The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (68 page)

'It shall be six-a-side
then?' The King swung the blond lash of his hair across broad shoulders. 'A
fair fight indeed.'

'Ashling won't be fighting,'
Connal snarled, making a barrier of his body in front of her. Still, he couldn't
bring himself to look her in the eye.

MacTire rounded on Connal
with a knowing smile. 'We Fomorians respect our women, Savage. And that
includes their right to combat. You may find Ashling's ability formidable. I,
for one, want you at my side.' The look he gave Ash over Connal's shoulder was
sickening.

'I'm in,' Ash said.

Her voice, Connal knew. But
his Little Red was no fighter. Was she?
Fierce
. The doctor's description
pinged around his skull. What she’d said in the Temple about taking care of
herself, those claws ... Ash really was wolf, and it killed him that his enemy
knew it better than he.

‘I’ll be ok, Big ...’ Ash
cleared her throat to cover her slip, ‘Connal. I can handle myself, and I can
handle them.’ She tipped her chin at the walls of tension backing up Fite,
making sure her face was steady when Connal looked over his shoulder at her.
Meeting his eyes disturbed the beat of her heart. God, he looked so broken. And
it went beyond the sadistic haircut. What had they done to her Big Bad? He was
so close, she wanted to touch him, to reach right out and wrap herself around
him. She settled for stepping up to his side so that the wolves could see her.

As the aggression in the room
dialled up, the promise of violence cranked Ash’s bones. The beast inside her
was gaining confidence with each additional pack member. Connal, Mac, Brandr,
Rún, Knutr. Preferring these odds, she was struggling to keep hold of the
leash. Her vision had stalled on predatory crimson, her claws refused to
retract and she could no longer hide her fangs behind her lips. She was talking
herself down even as she stretched her senses, letting her wolf size-up the
room’s occupants.

Tyr caught her eye and she
felt a push of fur under her skull.

She snarled as he impressed
his thoughts upon her.

You’re mine,
he growled.
I owe you. Flesh for flesh.

He wanted to take her on,
fair enough. She had hurt him, and much as she regretted it, sorry wouldn’t cut
it. He was a warrior. The honour was in the fight, and if she was brutally
honest, she was itching to make the boy submit. Again.

Inclining her head at Tyr,
Ash broke the stare and cut a look to Mac, who was watching her, head cocked.
Her lips curved at him in a smile that relayed her thanks and the softest hint
of affection.

Silence had weight in the
attic. It laid on them, both sides prowling a live-wire fence of primal energy.
The Contests had nothing on the charge in this room. Ash heard the snap before
she felt it. Behind Fite, a wolf was body-popping, a haze falling around him as
his joints began to splinter.

Hell broke loose in an
explosion of fur and teeth.

The shift roared through her,
fast on the heels of the other wolves. Humanity took a backseat, was strapped
in for the ride as she bust out and was met head on by Tyr’s large golden wolf.
Ash locked in and lashed at him. His shoulder took the brunt as he twisted from
the rake of her claws. Tyr howled and an answering cry rose up from the
flanking wolves. They weren’t the only ones who’d cut loose.

To her right, Connal, massive
and white, was laying into an opponent. To her left was Fite, his lean, silver
beast engaging MacTire, whose wolf was huge, thickly-furred and black ... Pain
slammed into her flank and tore a yelp from her throat, spinning her to face a
grey wolf with its claws tipped in her blood. Ash roared and opened her jaws
wide, muscles bunching as she settled her weight into her haunches. She never
landed her blow. Tyr tackled her from the side and she crashed to the attic
wall. As she fought to draw breath, she saw the grey wolf occupied with dodging
Brandr’s razor talons. Then Tyr was on her again, gouging her shoulders, his
muzzle snapping inches from hers. Ash scrabbled beneath him, her back legs
daggering nails into the soft flesh of his underbelly. He reared back and she
attacked, striking a slash to his face.

Fighting tooth and nail was
an apt description.

Everywhere she looked, blood
flowed and fur matted, whimpers echoed around; the wolves were lethal,
throat-tearing machines. She hurt, really hurt, yet this animal body was built
for fighting and revelled in it. Even as she wished for it to end, the
primitive part of her was baying for more.

And it got more. A fresh wave
of howls had all heads whipping to the attic door, where wolf after wolf was
spilling over the threshold in a growling stampede that sent the odds wildly
out of favour. Tyr rounded on her, lip curled off pointed fangs. He was joined
by another that lowered its ears and canted its head when she snarled, but
didn’t back off. Instead, it circled like a mosquito, darting in to nip her
flank, and dashing out of reach. Shaking off the bites, she backed up. She was
vulnerable at the throat, belly and wings. He’d already struck something
sensitive; blood poured freely from the arch of her right wing, deadening it.
Tyr went for her neck. Ash deflected by tucking herself in and falling flat to
the ground. She launched herself at the nearest furred body and her
mosquito-wolf crumpled with a yelp. Ash silenced it by severing throat from
neck in a single bite. The blood on her tongue was lust in her veins.

Her snapping growls kept Tyr
off her back, and when she dodged his next lunge, the momentum sent him
barreling into Connal’s flank. Connal’s white wolf rounded on her prey, but Ash
tagged him out of the ring with a butt of her head to his furred shoulder. Tyr
was still hers.

Battles raged around them.
Mac had Fite’s silver wolf attached to his rump, its teeth embedded in the
muscle and ripping the flesh beneath. Concern took her concentration from Tyr
long enough for him to get a clamp on the scruff of her neck. His paws beat out
punches, slashing at her chest. Her defence was to surge them forwards. She
clawed down his ribs, piercing his soft belly. His whimper hurt her but she
bore down, shifting his weight beneath her, the bulk of her beast pinning him
as she yanked her scruff from his grasp.

Freed from his jaws, Ash
snapped her own around his throat. Tyr went limp and her growl thrummed
satisfaction into the air.

Enough!
Ash projected the word, hard and fast, to every corner
of the room.

Crimson eyes turned to her,
their bodies frozen in acts of violence. Mac had Fite in a throat-lock, Connal
had one giant paw resting on the stump of a neck, Brandr and Rún were elbow
deep in dead and wounded, Knutr chuffed from somewhere behind her. Her pack was
alive and she had a bargaining tool. Fite’s reinforcements slumped or leaned on
one another, brought to heel by her demand. They were listening.

Stop this now Fite, or I
finish him,
she said
.

Beneath Mac, the silver wolf
imploded. Skin replaced fur, and Fite lay with his human throat bared, red eyes
and perma-claws the only part of his beast remaining.

His posture was submissive.
His words were not.

‘The she-wolf returns to
Fomor over my dead body, my Lord.’

Mac’s rumble curled his lip
off wicked canines, the great beast growling a threat to Fite’s pulse before
the animal was caged back inside the man. Securing Fite’s shoulders to the
floor with his knees, Mac’s hands encircled the other male’s throat and he
leaned close. ‘Unfortunately that can be arranged, Fite. You are my
s
kuldalid
, my family, but I will not abandon one of my own to
the Morrígan's curse. We are mongrels all, crossbreeds born of a need to
survive. Ashling DeMorgan is no different in that. She will not be imprisoned
or put to death because we fear the unknown.’ The direction of numerous stares
was not lost on Ash; her wings itched under the attention. ‘Some lessons are
well learned,’ MacTire continued, and his eyes rose to meet Connal’s briefly
before pinning Fite in the power of his conviction. ‘Do not make me choose, for
it will be her.’

'That won't be necessary,'
Connal said, and every head turned to stare at him. Even the dead ones seemed
rapt.

S
ome time, amidst the chaos, Connal had shifted back to
human form and Ash allowed herself to take her first good look at him when he
spoke. He was a shock to her system, and that was before she let herself mourn
his hair. All his gorgeous dreads had been hacked off, leaving a jagged mess of
short hair and bloodied scalp. Between the run-in with a sadistic barber and
the dog-fight, Ash was expecting the rugged landscape of his body to bear some
marks. But looking him over? There were more than she could explain. Bruises
and scratches marred his skin, layered under the fresh lacerations. Blotches of
purple were raised along his shoulders. She swallowed hard when her gaze
tracked down. The nipple rings were really gone. What the hell had happened to
him? She would have asked, but her wolf’s muzzle didn’t allow for speech and
she couldn’t imagine him appreciating her being in his head.

The choice was taken from her
anyway, as Mac changed position on Fite so he could look at Connal. ‘Speak,’ he
commanded gruffly.

Yes, please, God, speak. Explain.

He didn’t look at her, but
when he answered, Connal was just as taciturn, his voice just as deep. ‘This is
for Ashling to decide.’

Her ears pricked at her name
on his lips, pleasure a soft pull in her chest. She was too busy trying to will
Connal’s eyes to hers that she didn’t realise Rún and Brandr had come to
relieve her of Tyr. She relinquished her domination to the two males, backing
off and standing uncertainly at the side. Mac was still on Fite, poised to
finish him if he made a move towards her, but his eyes were on her: dark as sin
and warm as coal.

Faced with the inevitable
post-shift nakedness, Ash didn’t know what to do. Fur and fangs were a lot more
intimidating than bare-assed female. The males in the room, barring maybe one,
didn’t want to jump her. They wanted to kill her.

To Hell with it, she thought.

They already thought her an
abomination, seeing her naked couldn’t be much worse. Taking a deep breath, Ash
tucked her wings in tighter and braced for the change. It was an implosion, the
primal energy collapsing in and humanity bursting out. Fur receded and she rose
from all fours with only the slightest wobble.

A growl lashed through the
air. ‘Jesus. Will you cover yourself?’ She started at Connal’s outburst,
curling into herself as he attacked a tapestry off the wall and launched it
blindly in her direction. The heavy fabric thwacked against her body and she
had the mind to snatch it before it fell, but mortification was rapidly raising
a head-to-toe flush of wounded embarrassment. Connal didn’t say another word,
no one spoke, and yet he burned her with his judgement. He couldn’t bear to
look at her.

She was an abomination to him
too.

God, she was really starting
to hate that word. She secured the cloth around her, risking a glance under her
lashes. Most of the wolves had their eyes averted, a few were watching her in
their peripheral vision. She forced her spine straighter and wore the tapestry
like armour, daring Connal to think his worst. Faced with the perfection of
him, Ash was struggling to find words and finding it even harder to keep her
gaze from his and above waist level. She settled for frowning at his chest.