I Never Told You I Love You - Complete

Chapter 67 - Target Practice

"I don't understand. Are you saying you both still want to be my Guardians?" Lissa asked.

"No. We didn't think it was a good idea for both Dimitri and me to guard you. We're considering a whole range of options. For instance, we've both been offered jobs at St. Basil's if we wanted to return there. Or there's the possibility of both working at Court so we could share an apartment there. Or some large Royal Moroi families have several Guardians allocated to them so we could seek that sort of allocation. Or I could guard you at Lehigh and Dimitri could guard Christian so that way we could still be together."

Lissa looked at Rose as slowly comprehension dawned. Rose didn't even need to probe through the bond – Lissa emotions were blasting through in quick succession. Shock. Surprise. Anger. Betrayal. Jealousy. Disbelief. Disappointment.

"I can't believe you'd do that to me. You'd choose him over me."

"That's not fair Lissa. It's not that simple."

"It is that simple. You said the two of you would not consider allocations where you could not be together. That means you've chosen him over me."

"No, it means I've chosen me. What I want. I want love in my life, Lissa. I want a relationship and maybe even a family with Dimitri. I'm confident I can be a Guardian as well as his wife, but it means compromise and adjustments need to be made, and one of those is finding an allocation which allows us to be together."

"I'd never do that to you, Rose. I'd never choose Christian over you."

"Lissa – you'll never be in a situation where you'd have to. You're free to love who you want and do whatever you want with your life. But it's different for me. I know Guardians are expected to live a life of duty and service without love, but I'm not prepared to do that, and neither is Dimitri. What he and I have is precious, and our marriage acknowledges that."

"They're pretty words, Rose, but the upshot is still the same. You're going to leave me."

"Lissa? Do you think I have as much right to be in love as you do?"

Lissa paused looking at Rose in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. Do you think I have as much right to be in love as you do?"

"Well of course you do!"

"Then why is this an issue? I'm in love. I've married the love of my life. Yes, it's going to mean some compromise is necessary, but life is about compromise. I know these sort of decisions were easier when it was just you and me, Lissa – but you have Christian now, and I have Dimitri. And I haven't said I won't guard you, just that Dimitri and I need to be together. That's what the next few months are about – working out where to from here."

Lissa had calmed down quite a bit. "I guess Dimitri guarding Christian is an option. He'll be doing different subjects to me so he'll need his own Guardians, and we'd spoken about living together on campus," she started, her planning wheels already turning. "We'll be living outside wards, so we'll be having a larger security detail anyway, so there'd be more flexibility for you to be rostered off at the same times..."

"Nothing needs to be decided right now," Rose said with alarm, "I need to talk it all over with Dimitri, and you need to talk to Christian about it, too. But I wanted to be honest with you about how I'm feeling and where we're at. I know I haven't told you about a lot of things and I've kind of sprung all of this on you, and I am sorry. It's just taken me ages to work out everything in my own head."

Lissa nodded. Probing through the bond, she could see Lissa was thinking over what Rose had said. Deciding now was as good a time as any, she moved on to the other thing she wanted to discuss.