Page 98 of Vampire Kings Box Set

If that weren't enough work for one wolf, it soon becomes apparent that Will is not the only troublemaker in the house of Maddox.

Lorien also catches the pack master's attention.

And perhaps even his affection.

But the arrogant vampire prince must first be humbled if he is to be loved.

PACK MASTER PREVIEW:

“LET ME THE FUCK OUT!”

The cage was an item of necessity now, the one and only thing keeping Will from going absolutely mad with his hunt lust. They had agreed to it, and yet at times like these he acted as though he was being held captive against his will. He couldn’t help it. His mind was addled. His hunger was in control. At night, Will would go into the cage of his own accord. Come morning, he would be absolutely deranged.

This was their new morning routine, one neither one of them enjoyed in the slightest. Maddox did not like it because he knew it hurt his boy. Will did not like it because he was possessed by the spirit of a wild beast that demanded he behave in abhorrent ways and consume terrible things. Sometimes he was hungry and desperate for human meat, and the rest of the time he was trying not to retch at the knowledge of what he’d done. At this moment, he was in the hungry and desperate phase of things.

“ARRRGGGHH!” Will threw himself against the bars of the cage, snarling and salivating. “Let me out!”

“You can come out when you’ve eaten and had your little transformation and taken a nap.” Maddox was calm, his tone measured even as he stood outside the cage in their bedroom, a stainless-steel bucket containing contraband flesh in one gloved hand.

“Let me out now! I want to hunt!” Will’s eyes were wild. He barely looked like the same man he had been when Maddox freed him from prison. He’d grown a perpetual scruffy five o’clock shadow, and he was bigger than he’d been before, far more bulky and perhaps a little taller.

“I am not going to let you hunt the general populace, William.” Maddox was firm, but calm. Any kind of emotional display would only set Will off. He was so close to animal right now, Mad had to be careful of everything, including his tone. “I bought you some meat, you won’t be hungry much longer.”

“Dead meat!” Will cursed. “I need fresh meat!”

In about twenty minutes, he would sob with regret for everything he was saying and doing, but for now his instincts were so powerful and intense they drove every part of him.

“You will take what you are given, boy,” Maddox said sternly. He had become much less of a lover of late, and far more of a master. This was out of necessity. He was not disgusted by Will’s appetites as Will was, and he knew this brutal, angsty cycle would not end until Will accepted it in his calm and human state. That was going to be a journey of a thousand meals, one that had started with a simple snack.

Mad tossed a lump of raw meat into the cage. In the beginning he had always cooked it, tried to make it look and feel like a proper human meal, sanitizing the cruelty of it, but Will’s appetite was stronger when the flesh was still warm from the kill.

In spite of his petulant, snarling annoyance at not being allowed to hunt it down himself, Will fell upon the meat, grasping it with both hands and wolfing it down with those great gulping dog bites that are all swallow, no chew. He ate every last bit of it, licking the sanguine essence from his fingers, careful not to miss a single drop. When he was certain there was nothing left at all, he let out a wild howl, a primal sound of anguish and pain. He collapsed to his hands and knees, and the terrible transformation began again…

Meanwhile, in a very nice home, not all that far away…

“I can’t keep calling you Chauvelin. That’s too long a name. You have a first name?”

Ivan was settling into his new den. Lorien watched with amusement, finding it quite fascinating how everything he’d found tedious and weak in Will was so much more developed and likable in Ivan. Ivan was a brute, but a charming one.

“Hold on a sec!” He cocked his head for a split second, then went dashing out the front door, still stark naked. The man had absolutely no chill, as the kids said. Lorien adored it.

“Let me go!” someone was screaming.

“Let me go!” Ivan mocked his victim as he returned, dragging a parking attendant who had made the terrible mistake of trying to ticket his pickup. Blood smeared the pretty foyer tile a fresh pink. Part of the face was already gone. Ivan had a particularly brutal and messy way of killing. It was the style of kill you'd expect to see from a fledgling with no master, or a predatory animal that had never known its own kind. Privately, Lorien thought Ivan did know better, he just liked the mess.

The man's fluorescent vest was stained with blood as the latest victim writhed and gurgled on the fancy floor. The one remaining eye stared desperately at him as he begged incoherently for mercy that would not come. This was not a house of mercy. This was a lawless den of the discarded, a place of perversion.

Ivan glanced up at them. “You boys want in on this?”

Little fledgling Chauvelin was obviously not going to say no, and even Lorien was somewhat peckish. The poor parking attendant found himself descended upon by three fearsome beasts with great fangs and terrible hungers. It was an awful, brutal, terrible way to go. Lorien did the human the kindness of attempting to suck his blood down as quickly as possible so he lost consciousness before Ivan truly started tearing into his entrails. Lorien was not entirely certain he was successful.

“I think we should put the skulls on the mantlepiece,” Chauvelin said when they were done with their meal. What was left was not in any way appetizing, even to them, and the conversation around how to get rid of the bits was in full swing.

“Like college kids stacking beer bottles?” Ivan did not sound keen, or maybe he did. It was hard to tell. Ivan’s aesthetic was trash murder hobo, but make it hot. Sometimes he had something close to an alpha vibe, the instinct to hunt for the pack, for instance. That was pure alpha. But Ivan was a loose cannon and could not be trusted.

“It’s also evidence of murder,” Lorien said. “What we do, when we kill them, that’s still murder.”

“That’s still murder,” Ivan mocked him as if he were a spotty schoolboy worried about displeasing a teacher. Chauvelin laughed a little too loud and a little too long.