Adelaide Kane
𝖆𝖘
Viktoria Belikova

❝Брат, если ты разведешься, я выберу ее. (Brother, if you get divorced, I'm choosing her.)❞
⏤ the russian puppy

Ellen Kirova couldn't fathom, for the life of her, why she was sitting in front of, an almost pleading, Dimitri Belikov.

"You are aware that the semester is coming to an end, do you not, Guardian Belikov." Ellen questioned as she lowered the file in her hand, "And you are we already took in a student after the beginning of the semester, are you not?"

Dimitri nodded solemly and glanced to his side, to his younger sister Viktoria, who was looking at the ground with a fading black eye. "I am aware, but I fear that there is no other Academy that I trust to give my sister one last chance to prove that she's worth training and promising."

"Which is why you return much earlier than expected." Kirova guessed correctly. "Miss Belikov, tell me the incident in question by your own words." she then ordered.

Viktoria glanced as her older brother momentarily, but Dimitri barely looked at her, keeping his eyes on the Headmistress. Viktoria knew that he wasn't angry with her, not completely at least, but she never did like seeing her older brother angry with her.

"Break up gone bad." Viktoria claimed as she turned her head to the headmistress, but a scoff from Dimitri beside her, had Viktoria looking at ground. "Dimka...." Viktoria sighs.

Ellen frowns as she senses that there is more to the situation.

"I was dating a Moroi-" Viktoria started before her older brother countered in Russian.

"Вас шантажом заставили вступить в оскорбительные отношения. (You were blackmailed into a abusive relationship.)" 

At this, Kirova's brows raised, shock clear in face, althought it wasn't uncommon to hear about Morois and Dhampirs getting into relationships. While Viktoria blushed and lowered her gaze again.

"I tried to break up with him and he didn't take it well." She finished, not wanting to go into details, although by the way that Kirova tried to hide the soft look on her face, it was clear that her file said everything.

"Your academic record is unblemished, except, of course, for this event, so I have no problem in approving your transfer, but I'm afraid I will have to impliment some-" Kirova started only for Viktoria to counter.

"Мне все равно, мне не нужны вечеринки, они мне не нужны. (I don't care, I don't want parties, I don't need them.)"

It surprised Kirova sligtly as she knew how Dhampirs liked to be the life of the party, but with one look at Dimitri's face, Kirova understood that not everything that was on the file was accurate.

With a small nod, Kirova dismissed the clearly traumatised Dhampir girl, to be able to talk logistic with her older brother and momentary parental guardian while on the grounds of the Academy. And at the dismissal, Viktoria wasted no time in all but running out of the room before her brother could tell her anything.

Viktoria had no idea where she was running to, she didn't know the layout of this Academy, although she knew it wasn't much different from St. Basil's, none of the Academies were really that different from one and other.

She subconscious and almost traumatically kept fixing the scarf around her neck, and fixing the hair that was covering her healing face. Viktoria was still absolutely embarrassed and furious with the whole situation.

And it most definately didn't help that the first person who she happened to bump into, was none other than Jesse Zecklos.

"Woah, where's the fire?" Jesse teased as he grabbed Viktoria by the waist, making the young Belikov jump and try to push him away. "You're new." he then observed, keeping a shaking Viktoria close to him as he moved her hair to the side, revealing her bruised face, which he paid no mind to.

"And you're pretty." he acknowledged with a smirk.

Viktoria couldn't move, she couldn't speak, she was frozen in fear and panic, just like she'd been the fateful night that ended with her being expelled from St. Basil's. But even though she couldn't move, the look of sheer panic was clear in her face.

"Le-Let me go." She tried to plead, but her voice broke and her words were weak and low.

"I'm throwing a party tonight. You should come as my guest of honour." Jesse told her as he, as if he knew how a scarf should look on a woman's neck, gently moved and fixed the scarf, prompting Viktoria to tense up even more.

"She said to let her go, Zecklos." Kate called from the other side of the path that they were on, dressed in gym clothes and with a sheet of sweat covering her flushed face. "Unless you want me to break those fingers that are still touching her."

Jesse groaned and let go of Viktoria, turning his head to the, so far, only Dhampir, around his age at least, to ever reject him, "Spiridon still hasn't killed you?" he snarked, bitter about something that Viktoria didn't know about.

"Still going after women who have no interest into falling into your disease ridden bed?" Kate mocked in return, breefly sliding between Viktoria and Jesse, with a look of over-protectiveness that Jesse had only seen on Kate's face when dealing with Lissa.

"Your uncle must be so disappointed that his family is reduced to him and one lousy Dhampir. At least his daughter knew how to party." Jesse taunted.

"And your father must be tired of paying your bills at brothels, although I believe he's finally accepted that his own son and heir would rather be a whore than a respectable heir." Kate smirked, crossing her arms as she looked at Jesse with a daring and wild look in her eyes.

"It's a shame you were Lissa introduction to the Human world, she lost the possibility of learning how to be among freaks like her, only to be reminded that there are still abominations around." Jesse crooned, smirking back at Kate and stepping closer to her, therefore closer to Viktoria, who instinctively stepped back.

Kate grinned almost maniacally, and in a way that certainly scared Jesse, "How many children do you already have with the women who work in the brothel's of the Dominion? Or even better, the Royal Court? I think you should inform the headmistress of the count so she can start sending out enrollment papers."

"You're a bloodwhore!" Jesse spat angrily, as if Kate's words had touched a nerve, which considering he was close enough to Kate that she had to place a hand on his chest to push him away, Kate knew she had, which made her smirk widen.

"And yet, not even if the Queen paid me more than she's worth herself, would I lower myself to the standart of sleeping with you." Kate replied easily, enjoying how Jesse bristled at her reaction, or there lack off at being called something that was not only demeaning but often used as a threat.

Viktoria Belikov stood behind the girl who stepped in, and prevented Viktoria from ending up in the same situation twice, looking at her back with a look of bewilderment and sheer shock and gratitude. She'd honestly never seen a Dhampir not give into a Moroi's demands and taunts, or even their insults, but the Dhampir girl before Viktoria, seemed to do it so effortlessly.

As Jesse stormed off, angrily and huffing like an English Bulldog when they are having problems breathing, Viktoria noticed the zvezda mark on the back of the girl's neck, which told Viktoria almost everthing she needed to know about her.

The mark on an unpromised Guardian's neck was something that was not at all common, but it told everyone that saw the mark that the person wearing it had faced death, either several times during a lengthy fight, and that they had too many kills to mark, or that they'd faced death too many times over the course of a while and that the tally was too high to mark.

Regardless, Viktoria stared at Kate with eyes filled with admiration as she turned aorund to check on her.

"Are you alright?" Kate questioned the girl that she'd never seen before, her voice soft, worried and caring, not at all like it had just been while talking to Jesse. "Did he do this?" she asked as she pointed to Viktoria's face, not daring to touch her considering the younger girl was standing with her arms wrapped around her body, both defensively and protectively.

Viktoria shook her head, slowly, as if she was still returning to reality after an out of body experience.

"Did he hurt you?" Kate insisted, keeping the distance between her and Viktoria, not wanting to startle the girl that she didn't know.

Unfortunately, before Viktoria could answer for herself, Dimitri's voice echoed throught the night air, desperate and worried "VIKA!" followed by his rushed footsteps in their direction.

Usually, Kate would stand to the side, would let the older Guardians deal with their businesses alone and privately, but there was something in the way that Viktoria was holding herself, in the way that she flinched, that had Kate stepping in Dimitri's path, unknowingly blocking him from his own sister.

"Comrade." she greeted in a stale and Guardian like tone, that halted Dimitri in his step, a voice that had his body tense and warm up as well as had his pulse racing.

"Alistair." he greeted in return, his voice suddenly no longer urgent or desperate, but rather hesitant, which confused his younger sister tremendously as she, unlike the rest of their family, wasn't up to date with the whole Dimitri and Kate dilemma that the other women of their household had been dealing with.

"I see you've returned, early, without warning, and still made me train with Spiridon." Kate started, staring at Dimitri, knowingly keeping his attention on her.

"Unprecedented events occured that prompted me to return earlier and without notice." Dimitri replied, trying to match the tone of Guardianship in which Kate was talking to him in. "Hardly anytime to let you know." to which Kate hummed, and led him to believe that their conversation was over, which allowed him to turn his attention to Viktoria once more.

"Now that you're back, however, нам нужно поговорить (we need to have a conversation) about what is professional and what is condesending in emails." Kate told him, forcing herself to stand taller and capture Dimitri's attention once more, while motioning to Viktoria, behind her back, to run along. Giving the unknown girl the possibility to escape Dimitri while she was distracting him.

Dimitri frowned at Kate's words, not quite understanding them until he saw his sister slinking away from the two and understanding what Kate was doing, which caused him to run a hand through his hair.

"Ты мешаешь мне следить за сестрой. (You are interfering with me checking on my sister.)" Dimitri told Kate in Russian, which after spending some time speaking only in Russian seemed only natural for him, especially considering the fact that Kate understood and spoke the language well.

"Сестра? (Sister?)" Kate echoed before looking over her shoulder to see in Viktoria had ran off like Kate told her to.

Her action allowed Dimitri to look at her and soothe all of the annoying longing that he'd had of her. He was still very much in denial that he could like someone younger, even if they were technically an adult already, even if their relationship was purely kinship and comradship.

"Да, младшая сестра. (Yes, younger sister.)" he replied softly until she turned back to look at him again with a shrug, as if their familial status interfered with her actions.

As she turned back to face him, the air around them suddenly felt charged, in a way that both of them didn't quite like it. Tension had built in the small amount of time that he had been away, tension that the emails they'd exchanged hadn't helped at all.

"You grew a beard." Kate pointed out, noticing how his face wasn't as clean-shaved as if had been when she last saw him. It was a sight that Kate couldn't deny looked quite good on him.

"My mother and grandmother like to see me with it." Dimitri admitted easily, just as he did in every other subject whenever they talked.

"It looks good." she added, grabbing one of her shoulders with the opposite hand, not knowing how to break the slight ice that had formed. "When we first met, you told me I reminded you of one of your sisters." she chose to say.

"Viktoria, Vika, the one you just aided in escaping me." Dimitri agreed, smiling softly as he spoke of his sister, much in the same manner that Kate smiled with talking about Lissa or her own family.

"Did you mean it as a good or a bad thing?" Kate quized, narrowing her eyes in a faux threatening way, to which Dimitri chuckled and shrugged, and Kate would be cursed if she claimed that she hadn't missed the chuckles that only she seemed to illicit from Dimitri.

"You should be careful though, Vika becomes quite attached, like a puppy if you give her too much attention." Dimitri warned Kate, stepping closer to her and crossing his own arms comfortably, looking down at her in an almost sweet way.

"I'll train her well then." Kate merely replied to him, trying to ignore the warm feeling in her chest.