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Will wanted to fight. Tried to fight. He thrashed around, as much as Maddox’s grip would allow and found that all it did was cause him to rip his own flesh, resulting in a very painful wound indeed.
“That is going to need stitches,” Maddox said as his teeth came free. He transferred part of his grip to the back of Will’s bloodied head. “But first, I am going to give you a bath, mucky little pup.”
“Let me go!”
“Absolutely not. Not ever again.”
Will cursed, knowing the words to mean nothing. Maddox had forsaken him at Gideon’s insistence once before, and there was nothing to stop him from doing it again. All it would take was that ancient evil commanding it, and he would be abandoned again.
“You already fucking did, asshole.”
“We will talk about that.”
“Oh, talking. Yeah. I give a shit about talking. Just got done gutting three people in a shiny van, and you think I want to hear you fucking talk?”
“Yes,” Maddox said calmly. “You’re a very scary, very bad boy. Now come.”
He used his grip to maneuver Will away from the scene of his brutal crime, and into the back of the vehicle he had arrived in. Will was not particularly surprised to discover that Henry and Lorien were in there too. Henry was on the far side of the back seat, and Maddox put Will in next to him before getting in himself. Lorien was driving.
Nobody uttered any kind of greeting. They were angry at him, judging him for all he had done of late. They did not like what he had chosen to become. Henry had transitioned from captivity back into civilization with barely an issue. Will felt some small spark of jealousy at that. It made him feel like a worse creature. Actually, that’s what all of them did. Maddox. Lorien. Henry. Every single one of them was a presence to remind Will of his many failings.
They drove quite a long way, out of state. Will thought it probably didn’t matter. Gideon was the kind of evil who wouldn’t be stopped by state lines. He wouldn’t be stopped by anything, come to it.
“What is this?” he asked roughly. “Some kind of shitty silent intervention?”
“We’re trying to help you,” Henry said gruffly, immediately confirming Will’s suspicion.
Will hated the way he felt right now. Prickly, slightly guilty, wrong. When he was on his own he could follow his instincts precisely and never feel wrong at all. It was only when he compared himself to others that the wrongness came in.
He also hated the way his shoulder was intermittently rubbing against Maddox’s arm. It was a casual intimacy, and every time it happened he was jolted with feelings he did not want to feel, and yearnings he would have denied if accused of having.
This car was claustrophobic. This situation was untenable.
“You stink,” Lorien added, unhelpful and judgmental as always.
“Lorien…” Henry said his name chidingly, and Lorien shut up.
Maddox did not engage verbally in the fray. He stayed where he was, unmoving, unyielding, perhaps entirely unfeeling. Will had the urge to force some kind of emotion out of him. This unfettered ultra-dominance could not be all there was.
And so, on the interstate, Will took his wolf form. It was an act that was very disruptive indeed even without his flashing white jaws, because he was far larger than the back seat.
Almost instantly he managed to Alice in Wonderland himself out the windows of the car, his big, shaggy black head out one window, his angrily wagging tail out the other side. Henry and Maddox were variously crushed in the back with him. Henry cursed and pushed at his ribs in the attempt to make enough room to breathe.
Something clamped around Will’s back leg. Something cold. Something painful. It was a moonsilver shackle, and it reversed his transformation instantly and completely. Will collapsed back into the car, entirely naked, bloody, and now screaming because moonsilver was incredibly painful. Torturously so. So painful that even Gideon had not used it on them very often during the wolves’ captivity.
“You forget things so quickly,” Maddox mused as Will screamed in agony. “I think you need to be medically inspected.”
“Take it off! TAKE IT OFF!” Will reached for it, but touching it with his hands only made the pain worse.
“I will take it off when you show some sign of human intellect again,” Maddox replied, looking down at Will dispassionately.
Will was writhing unrestrained over Henry and Maddox in a humiliating way. The pain was so intense and so unrelenting he would have promised anything to have it removed.
“Please, take it off.”
“Oh, you do still have some manners, how fascinating,” Maddox commented.
“Maddox…” Henry spoke up. Mad lifted a hand and shook his head at Henry. He was not going to allow anyone to intervene on Will’s behalf.
