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Maddox stepped out of his vehicle and steeled himself for a challenging reunion. The sounds coming from the interior of the ambulance were animal. Ripping, growling, rending of flesh. The smell of intestinal punctures and worse. Maddox was glad to not have a functioning digestive system, for he was certain it would have been forced to regurgitate everything.
He approached the steaming rear of the ambulance, the doors wide open. The beast inside was not a wolf, though it clearly had been in wolf form when it dispatched the paramedics and their patient. Maddox could not imagine what would have drawn Will to this vehicle; perhaps he sensed weakness. Perhaps the lights and sirens drew his attention. He was feeding in human form, though the term human could only be applied loosely to someone eating other people raw.
Maddox felt a surge of guilt and affection and sorrow all at once. He knew the events that had inexorably led to this point had been under his control, and that it was his failure to be honest with Will and to love him as he needed that had created this diorama of depraved cruelty.
“Boy.”
He uttered the word softly, so as not to startle Will. In this state he would react unpredictably. He was more animal than man, and more feral than sane.
Will dropped a limb and turned to face Maddox, another leg still in his bloody hand. His eyes blazed with blue fury, his skin marked with blood and viscera. There was nothing to be seen of his face besides blood, all the way up into his dark, curling hair. He looked like a hellish version of his old self, all the weakness and vulnerability that used to lurk beneath his stoic exterior gone, transformed to brutality and cruelty.
Maddox let out a soft ancient curse under his breath. He had been warned, and yet he still could not have anticipated this scene.
For the first time, he wondered if he had done the right thing in freeing Will from prison in the first place, if he was blaming himself when in truth this was always the form Will had been destined to take. The sight of the massacre was truly stomach churning, even for a creature as cruel and old as Maddox.
“Fuck you.”
Will’s first words were a raw curse. His voice had changed since Maddox last spoke to him. It was deeper and perhaps more dominant. It was rougher and nastier. There was very little to love about Will in this moment.
Maddox smiled broadly. It was not the kind of smile anybody who had ever seen it before had lived to tell the tale thereof. Thousands of lives had ended shortly after the expression. Will, even in their many months of intimacy, had never seen it either. Will did not have the sense left to realize how much danger he was in. He was too angry, too hurt, too outright animal.
“Watch your words, pup,” Maddox intoned, his voice smooth, calm, and unaffected. “I am still your master.”
“You’re nobody’s master. You’re Gideon’s fuck boy.”
Maddox restrained the impulse to immediately fly at Will and teach him a brutal, physical lesson. He had never allowed this level of insolence and disrespect. Will knew better than to speak to him in such a way, even as a beast.
“I have come for you, William. You may come of your own free will, or I can put you back in a cage.”
Will laughed, a wild, maniacal sound. “Nobody will ever capture me again. I will die first. Get the hell out of here. I don’t want you, I don’t need you, and I don’t fucking like you.”
His words were just as vicious as his actions, delivered in cutting, cold tones. There was not a hint of weakness or affection in his gaze, not any sign of the love they had once shared.
None of this caused Maddox any concern at all. He continued to smile that particularly dangerous smile, his high cheekbones, cruel features, and dark eyes lit by the helpless flashing of ambulance lights. He was not here to cuddle his wayward pup. He was here to claim him.
William had forgotten who he was talking to. In fact, Maddox wondered if he, too, had forgotten who Will was talking to.
He thrilled to the possessive dominance pulsing through his dead veins, the primal urge to claim and own animating him.
“William,” he purred Will’s full name elegantly. “I am going to break you.”
Will clenched the dismembered leg by the ankle and approached Maddox, wielding it threateningly like a club.
“Go away,” he repeated. “I don’t need you, I don’t need your pack master, I don’t need my father. I don’t need anyone.”
“You’re wrong, of course,” Maddox replied, feeling an intense affection for Will, an emotion nearly as strong as his desire to hear Will scream. Things were much worse than they had been when he first claimed his wolf pup, but that did not change the basic dynamics at play. Will needed a firm hand, and Maddox was that hand.
Will took a swing at Maddox. The leg was from an adult male and had quite a bit of squelching heft to it. Maddox leaned back slightly, allowing the severed bone to pass by under his nose.
They both knew these tactics weren’t ones of true aggression. Maddox could not be bested with a leg. Beatings, even nasty, violent ones could not harm a vampire lord. Maddox took this display as Will’s attempt to show him what he needed. A golden rule enactment of sorts.
The boy needed a beating.
* * *
When Maddox moved, he moved quickly. Far faster than Will could move, and a lot faster than he could see. From Will’s perspective, one moment he was waving a leg around menacingly, the next moment he was restrained in the cold arms of his vampire master. Maddox’s powerful limbs made movement impossible.
Will had forgotten how strong Maddox was. He had forgotten a lot of things. He remembered several of them all at once as Maddox sank his fangs into the back of Will’s neck, sharp teeth sinking through the powerful muscle at the base. It was not a feeding bite. It was a bite designed to dominate and subjugate.
