Sitting at the table, Cesare took his books out, noticing quickly Anastasia hadn't opened her bag. The others would be coming for them, and they needed to look innocent. Whatever was holding her up had to be taken care of now.

“I don’t belong to you,” Anastasia said, letting the statement settle between them before continuing. “I like you Cesare, and you’re my friend, but I don’t belong to you or anyone. I appreciate what you’ve done for me, more than you can know, but I won’t be someone’s property. Not even yours.”

A low, vicious hiss came from behind him as Alexandra’s anger cut through the air. He felt the vampires cold hand come down on his shoulder, the silent support a welcome anchor in the storm of his violent rage. Cesare reached into his bag, the black aggression that surged in him washing along the walls of his self-discipline, its cold acid wearing at the hard rock. It was long minutes before he could respond or even look at the girl beside him.

When he meet Anastasia eyes, whatever she saw there had her flinching back. “You know I used to think being alone meant you were strong. I’ve met people that didn’t need anybody. Cold and dead eyed, they walked through a frozen wasteland. They loved no one and no one loved them. That’s what love means, that you belong to someone. Because you’ve given a part of yourself to them. Stitched flesh to flesh, and the secret is, you don’t want to get away. I belong to you, Alexandra, Elizabeth, and Lady Kali. And I’m proud of it. Live your life without belonging to anyone, at the end, you’ll be no better than a diseased ridden dog.”

She met his words with a hot glare of her own. Looking beyond him, she locked eyes with the vampire. “Do you belong to him?”

“You don’t understand, because you’ve never loved anything but yourself. I belong to God, every morning I consign my body and soul to Christ. He is first in my life, beyond anything or anyone. After God, I am a sword in the hands of the Order of the Dragon, a weapon to cut down unbelievers. Finally, I belong to those I care about, the people who I’d die or kill for.” Her words were hard and unforgiving as she faced the Harab Serapel. “You look at belonging to someone as a degrading thing. I look at it as an honor. I belong to Cesare in the same way he belongs to me. He would kill for me; he would die for me. Why would I regret belonging to a man like that?”

Unable to hold the vampire’s eyes, Anastasia started taking out her own books. She wasn’t defeated; she was only choosing to fight another day. She’d take her time and think over the vampire’s arguments and when she came back, she’d be ready for a balls to the wall fight.

In fits and starts, they worked on Cesare’s remedial school work. They’d been through a lot as a group, and there were bonds between them that none of them understood. That was as much a weakness as a strength. The closer you got to someone, the more you hated them. Love and hate twisting around each other in a mad dance of incestuous homicide.

Consumed by their work, it was only by fortune Cesare caught the group cutting through the lunchroom. Swinging his leg around the bench, Cesare casually stood. He didn’t want to look like he was scared, but he wouldn't be caught sitting while they loomed over him. Despite their differences, the two girls followed, forming up before the coming Thagirion.

Jerold lead the pack of fighters with Blaez on his right and Abraxas to his left, Pantagruel towered over the three men at the tail. A cold, triumphant light shone in Jerold’s eyes as he stopped a few feet away. “I have witnesses putting you at the site of an unprovoked assault on a student. Do you have anything to say before we take this to my office?” Like a stone thrown into a pool, silence spread through the room.

A tight grin sliced across Cesare’s face at the public threat. He was impressed with the speed Jerold had acted. That didn't stop the rush of glee at the smack down he was about to give the arrogant popsicle. “They put me at the site, but not the one fighting … right?” Cesare asked, eyes never leaving the teacher.

“We both know you’re the one. What kind of man beats girls for fun?” Jerold’s voice was carefully layered disgust, just loud enough to carry. “I can understand a fight with a guy, but a girl … there is no excuse.”

“Since I don’t know who you’re talking about, I can’t say why I’d attack her. Do you have proof besides vague rumors about me being close to the fight? What does the student say?” That was the big one. If the victim told Jerold that Cesare was the one, he was dead in the water.

Jerold hesitated for a telling second, eyes drifting away from Cesare’s. “We know it’s you.”

Holding his sigh of relief back, Cesare pushed the attack. “But you can’t prove it was me?”

Stepping forward, Jerold glared down at Cesare, a wash of cold air swirled around them as the man’s anger radiated off him. “Come clean and I’ll make this easy on you.” His eyes narrowed with cool distaste. “Before you came, we had order. The Thagirion kept the peace, and the students gave them the respect they deserved. We had standards, now, we have you. Kids fighting in hallways, pornography on walls, students afraid to cross your path. Back in my day, we’d have put you in your place and buried you there.”

Taking in the silent room, Cesare met the eyes of the students as they watched the showdown. “I didn’t make this shit hole; I just refuse to pretend it doesn’t stink. The Thagirion were scum before I came, I sure as hell didn’t make them that way. They’re supposed to protect, but what we need is protection from them. I might only be a cockroach worth nothing more than the garbage I feed on.” The bastard brother of a smile crossed Cesare’s face, hate, malice, and bared teeth. “But you know what they say about cockroaches. They never really go away.”

“If you had any self-respect, you'd leave before you bring it down around you. I won’t see something beautiful that’s stood for over a thousand years, fouled by street trash. You can't fathom how far I’ll go to protect my home.” With a visible effort, Jerold pulled back. “But I don’t have to do that. The Order of the Dragon requires its squires to swear oaths of piety, including truthfulness. Alexandra Dracul, did Cesare get in a fight today and break a girl’s arm.”

Cesare watched the vampire out of the corner of his eye. This was always in the cards, the one hand he couldn't top. He never expected her to turn away from her God or the Order, not for him. Those things were the treasures of her life, she thought they were what made her who she was. The truth was, they didn’t honor her; she brought honor to them.

Alexandra stiffened at the question. “I refuse.”

Jerold slowly turned to the vampire, eyes settling on the girl with the weight of a man who’d dealt with monstrous children day in and day out for years. “I asked you a question child, and you will answer. Unless you’ve forgotten, you are a student and I’m a teacher. Refusal is not an option.”

“I don’t answer to you. I answer to God and the Order of the Dragon.” She smiled in the face of the teacher’s icy rage. “My father is Lord Dracul, Grand Master of the Order of the Dragons, First Knight of Christ. I have faced his fury and held strong. Do you think your special snowflakeness intimidates me?”

Almost driven to real emotion by her words, Jerold’s fingers tightened in anger. No matter how far gone he was, Jerold had to know that pushing the vampire was doomed. She was a soldier, used to the company of far more dangerous men than him. Trying to intimidate her was like throwing stones at a tank and expecting it to fall over.

Jerold glared at the three with impotent fury. Without a confession or a reliable witness, Jerold had nothing. He needed one of them to break and tell him what happened; he needed a confession.

His words came low and soft, but in the dead quiet of the room they carried. “You don’t understand what’s at stake. You girls are from two of the most powerful families of our race. You can’t understand what it’s like for someone with no family and little power in our world. They're left out in the cold, with nothing to make a life from.” He gestured at the room and the school beyond it. “This place teaches them the skills to make a place for themselves in the world. Saves them from dying on the streets or going to prison. Every year, I see kids get a second chance because here, they are safe. It’s not perfect, but it's far better than anything they can find out there. I won’t let you take their futures away from them.” Jerold words stretched across the room in a palatable wave, kids straightening in their seats as his words pulled them in.

Pivoting on his heel, Jerold stalked away with the Thagirion pulled into his wake. The problem was that the man believed in what he was fighting for. As far as he was concerned, Cesare was a cancer eating at the fabric of the school. Jerold would do whatever it took to cut that cancer out, even if it meant amputating a limb.

Shaking his head, Cesare led the girls out of the cafeteria. The attack on the girl could go either way. If she talked, Cesare was fucked. It all depended on how much she feared Cesare.

The classes blended together as they often did when he had something on his mind. Viktor continued courting of the girls, hovering around them in case they needed anything. Tamlin pushed him as hard as he ever had, and sometimes beyond, his mind and body reshaping under the man’s torturous teaching. Through all his fights with the scarred man, the wolf wove through his mind. Scarlet instincts were birthed under its ebony claws, fashioning him into a wolf from the inside out.

Walking out of the room, he hit the stairs faster than usual. Leaping down the steps, his mind traced the threads of his plans. Coming around a corner, he thumped into a kid hurrying the other way. The student’s books and papers went flying, while the boy stumbled and sprawled on his back. Cesare stance adjusted with the instinctive balance of a fighter; muscle memory burned into bone.

“Sorry about that man, I should have looked where I was going,” Cesare said as he started picking the guy’s books off the floor.

“No, no, it’s okay. Really, I can get that.” The words tumbled over each other as the boy scrambled to his feet.

“It’s no worry. Here, let me …” Cesare’s words trailed off as he picked up a packet of papers made into a small book. The cover stopped him in mid-motion, it was Anastasia silhouetted against a towering inferno of snapping flame, voluptuous breasts and wide hips all shadow and mystery. He remembered the fight and thinking it would be a great picture, apparently, he wasn’t the only one.

Straightening, he thumbed through the book as the boy went silent. A mixture of horrified terror wrapped around his throat like a nose, strangling his words stillborn and unmourned. The pictures were a replay of the ones posted on the walls of the cafeteria. “Where did you get it?” Cesare asked as students streamed by them, not a one coming within three feet of them.

Licking his lips, the boy’s words were the squeak of a mouse facing a tomcat. “I can’t tell you … when you buy them, you have to give an oath … that you’ll keep quiet.”

Looking up from the packet, Cesare slipped the book into his back pocket. “You have two choices. You can tell me what I want to know, right here, right now. Or, I can see you later and get my answers a strip of flesh at a time. Either way, you’ll talk. I guarantee the people you swore an oath to, won’t go as far as me.” The words were all the more terrifying for the calm, almost kind voice Cesare delivered them in.

Swallowing, the kid looked at the students walking around Cesare. Rabbits don't band together against the fox; they scatter for holes. “I got it from Greg.”

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