I Never Told You I Love You - Complete

Chapter 80 - Hola!

The last fortnight had gone past crazy fast. It seemed like only yesterday Rose's parents had left for Mexico, but they were due back tomorrow, Friday morning. Things had been relatively quiet in their absence. Rose had trained, done schoolwork and there'd been two more tournament rounds. The second Rose, Eddie, and Vika had observed, Dimitri not wanting any of them to compete until the third week. The winner had been Ramos – a bit of a dark horse in their year. Surprisingly, he'd also done quite well against his Guardian, Emil – lasting for eight minutes.

Emil was actually a decent fighter. He was also the only person on campus who was naturally quieter and more reticent than Ramos. Yet strangely during the debriefing chat afterward, the two were seen sitting off to one side chatting quite animatedly. Dimitri had sat on the grass cuddling Rose laughing as he observed his almost eremitic colleague bordering on ebullience.

"I might suggest Emil informally mentors Ramos," Dimitri said to Rose thoughtfully. "They seem to have really clicked!"

"I'm not just saying this because I fell in love with mine and married him," Rose said, leaning up to kiss her Russian God, "but I think there's a lot to be said for Novices having a mentor even just for one or two sessions a week."

"I agree, milaya. It's not just good for the student. The mentor benefits, too. I'm going to mention it to Alberta. We're so short staffed at the moment she won't be able to work it into the workload allocation, but there are lots of other ways she can encourage Guardians to mentor a student."

"Do you ever wonder how different our lives would have been if you hadn't agreed to mentor me?" Rose asked.

"The idea is too frightening for me to even contemplate," Dimitri said, pulling Rose closer to him.

The following week Eddie had competed and, unsurprisingly, had been the victor. He'd had to fight Guardian Harrick, the one who had attacked Dimitri on shift, so Dimitri had given Eddie the low down on his fighting style and weaknesses. Eddie had done well – actually managing to take down Harrick after eleven minutes. This first Novice to take down a Guardian in the competition, it automatically propelled him to head of the leaderboard and made him a big man on campus – at least for the week. Eddie, being Eddie, shunned the accolades. If anything it just made him more determined to train.

They'd added an extra thirty minutes onto their training schedule every morning, and Eddie would often stay back after their afternoon sessions had ended. At first, they'd thought it was him wanting to be the tournament victor, but Vika was starting to get worried. Apparently, all he could talk about was training and allocations. She'd spoken with Rose about it, who'd suggested she raise her concerns with Dimitri.

In the end, Dimitri had had a chat with him and got to the root of the problem. Eddie, like the rest of them, was starting to freak out about his future and his allocation. After a long chat, Dimitri had managed to get through to him and calm some of his fears. They still trained an extra half an hour a day, but Eddie was more like his usual self.

"Hopefully Matthews will go back to her normal self tomorrow," Dimitri commented as he and Rose were walking back to their unit after dinner. "She's been cranky as hell the last fortnight."

"Oh, why's that?" Rose asked, not wanting to give away a confidence.

"I think she's rather taken with your Dad's Guardian Hughes. I thought you knew?"

"Yeah, I did. I didn't think you did," Rose laughed.

"I've worked with Matthews for a long time, milaya. Of course, I noticed!"

"It's sad really. Hughes will be going back to Turkey with Baba, and I suppose Matthews will stay here."

"I suppose so," Dimitri mused. "It's one more reason I'm glad we married when we did. I know getting through allocations is going to be difficult, but at least we'll be together."