Page 114 of Vampire Kings Box Set

That made Will very angry. He didn’t like Ivan. At one time he would have been pleased to see him dead. But not by these assholes, who attacked his father and then had the nerve to talk to him like they were friends.

Will turned to look at Mad. “Am I wrong? How fucking scared are you? Fucking pussies. Acting like you give a shit about me while you try to kill my father. I bet you didn’t kill him either. I smell blood. I don’t smell death.”

“Good senses,” Norris complimented.

“Shut the fuck up,” Will replied.

“William, you are making a scene,” Maddox observed.

“I don’t care. Why the fuck would I care? You’re up to some shady shit and you think I’m just going to go along with it? Oh gee, sure, I love meeting new wolf friends!” He made a goofy voice before going back to his growl. “Get fucked.”

Maddox was glowering at him furiously. Will knew he was pissing his master off greatly. If there was anything Maddox didn’t like, it was looking weak and out of control. It must have galled him to call Henry in, but Henry hadn't been enough on his own. Now there was a vampire king, a pack master, and three clowns trying to stop him from becoming what he was always meant to be.

It was about then that Will’s feet suddenly went out from under him. He found himself dropping to the floor on his knees, the reluctant victim of gravity.

Henry had knocked him over and was looming above him. “Stay down,” he said. “It’ll make this easier.”

“Fuck off.”

“You’re a mouthy little shit,” Henry said.

“Yes,” Maddox agreed. “He is.”

They were both looking down at him, Henry and Maddox, two large, dangerous alphas with dark expressions in their eyes. Will felt his cock throb. He wanted to fight them, but the impulse to fuck was never that far away either. It had been too long since he’d been properly claimed. Too much had been going on. Maddox had been distracted, and Will had been too busy going mad for human flesh to get down to sex. Being dangerously deprived was not helping his mood.

Being dominated by and in front of strangers was making him exceptionally angry. He made to get up, but of course Henry forced him back down, boot on his shoulder. Will flashed back to any one of a dozen times he’d been in this position before, a helpless prisoner of more powerful forces who thought they understood him and knew him better than he knew himself.

“They are here not because anybody is afraid of you, but because I would like for you to survive this transition,” Maddox explained. “These gentlemen have offered their time to help you, so you will show them, and me, respect, or you will face the…”

“Blah, blah, whatever,” Will interrupted with more attitude.

He intended to push everybody here to their limits. Nobody was here to help him. They were here to use him. He didn’t trust a word coming out of anybody’s mouth. Not even Maddox, much to his own disappointment. He’d started to trust Mad a lot lately, more than anybody in his life, but secrets were to trust what it turned out toasters were to curtains.

“Can anyone else smell burning?” It was Norris who piped up. Maddox, Henry, and to some extent, Dante, were too busy staring Will down in a kind of ocular domination gang bang to notice that there was another problem deeper in the house.

At that sentence, everybody started sniffing.

“Is the house on fire?”

“I think the house is on fire.”

The house was on fire.

The toaster had somehow caught the curtain alight in Will’s room and the curtains were well ablaze. This would have been a big problem in a normal house, but in Maddox’s home there was very little to burn. The carpet went up. The bed went up. There was a lot of smoke and general grossness, but the concrete and steel construction ensured that the whole building wasn’t in danger.

But guess who didn’t know that as Will’s window blew out with the flames, wanting to suck more air, and fire licking into the night? Any of the neighbors. Or onlookers. Or the fire department.

Their response time was excellent. Barely three minutes went by before sirens sounded, coming nearer and nearer. An engine stopped outside and a small party of New York’s finest began to swarm toward the door.

Maddox palmed his face with his hand and muttered something in a very, very old language. Everybody understood it, though they didn’t know a word of it.

He. Was. Pissed.

He was angrier than Will had ever seen him. He was so furious he seemed to go almost translucent with rage, his eyes two dark wells of fury. Will had seen him like this once before, at the precipice of battle with Chauvelin’s fledgling army. This time his rage would not be directed at an army of others. This time it was entirely focused on William. Will swallowed as Maddox’s hard stare met his for a moment. He couldn’t do anything now besides open the door for the fire department, who were already shouting to be let in.

“GET OUT! EVERYBODY EVACUATE NOW!”

Will laughed as Maddox and Henry and every other supernatural alpha found themselves thoroughly dominated by the simply human fire captain who came charging through the door, hose in tow. He knew that the last thing Maddox wanted was a dozen humans tramping through his house, but he had no choice. They didn’t know he was the vampire king of New York. They didn’t know he was an ancient eternal. All they knew was that they needed to get inside and put the fire out before it burned the block down.