Xander's Chance

What did happen to a weapon after a victor won his war? What if that weapon had a taste for blood and didn't want to stop? She unleashed him without any intention of reining him in again.

She touched the small, velvet pouch at her waist. Inside was the red gem, Xander's only belonging, that he'd kept once his mother died. Every campaign, he gave it to her for safekeeping, in case the weapon of an enemy severed the leather cord and it was lost.

The Watcher was wrong. There were two things capable of keeping Xander from falling completely to his nature. She was one; the memory of his real mother the second.

"Which of the immortals sent you?" she asked the Watcher.

"Do you think they'd give you a chance to save that creature?"

Protective anger stirred at his dismissive tone.

"He slaughters without mercy and control. You alone want him alive. Neither world would be worse off, if he was gone."

Not true.

"He was not always a beast," the Watcher mused. "Do you remember what he was before you trained him to kill?"

Eden's jaw clenched. She remembered the strong, thoughtful little boy whose life she decided to sacrifice for her cause. There was a time she had some heartache about trading his innocence for blood. That time passed, when she saw how dedicated he was to doing whatever it took to reach his opportunity for vengeance. He was as strong as she was in that way, willing to sacrifice anyone and anything.

"Leave me, Watcher," she ordered.

The Watcher obeyed. Eden sensed she would only get one warning from any of the immortals who now wanted her Xander dead. There was some logic to the Original Watcher's statements; Xander was all-but-lost to his bloodlust. She created that side of him for her purposes without considering what happened, once she saved her world.

He was a menace. He knew no discipline or restraint. He didn't understand the difference between an immortal warrior and a human child, between opponent and innocent. All were traits she developed in him that made him the perfect warrior, insatiable for blood, merciless and ambitious. He knew one way of life, and that way had no place in the peaceful society she hoped to return to.

Even admitting this, she didn't believe he was an animal. Animals didn't protect a necklace belonging to their mother or insist their adopted-mother stay where it was safe.

They didn't decimate cities out of a sense of vengeance, either.

No, Eden definitely didn't want to think about what happened next. If not for the attachment she let grow to Xander, she wouldn't be concerned about tomorrow at all. Simply surviving was enough.