The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (74 page)

Connal’s head cocked, his
lips pressed into a frown. ‘You want us to break the truce?’

Ash’s head was shaking. ‘No.
God, no more killing. You and your brother have just started getting to know
one another. Surely there’s another way. I could speak to my grandmother,
perhaps she could help ...’

Connal’s growl cut her off in
a harsh snap and she bristled. His features softened, his voice gentled and his
apology was in the tender brush of his fingers through her hair. ‘I don’t want
you to go to her, Ash.’

Her face clouded in
confusion, and his shut down. He looked fierce and Ash wished he would project
just a little of what he was thinking. ‘But she already helped us
,’ she said,
‘s
he let us be together.’ That was points in her
grandmother’s favour, she thought. He didn’t agree.

‘Please.’ That voice. She’d
never heard him sound like that. Low and fraught with pain, it was the kind of
begging she never wanted to hear from him.

Placing her hands flat on his
chest, she leaned into the rough hold he’d tightened on her. ‘Okay, my love.’
She reassured him best she could in her bewilderment. ‘Perhaps we could
persuade Mac to keep them under control. I think he’d listen to me.’

His body went ramrod stiff,
and in a blink, his eyes went from polished steel to crimson intensity. A
street cleaner shuffled by them as Connal backed her to a wall and locked his
arms either side of her shoulders. ‘What does MacTire mean to you, Ash?’

‘
Does a clean slate mean nothing to you?’
she
snapped. His jealousy got under her skin. Ash’s fingers curved into claws and
she dug them into his hips. Branding. Assuring. Punishing. ‘I chose
you
,
Connal.’ If her words were roughened by a growl, he couldn’t really blame her.

‘I’m sorry, Ash. I have to
ask.’ The saving grace for him was that he did look sorry, but he wasn’t
backing down.

She let her anger bleed into
her eyes. ‘You want me to ask where you got those bites and scratches all over
you? And I don’t mean the ones from the fight.’

Blood rushed from his tawny
skin, leaving him pale and anxious, and her heart turned over. She wouldn’t
push, didn’t think she really wanted to know, but she was reminding them both
when she spoke again. ‘Clean slate, remember? I want you, Big Bad. You are my
happily ever after.’ She saw nothing but him in her future.

‘And that’s why I’m asking,
Ash.’ He exhaled heavily, dropped his forehead to hers.

What?
She blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’

Connal shoved away from her
and paced the quiet Dublin street. He was magnificent, even in his agitation.
‘The Morrígan has given me until the the next full moon wanes,’ he said, ‘or
there is no ever after, for either of us.’ Agony strained the deep growl of his
voice and she left the support of the wall to follow his tense back-and-forth.

‘Geez, Big Bad, will you stay
still?’ He made no sense and was getting her dizzy. ‘What do you mean? Given
you until the next moon to do what?’

When he did stop, his gaze
was direct, but wary. Brow knitted, the search for words was written on his
face. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

Connal’s breath left him in a
rush and she braced as a mask fell over his features.

‘The Morrígan’s price is
always death,’ he said.

‘No. She can’t have you!’ Ash
railed. ‘I lost you once already.’

‘Not me,’ he said gravely, ‘I
have to finish what I started. I have to kill him, Ash. MacTire must die. Or we
do.’

The Becoming Novels: Book Three

JESS RAVEN & PAULA BLACK

"Now this is the law of the jungle,
as old and as true as the sky,

And the wolf that shall keep it may
prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.

As the creeper that girdles the tree
trunk, the law runneth forward and back;

For the strength of the pack is the wolf,
and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”

The law for the Wolves. Rudyard Kipling

Ash opened her eyes and a
lonely chill ran along her spine.

Connal was gone.

Her new instincts confirmed
it.

Ever since he’d confessed the
price of their freedom, she’d feared waking like this: to find he’d snuck away
in the night, ready to commit murder in her name. Because however much he plied
her with his easy Irish humour and distracted her with his wickedly hard body,
there was no getting away from it: as long as MacTire breathed, they had no
future together.

Moonlight cut across the
empty expanse of sheets. She gathered them around her and blinked, taking in
the room in her grandmother’s house she’d made her own. The glow created deep
shadows around her furniture and glittered off her jewellery. That’s when she
noticed the figure silhouetted in the window.

He hadn’t gone far then.

Relief tempered the chill on
her skin.

Connal stood, palms braced
against the glass, a broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted guardian. The muscles
across his back were strung with tension and she knew its source: the moon,
hanging in the sky like a great glowing clock, counting down their days. When
it was full again, their time was up.

Ash slipped quietly from the
bed and padded across the oak floorboards.

He didn’t turn, though she
knew he heard her. His hair, mussed by sleep, stuck out from his head in
haphazard tufts. She was still getting used to the short spikes, learning to
wrap her fingers in the silken strands and hold on. He’d admitted to hacking it
off, but the ‘why’ of it, and the circumstances surrounding his bargain with
the Morrígan, remained a tight-lipped mystery.

Ash’s breath caught as she
approached. In the between, where light and shadows crossed, he looked like a
fallen angel, vicious scars slashing his ribcage where the wings had been torn
away. The brutal mementos of his time in Fomor caused her festering emotions to
surface. Grief, guilt, anger. All this suffering in her name. It had to end.

‘You're not actually
considering doing it, are you?’ she whispered into the night.

Connal shook his head, his
forehead dropping to the glass. ‘I can’t kill him. Not now I know the truth.’

‘Of course you can’t. He's
your brother.’

‘He wanted me dead. He
ordered my execution. The Gods know I have just cause. But …’

Ash’s hands hovered over the
scarred evidence of his torture. She couldn’t argue with that. Her fingers
slipped up his nape in a familiar stroke, scratching lightly through his shorn
hair. She dropped her forehead to his shoulder blade and pressed close.

Connal didn’t move, but the
tension in his back unknotted in slow-breathed increments, loosening the
muscles beneath the ridges of scarring.

‘But MacTire saved both our
lives,’ Ash said quietly, ‘when Fite had us cornered. He extended his hand in
friendship, and you took it. I understand, Big Bad. There has to be another
way. My grandmother-’

‘Your grandmother will not be
denied, Ash.’

He turned to her then and her
hand fell to the curve of his throat. His eyes shone in the darkness, such a
silver grey that the pupils seemed surrounded by moonlight. Ash almost missed
what he was saying. ‘The Morrígan has set her price,’ he said. ‘If I don’t pay
up, I’m condemning us both to die.’

Instinctively, her fingers
brushed the silver pendant resting in the notch of his throat. The filigree
knot of ravens was such a delicate thing against his muscle, and yet it held
his life, just as her mother's ring held hers. The talismans were the only
thing keeping them alive beyond the full moon and they both knew their power
was conditional on MacTire’s death.

‘Let me go to her,’ she
pleaded, not for the first time.

‘No.’ His face tightened,
those gorgeous grey eyes turned to stone.

‘What are you trying to
protect me from?’ she demanded.

‘Nothing good, Ash.’ His gaze
diverted back to the night sky and a crack appeared in his voice. ‘Please,
a
ghrá
. Let me deal with this. It's my bargain, my burden.’

‘Bullshit, Connal.’ Ash
cupped that strong, stubbled jaw and forced him back into the room. ‘This is
our lives,’ she said, drawing his gaze down to her, ‘our future. Nobody is going
to die just so I can live. I’d rather accept my fate, and live out my time with
you, however short that might be.’

His big hands framed her
face, rough, warm and familiar, but there was something feral in the intensity
of his stare. His eyes were lit from within, the embers of the wolf smouldering
just beneath the surface. He spoke and his voice turned to gravel. ‘There is
nothing I won't do for you, Ash. Nothing.’ He was so resolute and Ash swallowed
down the lump in her throat. ‘There is nothing I won't give you. For you, I
would do this. Just say the word.’

His hands knotted in her hair
and he claimed her mouth in a savage kiss, sealing his promise and stealing her
clarity. His lips took her protests and the thing inside her reared up in
response, clawing him closer.

Nothing he wouldn’t give
, even his own brother's head on a platter, but she
was no Salome.

His intensity frightened her.
He was a wild, dangerous creature, and when he touched her, she became infected
by that wildness.

Her lips were swollen when
she came up for air. 'No,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t want it. I only want you.’

'You have me,’ he growled as
she raked the maul of scars corseting his back.

‘I’ve just got you back, Big
Bad. I refuse to give up on us. You have to let me go to her.’

‘No,’ he growled louder,
closing her into the circle of those powerful arms.

His erection pressed into her
belly. God, he was a past master of distraction. The harder his body got for
her, the more her defences softened. She knew exactly what he was doing, but
she was powerless to resist. He only had to look at her that way, all animal
heat and possession, and she could feel her resolve slipping away, along with
any shred of humanity she might have left.

She felt her weight swept
from under her as Connal laid her down on the plush sheepskin rug. Clothed only
in moonlight, her breaths were ragged as he braced himself above her. His face
hovered, those dark-lashed, glacial blue eyes deep-penetrating as he hooked his
ankles around hers, dragging her legs wide. Her claws dug into the flexing
surge of his ass and he answered her unspoken need, driving the thick girth of
his cock home. Deep, so fucking deep, until their hip bones were locked. A
growl rose from his throat and his lips parted to reveal the tips of long
canines, promising the kiss of his teeth.

Maybe in the morning, when
the residual draw of the moon was gone, when he wasn’t touching her, when his
bite wasn’t sending her spiralling into ecstasy, maybe then she would remember
why she needed to fight. But for now, drowning as she was in the earthy, male
scent of him, surrender seemed a fair price to pay to feed her addiction. When
it came to this man, she had no control to lose.