The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (25 page)

C
onnal had no idea how long he had lain awake, cheek
mashed into the rough concrete, staring off into the middle distance of his
apartment through the bars of the cage. There was no sense of time passing in
this windowless cellar, no dawn to follow the darkest hour. Time was measured
in splinted breaths as he strove to minimise movement. There was no cell in his
body that was not battered and abused. He felt a thousand years old. The bony
prominences of his shoulder, hip and knee were ground raw against the
unyieldingly cold surface and the chill in his body ran marrow-deep, a
combination of profound blood loss and his near nakedness, that had him
fighting the chatter of teeth and the shiver of flesh beneath the thin covering
of the towel draped across his hips. But it wasn’t the hurt or the cold that
kept him paralysed on the floor of that cage. Fact was, Connal was afraid,
terrified that if he moved so much as a muscle, he would wake her. And then it
would be over. He would trade an eternity of discomfort, if only they could
stay, spellbound, like this, just a few moments longer.

Time, it seemed, was not the
only thing that stood still in this subterranean bunker. Reality had also been
suspended, for he woke from vivid dreams, his ravaged body aching and aroused,
to find himself blanketed in the familiarity of her scent. Like a living,
breathing backpack, she was fused along his spine, arms locked around his neck
as though clinging to him for support. Her face was buried in the hollow of his
throat, glossy raven hair spilling over his exposed shoulder.

Maybe it was the fact he felt
like he’d gone fifteen rounds with the Juggernaut love child of Godzilla and
the Hulk. His body hadn’t taken such a beating in, well, ever, but it felt like
the physical wounds had somehow poked at the cracks in the foundations of
something altogether more than skin deep. He felt exposed, a vulnerability that
had nothing to do with his nakedness or the fact that he’d woken with a massive
hard-on and a head full of poisonous memories. Aoife. There was a can of worms.
He stifled a groan. He needed to get drunk and fuck. Screw the lid back down on
the jar of crap, stuff the spill of emotional excrement back into the cupboard
and slam those doors good and shut. But something told him a bottle of the hard
stuff and a knee-trembler down the back of some alley weren’t going to cut it.
Some marks on your slate were drawn in indelible ink. All you could do was
paint on layer after layer and hope to hell the whitewash didn’t just peel
right off.

Ash. Somehow, she had found
him down here, suffering. She knew what he was, yet she stayed.

Yeah, she knows what you
are, mate. But who you are, what you’re really capable of? Would she still be
holding onto you if she knew everything?

A wash of some raw emotion he
could not name rose up in him and wrung itself tight in his chest. What had it
cost her in courage, to confront her own terror, in order to help him? She had
covered him, cleaned the blood off his skin, held him.

Yes, and you are a selfish
son of a bitch for letting her stay there.

The knot behind his sternum
tightened and caught in his throat. Her selflessness touched on the raw nerve
of his own dogged self-reliance. He couldn't remember ever having being held
like this. Unless that one curled grip of tiny fingers around his thumb
counted.

Memories shot like muzzle
flash, freeze frames of events even his dreams didn’t have the balls to
re-visit in real time. Crusted, swollen lids squeezed shut on the shimmer that
watered his vision, as though he could blink the emotion away, swallow it back
down. It counted, but that didn’t mean the outcome of that one, brief contact
had been any better than it was going to be with Ash. The sentence he served
was a solitary one, and he was a grade-A asshole to even consider dragging her
into that cell with him.

A stirring at his back, a
subtle change in the pattern of her breathing alerted him to the fact his timer
had finally run down. Cracked lips parted and he croaked out the words he was
loath to speak on a resigned exhale.

‘You’re awake.’

He waited, an eternity of
dread-laden silence, for her whispered reply.

‘You're one of them,’ she
said.

The accusation he’d been
waiting for hung in the air, like a gallows. For reasons too raw to explore, he
didn’t want Ash to see him like this, broken and bleeding on the floor, sliced
open with all his dirty secrets exposed. ‘Yes,’ he confessed.

Neither of them moved. He was
aware of her breath on his skin, could feel the flutter of her heartbeat
between his shoulder blades, but his eyes never left their blurry focus point
outside in the room, and her hands stayed firmly latched around the corded
circle of his neck. If she let go, he would fall.

‘You didn't tell me.’

God. Her voice sounded so
quiet, soft with resignation. He cared what she thought of him. She’d put her
faith in him, at the club, to get her out of there. That trust had been there
in her eyes when he held her on the dance floor. How would she look at him now,
knowing he was the physical embodiment of her nightmares? There wasn’t a soul
walking this earth who knew what he was and did not fear him. He wasn’t sure he
could bear looking into her eyes to see that same fear staring back at him. The
confession cracked from his lips in a broken whisper. ‘I didn't know how.’

‘It’s quite easy,’ she said.
‘The words ‘Ash, I’m a giant wolf beast’ aren’t all that hard to say.’

Silence.

She was laughing at him. That
was really, really bad. Dread dropped though his gut like an elevator. Her
mockery was masking either contempt or fear, probably both. He wanted her to
hold onto him so fucking badly, but when he opened his mouth, it was as though
the barriers of his own defensiveness came slamming down between them.

‘Why are you still here Ash?’
he asked, twisting his torso, breaking the lifeline before she had the chance
to cast him adrift. Less painful that way. Still hurt like a mother.

Ash took a few seconds to
answer him. ‘I got locked in,’ she said.

‘Shit.’ Had he actually
deluded himself into thinking she was caged up in here with a lethal, wounded
animal by choice? ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘you can go. You shouldn’t be here. I’ll
give you the code for the door.’ Pathetic. He couldn’t even make it sound
convincing in his own head. He was offering her an out. He owed her that, but
there was a fist in his chest waiting to crush as soon as she snatched what he
offered and ran.
Don’t go
.

‘You’ll give me a code?’ she
replied, incredulous. ‘I don’t want it. You can let me out yourself.’ She
looked smug, as though daring him to move, to drag his broken body across the
stretching expanse of cellar and open the door.

Of course. She was afraid to
leave. Given the choice between the demons howling at her door, or the beat to
shit wolf who could hardly draw breath without flinching, he was looking like
the lesser evil. His ragged exhale spoke of defeat. ‘I can’t protect you.’

‘Protect me?’ she turned on
him angrily. ‘You kinda needed me last night ...’

Shame burned in his throat
and his eyes dropped to the pile of blood-stained towels in the corner. Her
pity would be a blow too far. ‘I’m grateful for everything you did for me, Ash,
but you shouldn’t have stayed. I could have seriously hurt you.’

‘But you didn’t.’ Her fingers
curled around his bicep, squeezing her conviction into his skin. ‘You’ve got a
load of razor claws and teeth and not one touched me.’

He couldn’t bring himself to
speak but, the rasping rattle of his breathing hitched slightly, and she
removed her fingers from his skin. It was a retreat, separating herself from
him as he withdrew from her.

All words disappeared with
that recession, folding into themselves and reforming into a silence so thick
it smothered.

When not another breath could
be sacrificed to the weighty tension, she broke it, coaxing the words into the
air between them on a plaintive whisper. ‘I thought you were going to die,
Connal.’

He dropped his forehead into
his hands then, replaying the scene from her perspective, realising for the
first time how bad it must have seemed. What was pain and dishonour to him, had
been life or death to her. His callused fingers grazed her cheek, coaxing the
dark-lashed sapphire of her eyes to meet the steely reassurance of his own. ‘My
kind don’t die, Ash. We’re not immortal, but it takes more than flesh wounds to
take us out.’

‘You lost so much blood.’

Her cheek took on a ghostly
pallor beneath the pads of his fingers and he found himself wanting to comfort
her. The corners of his mouth tugged into a crooked smile. ‘I’m weak,’ he said,
‘but I heal fast. I just need to feed.’

Ash’s eyes narrowed and her
brows took a trip so low they could have doubled as a moustache, her hands wheeled
in front of her, drawing his gaze to follow the panicky movements. ‘Woah, no,
Dude, I like you but don’t look at me like I’m breakfast. I am nobody’s snack
pot.’

Had he flashed too much
canine? Connal’s eyes lit up with amusement. ‘Contrary to popular fairytales, I
don’t actually eat beautiful girls. Their panties get stuck in my teeth,’ he
deadpanned.

‘That’s a relief,’ she said
nervously. ‘If you need to drink my blood, it’s yours.’ With a hard swallow ...
she offered her throat.

Christ. She tilted her head
back, exposing the slender curve of her neck and the submissive gesture tugged
at the animal part of him. Dark eyes fixated a moment on the rhythmic thud of
her pulse. He subtly adjusted the towel across his hips and, clearing his
throat, he rearranged his features into an expression of surprise.

‘What?’ Her cheeks flamed as
embarrassment set in and she flustered to cover up. ‘You told me they ... you
... bite.’

‘You have been reading way
too much vampire lit, Ash. I have no interest in sucking your blood, thanks all
the same.’ It was the truth. Of the many parts of her he craved to taste, her
blood was not one. He could lick her raw, sink his teeth deep into that creamy
flesh ...

‘But then, I don’t
understand, why the biting?’ she asked.

He held her gaze with a dark
intensity, subconsciously stroking the tip of his tongue along the razor edge
of his teeth. ‘The biting is a sexual thing, an act of intimacy, heightened
sensual pleasure. Nature’s breeding incentive.’

‘And that’s a bad thing?’ Her
lashes fanned down.

‘No, not within our species,’
his brows set in a frown, ‘mutual biting is a natural instinct, a reflex during
sex, ensures the mating pair don’t disengage too soon.’

‘Like when mating dogs get
tied?’ She asked, looking back up at him, her lips twitching, withheld
amusement threatening laughter.

‘Something like that, yeah,’
he cut her a glare, ‘except humans react differently to the bite. The
eitr
,
a substance in our saliva, acts like a drug. They can’t handle the intensity of
the high. They go mad from it, it becomes an addiction, leaves them constantly
craving the inhuman high.’

‘Those girls, at the club,
they were all over the men ...’ Ash said, making the connection.

‘Yeah,’ he replied.

‘Do they bite back? One of
them, she bit the man … wolf ... she was with.’

‘It’s a way to encourage the
male to bite, taps into the primal instinct.’

‘Shit.’ Ash dropped her head
into her hands, curling her fingers into her hair as she mentally digested what
he’d told her. ‘Soooo ...’ she said eventually, ‘you don’t eat people, or drink
blood. What do you need?’

‘Right now?’ He offered her a
wry grin. ‘I could murder a plate of steak and eggs.’

‘That’s all? Well, damn, I
can do that!’ She pulled at his arm again. ‘Get up, Big Bad, I cook a mean
steak and eggs.’

I
t took a lot of groaning and creaking muscles for them
to manoeuvre into the small set-away kitchen area. Took even more to get him
seated and stable in the hard-backed dining chair, his face flushed and clammy,
impossibly pale under the blush of pained exertion.

‘Steak and eggs, do you have
steak? Aha!’ Rifling through the compact, protein heavy fridge, she came up
with a film-wrapped plate of two thick meat slabs and a carton of eggs, nabbed
some butter for the pan and the salt mill from the countertop and she was good
to go. ‘Do you want it rare? Eggs well done, scrambled, sunny side up?’ Ash
shot off questions as she moved, animated into helping him, eager to do
something other than think anymore about whether or not he wanted to bite her
... and whether she wanted to be bitten. The thought boomeranged around her
head, hitting off fantasies and darting around the corners of her sense,
avoiding her terror. It wouldn’t leave her alone. It wanted to be acknowledged
and she beat it back by prepping the steak with vicious shakes of salt and
heapings of butter, sizzling in the bottom of the pan.

‘Rare and scrambled.’ He
grunted his words in edgeways and she leapt to ... the word wasn’t obey. It was
more ... accommodate. Care.

When she stopped moving long
enough to get a good look at him, he was watching her with the strangest
expression on his face, the fever gone from his gaze, the colour in his skin
trickling down his side and ... splattering on the floor like bloody Chinese water
torture. Drop, drop, drop.

‘Oh my gods, Connal! You are
dripping all over the floor! Did you pull something? Hold this there and give
me two seconds.’ She pressed a red plaid dishcloth into his hands and was away
before she could check if he actually obeyed her, figuring out the way back
through the drapes and stepping into the correct section. Bath. Her beast
needed a bath and she could handle no more blood today. No more blood for at
least a month, please.

She spun the taps over the
copper bath, dipped her hand under to test the temperature and let it fill. No
soaps that would sting, just hot, clean water filling the tub. The scent of
cooking meat sizzled into the air and filled the cool of the cellar expanse
with the delicious aroma of salty beef and Ash trailed it back through the
drapes to check the pans.

She felt like the Flash on
acid, constantly moving, making herself necessary, because if he asked her to
leave again, she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t explode into a bawling mess. And
he’d certainly kick her out then.

Ash pulled the thick slabs
from the pan, scored the meaty flesh with a knife searched out from a drawer
and declared them rare enough for any beast to eat. Plonking them
unceremoniously on a clean black plate, she heaped a tumble of messy scrambled
eggs into a bowl, her offerings pushed across the table to still in front of
him.

‘I’ll trade you steak for
answers, Big Bad,’ Ash handed over a knife and fork, and dropped herself into
the opposite chair with a tired sigh, huffing a stray curl from her eyes.
Watching, waiting for that first bite that would seal their agreement.

‘Where’s your plate?’

Her shoulder lifted in a lazy
half shrug but she didn’t rise to get herself one.

‘When did you last eat Ash?’

She rolled her eyes to the
ceiling as though trying to remember, fingers flicking as she counted off the
times she hadn’t. She didn’t know. It had to have been a few days, the hours
snowballing into one another with fear and pain, stalkers and doctors and body
burying and sex ... and right back into fear and pain. A cycle such as that
didn’t leave time for food. ‘The pub, I think ... maybe.’ It was an absent
answer and Ash nudged his plate closer, trying to coax him to eat with the
scents swirling from the stacked meat. ‘Connal, please eat.’
I need you
strong, I need you not dying. Because you’re scaring me.

He lifted the fork and
pointed the tines in her direction. ‘I eat when you eat.’

‘I’m not hung ... ry.’ Her
stomach chose that moment to thunder its disagreement. It was definitely hungry,
a sleeping beast poked to growling by the spearing scent of salty meat and
fresh, velvety eggs. It chewed on her insides.

‘Steak for answers, Ashling.’
And his voice brokered no argument, strong fingers spooning heapings of eggs
onto the plate and forking one of the steaks into the bowl.

Steak and eggs for two.

Ash scooped up a second set
of cutlery with a resigned huff, glaring at him with no real heat, a pointed
dip of her lashes and quirk of her brow prodding him silently to eat.

The first forkful of eggs
that passed her lips was Connal's cue to dig in. He stifled a moan around the
first mouthful. ‘So good,’ he groaned, and when his eyes lifted from the plate,
the smile on his face was food to Ash’s soul. Carving through the meat with
rapid efficiency, he paused, fork mid-air and caught her eye. ‘Thank you,’ his
words were quiet, sincere, ‘for everything.’

Deer in the headlights
startled, Ash couldn’t even blink as he caught her gaze and uttered words so
low and, God forbid she say it, heartfelt, she thought she was maybe dreaming
it. But no, he was waiting for something and her head dipped, hair falling to
curtain the pleased blush rising in her cheeks, a flustered mumble tripping off
her tongue. ‘Ummm, no problem, Big Bad ... a pleasure.’

It was a few bites into the
companionable silence that lapsed before Ash swallowed and let loose with
something that had been worrying the back of her mind since their conversation
in the forest. ‘I have their eyes,’ she said. Random to anyone outside of her
head, but he looked so human sitting there. They’d looked human too, the men in
the club. Except for their eyes. Something she shared. She shuffled some eggs
around, flopping them into a small pile and stabbing at them as she spoke, gaze
down. ‘What am I, Connal?’

He balanced the knife and
fork on the edge of the plate and straightened up in the chair. ‘Truth? I don’t
know.’

That was not promising, not
helpful at all. ‘Am I like you ... them?’

His expression darkened.
‘They believe you are, but they’ve been wrong before, and when they get it
wrong, people die.’

‘And you? What do you
believe?’ Her fork screeched on the plate as she speared a chunk of steak a
little too forcefully. He hated the wolves, killed his own race. Would he do
the same to her if she was like him?

Leaning back on the legs of
the chair, Connal scrubbed a hand over the nape of his neck, as though
considering his next words. ‘I believe what I can see with my own eyes, what I
can touch, and feel. You are different.’ He examined his hands before lifting
his gaze to deliver the confession. ‘I’ve been drawn to you from the moment I
caught your scent on that red coat. It’s the same reason they are drawn to you,
the wolves and the thralls.’

A frown crinkled her brow,
mourning the bright red of her damaged-beyond-repair coat as she chewed over
his past words with a bite of steak. ‘I’m bait.’

He shook his head, mirroring
her frown. ‘Not bait. Biology. The full moon. You felt that, didn’t you? The
quickening, the energy, the appetites. The pull is in your blood, Ash. You feel
it too, you can’t deny it.’

There would be no denial. Ash
felt her cheeks infuse in a flush redder than the blood on the floor, heating
at the memory of him, her, them. The feel of the ice melting and her
inhibitions lowering. The pull. ‘So that was why we ...’

‘Some instincts are too
strong to be denied,’ he said, and the way he looked at her when he said it
gave her the distinct impression he was fighting some pretty powerful instincts
of his own.

‘You’re saying I’m an
animal?’ Indignation lit her tone into a growl, her knife and fork clattering
to the swiftly emptying platter of food. Every little part of her wanted to
deny the implications, but given what happened, she hadn’t exactly been
civilised.

The front legs of Connal’s
chair snapped back down to the floor. ‘We are all animals, Ash. I can’t tell
you what you are. I can only tell you that these wolves are desperate enough to
rip you apart trying to find out.’

Just as they did my
mother.
‘What makes me so damn
special?’

‘It's genetics. They target
latents: females who they believe can carry their bloodlines.’

‘Bloodlines? You mean, like,
breeding?’ Ashling DeMorgan. Graduate, orphan, broodmare for hell wolves.

‘I mean exactly like
breeding.’

There could be no measure for
the volume of weirded out she was currently drowning in. Her nightmares made a
lot more sense. The way they descended on her mother had always been too
confusing for her younger mind to process. They had been ravaging and ravenous.
Now, she could add the word carnal to it. ‘Why? What do they want with me?’

‘They are a species on the
verge of extinction. They have no females to carry their young, and so they are
recklessly hunting down any woman with the merest hint of wolf blood in the
desperate hope of propagating their race. And you are their latest target.’

‘Lucky me ...’ The frown was
becoming perma-etched onto her face. Everyone wanted her to have their wolf
spawn? She could maybe deal with that, be flattered even, but the end result
would probably make her look worse than Connal in the process. ‘You said my
grandmother sent you to protect me. She knows?’

‘How do you know that she’s
even your real grandmother?’

‘What do you mean? She’s the
only one I have.’

‘I mean you’re not the
first.’

Confusion darkened her eyes,
the last forkful of eggs abandoned on the plate, imploring him to enlighten
her.

‘You’re not the first girl
that Anann DeMorgan has assigned me to protect.’

Well didn’t that make her
feel all special. ‘What happened to these other girls?’

‘Some were taken, the rest,
Anann hid them, offered them refuge. But ...’

‘But now she’s in no state to
do anything,’ she finished for him.

‘Yeah.’ Connal’s elbows hit
the table and his head slumped into his hands on a frustrated exhale. ‘I can’t
fight them all.’

YOU’RE SCREWED got stamped
across her forehead in a blaze of panic. She would not be prey to them, never
would they traumatise her world like they did her dreams. She would never stop
running if that’s what it took. And fighting, if she had to, she would arm
herself tooth and nail in any way possible.

‘I refuse to just lay down
and die ... or spread my legs for a monster horde.’ Nails raked at her insides,
her skin shrinking and shrivelling in a tight chill of abhorrence. ‘I want
these murderers and rapists brought to justice.’

‘You’re just a little lost
girl, Ash. I can’t protect you. There is no justice.’

‘Revenge then.’ If he knew
just how personal her vendetta was, Ash didn’t think he’d be spouting about ‘no
justice’. She could literally feel the blood gathering on her hands, the
violent urges swarming up to fill her with sharp-fanged thoughts and clawing
animosity.

‘Revenge will take you to
dark places,’ he said grimly.

‘You say that like a man
who’s been to those places,’ she countered.

He didn’t reply. It was as though
their conversation had taken a turn down a dark alley he was unwilling to
explore, and they fell to eating in silence. When his plate was clean, he
busied himself with clearing away the dishes. He seemed grateful when she
steered them back to neutral ground, marvelling at how rapidly his injuries
seemed to be healing. He turned his back to her while he worked at the sink,
but she could see the tension ease across his broad shoulders. Even injured, he
was magnificent. The towel he’d hastily wrapped around his hips left precious
little to the imagination and she wondered if he could feel the heat
of
her
gaze as it raked over his body. She’d been trying to muster the composure to
say something when she remembered leaving the bath taps running.