The Discarded

Alone Chapter 17 - 2

"You seem to be getting into the habit of backing my plays?" Cesare said, eyeing the werewolf.

Silence fell as they slowed down. "I lost everything to you. I'd known my pack my whole life, you shattered that, stole my best friends from me like it was nothing. I knew their families, their girls, when they got their first piece of ass and the first time they got high. We were like brothers." The werewolf shrugged, mouth twisting in bitterness. "At least that's what I thought. But when the chips were down, they cut their losses and ran. You know what a two bag girl is? It's a girl you'd fuck if you could bag not just her head but yours, now I'm a tow bag guy." He gave a low biting laugh.

"I was once the guy others wanted to be, now I'm the fuck up that lost it all. After the Brain Trust thing ... it was decided I'd repeat Second Year, just one more failure to lay at my father's feet." Shaking his head, a long sigh gusted from the werewolf.

"You took everything from me, but the thing I hate you for, is stealing my parents." Blaez looked at Cesare with sad, broken eyes. "After the meeting with the Mistress, my dad looked me in the eye, and told me he hoped my son wouldn't be as disappointing. Not because I'd lost to you, he said he could understand that, even told me he wouldn't want to tangle with a man like you. No, he was disgusted that his son had become the kind of man he didn't want to defend. I've never seen contempt in my father's eye before." Looking away, Blaez took a deep breath, letting it out slow and careful.

"But the one thing that never left me, was you," Blaez said, in a ghost of a whisper. "Friends come and go, but enemies stay true. When days are dark, friends are few, but enemies are a crop that never needs watering." Meeting Cesare's eyes, the werewolf's voice evened out. "You're the only one that still sees me as a person, everyone else sees a cripple or a joke. You're all I have."

Blaez's eyes shone with a special kind of desperation. It was hard being in the world, even harder to be alone. People were shallow, cruel things, they saw the deformity, scars, missing limbs, burns, disfigurements, or the sin of weakness. They didn't see the heart behind the tortured flesh, you weren't a person if you were crippled, neither a man or woman, just a cripple.

Cesare didn't like the werewolf, hated him on a lot of levels, and would be more than glad to do a jig over the boy's grave. They'd never be friends, there was too much blood under the bridge for that. But that wasn't what the wolf was asking for. The wolf just wanted to be accepted as something more than scars and failure.

He didn't want the werewolf thinking this training meant they were friends. But if the wolf was looking for a place to hold up for a while, well, Cesare could always use a killing machine.

It didn't matter if the wolf was behind Cesare or only biding his time, not in the eyes of the school. All that mattered was that the school would see Blaez submitting to the Furies. That was the reality they'd take away. Cesare's lips thinned in a smile of satisfaction as the possibilities of this new dynamic opened closed doors.

Walking onto the grass of his territory, Cesare swept his students with a close look. They were more than they'd been, not only in time, but in blood, hard days, and savage truths. Running in the morning, sparring after school and on weekends, had burnt away their softness, leaving them lean and rangy. The biggest change was the eyes; they were sliding away from the civilized rules that had ruined their lives and into the instincts twisted around ancient bone and elder flesh. Now they met his eyes with respect instead of avoiding them in fear. It was nothing more than a start, but that didn't mean it wasn't a good start.

Walking past them, he hung his bag on the fence before slipping between the roots. Even after all the fights he'd had in this ring, the grass was still as lush as the first day. Vibrantly green, it was unashamedly alive, infused with eldritch energy that made it impervious to the depredations of careless feet, falls, or the tearing power of a werewolf's claws.