Chapter 1

I was standing less than thirty feet away. I was tall enough that I could see in through the second story window. A faint light shone, and a girl with long, dark hair stood up. She was a dhampirs like me; obviously not the princess. She was undeniably beautiful, but the problem was, I've been sent here to bring her back to the academy. Rose Hathaway.

She leaned over the opposite bed, and I could just barely make out the words she was saying through the slight gap in the window. There was another girl in there, kicking and screaming.

"Liss. Liss, wake up." She whispered.

"Andre. Oh, god." The other girl moaned. She sat up and Rose hugged her. She had long blond hair. This girl was Moroi. This was the other girl I had been sent for. Princess Vasilisa Dragomir. The last in her line. The youngest princess alive.

Rose stroked here hair and whispered, "It's okay. Everything's okay."

"I had that dream."

"Yeah, I know." What does that mean? How could she have known what the Princess was dreaming? Unless… no. that hasn't happened in centuries. They couldn't have a bond. No, I decided. That was impossible.

They sat there for a while, in total silence. A cat came and sat on Vasilisa's lap after a few minutes, then jumped up into the open window.

"When did we last do a feeding?" I heard Rose whisper.

"You were busy. I didn't want to…" What? Was Rose feeding the Princess?

"Screw that," she said, leaning back and shaking her hair out of the way. "Come on. Let's do this."

"Rose…"

"Come on. It'll make you feel better."

The Princess moved in towards her, and then I watched as, without any more hesitation, she bit into the dhampir girl's neck. So that's how she was surviving. No one back at the academy could figure out how she was still alive, but her name was on the school's system in Portland, so she had to be. I mean, who else in the U.S. would have a name like Vasilisa Dragomir. And that Dragomir was one of the twelve royal families, it had to be her. It all made sense. And when she was done, she sat up as Rose lay down.

"You okay?" she asked. I could tell how much it hurt her to feed from her best friend, but she really didn't have another choice. The only other option was to compel people into forgetting that they'd just been bitten by a vampire. And there was never a certain chance that the compulsion would work. So this really did make sense.

"I…yeah. I just need to sleep it off. I'm fine." I heard Rose whisper.

Vasilisa watched her friend for a few moments more saying, "I'm going to go get you something to eat." She walked out of the door.

"You don't know what you're missing." Was she talking to me? Had she seen me? That was when I realised she was talking to the cat, who was still sitting on the window ledge.

The cat crouched and puffed out its fur. A reaction to me I supposed; cats don't like dhampirs. Rose sat up and then stood. She waited for a second before coming over, as if to check her balance. When she did walk over to the window, she looked right out and stared me straight in the eye. She jerked back in surprise and the cat moved away from her. I stepped back and went to tell the others where they were. The twelve best guardians from the school had come.

"They're staying in that house, just there." I informed the others as I pointed out the house.

"How do you know?" the guardians were all wondering the same thing, but only one of them spoke up. "Have you seen them?" he asked, obviously doubting me.

"Yes, actually, I have." Okay, they weren't expecting that. "Princess Dragomir is feeding from Rose Hathaway." I informed them. There were shocked murmurs coming from the others. They hadn't been expecting that either. This was shocking news. This is what blood whores did. They let Moroi drink from them during sex. Now, I doubted that these two girls were having sex, but they obviously had a very close relationship, for the Hathaway girl to let Vasilisa drink from her. She had to know what people would think if they found out.

We heard them running and decided to split up. They came running down the street, and I stepped in their way. Rose stared at me, and her eyes widened as she took in my appearance. As she realised that I was the one watching her earlier, her eyes narrowed. As the other guardians came and gathered around us, but keeping their distance, she took a step back, as if she were bracing herself against the Moroi girl...

...which I soon realised she was.

"Leave her alone. Don't touch her," she growled

I held up my hands to show that I meant no harm. I stepped forwards as I said, "I'm not going to—" and Rose leapt at me.

She didn't do a very good job, seeing as it's been about two years since she practised fighting; since she ran away from St. Vladimir's. As she threw herself at me, I acted on instinct and pushed her away. She went flying, and I just managed to catch her as she fell towards the concrete. As I caught her, her hair fell from her neck and the bite mark was clear. The two little wounds on her neck were still bleeding sluggish. She obviously didn't realise what I was staring at. Then she lifted a hand to her neck and looked at the blood on her fingers, apparently realising that she had just been bitten. She stood up and glared at me and shook her hair out around her shoulders to cover up the wound. Her hair was long, thick, and dark, and so completely covered the mark there.

I looked up and met her gaze. She was stubbornly holding my eyes, staring me down. Then Vasilisa grabbed her hand.

"Rose. Don't." she warned as the dhampir backed up again. Obviously to attempt to attack me. She seemed to slowly see reason and relaxed. Her body sagged in defeat.

I stepped forward again, knowing that she wasn't going to attack again. I turned my attention towards Vasilisa, who was watching me with a curious expression. I swept a bow and explained.

"My name is Dimitri Belikov. I've come to take you back to St. Vladimir's Academy, Princess." Rose glared at me and resigned; she followed after me. Vasilisa hesitates, but after looking around, and then meeting Roses and my gaze, she obliged, too.

I lead them to the SUV we'd brought with us, but we'd picked it up at the rental place at the airport, and we'd managed to get a design exactly the same as the ones at the Academy—two, actually—which was a surprise as they were only brought out a month ago. The new Mercedes SUV.

When the girls walked onto the Academy's jet, they both instinctively sat together, holding their heads close and murmuring so low that none of us could hear what they were saying. The other guardians scattered except for me and one other—Steve—who sat up front with me and the girls.