The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (43 page)

‘What?’ She was in shock.
Connal had brought her into hell, so that she could live. Knowing that he
wouldn’t. A growl bladed her words. ‘He saved my life, risked his own to bring
me here, to bring me to you, and you
killed
him?’ Every word was a
match, her anger gasoline, waiting for the flame to hit. Something raked under
her skin. Her fingers gripped into the sheets and fabric shredded.

‘The Savage had it coming,
many times over, and he knew it. Have you any idea how many of us your precious
saviour murdered?’ The calm, sea-green rims his eyes were eclipsed by a bleed
of crimson. ‘When he took you to his bed, did he whisper that he was the reason
we are damned to this fucking hellhole? Did he brag to you that we are on the
verge of extinction because he ripped the heart out of every woman and child of
our kind? Or that he sold his soul to that bitch, Morrígan, in exchange for his
own ticket to freedom?' He bared his teeth in a sneer. 'No, I didn’t think so.
Not exactly sweet pillow talk to charm a lady out her knickers, is it?’

‘You bastard!’ The fire
caught hold, spinning her into a fury of talons. It was instinct to swipe at
him, to silence the words that hurt, that drove doubt into the well of her love
and muddied it.
Ash had
never been party to the full truth of
Connal’s
past. She defended
him
the only way she could, with violence.

As her claws struck across
Fite’s mouth, Ash knew the wealth of her anger wasn’t directed at him. If not
for her playing on Connal’s instinct to bite, she never would have been at
risk, he never would have had to hand himself over to the mercy of his enemies
to save her. He never would have died if she’d left him to his plans.
She’d
killed
him. Delivered him over to god-only-knew what brutality before they executed
him. Fite’s hatred alone enforced her belief that it wasn’t a quick death.

‘I underestimated you,’ Fite
backed away, clutching at his torn face, cold fury in his eyes. ‘It won’t
happen again. Who are you?
’ he
demanded.
‘
What are you,
and why have you come?
’

Trembling, staring at her
bloodied hands, Ash had no answers to who or what she was becoming.

T
he
two males
lounged, legs kicked up on the tabletop. Tyr picked at his teeth with the
remnants of a bone, discarding it to the ruin of the carcass they’d shared, and
looked over at Rún.

‘I’m just saying it’s fucked
up. You heard MacTire say it yourself. He slit Aoife’s throat. He called her a
‘
faithless bitch of a mate’.
’

Rún shook his head, indigo eyes
shuttered by long lashes. ‘Goldilocks is a hothead, but he didn’t kill Aoife.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘I just know, okay. They
fought like dogs, but he always loved her. Probably just mouthing off in the
heat of the moment,’ Rún hedged.

Tyr’s blond brows disappeared
into his hairline. ‘Heat of the moment? Aren’t you even curious? What the hell
did he mean by a bastard child being thrown to the untame? Thrown by whom?’
Animated, the younger male leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees.

‘How the fuck should I know?’
Rún shrugged massive shoulders and let his head fall back, measuring a breath
through gritted teeth. He focussed on the ceiling, rather than look his fellow
warrior in the eye. Why couldn't MacTire have kept his arrogant mouth shut? ‘We
were all out raiding the night of the Blód-Samhain. Aoife and the child stayed
behind with the other women and children, and they died in the first wave of
the Savage’s ambush. End of.’ The lie tasted bitter.

‘No, see that’s the thing,’
Tyr pushed. ‘I don’t recall seeing MacTire at the bonefires, not until much
later, when the carnage kicked off.’

‘That was a messed-up night,’
Rún exhaled.

‘Exactly. Anyone could have
done anything in the chaos.’

‘This is ancient history, my
friend.’ And that was the truth, wasn’t it?

Rún fired a clean-picked bone
across the room, and the projectile hit its mark with deadly accuracy. The bell
that would call the
thegn
to clear up the mess chimed at the strike.

What good could it do to pick
over the carcass of the past now? The circumstances of the Queen’s death, and
that of her child, had long-since been subsumed by the bloodshed that followed
in their wake. The body count was too high, the mass graves too deep for two
individual souls to matter. What was done could never be undone, and Connal
Savage’s death had been the final coffin nail in that inglorious chapter.
Still, the freshly-turned memories rankled him, as did the muzzle of silence
MacTire had sworn him to. ‘What difference would it make, Tyr?’

The young wolf pressed on.
‘What difference?! If MacTire did what he boasted to the Savage of, it’s
infanticide!’

Rún’s soft growl issued a
warning. ‘You don’t let MacTire hear you throwing that word around, Tyr.’ The
mood he was in, Tyr might not survive their leader’s wrath.

‘Where is the King?’ Tyr’s
nervous glance to the doors made Rún chuckle. He shoved the male’s shoulder.

‘Fear not, he went to find
the doctor, about his face.’ MacTire’s expression when he’d emerged, gashed and
bloodied from his chambers, had been fucking priceless. This woman, Ashling,
had elevated herself in Rún’s estimation. Clearly she had a fight in her that
the usual
thralls
did not. There might be hope for them all yet.

‘Doc Madden? I haven’t seen
him since MacTire had him punished.’

Rún pitied their healer. The
King had the doctor bend over to the omegas as punishment for failing to secure
the girl. No male should be subjected to such base degradation. ‘Probably gone
to bathe in female
,
’
he
said.

‘Not a luxury for the
t
hegn
, my friend. Poor bastards.’

‘Ha!’ His crack of laughter
startled Tyr. Rún was normally as taciturn and humourless as he was. ‘Do you
actually believe they’re celibate?’
Rún asked.

Tyr’s b
lond brows pulled down. ‘It’s their vow. To uphold the
purity of the bloodlines.’

Rún cut him an incredulous
stare. ‘Where do you imagine all those latent females came from?’ The younger
varg could be very dense.

Tyr tried again, but it
sounded stupid even to his ears now. ‘Spontaneous mutations in humans?’

‘Uhuh. About as likely as a
human sprouting feathers and laying an egg.’ Eyes rolled and another bone hit
the platter, gleaned of flesh.

‘Fuck.’

‘Yeah, explains why they all
failed.’ Runt wolf and human just made runtier wolf. The blood was weak. The
vessel was weaker.

Tyr’s foot gestured lazily at
the door. ‘What about this one? Think she’ll go the same way as the others?’

‘I don’t know. You saw what
she looked like. Only wolfblood needs the red fog to survive above ground, and
only wolves are cursed to die that way.’

Words fell to silent
contemplation as a
thegn
stole in to clear the plates.

They both knew what it meant
if the girl was one of them. She’d be their hope and future, the mother to the
next generation of their species. Now that Connal Savage was no longer a threat
to their numbers aboveground, she would become the new prize at the Contests,
and any one of them would kill to mount her. Rún ran the tip of his tongue
along his lip, teasing the flesh with his teeth. The she-wolf would feel so
much better than the human
thralls
. Less breakable. He couldn’t remember
the last time his wolf had taken a female.

The scent of blood alerted
them to movement in the tunnels, their heads snapping as one to watch the
shadow lengthen against the backlight of the torches. Fite’s silver hair shone
in the dance of flames as he emerged from the main tunnel. He was bleeding,
fresh scratches marring his cheek and jaw, splitting his lip. He was covering
up a limp with swagger, favouring his right side as his left thigh bled through
his pants.

Rún smirked. ‘What? You too?’

Fite cut a glare across the
room, metal-tipped fingers pressed to a deep laceration.

‘Looks like the she-wolf
found her claws,’ Rún said.

‘You sure she’s not
tigerblood?’ Laughter rumbled off the cavern’s walls and Tyr grinned.

'She sliced through your
attempts to soften her up, then? Need to sharpen those diplomacy skills, Fite.'
Rún suspected their brother had been chosen for the task because he was the
only one their king trusted to be alone with the female. Fite’s control was
legendary, which was ironic, considering that, anatomically, parts of him were
permanently wolf.

‘Fuck you. Both of you.’ Fite
slumped into a chair and wiped at his face with a rag. He was already starting
to heal.

The others were quiet until
Tyr murmured, ‘Is she the real deal?’

‘Yeah ...’ Exhaling roughly,
Fite reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew a shimmering strand
for inspection, running it through his steel fingertips. ‘I took this from her
head.’

The males leaned in on a
sharp intake of breath, not daring to believe their eyes. It was a single red
hair, too thick and silky to be human.

‘Damn. She’s a russet?’ Rún’s
whisper was reverent.

‘Russet wolves don't exist
outside of myths. The ancient ancestral bloodlines died out centuries ago.’

‘Then what is she?’ Tyr
sounded lost.

‘I don’t know what she is.’
Fite’s voice was tight.

‘But you’re saying she’s a
russet wolf?’ Scruffing at the line of his jaw, the cogs seemed to be turning
in Tyr’s head, but not grasping.

‘I’m saying she pulled a
Wicked Witch of the West and commanded the sky piranhas to fly, fly, fly.’
Fite’s glare was penetrating. ‘And away they flew, like trained flying fucking
monkeys.’

‘What the hell?’ Rún’s copper
brows pulled together over troubled eyes.

‘She’s a DeMorgan. Haven’t
any of you stopped to consider that she could be the Morrígan’s Trojan Horse?
That girl is no victim. She told me herself, she forced him to bite her. Why
would she do that, if not to infiltrate our ranks? And Connal Savage risked his
own life to bring her to us. Why?’

Fite’s point struck home,
hard.

‘You think it’s a trap?’ The
facts were straight enough in Rún’s head, it was the motives that were screwing
with his mind.

‘Savage’s loyalty to DeMorgan
was never in question. So why keep the girl alive when she was becoming the
very thing he despised?’ Fite asked.

‘And why place her in the
hands of his enemies, knowing it would get him killed?’ Rún added. If that
bitch Morrígan was truly the girl’s grandmother, what did that make her? Was
she really one of them?
Fite was broadcasting his suspicion, loud and clear.

‘But the King made the blood
link,’ Tyr cut in. ‘We all saw her dying in the water. You even have that hair,
and her claw marks to prove it. She has to be one of us, Fite.’

‘MacTire is letting himself
get led by his cock,’ Fite snarled, ‘and if we’re not careful, he’s going to
fuck that Pandora’s box open and unleash hell on us all.’

Again …
Rún finished Fite’s rant internally, the growl in his
throat going unheard. It wouldn’t be the first time MacTire had brought them to
ruin over a woman. When that male fucked, it seemed they all got screwed.