been?" My mind was racing a million miles an hour.

My mom placed a hand on my arm to calm me down. "We will have time to discuss it all in detail this weekend, Rose. To make a long story short, he always wanted to be involved with your life, but has a lot of enemies and didn't want any of them to try to get to him through you. I've been keeping him updated on you over the years until we deemed it safe enough for everyone to know. Clearly you can take care of yourself now and Abe practically demanded I let him meet you."

"Enemies? What is he, like a mob boss or something?" I said it mainly as a joke, but when my mom just shrugged I burst out laughing. "Of course he is. I don't believe this."

As the party wore on, I couldn't believe I was actually done with school! Dimitri and I were so close to being safe. We would still lay low for a bit after we left campus, but we couldn't technically get in trouble any more and that was such a relief. My last worry was getting assigned to Lissa. Despite the bond, there was still a chance the guardian council would assign someone else to her. I wouldn't put it past her to compel the whole council though. Then we needed Dimitri to be assigned to Christian and our lives would be perfect.

I was deep in conversation with Adrian who was half heartedly trying to convince me to come be his guardian for about the seventeenth time when Christian came and dragged us out onto the patio to make sure we were prepared for tomorrow. It was going to be hard for me, but I didn't have an active role stopping Tasha. Christian was going to do most of the hard work.

"As soon as I can, I'll get Tasha's phone off of her and delete any messages and pictures she might have stored on it and just in case she has pictures stored elsewhere I'll make it very clear before she leaves than if she hurts my friends, she loses her family." Christian's eyes were fierce and angry.

"Lissa and I will be on stand-by for some strong compulsion just in case she is still being unreasonable," Adrian chimed in.

"And I do nothing," I muttered. It was hard for me to sit back when someone I loved was in danger. Usually it was Lissa, but this time it was Dimitri.

Lissa put her hand on my arm. "Rose, for once let us take care of you." She smiled kindly at me and I managed a smile back despite the fact that I didn't have a lot of confidence in this plan going smoothly. After all, we were just a group of teenagers. "Thanks, Liss."

As the rest of the group wandered back inside to rejoin the party, I stayed on the deck to have a moment to myself. As I leaned over the railing, looking up at the night sky, I wished I smoked in that moment. I would have felt much cooler standing out here by myself if I had a cigarette in my hand. As fate would have it, I wasn't alone for much longer.

Abe… my dad.. stepped around the corner and came to join me. God that felt weird to think.

"How long have you been out here, old man?"

He had a glass of what appeared to be whiskey in his hand and sipped it as he surveyed me. "Long enough. She told you then?" He asked.

I snorted. "Yeah, she casually slipped it in between congratulating me for graduating and reminiscing about my childhood. Talk about timing."

"I hope you aren't angry with her. I asked her to keep it from you, Rose."

"She told me… not that I really understand why." I eyed him skeptically, but his face gave nothing away. He gave Dimitri a run for his money.

"We'll get into that eventually, but what I'm more interested in at the moment is why you and your friends were talking about stealing Natasha Ozera's phone and compelling her?"

AN: Is Abe going to rat them out?! What do you all think? Please leave me a review!