A month and a half later I spent Valentine's day alone, although I did have surprises arrive from Dimitri. Another two weeks later and Dimitri was at Court because he'd just started his- previously unheard of- paternity leave, when my water broke and contractions started. "Dimitri!" I screamed in pain, "your daughter's coming!" To his credit he stayed remarkably calm through the following twenty-two hour labour. The thing was, all the darkness I'd failed to absorb decided to overrun me the second my daughter was out. "Dimitri! Keep her away from me. It's the darkness, it finally absorbed, keep her away from me!" I had no clue where to start this fight, except to remember how I fought it off in the cabin. Slowly, extremely slowly, I pushed nine months worth down.
"Roza? Mommy? Are you ready for our angel? Our miracle?" Hearing Dimitri's voice made a lid snap shut over it. I looked into my fiancé's eyes, then down at our daughter and nodded.
"Yes. It's under control. I can't have her long though- I'm exhausted." I cradled my miracle Belikov mini-me in my arms. We attempted a feed before Dimitri put her in her cradle and climbed into bed and we fell asleep. And I got visited by Adrian.
"Hey little dhampir! You're little again."
"Yeah. She's here. Nine months, a twenty-two hour labour and two hour darkness battle later and Ekaterina Roza Belikova has arrived. Now, can I please get normal sleep? I'm Mom to a newborn, I need my private sleep."
"Congratulations Rose." He smiled and let the dream dissolve. My daughter woke us up two hours later, and the fun began. The dancing on eggshells because we weren't getting sleep, my milk would take three days to come in, the darkness was trying to interfere and Ekaterina was as demanding as her mother.
The press had a field day over the following three months. Not only had our world's most dangerous guardians given birth to the impossible child, said child was making said renowned guardians exhausted. And to top it off, they were waiting for us to fall apart and call off our wedding. We didn't. Summer came around, and so did our wedding.
It was graduation and wedding week and Court was overrun. Tatiana and Council had lowered the graduation age over winter- effective the coming summer. My workshops had been added to the worldwide curriculum and it worked well enough so Court currently held three graduation classes (from all Academies worldwide), those visiting for summer, my wedding party and any guardians up for reassignment who could be spared. I hated the lowered age law, but Hans had me working on their assignments with him. Very few of the children were to be bodyguards.
One visitor surprised us all.
"Vika?" I asked when she turned up on the doorstep, baby in tow.
"Hey Aunty Roza, here," she handed her baby over to me, "meet my son, your nephew, Alek Belikov."
"Vika? What are you doing here?" I asked as I let her in. "I mean I'm glad you'll be here for the wedding but..." I didn't really know where to head with this discussion. I led her through to the nursery to meet her four month old niece.
"I graduated."
"But doesn't that usually just mean graduate?"
"Normally," Dimitri answered as his eyes shifted from changing our daughter to staring down his sister and our nephew. "What's going on Vika? And I don't want preamble."
"Babushka let me be promised. I'm out here for assignment."
"Roza? Mommy? Did you have any clue? You're working on assignments with Hans aren't you?"
"No, I had no clue Daddy. I'm only on Junior and Sophomore assignments." I went over to Dimitri, "here, I'll take Ekaterina. You meet our nephew, Alek." I handed him Vika's son before picking up my daughter. "Vika, meet your niece- Ekaterina Roza Belikova."
We got through the week and the wedding somehow. I was back in the office immediately though.
"Hans. Viktoria Belikova? I want you to assign her to Court. Effective immediately, move her into Guardian Housing. Her son is only three months older than Ekaterina."
His gruff grunt was enough of a 'yes' for me. "If you can find her an apartment in half an hour then I'll have her assigned to Court. It also means you take over assigning the Senior graduates, leave me with only reshuffling all the other seasoned back into the field."
"Deal. Thank you." Fifteen minutes later I had found an appropriate apartment for her and was being handed the database of Senior graduates to assign and the request lists. Over the following fortnight I had great fun shuffling and reshuffling assignments for each graduate class. The sophomores all got Academy or Court positions, as did half the juniors. The minute Hans and I locked in their assignments the message was sent out for them to be ready to leave by human daybreak. Their seasoned counterparts were messaged to be ready for a trip to Court by human nightfall. A week of non-stop shuffling and reshuffling the senior graduate's, half the juniors, and the seasoned guardians later it was finally over. We still had way too many children in the field as active body-or pair-guards but the Moroi felt that they were safer. I'd have preferred a group of the best seasoned going hunting but didn't get a say.
Trying times
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