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.