The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (55 page)

Mac had her attention but her
eyes stayed on the men in the arena. Brandr stopped before her
and
swe
pt
down
in a lavish bow. He was rewarded with a crinkle of her nose and sauntered off,
laughing.

‘In the days before the Great
War, the Contests were more a spectator sport, the untame, pitted against men,
slaves mostly.’

‘That’s barbaric.’ Ash felt
sickened. Connal’s father had put him in the fighting pits, hoping to purge his
human weakness. She couldn’t bear to think of him being used as the
entertainment in their sick, dog-baiting spectacle. She looked up at the King,
hiding the emotion in her gaze with a sweep of her lashes. ‘What about now?’
she asked. These certainly weren’t men waiting to die, the energy in the room
was downright enthusiastic.

‘The Contests were reinstated
to decide who gets to spend time aboveground, during full moon.’

‘So there’s a quota on how
many can go?’

‘There was,’ Mac replied.
‘Our exploits need no longer be confined to the neutral ground of Form.’ His
face split into a broad grin.

‘Exploits?’ Ash arched a
brow, ‘by which you mean biting innocent humans and turning them into your sex
slaves.’

Mac stiffened. ‘So many males
confined this way creates friction,’ he gestured to the arena, and Ash could
almost smell the testosterone. ‘Tensions need to be worked off, one way or
another.’

‘Then why limit yourselves to
the safety of the club?’ Ash asked. ‘Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, Mac?’

That got a growl from his
throat. ‘I value the lives of my men, finite in number as we are. We had a
tacit agreement with the Morrígan: Stray from neutral ground, and all bets are
off.’

‘So that’s what Connal was
doing, hunting down the strays? But now he’s gone, and you have free run of the
city.’

‘Precisely.’ He had the
decency to drop his smug smile in the face of her glare. She saw it though,
still twitching at the corners of his mouth. Asshole. She tried to picture
Dublin, overrun by these creatures. God, it was going to be carnage.

The first pair stalked
forwards, and she forced herself to sit back, drawing her knees to her chest.
Her blood was alive with the energy filling the space. It put her on edge. The
men were unfamiliar, but she still blushed when they discarded what little
clothing they had on and looked to Mac. Ash looked anywhere but at them. More
hand signals from the King and they exploded in a bone-cracking snap that rang
howls around the arena.

She had trouble breathing.
The massive wolves crashed together, bloodied on impact as claws and fangs
ripped through flesh. Frightening creatures. Beautiful creatures. Her attention
was fixed as growls spun like thunder in the cavernous space and the spectators
bayed their excitement. Blood pulsed beneath her skin. Plugged into the circuit
of violence flowing through the assembly, she had to fight the connection.

Bone glinted through gashes
in their flesh, but the wolves paid no heed. Her stomach roiled and Connal’s
white beast lay on the floor of its memory cage while she talked to it, while
she cared … She pitied the creatures. Who would dress their wounds?

An agonised howl snapped her
vision to the Contest in time to see a muddy-brown wolf fly into the wall. A
sickening crack and it dropped to the floor. The baying racked up to a
triumphant bellow. The victor came forward to rub his head against the King’s
legs. MacTire remained unfazed as he gestured for another pair. Ash tried
transplanting the barbaric scene before her to Dublin’s quiet, suburban
streets, but couldn’t. Carnage would only be the start of it. If these things
got loose, the civilised world was screwed.

‘Aren’t you afraid my
grandmother will come back and smite you down herself?’ she asked.

‘She is governed by the laws
of the Gods,’ Mac replied. ‘They love to meddle in the lives of mortals, but
direct participation is forbidden. The Morrígan may not personally take life,
or her own is forfeit. She merely incites others to murder.’

Ash struggled to reconcile
the pathetic, disabled grandmother she’d visited in the nursing home with this
creepy goddess Mac described.

‘This full moon we celebrate
a new found freedom,’ he grinned.

‘So why are the Contests going
ahead?’

‘My men fight in your honour,
Ashling. You are their Queen.’

All this violence, is for me?
That’s messed up, she thought. Don’t they have chocolates to give a girl
instead? But there was no denying the pleased growl that hummed from within
her. She frightened herself. Ash needed to get out of there before she lost her
humanity to the wild lure of these creatures. She cast her hook into the waters
of Mac’s intel and fished.

‘The full moon is close,
then?’

‘Tomorrow night,’ Mac nodded.

Her head snapped back on her
neck, startling at his words. Tomorrow night. She could survive that long. She
would. Same might not be said of the wolves in the ring. Smoky fur slicked with
blood, the wolf was belly up beneath a snarling grey beast, its neck exposed to
the savage canines inches from its throat. It whimpered and the room exulted.
The display shook her, a vibration in the marrow of her bones, part excitement
and a dose of disgust. Skin too tight and bones too heavy, her joints creaked
and popped in their sockets as she watched.

The rules were pretty simple.
Submission got them freedom from the arena, but they forfeited the right to go
aboveground that month. Get thrown out of the ring and it was an instant loss.
Like Werewolf Sumo Wrestling. There weren’t too many serious injuries; she’d
seen what they could do. Connal had been in far worse condition than any of the
competitors. Most disturbing of all, they looked to her when they delivered a
particularly vicious blow, honouring her with the violence.

‘Tyr.’ Mac’s beckoning call
startled her and Ash sat back, arms straining around her knees as she gathered
into herself. There was a rope to her control and the brutality was quickly
fraying it. Lips pressed into a thin line, she watched the male come forwards.
God, he looked young, his baby-face framed by a mop of curly blond, blue eyes
bright even in the gloomy fire-light. He was leaner than the muscle-bulked
males, sculpted. When his massive opponent stepped forwards, the primal thing
inside her growled a protective warning. Foreboding rose like a shadowed chill
up her spine. This was not going to end well.

‘Is that fair?’ Ash
whispered, angling herself to the King’s ear.

‘Just watch.’

As the fight got underway,
Ash really started to wish she hadn’t obeyed him. The rope thinned a little
more, the scene before her unravelling in a haze of red as blood spattered
across the crowd. She felt as though she was in someone else’s skin, in
something else’s skin. The pressure built, each slash and bite winding her tighter
than a screw, until she was at break-point.

Tyr was pulverizing the
larger wolf. Jaws clamped to its jugular, his powerful back limbs raked at the
soft underbelly, slitting his opponent open from throat to groin. Ash snapped
from her seat with a roaring protest. This wasn’t a competition. He wasn’t just
winning. He was torturing.

‘STOP! Stop it!’ Darkness
rolled through her growl until it was a menacing thunder on her lips, and then
red crashed into her vision and she fragmented.

‘C
ome on, come on ... Come. On!’ Dangling the
blood-soaked string of silk into the small hole he’d dug into the cave floor,
Connal gritted out demands. Over the past hours, they’d perfected this
technique of luring the filthy, razor-mouthed fleshworms to the surface. Though
it cost them their own blood, the cuts to their forearms, coupled with a few
nasty bites, seemed a small price for freedom. A couple of trial runs slinging
the bait from the cave proved the raveners went wild for the juicy, blood-swollen
grubs. Now, if only they could amass enough to give them the head-start they
needed to make it down the mountain. The wriggling pile tied up in the remnant
of the Doctor’s robe didn’t seem half-enough, but they were running out of
time. ‘I hope you’re a good sprinter, Doc.’

The doctor smirked. ‘Those
things come after us, I’m tripping you. Just remember that, Savage.’

‘Think you could catch me,
Thegn
?’
Connal laughed.

‘Hey, come here. Look at
this.’ Madden turned back from the mouth of the cave, eyes animated. ‘It’s
starting.’

Connal abandoned his fishing
hole in the dirt and came to stand beside the doctor. He peered out into the
darkness. Around the rim of the crater Madden pointed out earlier,
there was a new
glow, forming a halo of light on the horizon.

‘They’ve lit the arena for
the Contests,’ Madden explained.

‘It’s too soon.’ Connal’s
brows knitted. ‘We’re not ready.’

‘We don’t have a choice,’
Madden replied. ‘Listen to that. The fights have already begun.’

The muted echoes of a wildly
cheering crowd filtered across the valley, and Connal’s blood ran to ice-water
at the memories they carried with them. ‘How long have we got?’ he asked.

‘An hour. Two, tops.’
Madden’s troubled eyes fell on the sorry looking stash of bait. They both knew
it was all that stood between them and being eaten alive.

‘Then what are we waiting
for?’ Connal offered the doctor a grin, clapped him on the back, hard enough to
rattle teeth, and bent to gather the makeshift sling and the bundle of
fleshworms.

‘Savage,’ Madden said.

‘Yeah?’ Rocking back on his
heels, Connal looked up at the doctor.

‘In case I don’t make it out
...’

‘Don’t jinx it, Doc. Much as
I'm digging this half-naked, desert-island bromance we've got going on,’ he
motioned a hand between them before stabbing a finger towards the doctor’s
chest, ‘if you start in with the sappy goodbyes, I'm personally going to feed
you to those things out there, limb by limb.’

‘This is important.’ Madden’s
mouth set in a hard line. ‘There’s a girl.’

That got Connal’s attention.
‘Been dipping your wick in more than the ceremonial candles,
Thegn
? Bad.
Boy
.
’ Connal tutted, his face splitting into a manic grin. 'Didn't think
you had it in you, man.'

‘This is fucking important,
Savage. There’s a child.'

'O-kay ...' The smile melted
off Connal’s face. Hands braced on his thighs, he stood.

'She doesn't know I'm the
father,' Madden
said, looking
cagey.

'Do
you
know you're
the father?’ Connal asked. ‘Those girls in Form …’ He didn’t want to insult the
guy, but it was common knowledge the
thralls
weren’t exactly choosy
about their sexual partners.

Madden’s eyes narrowed.
'She's not a
thrall
, and yes, I've made it my business to know.'

'Why the death-bed
confession?' Connal asked.

'Because I'd hoped, one day,
to be free of my vows, to break my ties with MacTire and offer her the life I
can’t give her as a
thegn
.’ The doctor’s dark eyes were pleading. ‘If
I'm not there to look out for them, I need to know you will.'

Connal exhaled, weighing the
bundle of fleshworms in his fist against their hopes of escape. 'You do know
neither of us stands a snowball's chance of getting out alive?’

‘I don’t need a lesson in
statistics to know you have the physical advantage in this situation, Savage.’

Connal gritted his teeth.
‘Okay. You saved my skin, Doc. I owe you, so I’m prepared to humour you on
this. Who's the girl?'

'Liath Murphy. And the boy,
my son, is Josh Murphy. He's four years old.'

'My neighbour, Liath?'
Connal’s lids flared. 'Small fucking world.'

Madden's upper lip curled in
a snarl.

‘Whoa there,’ Connal held up
his palms, 'back off, Doc. I never laid a hand on Liath Murphy. I don't get my
meat where I eat.'