Pushing open the cafeteria doors, sound blasted over Cesare. They were late, and that meant lunch was in full swing. Hundreds of kids desperate to validate their small lives made for an ear-splitting cacophony. The stragglers deserted the lunch line as they saw the three make for it, better hungry than marked as a pariah.

Sitting at their table, they pushed their trays aside and unpacked the remedial books. They'd just started eating when Alexandra set her hand on his with a nod to the oncoming man.

Jerold passed over the invisible line separating the students from the faculty. Elizabeth was behind him, tracking the icy asshole with a look reserved for particularly loathsome weeds. Alexandra’s hand tightened on Cesare’s, looking a question at him. He shook his head slowly, keeping her in her seat. The Thagirion hadn’t joined the man, which meant this an angle being worked, not an attack.

Stopping with the table between them, Jerold’s lips thinned with anger at them refusing to rise and greet him. Staring at the confrontation, the students were as attentive as carrion birds. Whispers broke out among the closest, information spreading with the quickness of beautiful lies. The realization seeped into Jerold as he looked over the cafeteria. He wasn’t a teacher coming to see students, he looked like a man begging a favor. He’d lost before he’d started, and from the cold fury that flared in his eyes, he knew it.

“I have an offer,” Jerold said, fingers steepling on the table as he leaned forward. Cesare looked up at the man, taking in his pressed black suit with its blade thin white tie, ice blond hair parted perfectly along the side. It gave him a ruthless look that worked well on the white on white man. But Cesare had seen under the mask of brutal control, into the primeval thing that dwelled in the frozen night.

Elizabeth skirted the side of the table; hands coming down on Cesare's shoulders in a gesture of support. “I'd appreciate it if you cleared any meetings through me.”

“I’m head of the Thagirion, charged with the protection of the school. I can talk to anyone at any time,” Jerold said, breath frosting out past his lips.

“You can talk to them, with me present. Are you forgetting, any student may ask for arbitration? Consider them asking for permanent arbitration where you're concerned,” Elizabeth said, hands tightening on Cesare.

Jerold’s eyes flashed with fury that disappeared as fast as it had come. “Given our recent friction, I understand your protectiveness.” He turned away from her, focusing on Cesare. “Your grades won't be enough to graduate.”

It wasn’t a surprise; they’d hoped something would change and put him over the top but nothing had. Cesare nodded for the man to continue.

“I need a teaching assistant for the Ludus Noctis. The credits should allow you to pass, if barely.” The table went silent at the offer, each of them caught in the barbed trap Jerold had laid for them.

“What could you possibly need him for?” Elizabeth asked from behind Cesare.

“I need help with the Cherries.” Seeing their looks, Jerold continued, “Every year we get kids who think they have what it takes to be gladiators. I’m required to let them train with us for a year before kicking them out. It’s a drain on real students and a waste of my time. Usually, I set them in front of a palus and have them pound wood for a year. They’ll be Cesare’s to mind.”

“I’ll take it.” Jerold smiled, teeth bared in victory at Cesare’s words before he pivoted and stepped away.

They were quiet as they watched the man walk away. “It cages you in a place where everything moves to his whim.” Cesare tilted his head back with a grin, meeting Elizabeth's concerned eyes.

“I know. He tried a frontal assault, and we left his best charred and bleeding on the field like discarded meat. He can’t touch Alexandra or Anastasia, not with their connections, but he can fuck me three ways from Sunday and hope I sink the team,” Cesare said as he looked across the room to see Jerold rejoin the teacher’s table. “If he can make me into his bitch, that stain will spread to the rest of you.”

“Why agree?” Alexandra asked, beating the others to the punch.

It's the only way,” Cesare said.

Alexandra met his eyes briefly. “If you need me, call.” She wasn’t doubting his ability, only reaffirming her commitment to him.

“This could be an opportunity for us,” Anastasia said, meeting the eyes of the other women. “The gladiators are second in power only to the Thagirion and us. Gaining their respect will put us one step closer to locking the Thagirion out.” Her eyes turned to Cesare. “You won’t have any friends in there, Cesare. It'll be you and them, nothing in between. In every way that counts, you'll be a Cheery, an outsider to an exclusive group.”

Cesare shrugged, the weight of Elizabeth’s hands making it seem more resigned than it was. “I’m used to it.” They didn’t know what to say to that, and he had no reason to make them feel worse. “You joining us for lunch?” he asked, looking up at Elizabeth who still hadn't removed her hands.

She looked down into his eyes. “I should get back to the faculty table; we were in the middle of a discussion about a teacher’s workshop when Jerold left.”

Smothering the brief flare of hurt at her words, Cesare nodded, taking up his books again. “Thanks for coming over, it could have gone badly if you hadn’t been looking over my shoulder.”

Hands leaving his shoulders, she walked away without a word. The kids pulled back as if she was diseased, a modern leper in the world of monsters. They'd never accept her. Powerful enough to make a goddess back down, but she didn't have the influence to make them play by her rules.

Cesare was eating when the story of their fight hit the lunchroom. It spread from the kids who'd been there like a cancer on steroids, jumping from table to table as the story was told and retold. He tracked it by the looks sent his way.

With his back to them, Viktor was racking weights as they walked into his classroom. His white tank top clung to his body like a second skin, showing off the mountain range he called a back. Muscles jumped and rippled in moving peaks and valleys with each weight racked.

The girls slowed as they walked to their dressing room, as Cesare headed alone into his. Stripping out of his clothes, Cesare's mind calmed as he entered the quiet place of training.

Stepping onto the faded, stained mat, he started his asana’s. Viktor stayed to the side, arranging weight sets for the girls to use. It made switching exercises easier if the weights, benches, and seats were ready. Down time was the death of gains, this way Viktor managed every second of recovery.

Viktor's eyes locked onto the girls as they stepped out of the locker room, tracking them on their way to Cesare. They had different warm up routines, the asana’s he used too punishing, contortions of meat and bone sliding over the edge into the grotesquely cruel to untrained bodies. But neither were new to weightlifting, their own routines fine-tuned through years of work.

“Cesare?” Alexandra asked, arms locked behind her back, fingers woven together. Coming up behind her, he gently lifted her arms, muscles stretching under steady force. Black sweats hugged her ass, perfect globes straining the fabric as she bent forward to his upward push. Alexandra had the body of a dedicated killer, even her ass shaped by the furnace of training.

There was one thing that never changed, no matter the day, he was the only one to spot or touch the girls. It was an unspoken rule, one Viktor respected by keeping his distance. The man made up for it by running avid eyes over their curves as they stretched.

The girls finished warming up before Cesare was done. His warmup was more than stretching to make sure he wouldn't pull a muscle lifting. He lived and died by his radical contortions, every punch or slip of the body was born in the torturous asana’s.

The girls were already deep in their lifts by the time he finished his last posture and moved onto weights. Laying down for his bench press, he lifted the barbell up and off the hooks, letting it settle just above his chest with a grunt. Suddenly, Alexandra was there, hands gently guiding his. The vampire’s attention never left the weights as they smoothly rose and fell. It wasn’t always her, sometimes he’d look up and see Anastasia looking down with an impish grin. While he kept an eye on them, they did the same for him.

She helped him with the last one, guiding the barbell up and onto its hook. “You know that doesn’t do anything for fighting strength, right?” she asked, stepping back to open space for him to sit up.

Cesare stretched with a satisfied smile. “It doesn’t improve core strength like the fundamental lifts, but I like to think it adds to my overall upper body.” She nodded, everyone had lifts they liked to do regardless of gain or goal.

“Get OFF!” Anastasia screamed, a wave of heat blasting on the heels of her rage infused words. Whipping around, Aleph came over Cesare in a rush of razored perception. The Kundalini struck in a flare of blinding gold, fangs sinking into Cesare’s Root Chakra with lethal speed, a torrent of strength raging through his subtle body.

Anastasia cowered back, the work bench she’d been using reduced to molten slag behind her. Eyes wild, whites showing around pinpricked pupils. Black flames flowed across her arms and dripped from her fingers, malignant melted steel pockmarking the ground. Viktor stood in front of her with his hands raised in surrender. Swiping up a massive dumbbell at his feet, Cesare let it fly at the feral man as he gave a savage roar. “Fuck OFF!” The words lanced into the room, tearing through the air, steel barbells whining in sympathy.

Twisting around, Viktor caught the dumbbell with one hand, spinning and dissipating the force as he let it fly against the wall. Glaring at Cesare, face warped by fury, Victor opened his mouth as Alexandra body checked him from his blind side with the kinetic force of an out-of-control semi. She followed his rocketing body to the wall, hand clamping around his throat, fingers biting deep.

Vamped out, her face was a wasteland of emaciated cheeks, sharp cheekbones, and hollow, shadowed eyes. A terrible hiss sliced the air as skeletal hands lifted Viktor clear of the floor, pinning him against the wall by his neck. Alexandra emanated physical devastation, violence freed from any moral center.

Viktor snarled into the hissing vampiric face, body bulking with immense power, white tank top tearing and falling down in strips. The sweats molded to his body bust under the kinetic force of bulging muscles. Viktor’s brow thickened, shadowing his eyes. His snarl deepened, taking on the base note of an affronted alpha.

Thick and calloused, knuckles reinforced with dense bone, his hands curled around Alexandra's, stopping her from strangling him. Strength collided, fury rising in the man’s face as he matched his power against the vampires and found it wanting. He was a legend, had killed more men than small nations. Against the unleashed vampire prodigy, he was left wanting. Jackknifing, the man used the power of his body to break the vampires hold, snapping away from her and coming up fighting.

He wasn’t fast, he was just good. Even as Alexandra flowed into her stance, he was in her guard, thick, bony fist smashing her face with breaking force. Viktor’s knee was moving even as his fist connected, burying itself in her stomach with a meaty sound. Stepping back, his back fist hammered her face.

Viktor growled, muscles tensing as he puffed up, yellow eyes glaring at the vampire, demanding she recognize his dominance. Raising her head, Alexandra smiled, needle fangs shining an unholy white in the light. “Silly, filthy, thing, you think you can fight me. I’m Varacolaci, those who swallow the sun and rule the night. You dare challenge, my Lord? I’ll take your skin to lay at his feet, a sign of my devotion.”

Viktor’s growl dipped in uneasy realization, but it was too late to calm the vampire down. Alexandra flashed forward, her backhand sending Viktor reeling, blood spilling from his split lips. Precise punches and kicks cracked into the vampire, Alexandra shrugging them off with the unconcern of a lion fighting a butterfly. He was wily, slipping around her best combo's but when she connected, she hit like a sledgehammer.

Breathtakingly beautiful, the vampire was a vision of murder. Under Aleph’s eyes, every step of her deadly dance was laid out, layers overlapping, wet muscle under the image of clothes, information saturating Cesare as seconds burned across neurons. Beyond the sight of man, only Alephs divine sight let him track her. A lion taking down a grizzly, power wedded to incredible force, in and out of Victors guard, her body was a supple weapon of liquid steel and unbreakable will.

No matter how fast she tore through the air, Viktor knew where she’d be. His punches moved into the space she would be before she got there. His punches fell with relentless, punishing force, he was in the prime of his life, as deadly at war as he would ever be. This was what he was famous for, and he showed it in every economical movement.

Cesare pulled his eyes off them and ran to Anastasia. He was a bare few feet away before she noticed him, jumping into his arms and burying her face in his chest. Holding her, his hand ran down her back. “What happened?”

Anastasia’s arms tightened around him, her voice muffled by his shirt. “I was squatting, and he came up behind me to spot me … I couldn’t … I didn’t want him close to me … touching me …” Tears left wet tracks down her cheeks as she looked at him. “After the attack, I can’t take people … touching ... or getting close.”

Pulling her close, his fingers ran over the tortured skin at the back of her head as his chest absorbed her sobs. No one could walked through the crucible she had without bearing the maiming the fire left. She’d come out the other side surprisingly sane. But she’d walked through the gates of her old life and into her new one with scars deeper than flesh.

Kissing her head, his voice was low. “I understand. I’m here.” She burrowed into his chest, hands cupping his ass. He grinned as he felt her squeeze his butt. It was who and what she was, food, comfort, love, and lust, birthed in the corrupting black flame of her sexuality. She touched him to know she could touch him, to soak in the welcome of flesh, that he cared enough to let her run her hands over his ass. She possessed his body with each caress, marking her territory.

“I missed this,” she said quietly, breathing in his scent. The twin comforts of body and words eased her back from the edge. His scent and voice had been the two constants through the horror.

“Good, now let’s stop Alexandra from killing Viktor,” Cesare said as he turned her so he was flush against her back. Anastasia sighed in satisfaction, relaxing into his warm bulk and the hard planes of his muscles. His hands settled along her hips, moving down to her inner thighs without thought.

Cesare had never lost awareness of the two fighters. Aleph's senses fed directly into his soul, reducing his eyes to wet sacks of meat. The fighters had gone back and forth across the room, Viktor hitting Alexandra four to five times for every one she landed. Cesare knew she didn't need saving, but that didn't mean she wasn't taking damage despite her ability to hide it from Viktor.

“Give Viktor a wake-up call.” The words were less than a whispering caress across Anastasia’s ear.

“Gladly.” Her hand flashed forward, black flames snapping into the air with voracious hunger, eager to devour the feral man. Viktor tucked and rolled out of way of the blast, black flames hitting stone. Super-heated rock flashed red with a crackling sound, fault lines spreading from the blast zone.

“Alexandra!” The word stopped the vampire in mid-step.

Setting her foot down, she pivoted away from Viktor with the concern of a lioness for a cub. Her eyes locked with Cesare’s as she stalked to his side. Taking a spot on his left, she settled her eyes on the wary creature standing ready at the far side of the room. Raising an eyebrow thick with warped bone, Viktor’s voice was a rough, guttural thing. “I only moved to help her.”

“You don’t touch them. They're mine, they’ll never be yours. If they need help, I’m here,” Cesare said, voice stroking the violence in the air, shadows shifting, stretching, and creeping across the floor. Menace gathered in the air, a storm front felt along the insides of the thigh and the sensitive corners of the soul, vicious, cruel, and potent.

Anastasia relaxed further into his arms, this one time appreciating the benefit of being owned. Viktor took in the intimate way they held each other with Anastasia molded to Cesare, arms pushed against Anastasia’s breasts; hands close to cupping her core.

Viktor’s eyes heated as they shifted to the poised vampire at Cesare's side. She was at rest but ready, willing to rejoin the fight, waiting only for Cesare’s word. They’d fought a battle of attrition, neither having the power to put the other down. No one knew who’d win, her defense or Viktor’s offense. “They're mine to me, and I'm there’s. We don’t need you. We don’t want you. You don’t belong.”

Alexandra gave a low, dangerous hiss of pleasure at Cesare’s words as black flame lit around Anastasia’s hands in recognition of the bone deep truth. They didn’t have much at school, but they had each other.

Viktor gave a slow nod, body relaxing, bone ridges fading. Muscles that had bulked and bulged melted back into the human range, albeit the edge of human. “I got you. We’ll mark this up to a lesson learned. Clean this fucking mess while I change.” His words were cast behind him as he stalked into the men's locker room.