The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (45 page)

‘The
thrall
will bear
witness. Should I have her brought to you?’

‘No!’ She didn’t want the
female near her. Clearly the woman would lie for him.

‘What did you really know of
him, Ashling? Other than what he chose to reveal.’ Each word was accompanied by
a caress, his thumbs following the underside of her breasts. Her heart kicked
in her chest. ‘You believed yourself in love with him, but what you experienced
were false emotions, stolen sensations from the blood link that you and I
shared.’

It couldn’t be true, she knew
her own mind, her emotions weren’t something that could be fabricated … and
yet, something Connal had said rose to the surface of her memories, drawn up by
the twinge of doubt. ‘
Just you and me, naked and broken … no full-moon fever
... no supernatural mojo
…’ Is that what he’d meant? That everything before
that had been the product of some wolf voodoo? But … ‘Why should a blood-tie
with you affect how I feel about him?’

He turned her in the circle
of his powerful arms until she was face to face with the wolf branded into his
chest. The exact replica of Connal’s, seeing it again, on another man’s skin,
engulfed any lingering desire in a wash of sadness. Her lashes were wet when
she blinked, throat knotted. If she ignored his face, she could almost imagine
it was Connal. He even had the nipple rings.

Bundling her small hand in
his, Mac rested the flat of her palm to his beating heart. ‘Connal and I were
brothers once,
félagi.
Bonded until death. He turned against me, and
against us all, Ashling. He was a traitor to his own people. You must see, I
had no choice. He knew it too. He brought you here, in the end, to me. I
believe it’s what he wanted.’

‘It is?’ Her voice was so
very small, confusion near tangible, a tangle in her head. There was no telling
truth from lies, no fact from fiction, there were too many pieces of too many
puzzles and Ash couldn’t see straight enough to put them together. Her exhale
was broken, and when Mac wove his fingers through hers and led her away from
the orgy, she didn’t resist.

Y
ou saw them,’ his voice interrupted her thoughts.

She didn’t turn her head but
her fingers twitched around his. She was listening.

‘It’s instinct for the males
of our race to work in pairs. Brothers share everything, just as Connal and I
should have. We were brothers once.’

Ash’s head snapped up, eyes
colliding with the pitch night of his gaze. Oh yeah, she was listening.

‘Connal was ruined.’

A flinch shied her away from
his words.

‘No, Ashling, listen.’ His
thumb stroked over her knuckles, back and forth as he led her through the
tunnels. ‘We were fated to rule together, to love together, side by side. That
is the way of our people. Blood brothers live one life.’ He paused, allowing
her silence to think.

She knew this part, Connal
told her as much, but he’d been far less forthcoming when she asked if he had a
brother. His distraction techniques had been incredibly effective.

‘Why was he ruined?’
she asked.

‘Connal’s father was
king
before me.
Bres
was his name
, and his félag, Vise, was my father.’

‘But you said you were
brothers.’

‘Born of the same mother, yes
. We shared our mother’s womb,
but
were
sired by different fathers.’

Ash could see the sculpture
clearly in her head, the yin and yang babes curled against one another in their
mother’s stone womb. This is what Connal had meant. The branded males shared
one mate, and accepted all offspring as their own. The sculpture must have hurt
him. He’d lost his brother and his pack. He had a brand and one side of
himself, a half-life, if anything MacTire said was true.

‘Our mother gave birth to us
in a war camp, far from home,
’
he said. ‘While our fathers were away fighting,
marauders attacked the camp. They returned to find her murdered in her bed and
Connal gone. I was behind an overturned table, swaddled in blankets, asleep.
The King blamed himself. He refused to believe his son was dead, and he was
right, though it took him ten long years to track the boy down. By then it was
too late.’

Ash hadn’t thought Mac
capable of talking in anything more than grunts, but his gruff voice was
proving her wrong with every syllable he uttered. ‘What do you mean he was too
late? He found him ...’

‘Connal fell into human hands
and was raised by them. He was never taught control as we are.’

Ash lifted a brow in
question.

‘Fomorian children study
under the
thegn
Masters from infancy, to contain their stronger, animal
natures. Not that there have been any children for centuries ...’

The awkward silence that fell
was a separate entity. What the hell was she thinking, getting soft on him when
he had her set up to be the new mother of the race? That’s what he really
wanted: an incubator for his hellhound babies. And she was not thinking about what
would happen afterwards. Well, she was, but she had no plans to be around long
enough for him to pass her on to the sexual animals he ruled. Nuh uh. She was
getting the fuck out of the Rocky Horror Porno Show
, pronto
.

‘Take heed of how the vargs
took that
thrall
. She was overcome by ecstasy, was she not?’ His tone
dropped, huskily rasped to the curve of her throat. Heat flared where his words
touched and her head dipped in agreement.

‘Now picture the scene were
their beasts given free rein.’

She didn’t need to picture
it, it was something she saw when she slept, a blood stain on her memories. Red
Shoes would be ripped apart, like her mother was.
Great beasts tearing at
her flesh until there was nothing left but viscera. Blood, bone, screams.
She’d witnessed what the loss of control could do, first hand.

Hell, his Blond Assholishness
still bore the marks of her own lack of control. Even now, it was writhing
inside her, stretching aggressively. She may have it leashed, somehow, but the
animal force stirring inside her was no lapdog, docile and happy to obey. No,
she had a Great White on the end of her leash, and it gnashed its jaws with
every wave of emotion.

MacTire guided her down
another endless corridor. ‘The King put Connal in the fighting pits, hoping to
purge his human weakness, but the experiment worked too well. Without the
balance of training, Connal became untamable. I should have killed him, and
saved us all the misery that followed, but out of respect for his father, he
was allowed to live.’ A growl leaked the pain of old wounds into his voice. ‘We
even went through with the sham of the branding, just to please the old man.
The King was a sentimental fool,’ he scoffed, ‘and it destroyed us all. Connal
escaped and massacred our people.’

Throat bobbing with a
swallow, Ash looked up from her feet, only half-noting that rock had turned to
fine grains of slate black. The big brute knelt and sifted his fingers through
the sands. Torch-flames flickered in the black of his eyes like starlight and
she couldn’t look away.

‘You see this, Ashling? These
are the bones of your ancestors, females, babes, warriors, turned to dust by
the Savage and his hatred.’

He flipped her hand and
poured the charred remains into her palm. She gagged, but the grip on her wrist
wouldn’t allow her to dispel the dead sand.

‘Connal destroyed us. We live
in a world built upon the bones of our own people, their lives the foundation,
their blood our water. Can you see?’

She could see. The wasteland
of Fomor spread out before her was a world without life. It was a canvas of
desolation.
Us
, he’d said. The King considered her one of them. He was
sharing his world with her.

‘How could one man bring down
so many single-handed?’ she asked. It simply wasn’t possible, even for Connal.
She’d seen the aftermath of the fight against Brandr and Fite. Mac’s fingers
loosened and she tipped her hand, brushing at the particles clinging to her
skin. She wiped it on his shoulder, disgust in the curl of her lip. He laughed,
twining their fingers again as he rose from his crouch in the sand.

‘I never said he was alone,
Ashling. He had an army of untame at his back.’

‘Untame?’

‘Haven’t you wondered why we
have this duality of man and beast?’

He turned her with a guiding
hand to the small of her back and she moved with him, brow knitted. She’d never
really thought about it. Her head hurt with the fragments of information rammed
inside.

‘Fomorian biology wasn’t
exactly covered in any of my classes.’

His lips pulled into a grin,
a bark of a laugh letting her glimpse the sharp, white tips of his canines. ‘It
would be my pleasure to teach you.’

And wasn’t that something to
say. Ash’s body had no trouble interpreting that for it’s own needs.

Mac smirked, as though her
thoughts were his and then he was teaching, veering off a path through a
doorway with her in tow.

‘O
ur people were once pure beast.’ Mac’s voice
ricocheted off the rock as he led her deeper into the warren of tunnels. They
were narrowing and he had to half-turn to fit through the gaps. Ash was barely
avoiding catching herself on the jagged edges of the rough-hewn passage. ‘We
roamed Ireland, wild and uncivilised, until settlements of men encroached on
our world. They brought ancient gods with them, a powerful force that defeated
the Fomorians and banished them beneath the black sea. But some of our
ancestors found a way to escape, by binding their souls to those of human men
and women.’

They were body-snatchers?
Ash snorted, but forced herself to sober. They’d taken
the bodies of innocents.

Ash was pretty sure the King
was leading them down into hell, the bowels of some darkness she may never
climb back out of. The bone sand had already creeped her out, and now her
freak-out level was ratcheting up. As a macabre tour-guide, Mac could rival the
best. If she encountered the pit of primordial ooze the mammoth wolf things had
crawled from, she’d fight tooth and nail to get away and hide under Mac’s bed.
But for now, Ash had borrowed some steel balls. ‘Who were they? The people you
violated?’ she asked.

‘They were Viking invaders, a
band of Norsemen and the straggle of male and female slaves aboard their
longboats. They moored on the Dubh Linn, oblivious to its dangers, and on the
night of Samhain, when the moon was full, the Fomorians were reborn as the men
you see today: human in form, but not human. Beast, but partially tamed by
humanity.’

His fingers toyed with the
ends of her hair where they curled against the base of her spine and her flesh
shivered. She looked down to see the floor had given way to rugged steps,
dropping into darkness. She tentatively took the first one.