The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (106 page)

'House? It's a palace, but
who cares about that.
They
are what I am talking about. It's like we stumbled
into a male-model convention.'

Ash snorted and moved to the
window to peer out at what Carla was finding so interesting.

Ah.

No wonder her friend was
worked up. A group of semi-naked, muscular men were doing the last minute
preparations to the garden for the night ahead, carting great, wrought-iron
fire pits to the marked spaces on the lawn.

Another small group ran the
path through the gardens, feeding the illusion that it actually was an elite
rugby training camp, as Carla had been led to believe, and not a den of
mythological shape shifters. The men were doing well with the charade so far,
and Carla seemed too fixated on their constant state of hardly-dressed to think
about the reality of it all.

They chose the house not only
for its size, but also the extensive gardens. The
thegn
had installed
perimeter security worthy of Fort Knox, so the Fomorians would be free to
release their inner beasts without attracting any pitchfork-wielding,
neighbourhood lynch-mobs.

'I told you they made them
big here.' Ash leant on the pretty flower-box rail outside the window and
watched Brandr flex for one of the girls setting out cushions on the grass.

'I'm going to be drooling all
down this beautiful dress.' Carla sighed dramatically, propping her chin on her
hand. Clearly Brandr’s flexing had caught her eye too.

‘They aren’t wearing kilts
though,’ Ash joked, remembering a lonely conversation she’d had with her
friend, what seemed now like a thousand years ago.

‘I’m not that picky. Still
want to know what they wear under those jeans.’

Nothing, she thought, if
Connal and Mac were anything to go by. ‘What would Brett say?’ Ash laughed.

‘Hey, if those fine specimens
of masculinity choose to parade around this house half-naked, I’m allowed look
at the bait, aren’t I? It’s not like I’m going to bite or anything.’ Carla
grinned and Ash just rolled her eyes.

Probably just as well Carla’s
husband was on a tour of duty, Ash thought, and not only because the Marine
would have a hard time measuring up to the Fomorians. The fewer humans they had
to conceal their true forms from, the less likely there’d be a screw-up
involving the need for more brain-washing. Carla was only visiting for the
weekend, leaving the baby at home with her parents, but Mac had served his men
a harsh tongue-lashing on how they were to behave.

The fears that his men
wouldn’t accept him as King, after his blood-brother beat him in combat, were
totally unfounded. A thousand years of loyalty counted for something, after
all, and Connal had no inclination to rule. He’d spent long enough on the
receiving end of orders himself to ever want to dole them out. Their world was
turning perfectly, everyone was behaving, and Ash was slowly relaxing into the
belief that everything was going to be ok.

Her only regret was that
she’d had to lock her ailing wolf away whilst Carla was around. While the
untame might be passed off as very large hounds, she’d never be able to explain
the wings to her friend.

Perhaps not her only regret.

She missed that other half of
herself, only realising after they were split just how much a part of her the
wolf had become. She was still strong enough to handle Connal, and thanks to
her mother’s blood, she wasn’t going to age, but she felt different. Human. She
missed the feral edge. It had brought her back to life when she hadn’t even
known she was dying, and not just literally. She’d never felt more alive than
when she let that wild side of her loose.

Her gaze bypassed the men,
drawn to the outbuilding across the way. The stables had been converted to
accommodation for the remaining untame, and now, her wolf. She wasn’t doing so
well. Since the separation, her beast had been weakening by the day and until
Carla had arrived, had been by her side, or in their room, strengthening only
slightly when she was near Ash. Sadhbh was doing all she could to ease her
pain, but her wolf was still no doubt down there wondering what she’d done to
deserve the separation.

You can’t keep calling her
‘she.’
Ash chided herself, but giving
her a name would mean accepting they were no longer one in the same being.

She was surprisingly tame,
perhaps because she was so ill, though Connal put it down to the fact that she
hadn’t been raised with a pack, or trained for violence, as her sister’s wolf
had been.

God, her sister, Ellén.

There was another whom the
magic had failed.

The Morrígan might have
exorcised the beast from her body, but her mind remained wild. She couldn’t
speak a word, cowered in a corner and hissed at anyone who entered the room,
refusing to eat anything but raw meat. With a weight settling on her heart, Ash
left the window and moved back to the dressing table. She needed something to
do. Staring in the glass as she fixed Connal’s coin around her throat, it
struck Ash that her sister was her mirror image in more ways than one. When the
wolves had found Ash, she’d been too tame. Ellén was too wild.

A soft knock at the door drew
her attention from the mirror, and her face broke into a smile of genuine
happiness as Knutr’s head appeared around the door.

‘Safe to enter?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ she replied,
ushering him into the room.

‘We’ll leave you two alone,’
Carla said cheerfully, steering Sam out of the room.

In the weeks since the
showdown, her uncle had filled out, and she suspected he’d developed a fondness
for shampoo since his time experimenting in Connal’s basement. His hair was
thick and glossy and fell around his shoulders like a figure in a Renaissance
painting. His flowing linen shirt and the fur draped over his arm only added to
the illusion. It was easy to forget he’d actually lived through the era.

She stood to offer him a
careful hug.

‘You look so beautiful,’ he
said, pulling away from her embrace.

‘Thank you,’ Ash replied,
obliging him with a twirl. ‘Sam spent hours making me presentable.’

‘A flower like you doesn’t
need embellishment,’ he smiled. ‘Your mother was the same.’

‘I wish she could have been
here.’ Ash dropped her gaze, twisting the silver ring on her finger.

‘I’ve wished it, with every
breath, since the day she died. But all wishing ever got me was a broken mind,
to go with my broken heart.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Ash replied,
looking back up at him.

‘The past is passed,’ he
said, resting his hands on her shoulders. ‘I have you now, and your sister. You
are my future.’ He ran his hands down her goose-fleshed arms. ‘You’re cold,’ he
frowned.

‘Just a little nervous,’ Ash
replied.

‘I brought you this,’ he
said, displaying the snow-white fur across his arm.

Ash ran her fingers through
the luxuriously soft pelt. ‘For me?’

‘It should be your father
doing this,’ Knutr frowned, his movements awkward as he draped it around her
shoulders. ‘It’s tradition.’

Ash couldn’t resist stroking
the thick pile. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Warm, it draped her to her feet and she
gathered it around herself, fluffing it while her uncle shifted uncomfortably.

‘I’m afraid it’s not a real
fur.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘All the family heirlooms were lost in the great
war. I wanted to hunt you a new one, but MacTire refused. Said we have to
adjust to the new ways.’ He curled his lip in disgust. ‘That beating Connal
gave the King left him soft in the head, if you ask me.’

‘I love it,’ Ash declared,
kissing his cheek, secretly relieved that no poor animal had lost its skin on
her account. ‘I have something to give you too,’ she said hastily. Securing the
fur so she could move, she tugged her mother’s ring from her finger, and before
Knutr could object, she had pressed it into his large palm.

‘I can’t take this,’ he said
brokenly. Knutr stared down at it with tears welling in his eyes. ‘Your mother
hated me, Ashling.’ His hands were shaking so much, Ash was prepared to catch
the ring if it fell. ‘After Ellén was born, she wouldn’t even look at me. I
failed her, in the end, and your father.’

‘I don’t believe she ever
hated you,’ Ash whispered. ‘The reason she couldn’t look at you was because
she’d lied to you. She’d given away your daughter. She’d let the Morrígan
convince her you couldn’t love your own child. Don’t you see? I know you loved
her, and she loved you. I want you to have her ring,’ Ash smiled, recalling how
he’d treasured her fairy lights in that dingy prison cell. She knew she was
putting it in good hands. ‘My mother would have wanted you to have it,’ she
said. ‘Besides, if all goes to plan, I’ll be getting a ring of my own tonight.’

‘I ...’ Knutr stammered.

‘You don’t have to say
anything,’ Ash said softly, closing his hand around the ring. ‘The past is
passed, as you say.’

Knutr closed his eyes and his
breath hitched.

‘Can we go to see Ellén,
together?’ Ash asked.

‘Yeah,’ Knutr exhaled, ‘yeah,
I’d like that.’

With the ring jammed on his
pinkie finger, he slipped his arm through hers and they took the stairs. Ash
bit back a smile at her uncle’s awkward gallantry. She was grateful for the
support though. Normally, she’d be sliding down the giant banisters in a blur
of laughter, with Connal ready to catch her at the end. But today, in this
dress and shoes, and with her man secreted away by the pack for God knew what
bizarre rituals, she felt delicate, vulnerable somehow. She’d never felt the
loss of her wolf so acutely as she did today.

No,
she thought, packing away the sadness. Knutr was
right. The past was passed, and it wouldn’t do to dwell on what she’d lost. Not
today, when she stood to gain so much.

The room where they kept
Ellén was in the basement. Nothing as grand as the rest of the house, but down
here, the windows were securely barred and the walls thick. As they stepped up
to the heavy door, Knutr hesitated, raising a hand to hold Ash back.

‘What is it?’ Ash asked.
She’d noticed nothing unusual, but then she no longer had the sharpened senses
she’d come to take for granted.

‘Shhh,’ Knutr replied. She
shushed and he cocked his head, listening.

Ash pressed her ear to the
cool wood and strained to hear. Coming from within, Mac’s gravelly voice was
unmistakable, and the words strangely familiar.

‘
... every step you take
will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that blood must
flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to suffer all this?’

Ash flinched at the sudden
flashback to her ‘training’ in the temple.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Knutr
snarled, ripping open the door. Ash caught it on the back-swing and followed
him inside.

On the floor lay a shirt, the
match of Knutr’s except for the bloodstains spattering the white linen. Knutr’s
red gaze swept the room, seeking. He found what he was looking for in the
bathroom. As he kicked in the door, Mac leapt to his feet and spun towards him.

‘Get away from her,’ Knutr
warned, unsheathing his claws.

Shirtless, the King’s chest
was raked with bloody scratches. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said calmly, but
his expression was guilt-ridden. Something hung from his hand.
A whip?
Ash
thought, fear kicking her pulse to a gallop. But no, it was a book, a leather-bound
book. He raised it, turning the spine slowly to show Knutr. It was an old,
well-worn copy of Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales.

As if that explains
everything
, Ash thought, until she
peered further over Knutr’s shoulder and saw Ellén, submerged in the bath,
fully clothed, only her lips and nose above the water.
Oh,
Ash
remembered. ‘It’s from The Little Mermaid,’ she said softly, ‘you were reading
it to her?’

Mac nodded, his jaw tight,
eyes wary.

Ellén’s face emerged from the
water and she gripped the edges of the bath, blinking wet lashes, staring at
them, confused by the interruption, but not scuttling into a corner as she had
every time Ash had come to visit before.

Ash put a hand on Knutr’s
shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Look. Ellén isn’t hurt. He wasn’t hurting
her.’ On the contrary, Ash had never seen her sister look so calm.

‘I don’t know if she
understands, but the words seem to relax her,’ Mac shrugged.

It’s your voice,
Ash thought. When the King wasn’t using it to bellow
orders, it was the sound of molten chocolate.

‘The water seems to calm her
too. I thought she might find it familiar.’

Damn.
Ash felt the adrenaline drain out her feet to be
replaced by another emotion entirely.

‘How long have you been
coming here?’ Knutr demanded.

‘A while,’ Mac said
sheepishly.