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4 entries this month
Belonging10:18 Aug 31 2026
Times Read: 163
I don't know how long I lay there.
Long enough for the blood on my clothes to begin to freeze.
I know this because I was told.
I remember none of it.
Not the gunshots.
Not the snow.
Not my mother's body beside me.
Two of Papa Moroz's sons found us.
They had been drinking in Moscow that night and were making their way home when they saw something in the snow. At first, they thought it was only a woman who had fallen.
Then one of them recognized her.
Alina.
A dancer from a club they had visited from time to time.
She was dead.
Then they heard me.
They found me beside her, wrapped in a blanket, soaked in blood that wasn't mine.
Neither of them knew what the hell to do with a ten-month-old baby.
So naturally, they took me home to their mother.
Galina Moroz.
I am told she took one look at me and that was the end of the discussion.
She cleaned the blood from my face. She bathed me, fed me and wrapped me in something warm.
And when Papa Moroz was informed that there was apparently now a baby in his house, Galina informed him of something else.
I was staying.
Papa had connections. The kind that made paperwork move faster and questions disappear when necessary.
He found out who I was. He found out who my mother had been. And when nobody came forward to claim me, Nicolai became a Moroz.
He also made sure my mother was buried properly.
Papa never knew Alina.
He didn't have to.
She was my mother.
And I was his son.
That was enough.
BLOOD IN THE SNOW11:03 Aug 28 2026
Times Read: 209
I was ten months old when my first family died.
I don't remember them.
People sometimes seem uncomfortable when I say that. As if I'm supposed to have some buried fragment of my mother's face, my father's voice, the feeling of being held by people whose blood I carried. I don't.
Everything I know about that night was told to me later.
I wasn't born a Moroz.
My biological father was a Mafia boss in Moscow. My mother was a dancer in one of his clubs.
Apparently, she was beautiful. Long black hair. Green eyes.
I got the eyes.
He wanted her. He got her. Eventually, he married her.
Then she got pregnant with me.
By all accounts, my father was not a good man. That's the polite version.
He beat her. Often. Sometimes because she had done something he didn't like. Sometimes because he was angry.
Sometimes simply because he could.
After I was born, something changed.
She could endure what he did to her. What she couldn't endure was waiting for the day he would decide to do the same thing to me.
So she started hiding money.
A little at a time. Never enough for him to notice. Whatever she could take without raising suspicion went somewhere he wouldn't find it.
She waited ten months.
Then one night, she took me and ran.
She had money. She had a plan.
She almost made it.
Almost is a particularly useless word.
My father discovered we were gone and came after us with several of his men.
Eventually, they caught up with her.
She was carrying me wrapped tightly in a thick blanket against the cold. She begged him to let us go. She begged for her life.
More importantly, she begged for mine.
He shot her twice.
I was still in her arms.
Her blood sprayed across the blanket and across me, but according to the man who later told me what happened, I didn't cry.
Not once.
I just stared at my father with wide green eyes while my mother slowly sank to her knees, still holding me against her, still trying to protect me even as she died.
Her arms finally loosened.
The bundle containing me rolled a short distance into the snow.
I still made no sound.
My father looked at us and assumed his bullets had killed us both.
He nudged my mother's body with his foot.
She didn't move.
Neither did I.
Satisfied, he turned around and walked away.
His men followed him.
They left my mother dead in the snow.
And me beside her.
Ten months old.
Covered in her blood.
Very much alive.
Niolais Early Life10:29 Aug 26 2026
Times Read: 386
There are things about Nicolai Moroz that surprise people.
The knives usually aren't one of them.
Neither are the motorcycles, the tattoos, the temper, or the fact that he can walk into a room and make people reconsider whatever stupid thing they were about to do.
The dancing, however, tends to catch them off guard.
Nicolai can dance.
Not the vague swaying people do when there is music and nowhere convenient to sit. He can actually dance. Waltz, foxtrot, tango — proper frame, perfect posture, effortless control. Put him on a dance floor with a competent partner and suddenly the tattooed menace looks as though he has spent half his life in a ballroom.
In a way, he has Galina to blame for that.
Galina Moroz had once been a prima ballerina. Even years after leaving the stage, she carried herself like one. Straight back, graceful hands, every movement deliberate. She could cross a room without seeming to make a sound and somehow make everyone else in it aware of their posture.
She also possessed the particular kind of authority that never required shouting.
When Galina decided that her sons would learn to dance, nobody asked whether they wanted to.
Least of all Nicolai.
“I can fight.”
“I know.”
“I don't need to dance.”
“I didn't ask what you need.”
He had been young enough to sulk about it and old enough to believe sulking might accomplish something.
It didn't.
“Shoulders, Nicolai.”
He corrected them.
“Again.”
He did it again.
“Your feet know where they belong. Stop arguing with them.”
“I wasn't arguing.”
Galina merely looked at him.
Nicolai shut up.
It was a skill she possessed long before anyone else discovered how useful it could be.
Her lessons were relentless, although never cruel. Before there were steps, there was posture. Before there was music, there was balance. She taught him where his weight was, how to move it without thinking, how to control every part of his body independently while making the result appear effortless.
Years later, Nicolai would recognise how much of it had followed him into other parts of his life.
Fighting required balance.
Speed meant nothing without control.
The smallest shift of weight could reveal what someone intended to do before they did it.
He never told Galina that her lessons had made him a better fighter.
Mostly because she already knew.
And somewhere along the way, despite all his complaints, he began to enjoy dancing.
He never admitted that either.
Galina knew that too.
Decades later, people still make the same mistake.
They see Nicolai Moroz standing at the edge of a dance floor and make assumptions. Then the music starts. He offers his hand, takes his partner into frame, and the transformation is immediate.
No hesitation.
No awkwardness.
No wasted movement.
Galina is there in every step.
In the straightening of his back. In the placement of his hand. In the quiet confidence with which he leads. In the precision that makes something difficult look completely effortless.
Nicolai rarely talks about the people he loves. Sentiment has never come naturally to him, and declarations mean less to him than actions.
But family leaves fingerprints.
His mother left hers in the way he moves.
And Galina made certain that Nicolai wasn't the only one.
Every Moroz child learned.
Later, every grandchild learned.
There were no exceptions.
Human, vampire, werecreature, adopted, born into the family — Galina had never cared much about distinctions like that.
If you were a Moroz, you learned to dance.
Resistance was permitted.
It simply wasn't effective.
And somewhere, even now, Nicolai can still hear her voice whenever his posture slips.
Shoulders, darling.
He straightens them.
Some habits are difficult to break.
Others you never really want to.
Galina taught all her children to dance.
Nicolai was simply the one who never admitted how much he loved it.
People Have Many Opinions
12:25 Aug 25 2026
Times Read: 465
I have been told that keeping a journal is good for the mind.
I have also been told that killing people is bad for it.
People have many opinions.
I have never understood the appeal of recording one's thoughts. If a memory is worth keeping, I remember it. If it is not, I see no reason to preserve it in writing.
And yet, here I am.
Perhaps curiosity has finally gotten the better of me.
There is something strangely entertaining about this place. Vampires pretending not to be human. Humans pretending to be vampires. Alliances, rivalries, little displays of power and status.
They take it all so very seriously.
I find that charming.
Witchykitten has placed me on her friends list.
Apparently, this has made me weaker.
She finds this hilarious.
I do not.
Still, I have decided to let her live.
For now.
— N. Moroz
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COMMENTS
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Adain
20:57 Aug 31 2026
I enjoy following your journey Nico.
I have to refrain for turning parts of them into songs though. x