Page 57 of Vampire Kings Box Set

So Will found himself pacing the house, feeling restless and out of sorts. It wasn’t that fucking hard, just placing a simple online order. Then again, it was something he wanted, and not something Maddox cared about so of course it wasn’t happening. Maddox only did things that suited him. Will didn’t actually matter. He was an accessory, a decoration. The more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that his deepest darkest fears were true, that Maddox did not really love him and never had. He was being used.

“Goddamn…” Will wound up and punched the wall. The wall, like almost everything in Maddox’s house, was made of concrete. He felt and heard his knuckles crack, blooming instantly with blood.

“Fuck,” he cursed to himself, tucking his hand in against his chest. He’d known it would hurt. In prison, he would have hit someone else. In this household there was nobody to take his native aggression out on, and it felt like it was growing by the day, turning into something he wouldn’t be able to contain.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lorien appeared in the unnerving way he had. Will was sure he was practicing that particular skill. He’d shown up unwanted and unexpected everywhere from the kitchen to the goddamn bathroom.

“I want to find my parents, and Maddox is getting in the way. Or at least, not helping. He said he’d help. But he keeps forgetting.”

“Hm.” Lorien was rarely sympathetic. “What do you think knowing who they were will change?”

“You’re a vampire. Someone made you a vampire. Would you be alright not knowing who did that to you?”

“Well…” Lorien’s expression softened slightly.

“I’m a fucking wolf,” Will said. “And I don’t know how or why that happened. I know nothing about myself, and every time I ask Maddox, he has something better to do.”

“As I told you,” Lorien said. “Maddox discards those he is done with. It’s not personal. You're far from his first human pet, and you won’t be his last.”

Will growled under his breath. He wanted to punch Lorien too, but there was a very real chance that Lorien was right. He did feel disposable and forgotten. The feelings were made worse by the way all that trauma he tried to forget about was triggered. He’d always told himself it didn’t matter who his real parents were; they’d abandoned him. Suddenly, it mattered more than he could handle. He wanted to punch something again, but his knuckles already ached and stung. Looking down at his bloodied hand, he made a decision. He was going to find out, once and for all, no matter what he had to sacrifice along the way.

“Where is Will?”

Maddox had finally managed to wrest some free time from the arduous rigors of office and was hoping to spend it with Will, but William was not where he was supposed to be. Mad did manage to find Lorien watching television in the SUCU briefing room.

Lorien shrugged. “Am I on Will watch? Ha, get it? Whale watching… Will watching.”

Maddox did indeed get it. He did not appreciate it. Lorien’s flippancy of late was second in irritation only to Will’s sudden penchant for rebellion. The boy had been sulky, and just at the moment it was most difficult for Maddox to pay him attention. Being both the vampire king and human justice liaison was so demanding that even eternity didn’t feel like enough time.

He knew that if he was not very careful Will would get out of control. His true nature had been awoken; the beast he had always contained was closer to the surface now. He couldn’t help that. He could help the fact he didn’t seem to be trying to contain himself. Now he was roaming. Maddox’s knowledge of wolves told him it could be a very long time before he saw the boy again if that tendency to stray was not contained. Images of leashes and chains, cages and canes danced through his head as he mused on the subject of his missing pup.

William had never been to a courthouse of his own free will. Especially not this one. This one sent chills down his spine. As much as he pretended not to be affected by his many convictions and sentences, there was something very unsettling about being in the building where his freedom had been snatched away for the rest of his life.

There was a small chance that being here could get him into more trouble than it was worth, but he had to come. He had a vague memory that the records offices were housed in the same building as the court. He put his head down and walked through the metal detectors, past the police officers, trying not to let the animal instinct to start ripping into all manifestations of authority take over.

He managed to behave like a decent human long enough to gain entrance and move through the building to the more clerical regions. He walked the halls until he found what he thought he was looking for, a door like so many other doors.

RECORDS, the sign read in scratchy old plastic text. He was in the right place.

He jiggled the handle and tried to look in through the window but got nowhere. The office was locked.

“Excuse me, what are you doing?” A woman was speaking. A woman with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. A formidable woman like the one who had run the commissary in prison. William had learned a very long time ago not to mess with women like this. They were more internally feral than he was, and capable of far greater cruelty.

“I need to look at some records.”

“These are sealed, sir. You need permission to view.”

“Why? They’re my records. About me. About my life. Where I came from.”

“Access to these files can only be court ordered. Sorry.”

She said the word sorry like she didn’t mean it at all. Like she was glad to be in the way. Will looked at her with a fierce glare, but even he wasn’t going to use force on a woman half his size, even if she did have the glare of a mountain lion.

Will looked back at the door. Frosted glass. Peeling institutional green paint. The color alone was enough to trigger him. He’d been surrounded by that paint for the better part of three years. It had kept him from freedom and now it kept him from knowledge.

“Fuck it,” he said.

He put his shoulder to the door, gave a shove, and it popped out the lock with barely a complaint from the old wood. The woman had a lot more to say about it, but Will wasn’t listening to her anymore. He was confronted with rows and rows, stacks and stacks of documents.