Page 89 of Vampire Kings Box Set

Will tugged the rope free and immediately lost the rush for the first blow. Ivan clocked him in the jaw, hard, but Will had a stronger jaw than his father. He’d taken more beatings in prison than he could count, so the blow snapped his head back but it did not knock him out. He spun around to his left and kicked out toward Ivan’s knee. He missed the joint but caught the thigh and sent the older man over sideways.

They traded blows until their faces dripped with blood from cuts opened on brows and ears, lips and noses. They crushed one another nearly into oblivion, all their shared anger unleashed in the roughest and most feral of ways. Their strength seemed evenly matched right up until the point Ivan showed his hand again and unleashed his full force on the exhausted young whelp.

It had been a trap all along, and Will had fallen into it. He realized that far too late as his father pinned him down, his older man strength overwhelming Will’s exhausted form. Blood was running from a cut on his head, dripping down from the tip of his nose. A drop landed in Will’s mouth. Blood. Human blood. Then flesh. Human flesh. Ivan tore at the heel of his own hand and dropped a small chunk of it into Will’s mouth, right at the back where the swallow reflex was triggered.

“Taste it! Feel your hunger!”

Will tried to spit it out, but it was already inside him, spreading through him. It was just a taste, not enough to satisfy any hunger, but enough to suddenly ignite it. A burning that made his stomach ache as though he was literally starving.

“FUCKKK!” He screamed the word and curled up on his side, gripping his stomach as pure agony flashed through him.

Ivan flowed into his wolf form and burst through the barred window as if the bars weren’t there at all. He was gone in seconds, leaving Will to fresher, deeper agony than he had ever experienced before. He couldn't walk. He couldn’t even move. He couldn’t stop screaming.

It took almost an hour for anybody to find him. It was Maddox who noticed him missing and came looking, only to discover his basement destroyed and his mate shivering and sweating in equal amounts, bruises covering almost the entirety of his body, not to mention bite marks in a few nasty places.

“What did he do to you, boy?”

Will couldn't have answered if he tried. His teeth were chattering so much he couldn’t form a word. It was a relief to be scooped up into Maddox’s arms, to feel himself being made safe again, but the hunger was still there as he was carried up to a warm bath. He had the awful feeling the hunger would never go away, not until he did the unthinkable, the unspeakable, and the unforgivable.

“There is never a dull moment with you, my boy.” Maddox sat beside the bath, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, bared arms and hands in the water, gently washing and cleansing the many wounds Will had sustained.

Will still looked very sick, almost as if he’d been poisoned. But this wasn’t something Maddox could call the doctor for. This was something very much outside the boundaries of conventional medicine.

“I need to know what happened. Something more than a fight, am I correct?”

“He made me… he made me taste some of his blood. And he… he fed me some of himself.” Will retched just saying it.

“I see.”

Maddox tried to keep his voice calm. It was important not to spook Will. The boy had been through enough of late, and it seemed that every time he was out of Maddox’s sight he got into even more strife.

Will lifted concerned pale eyes to him. “Am I going to have to eat people? I don’t want to eat people.”

“Don’t worry about that for now, boy.”

“That’s not a no.” Will bit his lower lip. “I'd rather die than be like him… than do what he did. He killed people like an animal, no dignity, no… It was fucked up.”

Maddox did not remind Will that on their first meeting Will had to be stopped from beating a prison guard to death. It seemed churlish and unproductive to do so. Humans never had a clear vision of themselves, and they changed so much during the course of various events it was impossible to pin them down as one thing or another.

Lathering a cloth with soap, Maddox started to wash Will’s back. It was the one part of his body that had not taken much damage during the fight with his father. Wounds on the back were retreat wounds. He had none because knowing Will, he had stayed on the attack the whole time.

“I hate him,” Will whispered. “I hate that he's inside me. I hate that I am made of him.”

“Many a fledgling shares that sentiment, and probably many a human too,” Maddox mused, moving the cloth in soft, soapy circles over the rippling muscles of Wills’ back. He hoped he was providing some comfort, if any could be found in the warm touch of a master in Will’s darkest time.

“You knew, didn’t you. You knew all about him. What he was. What I am. You knew.”

“I would like to say I knew it all,” Maddox said. “That omnipresence of knowledge would be…. well. Suffice to say, I knew that sons who look for lost fathers rarely find the peace they are seeking.”

“Did you know I am, or he thinks I am supposed to eat people?”

“Your kind is rare, William. I have lived long and seen many things.”

Will lifted his head and his blue gaze bored into Maddox. “Did you know about the people meat?”

“Yes,” Maddox admitted.

Will made an impatient gesture, splashing water over his master, though not in a fun way.