Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (25 page)

HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

Backs to the lockers, eyes on the swirling black water of the conduit, Ash and Connal waited out the last minutes of the full moon. The basement was eerily quiet without the bustle of wolves filling it. Even the longing cries of the
thralls
outside the door had died to silence. Ash’s ass was numb from the cold floor. She was ready to slump in exhaustion when Connal drew her down, laying himself out as a mattress between her and the hard tile. Ash covered him and tucked herself in, her hands gliding under his shirt to stroke his warmth. He exhaled a contented purr, strong arms banding her to his chest.

She was never letting him go. Here, like this, close and so together, was how they were supposed to be. Distance wasn’t an option. He made her heart beat in tandem with the steady thud of his, he made her blood surge with life, he was the bones of her and if the moon waned and her grandmother left them to die, at least she wouldn’t be forced to live without him. Ash sighed and burrowed in.

She felt her muscles go lax. A deep fatigue crawled over her and laid heavy down her spine. It pinned her limbs and added weight to every movement until even breathing had a pressure to it. It had crept up on her. First, she’d merely been tired, but now, she was hooked up to an energy drain and her strength was leaching away into the atmosphere.
What the ...?

‘Connal?’ Her fingers wouldn’t curl; they were flat and spread out on his ribs. She couldn’t grip him.

‘Hmmm?’ He sounded miles away and, close as she was, she didn’t have the energy to reach him.

The first tremble was merely a shiver. She cast it off as the taint of panic working through her system. The second shook her head to toe. Her skin quivered, her nerves on a Magic Finger bed, taking her body in a fit of uncontrollable shaking.

‘Oh God, Connal, this doesn’t feel right. I don’t feel right.’ Maybe the Morrígan’s curse would take them after all. Maybe she really had lied.

‘It’s just the waning moon, Ash. Nothing to fear. It will pass.’ Connal’s deep voice was a soothing rumble beneath her and she forced herself to relax into the quakes, concentrating on the inhale-exhale of his breathing.

‘Why is this happening to me?’ she asked.

‘It’s a withdrawal. The opposite to the quickening you felt when the moon was rising.’

‘Full-moon DT’s?’ Ash laughed through chattering teeth and the amusement was warped.

‘I’m shaking too. See?’

He was. When she focussed beyond her own tremoring body, she could feel it. Her frustrated breath skipped over his collarbone. ‘I have so much to learn. Everything’s happened so fast.’ She was Dorothy in the hurricane, all spun about and landing in a different world. She still had trouble wrapping her head around the fact that her nightmares were real and she was a mythical monster, in love with another mythical monster.

Bristling stubble and warm lips seared a kiss to her jaw, sealing promises to her skin. ‘I will teach you everything I know,’ he murmured.

She nodded, turning to intercept his nuzzling path and capture his mouth with hers. ‘Yes, Connal.’ Ash sucked at his bottom lip. ‘We have forever, right? We get to grow old as dirt, together.’ Excitement thrilled through her, so strong she couldn’t feel the shakes over the buzz. Happily Ever After was a fairytale, but if werewolves and goddesses were real, why not that too? She was brimming with hope.

‘You are Fomorian now, as I am. Semi-divine blood can live for millennia, potentially.’

There was something different in his voice that she couldn’t place. She pushed her palms against his ribs and lifted herself up, getting them eye to eye. Her strength was slowly seeping back. Ash smiled and crinkled her nose tenderly to his. ‘I get to spend eternity with you, Big Bad.’

She was met with silence.

Insecurity prodded at her and she sat up, resting her ass on his thighs. Connal seemed less than enthused about a future spent together. Ash’s skin burned with embarrassment. Flustered, she was back-pedalling to clamber off him. God, had she sounded that pushy? Or maybe he could see the plans she had, the dreams in her head that had them shacked up with a litter of wolfhound puppies. Setty would have liked that. She scrambled to reassure him. ‘If that’s what you want, I mean. I’m really untidy, and I sing loudly in the shower and I ...’

He had her wrists pinned and her body trapped between his thighs before she could completely pull away. One hand cupping the side of her face, Connal’s eyes were dark with passion, metallic grey and intense. ‘For as long as you are insane enough to want me, Little Red, I am never letting go.’

Beaming a smile, her fingers carded into his hair and she hauled him close. ‘That is a happily ever after I can live with.’ They fit together seamlessly, her mouth melting over his lips, yielding and demanding. She played her tongue in a dance with his, teased her teeth on the soft flesh of his lower lip. Ash would never get enough of kissing him. The taste of him was a masculine rush, consuming her senses. They pulled back, foreheads touching and their breaths rasped in the space between them.

‘That’s assuming we can avoid any number of violent ends,’ Connal murmured. ‘No Fomorian in history has cheated death much beyond a thousand years.’

He was being Worst-Case-Scenario-Guy and she scowled, laying her fist into his shoulder.

He grinned at her.

Ash rolled her eyes and took his grin in a rough kiss. ‘Then we shall be the first, she said. ‘There is a first for everything. Nobody is hunting us now. Mac is on our side. Plus, we have my grandmother’s protection.’

Connal lost the smile and stiffened, just the slightest change, but she was wrapped around him like a second skin, and it translated through.

Ash frowned. ‘You meant what you said to Mac, right? She’s not still going to insist you hunt them down, is she?’ She hadn’t considered the price Connal had to pay for their freedom. She was considering it now, with a huge dose of foreboding on the side.

‘No. My guard-dog services are no longer required.’ He intertwined their fingers and pulled her up from the floor as the
thegn
arrived, laden down with fresh piles of clothing. A
thegn
to a locker, the wolves’ basement was being restocked. ‘We should go,’ Connal said.

They trekked through the club and, as dawn broke, they were leaving, along with the small crowd of
thralls
doing the walk of shame. Streaked make-up, torn clothes and well-used bodies, the group drifted apart, finding their bearings through the disorientation of a full moon hangover. Connal led her in the direction of her grandmother’s house and she fell into step beside him. The street-cleaning trucks and delivery vans were out, but otherwise the town was deserted.

‘Those poor girls. What happens to them after the full moon?’ Ash asked.

Connal’s thumb smoothed over her knuckles and her step picked up. Like this, she could pretend they were just another couple, walking through the peace of the early morning. If it weren’t for the conversation.

‘They return to a semblance of life,’ Connal told her, ‘some manage to hold down jobs, or drift through college, but their motivational drives are all focussed on the next hit of the full moon. They become emotionally distant from their families and friends.’

She hummed in thought. ‘It’s no wonder people assume it’s a drug.’

‘The effects of the
eitr
are similar to a drug.’

That she knew all too well. She remembered the violent, cosmic ecstasy of being bitten by him. It had been transcendent. ‘There were
thralls
in Fomor too,’ she said. ‘They don’t ever come back, do they?’ So many ‘Missing’ posters pasted up around Dublin, Ash doubted those girls were ever found.

‘No.’ His jaw was tight, his thumb stopped its stroking, and she knew he was bracing himself for an outburst. But the
thrall
weren’t his fault.

Ash shook her head, her hair catching in the morning breeze and tickling her face. She pushed it back, thinking. ‘It’s not right. There must be some way to break the addiction.’

‘None that I know of.’ He raised her knuckles to his lips and she smiled. ‘I just tried to keep the numbers in check,’ he said.

Ash frowned. ‘But if you’re not patrolling the streets any more, then come full moon, there’s nothing to stop Mac’s men from biting anyone they want. It’s going to be carnage.’ It would be more than that, it would be Dublin - Population:
Thrall
. Now she knew she was safe, her mind had opened up to worry for the rest of humanity.

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, 'she 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.’