Hey everyone :) This chapter came a little quicker than the last... due to me not be bothering to do my art homework. Oh, welll haha :) Now, this Chapter is in Rose's POV. Not sure if that's what you guys want or not. Let me know if this works out and I'll do some more chapters in Rose's POV.

And I need to thank xx-RedRoseBlackThorn-xx for beta-ing this chapter :) You are wonderful.

Rose POV

"Mason, you should know me by now." I said, licking donut icing off my lips. "I always win at rock, paper, scissors."

He sighed unhappily. "How do you do it? Every time!"
"It scares me too, Mase. My awesomeness is on so many levels. Why you'd bet your donut on it, I don't know."

"Foolishly in love." Eddie Castile muttered from behind us. Mason gave him a light punch on the arm.

"Yeah, in the love with the adrenaline rush of gambling."

"Sure."

A smile flickered on my face; I knew Mason had a crush on me. It was obvious. We constantly joked and flirted. Only sometimes—well, most of the time, actually— I think he really did flirt in hope of reeling me into his love boat. Not that that was a bad thing. He was cute after all. Ginger hair that flopped over his forehead constantly, and a cute grin to match. And he was a nice, funny guy who, really, was the only guy who could get me into hysterics. Where did he go wrong? He didn't. But, it was weird to think of him that way. I mean, he's Mason... Mason Ashford. To me, our friendship could only be platonic. But, hey. I'll let him dream.

"Woo!" Mason screamed randomly and spread his hands out in the air. "Snow!"

I looked at the sky, full of hope. Teeny, tiny snow drops landed on my face. "Yes!"

"Come on, baby!" Eddie shouted to the sky.

"Thank god. Dimitri can't make me run laps in this."

"Urgh." Mason sighed unhappily as the snow began to fall harder, creating a layer on snow on the ground. "Rover's going to smell like wet dog."

I snorted, "You're still doing that session? I pulled out of that as fast as I could. I mean, how the hell is petting a dog going make to make me calm?"

"Lucky you. If I start rambling about Rover missing his heart or something; you think that'd get me out?"

I considered, reminiscing my own plot to get out of doggy day care. Ms. Karp, a crazy teacher, opted for a slot in the timetable dedicated to spending half hour with a straggly dog. Yeah, you heard right. Apparently petting dogs is the solution to life's problems. Me, being not so found with the smelly pooch, used some of my finest angry faces and threats to get out of that blow out class. And it was declared, for the safety of the dog, that Rosemarie Hathaway did not have to attend. Mason's Walking Corpse Disorder gave him a few good getaway options. Many sufferers of Walking Corpse Disorder believe that they're missing vital organs, which technically made them dead, and although Mason never did think that (he believed he had been murdered and had come back as a ghost or some sort of dead person), he could start telling porkies about the dog to make Ms. Karp freak out and think the dog was making his condition worse.

"A few crocodile tears might speed up the process."

Mason put on his goofy grin, slinging an arm round my shoulders. "What would I do without you?"

"Probably be spending most of your time thinking up someone new to jerk off—Ow!" Snow clashed with the back of my head, dripping onto my shoulders. "You going to wish you never did the, Castile!"

"Bring it! You too, lover boy!"

Mason and I swapped a knowing glance at each other, then started scraping up all the snow we could, ready to pelt at Eddie. A few others recruited to Eddie's side but Mase and I took them to town. We had snowballs- big and small -hurtling in every direction. My hands stung from the cold, and the places where I had been hit by snowballs were soaked. Not that it mattered to me. I just knew if a teacher saw, we'd all be screwed. Ah, the pleasure of being Levels 2s. For some idiotic—but extremely useful in situations like these—reason, students who had reached level 2 and over were permitted to walk to classes without their guardians. It was the whole lesson of learning to be 'independent' again. Oh man, was I glad to be over level 1.

That's when I saw the perfect opportunity. Eddie was bent over in front of me, making a snowball. Ah, classic. With my snowball ready in my head, I snapped my arm back, positioning my aim to precision, lunging forward for the best impact I could get, then just as I was about to release—

"FUCK!" I screamed, seeing flashing black and blue lights in my eyes. It was silent all around me, like the calmness before a storm. I dropped the snowball in my head, and cupped my eye, swirling in my spot. "Who threw a hammer into my fucking eye?"

My eye began pounding painfully and just as I started to regain my vision, I looked at the ground to see a smashed up snowball with a huge stone in the middle.

"Rose! What happened?" Mason was suddenly at my side, holding onto my shoulders. He tried to pry my fingers off my eye and I let out an angry growl.

"Someone threw a fucking snowball bomb in my eye." I moved my hand and turned my face to Mason. "How bad does it look?"

"Shit, Rose." He gulped a bit. "We've gotta get you to the first aid room. Your eye is black…and pulsing!"

I swore again. "Listen, do you think I could patch it up with some concealer or something?"

"Are you out of your mind, Rose?" Mason shook me a little in frustration. "It's like a golf ball! You need to get something for it. Medically, I mean."

Groaning, I crouched onto the floor, noticing everyone staring at me. "I can't do that. We'll all be fucked if they find out about this."

"And you'll be blind if you don't do something about it! Plus, it's not like it's easy to hide, someone's going to see it and start asking questions." I went to say something but he cut me off and lifted me to my feet. "Shush. I'll come with you to the medical room."

I pushed him off me and glared—ouch—at him. "Stop being so fucking gallant; you'll get everyone in trouble. I'll go by myself and say I tripped on the steps."

He was about to argue again, but I started to walk off. "Pretend I was never here. See you later, Mase."

Okay, maybe now I understood why teachers freaked at the idea of snowball fights. I guess people are stupid enough to pick up stones in them. I kept my head down as I walked through the fields, even though most people were off to the next class, I couldn't risk being seen with this extra growth of an eye.

"Hey, Little Flower."

I turned to see a good looking guy who was probably a few years older than me, lounging on a wall.

"Excuse me?" I put as much disgust as I could make into my words at his 'flower' comment. He laughed quietly at himself and pointed to my head. I reached and felt something bobbly, and wet with snow, in my silky hair. I pulled out a little daisy that had been tangled in my locks. He said nothing, but instead, ate up my appearance, because, of course, I looked super sexy with my third eye growing. I started walking away. "Well, if your done wasting seconds of my life…"

"Where's your guardian?" He said abruptly, catching hold of my gaze again.

"I'm my own guardian." I replied with sarcasm, because his question was pretty stupid and the answer was pretty obvious.

"Ah." He tried to keep his subtle little smile down, which made the appeal to keep looking at him strengthen. "I need a new guardian, think you can handle me?"

"Don't know, don't care."

"Ouch." Keeping his eyes on me, he patted around in his pocket, grimacing. Weird, kid. Kid? Was he even that? Adult, perhaps. "Hasn't your class started? Or are you bunking?"

I touched my eye. It was swelling even more. "Going to the med room."

He nodded with a small frown. "You in for self- harm?"

"Nope. The steps got the better of me."

"Need a man to help you up, next time?" He cocked his arm out, as if I were to take it.

"No." I said defensively. "And definitely not from you."

Even with a clear rejection, this guy didn't seem fazed, still keeping his eyes glued on me. Realisation hit me. "Shit, what time is it?"

"Quarter to, last time I checked."

"I'm late. Really late. Dimitri's going to kill me."

The guy's lazy smile increased and he chuckled. "So that's who you are; the infamous Rose Hathaway. You're just as beautiful as legend has it."

"Glad I kept up to expectations." I said bitterly. I really had to go; broken eye or not, I didn't want to have to make up for lost lesson time later. "Treasure this moment as best you can; the legend is leaving."

He cracked up into a loud laugh, choking at the end. "Well, Rose Hathaway. It's only polite to meet the discoverer of this legend again. It's Adrian Ivashkov."

"Too bad I'm not polite." Urgh, so that's who he was. The Ivashkov family were wealthy and well known in the real world. They also had a lot of family members. They had some sort of company or investments that kept the bank rolls regularly rolling in. So, he was a 'Royal' as we liked to call it. People who were spoiled and rich and doted on. And frankly, who acted as if they were Royal. That's where the label came from. Whenever they had a minor problem, they were sent off to here. We had them all. The Taurus', Scarcozys, Lazars, Badicas, Ozeras (even though they had gone off the map now, because of what happened) and the Contas. And that's only six of the twelve families branded as Royal. There's always at least one from each here at a time. And all for shitty reasons. Adrian had probably been hospitalised for losing a favourite designer coat.

Adrian, not aware of my Royal hating going on, laughed. "I'll take that as Rose language for: catch you later then."

"Bye, Adrian." I walked away, with no intention of stopping again this time. My eye really felt like shit now.

"See you, Little Flower."

"Don't call me that."

From behind me, I heard quiet laughing.

I was sitting in a comfy grey seat, with an ice pack on my eye (it wasn't broken, can you believe that?), waiting for Dimitri to pick me up from the medical room. Apparently, I couldn't be trusted to make it to the gym without 'tripping up' again. The glass doors of the office opened up automatically and a gust of snowy wind blew into the office area, flicking the bottom of Dimitri's long coat as he walked in. His tied up hair was drenched from the snow. And, boy, did that look good on him. I kept the ice pack firmly on my eye, covering any inch of bruising that might have been showing. He strode into the medical room and stood in the doorway, looking at me. Urgh, I felt stupid.

"Do you prefer staying here or do you want to come back with me?" He said. In any other situation, I would have said that sounded seriously suggestive.

"I'm fine." I said gruffly. "To your place, Comrade."

I claimed the ice pack for the rest of the day from the nurse even though the swelling and pain was going down; there was no way in hell Dimitri or anyone else—let me correct that, especially Dimitri—was going to see my eye. We sat on one of the gym benches.

"Are you up for some work?" He picked up some boxing gloves and I almost fell out of my seat. No laps? Hell yeah, I was up for it.

"Woah, the doubt you have for me is insulting." Dimitri looked cautiously at me. Gees, not kidding about the disbelief. I stood up and reached for the gloves in his hands. "Ready, Comrade."

He retracted the gloves from my clutches and threw them into a bag. "Alright then. Ten laps."

"What?"

"Ten laps." He grabbed the stopwatch from around his neck. He'd ripped me off. Whether he'd realised it or not. Guess it was back to the laps. I pulled my leg back in a stretch and got set to run.

"Rose." I looked back at Dimitri, he was holding out his hand. "Ice pack."

My heartbeat started to climb. "No, I want it on."

"You can't run like that, Rose. I'll hold the pack."

"I can run like this. Watch me." I took off. Who was I kidding? In a matter of steps, I had a strong hand grip my arm, halting me. Dimitri pulled me around to look at his face and touched the ice pack.

"Let me see."

I wanted to tell him to get off, to rip my arm from him and really run, out of this building and out of this stupid school. Just running and running into freedom. All the guardians and teachers behind me. All the anger and embarrassment dissolving with every step.

Instead, I took a deep breath and let the ice pack fall. Dimtri's face was unreadable. He too let the ice pack drop to the floor and kept one hand on my arm and the other hovering on my face, almost as an embrace. "Does it hurt?"

"No." I said somewhat truthfully. I was fully aware of the intimate space between us; his hands touching me, the closeness of our bodies, but I couldn't shake the inner anger inside of me. It was there, even if it hadn't made its appearance. I wanted to scream and shout. But I couldn't. Not to Dimitri. After a minute, Dimitri pulled back from me and cleared his throat.

"Let's run." Was all he said, and then he started round the gym track. In shock, I followed him.

It was during the eighth lap that I felt the inner demon leaking out. My muscles were beginning to feel the ache and exhaustion was starting to overcome me. It was a good feeling though, like a climax of relaxation. We didn't speak the whole time and I kind of liked that; the silence was comfortable. I finished the run more out of breath than Dimitri, who recovered impressively within seconds, and I decided right there and then, I wouldn't be like that next time—if there was ever a next time of this. I felt the need to do something impressive that he would be proud of.

My lesson with Dimitri had almost finished; most of the time was spent in the medical room (and talking to Adrian). He wiped his face with the towel I had just used to do that with. And I couldn't decide whether that was gross or not, but my mind was wandering more to the not.

I left Dimitri in a better mood, considering the events of the day, taking my time to make it to next lesson since no one else had been let out yet. I was just crossing the corner of the building when I heard a sickly sweet voice.

"I saw what you were doing over there with him, Rose. Tut, tut. Wonder if he'll be kicked out for messing with little girls."

Dum dum dummmmm... Wonder who it is? Have a guess. It's easy to do... just one little click down below :)