The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (14 page)

The doors flung open, and
Madden’s groggy eyes followed suit, to be greeted by the distinctive silhouette
of MacTire darkening his doorway. Madden let loose an exaggerated groan,
attempting to hinge stiff limbs up off the rock mattress.

‘Haven’t you heard of Memory
Foam down here in the ghetto?’ This bed the vargs had dumped him on to recover
from the paralysis was little more than a ledge, badly hewn from the indigenous
stone.

‘Robbie, my boy.’ The low,
gravelly register of MacTire’s voice resonated around the small quarters. Giant
fisted knuckles rapped down hard on Madden’s skull, and like a kicked vending
machine spewing coins, he spat out a low string of profanities, quite possibly
a few teeth too. Laughter ricocheted off the rough walls.
Fucking A
,
Madden thought. The only thing worse than MacTire in a bad mood? MacTire in a
fit of the jolly back-slapping happies. That superficial charm was a thin skin
barely concealing the psychopath beneath.

‘Get some clothes on, you
look like Robinson bloody Crusoe.’

Madden scowled, eyeing the
wolf carcass MacTire had slung about his shoulders, complete with paws and
rabid teeth fixed in a death-mask perma-snarl.

‘Given roadkill stoles went
out with Adolph Hitler, you are in no position to be doling out sartorial
advice to me.’ He swung his legs over the side of the bedding platform and
began stripping out of the remnants of his bespoke tailored pants. ‘You owe me
another suit.’

Madden was treading a fine
line, but he was under no illusions. MacTire allowed him to take liberties
solely because he was of use to him, enduring his insolence only for as long as
it amused. Regardless of appearances, MacTire was the King of this godforsaken
realm and Madden would never rise above runt status in any of the vargs’ eyes.
It didn’t matter that Madden’s family had been high-born, or that his sister,
Aoife, had been the King’s consort. Once he’d hit maturity, not even the Queen
could disguise his inability to shift form. Their dirty family secret was
exposed, and Madden was destined for sacred orders. In spite of their
ceremonial pomp and trappings of importance, the
thegn
were nothing more
than genetic flotsam, left overs from an ancient experiment in sink or swim
survival. Too human to ever be accepted as equals, his kind were tolerated as
servants, provided they towed the line and swore to the monk-like celibacy that
ensured their corrupt bloodlines were severed. If the King demanded a show of
submission, Madden would be reduced to putting his lips to the male's nipples,
like any other runt
thegn
in his service. But subservience was not in
Rob Madden’s nature. For him, it was a means to an end, just as he hoped this
girl could be the means to releasing him from his infernal vows.

Unselfconscious, Madden
strode naked across the room, shrugged into the dark red robe suspended from a
hook on the wall, knotted the sash low on his hips, then retraced his path to
retrieve the vials of blood from his ravaged suit, burying them deep in the
pockets of the robe. Behind him, MacTire had gone uncharacteristically quiet.
When he turned back to face the doorway, the expression on the King’s face had
changed, already dark eyes now black as pitch beneath heavy lids. His lips were
parted slightly and his breathing had deepened. It made Madden uncomfortable.
It made him feel like prey. Rumour had it MacTire’s sexual preferences ran to
the extreme. He cleared his throat loudly and the tension snapped.

‘You have something for me,
Robbie?’ MacTire’s ridiculously handsome mouth curled in a wolfish grin.

Yes, and it
absofuckinglutely does not involve a mutual show and tell of our penises, big
boy
.

‘Come with me,’ the King
growled. ‘The others will want to watch this.’

Madden coughed, shuffling the
vials in his pocket and following after MacTire as he strode off down the
warren of passageways carved out of the rock. The breadth of the walls and
ceiling height were more than adequate for any average man, but the King’s
frame dwarfed the tunnels. Coarse blond hair hung down his back in a twisted
braid that grazed the small of his exposed back. He was built like an Olympic
swimmer, massive shoulders triangulating down to narrow hips that barely kept
the low-slung waistband of his leather trousers decent. Arrogant bastard
preferred to go shirtless, with only gold bracelets adorning the bulk of his
upper arms. And there was the road-kill cravat. You had to hand it to MacTire,
he was a prime specimen, with real presence. If you rolled that way. Which
Madden didn’t. No Sir.

They stopped at a set of
carved iron doors that were unfamiliar. The King punched through with a
dramatic flourish, the glint of gold pierced through his nipples catching
the
light
like small beacons of royalty. As the doors opened, the scene before him
loosened Madden’s jaw and struck him uncharacteristically dumb. Naked, save a
pair of red-soled spike heels and the chain circling her neck, the human female
on her hands and knees was prowling, her back arching with a grace that was
almost feline. A purr vibrated in her open throat as she licked and sucked at
the male’s balls and worshipped the underside of his weighty erection. The
clawing of her black, half-mooned nails into the tensed muscle of his powerful
thighs did nothing to detract from the kitty cat impression. Madden’s eyes ran
a slow scroll up from the thrusting mouth to pelvis action to make contact with
a familiar set of dark brown eyes. Brandr. One of MacTire's elite Vanguard.
With a temper on a short tripwire, hundred-proof testosterone for blood and a
homicidal glower, Madden had always pegged the hairy bastard as the hothead of
the sextet that formed the King's trusted, inner circle. No, they were no
longer six, he mentally corrected himself. Brandr's eyes lit up in recognition,
his mouth pulling into a grotesque grin, exposing huge fangs that glistened
with the bluish, opalescent liquid Madden recognised as
eitr
. The male’s
hips didn't miss a thigh-slapping beat as he ground his cock down the throat of
the whimpering brunette kneeling before him, fisting handfuls of her silky hair
to pump her swollen red lips down to his hilt.

Madden tugged the robe
tighter around him. Extreme preferences ran riot through the vargs, and he and
MacTire were way overdressed if they were joining this feast. He prayed to all
that was holy that the King hadn’t brought him here for a practical
demonstration.

'You see how we toil in your
absence,
Laeknir
?'

Madden arched a brow at
MacTire as his laughter ricocheted off the rock walls, addressing him with the
pet name of 'healer', reserved for when the King's mood was marginally less
than murderous.

'Nice work, if you can get
it,' he muttered, but the words were drowned out by the feral grunting and wet,
smacking sounds that heralded the triumphant howls of Brandr's powerful climax.
The warrior pulled out of her mouth and cracked his palm across the brunette's
buttocks with a hard slap that left the red imprint of his hand on her soft
flesh. Her hands fell to her lap in a boneless puddle of female supplication,
tear-streaked mascara framing huge doe eyes that looked up to him with an
expression of undisguised veneration.

‘Thank you, Master,’ she
whimpered, gleaning the remnants of his taste from the corners of her mouth
with relish. She ached for him, it was in her every gesture, her hand winding
up to stroke the scarred bite mark at her jugular.

The girl was
thrall
,
chosen from amongst the countless numbers that flocked to Form every full moon;
a living demonstration of how the bite of a varg could transform a human from
sentient, reasoning being to mindless, craving flesh slave. The humans assumed
it was a street drug, one they’d called Rave, and the mind-altering, addictive
properties of the
eitr
in their saliva certainly fit the profile.
Madden’s presence in Dublin’s busiest ER was no accident. It suited their
purposes to encourage the misconception and deflect attention from the truth of
what was happening in the city’s dark underworld. In reality, it was a simple
biological glitch, an inter-species incompatibility discovered entirely by
accident. The effects on humans couldn’t have been predicted, but, deprived of
any females of their own species, the Fomorian males had simply adapted. Humans
provided for their sexual needs, if not their procreative ones. And goddamnit,
but Red-Shoes, down on her knees, was providing amply. Lucky for the
thrall
girl, Brandr was in human form. In their natural, beast physique, there were
certain anatomical incompatibilities with human females.

'Good girl. We’ll finish this
later,' Brandr growled in hoarse, thickly accented words. He strode across the
room to stand before MacTire and Madden, a statuesque monolith of
broad-shouldered, buck-naked, Norse warrior masculinity. Chest expanded like a
damn peacock, it seemed to Madden the guy was consciously flaunting the
félag
wolf symbol emblazoned across his sternum. To the varg warriors, their
individual marks were a brand of fealty, strength, virility. Madden yanked the
robe tighter about his body, his lungs suddenly constricted, the symbol
fire-branded into his own chest seeming to burn as a familiar shame crept
through his veins. Servility, inferiority, celibacy. The symbolism of the two
marks could not be more disparate.

'Welcome.' Brandr extended a
hand to the doctor and they locked wrists. Madden resisted the impulse to recoil
from the contact. You didn't refuse the accepted extension of Fomor hospitality
unless you were looking for a front row seat at the feeding of your own
entrails to the raveners.

MacTire interjected, the
deep, bass tone of his voice resonating around the room. ‘Come,
Laeknir
,
Brandr, away to my quarters. Let us convene the
Skuldalid
, I would have
news from the Overworld.’

 ‘S
it.’ MacTire gestured broadly to the procession of
warriors filing into the stone chamber. He sprawled out in the hulking
monstrosity of a throne. The Royal seat succeeded in dwarfing even the
substantial bulk of the King's frame. His heavy palms stroked the smooth white
bone of the ravener skulls that curved to shape its grotesque armrests. Legend
held that the man himself took the winged predators down with his bare hands
during the battle that saw the Fomorians decimated and driven beneath the
waters to this hell-forsaken prison. The Fomori maintained that the throne was
constructed from the skeletal remains of the King's glorious victory.
Victory,
my arse
, Madden thought. The Savage’s army had been both merciless and
brutal, every woman and child hunted down and slaughtered, until the waters ran
red with their blood, while the males cowered in the caves. More than a
thousand years later and their bones had crumbled to grains of sand, a grisly
monument to the terrible genocide that saw the surviving males retreating into
a troglodyte existence and living in fear of the black-winged shadows that
guarded their prison.

Madden considered the
throne's claimed provenance to be so much propagandist bullshit. He had seen
what a ravener could do to a man. The retreat had been chaos and the passage of
time had eroded the true history. Not that MacTire was the type to dispel a
myth that bigged up his own prowess. And not a soul in this hellhole had the
balls to challenge the veracity of the King's legendary battle skills. To do
so, they would have to go through his
Skuldalid
, the inner circle of
viciously loyal guards, blood sworn to protect their King's life with their
own. The word meant family, and Madden supposed it was the closest thing
MacTire had had to kin this past millennium. His mate, Madden’s sister Aoife,
and her newborn son, had been amongst the first to fall to the Savage.

Madden stood as the
Skuldalid
took their seats at the rough-hewn, circular table. The Chamber, lit by the
flames of torches mounted in the walls, functioned as the strategic nerve
centre of MacTire's iron rule over Fomor. Brandr, heavy browed, dark and
bearded, with the muscle bulk of a pro wrestler, sat at MacTire's right hand.
Bare-chested, having hastily commando’d a pair of pants, he was all male.
Nothing pretty about him, face rough and masculine, a scowling, growling beast
whose wolf showed through with every rapid-fire mood change. He was dangerous,
unpredictable and more likely to leap to violence than breathe. Leaning boldly
back in his seat, his splayed stance mirrored that of the King, eyes dark as
bitter espresso, commanding the room to order.