Page 198 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Will couldn’t kill him, but he could hurt him. And though his teeth were not now the brutal canines that slashed flesh and ended the lives of his prey, they still did damage when applied to the neck of the man he had killed once before.

“Get him off! Get him off!” Chauvelin screeched like the little bitch he was.

“Get off,” Raymond laughed, kicking Will hard enough to send him spinning across the open space. “I can break you down all day, pup.”

Will charged Raymond. It did not go well. He found himself flying through the air, spinning uncontrollably until he hit hard concrete, sustaining more damage, losing more blood. The collar around his neck made it impossible to take animal form, but all his feral instincts had risen.

He was not going to give up. He was not going to back down. He didn’t care if he broke every fucking bone in his body, he was going to fight. He rose to his feet, unsteady and with blood dripping into his eyes and from his nose. It was hard to breathe. It was hard to see. But it was not hard to hate.

Chauvelin had scurried away. Good. That left Gideon and Raymond. Gideon was no target. But Raymond was approaching again with the intention of getting him under control.

They’d made a mistake when they let him out of the cage. He was not going to go back in again. He would die on his feet here in this spartan arena rather than be made captive.

Raymond lifted a cane as if to strike him. Will dodged under it, spun to the right and kicked Raymond in the back of the knee, twisting that leg down. Off balance for a moment, Raymond lost his grip of the cane. Will grabbed it and brought it down on the master vampire’s back with all his might, hard enough to shatter it.

“You little…” Raymond laughed and grabbed Will by the leg. His grip was too powerful to escape. Ray hauled Will across the courtyard, grabbed a cane held in reserve, and proceeded to beat Will all over with it, holding onto his ankle as a grip point, lashing the stick down with very little care for what he hit.

Will did not give up, though the blows were falling quick and fast. He knew how to take damage and keep fighting. And he knew he was going to fight until he either lost consciousness or died. There was nothing left to live for. There was only the pain and the rage and leaning into both.

“That’s enough,” Gideon said.

Raymond stopped and dropped Will’s leg. Will lay in the moonlight, bloodied from head to toe, breathing in harsh, ragged gasps. He was very nearly broken physically, but he had never been stronger in spirit.

“Look. At. You.”

Through a sliver of one eye remaining open, Will looked up at the Maker. Gideon was terribly beautiful and awfully cruel. Will expected to see gloating triumph in the beast’s eyes. Instead, he saw something else.

Gideon crouched next to him. “I am impressed,” he said, the night breeze playing with his dark, glossy strands of hair, making them billow out around his handsome head. “You are a true fighter. To the very end. With your very last breath.

I can see what Maddox loved in you. It is a pity you were cursed with wolf blood. You would have made a very pretty vampire.”

“Fuck… off…” Will cursed, lifting his arm to weakly swat at Gideon. He knew he couldn’t do damage, but the instinct to fight was the only instinct he had left.

Gideon put his hand around Will’s throat and squeezed.

“Well, you showed them… something. I guess.”

When Will came to, he was back in the cage with Henry. He was aching, he was bloodied. He was a mess. But he didn’t feel as bad as he had the first time he ended up in this cage. The fight had cleared his emotional load and left him with something much more bearable — physical damage.

“What are you smiling at?” Will grunted the question. His eyes were almost completely swollen shut, but he could still make out Henry’s tattooed, muscular physique lurking in the corner.

“There’s something about you that puts me in a good mood,” Henry confessed. “I think it’s watching you be stupid as hell. Gideon had to choke you out just to get you to stop trying to get yourself killed.”

“Before I do that, I’m getting you out,” Will grunted. “I’m getting you and Lorien out of here. I was a piece of shit. Maddox is a piece of shit. But I know who the fuck I am, and I know you don’t deserve to be in here.”

“You’re not getting me out, whelp,” Henry sighed. “I’m in here because Gideon wants to control everybody close to Maddox. It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, it is. You said it was.”

“I was angry. Being caught up here for two years and then you come in pouting about some domestic…”

“He lied to me about knowing my mother. Lora Candy. She was my mom. And now she’s dead. I’ll never get to talk to my own mother because he lied to me. Fuck knows what else he’s keeping from me. Ivan was right. Hell, fucking Gideon was right. We don’t belong together. If he can lie to me for that fucking long…” Hot tears squeezed out the sides of his damaged eyelids. He didn’t want to cry, but what Maddox had done hurt more deeply than anything Gideon could ever do.

Henry’s look was more sympathetic than it had been the first time. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, so I had her and I didn’t know it, and now I’ve lost her. Because of him.” Will clenched his fist, and then wished he hadn’t. His knuckles, like most of the rest of him, were swollen and bloodied.

“I don’t know how that can ever be fixed,” Henry rubbed his chin. “In the meantime, you have to slow down, calm down, accept a little captivity. We will get out of here, eventually. But it’s not going to be overnight. You have to start mitigating the damage you’re taking.”