Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58365 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58365 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Read Online Books/Novels: | The Golden Line (Knotted #1) |
|---|---|
Author/Writer of Book/Novel: | Addison Cain |
| Language: | English |
| Book Information: | |
They call me brutal. They call me unrepentant. They call me possessive. I am all these things and much worse. But to her, I will be conqueror. The Golden Line is a dark, sinister Omegaverse romance for those with twisted tastes and a love for delicious villains. Complete power exchange dominates these pages, as does an attentive Alpha hero you will adore. | |
| Books in Series: | Knotted Series by Addison Cain |
| Books by Author: | Addison Cain Books |
Chapter 1
They were coming.
Gaping like a fish, Morgaine fell from sleep into agony. Wide eyes locked on the rugged ceiling beams above her cot. She couldn’t breathe. A great invisible force pressed down against her ribs, the unseen weight of a full-grown man crouching on her chest as if to tell her, stay.
Tongue tracing dry lips, she closed her eyes, counted to ten, and scrounged up the will to force her lungs to expand, contract, and expand again. Next, she worked to uncurl her cramping fingers—knowing it wouldn’t be long before they grew gnarled, muscles winding tight until each digit locked into place.
Waking in such misery could only signify one thing.
She didn’t have much time.
Morgaine had to hide. She had to get out of her bed, ignore the spreading fire shooting through each nerve, and find a place to suffer alone before they found her.
The horrors that haunted her dreams every eve of their arrival were nothing. The pain clawing through sinew and bones the closer they came was nothing. The feeling of being hunted, of hairs rising on the back of her neck, didn’t matter.
The deep-seated shame for what would happen should the hated ones find her… mattered greatly.
Morgaine would rather die. She could never abide their eyes on her, their hands.
Alphas...
Alphas approached. Close enough now that she couldn’t waste a precious second.
Season after season they infected her settlement—to look over their chattel, to drag away friends and loved ones who were never seen again. All colonists understood survival required a show of respect to the ruling invaders.
Never look them in the eye.
Should a foreign soldier approach, settlers were expected to go to their knees and prostrate themselves for inspection.
Never speak unless spoken to.
Those who argued, who fought... they were made examples of.
Morgaine had seen unspeakable things: whippings, brandings, executions.
They took whomever they wished. Older children, younger men and women—those the settlement needed most. They tore families apart. Pleading screams were a common song on the days the Alphas came to take.
Some even grew numb to it. Some looked away.
Others, like her, spent their years plagued by nightmares and regret. You could hear it in the settlement after dark, the hum of sad moans, the creak of neighbors tossing and turning as sweat soaked through their threadbare sheets.
Everyone carried the stain.
Her personal hell was the undying memory of her older cousin—how hard he had fought when massive soldiers seized him. She had been a frightened child of eight. The boy, her hero, had been only thirteen.
The last time she saw him he was calling for his mother, blood dribbling from a split lip. It took two of the soldiers to cart him away.
Morgaine’s aunt had been held down by her own people when she’d tried to intervene. The settlers had not done it to be cruel. They had done it to save her life.
Endless, awful months followed where her aunt wept for her stolen son. No amount of reimbursement had eased the woman’s despair. What was money when one’s only child was gone? When she knew she would never see him again?
If the Alphas marked you, there was no return. Ever.
No one knew what became of those they took, and any who dared to ask were silenced. Her aunt had been unable to hold her tongue the next season the Alpha invaders returned. Begging for news, the woman had run to the first soldier she’d found. He threw her off. She scrambled to another. As the story goes, it was the fifth, less patient brute who’d hacked out her tongue.
No son, no way to communicate… it was less than a year before she took her own life.
Morgaine would never let such suffering befall her mother. And there was one sure way to prevent it—she’d not let the beasts set eyes upon her since that morning they’d found her mother’s sister hanging from the rafters of her own humble cottage. Not when a coil in her gut warned that she would be taken next.
Terrible dreams and pain strong enough to freeze her muscles always came as warning that Alpha arrival was imminent. A blessing and a curse she dared not share. A secret of such magnitude… an unexplainable alarm that cautioned of their arrival? Should the Alphas learn of it, and find the settlement empty? Everyone would be hunted and punished… and she would be executed for insubordination.
No matter what she had to endure, she would never leave her mother desolate and alone.
No matter the agony or sickness or fear that descended with their ships.
Season after season, Morgaine had bested it. She had carried her secret into the woods and would do so again.
Yet that morning, her body was a twisting ball of agony, and she was almost unable to move.
Groaning, Morgaine threw her legs over the side of the bed. Braced against the cot, it took four tries before she was able to lift her torso. The movement of pitching forward sent each limb into a spasm, leaving the girl falling into a haphazard pile on the ground.