Pack Master (Vampire Kings 3)

“You're not killing my father,” Will said. “He sickens me. But I won’t let you hurt him any more than you have. If you go after him again, I will kill you.”

He said it simply, without emotion. It was a cool, collected statement of fact and it carried the weight of the history of Will’s crimes behind it as no idle threat.

The moon shone down on the pair of them, solving nothing, but casting everything in a silver glow that made Will feel very Will-like. He was becoming something more, something new. He felt himself shifting on the inside; thoughts, feelings, needs rising and falling in new combinations.

“I’d rather not have to kill you and your father. But I will do anything I need to in order to rid the world of feral wolves,” Henry said.

Will’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “You’re just Maddox in a wolf suit. So caught up in thinking you deserve to decide who lives and who dies. Arrogant. Stupid. And more vulnerable than you think.”

“You’ve been warned,” Henry said. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to keep you in the dark. I am telling you. I will be killing your father.”

Will punched him right in the fucking face. It came swiftly, the motion not telegraphed at all. Will knew how to hit someone without them knowing it was coming. Prison fights didn’t come with a lot of warning. They were quick and they were brutal.

Henry stumbled backward, blood pissing down his face. He cursed and tossed his ice cream to the side.

“Little shit,” he growled.

Will grinned broadly, standing handsome and strong in the moonlight.

“Maddox is going to work out that you're not here for me. He probably already knows you want to kill Ivan. Guess what? If Mad wanted Ivan dead, Ivan would be dead. He’s alive because the vampire king allows it. You’re not just crossing me. And you’re not just coming for Ivan. You’re crossing Maddox too. You might be the one who doesn’t survive, pack master.”

Will said the last two words with a derisive sneer. He was so tired of everybody thinking they knew how to handle him. Nobody knew how to handle him. And they never fucking would.

Henry took a step forward.

Will took a step back.

“Why are you moving, pup?”

“I’m not going to make it easy for you, not the way you made it easy for me,” Will said. “If you want to hit me, you’re going to have to work for it.”

“That’s what I thought, scared little pup. You’d rather be spanked like a baby than…”

Those words were enough to bring Will into range, but with clenched fists and gritted teeth. What ensued was a stand up, knock down, roll around on the ground fistfight. Blows and cuffs were traded back and forth until Will’s head rang with them and his body ached. But he wasn’t going to give up. He was never going to submit again.

They were both gasping for breath and covered in what passed for mud in New York by the time they stopped, nothing resolved, but all anger discharged.

Henry rolled up to his feet and offered Will a hand. “Let’s go home.”

Will took the proffered hand. He’d actually meant to swat it aside, but he ended up gripping and letting Henry pull him up. Weird.

They came in the door filthy, bruised, and bleeding from lips and noses.

Maddox gave the pair of them the look of a headmaster greeting two scrapping boys to his study. He'd been waiting up. Of course he had. That was the main characteristic of an apex predator, the ability to wait. Maddox had a great many weapons and powers at his disposal, but the greatest of them all was patience.

“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I should have been more careful. The fire was my fault. And everything after was fucked up.”

“Go up to my room and have a shower, boy,” Maddox said.

Will nodded and did as he was told. Maddox turned to Henry, who thus far was not proving to be as useful as Mad had imagined he would be.

“So you take him out and beat the hell out of him, is that it? A more violent version of what I was doing?”

“No,” Henry said. “I didn’t beat him. I let him fight me. There’s a difference. In one case, I dominate him and he feels as though he’s powerless. In the other, he gets to test himself against me without being seriously harmed.”

“Ah,” Maddox nodded. “There is a steak in the refrigerator. You can put it on that eye of yours. I think it will need it.”

“Thanks,” Henry said. “We’re making progress.”

Maddox did not dignify that assertion with a response.

Having left the pack master to tend to his bruised face, Maddox went upstairs to find Will. He found his boy in the shower, leaned back against the wall, hot water pelting down over his body. His skin was coming out in a whole host of bruises and covered in grazes. It must have been a real scrap as well as a pointless waste of time. At least it had tired him out, as he appeared to be fast asleep. Standing upright. Completely exhausted and apparently, utterly done.