Owned and Knotted

Owned and Knotted Darkly Ever Afterverse Book 2 L.V. Lane Copyright © 2023 L.V. Lane All rights reserved. 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. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author. The author does not grant permission for any AI solutions to read and process this content. Cover by Three Spires Creative Created with Vellum Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 About the Author Prologue Imogen The battered SUV rocked from side to side as we navigated the rutted forest road. It was late, dark, and a light drizzle settled in. The worn wiper blades screeched as they swiped side to side, providing only a token clearing of the windshield. Cooper handled the vehicle with ease, broad-shouldered and built like a tank. He was an alpha, as were all my lieutenants, big, strong, and mentally astute. I stared out the side window into the dark, wet forest flashing by, and reflected that Cooper didn’t have my intellect. My body might lack the brute strength of an alpha, but I was fast and nimble, and so was my mind. That may sound bold, but when society unraveled and the first chemical mutations began, I didn’t roll over for the first alpha I saw, seeking protection. When you live in a world where alphas rule all, you have to fight for the scraps, for your place, and demonstrate that you’re more than a breeder. Chemical warfare infected large sectors of the world with a virus, and a subset of the population became something else. The world wasn’t equal. It wasn’t before society collapsed, and the inequality worsened after. Now, the alphas presumed themselves to be on top. They were designated the upper echelon when the apocalyptic shit hit the fan, but I refused to accept that status quo. I’d never been one for following the rules or standing on the sidelines. Above all, I learned how to fight within my capability. Sure, if an alpha had a mind, got close enough, and got his hands on me, I was fucked in more ways than one. So I didn’t let that happen. If an alpha had his hands on me, I wanted it. Otherwise, he would find one of my many blades lodged in his throat. The radio crackled. “Vehicles ahead.” My tension cranked up a notch at hearing Dan’s voice from the lead SUV a couple of miles ahead of us. We were late coming back from a patrol after finding a burnt-out car and stopping to check it out. No one was in it, dead or alive, but it was close enough to our turf to make me nervous. “Do we know who it is?” “Looks too new for the local communities. I’d say Rowan’s men.” “Fucking Rowan,” Cooper muttered. He wasn’t a smoker, past or present, but he had that gravel in his voice. I didn’t know their history, just that they had one. When I questioned Cooper, he closed off, saying the past was best left buried. I surmised that the two men didn’t get along, and now tolerated each other. Despite this, I preferred Rowan’s disciplined soldiers over a dozen other lowlifes that hustled in these parts. I’d never met the man, but with him having moved into the area a few months back, it was inevitable his people and ours would cross paths from time to time. Given they were making waves for some assholes around the area, I even appreciated them. “Let’s see what they want,” I said. “Ah, boss,” Dan’s voice crackled through the radio. “It’s Rowan. He’s here.” Cooper muttered a curse, and his knuckles turned white around the steering wheel, but he didn’t come to a screeching halt and turn us around. I read that he was apprehensive, but not worried for my safety. From what I’d heard, Rowan left the smaller, peaceful communities, including ours, alone. Still, I was keen to meet him for the first time, if for no reason other than morbid curiosity about how Cooper would handle it. We rounded the next corner and found Dan’s SUV and two more blocking the road. “Let me handle this,” Cooper said, nodding his head at the big SUV and people distorted through rain on the windshield. “You don’t need to deal with it. I can see what he wants.” He’d had a couple of run-ins with Rowan, all peaceful, Cooper had told me. A bit of posturing from what I could gather, reading between the lines. “No way,” I replied, cutting a look that told him not to belabor the point. Cooper liked to provoke me sometimes. I was the leader. Many people didn’t understand how that was possible when I was an omega. We played on it sometimes, and I’d let Cooper do the talking, but not today. Today, I wanted to size up the alpha who had once been Cooper’s friend. Given we were neighbors now, I also wanted to get the measure of Rowan for myself. You could tell a lot about a person by their actions. I believed you could tell much more by meeting them face to face. Not giving Cooper a chance to argue, I hopped out of the SUV and splashed into a puddle. To my left, Dan and his team were already on the ground, waiting. The door clunked shut on the other side before Cooper rounded the vehicle and loomed at my side in a territorial display that brought a fleeting smile to my lips. The smile dropped as my eyes locked with the alpha