Dimitri's Point of View in Frostbite (Vampire Academy) (Book 2)

Shadow Kiss (Chapter 1)

I softened into a smile at her attempts of making a joke to cheer me up. “Yes, I’m sure. What is  it, about a month?”

“Thirty-one days.” She announced primly.

“Not that you’re counting.”

She shrugged, which made me laugh.

“I suppose you’ve made a birthday list too. Ten pages? Single-spaced?” Ranked by order of priority?” I was still smiling. It was one of my relaxed and amused ones that rarely came out.

She smiled and opened her mouth to reply but then quickly shut is as her face turned from happy to sad and hurt.

“No.” She said in a small voice. “No list.”

I tilted my head to get a better look at her, making some of my shoulder-length hair blow into my face. My hair was brown, like Roses’, but not nearly as dark. Hers looked black at times. I brushed the unruly strands aside, only to have them immediately blow back into my face. “I can’t believe you don’t want anything. It’s going to be a boring birthday.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She said.

“What do you---“ I stopped, I understood then. From the look in her eyes I could tell exactly what she meant. She wanted freedom. Being eighteen meant we could be together, it meant we could be seen as a couple in public and not be questioned. It was something she and I both wanted more than anything in the world. Yet we couldn’t have.

I understood. I always did. It was part of why we connected like we did, in spite of the seven-year gap in our ages. We’d fallen for each other last fall when I’d been her combat instructor. As things heated up between us, we’d found we had more things to worry about than just age. We were both going to be protecting Lissa when she graduated, and we couldn’t let our feelings for each other distract us when she was our priority.

I didn’t think our feelings for each other were ever really going to go away. We’d both had moments of weakness, moments that led to stolen kisses or saying things we really shouldn’t have. After she had escaped the Strigoi, I had told her that I loved her and admitted I could never be with anyone else because of that. But we still couldn’t be together either and we had both slipped back into our old roles of keeping away from each other and pretending that our relationship was strictly professional.

Looking down at Rose I could see her shiver, pulling her robe closer to her. I wanted to change the subject, wanted to stop thinking about our love life and start taking action on the now. “You can deny it all you want, but I know you’re freezing. Let’s go inside. I’ll take you through the back.”

Astonishment flashed in her eyes. And I knew it was at my abrupt change in subject rather than me sneaking her around the campus. “I think you’re the one who’s cold.” She teased, as we walked around the side of the dorm where the novice guardians lived. “Shouldn’t you be all tough and stuff, since you’re from Siberia?”

“I don’t think Siberia’s exactly what you imagine.”

“I imagine it as an arctic wasteland.” She said truthfully.

“Then it’s definitely not what you imagine.”

“Do you miss it?” she asked glancing back at me as I walked behind her.

“All the time.” I said my heart aching for my hometown. “Sometimes I wish---“

“Belikov!”

A voice was carried on the wind from behind us. “I knew this was going to happen.” I muttered, too low for Rose to hear. I shoved her further around the corner she’d just rounded. “Stay out of sight.”