The Furies retreated, Elizabeth staying with them. “You're pushing them hard, Cesare,” Elizabeth whispered as they reached the table. Taking out his study books, he met her worried eyes.

“I can’t do this softly, the Umbrae Lunae would never respect us if we did it any other way. We either play to the people or we die under their pitchforks,” Cesare said, already thumbing through his book for his place.

“It’s only a matter of time before he comes for you,” Elizabeth said, hand clenching into a fist of white knuckles.

Nodding his agreement, Cesare sipped his tea. “Once I take everything from him, and he has nothing left to lose, he won’t have any reason to hold back.” The girls froze in the process of laying their books down. “I’ll either be able to face him, escape, or die. It was always going to come down to him or me.”

Exchanging long looks, it obviously meant more to them. Slowly, the books came down on the table, Alexandra flipping through pages before looking at him seriously. “I’d give myself even odds against the dragon in an enclosed space. Out in the open, I’d put the odds at seventy to thirty in his favor, if I was armed and ready. You’ve come a long way, but dragons are a league of their own.”

Sighing, Cesare met the worried vampires’ eyes. “It’s no different than any fight.”

“You’ll be fighting a dragon, Cesare. That makes it different,” Alexandra stressed.

Facing her, he ignored the others. “No, it’s not. Musashi wrote that once you know how to defeat one man, you know how to defeat all men. Tactics, surprise, planning, flexibility, knowing your enemy, these are the things that bring victory.” He looked at her pointedly. “Not axes, swords, and muscle.”

The three went silent, each of them turning over his words. “You think you can win?” Elizabeth questioned, pushing through the abstract advice.

“I think I have as much chance as I’ve ever had.” Cesare dodged neatly, smiling into her frustration before giving in. “Musashi killed a man armed with live steel at thirteen with a wooden sword. He beat the man to death. One man or an army of men, a dragon or a wolf, they’re all the same. It’s always the same fight. I think I have as much chance as Musashi did at his first fight.”

They seemed satisfied with that, they’d focused on Musashi winning, not the part about a boy facing a skilled swordsman. You take a child and throw him into a ring with a trained Samurai and that boy was meat. Cesare didn't think for one second he'd be coming out of the fight alive.

Maybe they didn’t want to think about it, it was easy to lie to those that wanted to believe. The woman at the table desperately wanted to be convinced that everything would be okay. The only other option was that Cesare would be butchered as a stepping stone for girls who thought he was acceptable collateral damage. But then, he didn’t want to face that reality either.

It was easy to get lulled into the idea that they were friends and they’d stand by him. Easier than dying. Cesare willfully turned his eyes away from the squirming, ugly truth. He was useful, meat to feed their ambitions, an asset to be used, destined to be discarded when empty.

If he stopped, if he got it through his head that he deserved to live, they'd turn away from him. Alexandra didn’t want to serve a nobody, she would bow her head only to an avatar of crazed slaughter. A validation for her own behavior, a thing that condoned her insanity. A normal student would never hold her attention.

Anastasia wanted the power only position could birth. She thirsted to control the lives around her. She’d gone into the Thagirion with a slogan of helping the weak but it was a mask, she hungered for power. She wanted to be like her mother, to have an army and a following, venerated and worshipped. If he walked away, she'd find another boy to hone her edge, someone else’s flesh to use to barter her way into the halls of power.

Elizabeth was the most complex and the simplest. She was his friend, but only on her terms. Elizabeth would back him when she agreed with him, and not a moment before. Tread off that moral compass and she’d turn her back on him. Idealistic people were fickle, you'll never measure up.

They were all the same. Feasting on his heart and soul, cutting strips of wet meat from his carcass, tearing out slippery organs, gorging themselves at his expense. It wasn’t that they didn’t realize what they were doing, it’s that they didn’t care. He was a meal they’d strip to the bone until forced to seek another. That was the price of their friendship.

Elizabeth effortlessly claimed leadership of the teaching. It wasn’t even a fight; she assumed the mantle with the simple power of knowing exactly what she was doing. She worked through the material, relegating the others to assistants.

In only a few minutes she made clear the difference between gifted amateurs and professional genius. Elizabeth loved to teach, this wasn’t a job she’d fallen into by accident, it was a calling, hung onto when everyone had tried to strip it from her. Lively and engaged, she pulled his attention in with tone and words.

The hour ended and Elizabeth pushed the book away, getting reluctantly to her feet. Hurrying to her class she left with a quick goodbye. The rest of them gathered their stuff at a more sedate pace.

“You should ask her to teach you,” Anastasia said cinching her backpack with a ruthless yank. Unwilling to agree with the other girl, Alexandra gave a grunt of frustrated anger.

They started down the hallway as Cesare thought over what the girl had said. “She’s talented, trained, and has years of experience. It’s no insult not to be as good as her,” Cesare said, the words mild and plain under the girls glares, sadness burning their eyes.

It came to him that this time meant a lot to them. Maybe they were willing to sacrifice him for their need, but they wanted to pretend they were friends. That meant helping him. That boy on the street you gave five dollars too, he doesn’t care if you do it out of guilt or faith, all that matters is that he'll eat. Cesare was the same, he was just happy to have someone.

Stopping, he looked at the girls for a long minute, taking in the anger with its bedrock of sadness. “Elizabeth would never spend the time to teach me. She’d have to put aside the extra classes she takes on the side, and she won’t do that.”

His words softened with raw feeling, aching with a lifetime of being at the bottom of any list of give a fucks. “The sacrifices she’d have to make to help me are too high. I simply don’t matter that much.” Shaking his head, he turned away from the pity in their eyes, briskly walking down the hallway. “I understand my place.” A world was said in four words, the plea of a dying leper for his family, the cry of a friend as he laid on the ground bleeding from a wound given from their one true love, the sorrowing call of a child for its mother, and the sure and certain understanding of a homeless kid.

The other's followed silently. Neither had easy lives, both had more than their share of hard times and long nights. But life was measured in degrees, not in kind. It was one thing to get ignored by your father and another to know your father never wanted you. It hurt to have your mother not be there for your birthdays, and another to know your mother had thrown you away. As much as they liked to pretend they understood the flawed man that prowled between them, there was no way to quantify the pain he’d faced or the damage it had done to him.

Viktor gave them a nod as they came in, tracking the sober looking girls. But his eyes didn’t rest on their faces. While Kali may have fucked him up, it would take a lot more than a love tap to change Viktor.

Cesare changed clothes and was out before the girls. When the others came out, they joined him on the mats. After weeks, there was no need for words. It was a time when the moment demanded their focus, working out a thing of brutal effort, pain, sweat, and determination. Pitting the will of the person against the iron of the weights and a past that's always rosier than the present.

Viktor kept his distance, prowling around a boundary as invisible as it was viciously enforced. No one knew what would happen if the man broke that wall, but they all knew the day would come when he did. This was his territory; he might pretend to play by their rules, but it was still his game. Viktor was a lone creature prowling around a pack, looking for an opening, pushing and retreating, each time coming a little closer.

For all Viktor’s subtle provocation, these few hours were something Cesare treasured. He'd grown up knowing only the degenerate and perverse wanted to touch or be touched by him. Here his touch was wanted, the play of calloused hands over sweat streaked shoulders, the soft touch against bulging muscles engorged with blood. Smooth and in control, he kept the euphoria to a low burn in the back of his mind. It wasn’t just that the girls were gorgeous, their welcome a blessing God had long denied him. It was wonderful, beautiful, and one of the best parts of his day.

It meant as much to them, if for different reasons. Alexandra had grown up in a world of fear and isolation where touching was violent and final. Now more than ever, she was alienated from others by her murderous power, and her shaky hold on sanity. No one wanted to get close to a vampire that was unstoppably powerful and insane. Better to keep your distance from the thing sheathed in the flesh of a girl. Every touch to her was a gift from God, another brick in the wall against the black tide of melancholy that threatened to swallow her.

Anastasia couldn’t stand the touch of people, not after the attack. Trust seared out of her soul with the flesh she’d sloughed off. An almost involuntary thing twisted into the bodies flesh, a tensing of muscles, the low burn of hateful power bleeding into her soul. Anger, fear, and a bone deep hate mingling into a volatile thing that hungered to devour. Everything but Cesare, the voice that had gotten her through the melting of her face and maiming of body, the strength that had kept her soul from cracking and shattering like cheap crystal.

This was more than a place to work out. It was a time when Cesare could touch and hold the girls under the illusion of helping. When they could speak with a truer voice than words, the brush of hands against straining muscle soft with support and care. Every touch true and special, the answer to so many hopes and dreams. Only a person who'd lived life where every touch wad done with violence or hunger, could understand how much it meant when the dream came true.

He shared a look of understanding with the girls as they split up after class. It was strange to feel so close and yet separated by insurmountable distance. Shaking off the thoughts, Cesare darted up the stairs, grinning as being with the wolf crowded out everything else.

Pushing into the room, he locked with the eager eyes of the beast. Rising in a rippling stretch, the wolf’s wild yellow eyes were anathema to the civilized. A black hole in the sunlight that poured through the room, it dimed the world with its presence. Reality submitted to the wolf, baring its throat to something simply more.

Without realizing he’d moved, he was in front of the wolf, luxuriously soft fur running through his fingers. A low rumble vibrated through the air, joy and pleasure softening the wolfs face into a dreamy look of happiness. A deep, cascading growl radiated from Cesare in counterpoint to the wolf. Cesare lowered his head until only inches separated their eyes.

It was in his mind, settling into its place with an almost audible click of rightness. Untamed and feral, its presence called to the rawest depths of Cesare. Day by day, the wolf became more a part of him, making its den in his mind, carving out a sanctuary in his heart. It had come on him slowly until it was an almost physical wrench when he had to leave.

Everyday Cesare understood the wolf better, his own mind aligning with its truth as the changes warped him into kin. Reordering his instincts, realigning his basic structure into something more animal than man. A thing that lived in the body of a man but reacted with the pure instincts of a wolf.

Werewolves were an unholy joining of man and wolf, grotesque mockeries of both. The blind rage of humanity, its vain, prideful self-destruction, killing need wedded to perversity. Corrupt cesspools of conflicting instincts, they were nothing but engines of mindless slaughter, bombs coated in shit.

The wolf pushed into his mind, taking Cesare deeper than he could go on his own, down to the place of golden and scarlet lines on their field of black. Every day he worked with Tamlin the wolf moved through his mind, changing his instincts a little at a time, remaking Cesare into something wholly new. Pride pulsed through the bond as the wolf stared out over the field. It was a slow process to prevent his mind from splintering, but the wolf was pleased.

The time he could back out was long dead, its bones consumed by the wasteland of never. It was a strange, tortured place, hating who he'd been and disgusted by who he was becoming with only self-loathing tying the two together.

When you’d lived through enough bad times, had enough shit done to you, there came a time when you couldn’t blame the world anymore. That hatred had to go somewhere and like a starving dog, it turned on you, savaging your heart, mangling your soul into something crippled beyond healing, maimed thing of ugliness. Hate made a pit of your private places, laying down among the ragged shreds of self-confidence.

No matter how much it hurt, or maimed, it was treasured. Because it was better to have that hurtful, spiteful thing, then nothing. Serpents that spoke in the dark hours of the night, suicide, loathing, depression, and madness, they all wound around his soul. Each a beloved friend he’d cuddled close, let suckle from his black soul, his milk bitterness and malice.

“Thinking too much leads to hesitation. I don’t have to tell you what that would mean for someone in your position,” Tamlin said from behind him, the hard words sliding cold and sharp into Cesare’s mind.

The shit wrong with Cesare wasn’t going away, nothing could fix years the years of damage. All he could do was take what he could from the cold bitch called life.

Dropping his duffel, Cesare followed Tamlin to the mats. “You’ve come a long way in a short time.” Pivoting, the man faced Cesare. “In another time and place, you’d be praised for what you’ve accomplished, but this isn’t that time. Here, the only prize you get is another day.” He gave a nod to the wolf that watched the lecture intently. “For a wolf, that’s enough.”