The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (37 page)

He didn’t say it but she felt
it. Connal didn’t think he would be coming back from wherever he was going.
Always protecting others when he pretended not to care. He’d won her friendship
and affection, time and again, and where he couldn’t express, she could. Not
eloquent, she was never really that, but her hand curved on the muscle of his
arm and she leaned a little, a brief embrace of touch letting him know ... just
letting him know. She smiled, eyes watery, throat choked. ‘I will, Conn, I
promise. Thank you, for everything.’ Liath stepped back, repeating his words,
and turned, fingers smudging a drop of wet from her cheek. ‘Please, take care.’
Useless perhaps. ‘I really hope Ash will be okay.’ Her neighbour had been good
for him, it seemed. ‘See you soon, yeah?’ Those were the hardest and she was
glad her back was turned, tears tracking the steps that would take her home.

‘Yeah,’ he lied, and watched
them leave, before training his attention back to the snivelling creep on the
floor. ‘Get off your knees, Scotty, and beam us the fuck to Fomor.’

W
aiting had probably never been so tense. Madden was
stood beside the colossal statue of tension that was MacTire, and the male
didn’t even look to be breathing. But for the slight dilation of his pupils as
his focus caught on the swirling vortex of blood nearing the shore, he could
have been a sculpture. Madden daren’t move though, not with the way the other
members of the Skuldalid sneered at him, waiting for some glimpse into the
residual pain of a humiliating punishment, so they could laugh at him like
hyenas on crack. Some welcome party, he wanted no part of it. He wanted to be
topside in a hot bath, getting a massage from a few of the club’s girls. A
pretty blonde maybe. None of it would come to pass until MacTire gave him leave
to return above ground. Fomor was unstable and hungry for a look, a taste, of
this female key. Boots scuffed bone sand, the only tell of his agitation as he
forced himself not to move, not to flinch, when a pacing Varg skimmed too close
to him. Fuckers liked playing with him now. The privileges of his status as
brother-in-law to the King held about as much water as a sieve, when MacTire
himself had publicly issued the orders for his debasement at their hands. It
didn’t matter that he’d been allowed to accompany the Skuldalid for the
female’s arrival. That was just a means of adding insult to his injuries. Doyle
had succeeded where Madden had failed, and MacTire had dragged him here, with
his pride in tatters, to rub his nose in it.

A snarl was leashed and ready
to be let loose on the next Varg that walked behind him, but it never came
about. MacTire moved, ploughing through the few males that had swarmed forwards
in haste to see the girl, when the two bodies splashed up, crimson to charred
bone beach. Here was history, being written in the sands of Fomor, a double
coup that defied the comprehension of every pair of eyes that witnessed it.
Here lay the pariah of their race, the author of their downfall, limbs entwined
with their brightest hope. Here was their mortal enemy, delivering the key to
freedom right into their hands. It spoke to Madden of atonement, but there
wasn’t a male amongst them, Madden included, that would hesitate to avenge
their lost. Mothers, daughters, sisters, mates. If the Savage had come seeking
to atone for his wrongs, he would find no forgiveness here, amongst the
Skuldalid. Every bruised muscle in Madden’s body ached from the base
degradation that was their brand of mercy, and he had merely failed to produce
the girl. To break the oaths of the félag and take arms against your own blood?
There was no more inglorious act. The King’s Vanguard had waited many centuries
for justice.

They were so still, the two
bodies that were the focus of all eyes, locked in an embrace that fitted them
into one form. She looked more delicate than the last time he’d seen her,
fragile and deathly pale, wrapped in the bind of the Savage’s arms. Breakable.
A strange rush of embarrassment filled heat into his cheeks, as though he had
stumbled upon a private moment in a world of blood and pain. There was no
savagery in the hold, none of the fierce brutality marking her skin beneath the
faint spiderweb pulsing at the surface of her pale flesh. Only tenderness in
the kiss that never broke. Hurtled into Hell and not even that could separate
one from the other. It was light fractured in a place where shadows ruled.
Madden couldn’t tear his eyes away.

The dull light of the torches
planted at the water’s edge illuminated the black pathway of veins slowly
receding and he feigned a doctor’s interest in the phenomenon, a distance away
and observing. Her breath was visible now, the rise and fall of her chest
shallow compared with the ragged, panting growls of frustration sawing the
Savage’s body as he fought the leaden paralysis claiming his strength. Madden
could relate. He hated that weakness. It struck like lightning on the trip over
and could hang around for hours. Not something you wanted when the universe’s
bitchiest raptors haunted the skies of Fomor. As if on cue, a murderous screech
cut a nervous murmur across the crowd of Vargs, slicing through the stunned
stillness that had carved awe into the face of every male on the sands. This
female was different and they could smell it.

‘Get him off her,’ MacTire
growled, incensed at the picture before him. His obsidian eyes were alive with
a maniacal gleam, the torch flames casting him as a grotesque Gollum with the
precious wolf bloodlines in his covetous sights. Rún and Brandr moved forward
to obey. Gripping Connal’s useless limbs, the russet-haired warrior hesitated,
exchanging a look with his blood brother. Madden read into that look, the
unvoiced reticence to wrench apart these two ... lovers?

A growl dashed the hesitation
into motion, the brothers moving fast to unravel the chain security of Connal’s
arms from around the unconscious female and draw her unresponsive form off the
sand. Rún took her weight, so real, her curves draped over his arms.

‘Fucking parasite, we finally
pried you off her.’ Brandr leant down, his scruff-faced lip curling into
Connal’s. ‘You should have died the other night, you stinking cur, in the
gutter, where a traitor like you belongs.’ Drawing up on a snarl, Brandr found
MacTire looming above them and looked to the King for permission to finish the
job.

From the ground came a wet
croak that drew both men’s attention. By the time he mustered the strength to
speak, the Savage had schooled his paralyzed mouth into a half smile. ‘Brother,
it’s been too long,’ he wheezed.

‘You have no right to call me
that.’ The lability that crept into the King’s voice was off-key for a man
known for dispassionate cruelty. His face contorted with revulsion, he struck
Madden as unstable. ‘Our mother cursed the day she spat you from her thighs,
mongrel. She should have wrung your neck at birth and spared us all your
treachery.’ MacTire’s boot kicked out and a shower of bone-sharded sand rained
down on the captive’s head. This was the Savage’s legacy to his race, charred
remains in a sea of brutal bloodshed.

The King demanded Madden’s
wandering attention with a proclamation. ‘My men. Our day has come to rise once
more. See that Elatha has provided the vessel for us to thrive once again.’ The
register of his voice dropped to a reverent whisper as he approached Ash, the
fingers of his giant hand moulding to the pale curve of her cheek. ‘And is she
not beautiful?’ The pad of his thumb brushed across her full lips. Draped, limp
in Rún’s arms, Ash remained mercifully unconscious, though the blue-black
lividity had receded completely to reveal the porcelain perfection of her skin.
The silk sheet Connal had wrapped her in was shredded, barely covering her
modesty from the lascivious eyes of the gathering crowd. MacTire’s hand dropped
to sift the raven silk of her hair through his fingers. Lifting a handful of
damp curls to his face, he inhaled deep and a growl ripped from his throat.
Gripping her jaw in one powerful hand, he angled her throat to reveal the
freshly cut bite mark in her skin. Wheeling on Connal where he lay powerless on
the shore, the King snapped.

‘Was it not enough to seduce
my mate and plant your maggot spawn inside her belly? Must you defile this one
too?’ He gestured to Ash, where she hung from Rún’s arms. ‘She trusted you and
yet you condemn her to the same hell as the rest of us. Once a betrayer, always
a betrayer.’

‘You know nothing. She loves
me, brother,’ Connal’s words were a cracked whisper. ‘She will never go
willingly to your bed, MacTire. Even if you force her, it will always be me, in
the end. Me in her thoughts, in her heart. Mine.’ His eyes drifted closed, but
the shadow of a smile hovered on his lips.

MacTire’s booted foot moved
to obliterate that smile in a sickening crunch of bone, but it was clear to
Madden that the remnant of its effects lingered in the strain that bracketed
the King’s mouth with deep-furrowed chagrin. ‘You are a traitor to your race,
Connal Savage. You will die here, alone, in the same agony you left your kin to
suffer.’ MacTire snatched up a fistful of dreads, yanked Connal’s head to a
sickening angle, and spat squarely in his face. ‘Burn in Hell with your bastard
child, my blood brother. They say the babe mewled like a worthless runt when he
was thrown to the Untame. I should have slit your throat then, along with my
faithless bitch of a mate.’ His boot tipped Connal’s chin up and a vicious yank
of strong fingers tore out the silver hoops hooked through the Savage’s flesh,
breaking the skin to a grunt of stifled pain and removing the rings and their
pure blood connections in a spray of scarlet. He was nothing without the
pierced birthright, less now than the dog he had been.

Madden felt the sand shift
beneath his feet, or was it that he had turned to stone and the rest of the
world was suddenly turning on a different axis?

If Thor’s Hammer had smashed
his face in at that moment, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. MacTire’s words ran
his blood cold and instilled shock to every cell, electrifying his heart to a
beat of deranged, swelling fury. It rose to lash across the spasm of his
confused thoughts with one truth. MacTire, not Connal, had killed his sister.
And the arrogance of the man had him declaring it before his own creatures. Too
confident, too angry and probably too damn stupid to realise Madden as a
threat, MacTire simply ploughed on with his orders.

‘Break him open and gift him
wings of bone. Season his innards with salt. The Raveners will relish his
flavour so much the longer.’

The King’s words warped in
Madden’s ears. The same momentum that propelled the wolves into their future
was sucking him back into a past he no longer recognised. The Vargs milled
around his frozen form as though he were invisible, rushing to shackle a limp
Connal to hang between a rock structure, a monolith with sharp points reaching
to the skies and a gap enough to string a man up.

‘Keep him conscious. The
Blood Eagle is no fun if he sleeps through it,’ MacTire laughed. The sick,
murdering bastard actually laughed as they stripped what shreds of clothes
still clung to Connal’s body. Flash frames of memory played across Madden’s
frontal lobe, rapid-firing despite his outward stillness, stripping away layer
upon layer of ingrained misunderstandings.

Aoife, flushed and breathless
with life and secret laughter, returning from one of her covert, midnight
adventures. He’d understood enough to know it was a male who brought her that
joy, but had never known his name nor seen his face. God, but he saw it now.
Dreads hung low, silent tears cut tracks down filthy cheeks as the blade ripped
through the sinew and bone of Connal’s broad back, the rip and crunch of brutal
hands fashioning gruesome, bloody wings from the cage of his ribs.

Aoife. Heavy with child and
utterly joyless. Aoife. Once bright eyes turned fearful and furtive, concealing
the black-haired child in her robes. It was the last time he’d seen his sister.
She left their tent and never returned. What came in her place was this man,
strung up in front of him now, ripped open by the savagery of vengeance.
Connal, at the head of a demon army of Untame that unleashed horror on their
people. Blood and burning and chaos and fleeing for their lives. And MacTire,
in the caves, always MacTire, holding him back when he wanted only to go to
her, his sister, with her baby. Again and again, the image haunted him, like a
word spelled over and over, until suddenly it looked like a foreign language.
Not saving his life, not grieving a mate, or a son, but wearing their blood on
his hands, knowing they were already beyond saving, dead on the end of
MacTire’s own blade.