The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (87 page)

‘I ripped your lungs from
your chest once.’ He gnashed his teeth. ‘This time, I’ll eat your heart and
finish the job.’

Connal put his lips to Fite’s
ear and growled. ‘How does it feel, knowing you have to chain your opponents
before you can best them? Does that make you feel big? Make you feel like
you’re the alpha-male?’

Fite’s claws tore through the
metal tips of his gloves and his fangs dropped to pierce his lower lip. He
glared back at Connal with blood-red eyes.

‘Did I hit a nerve? You look
like you’re losing it there, Fite. Aren’t you supposed to be the wolf with the
legendary control?’ Connal’s laugh was a taunt.

‘Still the Morrígan’s bitch,
I see.’ Fite aimed a gob of spittle at the pendant circling Connal’s throat.

‘Get off your fucking back
and I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget.’ He backed away just enough for
Fite to pop up to his feet. Flexing his claws, the air around him shimmered as
he wavered, on the brink of transformation.

Connal cracked his neck, let
the electrical current of fury and adrenaline pulse through him, and the
answering sound that rumbled from deep in his throat was nothing human.

A chorus of whistles and
catcalls rose up from the crowd, their bloodlust coalescing into an animal with
a life all its own. They pressed closer, scenting a kill. The untame felt it
too, unleashing an unearthly howl that bounced off the stone walls of the
crater. The entire gathering was baying for blood and Connal’s beast was right
on board to deliver.

‘You’re mine,’ Fite said, in
a voice so deadly it was almost seductive.

‘No, he’s not!’ MacTire’s
roar from up in the gods was deafening, commanding the attention of every soul
in the room. Looking up at him from that vantage point, all golden hair and chiselled
muscle, he could truly be mistaken for a god.

Fite’s fists fell to his
sides as he stared up at the King in disbelief.

‘There will be a fight,’
MacTire declared, ‘but not here, and not today.’

He held his audience in rapt
silence.

‘You all know the Savage is
my half-brother, and that we bear the marks of
blódbrodirs
.’ MacTire
pounded a fist to the brand on his chest. ‘It is the right and responsibility
of all blood brothers to meet in contest, to prove their dominant status in the
pack. This full moon, you all will gather to witness the contest to determine,
once and for all, your true leader.’

Brandr took up a chant of
'MacTire' and it caught fire, beating like a drum through the crowd.

'For as long as I am your
king, every one of you will respect the old laws. On pain of death, the Savage
is not to be harmed. I will not have this contest defiled, nor will I fight a
wounded opponent. If I am defeated, you women can squabble over the spoils to
your hearts' content. Until then, you will obey me, and I say Connal Savage is
untouchable. Am I understood?'

Murmurs rippled through the
gathered men.

'Am I understood?' the King
bellowed and a chorus of 'ayes' responded. Except for Fite, who was silently
fuming.

'Fite,' MacTire addressed
him. 'You are charged with seeing that my brother has safe passage back through
the conduit. If I hear so much as a hair on his head has been interfered with,
you'll find out just how imaginative I can get when it comes to punishments.
And just to keep things tight, know that anything you suffer, Tyr will have
visited upon his body two-fold.'

Fite regarded him with narrow
eyes and gritted teeth. 'Once again, you hold my solitary weakness against me,'
he growled.

'I will maintain order in
this shithole by any and all means. Are you challenging my authority?'

Fite pursed his lips. 'I am
not,' he conceded finally.

'Good. When you are king, you
can make the rules. Until then, disperse this mob. The party's over.'

The crowd melted away until
only Fite and Connal remained.

‘Guess this makes us BFFs,’
Connal laughed.

'You can wipe the smirk off
your face, Asshole,' Fite sneered. 'Either I get to watch you die, or you'll
take MacTire down and then I'll get to kill you myself. Either way, I win.'

‘Heel, Fido,’ Connal quipped,
getting into Fite’s personal space to snatch a dagger from the other male’s
belt.

Fite’s reaction was an
instinctive baring of claws, his gaze clamped on the blade.

‘Relax,’ Connal said,
eyeballing him, ‘don’t go getting your knickers all in a twist. When I kill
you, it’ll be the old-fashioned way, without weapons. No crossbows, no whips,
and no goddamn chains.’ He turned his attention from Fite to the untame
creature that had taken to pacing the short length of its chains. As he walked
towards it, the beast sat back on its heels and growled menacingly, gearing up
to make a lunge at him. Connal’s steel confidence didn’t waver. He looked it
straight in the eyes and stalked right up into its attack zone, knife in hand.
The wolf hesitated, peeling back its lips in a threat. In response, Connal
snarled right back with a growl that was pure, dominant animal. The untame
whimpered and backed down, lowering its head to the dirt in submission.

Fite spat a string of curses
from under his breath.

Grabbing the scruff of the animal’s
neck, Connal slipped the knife carefully into its fur and cut through the
ligature that was digging into its flesh. The untame shook its enormous head
free and proceeded to swipe its long, pink tongue over Connal’s fingers.

‘By Balor’s cock,’ Fite breathed,
‘I’ve never ...’

‘You’ve never taken the time
to understand them,’ Connal replied, as the monster nuzzled his belly. ‘These
magnificent animals are our ancestors.
This
is our true nature,’ he
motioned towards the whip in the dirt and looked directly at Fite, ‘not that
instrument of pain.’

A slow clap started and
Connal scanned the shadows for its source. In the far right of an otherwise
deserted row sat Knutr, feet up, a maniacal grin on his face.

‘Enjoying the show?’ Connal
asked.

‘About fucking time somebody
put an end to this shameful exhibition. You are your father’s son,’ he nodded
to the rhythm of his lazy applause.

‘If you knew my father, you
would never say that,’ Connal said icily. He unfastened the chains from the wall
and used a short length as a leash to guide the creature from the arena. ‘Where
does she belong?’ he asked Fite.

‘We have a holding cage,’ he
replied grudgingly. ‘Follow me,’ he said, and without waiting for a reply,
stalked down a narrow tunnel that was unfamiliar to Connal.

‘Your father and I grew up
together,’ Knutr called. Connal looked back to see the man dancing along the
stone benches towards him, doing a passable impression of a drunk tightrope
walker. ‘We were cousins,’ he said, flashing the whites of his eyes as he
jumped down off the rocks to land directly in front of Connal.

‘Cousins?’

‘Your father’s father and
mine were brothers.’

Connal regarded him
suspiciously.

‘What? You can’t deny the
family resemblance,’ Knutr grinned like a shark and floofed his scraggly dark
hair.

It was true, they shared
similar colouring and body shape, give or take about sixty pounds, but …
‘You’re insane,’ Connal shook it off and pushed past him with the beast, eager
not to lose sight of his reluctant guide, whose back was already disappearing
around a corner.

Knutr pranced after him.
‘Yes, they call
me
crazy,’ he rasped a laugh, before leaning over
Connal’s shoulder to whisper harshly in his ear, ‘but if it had been some other
untame, and not Cara here,’ he motioned to the animal at Connal’s flank,
‘they’d be mopping your entrails off the ground right now.’

‘Cara?’ It was true Connal
recognised the creature on sight. He remembered her from his days fighting in
the arenas. The ragged left ear and solitary black paw were distinctive. And
Knutr was right: as untame went, this girl was as docile as you could hope to
find, unless provoked. But how was Crazy-Wolf to know that, and where did he
come up with a name like Cara, the Gaelic word for friend? Fite rounded another
turn and Connal followed, down a set of damp stone steps to a dark room full of
prowling untame. The smell of their caged confinement was overpowering, as much
an assault to the senses as the snarls and growls that greeted their arrival.
Fite used a torch flame to light up the room.

‘They’re all female, you
know,’ Knutr said. Tripping heavily down the steps, he resembled a gorilla
attempting ballet. ‘When the gods cleaved the Fomorian beasts to the humans in
that Viking longboat, there were almost exclusively males on board. Most of the
ladies got left behind in the big evolutionary jump.’

‘Yeah, we all know the story,
old man,’ Fite said under his breath. ‘Elatha harnessed the power of creation,
used the
Skil
to fuse man and beast, and freed the Fomorian people from
their bondage-' he sing-songed it, as though he'd learned the words by rote as
a child, '-and it seems we’ve been fighting over females ever since.’

A frown furrowed Connal’s
brow. ‘The
Skil
was used to create us?’ Having been raised by humans,
there were large gaps in his knowledge of Fomorian legend. ‘I understood it was
a breaker of bonds?’

‘The histories are sketchy,’
Fite replied, ‘but the blade is said to cleave. That is a word with more than
one meaning.'

‘What gives it its power?’
Connal asked.

‘Its origins have been lost
to the passage of time,’ Fite replied, ‘but all creation has its source from
the gods.’ Shrugging off the conversation, he knelt long enough to snap open
the bars of a holding cage that would contain the beast. Getting back to his
feet, he went to retrieve a set of restraining implements from the wall.

Bitter memories turned over
in Connal’s gut at the sight of them.

‘Those won’t be necessary,’
Connal said, slowly unhooking the chain from the animal’s neck and guiding it
inside. It went placidly enough, but Fite kept a safe distance nonetheless,
until the thing was safely secured. A second opening at the opposite end of the
cage allowed the untame to re-enter the main enclosure with its sisters, where
it skulked into a corner to lick its wounds.

‘Cara was once your father’s
pet,’ Knutr said. Connal turned to look at him. He’d planted his arse on the
bottom step and his knees were rhythmically jumping up and down in a fast
tremor. ‘But that was before he lost your mother,’ he muttered. ‘That changes a
man.’ The way he said it, with a crack in his voice, it was clear Connal’s
father wasn’t the only one to suffer that loss. ‘By the time he got you back,
he was a broken man. Used to rant about how his bloodline was cursed, that none
of their males could ever hold onto the woman he loved.’ Knutr snorted. ‘We
laughed at his superstitions then.’ Wrapping his arms about his knees, he
rocked back and forth on the step. ‘Not anymore. No,’ he said shakily.
‘Generation after generation, it has come to pass.’ His glassy eyes shot up to
Connal’s and he jabbed a finger in his direction. ‘You’re next, mark my words,’
he nodded vehemently. ‘Unless you do something, you will lose her too. Just
like I lost the girl’s mother. Just as I lost my brother, Crys.’

‘Crys was your
félag
?’

‘Aye,’ he said, and his neck
sagged on his shoulders. ‘He was, once.’

Connal paled. ‘Shit.’

Knutr cocked his head to one
side and regarded him. ‘It was you who took his head,’ he murmured.

Connal nodded numbly, his head
pounding with the revelation. He’d killed Ash’s father. He’d known all along it
was a distinct possibility, but hearing it first-hand still came as a blow.

‘I’m glad it was you,’ Knutr
said quietly. ‘All along, I hoped he died fighting. It’s how he would have
chosen to leave this world, with an honourable death, not stabbed in the back
by that evil bitch, Morrígan.’

Connal remembered it with
crystal clarity. It was the night he’d seen Anann DeMorgan sneak a little girl
in a red coat into her house. He knew now, that girl had been Ash.