The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (50 page)

That was a problem.

Too much had happened, with
no reprieve, wearing her down until she was threadbare from all the friction.
Fite hated her. No, that wasn’t quite right. Fite
feared
her. In her
heightened state of animal arousal, she had smelled it on him, and knew
instinctively what it was. Hell, she was even starting to scare herself.

They walked single file, and
Ash’s thoughts got sidetracked. Sure, she’d noticed the King: he was imposing
and arrogant, and built. The breadth of his shoulders had never seemed so wide
in the massive caverns, but down here, she wondered how he could fit without
being greased up. His body took up so much of the tunnel, she had no hope of
seeing around him. Huffing a strand of hair from her eyes, she had to admit he
was a sight from the back. His white shirt flowed and tightened with his
movements, bunched around thick arms and drew taut on his shoulders before
loosening at the waist. Indented muscles were clearly defined through the thin
fabric and she followed the line of his spine to an ass molded in some sort of
leather.
That should be illegal.
No man that looked like him should be
allowed to wear something so tight. Maybe it was a brother thing. Connal had
looked just as biteable in his biker leathers.
Fuck.
She stumbled and
averted her eyes.
No, stop seeing him where he isn’t.

‘Ashling?’ Concern deepened
Mac's voice and drew her gaze up to his.

She brushed him off. ‘I’m
fine. Are we nearly there yet?’

He continued staring at her,
sensing the shift in her mood. When his lips parted and his eyes narrowed, she
braced herself for him to push, but he only scrunched himself to the side and
gestured one long arm in front of him, making room for her to pass. ‘We are
here.’ She peered around him.

A wooden door sealed off the
rest of the tunnel. Her curious glance was answered with a daring smile and a
tip of his head. Clearly, she was to enter first. Taking a deep breath, Ash
sucked in and squeezed past him, ignoring the purr in his throat and the leap
of her heart when her breasts brushed his abdomen. The door, carved into knots
and creatures, opened easily when she flattened her palm to it.

‘Oh, wow.’ Candles glowed on
every surface of the temple-like structure; columns raised the ceiling in
vining sculptures. For primitive creatures, they definitely knew how to carve.
Statues sat on pedestals or were recessed into the walls. Some were hewn
straight into the rock. She didn’t recognise the people they depicted, but they
were beautiful, powerful.

‘Elatha.’ He made her jump
and she hid the freak-out with a glare.

‘Excuse me?’

He smirked and turned her to
face the largest statue: a giant prince of darkness with hair that shimmered
with strains of gold. It wasn’t plated. The colour was in the rock. Blue
glittered in the sculpted sea, silver shone from the boat he stood in. It would
have been angelic, if not for the limp raven dangling from the man’s fist.

‘This is Elatha. Our
ancestor, our God.’

‘Damn, Great-Great Grandpa
was a real animal lover, huh?’

‘The raven is a
representation of the Morrígan
,’
Mac explained.
‘
Their
falling out has been at the root of all our evils.’

Big Mac was deadly serious,
but his grav
itas
did little to calm the hysteria in her blood.

‘Can’t beat a good ‘ol family
feud,’ she quipped. Her family tree was starting to sprout some bizarro
branches. Maybe being an orphan wasn’t so bad after all. ‘So, if my grandmother
is rotting away in a nursing home,’ she asked, ‘does that mean the Dublin Bird
Strangler is on the loose somewhere too?’

He clearly didn’t appreciate
her humour.

‘All that remains of Elatha’s
earthly presence is the red fog that gives us life during full moon
,
’
Mac replied.

Earthly presence? Ash wasn’t
sure she wanted to know what other plains these ‘Gods’ dwelt upon. Her head was
already spinning. She shrugged Mac off on the pretense of moving closer to the
shrine, but really, the heat of his hands through the thin sheath of her robe
was too much.

A dark pool at the foot of
the statue seized Ash’s attention. No … Not a pool at all. A doorway. A
conduit.
The
conduit. Connal had told her as much in the forest. The
black waters were channels to the surface. Escape from this godforsaken place
was just within reach ...

‘Not a wise move, Ashling,’
Mac interrupted her thoughts, ‘it’s days yet until the full moon.’ Reaching
around her, he took a bowl from a stone niche and carefully poured its thick,
liquid contents into the water. Red fog shimmered up from the surface and
overflowed, lapping their ankles with a soft fragrance.

‘Elatha’s essence lives on in
the black waters,’ Mac said, by way of explanation.

It was sweet, musky. Ash inhaled
hard and sighed as her muscles loosened and the tension under her skin eased.
She tried very hard not to think about breathing in some ancient deity’s
essence, but there was no denying it was good shit. It made her all warm and
fuzzy.

She’d get back on board with
her escape plans, just as soon as her head got off this tilt-a-whirl
intoxication. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘We are in the Sanctum of the
Thegn Masters.’

Right, because that explained
everything. Mac wasn’t being very vocal and it scared her. These short answers
did nothing for her confidence.

Irritated, she spun away from
him, taking in the majesty of the place, the sanctuary. ‘Are we going to pray?’
She quirked a brow. ‘Because I’m not the type to scrape down on my knees to
anyone, not Gods ...’

‘And not Kings.’ Mac laughed,
finishing her sentence. ‘Your rebellious spirit excites me, Ashling,’ he
reached out and twined his fingers in a lock of her hair, rubbing the curl
against his skin, ‘more than it should. The way you went for Fite back there …
utterly fearless.’

The awe in his tone left her
breathless. She pulled away. ‘We’re here to train.’ Not a question, she wanted
his head back on track because hers was getting fogged. She tried to convince
herself it was the smoke.

‘And so we are, my impatient
one.’ Mac peeled the shirt over his head in one lithe shift, and Ash gaped.
Magnificent. Revealed in all its chiseled, muscular glory, the King’s torso was
spectacular. Lightly dusted in fine hair, his abs rippled in slo-mo as he
tossed the shirt aside. Muscles danced and tendons flexed and her eyes may have
been a little glued. She was female after all. Gold rings glinted through his
nipples, winking at her in the candlelight. Ash blushed, desire suddenly riding
her hard in spite of all her mental chiding.

‘Whoa there, big guy,’ she
protested, ‘we can train with our clothes on!’ Her hands went up, warding off
any further removals.

He ignored her, popping the
fasteners on his trousers, unselfconscious and oblivious to the havoc he was
wreaking in her head. ‘Clothes are precious in Fomor. My men die to bring them
here.’

‘I’ll pay for the
dry-cleaning if I get blood on you, ok?’
Blood, or drool.
Damn it, she
was affected by him and he wasn’t helping her by taking things off. Her eyes
shut, her hands clenched. Ash aimed for a resolute, no nonsense tone, trying to
hide the lusty hum in her blood. ‘Seriously, you start doing the Full Monty,
and I’m out of here, Mac.’

He was so blasé about
stripping, it unnerved her, but he made no more moves to lose the trousers.
Instead, his head canted, smirking as he looked her over. ‘Get comfortable with
nudity, woman.’

Seriously, did he just
‘woman’ her? A protest bubbled on her lips, only to be silenced by the bomb he
dropped next.

‘Clothing doesn’t survive the
shift
,
’
he
said.

Her voice shook. ‘You’re
going to turn beast?’

‘Yes, Ashling, and if we do
this right, so shall you. Trust me.’

Oh God. It was one thing
seeing Connal change, he’d been injured, but coming face to face with one of
the creatures that murdered her mother? Hell, if what he said was true, she was
becoming
one of those creatures. She wasn’t ready. Panic cranked up with
the quickening beat of her heart.

He held her in his dark eyes,
mesmerising, fingertips sliding the robe from her shoulders and letting it pool
at her feet.

Frozen by his revelation, she
allowed it, letting the drugging incense flood her veins. Nervous fingers
picked at the lace trim of her tank top and she squirmed as his gaze roamed her
head to toe. Not much protection in a vest and panties.

His voice was seductive as he
circled her. ‘Do you know that the she-wolf is bigger and more powerful than
the male?’ he said as he drew her hair back from her shoulders. The pad of his
thumb stroked her pulse and it skipped for him. ‘It allows her to handle a
branded pair, and to protect her young.’

Damn if that wasn’t one hell
of an image. The coiled energy within her purred. ‘You’re saying I could hurt
you?’ She spoke quietly.

‘I can handle you, Ashling.’
His arrogance was like a scent.

‘What I did to that girl was
accidental, but it’s stronger around you.’ Ash hid the tremor in her voice with
a growl. ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody else.’

Mac hummed, as though tasting
words before he spoke them. ‘Would it ease your mind if I restrained you? For
my protection.’ A smirk played on his mouth. ‘It’s true, you don’t yet know
your own strength. I can summon the ouroborus roots to restrain you.’

Ouroborus? Wasn’t that a
snake symbol? Oh shit.

Mac raised his palms and the
walls came alive. Writhing vines reached out to wrap her ankles and slither up
her body, coiling around her wrists.

Her body thrashed
instinctively, claws extending in defence as the bindings tightened. She’d
asked for this, why was she fighting? Ash took a breath, allowing the roots to
collar her throat. Another growl escaped her lips and she couldn’t swallow the
tremulous warning.

‘I swear, if you try any
funny stuff, none of your little vines will be able to contain my degree of
pissed off.’ Ash couldn’t put her finger on where the surety came from, but she
knew it was truth. The energy inside her could break free, if he pushed.

Mac made no indication that
he’d heard her, he just watched, coal-black eyes fixed on her every breath,
intensely aware of her reactions.

Heart rate elevated, breaths
panicked, skin coated in a fine sheen of sweat and Ash knew she probably looked
as freaked as she was trying not to feel. She was being provoked.
Just
breathe, Ash. Maybe he knows what he’s doing … hopefully he knows what he’s
doing.

Cloth dabbed at her forehead,
snapping her thoughts front and centre.

‘Your beast strengthens by
the hour, Ashling. I can feel your quickening in my own blood. You must contain
it.’

Terror roared over her
careful control. ‘But how?’

His face was so sympathetic,
it hurt to look at it. She didn’t trust his concern. ‘For this to work, you
need to relax. Breathe deep.’

Ash complied shakily.

‘Taste the smoke in your
lungs, it will calm you.’ He took up pacing around her once more, his eyes
searing where they lingered.

A warning rolled from her
throat.

He cast her an admonishing
look but continued. ‘From childhood, we were sent to the Thegn Masters for
instruction. They taught us to transcend emotions, to diffuse our triggers, by
diverting their energy.’

‘Triggers?’

‘Negative stimuli: fear,
pain, anger, grief … lust.’ He prowled around her and even the words bristled
something primal in her. ‘Jealousy, I believe we have established.’

From behind her, Mac’s voice
was low with amusement. She could sense the damn smirk. ‘You must learn to cool
the rage in your blood, control it, before it consumes you.’

When he next came into view,
he was playing something through his fingers. It was a goddamn whip. Fear
flooded her blood with adrenaline and flipped her switch from warily compliant
to frantic. She reared away from him. Her curled lip was a nod to the leather
he stroked tenderly over his palm.

‘Back up there, Wolf-Boy. I
signed up for your creepy meditation, not flagellation. You are not BDSM-ing me
with that.’

He snapped it out and she
flinched back on a snarl as the thin, singular fall cracked the ground beside
her. Mac was baiting her, and it was working. Ash’s hackles were up.

‘You see? I haven’t even
touched you, and already you’re set to detonate. You wield power you are not
equipped to handle, Ashling, like an assault rifle in the hands of a child. If
you cannot rein it in, you will be disarmed.’

She caught the threat but bit
back the growl. He was right.

Mac secured the snake whip
under his arm and dipped to catch her eyes with his. There was a promise there,
a warning, and as he drew a strip of silk from his pocket, Ash knew he was
giving her the opportunity to fight against it.