The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (59 page)

‘She has bewitched you, my
Lord,’ Fite continued. ‘She is the Morrígan’s creation, sent to punish us over
again for the sins of our forefathers.’

MacTire clamped a fist around
Brandr’s hand and forcibly removed it from his body. ‘And if we kill her? What
then? We throw away our only hope of freedom because we are too fucking
cowardly to tame her.’

‘The last untame thing you
refused to kill came back to bite us in the ass. Would you have history repeat
those same atrocities?
’

‘
The King must set aside emotional ties
,
’ Rún
said,
interrupting the argument.
All eyes turned to him as he
produced a
leather wrap, proffering it in one hand
while
he untied its bindings. The
assembled warriors, MacTire included, fell silent. The flaps fell back to
reveal the ornate, bone-handled dagger within. The men drew in a collective breath.

‘This is the
Skil
,'
Rún said, 'the mystical blade of severance, forged from Elatha’s steel and
hardened with the blood of our foremothers and fathers.’ Rún thrust the knife
towards the King. The hilt was said to be fashioned from the bone of the first
wolf. Engraved with the phases of the moon and ancient runes, its curved blade
was polished to a razor edge.

MacTire’s gut took an
express-elevator descent into his boots. He and this blade had history, and not
the kind bards wanted to write poetry about. A thousand years and more had
passed since he’d last laid eyes on the weapon, since he’d sought to use it to
sever his mated bonds and free both Aoife and himself from a loveless union. To
say the consequences had been fatal was the understatement of the era.

'You kept it safe, all these
years?' MacTire asked, lifting his eyes to Rún's intelligent face. He’d thought
the wretched thing lost in the wars. Rún had been there that night, had borne
witness to the tragedy with Aoife and the child. Though sworn to take the
King’s secrets to the tomb, the unspoken message in the scarred warrior’s eyes
was clear
:
Redeem
yourself. Rise above base desires and prove yourself worthy of their honour and
respect once more.

‘My Lord, you have tethered
your soul to this female, Ashling DeMorgan, through blood and bite. Your
s
kuldalid
begs you to see, the King’s judgement has been
compromised. With this blade, the bonds can be severed, and true sight
restored.’

‘You ask this of me?’
MacTire’s black eyes scanned the faces of each of his loyal men in turn.

‘We do,’ they spoke in
chorus.

The King’s hand reached to
curl about the thick hilt of the dagger, his grip tightening until the skin
across the knuckles was bloodless. Lips pressed into a thin line, he jerked the
blade from Rún’s palm. ‘Then you leave me no choice,’ he said.

A
sh tried everything, feminine attraction included, but
that only worked when someone was in seeing distance of said attraction. No one
had been down since she’d woken in the cell. No one to charm or beg. Or, hell,
she’d go with punching them through the bars at this point, if someone would
just
come down
.

The full moon was upon them
and she was running out of time. She was losing what was left of her mind in
the dark, with Knutr mumbling and singsonging at her in his lunacy, laughing at
her attempts until he rolled onto his back in a crease of hysterical male. She
launched her lock-picking bolt at his head and slumped.

‘They’re just going to leave
me down here to rot, aren’t they?’

She got no answer but a raspy
cackle.

‘You’re no help.’ Ash
groused, cheek pressed to the bars. She watched the main door to the cell block
with a laser focus intensity, willing someone, anyone to walk through. She shut
straining eyes for a second, and the images burst to life behind her lids.

Wolves fleeing,
whimpering, claws slick with blood and a coppery tang in her mouth. The drive
to hurt, to protect, her hackles bristling as she raised her head to howl.
The same flashes flared up whenever she concentrated,
like glimpses of a dream without the sleeping. She couldn’t shake the suspicion
that they had to do with her getting jailed.

Ash glared at the door.

The lock turned over with a
click.

‘Knutr? Did you do that?’
Did
I do that?

‘Hmmm?’ He was napping like a
kitten in the middle of his cell, one hand stretched through the bars towards
her. Gathering her legs under her, Ash shrank back into the shadows, energy
coiling under her skin like a billion feral springs.

The door whined on stiff
hinges, opening to admit the wide shoulders of a large male presence and
tendrils of a familiar scent. She leapt from the shadows with every intention
of batting her lashes and giving him her sweetest apology, but she drew up
short once he stood in front of her cage.

He selected a key from the
bunch in his hand and went to unlock the door. She could have hugged him for
that, if it weren’t for the wicked looking dagger in his other hand.

Mac's brows pulled together,
his eyes darker than sin when he looked at her.
‘They’ve left me with no choice,’
he said, examining the curved blade.

The weapon was stunning for
sure, but she could admire it much better if he wasn’t planning to use it to
slice her into chunks of Ash.

‘Time to go, Ashling.’ The
cell was open, and Mac reached for her.

‘I’m not going anywhere if
you’re going to make me into your next scarf.’ She wasn’t moving an inch closer
until she knew she had a chance of getting around him and making a break for
it. She was still, poised. Internally she was shaking.

‘What are you talking about?’
The King looked harassed, twitchy.

Ash waved a hand at the
dagger, one brow quirked. ‘You don’t come to a girl knife in hand.’

‘I … this isn’t for you.’ He
slipped the lethal beauty into the waistband of his pants, dark eyes beckoning
her with a tinge of crimson desperation. ‘Come, Ashling, time is of the
essence.’

‘You just said they'd left
you no choice.’

‘
They
want you dead,
and it’s only a matter of time before they realise I’ve set you free.’

‘Go fly, little bird. No
dying in cages.’

Mac’s growl rolled to silence
Knutr’s sleepy mumblings. His hand wrapped her wrist, hauling her into his
side, and before she could communicate a suitable protest, he was steering her
from the cell.

He was pushing her in front
of him, his broad body a wall between her and everything behind them. Running
through the tunnels was like being on a treadmill, the same environment flying
past with no sense of real advancement, except for the fire in her chest and
muscles that said she should have gone to the gym more often.

When he slowed, she huffed in
air gratefully. ‘I don’t understand, Mac. Why are you doing this for me?’

In the dim light, Mac’s eyes
blazed with a dark intensity. ‘I’m not sure I understand myself.’

‘Well, ain’t that the way to
make a girl feel special?’ Drawling out the words with a quiet laugh, Ash
rested her gaze on him, admiring his stillness. He was so alert, a block of
fight, guarding her in the passage as she panted.

His eyes were softer when he
glanced at her, lightened by her laughter. His large hand carefully swept the
hair from her face, brushing at the sheen of her sweat. ‘We must carry on,
Ashling. The conduit is the first place they’ll look, once they realise you are
gone, and not dead. We must get there first.’ His thumb stroked her lower lip
before he nudged her into a walk.

She gnawed on the inside of
her cheek for a few steps. ‘Mac …’

He looked at her with a brow
raise but kept her walking.

‘You put me in jail. You
can’t tell me that was for my own protection.’

‘It was. In part. It was
either restrain you, or destroy you.’

She swallowed.
Bolts of
lightning, shocking pain shutting down her circuits. She fought, snarling
against the pull of unconsciousness. She went down in a crackle of fury.
They’d
tasered her into submission. But not before … Oh God. A stab of pain lanced
behind her eyes and she mashed the heel of her hand into her forehead.
The
satisfying crunch of a windpipe, the gurgle of blood, a wolf shedding into the
form of a curly haired boy.

‘Did I kill Tyr?’ she asked.

‘He lives.’ Mac’s short
answer made the thing inside her roll over, and she could feel its
disappointment. It had been set on killing.

‘And the others? I don’t
remember ... There was blood. Fear.’ She had to talk because if she didn’t, her
worst-case-scenarios would explode in her head and she’d be paralytic on
terror.

‘You didn’t kill them all.
The raveners took most of them.’

That silenced her.

When she would have
apologised, he jerked on her arm, dragging her down the tunnel at a new pace
until they came to a halt outside the carved door of the temple.

She looked up at him and
Mac’s head was canted low, his blond hair covering his face. He avoided her
gaze when she dipped to find his eyes. ‘You’re really letting me go, aren’t
you? In spite of everything.’

Silence. He opened the door
without a word, his shoulders tense, muscles bunched, as though holding up
something heavy. The King was suffering. Why? Was he regretting bringing her to
the brink of safety? Was he lying to her about letting her go?

Oh … he doesn’t want to
let me go.

To save her, he’d have to
risk losing her.

‘You’ll be safe in Form, for
now at least,’ he said. ‘They can’t touch you on sacred ground. Here, I want
you to take this.’ He took her hand and fastened something around her wrist. It
was Connal’s necklace. The coin and a key dangled close together from the cord.
The metal jangled as she shook. She’d lost it, her last connection to Connal,
and he was giving it back to her. With something of his own added. ‘I cannot
say what power it holds now, if any, but you’ll need all the protection you can
get,’ Mac said, releasing her hand. ‘You’ll emerge in the cellar of the club.
The key unlocks the private elevator to my suite. Wait for me there. Don’t do
anything stupid. You leave, you die. Understood?’

‘You’re not coming with me?’

‘Not yet. I’m going to head
off Fite and the others, put them off your scent.’

‘What about you?’ Ash sought
his eyes. ‘How will you explain my escape?’

‘I can hold my own,’ his
mouth quirked a boyish grin, ‘I’m the King, remember. Knutr will be implicated.
He’s been playing with the locks for centuries.’ She frowned and he answered
her unspoken fear. ‘They won’t punish him. He’s family. You’ll be safe in Form
until I come for you.’

Not the whole truth. Once the
moon passed, she was as dead as any wolf caught aboveground without the red
fog. They both knew it.

Yet he was giving her a
chance. Against everything he wanted, against his brothers. He was letting her
go.