Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) Read online

  Ash felt empty, observing but not participating, throbbing between her thighs to the bass beat of their rumbling growls. The side of her that gave her talons was mewling to be part of the dog pile, ready to roll over and pant. She struggled to draw less blatantly aroused breaths. This should not be getting her hot. Logic fought to reconcile her lusts, while instinct dictated the physical response that left her sleek and wet at the scene playing out before her with a hardcore soundtrack.

  Her thighs clenched as her eyes caught on the wolf between the female’s thighs. Tall, broad and dark-haired, his eyes held hers in his crimson-hazed stare, and she knew him. He was the one from Form, hairy and brutish, she’d been too intrigued by his tattoo at the time to pay him any special attention. She really looked now, took in the chiselled power that seemed bred into their race, and blushed to the tips of her toes when his lips curved in a rakish smirk.

  Busted.

  His eyes provoked her, challenged her, and an impression, heavy with erotic images, locked into her mind.

  Hot, focussed strokes, bent backwards, stuffed and stretched, bearded jaw burning her skin as a warm mouth closed over her nipple and hips pistoned between her thighs. His snarl as he commanded the others to join, made space for another … Brandr … I am Brandr … It was a strike to her senses, encompassing them in his fantasy of her. Come, Ashling, there is room for you …

  It wasn’t that she was tempted by him, she didn’t want him, but her primal soul wanted what he offered. Her arousal wept, swarmed as she was by sensations so vivid that seconds passed before she could think straight, before she could believe that she wasn’t the one bound for their pleasure. As Brandr soothed the quaking female, Ash swore she felt hands brush her skin.

  This mental mojo was good.

  Brandr’s fingers brushed the girl’s lower belly and Ash’s clenched, feeling rough skin stroke her stomach. She swallowed a moan, eyes fluttering closed, letting herself swim in the tactical illusion the wolves were feeding into her head. Strong hands dragged her back to a broad chest and she encouraged the ridge of arousal pressing to the small of her back, liking the fantasy reaction and the hitch of breath she imagined she heard. Her brain fuzzed with a bolt of lust.

  God, the wolves were really good ...

  ‘Do you like what you see, Ashling?’ The low-gravelled timbre of the voice caressing her ear was unmistakable. MacTire. Her whole body flinched, dulling her aroused flush to chilling mortification.

  Fuck.

  What she’d thought were impressions of hands, fed to her by Brandr’s lust, were very real, restraining her against the mass of the King’s body. She struggled, her hips canted forwards, as far away as she could get in his shackling grip. Might as well have been a worm on a hook for all the good it did her. ‘Let go of me,' she demanded, 'this is disgusting.’

  The sound in the back of his throat was a tut of disapproval, his hold on her only tightening, letting her feel the blazing heat of him. ‘I would love to join you, to give you what you desire,’ coal-black eyes fell on the pack where they ravaged the woman to ecstasy, ‘you are promised to them, when I am done with you, but now that you are in my possession, I find myself questioning whether I am prepared to share you.’

  ‘I am not some possession you can just take ownership of, Mac.’ Her lip curled, mocking and obstinate.

  ‘Do not deny your nature, my Queen. You want to be in her shoes. I can feel it, taste it on you.’ The tip of his tongue ran a wet shiver up the column of her throat. Broad hands dipped into the hollows of her hipbones, meeting just above the apex of her thighs, fitting her back, flush against the iron ridge of his erection. An inch lower and the bastard would feel just how right he was. She squirmed, deflecting him when he would have taken that inch. He growled and she froze mid-struggle, slowly putting space between her ass and his arousal. What she saw as a fight to get free was a grind to him, and he was responding to the friction as only an animal could.

  Primitively.

  ‘You repulse me.’ Ash was turned-on and he made her hate it. ‘So why do I feel this way?’ she asked.

  ‘I feel it too,' Mac replied, 'because we are tethered by blood,’ stubble grazed the bare skin of her shoulder where he planted his lips, ‘and because you are mine.’

  ‘I told you already, you don’t own me.’ Ash strained to break free of his touch, convincing herself it was defiance warming her and not the way he played her nerves. ‘What do you mean tethered by blood?’

  ‘I mean your blood is inside me. We share a physical link, Ashling. I am attuned to your desire, as you are to mine.’

  Oh yeah, she could feel his desire.

  Something flickered across her thoughts: Doc Rob, at the hospital, taking samples for ‘research.’ Connal asked if they’d taken her blood, told her they could track her through it. ‘Wait up a second here. Are you saying you drank my blood?’ Bad enough I’m trapped in an undergound hole with a pack of sex-crazed werewolves, but now I have to deal with vampires too?

  ‘Mmmmm ...’ He growled, running his nose behind her ear, inhaling the scent of her hair, but the asshole didn’t answer her question. He didn’t have to, because the words he did speak resonated a memory that threw her right back to the forest floor where she’d first heard them in her head. ‘I can feel you, Ashling DeMorgan. You are inside me. You are mine.’

  Clarity was a shaft of light through clouds of confusion. The spontaneous orgasmic combustion, the temptress she had become, goading Connal into fucking her that very first time. ‘Oh my God … It was you! In the forest. What have you done to me? Do you think you can turn me into one of your zombie sex-bots, like you did with her?’

  On cue, the girl came again … Loudly.

  ‘She is nothing compared with you, Ashling. The tie exists because you are wolf. Already your mind is bonding with the pack. You can’t deny you feel their thoughts.’

  She was fighting to deny it, but it was all horribly true. She couldn’t even look away.

  ‘And we did not make the pathetic female thrall. She has your precious Connal to thank for that.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Her brow creased. His hands moved over the tension in her body, raising shivers.

  ‘Your lover was the one who bit her, and left her bound and gagging over a desk in our club. We took care of her.’

  Disbelief rattled through her like a chill wind. ‘You’re lying. Connal wouldn’t ...’

  ‘The thrall will bear witness. Should I have her brought to you?’

  ‘No!’ She didn’t want the female near her. Clearly the woman would lie for him.

  ‘What did you really know of him, Ashling? Other than what he chose to reveal.’ Each word was accompanied by a caress, his thumbs following the underside of her breasts. Her heart kicked in her chest. ‘You believed yourself in love with him, but what you experienced were false emotions, stolen sensations from the blood link that you and I shared.’

  It couldn’t be true, she knew her own mind, her emotions weren’t something that could be fabricated … and yet, something Connal had said rose to the surface of her memories, drawn up by the twinge of doubt. ‘Just you and me, naked and broken … no full-moon fever ... no supernatural mojo …’ Is that what he’d meant? That everything before that had been the product of some wolf voodoo? But … ‘Why should a blood-tie with you affect how I feel about him?’

  He turned her in the circle of his powerful arms until she was face to face with the wolf branded into his chest. The exact replica of Connal’s, seeing it again, on another man’s skin, engulfed any lingering desire in a wash of sadness. Her lashes were wet when she blinked, throat knotted. If she ignored his face, she could almost imagine it was Connal. He even had the nipple rings.

  Bundling her small hand in his, Mac rested the flat of her palm to his beating heart. ‘Connal and I were brothers once, félagi. Bonded until death. He turned against me, and against us all, Ashling. He was a traitor to his own people. You must see, I had no choice. He
knew it too. He brought you here, in the end, to me. I believe it’s what he wanted.’

  ‘It is?’ Her voice was so very small, confusion near tangible, a tangle in her head. There was no telling truth from lies, no fact from fiction, there were too many pieces of too many puzzles and Ash couldn’t see straight enough to put them together. Her exhale was broken, and when Mac wove his fingers through hers and led her away from the orgy, she didn’t resist.

  BLOOD BROTHERS

  ‘You saw them,’ his voice interrupted her thoughts.

  She didn’t turn her head but her fingers twitched around his. She was listening.

  ‘It’s instinct for the males of our race to work in pairs. Brothers share everything, just as Connal and I should have. We were brothers once.’

  Ash’s head snapped up, eyes colliding with the pitch night of his gaze. Oh yeah, she was listening.

  ‘Connal was ruined.’

  A flinch shied her away from his words.

  ‘No, Ashling, listen.’ His thumb stroked over her knuckles, back and forth as he led her through the tunnels. ‘We were fated to rule together, to love together, side by side. That is the way of our people. Blood brothers live one life.’ He paused, allowing her silence to think.

  She knew this part, Connal told her as much, but he’d been far less forthcoming when she asked if he had a brother. His distraction techniques had been incredibly effective.

  ‘Why was he ruined?’ she asked.

  ‘Connal’s father was king before me. Bres was his name, and his félag, Vise, was my father.’

  ‘But you said you were brothers.’

  ‘Born of the same mother, yes. We shared our mother’s womb, but were sired by different fathers.’

  Ash could see the sculpture clearly in her head, the yin and yang babes curled against one another in their mother’s stone womb. This is what Connal had meant. The branded males shared one mate, and accepted all offspring as their own. The sculpture must have hurt him. He’d lost his brother and his pack. He had a brand and one side of himself, a half-life, if anything MacTire said was true.

  ‘Our mother gave birth to us in a war camp, far from home,' he said. ‘While our fathers were away fighting, marauders attacked the camp. They returned to find her murdered in her bed and Connal gone. I was behind an overturned table, swaddled in blankets, asleep. The King blamed himself. He refused to believe his son was dead, and he was right, though it took him ten long years to track the boy down. By then it was too late.’

  Ash hadn’t thought Mac capable of talking in anything more than grunts, but his gruff voice was proving her wrong with every syllable he uttered. ‘What do you mean he was too late? He found him ...’

  ‘Connal fell into human hands and was raised by them. He was never taught control as we are.’

  Ash lifted a brow in question.

  ‘Fomorian children study under the thegn Masters from infancy, to contain their stronger, animal natures. Not that there have been any children for centuries ...’

  The awkward silence that fell was a separate entity. What the hell was she thinking, getting soft on him when he had her set up to be the new mother of the race? That’s what he really wanted: an incubator for his hellhound babies. And she was not thinking about what would happen afterwards. Well, she was, but she had no plans to be around long enough for him to pass her on to the sexual animals he ruled. Nuh uh. She was getting the fuck out of the Rocky Horror Porno Show, pronto.

  ‘Take heed of how the vargs took that thrall. She was overcome by ecstasy, was she not?’ His tone dropped, huskily rasped to the curve of her throat. Heat flared where his words touched and her head dipped in agreement.

  ‘Now picture the scene were their beasts given free rein.’

  She didn’t need to picture it, it was something she saw when she slept, a blood stain on her memories. Red Shoes would be ripped apart, like her mother was. Great beasts tearing at her flesh until there was nothing left but viscera. Blood, bone, screams. She’d witnessed what the loss of control could do, first hand.

  Hell, his Blond Assholishness still bore the marks of her own lack of control. Even now, it was writhing inside her, stretching aggressively. She may have it leashed, somehow, but the animal force stirring inside her was no lapdog, docile and happy to obey. No, she had a Great White on the end of her leash, and it gnashed its jaws with every wave of emotion.

  MacTire guided her down another endless corridor. ‘The King put Connal in the fighting pits, hoping to purge his human weakness, but the experiment worked too well. Without the balance of training, Connal became untamable. I should have killed him, and saved us all the misery that followed, but out of respect for his father, he was allowed to live.’ A growl leaked the pain of old wounds into his voice. ‘We even went through with the sham of the branding, just to please the old man. The King was a sentimental fool,’ he scoffed, ‘and it destroyed us all. Connal escaped and massacred our people.’

  Throat bobbing with a swallow, Ash looked up from her feet, only half-noting that rock had turned to fine grains of slate black. The big brute knelt and sifted his fingers through the sands. Torch-flames flickered in the black of his eyes like starlight and she couldn’t look away.

  ‘You see this, Ashling? These are the bones of your ancestors, females, babes, warriors, turned to dust by the Savage and his hatred.’

  He flipped her hand and poured the charred remains into her palm. She gagged, but the grip on her wrist wouldn’t allow her to dispel the dead sand.

  ‘Connal destroyed us. We live in a world built upon the bones of our own people, their lives the foundation, their blood our water. Can you see?’

  She could see. The wasteland of Fomor spread out before her was a world without life. It was a canvas of desolation. Us, he’d said. The King considered her one of them. He was sharing his world with her.

  ‘How could one man bring down so many single-handed?’ she asked. It simply wasn’t possible, even for Connal. She’d seen the aftermath of the fight against Brandr and Fite. Mac’s fingers loosened and she tipped her hand, brushing at the particles clinging to her skin. She wiped it on his shoulder, disgust in the curl of her lip. He laughed, twining their fingers again as he rose from his crouch in the sand.

  ‘I never said he was alone, Ashling. He had an army of untame at his back.’

  ‘Untame?’

  ‘Haven’t you wondered why we have this duality of man and beast?’

  He turned her with a guiding hand to the small of her back and she moved with him, brow knitted. She’d never really thought about it. Her head hurt with the fragments of information rammed inside.

  ‘Fomorian biology wasn’t exactly covered in any of my classes.’

  His lips pulled into a grin, a bark of a laugh letting her glimpse the sharp, white tips of his canines. ‘It would be my pleasure to teach you.’

  And wasn’t that something to say. Ash’s body had no trouble interpreting that for it’s own needs.

  Mac smirked, as though her thoughts were his and then he was teaching, veering off a path through a doorway with her in tow.

  ORIGINS

  ‘Our people were once pure beast.’ Mac’s voice ricocheted off the rock as he led her deeper into the warren of tunnels. They were narrowing and he had to half-turn to fit through the gaps. Ash was barely avoiding catching herself on the jagged edges of the rough-hewn passage. ‘We roamed Ireland, wild and uncivilised, until settlements of men encroached on our world. They brought ancient gods with them, a powerful force that defeated the Fomorians and banished them beneath the black sea. But some of our ancestors found a way to escape, by binding their souls to those of human men and women.’

  They were body-snatchers? Ash snorted, but forced herself to sober. They’d taken the bodies of innocents.

  Ash was pretty sure the King was leading them down into hell, the bowels of some darkness she may never climb back out of. The bone sand had already creeped her out, and now her freak-out level wa
s ratcheting up. As a macabre tour-guide, Mac could rival the best. If she encountered the pit of primordial ooze the mammoth wolf things had crawled from, she’d fight tooth and nail to get away and hide under Mac’s bed. But for now, Ash had borrowed some steel balls. ‘Who were they? The people you violated?’ she asked.

  ‘They were Viking invaders, a band of Norsemen and the straggle of male and female slaves aboard their longboats. They moored on the Dubh Linn, oblivious to its dangers, and on the night of Samhain, when the moon was full, the Fomorians were reborn as the men you see today: human in form, but not human. Beast, but partially tamed by humanity.’

  His fingers toyed with the ends of her hair where they curled against the base of her spine and her flesh shivered. She looked down to see the floor had given way to rugged steps, dropping into darkness. She tentatively took the first one.

  A punch of human instinct hit her with a warning. The fist of pressure halted her so hard she tripped onto the step below. Mac snatched her to him before she tumbled the rest of the way down and Ash clung on gratefully.

  Haunting, a symphony of cries worked up the spiralled staircase to knot in her throat until she choked on the sounds. She glanced at Mac, but his face was cautious.

  God, she was screwed. She was going to get eaten.

  'This is your idea of a history lesson?' she asked nervously. She'd take her sleep-inducing professor any day over this.

  He coaxed her forward and the darkness enveloped her, stroking around the flickering light of a solitary sconce. The howling from below was thunderous. How had she not heard it before? Mac seemed unaffected, and so she pressed on.

  When her bare feet touched the bottom step, silence reigned. Not a sound, not a whimper or growl, the sounds just cut off. It was so very dark. Not even her glow-in-the-dark eyes could adjust to the cluster of pitch black. Her skin pricked with sensation, like fur just under the surface. Power stretched inside her and perked up, lurking, wary and curious. This room had her attention. Or something inside it did.