Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) Read online

  ‘Then he didn’t bother to explain all the possibilities,' Fite frowned, 'like you might actually be one of us, and would suffer and die as we do without the full moon.’

  ‘No,’ she was adamant now, ‘he refused to bite me. I had to force him. I bit him first, I gave him no choice.’ Ash rubbed absently at her throat, brow furrowed. She never considered the greatest side effect: dying. Never thought she’d end up like that blue mess she witnessed, expiring in her backyard. But obviously Connal had. His refusal made so much more sense. ‘Oh God, was I like that?’ she asked. ‘Decaying and blue?’ Did that make her one of them? Ash couldn’t deny the clawed proof. The white-haired, porn-tashed hunk of Viking warrior clearly believed it.

  Fite fell silent.

  ‘I saw what happens,' she pressed, 'how am I not dead?’ Her head wasn’t wrapping around it. There were fractions of her memories missing, a black void that came after explosive ecstasy and agonising pain. She couldn’t shed light on them herself.

  ‘Connal brought you here,’ Fite conceded. ‘He pulled some mouth-to-mouth stunt on you to keep you alive until you got to Fomor. Weird shit, like he was transferring his immunity to the curse through his own breath.’

  ‘What?’ She was in shock. Connal had brought her into hell, so that she could live. Knowing that he wouldn’t. A growl bladed her words. ‘He saved my life, risked his own to bring me here, to bring me to you, and you killed him?’ Every word was a match, her anger gasoline, waiting for the flame to hit. Something raked under her skin. Her fingers gripped into the sheets and fabric shredded.

  ‘The Savage had it coming, many times over, and he knew it. Have you any idea how many of us your precious saviour murdered?’ The calm, sea-green rims his eyes were eclipsed by a bleed of crimson. ‘When he took you to his bed, did he whisper that he was the reason we are damned to this fucking hellhole? Did he brag to you that we are on the verge of extinction because he ripped the heart out of every woman and child of our kind? Or that he sold his soul to that bitch, Morrígan, in exchange for his own ticket to freedom?' He bared his teeth in a sneer. 'No, I didn’t think so. Not exactly sweet pillow talk to charm a lady out her knickers, is it?’

  ‘You bastard!’ The fire caught hold, spinning her into a fury of talons. It was instinct to swipe at him, to silence the words that hurt, that drove doubt into the well of her love and muddied it. Ash had never been party to the full truth of Connal’s past. She defended him the only way she could, with violence.

  As her claws struck across Fite’s mouth, Ash knew the wealth of her anger wasn’t directed at him. If not for her playing on Connal’s instinct to bite, she never would have been at risk, he never would have had to hand himself over to the mercy of his enemies to save her. He never would have died if she’d left him to his plans. She’d killed him. Delivered him over to god-only-knew what brutality before they executed him. Fite’s hatred alone enforced her belief that it wasn’t a quick death.

  ‘I underestimated you,’ Fite backed away, clutching at his torn face, cold fury in his eyes. ‘It won’t happen again. Who are you?' he demanded. 'What are you, and why have you come?'

  Trembling, staring at her bloodied hands, Ash had no answers to who or what she was becoming.

  DOUBT

  The two males lounged, legs kicked up on the tabletop. Tyr picked at his teeth with the remnants of a bone, discarding it to the ruin of the carcass they’d shared, and looked over at Rún.

  ‘I’m just saying it’s fucked up. You heard MacTire say it yourself. He slit Aoife’s throat. He called her a ‘faithless bitch of a mate’.’

  Rún shook his head, indigo eyes shuttered by long lashes. ‘Goldilocks is a hothead, but he didn’t kill Aoife.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I just know, okay. They fought like dogs, but he always loved her. Probably just mouthing off in the heat of the moment,’ Rún hedged.

  Tyr’s blond brows disappeared into his hairline. ‘Heat of the moment? Aren’t you even curious? What the hell did he mean by a bastard child being thrown to the untame? Thrown by whom?’ Animated, the younger male leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ Rún shrugged massive shoulders and let his head fall back, measuring a breath through gritted teeth. He focussed on the ceiling, rather than look his fellow warrior in the eye. Why couldn't MacTire have kept his arrogant mouth shut? ‘We were all out raiding the night of the Blód-Samhain. Aoife and the child stayed behind with the other women and children, and they died in the first wave of the Savage’s ambush. End of.’ The lie tasted bitter.

  ‘No, see that’s the thing,’ Tyr pushed. ‘I don’t recall seeing MacTire at the bonefires, not until much later, when the carnage kicked off.’

  ‘That was a messed-up night,’ Rún exhaled.

  ‘Exactly. Anyone could have done anything in the chaos.’

  ‘This is ancient history, my friend.’ And that was the truth, wasn’t it?

  Rún fired a clean-picked bone across the room, and the projectile hit its mark with deadly accuracy. The bell that would call the thegn to clear up the mess chimed at the strike.

  What good could it do to pick over the carcass of the past now? The circumstances of the Queen’s death, and that of her child, had long-since been subsumed by the bloodshed that followed in their wake. The body count was too high, the mass graves too deep for two individual souls to matter. What was done could never be undone, and Connal Savage’s death had been the final coffin nail in that inglorious chapter. Still, the freshly-turned memories rankled him, as did the muzzle of silence MacTire had sworn him to. ‘What difference would it make, Tyr?’

  The young wolf pressed on. ‘What difference?! If MacTire did what he boasted to the Savage of, it’s infanticide!’

  Rún’s soft growl issued a warning. ‘You don’t let MacTire hear you throwing that word around, Tyr.’ The mood he was in, Tyr might not survive their leader’s wrath.

  ‘Where is the King?’ Tyr’s nervous glance to the doors made Rún chuckle. He shoved the male’s shoulder.

  ‘Fear not, he went to find the doctor, about his face.’ MacTire’s expression when he’d emerged, gashed and bloodied from his chambers, had been fucking priceless. This woman, Ashling, had elevated herself in Rún’s estimation. Clearly she had a fight in her that the usual thralls did not. There might be hope for them all yet.

  ‘Doc Madden? I haven’t seen him since MacTire had him punished.’

  Rún pitied their healer. The King had the doctor bend over to the omegas as punishment for failing to secure the girl. No male should be subjected to such base degradation. ‘Probably gone to bathe in female,’ he said.

  ‘Not a luxury for the thegn, my friend. Poor bastards.’

  ‘Ha!’ His crack of laughter startled Tyr. Rún was normally as taciturn and humourless as he was. ‘Do you actually believe they’re celibate?’ Rún asked.

  Tyr's blond brows pulled down. ‘It’s their vow. To uphold the purity of the bloodlines.’

  Rún cut him an incredulous stare. ‘Where do you imagine all those latent females came from?’ The younger varg could be very dense.

  Tyr tried again, but it sounded stupid even to his ears now. ‘Spontaneous mutations in humans?’

  ‘Uhuh. About as likely as a human sprouting feathers and laying an egg.’ Eyes rolled and another bone hit the platter, gleaned of flesh.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yeah, explains why they all failed.’ Runt wolf and human just made runtier wolf. The blood was weak. The vessel was weaker.

  Tyr’s foot gestured lazily at the door. ‘What about this one? Think she’ll go the same way as the others?’

  ‘I don’t know. You saw what she looked like. Only wolfblood needs the red fog to survive above ground, and only wolves are cursed to die that way.’

  Words fell to silent contemplation as a thegn stole in to clear the plates.

  They both knew what it meant if the girl was one
of them. She’d be their hope and future, the mother to the next generation of their species. Now that Connal Savage was no longer a threat to their numbers aboveground, she would become the new prize at the Contests, and any one of them would kill to mount her. Rún ran the tip of his tongue along his lip, teasing the flesh with his teeth. The she-wolf would feel so much better than the human thralls. Less breakable. He couldn’t remember the last time his wolf had taken a female.

  The scent of blood alerted them to movement in the tunnels, their heads snapping as one to watch the shadow lengthen against the backlight of the torches. Fite’s silver hair shone in the dance of flames as he emerged from the main tunnel. He was bleeding, fresh scratches marring his cheek and jaw, splitting his lip. He was covering up a limp with swagger, favouring his right side as his left thigh bled through his pants.

  Rún smirked. ‘What? You too?’

  Fite cut a glare across the room, metal-tipped fingers pressed to a deep laceration.

  ‘Looks like the she-wolf found her claws,’ Rún said.

  ‘You sure she’s not tigerblood?’ Laughter rumbled off the cavern’s walls and Tyr grinned.

  'She sliced through your attempts to soften her up, then? Need to sharpen those diplomacy skills, Fite.' Rún suspected their brother had been chosen for the task because he was the only one their king trusted to be alone with the female. Fite’s control was legendary, which was ironic, considering that, anatomically, parts of him were permanently wolf.

  ‘Fuck you. Both of you.’ Fite slumped into a chair and wiped at his face with a rag. He was already starting to heal.

  The others were quiet until Tyr murmured, ‘Is she the real deal?’

  ‘Yeah ...’ Exhaling roughly, Fite reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew a shimmering strand for inspection, running it through his steel fingertips. ‘I took this from her head.’

  The males leaned in on a sharp intake of breath, not daring to believe their eyes. It was a single red hair, too thick and silky to be human.

  ‘Damn. She’s a russet?’ Rún’s whisper was reverent.

  ‘Russet wolves don't exist outside of myths. The ancient ancestral bloodlines died out centuries ago.’

  ‘Then what is she?’ Tyr sounded lost.

  ‘I don’t know what she is.’ Fite’s voice was tight.

  ‘But you’re saying she’s a russet wolf?’ Scruffing at the line of his jaw, the cogs seemed to be turning in Tyr’s head, but not grasping.

  ‘I’m saying she pulled a Wicked Witch of the West and commanded the sky piranhas to fly, fly, fly.’ Fite’s glare was penetrating. ‘And away they flew, like trained flying fucking monkeys.’

  ‘What the hell?’ Rún’s copper brows pulled together over troubled eyes.

  ‘She’s a DeMorgan. Haven’t any of you stopped to consider that she could be the Morrígan’s Trojan Horse? That girl is no victim. She told me herself, she forced him to bite her. Why would she do that, if not to infiltrate our ranks? And Connal Savage risked his own life to bring her to us. Why?’

  Fite’s point struck home, hard.

  ‘You think it’s a trap?’ The facts were straight enough in Rún’s head, it was the motives that were screwing with his mind.

  ‘Savage’s loyalty to DeMorgan was never in question. So why keep the girl alive when she was becoming the very thing he despised?’ Fite asked.

  ‘And why place her in the hands of his enemies, knowing it would get him killed?’ Rún added. If that bitch Morrígan was truly the girl’s grandmother, what did that make her? Was she really one of them? Fite was broadcasting his suspicion, loud and clear.

  ‘But the King made the blood link,’ Tyr cut in. ‘We all saw her dying in the water. You even have that hair, and her claw marks to prove it. She has to be one of us, Fite.’

  ‘MacTire is letting himself get led by his cock,’ Fite snarled, ‘and if we’re not careful, he’s going to fuck that Pandora’s box open and unleash hell on us all.’

  Again … Rún finished Fite’s rant internally, the growl in his throat going unheard. It wouldn’t be the first time MacTire had brought them to ruin over a woman. When that male fucked, it seemed they all got screwed.

  CHAINED BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS

  Freedom. Sort of. If wandering a rabbit warren of tunnels counted as freedom. Ash had worked the lock on the door loose with a sprig of herb and her nail. She was no MacGyver, but it had got her out. Foster homes had been good for something, at least.

  No more idle thinking. No more acting the sitting duck.

  ‘I'm getting the hell out of here, not waiting for the next male to …’ Well, Ash didn’t really know what they were going to do to her. She’d attacked their King and their buddy, so she assumed it wouldn’t be a pile of cuddles.

  The balcony had been a no-go. Even if she could scale the sheer cliff-face, she’d be too exposed in that harsh landscape. That wouldn’t get her home. It would just get her dead. Connal said there were conduits, black lakes that led to the surface. If she could find one, home might be a heel click away.

  Meeting yet another dead end, she greeted it with her fist. Her growl spun with her, slumping her spine to the cold rock. We’re lost, and we’re going to remain lost until Mac or one of his cronies sniffs us out like the bloodhounds they are. We’ll be hunted eventually. Or starve waiting. Her stomach was talking and that was not a good sign. She couldn’t risk eating the food Fite brought. What if the meat was drugged? She’d been unconscious when Mac got to her last time, and she wasn’t gunning for a repeat performance.

  She pushed off, and with quiet footsteps, set herself on the path down another corridor. It stretched on forever, miles of stone that twisted and led nowhere. Flames cast her shadow into the darkness in front of her. She encountered no one, her bare feet carrying her over the stone ground, footsteps echoing the beat of her heart. The sconces offered little heat and chills raised bumps on her skin, the air getting cooler, fresher as she turned a corner. It had to be opening up. She tugged at the robe she’d fastened around herself and poked her head around the corner.

  It was not a cold cavern.

  It was not an exit.

  Ash whipped herself back, pressed flush to the wall as her face flamed with enough heat to forge a sword. She sucked in a breath, mind stuttering over what she’d seen.

  What had she seen?

  Ash moved until the room came back into view and, with her heart racing, she studied, trying to make sense.

  There had to be five … no, wait … six, very naked males surrounding a woman. Heavy chains hung from a sophisticated structure fastened into the high ceiling. The woman was suspended by her wrists, helpless. They flowed around her, muscle and large hands shaping her svelte curves. Ash frowned. The woman was flailing, her keens getting louder and louder as they closed in on her. And then a splash of red hit the floor and Ash’s mind narrowed to the small drop, so bright on the dark rock. Snarls gave voice to another droplet, the growls rising as blood fell and Ash lurched with the realisation.

  They were eating her!

  They fell on the female, baited by first blood, and Ash couldn’t see her for males. Ravenous, their hands pulled, thighs flexed, muscle rippled. They were animals embodied by stunningly sculpted masculinity. The female screamed, stopping Ash’s heart. That was not a scream of terror. Pitched low and throaty, that scream was pure sex. It hit Ash at the centre of her lust, awakening it, a primal response to the energy arcing through the cavern.

  She’d been so very wrong.

  The woman was not being eaten.

  She was being bitten.

  Ash knew exactly how that felt. Her fingers strummed over the marks in her throat, probably invisible now, yet she could feel them. Memories of sensations lit up her nerves: Connal, his teeth, his body moving within hers as his bite took her to ecstasy. Her body went up in flames. Her eyes stayed locked on the motion of the males. The flash of canines, sharp and white, left streaks of crimson on the woman’s pale
skin. The female form arched, her mouth falling open as the giant breadth of a male asserted himself between her spread thighs.

  Oh … damn ...

  The woman scrabbled, heels scraping the floor, penetrated so hard her toes barely touched ground and she had to dig her stilettos into the columns of his thighs for purchase.

  Red winked from the bottom of scratched soles.

  It was those shoes.

  She hadn’t looked familiar: face thinner, hair wilder, makeup smudged beyond repair. But looking closer, beyond the blown pupils and slack-jawed pleasure, it was her, the girl in the street with the coveted red-soled shoes. Ash had barely glimpsed the female but she never forgot the Red.

  A howl snapped Ash’s gaze up from the floor in time to watch another male slide into the girl’s bound and willing form. Whimpers mixed with guttural groans, chains clinking rhythmically with the force of their thrusts. It was heavy with eroticism, the air blooming with the sounds of sex. The males moved over her, in her, stroking flesh with claws and teeth and Ash responded as though she was the one caught in their chains. Her body burned, her skin shivered, her muscles tensed and her mind was blown wide open by the impressions pouring from the males.

  The wolves were doing that thing they did, what Fite had done, what Connal had done, sensations and thoughts touching hers with images and emotions. No words, more like they projected an idea of the meaning behind words. She still didn’t understand it, but the message they were sending was loud and clear. It was primitive lust, intimate and rough. They wanted to destroy the woman, make her a boneless, motionless mass of ecstasy, take her until there was nothing left to take. They’d give her parts of themselves, their cocks, their hands, the brutal fullness of them filling her every way they could. And it would devastate her.

  Ash shuddered, back to the wall, head craned to watch the seven of them sink deeper into the maelstrom. Hands were everywhere, pumping and stroking, milking. Tongues lapped at sweat and canines punctured, wringing out tremor upon tremor, an earthquake of ecstasy spiralling higher every time they bit into her.