The Golden Line

2018·0.28 MB·english

by  Cain Addison

The Golden Line

By
Addison Cain
©2018 Addison Cain

All rights reserved.

No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote
short excerpts in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either
the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Cover art by ErisAdderly.com

*This book is intended for adults only and contains scenes featuring total power exchange
which may make some readers uncomfortable.
This one is for Myra.
Piggle Wiggle
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
EPILOGUE
SIGIL PART ONE OF THE IRDESI EMPIRE SERIES
ADDISON CAIN
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.
Fresh rushes muffled the thump of her collapse, but Morgaine tossed
a frightened glance to where her mother softly snored nearby. Her graceless
landing hadn’t disturbed the woman’s sleep, but the rising pained scream
trying to rip its way out of Morgaine’s chest would.
Biting her tongue as the fresh wave of hellish fire churned her guts
into knotted agony, Morgaine forced herself to be still and silent. Her mother
slept on, rolling over to snore all the louder.
Blood-laced spittle dribbled from the corner of Morgaine’s mouth
when she parted her teeth and dared suck in a breath.
It was imperative not to wake her mother, but by the spirits, she had
to get out of their cottage before she gave herself away.
That way, the woman would not have to lie if questioned. That way,
the responsibility would be squarely on Morgaine’s shoulders if her
noncompliance was ever uncovered.
As if she too understood that some things were better left unsaid, after
all these years, her mother had never questioned why Morgaine was
conveniently gone when Alphas stole through the settlement—had no inkling
that pain warned her child of the invasion.
It was Morgaine’s great shame to bear—for every time she fled,