Cesare had done a lot for Blaez with no reason to do it. When everyone had turned their backs on him, Cesare had come forward. In his hour of need, Cesare had been there with a helping hand, the one person who had every reason to smile at his pain. The wolf didn’t like pushing his parent’s demands onto the only friend he had.

Grimacing, Cesare nodded acceptance. “I get it; you didn’t have a choice.”

Sighing in relief, the boy shrugged. “Sorry man, but I have to live with them.”

Troy and Kelly bowed deeply to Lady Kali, carefully lowering their eyes in submission. “Lady Kali, it’s a pleasure to see you.” Kali’s neutral expression gave nothing away but a low current of distaste. Only when they’d waited a few seconds for her response did Troy turn to Cesare. “We don’t mean to intrude, but Blaez has told us of your training, and frankly, we don’t believe him.”

Cesare remembered the last time the three of them met. He’d savaged them with words, taken his pound of flesh for the wrong their son had done him. Every drop of agony he’d wanted he’d gotten, glutting himself on their pain. He’d won, and in that revealing thought, the rest of his anger at the two drained away. He didn’t forgive them for raising a bully and a bastard, but he didn’t want to see them covered in lye and set on fire either.

“Lady Kali, you do me and the Ludus Noctis honor,” Jerold said, bowing his head respectfully.

Kali looked at the teacher, a dangerous glitter in her eyes. “I didn’t come for you.” Her eyes heated as the man lifted his head, fear leaking into the mask he wore. “I assure you, if I did, you'd already be on fire.”

Swallowing, Jerold shrunk back from Kali’s threat. She’d kill him as easily as a man would a cockroach and with as much interest. The man was nothing to her, an irritant that kept coming back no matter how many times it was put down. Cesare could see the raw calculation in the immortal’s eyes as she studied Jerold, scales balancing as she debated taking the teacher out of the equation. Cesare kissed the top of her head, meeting the playful eyes that jumped to him.

“I guess it’s time to put on a show,” Cesare said, disengaging from Kali and handing over his duffel to Alexandra. He knew the others would follow, after all, he was the dancing bear, how could they miss that?

Ducking into the arena, Cesare walked to the middle before turning and facing Blaez. The boy was already stripped down to his pants, discarded clothing piled on the ground. Taking the clothes up, Kelly folded her sons pants with the easy motions of long practice, eyes moving between Cesare and Blaez.

Surrounded by her harem, Kali and Anastasia stood next to each other. Nzinga's dark bulk framed the two, the killer’s intent eyes following the boys over the akatharton's heads. Outside that circle of deadly force, Elizabeth and Alexandra leaned against the fence, far enough apart that no one would mistake them for being together. Away from the others, Jerold stood with Blaez’s parents, not as one of them but not intruding either.

Lining the fence, the Cherries stood in silent witness for the student body. No matter what happened today, it was guaranteed to spread quick as gangrene through the school.

Stepping forward, Blaez drew everyone’s eyes. Cesare and him had played this game over and over, but Cesare had never seen this level of nervous tension. It wound through the boy’s muscles, casting his face into an expressionless mask.

With a groan, the werewolf’s face shattered outward in a burst of bloody flesh and bone shards. The mass of ripped and torn flesh flowed, bloody spittle dripping from the mangled mass. Knees exploded and reformed in an instant, sending the werewolf hunching forward, back twisting, muscles mounding across his form as the primal tore into being.

Bloody muscle ripped skin as it grew beyond the confines of the fleshy suit it wore, flaps of skin melted into the body, coarse dark hair flowing over the werewolf. It happened so quick it was hard to take in the full horror of the change, in seconds a fully formed monster stood in place of the boy.

Nine feet of raw temper and violence met Cesare’s eyes with a happy yip of welcome. Falling forward, the wolf’s clawed hand came down in a three-point stance. It had come a long way in only a few weeks, less the lumbering, clumsy thing it had been, leaner, faster, and most importantly, ready.

Surging forward in a spray of torn dirt and grass, the werewolf lunged at Cesare. Falling back, Cesare’s body contorted into a vertical plane, the scythe like claws sweeping over him. Snapping up, Cesare twisted to the side, staying close to the monster, limiting its ability to take advantage of its size.

A werewolf was a big creature, and with Cesare’s help, the thing was a lot faster and smarter than it used to be. But it was still a big hunk of meat as nimble as a wide assed semi. Darting forward, his punch hit the creature in its ribs, muscle more steel than flesh. There was no need to hold back, not with the werewolf’s regeneration.

Turning its head, the wolfs jaws snapped at him. Cesare smiled into its great maw of pink and wet, jagged teeth misshapen into something born to kill but never to eat. Rolling along the things massive bulk, Cesare set himself behind it as he exploded forward, knee lancing into the werewolf’s back, thrusting it forward and off balance.

Scrambling around, the wolf gave a mad grin, joy lighting the things eyes as it set itself for another charge. Insane, happy eyes, shifted off him to the people leaning on the fence behind Cesare. Joy vanished like water thrown into a crucible of molten steel. Rage, raw, and soaked in pain, flared into life, a low rumble ran through the air, it wasn’t a warning, or a promise, it was bared intent laid cold and lethal in the air.

“Cesare, get your ass out of that cage,” Kali said, a wash of heat blasting across the arena, grass bending as her power surged into being.

Cesare ignored the immortal, focusing on the werewolf that was slowly stalking forward, eyes never leaving its parents behind Cesare. “No.” The word was for both Kali and the werewolf.

Stalking forward on all fours, the massive killing machine was coiled power stripped of weakness. The lessons seared into bone through play, coming out in murderously fluid grace. Cesare met the things eyes as it stopped in front of him. Fury pulsed in the air, fueling the hateful rage was a pain so deep it had never healed, never scarred over, never been made right. A wrong that had carved a canyon into the things soul and left it hurting for years.

“Back away boy, we know how to deal with this.” Troy’s voice came from behind Cesare, the words too close to be from the safety of the fence.

It wasn’t even a choice. “Killer.” The word was low, the touch of hate on a fair day, the starving child outside the grocery store, the whore left to rot in the alley. “If they take another step, flatten them.”

Alexandra didn’t say anything but she didn’t need to. Cesare doubted everyuthing, but he never doubted the vampire had his back, as long as he met her brutal expectations. A low growl in stereo came from behind Cesare as Blaez’s parents stopped.

Reaching up, Cesare wrapped his fingers around the wolf’s muzzle, pulling its eyes from the people behind him. Meeting Cesare's eyes, a low pressure came from the wolf as it tried to look at the two behind him.

“I know.” Silken and pain filled, the words caressed the air, drawing a deeper, more cancerous darkness from the shadows. “You don’t think I understand, but I do. I know the pain of being cast out by your family, discarded as unworthy of love. My family threw me out knowing the streets would rape my body and savage my soul, that pain never leaves. It took me a long time to realize I was where I belonged. Unloved and unlovable, the streets are the only place for people like me. There would be no one coming to save me, I was where I belonged.” Broken and tortured, the words pulled at midnights children, shadows joining, stretching needy fingers toward Cesare.

A low whine came from the beast as it listened to words it couldn’t understand, but resonated along with its pain. Caressing along its scarred face, Cesare smiled into the disfigured maw of a beast maimed by nature and scarred by love. “They chose the human over the wolf, cast you aside as something diseased and frightening. They fed you shit while calling you the bad one.” Rough, ropy scars ran coarse under his fingers. “But they're the ugly ones. They’re not worth your love or hate, worthless things of meat and shame. Cast them aside as they have cast you aside, don’t let them dictate your life now that you’re finally finding a reason to live it.”

The words wove around the wolf, speaking of lose and pain. Days when all you had was your rage to keep you going, and the only thing you feared was more days alone. Blanketing the wolf, the words soaked it's soul in cool relief, a low whine of pain released a solitary tear to wind down its scarred muzzle. Burying its head in Cesare’s arms, the thing gave voice to the pain that had shaped it into an abomination.

“We didn’t know …” Kelly’s soft words came with Alexandra’s low hiss of warning.

“Then you’re a fool,” Cesare said, bracing his feet against the werewolf’s push into his chest. “Your son wasn’t born cut in two, you wielded the chainsaw. You cut him down the middle and labeled one part good and the other shit. Did you think the wolf wouldn’t look at you as its parents? Wouldn’t wonder why you didn’t love him? Why you only ever showed kindness to the human? You broke your son, don’t come looking to me for sympathy, I got no fucks for you.”

Cesare heard the quickly cut off cry as the werewolves walked away. Trying to hide from the world, the wolf pushed into his chest. No one had held it when it cried, no one had cared if it hurt. There was never someone in the dark to hold the thing when the world closed in. Pain had been the only thing to touch its scarred flesh, the only friend that never left.

He held the wolf for a time that was just between them. With the silence broken only by its keening whine. When it pulled back, the monster snuffled Cesare in cringing thanks for what anyone should expect.

Exhaustion hung over the killing machine, worn and threadbare from the pain letting, it gave a low whine as the change started. Thick, blackening hunks of meat fell off the beast revealing glistening organs. Hitting the ground with wet smacks, flesh rotted in seconds, forming a slurry of black sludge. Bones broke, tearing through skin with jagged splintered ends reshaping themselves under fey currents of violent power.

Falling, Blaez gasped as black sludge ran off his body, slime evaporating in the air. Taking the boy by his shoulder, Cesare helped him up. Troy and Kelly followed Cesare with their eyes, something perverse and needy burned there, snapping with greedy hunger

“How'd you do that?” The demand came from the quickly closing form of Nzinga.

Taking in the rapidly closing groups, Cesare steadied the boy on his shoulder. Kali and Anastasia were coming around the sparring arena at a good clip with the harem spread out around them. Nzinga formed the spears tip, eyes incandescent with something he couldn’t place. Her black tailored suit stretched over hugely muscled shoulders, night black skin thrown in stark relief by the mass of tawny stripped braids that framed her face and trailed down her back.

Alexandra was at his side in a rush of displaced air, vampire quickness slicing reality. Elizabeth walked up on Blaez’s other side, having cut through the fence to make sure she was by his side when he faced the others. Despite being a teacher, she made no move to help the boy as she studied the converging parties. Cesare eyed the groups before making his way to the fence.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cesare said, laying the wolf against the fence. Blaez gripped the roots hard, drinking deeply from the water bottle his dad passed him.

“No one since the Sundering has controlled the Beast,” Troy said quietly, intense eyes studying Cesare. “I’ve seen charlatans, wolf whisperers, shamans, hippies, and tree huggers, spouting new age nonsense about talking to the spirit of the wolf. Some get lucky for a time, but they all end up under the claws of the Beast.”

“I thought I was going crazy.” Blaez words were soft. “I’ve seen the fakes, and I thought no way you could be one. But you couldn’t be the real thing … when I told my parents, they wouldn’t let it go. I didn’t want to put you on the spot, not after what you’ve done for me, but they couldn’t leave it.” The boy ducked his head, the words coming whisper quiet. “And its been so long since I’ve done anything to make them proud.”

Cesare nodded, some of the fear leaving the boy’s face at his easy acceptance. “I don’t see what the big deal is. You just have to learn to talk its language, to know the wolf, and let the wolf know you.”

Kelly laid her hand on her husband as the man’s face turned red, stopping the tirade before it could start. “I don’t think you understand … Cesare … No one can talk to the Beast. All of us find a way to deal with it, but the understanding is a barbed, broken thing. Jealousy, hatred, cruelty, burned into the relationship from the beginning. We dominate it, beat it down, and enslave it, it’s a rabid mad thing chewing on its maggot ridden flesh. That’s the only partnership we know.” Drifting back to the memory of Cesare talking with the wolf, her eyes went distant with awe. “I’ve never seen or heard of anyone stopping a kill crazy Beast with words. Never. Not once in thousands of years has anyone stopped a Beast with anything less than lethal force.”

Troy took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he struggled to master something so primal it roared in his eyes. “This changes everything, even the Bouda realizes it.” Nzinga had never taken her eyes off Cesare as if seeing him for the first time.

“It changes things for you, it doesn't change shit for me,” Cesare said, not liking the proprietary way the three were eyeing him.

“I wonder how he'd do with those lost to the Occidere Rabidus?” Kelly said discarding Cesare’s words even as she watched him. “He might slow the descent into madness, maybe even stop it …”

“That's impossible,” Nzinga said flatly, voice carrying a desperate strength to it. Cesare had heard that tone before, when you'd lost all hope and it was easier to give up than to keep hurting.

“It’s impossible to talk to the Beast, yet, he did it,” Troy said simply.

Cesare shook his head, turning away from them. “Cool story bro, let me know how it turns out.”

“You don’t understand …” Troy said angrily even as a low hiss sliced the air.

Whipping around, Cesare looked to where Alexandra had a vice grip on the Troy’s hand. “Don’t touch, my Lord.” Dipped in violence there was no need for her to threaten, everyone knew the consequences of defying her words.

Slowly, Troy pulled his hand back, the tension in the air thrumming. “I don’t think you understand what this could mean for my people.”

Cesare met the man’s eyes. “I don’t think you understand how little I care.” This time when he turned there was no attempt to stop him, only a low growl of anger resounding from two throats.