Lunch went by in a blur of schoolwork and remedial learning. Heading into Viktor’s class, Cesare brushed off the lingering look the man gave the girls. If they wanted him to stop, they were strong enough to take care of it.

Working through his warmup, Cesare let his eyes settle on the three of them. There had been a time when he was the one Viktor gave pointers too. For being an asshole, the man was a gifted teacher, able to see a problem and fix it in a way that stayed with his student. Cesare had learned a lot from him, not least of which was the lesson Viktor never meant to teach. As long as the girls were part of his life, he'd never have male friends. Competitive animal’s, men couldn’t see a beautiful woman and not want to fuck her, to possess and own, subjugate and control. The girls would never be anything but a black need pulsing in the heart of the men that saw them.

Cesare had always looked forward to class, and he wouldn't let Viktor take that from him. Before it had been something shared with Viktor, now it was Cesare on his own. It wasn’t like it had been, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it for what it was.

He gave himself up to the raw aggression of pushing weight, enjoying the rush of pure adrenaline that spiked his heart. Heat built up from his core, spilling out along his skin, sweat slicking his shirt to his chest. He didn’t need Viktor's help, pushing himself was a way of life for Cesare. Viktor was just the latest in a long line of people who’d moved on to something better.

“Cesare …” The strained words had him moving before thought formed. Alexandra wobbled under the weight of a massive barbell. Coming up behind her, he stepped into the squatting rack and steadied the weight. There was no way he could take it from her, but she only needed him to guide the load.

So perfectly in sync it might have been choreographed, they stepped back together. Only when the bar settled in place did Cesare realize the closeness. His body flush against her back, her ass pressed into him, firm and deliciously soft against his growing hardness. With a dip of his head, he breathed in her clean scent.

“I’m good now.” Quiet with a husky edge, her words sharpened the moment.

Stepping away, Cesare met her smile with a shrug of helplessness as his only answer for freezing up. She met his flushed look with one of her own before looking away. Neither willing to admit the treacherous cliff they’d briefly shined a light on.

“I really should be the one to help you with those lifts,” Viktor said, pushing into the private moment. “The boy can’t come close to holding that weight.”

Alexandra's eyes hardened. “Thanks, but I don’t need someone to carry the weight for me. If I get in trouble, I’m more than capable of getting myself out of it.”

Taking the rejection with an easy smile and a nod, Viktor backed off. He wasn’t used to being brushed aside, not with his looks. But the war was long, and this was just one battle.

They split in the hallway, with the girls heading to their own electives. Taking the stairs two at a time, Cesare reached the deserted part of the school where Tamlin kept his class. Opening the door, he was consumed by the sinfully black wolf.

As much as he wanted to run his hands through its warm fur, he stopped to admire its singular beauty. To call it a wolf was like calling the Mona Lisa a painting. Created of muscle and bone, the wolf was wedded to liquid grace, a shade of black with a meaning deeper than the world, existing as realities shadow. Born of what reality wasn’t, it was mysterious, wild, and free, an illusion wondrously real.

Ghosting across the floor, Cesare lost himself in its yellow, fathomless eyes, his fingers burying themselves in its belly soft fur. Its hulking presence dwarfed his fragile humanity, far from frightening, it had become a comfort. He’d never had a dog, but this had to be the nova to that candle. To have something love you for no reason other than that it found you worthy. Not for favor or advancement, not because you were useful or pretty, merely for being.

The bond with the wolf was more than that infantile feeling, reaching into the stygian depths of his soul were even he feared to tread. It was an acceptance stripped clean of reservation. Sitting up, the wolf let him bury his head in its neck as it gave a deep, base rumble of reassurance. Thrumming through his bones, if low growl shook some of the melancholy off his soul.

More and more his masks were cracking and crumbling, leaving his gruesome flayed face to greet the revolted eyes of his loves. It seemed natural, almost freeing, to simply be who he was without hiding his leprous truth. He’d hoped they’d accept him, but you can’t accept what you don’t understand. They’d never understand a diseased creature forged in the sewers of humanity’s discarded shit.

Pulling the bits of himself together, he turned to face Tamlin. The man’s scarred head looked worse today, ropy canyons twisting into a tangled mass of ruined flesh. “You will never be accepted. Not by the girls you call friends or those you think love you.”

Taking a step forward, the man laid his hand over Cesare’s heart. “This meat is all you have. It’s all you will ever have. The only thing that will stop those coming for you. Your only defense, your only weapon, is the rotting thing you live in. They will never protect you, never be there when you need them to be. Call it unfair, it is. Call it cruel, it is. Call it what you will, but reality will not bend for the likes of you.”

The harsh words hammered into Cesare, shaping his soul with ruthless, uncaring truth. Each strike warped steel, hardening it, shaping its edges, stripping off layers of dross, pushing him to accept Tamlin's truth. Cesare was a wolf, a killer, a villainous monster. Lying to the world lessened who he was and degraded his truth. Better an honest villain than a crooked hero.

If he could only depend on himself, then he’d be the toughest, cruelest son of a bitch the world had ever seen. Straightening, he met Tamlin’s dark eyes. “I’ve bonded with Aleph.”

A flash of pride shone in Tamlin's eyes before they cooled into black stones. “Show me.” He blurred, disappearing in a burst of supernatural speed.

It swept over him between seconds, tearing his senses away, drowning them under its greater reality. Existence was gutted, ribs racketed back, belly splayed open, organs wet and quivering before Cesare's eyes, all its secrets revealed in raw, bloody glory.

Tamlin moved through the air, dancing through space without touching it. Cesare wasn’t fast enough to keep up with him, but he didn’t have to. It was harder to attack than it was to defend. Tensing, Cesare’s arm flowed into position, taking the blow across his forearm as he stepped out of the way of Tamlin’s follow up kick.

Air moaned, low and hurt, as the man pivoted around Cesare. There was no way Cesare could turn in time to face him. But he didn't need to. He could see Tamlin in god like completeness, could feel the punch cutting the air. Ducking under the blow, Cesare spun to the side, avoiding the elbow that hammered the space he’d been.

Tamlin stopped, allowing Cesare a chance to turn and face him. “360 vision, and a complete knowledge of the battle space. How far does it extend?”

Part of him hesitated to give up his secrets, but if he wanted to get stronger, he had to have someone to train with. “400 feet in all directions. It gave me a taste in my fight with Greg and Dan, but it was stronger once I joined with it.”

Tamlin nodded, raw calculation glinting in his eyes. “It’s a start. I can feel it changing you, growing tendrils through your humanity, devouring it by inches. Its divine corruption will change you into something unique, powerful, and singular. Do you feel it draining your prana?”

Cesare’s attention turned inward, navigating his inner realities with the ease of long practice. The moment was cold around him, divorcing him from the world, leaving his instincts and primal self-exposed. Wound around his mind and soul, the Kundalini napped eternity away. Tracing Aleph's path through the chakras, Cesare found its filaments gorging themselves on his prana, its gluttonous feeding little more than a trickle next to the ocean of volatile energy making up his soul.

“It’s nothing,” Cesare said with a shrug.

Shaking his head, Tamlin’s voice was wondering. “Amazing.” The approval disappeared as quickly as it had come, stern, unforgiving look snapping into place. “You still haven’t come close to understanding Sen. Let go of Aleph.”

Tamlin moved on him as soon as Cesare’s fleshy senses surged into place, reality distorting around him into fragments and lies. Tamlin’s attacks came in shadows of movement, seen only as they cut air. It wasn’t as quick as when Tamlin tested Aleph’s gifts, but it was faster than human.

Weaving and dodging, Cesare's thoughts faded, intuition seeking brutal whispers of slaughter. Sen was less than a will-o-wisp dancing around him in a foggy night. Tamlin demanded Cesare react with lethal aggression to an opening birthed in the unknown land when attack turned to defense.

As the minutes passed into hours, Tamlin worked Cesare as hard as ever, pushing him to the ragged edge of ability. Torturing his body, he forced it to get stronger and faster to avoid the bursts of pain that came with disturbing regularity. By the end of the session, Cesare wobbled on his feet, the world blurry with sweat, tiredness dragging his hands down with every rasping breath.

As clean and dry as when they’d started, Tamlin had a tight look of disappointment. “You fail. Each opportunity you miss is your failure to survive.”

Cesare slumped to the mat, eyes closing in blessed darkness. “I feel it, but you move to quick ...”

Tamlin was quiet in the pregnant silence. “This is about perception, when you think you can attack, when you need to defend. If you think there are no openings, there will be no openings. You fail because you don’t understand. Sen is the moment and the song, when you dance, you don’t wait for the beat, you exist in the beat. Feel the cadence of the song, lead your opponent in the way a man leads a woman. You will always be slower, but you don’t always have to be dumber.” Tamlin’s feet whispered across the ground as he left.

Tamlin was right, Cesare had to make this work. It meant less than dog spit that he’d never be faster than those stalking his shadow. There was a moment when a person’s defenses fell as they attacked, he could feel it. But he couldn’t move fast enough to exploit it, he had to find another way.

After cleaning up with the bucket and sponge, he slipped on his street clothes and spent the rest of his time with the wolf. The nightmare made flesh was in his mind from the moment he entered the room to the time he stepped outside. That didn't change his need to feel it under his hands, to hear the deep growl of pleasure as his fingers found the sweet spots. He craved its flesh as deeply as the softness of a woman.

Cesare met the girls on the stairs. Kids shied away from the trio, leaving them in their own world, a self-sustaining place violently separate from the rest of the school. Jealous, envious, angry, or hateful, it didn’t matter what the students felt, they all moved aside. Because power was the only virtue worth having. Without it, your voice was nothing but a child’s whisper, stripped of worth, degraded and discarded as unworthy.

No matter how people felt, how much they hated or loved, power controlled every relationship. Anastasia and Alexandra had the power of life and death. It wasn’t only their monstrous strength but the twin devils, prestige and money. They weren’t just murderous super beasts; they were dominate abominations birthed from the ruling class. Children of the greatest darkness, unholy monsters birthed from the abyss of shadows.

That’s what kept the hateful glares from turning into anything more. Their power made them invincible gods to anyone not at their level, physically and politically. Safe in their bastion of elitism, the girls didn’t give a thought to the bugs infesting the shadows around them. Armored in the knowledge that those beneath them would never dare attack. It was different for Cesare; he knew the sidelong looks of consideration were snakes biding their time. Outside the bubble of protection the two gave off, he was fair game.

Cesare looked the girls over as they hit the stairs, heading out onto the campus. There would come a time when his friendships would break apart under the force of everything he couldn’t be. When that apocalypse happened, he’d have to deal with the monsters stalking his trail on his own. He had to be strong enough to live through that. He wasn’t concerned with keeping status, the sewer would welcome him as he fell from grace. The only thing he cared about was living through the aftermath. The girls were the guardians of this life. When they left, the shit stained tide would roll back in, welcoming its wayward son into its diseased depths.

Lost in thought, Cesare was surprised to walk into the gray twilight of the corridor of thorns. Letting the grim thoughts slide away, he focused on the now. The future would wait, but the present was forever impatient for its pound of flesh.

Alexandra waited for Cesare to get Anastasia set in her meditation. Her legs were sheathed in sweats, lose around ankles, skintight as they flowed over hulking calves and dense, powerfully developed thighs. Muscles jumped along her arms and legs, tightening and loosening with each stretch. Wholly female, she was beautiful in a way other woman couldn't be. Spying his open appreciation, a shy smile crossed her thin lips.

“I’m proud to stand beside you,” she said simply.

“I know, you told me when I won the fight,” he said, sharing her smile.

Blushing, she refused to look away from him. “I was proud of you.” Her eyes looked back on the memory with savage hunger. “You were glorious. Powerful, lethal, dangerous, dominate, it was … the finest of moments. But that’s not the reason I’m proud to be with you.” She licked her lips with hesitation before pushing on, “The wendigo was like me, uncaring and cruel, it took from the world with the right of a god. I’ve never felt a kinship with anyone that made me proud of who I was … of what I am. But seeing you fight, I knew I’d finally met someone like me and worthy of … admiration.”

Without hesitation, she’d opened her tender spots to him. Submissively baring her throat, she'd shown him her underbelly, letting him see the fragile heart under the psychopath. He refused to give any less. “You gave me the courage to show that part of myself. How could I be ashamed of who I am when I see how beautiful you are?”

Lost in the moment and her eyes, he didn’t realize he'd reached for her until his fingers ran down her angular face. He traced the razor fine line of a cheekbone in a caress irresistibly inappropriate. “You gave me that. You made me see I could be myself without shame.”

Alexandra leaned into the caress, imprinting it in the small spaces of her heart before pulling back. In sync as they so often were in this place, desperate not to cross a line neither could recover from. Letting someone close only brought pain, they’d learned that lesson through broken bones and flayed hearts. Better to keep to this gray area, unsatisfied, unwanted, but safe.

They moved together, punches flying fast and hard, seeking the meat of dominance. A dance clothed in scarlet joy. Alexandra wanted to break him, to see him on the ground, a bleeding wreck drowning in his own blood. The need burned in her eyes without a shadow of apology. She liked hurting him, glorying in his pain.

Alexandra’s cruelty called to his own, a bared snarl of bloody lust stretching across his face as he sank a fist into her stomach, pulling the power at the last second. Cesare longed to see that face bloodied, eyes tight with pain. But that paled next to the raw need gnawing at his bones, the thing that pushed sore muscles to the point of tearing in a futile effort to keep up with her. She was a tiger, amoral and brutally unforgiving, and he wanted to make her submit. Hungered to make this untamed thing of flashing fists and bone breaking punches his.

It wasn’t only dominance, a deeper meaning threaded through the grunts of exertion and pain. This was the way they helped each other, by ravaging and tearing, flensing weak meat from bone for something stronger to take its place. In this moment of sweat and pain, they could unveil who they truly were. Facing each other not as vampire and human but as lioness and wolf.

The timer broke them apart, backing away with feral smiles of hunger. He was better than her, but she had the insurmountable benefits of being stronger, faster, and more experienced. Walking over to his bag, he got out her latest lesson.

“In 1943, trying to prevent the Nazi’s from getting a tactical nuke, a group of commandos was sent to sabotage a hard water plant.” Handing over the book, he continued, “Go through it, we’ll go over your choices later.” She nodded, already moving to where she could work on the assignment without being bothered by his training with Anastasia.

Smiling at her enthusiasm, he walked to where Anastasia waited. The girl’s eyes moved between him and where Alexandra sat. Thoughts darkened the akatharton’s eyes, snakes buried in the rotting forest loam, they wound too deep for him to guess what they were.

Walking beside each other, they made their way to the range. Heat washed over Cesare as he stepped into her space. His hands caressed down her hips, pulling her flush against him. Fever hot with the smell of jasmine, she was warmth and softness. Delectable curves and nubile flesh wrapped in a fire searing anyone that dared to touch her. Yet, no matter the pain, he kept coming back to that black flame. No matter how far she pushed him away during the day, this moment was theirs. She may reject his touch in the outside world, but in this space, she accepted it with an eagerness that set his blood on fire.

She pushed into him, molding her body into his with a need that echoed his own. Anastasia’s fingers traced his hands with a longing he didn’t understand given what had happened today.

“I don’t want that.” She wasn’t talking about now; she was picking up the conversation from a week ago. He’d told her that he wanted her, but only in the way of darkness, all possession and wanton hunger wrapped in cruel obsession.

“I care about you more than anyone outside my family. But I have my own goals, thoughts, and feelings, I won’t give those up for you, I won’t be owned, enslaved to anyone’s will.” Anger stoked her voice as feverishly hot skin took on an edge of pain as emotions flared.

Cooling down, she relaxed her painful grip on his hands, returning to a smooth caress. “If you wanted to be my boyfriend, I’d say yes; hell, I’d even ask you,” she said, ass pushing into his hardness. “You know what I need, the person I want to become. While my mother fucks who she wants, I don't have that option. The ones with the assets to be worth allying with will want to be paid in kind. My connections, money, pedigree, and reputation are the wealth I bring to the partnership. Beign with you in the way you want would taint my offering, make me damaged goods in their eyes. I don’t have centuries of work on my empire and an army of daughters backing me, I need to keep my options open; to be … available … in case an advantageous relationship presents itself.”

Cesare swallowed the words that squirmed to get out. “You're offering to make me a toy. Someone to play with while you keep your eye on the prize. What happens when you find that guy with the alliance you need? You fuck us both, throw some sloppy seconds my way? Put me out to pasture until you can’t use him anymore? Ask me to be part of your harem and enslave me to your will?”

Chuckling, his breath ghosted over her tortured flesh, tearing a shiver from her body. “I won’t be your back up bitch. I want to own, for your flesh to hunger for only me, to have your savage strength at my back, as I’m at yours. To be more important than any career or sweaty fucks you can rack up.”

The slow touch of her hands spoke of longing but her voice was gentle steel. “I love you Cesare, more than I’ve ever loved. But I won’t give up my dreams for you. You always ask for things I can’t give you.”

“No, I only refuse to lie about what I want.”

It wasn't that they didn’t love each other. She wanted a relationship built on lust and like, convenience in every shifting shade of its lying face. He wanted the owning that endured, stitching flesh to flesh neither able to move without tearing meat from bone.