Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) by Jess Raven, Paula Black Page A

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