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“Henry,” Maddox corrected him. “And burning the house down is not the way you show you don’t want guests. You are maturing in so many ways, but in others you remain a petulant little boy.”
The censure was turning Will the fuck on. This was the energy he wanted, the clash of egos, playing their strengths against one another, being put in touch with his weakness. He curled his fingers around the bars of the cage that held him at his worst and he waited for the showdown he knew was coming.
6
Maddox summoned some of his own troops, vampire courtiers who were happy to perform any task at all for the vampire king. He had an almost endless supply of willing minions now, so many that the cleanup barely lasted until sunrise, at which point the downstairs had been thoroughly dried off, and the upstairs was stripped of rancid carpets and burned curtains.
Finally, when the house only slightly smelled of wet burned things instead of being absolutely suffused by the scent of such, Will was uncaged and brought back down to face everybody. They’d all gathered in the lounge, a semi-circle of people he barely fucking knew and already loathed with all his being.
Maddox sat down on the couch and fixed dark eyes on Will.
“Come here, boy.” Maddox beckoned him over.
Will knew this was going to hurt. Pain had been inevitable from the outset. He wished the others weren’t here but complaining about their presence was probably only going to make Maddox more determined to keep them around.
He hesitated, glancing over at Henry and what’s-his-name and the other guy and whatever.
“Look at me. Focus on me” Maddox reminded him.
Will looked at Maddox and felt an ache for the old days, before he’d known what he truly was, before he’d been burdened with the truth of his father. It had been so much easier when he was just a rough criminal and Mad had been his eternal master. Now he didn’t know who he was; all he knew was that he no longer felt the same safety.
“Get rid of these assholes. We don’t need them.”
“Come. Here.”
Will let out a whine and then immediately wished he hadn’t. He sounded like a silly little pup. He knew that expression on Mad’s face. He knew he was in for a very painful interlude. Maddox was going to whip the hell out of him. He didn’t even mind that, not nearly as much as he minded it happening publicly.
He obeyed. Reluctantly. He obeyed because he wanted to show Maddox a little good will, and maybe reduce the general awfulness of the whole experience.
It did not count for much.
The second he got to Maddox’s side, he was turned over Maddox’s knee in front of everybody, his ass high over the vampire lord’s thigh. He should have expected it, but he’d figured Mad would allow him the smallest amount of dignity. He had been more wrong about that than it was possible to be.
“You’re a bad little boy,” Maddox lectured Will. “Starting fires in your room, disrespecting guests. You’re more a pup than a whelp. You’re going backwards.”
At that moment Will was actually trying to crawl forwards. Forwards off Maddox’s lap. He’d internally laughed at the idea of being spanked after everything that had happened. He’d figured it was a silly, juvenile punishment that meant nothing. It might sting a little, but it wouldn’t be capable of hurting him. He had been wrong.
Not only did it hurt like hell physically, Maddox’s disappointment felt like he was being internally flayed. The public display of his punishment was also calculated to bruise his ego. Maddox knew how to take him apart better than Will knew how to put himself back together. This silly, painful, twisted, harsh punishment was getting worse by the moment.
He wanted to prove himself dangerous. He wanted to show himself dominant. Maddox was painting a picture now that would never leave the minds of anybody who saw it. All the wolves. Henry. Lorien. They were all being encouraged to see him as small.
Will would not be small.
So he became large.
Impossibly large. Ferocious. Furred.
There was no longer a naughty boy over his master’s lap. There was a very large wolf loose in the house. Again. Amid the smoke damage and the still pooling water, a huge, fearsome beast roamed, the chaos around him reflecting the chaos inside him.
“Holy shit!” He could hear expressions of surprise coming from the new wolves Henry had bought with him. He surprised them. They were the same as him, the same thing, and yet he heard fear in their voices.
As a beast, there were far fewer concerns. His thoughts ran to simple instincts, basic needs. He was hungry. He was scared. He wanted out of this tight concrete prison. He was aware of the others, but only in the most peripheral of ways.
Maddox was there, but Maddox was alien. Maddox was a different creature from Will, not only not of his ilk, but not of his world. He sensed the vampire as powerful and perhaps even frightening. His senses twitched and his hunger rose again, demanding flesh.
“Easy.”
The word cut through his fog of hunger and rage. The voice sounded right. The scent was correct. Dominant and powerful. It was not loud, but it was firm. It speared through Will's darkness like a beacon of light on a stormy sea. It gave him something to fix on, a point of reference that could be trusted.
