The Golden Line (Knotted 1)

He was not touching her, though he still knelt between her spread thighs. The heat of his body was certain, but he did not move.

Bracing for pain, Morgaine’s every muscle went tight. Still he did not penetrate her.

Sniffing, tears on her cheeks, she glanced over her shoulder and found such a look of rage on the Alpha’s face.

His hands, fingers spread, were hovering over the line of welts on her back.

Her only value in the eyes of Alphas was in her beauty, and she had already disgusted the one who possessed total power over her now.

Afraid, she sat a hip to the floor, pulled her knees under her chin, and made herself as small as possible. She even apologized. “I’ve been told they won’t scar. You won’t have to look at them forever.”

Climbing to his feet, he stood over her, nostrils flared and eyes wild. When she began to cry, he bounded from the nest. The nearest piece of furniture was grabbed; the Alpha flipping a table with such strength it broke against the wall. Next, a chair sailed through the air, his roar louder than a dragon’s when it shattered. After he’d torn a corner of the room to pieces, the brute flew, shouting at the top of his lungs, out the door.

Chapter 14

Never in her life had Morgaine seen anything like it—that type of rage, that total loss of control.

The second she was alone, she darted from the foreigner’s sleeping pit, threw on the shreds of her clothing, and grabbed the first potential weapon she could get her hands on.

A broken bit of metal, the edge sharp enough to cut into her palm as she gripped it.

The layout of his rooms was unfamiliar, but she ran through them looking for a decent place to hide or a way to get out. The wash chamber was too small, the room for food consumption too sparse. There was a living area with a view of space. In there, she saw they had left her planet, that a company of ships flew at their side.

The weight of it left her reeling.

She was alone in space, stupidly hiding in a dark room from a male whom she been given to like a sacrificial lamb.

…as if he’d never find her.

The ridiculousness was not lost. Morgaine looked down at the sharp sliver in her hand, saw the way she clutched the ruined dress over her breasts, and knew hopelessness.

Whatever he had in store for her, she could not stop it.

Running the back of her hand over flushed cheeks, she wiped the tears away, and straightened her shoulders to face him with the last bits of pride she could muster.

The sound of the Alpha returning could be heard in the other room. Swallowing back a sick feeling, she turned from the view, standing so he would see her when he checked this final room. It did not take him long.

Still naked, his flaccid cock hanging thick and foreboding between his legs, he strode in with a scowl. Shorter and less muscular, a fully dressed man followed and immediately averted his eyes.

This frazzled companion was clearly a Beta like the men in her settlement—the first Beta she had seen in days.

The Alpha began to speak, his voice low, calm, almost poetic in its velvety meter. He even purred.

A moment later the Beta translated. “Our Heidron would like to know who struck you and why.”

What did it matter? What did any of this matter?

Morgaine tightened her grip on her makeshift weapon, felt the skin on her palm split until warm blood dripped down the blade. When the Heidron sniffed the air and darted a glance to her hand, when it looked as if he prepared to approach, Morgaine narrowed her eyes, and growled at the pair of them. “I was taken from my mother, forced to endure lessons on how to be a proper Omega, threatened constantly with unwanted male attention, and watched every minute of every day. I was struck because I disliked it.”

The words were fed back to the Alpha, the one watching her bleeding hand with his own narrow-eyed gaze. He did not find her answer satisfactory.

The Beta asked again. “Who struck you and why?”

Morgaine found the question pointless considering the brute who’d asked it, and snarled, “The day before you arrived, I laid down in the glass cage and ignored the rude questions and vulgar demands of the Alphas who came to bid on me. The commandant assured that I would not be able to sit or lie down again the next day. He ordered five strikes of a cane. The sergeant responsible for my transition carried out the sentence, adding in an extra strike for good measure. The Alpha with the greatest claim to me held me down, though he offered to take my punishment upon himself.”

Every word was fed back to the one staring at her. His eyes went to hers when he spoke for the Beta to translate. “You smell like fear.”

Her lip shook. “You’re very scary.”