The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (36 page)

Nothing could ever have
prepared her for the reaction. His or her own. For as Connal’s teeth sliced
razor points through her skin, she tore at the flesh of his throat with blunt
hunger and sealed them into the vast scream of a rapid-fire, ravenous frenzy of
carnal exaltation. Blood hit her tongue and it was the coppery tang laced with
a sweetness that shot her through with the taste of his climax. Raw, animal
musk and wild sugar sped through her taste buds and swarmed her blood with his,
a jerking, slamming attack that took her systems faster than any orgasm. It was
ecstasy to the nth degree. Stronger, harder hitting and addictive, she craved
more of him. Her tongue swiped, coaxing a little more of his life to pulse onto
her tongue as her curves ground out the rhythm of their thundering climax.
Synchronised, they were falling together through a Milky Way vortex coloured
with all the hues of the universe. It sparkled as she was woven through the
silver red flames of Connal’s soul. Her beast was beautiful and in that moment,
she felt inked into his every facet. As he was emblazoned across her cells,
making up her DNA with his name.

She understood the Thralls in
the club so much better now. This craving, it was carnal and necessary. If she
didn’t get more, she’d die more than the little death currently wired up to her
nerves and sparking her out. He was her drug, her light as darkness swept over
her vision and she cried out.

A lancing pain charged
through the flames of bliss to lodge a fist in her throat, taking breath that
she gasped for and stealing his light from her …

Ash went limp in his arms.
Logy from the pleasure sloshing languid in his veins, Connal drew back,
releasing his hold on her throat. At first, he thought it a trick of the light,
the muted blue and black decor playing with his sex-buzzed brain. But no. The
colour was draining from her skin, replaced by a reticulate network of black
veins that crept up over her skin like poisonous vines, shrouding her in the
black lace of what he knew meant certain death.

‘No! Oh God, Ash, what have I
done?’

Panic rode in hard on the
crest of his euphoria, obliterating the high and contorting it to a
stranglehold of terror. Those soft lips he had kissed not minutes before took
on the dark blue cast of hypoxia.

She was so unnaturally still,
cradled in his arms. ‘Breathe, a ghrá,’ he pleaded, voice cracking with the
dread that was throttling the life from his own heart.

An eternity he waited, but
her chest did not rise. Her heartbeat faltered, receding from his trembling
fingertips. In desperation, he did what he'd seen others do when they bargained
with death. He brushed the raven curls from her face and sealed his lips on
hers, attempting to breathe life back into her lungs. His eyes stung with
unshed tears and his hands shook, cursed prayers sent up to the Morrígan,
pleading, demanding that she do for her granddaughter what she had once done
for him.

Perhaps the Ancients
listened. Perhaps it was a simple biological transfer of mystical air, but when
he dragged his mouth from hers, the black in her veins was retreating like a
tide, fading out, suffusing her cheeks with pink for a few precious moments
before the darkness again washed in. His heart leapt, fastening on to the tiny
spark of hope. Again, he kissed his air into her lungs, and again she was
granted a fleeting reprieve from the encroaching spider web of death. It seemed
whatever magic let him live free of the red fog, a beast amongst men, was in
his breath and he could gift it to her, however briefly. He clung to that hope
like a lifeline. However temporary, it just might be enough to keep her alive
long enough to get her where he knew she needed to go.

 ‘D
rive faster,’ he growled.

‘If I drive any faster, we’ll
be wrapped around a lamp post.’ Liath cranked her head round to where Connal
was crowded into the back seat with Ash across his lap. He was shirtless and
Liath still had pillow creases on her face from when he’d roused her from her
chemical sleep. The rush to the car had been a confused panic. ‘What’s the
matter with her? Is she poisoned? Fuck, it’s Rave, isn’t it? An overdose?
Shouldn’t we be taking her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped or
something? She’s not looking too good, Conn.’ Liath was the one raving, high on
nervous tension, hands crushing the wheel in a white-knuckled death grip,
shooting off thoughts like a verbal machine gun.

Connal's glare cut her off
mid fire. ‘We need to get her to Form. Now.’ His head dropped once more to seal
Ash’s blue lips in the grim, rhythmic exchange of life-giving air that had
marked the minutes since he’d bitten her. ‘Stay with me, Little Red,’ he
murmured.

The car veered sharply left
and Liath’s ranting kicked off again. ‘We’re going to Form? Okay, but it’s not
midnight yet. That bastard was very specific. They will still make the
exchange, right? Even if ... Fuck!’ She slammed on the brak
e
s and
narrowly avoided rear-ending a taxi driver who’d pulled up at the kerb to take
a fare. She blew out a ragged breath.

‘Get your shit together
Liath,’ he commanded. ‘Josh needs you. I need you. If we don’t get Ash to Form
really, really soon, we’re going to lose her,’
and the boy
, he thought.
‘They can help her there.’

‘I fucking knew it!’ Liath
spat. ‘I should have gone to the police. Those drug-pushing scumbags have an
antidote, don’t they? I swear to fuck, I’m going in there and taking my son
back and I’m going to castrate that son of a bitch Doyle with my bare hands.’

Connal didn’t bother
correcting Liath’s skewed interpretation of the shitstorm they were caught up
in. He couldn’t afford the time to explain. For all intents and purposes, the
bite was a drug, one that was killing Ash, and the
thegn
did have access
to the only life support environment that could keep her alive.

Perhaps he should have had a
crisis of conscience about what he was about to do. But this was the bare truth
of how it was, when you were down to the wire, bargaining with the Grim Reaper
for the life of the one you loved, for the one thing that breathed life into
your own existence. You would do anything. You would gladly walk through the
fires of Hell, break every promise you made when the cost had been merely
hypothetical. You would offer up your life for theirs, because the thought of
going on without them was unthinkable.

His lips trembled on hers as
he watched the life ebb and flow through the black network of veins in her
skin. ‘Just a little longer,
a ghrá
,’ he whispered. ‘Almost there.’

There in that back seat,
performing mouth to mouth on his dying future, the ghosts of Connal’s past hung
off him like Jacob Marley’s chains. Loss, vengeance, regret. Centuries
breathing, yet no life at all. Until her. Better to die than walk that path
again. And he knew, with a quiet conviction, that would be the price. To save
her life, he was going to have to carry her through the valley of death on a
one-way ticket. He was selfish enough to want her to live, and to refuse to
live without her. If she were conscious, she would be martyring herself for the
sake of a kid she barely knew. That only reinforced his conviction. Every kiss
of his mouth to hers tasted of goodbye. She was wolf blood, and whatever
MacTire was, he understood survival. He would keep her alive, come what may.
Connal had to believe that, or he couldn't go through with it.

The car came to an
understated stop. Connal lifted defocused eyes and ascertained they were in the
same alley where he’d fought Brandr and Fite. Fate had been playing with him
all along, and now she was calling in the chips.

The
Thegn
muscle
guarding the fire exit took one look at Ash and stood aside to let Connal pass.
They knew all too well the black and blue stigmata of death.

‘Doyle!’ Connal bellowed as
he pounded up the corridor. Ash’s legs dangled limp over his arm and Liath was
tripping over herself to keep up. ‘Doyle!’ He roared.

'In here,' came the measured
reply.

It was the same office, the
one with the brass nameplate and the hulking mahogany partner's desk where he
had bound that girl in her panties, a million years ago, it seemed now.

'Josh!' Liath exclaimed,
pushing in past Connal.

'Hiya mum.' The boy was
sitting behind the desk, swamped by the oversized leather chair, playing with a
bundle of straws. ‘Look! Mr. Doyle showed me how to make straw animals.’ Josh
proudly held up a twisted mess of plastic tubing and Liath smiled weakly at her
boy.

Doyle looked grotesquely
happy. If Liath had once found that smile charming, it was clear from her
expression that now it churned her stomach. Doyle moved and she flinched,
expectant of some harm to her son, but he only resettled on the edge of the
desk with that damn smile. He was laser-focused on the limp body in Connal’s
arms. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘She’s actually the real deal.’ He slid his ass off
the desk and made a move to touch Ash’s black-veined face.

‘You don’t fucking touch
her,’ Connal snarled, curling her body protectively into his chest.

Doyle backed up to the edge
of the desk, a cocked brow and shrewd eyes taking in the significance of
Connal's possessive gesture and the way his mouth lingered on hers as he fed
her oxygen. ‘Fuck me. What did you do? Bite her?’ He laughed derisively.

Connal’s eyes were like
stone, pinning Doyle with a withering glare. ‘She’s dying.’

Doyle laughed and it
triggered a reflex reaction from Liath across the room. There was a metallic
clunk as she racked the slide on the semi-automatic like a pro and trained the
muzzle right on Doyle’s smug smile, looking more than happy to shoot it off his
face. Two pairs of eyes flicked to take in her slight trembling stance.

‘You need to get your bitch
here on a leash, Savage.’ The nervous tic popping at the angle of Doyle’s jaw
betrayed him.

Connal recognised the firearm
as one of his own. He’d been so distracted by Ash’s critical state, he hadn’t
noticed her take it. His voice was level, the kind you might use to talk
someone’s finger off the big red button. ‘You don’t want to do that Liath.’
Because
to spill wolf blood on the sacred ground of the seal would unleash Armageddon
on the whole of humanity
.

A sheen of sweat had broken
on Doyle’s upper lip when he spoke. ‘Yes Liath, don’t do something we’ll all
regret.’ His condescending tone really wasn’t helping the situation.

Liath shot him a glare full
of venom but her words were for Connal. ‘Why not? Sick, murdering, drug-pushing
bastards.’ Her finger twitched and the gun shook a little. ‘Someone who would
abduct a child deserves to die.’ Her son was watching her with wide eyes but
when she beckoned, one hand freed to hold out to him, he scurried with a
fistful of straws and latched to her side.

‘Not here, not in front of
the boy.’ Connal’s words were serenely calm. ‘He doesn’t need to see that,
Liath.’

Yet, she still couldn’t bring
herself to lower her arm. Sharp words tore in Doyle’s direction. ‘I swear to
God, if you or any of your minion scum come near me or my family again, I will
make your vow of celibacy more than just a life choice.’ The muzzle dipped,
aiming low. ‘It will be out of your hands.’ One arm tightened around Josh. ‘And
if that isn’t enough, I have evidence of what this club is really about, that
could put you away for a very, very long time.’

‘You won’t last the night,’
Doyle muttered through the sneer that twisted his lips.

‘You’re going to let them go,
Doyle,’ Connal levelled his ultimatum. ‘I may be an outcast, but I am still
pureblood. I will have your
Thegn
oath that you will not harm a hair on
their heads.’

‘Why the fuck would I swear
fealty to you,
Vargrliker
?’ he spat.

‘Because if you don’t, I’ll
kill you myself, right here and now. MacTire doesn’t get the girl and it’s
endgame for us all.’

‘You’re bluffing.’ His jaw
kicked up defiantly.

‘Am I? What have I got to
lose? Once I take her to MacTire, I’m as good as dead already.’

A flicker of confusion drew
Doyle’s brows low. There was no comprehension, no idea of the emotion behind
the sacrifice. He couldn’t see anything but stupidity and madness in the
decision and his face was lined with the puzzle, eyes narrowed on Connal as
though he was a bag of cats away from crazy.

‘I go with her, or she
doesn’t go.’

Connal swept a stray curl
from Ash’s face to make the life-breathing connection once more. Doyle scrubbed
a hand under his collar, as though the intimacy was making him uncomfortable.
‘Oh My God, you fucking idiot,’ he sneered, ‘you’re in love with her? You’re
insane.’

Connal lifted his eyes to the
male and they were bright with the truth. ‘No. She won’t make it without me. I
will have your oath,
Thegn
, on your knees and bleeding, or I will have
your head.’

It had to be the weirdest day
ever, and Liath was pinch-raw from the times she’d checked she wasn’t caught in
some nightmare, her boy alive and in her arms in the middle of this war of
words and threats. She crouched, a smaller target curved around Josh, the gun
forgotten when he’d asked to be picked up and she couldn’t deny him that. Not
like she needed it now anyway, the two men were talking oaths, calm but for the
tension that crackled in the air around them. Calm but for the knife that
slipped from Doyle’s pocket into his hand. Her warning cut off at the source on
a strangled cry, her palm covering Josh’s eyes as the blade aimed not for
Connal, but for Doyle’s own chest, the slim, lithe muscle exposed when the tip
sliced deep and spilled a trickle of blood over the intricate tattoo branding
his skin. From harming others to self harming in the blink of an eye, Liath was
dizzy, sick at the sight of the red on his pale skin. Her vision was blurred
with the adrenaline, but she could have sworn Doyle leaned in, head bowed as
though to kiss Connal’s nipple rings before he stumbled back, harshly cast away
by her snarling friend. She was so far beyond confusion, even her own name
wasn’t making sense as she watched the exchange through the white-noise of
shock fuzzing her brain. Why did she always have to get involved with the
freaks?

Doyle’s knees bent like rusty
hinges and he gritted out the words as though they were pulled teeth. ‘On the
blood of the
Thegn
, you have my oath.’

So much power, her friend
had. She’d never noticed it before, but now, with the man who’d taken her son,
Connal was a commanding force driving him to kneel without even raising a
finger. His threatening control shocked her. Could this storm in front of her
really be the same quiet male who had once carried her child around on his
massive shoulders? He scared her, but this was the man who had helped her
escape her ex.

His voice pulled her into the
room again. ‘He can’t touch you now. Why don’t you take Josh home?’ Connal
smiled at the kid before turning his eyes on Liath with his unspoken goodbye.
‘I’m sorry I got you into this mess, my friend. Thank you, for everything, and
take my advice this time. Find yourself a new job. The punters at Form are a
pack of animals.’