THE ARCHERS OF KYNTHOS

He was being held down, unable to control the thing that was now on top of him. He didn’t know how many arms, legs or tentacles this thing had, but they were all over him, and in him. With everything that was happening around him, all he was able to do was take what the monster was doing to him. Why they were doing this to him, he had no idea, but all he could hope for at this point was death.

Table of Contents

Blurb

Love’s Landscapes

The Archers of Kynthos - Information

The Archers of Kynthos

Author Bio

Love’s Landscapes

An M/M Romance series

THE ARCHERS OF KYNTHOS

By KM Harty

Introduction

The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the Love’s Landscapes promotion sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and is published as a gift to you.

What Is Love’s Landscapes?

The Goodreads M/M Romance Group invited members to choose a photo and pen a letter asking for a short M/M romance story inspired by the image; authors from the group were encouraged to select a letter and write an original tale. The result was an outpouring of creativity that shone a spotlight on the special bond between M/M romance writers and the people who love what these authors do.

A written description of the image that inspired this story is provided along with the original request letter. If you’d like to view the photo, please feel free to join the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and visit the discussion section: Love’s Landscapes.

No matter if you are a long-time devotee to M/M Romance, just new to the genre or fall somewhere in between, you are in for a delicious treat.

Words of Caution

This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved worldwide.
This eBook may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. This eBook may not be sold, manipulated or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.

The Archers of Kynthos, Copyright © 2014 KM Harty

Cover Design by Goodreads M/M Romance Group
Cover Photographs from Stock.XCHNG
Northern Lights over Northern Canada by dyet

This ebook is published by the M/M Romance Group and is not directly endorsed by or affiliated with Goodreads Inc.

M/M Romance Group Publication

THE ARCHERS OF KYNTHOS

By KM Harty

Photo Description

A statue, that looks as if it is floating in water, of a man with an octopus surrounding the lower half of his body. The man appears to be fighting it off and in pain.

Story Letter

Dear Author,

He has been down here for a couple of days already; he could tell by the streams of lights through the small openings high up surrounding the edges of the high wall. At first he thought it would be stuffy and hot, curiously it was rather cold. It must be the damp packed-earth wall around him. The wall was at least several metres high. Even so, that was not the only deterrence stopping him from leaving this prison he had been unceremoniously dumped into. He knew that he would be a permanent fixture here unless someone saw fit to release him from the sturdy chain attached to the iron collar resting on his neck.

They would come in two or three persons, at fixed intervals each day, to provide him with sustenance and attend to his personal grooming. He had no idea why they were fastidious about his cleanliness and health. He couldn’t shake off the ominous feeling that he was being fattened up like a lamb before a sacrifice.

What I wish for in this story:

I want this to be a Tentacles MPREG story (Tent-sex + Mpreg). A non-con struggly-forced breeding with impregnation of a handsome MC, and his struggles to adapt to his pregnancy. If you are brave enough, an on-the-page birth scene would be a big plus.

I am not one to demand for HEA/HFN as I detest those unnatural/forced HEAs the most. To me, as long as the ending fits well with the story, a tragedy is a big welcome too.

I love angst in my stories and I hope the MC isn’t too whiny or TSTL.

A huge thank you in advance for picking up this story.

Sincerely,

Kynthos-the-Archer

Story Info

Genre: paranormal

Tags: cult, m-preg, gods, abduction, captivity, betrayal

Content Warnings: dub/non-con, rape, no HEA

Word Count: 25,379

THE ARCHERS OF KYNTHOS

By KM Harty

I don’t know how I ended up here. I don’t know what wrongs I have done to get to this point. I thought that I was a good person. I don’t believe that I have ever hurt anyone, not intentionally. I kept to myself, didn’t make waves, and yet nothing in my life had prepared me to end up in this place.

The things that have happened to me nobody would believe, but they did happen. I have endured everything that has been done to me. I have survived it, but I am not the same man that I was before. The physical pain that I have been through is nothing compared to the pain of the betrayals that I have faced.

The time was coming. They would be coming. Slowly rolling on his back, he was careful and aware of the chains that bound him, being sure not to pull or jerk himself as he had done so many times in the past. Gently laying on his back to stare at the cracks in the wall where it met the ceiling, where sunlight would whisper in, the only sign that he had that the world was still turning. There were people up there, walking and living, going on with their lives, even as his had come to an abrupt end.

Closing his eyes to prevent the tears that always seemed to want to come at thoughts of the situation he had found himself in, he took a deep breath trying to calm himself down. There was no point in dwelling on the anger, fear and despair that now seemed to live within him. The smell of dirt, the cold and the cement that was now his home, filled him, causing his eyes to water again. This was his life. This was his hell.

The sound of the lock disengaging brought him out of his daydreams and back to the present. Slowly sitting up, he warily eyed the two men who walked in. The same two men every day. Maybe weeks? Maybe months? Time had lost all meaning here. He had lost all meaning here.

When he first woke up, there was a big man who would come in every day to take him down the hall and beat him. With his hands, a whip, whatever he seemed to have handy. He never spoke to him, never said a word. Just dragged him down the hall and brought him into a little room and did whatever he thought would cause enough pain for one day. Then repeat.

Then one day two men showed up with food. He had tried to get away, well as far away from them as he could, but they never did anything, never said anything. They cleaned and tended to any wounds that he had, and once he was able to stand on his own, his new routine was set.

They walked in three times a day with a tray of food. He ate while they watched, then they took the tray away and locked the door.

Once a day they opened the wall into a small attached room that housed a shower. They came in, unchained him from the bed, walked him into the bathroom, and disrobed him. Into the shower he went where he was chained back up, washed inside and out, dried off, and dressed in clean clothes. Then repeat, every single day.

The humiliation of having these two men string him up in the shower and wash him, like he was a child. The way that they would take the soap and wash him all over, lift up his penis and balls, like they were another arm or leg, not something considered private.

He was clean. He was fed. He felt like he was a Thanksgiving turkey, being given the best to fatten him up to better feed on. That was the thought that scared him the most.

It was a couple of days after that routine started that he got sick. The pains in his stomach had him throwing up on himself, curled into a ball of pain. There was nothing he could compare it with. Not even being beaten and tortured every day compared to this. He knew that there were people around him, someone washed him up. At one point he was sure that there had been an IV in his arm, but his awareness of time had been lost. He didn’t know how long he was sick. How long it was before they started coming back morning, noon and night.

He hadn’t wanted to touch the food. He knew that he had been poisoned. Why? He didn’t know. Why poison him when he was already trapped? Was this a new kind of torture? He took tentative bites of his food, slows sips of the water. The pain never come back, but the fear had kept him wary.

The tray table being slowly rolled in brought him back to his present. As always, he watched the tray being rolled in and placed in front of the bed. He had already been showered so at least he didn’t have to go through that again today. The cover was taken off the food, and the aroma hit him like a physical blow. There had always been good, plain, healthy food for every meal. But today there was steak, a big-ass steak, with all the sides. This scared him more than anything. This was his last meal. He knew that deep inside.

“Please, don’t do this. Please, let me go,” he begged them both. Instead of answering, one walked out the door.

He was confused. That never happened. There were always two of them in the room at the same time. He stared at the door, his fear racing inside worse than ever. Something wasn’t right; they always stayed in the room with him.

Then he walked in. The big one, who used to bring him down the hall every day and beat him. He was dressed in a dark suit, which always seemed ridiculous to him. Who kidnaps people, locks them in a hole in the ground, and comes to torture or kill him in a suit? Well, at least with the dark fabrics he wouldn’t have to worry about stains.

“Eat.” The voice was the gravelly sound that he remembered. The stern look in his black eyes telling him that the choice was not really his; he needed to eat what was put in front of him. The thought of eating, though, made his stomach rumble. There was no way that he would sit here and eat his last meal without a fight.

“No. Fuck you, and fuck all of this!” Kicking out with his leg, he managed to hit the tray and send it flying. He didn’t watch where it went, just kept kicking his legs out as the man prowled toward him. If he was dying, then he was going out with as much fight as he could put out.

The man walking towards him reached in his pocket, and he was sure that a gun was going to be pulled out. When the man pulled a syringe out instead, the fear intensified.

“No, please, don’t do this. Please, just let me go. I don’t know anything. I am nobody. Please stop.” The other man who had stayed in the room with them sat down on his legs immobilizing him. Unable to lash out, he kept moving his body as much as possible trying to get them away from him. It was no use. The man leaned over him and injected him in the arm. He watched, horrified, as whatever the white liquid was in the syringe was slowly released in his body.

“NO, NO, No, no…”

“You are wrong, Marcus Myles. You are everything to us.”

With that, he slowly rolled his head to meet the eyes of the man leaning above him, and stared into those black eyes as his world went dark.

****

He awoke in Hell.

Not like the hell of being held prisoner, chained in some room, but in what he would literally picture as hell. The room was all reds and blacks, and there were flames above him. He moved his head to look to the side and the pain that throbbed through his temples was enough that he saw black at the sides of his vision. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he slowly turned his head to the side to look out into the room.

All he was able to make out in his fuzzy vision were the colors and the flames. It looked like there was fire climbing the walls, coming out of the floor. It lit the room enough to see black shapes spread out around him. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath and opened his eyes back up. The dark shapes were people, or at least he assumed so. It was hard to tell with them being cocooned in something black. There were a lot of them in the room though. Looking back up, he was able to make out the fixtures above him that had flames coming out of them as well. Leaning to the other side it was the same. More black shapes, but on this side there were a couple in red.

They started toward him, and he could begin to make out some kind of music in the background. It was a low hum that was getting louder the closer they came to him. He tried to move his arms and legs, but it was useless. He was completely tied down, unable to move even his fingers. He tried to squirm and could feel the tight bands that were holding down his stomach. The music was getting louder, and he was now able to tell that it was not music that he was hearing. It was chanting of some kind. Not in English though. He was unable to make out any words that were being said.

He was going to die. Every breath that he was taking was going to be his last. He was being sacrificed for something that he didn’t know, understand, or even believe in. A bunch of people in robes were going to kill him before he reached his twenty-fifth birthday. Everything that he had not done in his life was starting to flash before his eyes. Regrets of things not done. A silent prayer was sent above to save him.

The chanting stopped. Looking to the sides, he could see he was surrounded by the men in robes. They were still a couple of feet from him, and the circle was at least a couple people deep. He tried to open his mouth to beg for his life again when the smell of something awful caught his attention. It smelled like sulfur, or something rotten burning. It was terrible, and he tried to look to see if the flames were getting closer.

One of the red-robed people stepped forward and started talking in that language again. He seemed to be talking to something at the edge of the table that he was lying on. Lifting his head up to see what it was brought the pain back full force. He thunked his head back down, and the pounding got worse in his head. His eyes were watering, not sure if it was from the pain in his head or from the smell that was getting stronger.

Lifting his head back up to try to get a look at what was happening, he let out a silent scream. He was not sure what the hell was there, but it was huge. It was some kind of dark shape taking form from black smoke that hadn’t been there before. He tried to struggle against the bonds that held him, but was completely unable to move anything but his head.

“Oh, god, no, please. Please, don’t do this,” he begged of the man closest to him.

The man ignored him and kept talking to whatever the hell was coming up in the smoke. Looking back up, he could see a more distinct form, but it didn’t look to be human.

“What the fuck is that??? Please, someone get me the hell out of here!”

His pleas were ignored. Everyone around him was completely focused on what was happening in front of him.

Continuing to swear and plead, he tried to move in the slightest. Knowing that it was useless didn’t mean that he wouldn’t keep trying. The dark smoke slowly started lowering and he could see what was happening. There was a figure there. Not quite a man, and not quite— not. It was a monster. The kind that you fear is under your bed when you are a child; the kind that you see in movies or read about in books.

Whatever it was, it was large. It looked to have a man’s face, but there was no neck. The head just blended down into what looked to be the body of an octopus. There were arms/legs everywhere. It was a dark gray color, which seemed to shine in the light, almost as if it was slimy. The eyes were the easiest thing to see. They were glowing red. The red seemed to light up the room as the creature looked down at him.

He was screaming himself hoarse now, begging to get away from this nightmare that he seemed to have fallen in. He tried to keep telling himself that this wasn’t really happening. He had been knocked out and this was some nightmare that he was trapped in; maybe some new form of torture, a drug of some kind.

He didn’t want to look at the monster but was terrified to look away. The thing started to move around him, circling the table that he was strapped to. On the second pass, the thing trailed one of its tentacles along his body in its wake. The feeling of the slime that it was covered with raised goose bumps on his skin in a room that had been so hot before that he was sweating. It was cold and heavy and gross, and he would give anything to have the thing back away from him.

The fear was unlike anything that he had ever felt. He had no clue as to what was going to happen or what could possible happen. This was so far from his realm of belief that it was even scarier than the thought of dying here.

The thing was walking around him again, speaking now to whoever had last been chanting. A hood was pushed back, and he could see a man standing there. An older man, gray hair closely cut— so normal looking yet talking to a monster. The man seemed very pleased with whatever was being said. The monster then looked back at him and the eyes glowed brighter. It said something to the man with the hood down, and a cheer went up through the crowd. Whatever they had been hoping was going to happen, was apparently going to happen.

Two more of the red-robed men stepped forward and began to do something at his ankles. The monster moved its body so it was standing at his feet waiting for whatever they were going to do to him. He heard the sound of a lock and realized that they had unlocked his legs. As soon as the cold metal casings came off, he tried to kick out with all he had in him, but his legs felt like noodles, and he could barely get his legs to move. Whatever the big man had shot into him was making his body very sluggish and not respond as well as he needed it to. When his legs were pulled back toward him, he had a very bad sinking feeling as to where this was going. Screaming again, commanding his legs to do something for him, but unable to do anything, he kept screaming and trying to lift his body.

The creature moved in between his raised legs, and he felt sick. The creature leaned down and took a whiff from him and smiled even broader. It then turned to one of the red robes and spoke quickly.

The tentacles were now sliding up and down his legs. It felt like there were fish crawling all over him, and he was trying to do anything to get away. One tentacle wrapped itself around his balls and squeezed hard making him yell out louder than he had already been. Another one started stroking his dick, but it didn’t arouse at all, it was too wet, cold and slimy to do anything other than make his dick try to crawl up inside his body. He was covered in goose bumps and his body started to shake.

Feeling one of the tentacles rub itself along his crack made his stomach turn. Turning his head to the side, he brought up what little he had in his stomach. Looking around the room, there was only the one face he could see. Everyone else was covering their faces with their robes.

“You cowards, show your faces!”

They all ignored him, but the monster in front of him smiled wider.

“You are going to be the perfect carrier. Feisty. I like them that way.” The voice was gravelly and flat. Turning toward the gathered men, it said, “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

With that, he felt a burning pain in his anus. It felt like he was being ripped apart. Screaming and begging, the tears were flowing even as the creature pushed forward. He looked down and saw that the creature was pushing one of its tentacles in his ass and wasn’t stopping. He could feel the widening of his hole as the tentacle grew thicker. Trying to dislodge it only caused it to be pushed in deeper. The men around him started chanting again, and the thing inside him slid forward till it hurt so much he thought he was going to pass out.

It stopped, and he was hoping that this was when they would kill him. That he wouldn’t have to have this torture go on anymore. The thought of what they might possibly do to his dead body was a passing thought, but the relief from not feeling the pain anymore was higher on his list of things to happen.

The creature started chanting along with the people in the room. Pausing as the tentacle was shoved all the way inside him. Marcus could feel it throbbing inside. The dry entry was now slick with blood and whatever slime was covering this thing. Slowly it started to pull out of him, only to thrust all the way back in; the chanting got louder and louder, faster and faster to match the thing’s thrusts inside him. The flames on the walls got bigger and brighter as the thing was thrusting as hard and as fast as it could.

His voice had gone hoarse with his screaming and begging. His face felt like it was on fire from the tears that he had cried. The pain was unbearable. He felt like he had been torn wide open and this attack was never going to stop. Finally, the thing pushed further in and paused.

Marcus screamed again. The creature had pushed all the way into his insides. Red-hot pain, greater than any pain he had felt before, burst into him. He lifted his head and looked down. He could actually see the end of the tentacle pushing up his lower abdomen. The chanting around him reached a high point, and the room was engulfed in flames. He could feel the heat burning his skin. Then it was quiet.

He felt the thing pull out of him, and it felt like he was wide open. He could feel something trickling out of his anus and was not sure if it was seed, slime, blood, or a combination of all three. He was ready to pass out. The flames had died down to only cast a glow around the dark room, and the hooded people around him all stood still, not even the rustling of robes could be heard.

The man in red spoke again in whatever language they had been speaking and chanting in before. The creature took a step back away from him and his legs were lowered. The pain he felt, as feeling started coming back into them, was immense. He wasn’t sure how long he was held with his legs in the air like that. It had felt like a lifetime in his mind, but he figured that the reality had been a lot shorter. Maybe at some point he had blacked out.

The men who held his legs walked back and joined the circle around him. Two more walked forward and grabbed his legs again and raised them up. He tried to fight, but his legs were still slowly getting the feeling back to them, and his body felt weak from the pain. The chanting was going strong again when the creature stepped forward and shoved another tentacle inside of him. He tried to scream again, but blessed blackness overtook him.

****

Marcus was sitting at the kitchen table with his mother staring at the sunshine outside. They were talking about nothing as they tended to do. They were best friends and always had been. She had raised him by herself and had done an awesome job of it. Well in his opinion anyway. Sitting there, he knew that something was wrong. There was something niggling at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t place it. He felt like he had been here before and it was really bothering him. He tried shaking his head and that didn’t clear up the foggy feeling he had.

She was wearing a blue dress. Why was she wearing a dress? She never did. Susan Myles had worked in a factory his whole life, and she never wore dresses. Marcus had always thought that his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. Be it in the coveralls that she was required to wear every day for work, or the sweat pants that she favored when she was home. Her dressing up usually was a pair of dress pants and blouse, buttoned all the way to the top, and even then that was only for weddings or funerals.

So why was she wearing that dress? He knew the answer to this, but he couldn’t pull it out of his mind. There was something there and he just couldn’t grab it. He was just sitting there staring at her. She had tears in her eyes now. That wasn’t right. He couldn’t ever remember her crying. Even when he had told her he was gay when he was sixteen, she hadn’t cried. She just gave him a hug and told him it was his day to do laundry.

Then he noticed how pale she was. Her shine was gone, the sparkle that made her who she was was gone. In its place was a sad woman. This was the day. This was the day that she told him that she had cancer and that there was nothing they could do.

She had hoped that what the first three doctors had told her was false. She was wrong. The doctors had given her the same prognosis as every other one she had seen. Three months, with treatment maybe six. There was nothing at this point that they could do. It was too late. That was the dress that he had buried her in.

She was still talking to him, but he couldn’t hear her. This wasn’t real. She hadn’t told him yet so how did he know? Standing up and going to the window, he looked out into the backyard of the house that he had lived in his whole life. But it was wrong. It was dark outside. He turned around and the room was light. What the hell was going on?

Turning back to the yard made him leap away. The yard was on fire; grass, trees, shed. Everything was engulfed in flames. He turned and yelled for his mom to get up and run, but the voice was lost in his throat. She was in her coffin, in that dress that he had buried her in. He tried to yell for help, but his voice wouldn’t work for him. This was wrong. This was all wrong.

He turned and ran for the front door. Opening it up, he was faced with another door. He opened that one as well, but it was just another door. Repeating this over and over again, all he got were doors. He turned to go run out the back door, but the flames had caught up to him. He was surrounded by flames. His mother’s house, his house, was going down, and he had no way out. Trying the door again, all he got was another door behind that. It felt like he had opened up a hundred doors, and yet he was still trapped in the house.

The heat was getting to him. He felt like he was starting to melt. His whole body started to hurt. He fell to the floor and clutched his lower half as pain speared through him.

“No, no, no,” he whispered out.

Closing his eyes, he banged his head against the wall. “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.”

Opening his eyes brought him back to the reality that he was in. Closing his eyes fast did not bring back his mother’s face. He was now facedown on the slab that they had him on. His hands tied down above him. He couldn’t move. His body was aching, and his heart hurt in a way he hadn’t felt since his mother died. He wasn’t sure how long he had been in this room; how long this creature had spent raping him over and over again. He knew he had passed out a couple of times. The first time being when he felt the second tentacle start to rub along him and then shove in with the first one. Thankfully he was able to descend into the darkness again.

The chanting had died down somewhere along the way. With his head turned to the side, he could see that there were about half the people left that had been there when this nightmare had started. He closed his eyes again, hoping that this time he would never open them.

****

He was floating. He was warm, not like the flames that had warmed his body, but the warmth that came from being in the sunshine. He didn’t want to open his eyes and be back in the nightmare that he had been in before, so he kept them closed. He dreamed that he was in heaven and his mother was there. She was wiping his brow and the rest of his body off, telling him that it was okay and that it was over. He tried to talk to her, but his voice was gone. His throat hurt, but the pain was ebbing away.

Marcus wasn’t sure how long he had laid there, somewhere in-between sleeping and waking, before he heard a door open. He didn’t want to see where he was or who he was with. He tried to take himself back to the place where his mother was with him.

“I know you’re awake. Time to open your eyes and get something to eat. I know that you must be hungry.”

He knew that voice. It broke his heart to hear that voice. The man that he thought could be the one. The man that he thought he would spend the rest of his life with. The man who had drugged him and brought him here. He tried not to flinch or move, but he could smell the food and his stomach started growling. He had no idea how long it had been since he had been in that hole in the ground and kicked that tray.

He could hear him set down the tray somewhere beside him, and then felt the bed dip where he sat down. Marcus didn’t mean to flinch, wanted to pretend that maybe he was in heaven and this wasn’t happening, but he couldn’t stop it. Giving up the pretense, he opened his eyes and tried to move away from him. The man actually smiled at him as he put his hand on his leg to stop him.

That caused Marcus’s whole body to shake with fear. He tried to still it, but he couldn’t. Where he had been warm before, he was now ice cold. He stared into those blue eyes, and he felt his stomach rebel. Not that he had anything to throw up at this point, but it was turning.

“Marcus, honey. You have to eat something. Come on, it has been a couple of days since your last meal. Come on, don’t look at me like that. I did this for us.”

Marcus turned away from him and tried to move himself off to the other side of the bed. He was looking around the room trying to find a weapon of some kind. When he got to the other side of the bed, he swung his legs to the floor and pushed himself off. However, his legs weren’t able to hold him. It felt like they weren’t even there. He caught himself going down on his arms, but they, apparently, were unable to hold him either and he found himself face planted on the floor.

He wanted to cry out in anger, but remembered all the crying that he had already done and steeled himself against starting again. He was done crying and done begging. They would not hurt him again.

He felt arms wrap around him, lift him off the floor, and gently place him on the bed. He wanted to fight him off, but he was so weak he could barely move. The pain that shot up his backside was a blaring reminder of what had happened to him. He tried to curl himself up into a ball as the memories came at him full force. The pain from his arms and legs being tied up for so long, being unused for so long, came back and he was so weak he was unable to do it.

That’s when he realized that he wasn’t tied up anymore. There were no chains around his neck, or on any part of his body. Looking around the room, he found the door that was letting the sunlight in, and it was unbarred. Staring at the door, he saw his freedom. Not that right now he would even be able to walk over there and climb out, but eventually he could. All of a sudden he was filled with hope. For the first time since the night he had gone to Brian’s house for dinner and felt the effects of the drugs in his drink, he had hope. Strength though he didn’t have. He looked over at the plate of food sitting there waiting for him and tried to reach for it.

Brian picked him up again, and he cringed in on himself at being held. He didn’t want anyone to touch him, especially Brian. Ignoring his flinches, Brian got him up on the bed and tucked him in as if he was a child. When he had him all propped up and tucked in, he brought the tray over and placed it on his lap.

As soon as the lid for the tray was removed, the smells just about brought him to tears. There was not much on the tray. Looked like chicken broth, Jell-O, and some kind of pudding. There was a glass of milk, and some hot beverage that must have been tea as it was too light a color to be coffee.

Marcus reached for the milk with a shaky hand, and had to stop to look at the bandages on his wrists. Another sign that what happened was not a nightmare. He grabbed the glass and brought it up and gulped down the cold goodness. His throat hurt so bad he had trouble swallowing and he was able to feel the cold as it traveled down. It was the best feeling he had had in a long time. Finishing it off, he started into the broth and ate that as fast as his shaky arms could spoon it into his mouth. He totally ignored Brian, who sat there watching him eat. Brian was smiling at him like he was so happy that he was eating. Marcus just wanted to reach over and choke him.

“If you can get your strength up we can go for a walk in the next day or two. Wouldn’t that be nice? It will be like that day you and I packed a basket and took it to the lake. Remember that?”

“You have had me kidnapped, locked in some room, chained in there like some animal. I was beaten, and raped over and over, and you want to talk about a date that we went on. Get the hell away from me!” His throat hurt. Even the cold and hot fluids he had didn’t seem enough to calm the pain in his throat from screaming himself hoarse.

“I did this for us, Marcus. You are angry now, and I get that, but you will see that this is a blessing. We have worked so hard to get to this point, and you are perfect. Now finish eating, get some rest, and I will be back later with your supper,” Brian said as he patted his leg.

“You didn’t do this for us. I sure as hell didn’t see you up there having that thing shove whatever the hell those tentacles were up your ass. Get the hell away from me now.”

Brian slowly stood up with a little smile on his face.

“I get that you are mad, but you don’t understand how important you are to not only me but our people. When you have had some rest, I will take you outside and show you the grounds.”

“I don’t want to see the fucking grounds! I want to go home now!” He was shaking and a little sick to his stomach.

“I’m sorry but that can’t happen. You have a new life here, a better life, with me.”

Picking up the empty cup, Marcus threw it at his head. With no strength in his arms, it was not much of a throw, and Brian was able to dodge it easily.

“You need to eat and rest. Get your strength back, and then you will see that this is for the best.”

Marcus watched him walk out of the room and wondered how he had never seen the man for what he was.

The two men came back and helped him to the bathroom, this time giving him privacy and letting him take care of himself. They ran a bath for him and must have put something in the water as he could feel his overly stiff muscles slowly relax. They brought in more of the same soft foods for him, and once again stayed to make sure that it was all eaten. They kept their distance from him though, still not talking, but giving him his space.

There were books and magazines left for him. All of which were, of course, his favorites, courtesy of Brian no doubt. It helped pass the time at least. A chair was set on the balcony for him to enjoy. Enjoy his ass. Brian was always there when he was on the deck. He talked quietly almost to himself, trying to be soothing. Marcus ignored him at all times. There were maids who came in and out all day cleaning the room, and changing the bedding. He knew that it would be pointless to try and talk to any of them.

So he ate and sat on his deck ignoring everyone. Once he was on the deck that first time, he understood why he was no longer tied up. They were in the mountains. Not just surrounded by the mountains but literally on top of one. From his vantage point, there was nothing for miles and miles. This was not where he had started out being held, of that he was sure. The air was thinner here; he could feel it when he breathed.

There was nowhere for him to go. He had no idea where he actually was and heading out on foot was not a smart idea. There had to be roads and cars here. He would just wait it out and find his way home.

****

It was a week before Brian showed up in his room with a heavy sweater. This was obviously the sign that he was going for a walk as he normally just curled up with the thick blanket that they had provided. It was spring, and that shocked him, as the last thing he did in his real life was go to his boyfriend’s house for Valentine’s Day dinner. It had been the first time that he had had a boyfriend on that special day and he had been so excited. He had brought Brian chocolates and some flowers while Brian had gifted him with an infinity bracelet with a diamond at the center. Then he had a glass of wine after dinner and woke up in that basement.

Shaking the thoughts away, he pulled the sweater on. It fitted him perfectly, like all the clothes that he had been brought. The super-soft jeans and Henley that he was currently wearing fit him like a glove. Everything fit him and was way nicer than anything he could afford. Although he would give anything right now to be wearing his Wal-Mart jeans in his cheap apartment. Not that he was hopeful that he still had an apartment waiting for him. He had been living in a month-to-month rental for the past year. After his mother had passed away, he had been forced to sell the house to cover her medical bills. The apartment was nothing special, one bedroom and run down, but it was his. He was sure that as soon as he hadn’t shown up with rent, all of his stuff had been sold off, and someone else was living there now.

Brian opened the door and gestured with his arm for Marcus to go first. Slowly inching out of the room, he followed the long hallway down. There was nobody else up there with them. Stopping when he got to the top of the stairs, he had to take a deep breath. He was in a mansion, or castle or something, because he had never seen anything like this before in his life. The grand staircase ended with the biggest entryway, with huge chandeliers and gleaming tiles. It was like a fancy hotel, or a movie set or something. Brian ushered him down the stairs and to the huge front doors. There were two men standing there in suits who didn’t even bother to look at him, just stared straight ahead. Brian opened up the door and there was another set of guards on the outside, and still more walking past with big guard dogs. Marcus felt a shiver run through him, and it wasn’t from the cold. His hopes of getting out of here were slowly sliding away as he caught sight of a massive iron gate that covered the front of the driveway. There was no way that he was going to be able to make it out of here on his own. He knew that much. He looked at Brian, and the man smiled widely at him.

When they had first met, it was that smile that had done him in. He knew that he wasn’t anything too special to look at. He was able to get laid when he wanted to, but he was never the guy who was flocked to in the bars. He had the twink-look going, with longer brown hair and his small frame. His eyes were brown, just plain brown, kind of like the rest of him, kinda plain. The day that Brian had looked at him and given him that smile, he had melted. Brian was his all-American wet dream come to life. Blond hair, blue eyes, and muscles that went on for days. The fact that he was looking at him was shocking. There were better looking guys, but Brian only had eyes for him, and Marcus always thought he was crazy for picking him when he could do so much better.

He was also a perfect gentleman. Even though they had met at a club, he had taken him out to dinners and dancing. Always attentive, always putting Marcus first. It was so good. He would pick him up in his fancy sports car, take him out, and treat him like gold. They would have a picnic in the park wrapped up in blankets and sit there until they couldn’t take the cold anymore. They spent hours and hours talking. It seemed like they could talk about anything at all.

The only strange thing was that Brian hadn’t wanted to rush the sex. They had made out lots of times and it was good, so good, but Brian said he wanted to wait and make it special. Yeah, good one, wanted to save his ass for that monster. He was right. Brian may be good looking but was bat-shit crazy.

They walked around the grounds in silence for a while. It was beautiful there with the gardens slowly starting to bloom and the mountains in the background covered in snow. If one was able to overlook the fact that he was a prisoner.

Marcus tired quickly. This was the most that he had moved in months and his body was not up to the strain. Brian seemed to realize this and stopped at a bench in the middle of the garden by a massive, ugly-ass fountain. Taking a closer look, Marcus was able to see it was a statue of the monster that had raped him. In its grasp was a man who appeared to be in the throes of pleasure/pain? Turning quickly away, before he started beating on the damn thing, he took a seat on the bench with a good distance between himself and Brian.

“Love, it’s time for us to talk. I need you to understand why you were chosen.”

“Don’t call me that. What the fuck you talking about? Chosen? I wasn’t chosen. I was beaten, locked in a cell, raped. I am locked away in a castle in the mountains like some stupid princess movie. How dare you even say that?”

“Marcus, just relax and let me explain some things. This house belongs to a group that I am a member of, the Archers of Kynthos. Everyone here is a member. Our fathers were members, and their fathers, and so on. The Archers have been around for hundreds of years.” He paused as if that was supposed to mean anything or impress in some way. When all he received was the cold stare that he had become accustomed to, he took a breath to continue.

“Kynthos is an Island in Greece where Zeus watched the birth of his son Apollo. We have been studying the history and the reasoning of why that place had been used. We were able to determine it wasn’t the island itself, but certain artifacts we have been able to acquire that were needed. The world has changed so much from when our ancestors were in charge, that most are unable to recognize it. The goal of the Archers is to unite the world under one rule. End the war, hunger, and hate that is plaguing the world. That’s where you come in.”

Lost, totally lost. This made no sense at all to Marcus as he sat there listening. These guys were trying to be card-carrying members of some Illuminati group. He watched as Brian took a breath and a big smile broke out on his face.

“We finally figured out how we can accomplish this, but we have been looking for years for someone like you. You have such strength in you. It is what initially attracted me to you. I saw you and thought, ‘Here is the man for me’. The fact that you are the Chosen One… You have no idea how blessed I was the day I found out you were the Chosen One. Now I know that we are going to be able to spend the rest of our lives together. You have no idea how happy that makes me. I love you. I do, Marcus. You have become my whole reason for being.”

“Did you love me while I was being raped? Were you one of the ones who got to hold me down while he kept…?” Marcus had to take a breath when Brian looked away.

Oh god. The man he thought he had been in love with had been one of the ones holding him down while he was being raped.

“What were you thinking of while you held me down? Were you thinking, ‘Here is the man I love being ripped apart’? That not even in his worst nightmare did he imagine what he was going through? What were you thinking? Tell me!”

Marcus jumped at him, trying to get a punch in if he could. The best that he managed was a bitch slap on the face. Brian didn’t lose his temper, nor did he lose his smile or that look in his eyes. Like Marcus was being indulged. He grabbed both his arms and pulled him around till he ended up sitting on his lap. Marcus tried to fight him off, but was unable to get any movement. Brian let go of his wrists and slowly rubbed up and down his arms as if to calm him.

“That is not a topic for today. There are things that you need to hear today, so please calm down and relax. Nobody here will hurt you, especially me.”

Realizing there was really nothing he could do, he let himself go limp and sit there. How messed in the head was he that he was enjoying the touch. That it made him feel warm on the inside for the first time in what seemed like forever. It was always that way when he was Brian. Why couldn’t his brain tell the rest of him that this was a sick asshole and he was stuck on the man’s lap?

“We needed someone very special to bring this about. Someone who would bring in the era of change that we have been working so hard toward. We were close once before, but never like this. When I met you, I knew you were it. The blood tests proved it.”

Oh god, the blood tests. Brian had been adamant that when they did finally have sex he wanted nothing between them. Thinking it was romantic at the time, Marcus had gone down to the doctor Brian had recommended. Bile filled his mouth.

“You were it. You had the genetic marker that we had been looking for. We just want the world to be one that we control to make it a better place for everyone. Not what it’s turned into. You will be the father of this new day. The doctor came and told me the good news this morning. It worked. We hoped and prayed that it would, but there is always room for error. But I knew, if anyone could do it, it would be you.”

“The father of the new day? I’m gay, asshole. I don’t sleep with chicks.”

“You don’t understand me, honey. You are the chosen vessel for our king. Everything that we have done was to make sure that you were strong enough, brave enough to do this. You were what we were waiting for.” Taking a deep breath, he said, “We found out this morning that it worked. You are carrying our king.”

Marcus felt the world tilt sideways and go black.

****

He awoke back in his room. It was the same room that he had been in, the same furniture, the same sunlight streaming across the floor. Yet it was all wrong somehow. Closing his eyes, he tried to go back to his dream, but no matter how hard he tried, he was stuck where he was. Slowly opening his eyes, he spotted Brian and another man standing by the window. They seemed to be deep in conversation and didn’t seem to notice that he was awake. He wanted to keep it that way.

He didn’t want to wake and have them spouting off all of these crazy things that they had going on in their heads. He didn’t believe what they said, couldn’t believe what they were saying. It was too crazy for words. Although up to this point nothing that they had done seemed sane by any means. Shifting slightly, he felt a slight pain in his hip, and was unable to stop the small sound that escaped him.

Both men turned and looked at him, both smiling. Wishing he was strong enough to get out of the bed and wipe the smiles off their faces but feeling even weaker than ever, Marcus couldn’t do much more than try to slide to the other side of the bed away from them.

“Hey, none of that. Just relax, honey; nobody here is going to hurt you,” Brian said as he slowly made his way to the bed.

Marcus laughed. They didn’t want to hurt him. What the hell had the last couple months of his life been?

“Your hip will be a little sore. The doctor was worried about your B12 levels, so he just gave you a little shot. How are you feeling otherwise?”

He couldn’t stop laughing. These people had treated him worse than a rabid animal up till this point and now they were worried about his B12 levels. These people were all monsters, and so screwed in the head that there was nothing else to do, but laugh in their faces.

“What is wrong with him?” The other man in the room had come forward and was now staring down at him as well. It was hard to make out what had been said with the man’s heavy accent. Something European, he was sure but had no idea where from.

The newcomer was an older gentleman, somewhere in his fifties at least. He looked like money, lots and lots of money. From the diamond ring and watch to the very expensive-looking suit that he was wearing. He had almost an indulgent look in his eye, like Marcus was some child that he was spoiling.

“I am sure that he has had enough shocks to his system for a while,” Brian answered, turning back to Marcus. “You’re okay. I know that was a big shock to hear today, but we don’t have a lot of time to let you adjust. If there were any other way that we could have done this, we would have. We just had to be sure of you.”

Brian nodded his head toward the other man. “Let me introduce you to the Viceroy of Kynthos for our European division, Laurent Gochnauer. He wanted to get a chance to meet you.”

Marcus turned away from the two men and tuned them out. He let his mind wander to what he should be doing right now. It was now late afternoon, so he would have already finished his shift at the coffee shop where he worked. It would be time to grab a quick bite at home, change and get ready for his second job as a bartender at a club that was just a couple blocks from his house. Well, that depended on the day. Not knowing the day, he was going with that plan. It was the weekend, and he was looking forward to the tips that he would be making.

He was not sure how long he was mentally going through his day before Brian sat down in his line of sight. He looked tired and stressed out. Marcus almost felt bad for the guy, almost.

“Marcus, I know that this has been a lot. If there had been any other way of doing this, I would have found it. We had to prove to them that you were the Chosen One. Now they don’t believe you are strong enough to survive this, but I know that you can.”

Brian took a deep breath and scrubbed his hands across his face.

“Right now there are two options, and I need you to look at me so I know that you understand me. Are you listening to me?”

When there was no reply, Brian reached down and grabbed his shoulder, giving it a hard shake. Marcus glared at him, but didn’t reply.

“Answer me. Do I have your full attention?”

The pressure on his shoulder didn’t lighten up, so Marcus gave in and gave him a slight nod.

“Good, this is important. Probably the most important decision you will ever make. Option one. You will marry me before the child is born. We will have a ceremony in front of my people. After our son is born, you will help raise him in this house. You will never want for anything in your life. Not for you, and not for our son. I will make you happy here, and you will be. Option two: you will get on a plane tomorrow with Viceroy Gochnauer. They will keep you in one of their holdings until the child is born. After that, they have no use for you at all. The child will be raised by our members who have been hand selected for this task.”

“No matter what you say, I don’t believe you. I am not pregnant, Brian. I am a guy; guys don’t get pregnant. I don’t understand why you keep saying that.”

Brian’s face turned cold and hard so fast it was scary. All of a sudden, it was like there was a person he didn’t know standing there.

“So you are choosing option two then. I will let them know that you will be leaving in the morning. I would wish you the best, but that seems like a moot point now. Good-bye.”

It felt like his life flashed before his eyes. No matter what Marcus believed his reality to be, it was not what others believed. The choice seemed simple when he broke it down. Stay and live, leave and die. What really worried him was what would happen when they all found out that he wasn’t pregnant.

Brian was heading to the door already when Marcus yelled at him, “Brian, option one! I pick option one.”

The man was angry, and when he turned to look at him, Marcus was scared of him for the first time. It was not the fear of what had been done, or what others had done. It was of what this man could do to him. Never once had he ever seen him this dark, this angry.

“Be very sure about this. There is no going back. You will be my husband. You will stand beside me and what this group stands for. You will help us raise our son to be the great king that he is destined to be. If you cause problems, you will be dealt with.”

He had to look away. He could not even look into the face of the man in front of him. This was not the man who he fell in love with, or at least thought that he had.

There was no choice for him though. Here at least he had a shot of making it out of this situation. The longer that he stayed alive, the more chance he had of making it free of this place.

“I agree, just please don’t send me away. Please.” Marcus had begged in the beginning and he had sworn to himself that he would never, ever do it again. Life or death choices were not where he ever thought he would be trapped.

“Everyone must know that you accept this marriage. You will be sharing my life and my bed.”

“What? After what happened you want—” Brian held up a hand to silence him.

“You will be my husband in every way; that is nonnegotiable. You loved me before. I know that it’s still in there, and one day soon you will love me again.”

He changed. Just like that, the dark, angry man was gone, and the carefree man that Marcus had first met was back. It was scary how fast he changed.

He took a deep breath, trying to think of how to word this without setting him off. Working the words slowly through his head, he had to take another deep breath, but was unable to hold back the shudder that went through his body.

“Brian. I need you to help me. Explain to me how you think that it is possible that I am pregnant.”

“Do you remember being sick? Right after you were brought to the halfway house?” Marcus nodded.

“We had a biochemist make up a serum that would help guarantee that you would be able to conceive our king. You were what we needed, but we had to add something a little extra to make sure it worked. Cottus himself should have been able to make you conceive during the ritual, but we needed the extra guarantee that nothing could go wrong. You don’t know how long we have worked for this. There was nothing at all left to chance.”

Marcus looked in his eyes and felt the man’s words roll over him. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realized that, in this hell he found himself in, he could really be pregnant. Feeling his stomach rebel at the thought forced him to run to the bathroom to lose what little breakfast he still had inside of him.

Brian stood there rubbing his back and as soon as he was done being sick handed him a cool cloth to put on his face. Marcus sat back on the floor of the bathroom facing the toilet with his knees drawn up in front of him. Taking deep breaths to calm himself down, he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening.

“The doctor wasn’t sure how soon morning sickness would take to kick in. We are still unsure of what your gestation period will be, so we are playing it by ear here. Every day the doctor will be by to check up on you. My job is to make sure that you are taking care of yourself and our baby.”

Looking at him smiling so smugly made Marcus lean forward and throw up again.

****

Life became a whirlwind after that. There was the wedding to plan, the doctor visits, and all the well-wishers already stopping by, not just to wish them well for the marriage but to see how he was progressing. Brian stayed by his side as much as possible. There were meetings to attend at what seemed like all hours of the day and night. Marcus was aware of the night ones because he had been moved from what he considered his room to Brian’s. He spent every night lying beside the man who had destroyed his life.

That thought needed constant reinforcement as well. The man was attentive, loving and controlling. There was not anything that happened in Marcus’s day that Brian didn’t plan out for him. His clothes were laid out for him every morning, all his meals planned in advance. Brian was there every morning as he threw up for what felt like hours, wiping his brow when he was done. He stayed during every doctor appointment and asked more questions than Marcus did.

Marcus was trying. He really was. It was just so damn hard to be here. Each person he met he had to wonder what part did this person take in his torture. Were they standing there while he was raped and begging to be released? Shaking their hands made his skin crawl and his stomach roll. The first one he had met did make his stomach roll. It was the big man who had beaten him for god knows how long. Turns out his name was Carl. That was one that had never crossed his mind when he was naming the man. It was always something like asshole, or fucktard. It was never something as plain as Carl. Turned out the man was the head of security, and the second in command under Brian. Not only was the man in the nightmares he had every night, but he was also the one who watched him all day.

After meeting him, he had been dragged into Brian’s office and reminded again of his two options. Option two was still available if he had any problems. This thought passed through his mind every time he thought of running screaming, and that was most of the time. The pregnancy was progressing much faster than they had guessed. A week after it had been confirmed, and he was already, as far as the doctor guessed, finished with his first trimester. The good news was that the constant sickness should fade. The bad news was his wedding day was now fast approaching.

Nobody was kind enough to give him a timeline on this. Just smiled at him like he was some child every time he brought it up. Brian kept telling him to not stress about it. He was taking care of everything. It was to just be a small ceremony, with just the heads of the Archers there. Another thought that made him sick. Brian was the Viceroy for the Archers for North America. He was the head and only answered to The One above him. They would all show up to pay their respects for his marriage, especially since he was to be blessed with being married to the Chosen One.

Marcus was lying down for one of his doctor-ordered naps. He had to take one every day, not that he was complaining. He was so tired all the time he found himself falling asleep while sitting with Brian in some meet and greet that he seemed tied to all day. He would sleep for a little bit at a time before the nightmares would wake him up. Even as tired as he was, he was unable to sleep more than forty-five minutes at a stretch before waking up screaming. Brian was always there and would always hold him after. He hated the fact that it felt good to be held. Not that he was taking away the nightmares, only acting as a constant reminder of what he was now in. Yet it was still nice not to wake up alone and scared.

Today the sleep just wouldn’t come. No matter how long he lay there, he was unable to actually fall asleep. His mind kept running in directions that he couldn’t stop it from going. Back to the room, back to the hell night. Toward his upcoming wedding night. To giving birth to this thing that was inside him.

Yes, that something inside him was making its presence known as a small bump that had appeared in the last day. He had heard the heartbeat, and that had pushed him further into believing. This little bump was further proof of his hell. The pull to rub his hands over it was strong. Everything in him wanted to stroke his hands over it and feel something. Anything. Love or hate. There had to be some feeling for this thing inside him. But where he was at was saving all his strength to survive, and he couldn’t add another burden to what he already had.

The door made a soft noise as it was slowly opened, and he could hear someone come in before softly closing it behind him. Brian. Had to be. The maids and other staff wouldn’t bother to come in while he was resting. There was no way they would even dare; Brian’s wrath was legendary apparently. He felt the bed dip behind him as the other man climbed in behind him and brought him close.

“I know you’re not sleeping. What’s wrong? You seemed pretty out of it earlier.” Brian was breathing on his ear and the feeling was going straight to his cock. Stupid body didn’t know what was good for it.

“Brian, I don’t know if I can do this. All these people here did this to me, and I am supposed to just forget about it? Sit across the table from them and make small talk? You don’t know what you are asking of me.”

Brian took a deep breath, and started running his hands through Marcus’s hair. It was something that he used to love having done. Brian was well aware of this fact. His other arm came around him and started rubbing over his bump. The feeling sent chills up and down his body and not really in a bad way.

The hot and cold his body was running was driving him nuts as well. How could he feel anything for this monster?

“You are going to do it because you have no choice. I wish that there could have been another way. I wish I could have worked our way towards it, but we had a deadline. The ceremony had to be performed on a blood-red moon to work. I do know that no matter what timeline we had, you still would have felt betrayed by me. You have to understand. I need you to understand. There can be no doubt in the people around us that you love me, they already know that I love you. If there is any doubt in their minds, they will take you away. I know you feel like I am a cold-hearted bastard, but I am doing this for us. They will kill you and not feel bad about it at all. That is why I am pushing you so hard. I need you to understand this.”

“Why? Why can’t I go back to my life? I swear I will never say anything to anybody ever. I swear.” Marcus cursed the tears that ran down his face. He hated feeling like this. He had sworn he was never going to cry again, but he couldn’t seem to get any of his emotions under control.

“It is too much of a liability. I am truly sorry, but isn’t this better? Isn’t this house better than the little apartment you used to live in? Here you have everything you could ever want.”

“Except my freedom. Can I go to a movie? Can I go shopping? Tell me how this is so much better when I can’t even leave the house.”

“You can leave the house. I told you, you are free to roam the grounds whenever you feel like it.”

“The grounds?! Are you kidding me? You totally ignored what I said. I said freedom, not be let outside like some dog!” he screamed at him.

Brian flinched and his face turned dark and twisted with anger. The hand in his hair tightened and pulled hard. Marcus let out a small sound at the pain, and immediately was let go. The hand slowly working its way back to soothing. The face had changed back to the loving Brian again. Marcus had thought his moods were bad right now, but they were nothing compared to Brian’s.

“You are not a dog. Nor are you a prisoner. You are my beloved. In time, when we know that it is safe, we will take you into the city. We are not the only ones who tried to perform the ceremony, but we are the only ones who succeeded. There are others out there who would do anything to get you and the baby. You are not willing to look at the big picture in this. This is not about you and me. It’s about what’s best for the Archers.”

Marcus laid there trying to absorb everything. Not sure what was a pile of BS and what wasn’t. Now he wasn’t safe because there was another group after him? That seemed like a pile of crap as far as he was concerned. Something else in his life for him to be afraid of. Then again it could be the truth, what did he really even know anymore?

“Have you thought about a name yet? I know that I would like him named after my father, Anthony, but the one thing that I have fought for was being able to name him. It should be something strong though. It will be our king’s name one day after all.”

“I don’t understand. How can he be our king? Of like North America?”

“No, love. He will rule the world. We will rule all, under him. I know that you don’t understand that yet, but one day you will see just how powerful he will be.”

“Is he some kind of monster? Is he going to look like that thing?”

“No, he will not be a monster at all. How could you even think that your child would be a monster? He will have power over the people. He will be a great leader, kind and generous to those who deserve it, except when he needs not to be. You have the power to shape him into a good person, but never forget that he will one day lead.”

Marcus closed his eyes and tried to let this all soak in. “Who will decide who the good and bad people are? You?”

“Yes me in a way, but not just me. The Archers have been planning this for years. Our ancestors were planning for this. There have been other tries, but they have never succeeded fully. We have learned from past mistakes and are more ready for the challenges that are ahead. We are ready for anything at this point, but you don’t need to think about that. For now, you need to be healthy and ready to be a father to this child we are having. You need to rest and get ready to be the most handsome groom in the world. These things you are worried about are not to be worried about now. We have our lifetime ahead to worry. For now, let us be. Can you do that for me?”

Marcus wasn’t sure what to answer. It seemed really simple, live there and somehow survive, or leave and face certain death. He needed to worry about today, getting through this day, this moment before he could worry about the rest.

“I will try. That’s the best answer that I can give you right now.”

“I will accept that. The other thing is, you need to forget about what happened before you woke up here. It’s in the past now and it needs to stay there. I know that you feel that we hurt you. I know that you feel violated. I would in your shoes. You will understand about the greater good one day, and it will all make sense. But for now, I need your promise. You need to relax around the house and the people in it. What’s done is done, and there is nothing that can change that.” Brian tugged him a little closer and his voice had gone a little deeper at this.

“I will try.”

“NO, not try. You will do it.”

“Yes, Brian. I will do it.”

One way or another he was getting out of here one day, and he was going to kill everyone here if he had to.

****

Their wedding was beautiful. It was full of people that Marcus didn’t care to know, but he smiled and nodded at all the right times. He gracefully accepted the congratulations on both the wedding and the baby. He drank his sparkling cider, ate his seven course meal, and smiled through the whole thing.

He remarked on the assortment of flowers, all white, that covered the ballroom in the house. The staircase he had walked down to meet his groom was draped in them. He joked that the number of candles in the house was enough to burn down the mountain. He smiled when people patted and rubbed his stomach and asked how he was feeling. He was able to joke about swollen cankles and his shrinking bladder. He hung onto Brian like a lifeline the whole day, and perfected the art of appearing as the perfect blushing husband.

He tried to count the number of guards that were there that day, but there were too many to count. He had learned how to pick out the ones who were security and the ones who were just uptight. The place was crawling with both. No one seemed to be bothered when they were talking with him and he would look around the room for his “groom”, meanwhile counting the number of windows in each room and hallway. He went to the kitchen to thank the chef for the meal, which was the best he had ever had, and finally found what he hoped was the door to the garage. Running to the bathroom to pee, he accidently went into the security room.

Yet nobody noticed anything but a happy, pregnant groom. Brian spent the day beaming at him. The love that shone in his eyes as he said his vows earlier in the day hurt like a knife. The man believed himself to be in love with him. Having to pull forth the emotion to say his made him sick.

He had always dreamed of getting married, and the day he was having was like a dream come true. Except for the people involved, and the man he married. After he said his vows, he looked up to heaven and sent his mother an apology for lying to a man of the cloth, but he was sure that his mother would forgive him this time.

His groom had even thought of his mother and had somehow gotten a picture of her and had it set up beside the altar. When Marcus had asked why, Brian had said he knew how much it meant to him to have his mother there when he got married.

So Marcus cried through his vows as well.

In the two weeks since they had their little chat, Marcus had been trying to be the man that Brian wanted him to be. He had been attentive and caring and there were times when the lines were blurring as to what was a lie and what was the truth. All he had ever wanted after his mom died was someone to love him and care for him. This man was all that in his dream body. It was hard to do the act and not feel something for him.

Yet tonight would be the real test. Even though they had been sleeping together for almost a month, they had yet to actually have sex. Brian said he was giving him time and he still wanted their first time to be special, when they were actually married. Marcus kept hoping that his pregnancy would keep going at the speed it started and the doctor wouldn’t let them have sex until the baby came. He had no plans on sticking around long after this thing was out of him.

Life, it seemed, always had other plans. His pregnancy had slowed down; where before their timeline was at a month, the doctors were now thinking two. His stomach was stretching out quite a bit, but the doctors kept assuring him that there was a lot more growing to go. He had sat there smiling when Brian had asked about sex, and had to fight to keep that smile on his face when the doctor assured him there was no danger with them having sex.

So here he was waving goodbye to the guests as they made their way up to their room, his hand firmly in the grasp of his new husband. At the top of the stairs, Brian grabbed him and hugged him close, then leaned in for a kiss. Marcus wrapped his arms around the man and pulled him even tighter as the kiss got deeper. The cheering from below got loud fast. The whistling and cheers had them both smiling and breaking away from the kiss.

As they made their way into their room, Marcus reminded himself to let go. Who he was before, and what he had gone through, was put into a tightly sealed box in his mind. Who he was tonight was the only thing that he could think about. This Marcus had his husband leading him into their room that had been lit up with a hundred candles. There didn’t seem to be a flat surface that didn’t have white candles on it glowing. The bedspread was a Tiffany Blue with white rose petals covering it. It was the perfect setting for someone’s wedding night.

Brian stopped in the middle of the room and pulled him in close. Placing his hands on the sides of Marcus’s face, he slowly lowered his head for a kiss. It was gentle and sweet and almost brought Marcus to his knees. Brian finally broke the kiss and took a slow step back. The heat in his eyes was enough to melt Marcus into the floor. The jacket that Marcus was wearing was slipped off his shoulders and fell to the floor. Next, Brian slowly unbuttoned his loose tuxedo shirt, letting his fingers trail over the skin that was found underneath.

Once all the buttons were undone, Brian slowly brought his hands back up Marcus’s chest to his shoulders and let the shirt fall on top of the jacket. As soon as his shoulders were clear of the material, Brian bent down and trailed hot kisses along the skin that had been exposed. He didn’t move his hands from where they had come to rest on Marcus’s waist, just splayed his fingers over the heated skin.

Brian worked his kisses up to Marcus’s neck and nibbled on the skin there, up one side and down the other. His hands had worked their way to Marcus’s back, and he let his fingertips ghost across the skin there.

Marcus felt like he was one big goose bump. His skin felt like it was on fire and cold at the same time. The sensations were so gentle and so arousing he didn’t even know what to do, except feel. Brian was playing his body perfectly, and he hadn’t even taken his pants off.

Brian lifted his head, and Marcus opened his eyes to look at him, not even aware that he had closed them. Brian gave him a small smile before leaning in and capturing his lips again. The kiss was hot and deep, and Marcus could feel himself whimper into it.

The hands at his back slowly worked their way from his neck down to the top of his tuxedo pants. He tried not to stiffen at the contact, but he was unable to stop it from happening.

“Shhh, I have you, love. Just let me love you.” Brian went back to putting small kisses along his neck and slowly nibbling on his ear while his hands were undoing his pants.

Marcus let his head drop back as he enjoyed the sensations. No other man in his life had ever taken care of him like this. He was more of a wham-bam-see-you-later kind of guy. This, this was something else entirely, and it was wrecking what he had going for him up to this point. It was hard to distance yourself from someone who was loving on you so hard, and the main attraction hadn’t even started yet.

He felt his pants drop to the floor. He was now standing in a pile of wedding wear, naked in front of this fully-clothed, beautiful man. It made him feel self-conscious of the belly that was sticking out in front of him. He lowered his hands to hide it while still trying to avoid all contact. He had managed so far to ignore it, but standing there naked, it was really hard to. Thankfully, Brian grabbed his hands and pulled them away.

“I think that you are the most beautiful man I have ever seen. Don’t hide away from me. That is our child growing inside of you, and it only makes you sexier to me.”

Marcus had to push the thoughts back into the box and lock them up tight or he would have reminded the man that he was not the father of this child. Those thoughts had nothing to do with where they were now. If they managed to break through, then he would break. He couldn’t let that happen yet. So he stepped away from the man, away from his pants and the sandals he wore for the wedding to accommodate his swollen feet. He could see the instant concern that crossed Brian’s face. It quickly turned to surprise as Marcus made his way to the bed to lie down. Once he was comfortable enough, he held out his hand.

Watching Brian almost rip off his clothes was one of the funniest, and sexiest, things he had ever seen. The man got his tie caught in his shirt, and buttons went flying. He didn’t have the luxury of wearing flip flops for swollen feet and his pants got caught around his ankles. Marcus couldn’t hold back. Here was this man who had totally seduced him while getting him undressed making a mess of getting himself undone. He let out a loud laugh that he couldn’t stop.

Brian had been bent over trying to get his shoes and socks off when he heard the sound that he thought he would never hear again. That laugh was what drew him the first night they met. Then the fire that burned inside of him, and his sweet looks. The laugh had been gone and the fire had all but disappeared with only slight hints of it coming through. But that laugh. That was something that he wanted to be able to hear every day of his life.

Listening to Marcus laugh and looking down at himself, he broke down laughing as well.

“Not so smooth, am I?”

“Right now? That would be a no.”

“I have waited for this moment for so long, and this is not quite how I pictured it going.” Brian had finally worked his way free and now stood straight in front of him.

Marcus had to take a breath, laughter all but forgotten. The man was perfection. He was sculpted in all the right places and his cock was standing very tall at attention. There was only a slight dusting of hair on his chest and around his balls, otherwise he was smooth. He stalked his way to the bed, and Marcus felt like he was prey of some kind. He tried to move up the bed more, but a hand grabbed his ankle. He stilled and stared into those blue eyes, then relaxed back down.

Brian took his time. He seemed to touch every part of Marcus, leaving nothing untouched. His legs were caressed and every inch kissed. Those hands stroked over every inch of skin they could find and slowly caressed. It was gentle and so loving. Marcus was straining for him to touch the one part of that was begging for it, but Brian seemed determined to leave his cock alone. His nipples were kissed and slow sensual bites placed on them. They were hard peaks by the time that Brian left them alone and worked his way up to kiss him.

There were slow kisses at first, light bites of the lips, that slowly turned demanding and sought all dominance over him. Marcus had wrapped his arms around him, trying to hold on to something and trying to lift his hips up so his dick could get contact with anything. His stomach was holding him back though. When he pushed up, his stomach would make contact with Brian’s and he couldn’t get the friction he so desperately wanted.

“I’m getting there, love. Just relax and let me love you.”

Brian started working his way down again. Loving on both nipples again and leaving Marcus panting. When he got to the round stomach, Brian caressed it while he stared down smiling at it. He placed a gentle kiss right above the belly button and started working his way down again. When he got to what Marcus thought would be the good parts, he again just gently ran his hands up and down his thighs while letting his hot breath drift over his dick. It was too much and not enough at the same time.

Marcus tried to relax, but he couldn’t help lifting his hips off the bed again. Strong hands pushed them back and he could feel a small laugh escape the man. He felt a wet hot tongue licking his balls before one was sucked into Brian’s mouth. Marcus couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped this time, and he couldn’t seem to control his breathing. His ball was sucked and left to sit on the man’s tongue before the tongue moved and licked its way up and down and around. When he had decided that one was good, he let it go with a pop and gently sucked the other one in for the same treatment.

The hands that had been working his thighs moved up, and one was placed on his pelvis to hold him down while the other worked its way to his taint to work that. When Brian was done licking his balls, he looked up at Marcus and waited for eye contact before he grabbed his cock and licked a path up it. He did that a couple more times before he took the tip into his mouth.

It was hot and wet and the eye contact and hand were driving him nuts. He felt like he was going to come at any minute and was trying to hold back. When the mouth went all the way down on him, and he could feel the tip of his cock at the back of Brian’s throat, he started panting. The hand that was working his taint made its way down further and slowly circled his hole. It was crazy and intense, then the other hand came up and pinched a nipple and he was done.

Letting out a cry, he came hard. It had been months since he had come, and it felt like he was going to last forever. The mouth didn’t back down and swallowed every shot that he had. When he was done, he was licked clean from top to bottom.

Brian crawled up him and kissed him hard. He normally didn’t like the taste of his own semen, but this seemed even hotter for some reason. The man kept kissing him and kissing him. They kept changing directions, and they went from hard to soft, right back to hard again before Marcus had to rip his head away to get air into his lungs.

Those hands came up and grabbed his shoulders and turned him over. Brian reached up, grabbed a couple of pillows, and got him situated with his heavier front on all fours. Marcus felt a moment of panic before the kisses started up again. They started at the nape of his neck and worked themselves all the way down to his ass crack. They stopped and skipped that part before working their way down his legs. His swollen feet were gently massaged and the arches kissed before they started back up again.

When the man finally made it back to his ass, Marcus felt like a melted pile of Jello. He knew he needed to keep the weight off his stomach and was trying to protect it, but his legs were shaking with the effort to keep upright. Big hands were wrapped around the top of his thighs to bring him forward and open him up even more. The hot tongue on his hole drove him wild. Marcus had no idea how long the other man worked his hole, but he was back to being a shaking mess begging to come by the time Brian had worked his tongue inside his hole.

Kisses were placed on his ass cheeks as Brian slowly pulled away. He could hear him rustling around for something and then heard the pop top of a bottle being opened. He could feel himself tensing up when that mouth was back on his hole kissing it, working the tip of his tongue inside. The lube had all been forgotten by the time he felt the mouth moving away and being replaced by a finger that made its way inside.

Marcus had been sure that he would be freaking out by this point. Not sure if the box in his mind was holding or if he was just so turned on that his brain and body weren’t working together, but there was no way that he could stop his body from rocking back and forth on that finger. When the second was added, it took a deep breath for him to relax around it, but when those fingers moved around and found his spot inside he went wild. He was fucking himself on the man’s fingers and couldn’t stop. Every back thrust dragged the tips of Brian’s fingers across his prostate and he needed it so badly. Even though he had just come, he was ready to let go again.

The third finger was a little more than he was ready for. As wild as it was, the slow burn was enough to calm him down for a second, but not much more than that. Not that Brian gave him that much time to adjust. Once he worked the three fingers in and out a couple of times, he was lifted and the pillows pulled out from under him. He was situated on his back with his legs being lifted up onto Brian’s shoulders. Brian was working lube on his dick as he stared into Marcus’s eyes. He got himself ready and then pushed forward once he was lined up. When the pressure gave way and the tip popped in, Brian closed his eyes and let out a groan. It took him a couple seconds before he was able to open his eyes and stare back at him.

Staring into each other’s eyes as the other man sank himself into him was too much for Marcus. He turned away from the feelings of his body and the love that the other man was staring into him. His face was grabbed and pulled back.

“Look at me. Watch me. Don’t you dare hide from this moment.”

It was too much. The man was very well endowed, and it seemed to take a lifetime before he was fully seated inside. Once he was ready, he pulled himself out a bit and then sank back inside. Marcus couldn’t stop his hands from reaching out and grabbing the arms holding his legs back. Brian worked himself in and out for a while driving both of them nuts. He released the legs on his shoulders, leaned forward, and fused their mouths together as he started pounding harder and harder.

Marcus couldn’t do anything but hold on for the ride and beg him to go harder when he was able to get his mouth free of the other man. He was close to coming again, and he wasn’t able to stop himself from begging for it.

Brian didn’t make him wait as he lifted himself back up, grabbed his legs again, and started plowing into him harder and harder. Marcus was going wild and grabbed his own dick to finish himself off when his hand was slapped away.

“Mine!” He was grabbed and jerked off in a hard grasp. It didn’t take long before he was coming again all over Brian’s hand and their chests.

As soon as he started to come Brian slammed into him two more times before grinding his hips into him and letting go of his own deep groans.

Not once did they lose eye contact. Marcus felt the tears coming again, and was ready to ruin the moment by screaming at the man about his hormones, when the other man leaned forward and kissed the tears away. In between each kiss, there was a softly whispered, “I love you.”

****

In typical newlywed fashion, they went at it like bunnies for two days. They stopped for meals and for the doctor’s checkups, but other than that, they spent the rest of the time naked and talking. Brian bathed him, massaged him, and cared for him in a way that had him breaking down more than he wanted to admit.

He was so out of touch with himself. He couldn’t control when he was sad, angry, happy, or horny. It was like he had no control over his mind or body when it came to this man. He brought it up to the doctor during his second visit when the doctor weighed him and he came in twenty-five pounds more than he had been before this all started, and he started crying again.

The doctor asked Brian to leave the room, but the other man didn’t want to leave. He finally did when the doctor told him that nothing was going to happen or be said as long as he was in the room. Marcus was a little shocked at this as nobody in the house ever did anything without Brian’s permission or seemed to dare speak against him. That was saved for the other Viceroys. When they came for meetings, you could hear them arguing in the vicinity of the man’s office.

When Brian had finally cleared the room, the doctor turned back to him and gave him a gentle smile.

“Marcus, you can’t keep going on like this. You are at some point going to have to give into whatever is in your head and just let it go. It’s not healthy at all to hold in everything that you are. I’m not saying that I could even imagine what you have gone through, but I know that you have managed to lock it away somehow.”

When Marcus gave him a sharp look, he patted his knees.

“I have been a doctor for a long time son, and I haven’t always worked in this place. I used to work in an ER. I would see people come in all the time after being beaten and abused. Some of them would lock it away like it never happened and go on with their lives. But let me tell you something about those people. At some point, they all cracked. Sometimes slowly and sometimes in horrible ways. I am not saying that I agree or disagree with what happened. I am an Archer and I have my beliefs, but I am also a medical doctor who has seen people crash hard from something like this and never get back up. You have something to get back up for, son. You have that man there who loves you like crazy and you have a child that you are going to be bringing into the world in a very short time. I understand your anger, and I understand your resentment, but all of this is making you a little crazy. Yes, your hormones are a little off right now, but not as bad as your highs and lows are right now. If you weren’t pregnant, I would definitely be prescribing you heavy medications to help you out, but I can’t. I can let you talk to me, and I need for you to know that no matter what you say, I will not take it back to the Viceroy.”

“Yeah, sure. I will talk to you, with Carl listening in and reporting everything to Brian. That would just be fantastic. I will get right on that,” he replied, pushing the man’s hand off his knee.

“Marcus, please look at me. This room is secure. There are no monitoring devices in this room. The Viceroy would not allow it. You don’t have to decide today, but you will need to decide soon. Please, don’t let this grow inside you. If something was to happen during delivery and you still have it inside of you, you will not fight to live. I am not ready for you die, and I am sure neither are you.”

With that, the older man patted his knee and walked out of the room. He could hear him talking quietly with Brian out in the hall and could hear Brian raising his voice. Brian came into the room, looked at him, and slammed the door.

“If there is something wrong, you can talk to me. You don’t talk to anybody else about it,” he said, as he made his way to the large walk-in closet.

“Why shouldn’t I be allowed to talk to the doctor? Do you not trust him?”

Brian came out pulling a sweater on and handed him one as well.

“It’s not that I don’t trust him. I just thought we had gotten to the point where we were good and you didn’t need him. You can talk to me.”

“Brian, there are things going on with me that I can’t talk to anybody else about. I swear I won’t tell him anything other than what I am feeling, but you have to let me talk to somebody else in this house.”

He didn’t look happy, but he finally nodded and took a deep breath.

“Come, let’s go for a walk. It’s going to rain, and I know how much you love the smell of rain.”

He took the outstretched hand, plastered on a smile, the past locked away again, and followed him out into the cloudy day.

Marcus didn’t bare his soul to the doctor, but he did start talking about his nightmares. The other man didn’t say much, just walked him through breathing exercises, and was a sounding board for him. When they were alone in the bedroom, the locked-away place in his mind slowly started to crack, little by little. He wasn’t feeling healed, but he was feeling better. Then there was a major concern a week later when he mentioned that he hadn’t felt the baby move.

He had been having regular ultrasounds during his pregnancy and was worried when the doctor called down and had the machine rushed up. Brian refused to stand out in the hallway, as he always did when he had a chance to see his baby up close. He tried to talk to the doctor, but the older man ignored him in favor of his patient.

When he had it all set up with the freezing cold jelly coating Marcus’s stomach, he got the wand working its way across his stomach. There was no noise in the room until the heartbeat came through the machine loud and strong. The doctor let out a heavy sigh of relief before going through the motions of measuring the baby to make sure that everything was fine.

“Okay, Viceroy. I am going to have to ask you to leave so I can talk to my patient alone.”

Brian was going to put up a fight again, but one look from the doctor let him know that nothing he did was going to make him agree to let him stay. Once the man was out of the room, the doctor finished cleaning the gel off his stomach and helped him sit up on the bed.

“How often are you talking to him?”

“Who Brian? We talk all the time. I mean when he’s not working.” The doctor reached over and cuffed him on the side of the head. “Hey, that hurt!”

“I was talking about you talking to the baby, not the Viceroy.” Marcus looked away from him at that.

Up till this point, other than the very unfortunate signs of pregnancy that he was going through, he had managed to completely distance himself from what was growing inside of him.

“Brian talks to it all the time,” he defended, and that earned him another cuff to the head.

“Marcus, I am serious. This is your son, not an ‘it’. I know you are not happy right now, but you need to be able to connect to your child. There have been studies done about children and how their learning ability is affected in the womb. To say nothing about feeling the connection to their mother, or father in your case.”

The doctor took his hands and placed them on his stomach. Right away, he felt something happen. It was a really uncomfortable feeling, and not, at the same time.

“This is not an ordinary child that you carry. This is the half son of a God. You don’t think that he isn’t more aware than any human baby born? You have managed to cut yourself off not only from yourself, but also the child that you carry. Talk to him. Hold him from the outside. Let him know that you are there.”

“I’m scared that it’s a monster like that thing that raped me! Don’t you know how scared I am that that thing is going to come for a second round?!? What happens if I have this baby and he turns out like that? Tell me then, what I am supposed to do!”

He was yelling, but he could hear Brian come in through the door, and he turned to him. “Get out!” he screamed.

Brian looked lost, but the doctor gave him a shooing motion with his hand and the other man left.

“Okay, listen to me, son. You are not going to be giving birth to a monster. Your son will come out very human. He will have some powers that we are not even sure about yet, but they shouldn’t show up till at least puberty. Think of the good that you will be able to infuse in him before then.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be preaching to me about him being some all-powerful king?”

“Have no doubt he will be a king, but what kind of king will he be? That is up to you to decide. You may not realize this, but you are the one with all the power here. You can take this child, and give him good. Teach him; don’t let him go with these men who all want something from him. If you don’t stand up for him, he will be taken from Viceroy to Viceroy and he will never be a child. He will be a learning tool. You have a chance here that no other person on Earth has. Please don’t waste it.”

Marcus looked at the doctor as he finally snapped, “I hate you. I hate all of you!” He kept screaming it over and over again.

Brian came in and couldn’t get him to calm down. He kept screaming until he made himself sick and then the doctor was given no choice but to sedate him. He was out very soon after that and missed the doctor being dragged out of the room.

****

He awoke to darkness. The room was dark and all the curtains were closed. He turned his head to the side and saw Brian sitting in a chair beside the bed with this head in his hands.

“Brian, what happened?” The man’s head popped up and he stared at him. It was weird, but Marcus felt the need to touch the man suddenly and reached his hand over to him. Brian stared at it like he had never seen one before. It took him a minute to slowly reach out and grasp it in both of his.

“Don’t you remember what happened?”

Marcus had to think about it for a couple of seconds before the hate and anger he had unleashed came back to him. It wasn’t as full though, like it normally was. It felt like it had been dialed down a notch.

“Am I drugged?” There were still some fuzzy edges around him that he couldn’t seem to shake free.

“We had to sedate you. Would you please tell me what happened? The doctor won’t tell us what happened.”

“Nothing. We just talked and I guess I kind of lost it.”

Brian scoffed at him and dropped his hand.

“Kind of lost it? You think having to sedate my heavily pregnant husband is something that I wanted to have to do? You think that bringing down the house with your screaming is ‘kind of losing it’? Are you shitting me here, Marcus? This was beyond ‘kind of losing it’. You had some kind of breakdown. You’ve been out of it for a whole day. I was going to bring someone in to put a feeding tube into you, damn it.”

“I’m sorry. I mean that I am very sorry to put you through that. The doctor and I were just talking, and he made me see some things that I wasn’t ready to see.”

“Yeah, well you won’t have to worry about him anymore. He will never be coming near you again,” Brian said as he stood up and started pacing.

“What? No, Brian. What did you do? Bring him here now.”

“After what he did to you? I don’t fucking think so. You were fine before talking to him; you will be fine with another doctor.”

“No, I won’t. I want him here with me. Please, Brian. He is the only other person in this house who talks to me, besides you. Please don’t do this to me.”

“To you? You don’t want me to do something to you? You are a liar, you said you were fine. You told me you were fine over and over again and then you pull this!”

Brian was yelling at him, and he was back to being the scary man that he hadn’t seen in so long. He longed to see the soft, blue eyes that he loved having on him. He was losing the man fast if he hadn’t lost him already. That fact should not have bothered him in the least, but he was starting to love him again. Never mind the lesser of two evils in his life.

Marcus took a deep breath and adjusted himself till he was sitting up.

“I wasn’t fine. I was far from fine when we got married.” Brian just stared at him. “I thought if I could just lock away what happened and not think about the past, ever, then I would be fine. But I wasn’t. I care about you. I do. Probably closer to love than care, but that’s not the point. It wasn’t me, not all of me. It was like a piece of me. It was killing me, and I think that it was hurting the baby.”

Marcus reached down and covered his stomach with his hands and was rewarded with some kicks from inside. He was shocked by the instant connection he felt to the little person inside. It was like suddenly he could not only feel the movement, but he could actually feel him deep inside his heart.

“I have never felt him kick. Did you know that? I have never rubbed my hands over my stomach or just put my hands there to feel him. Did you know that? I had managed to distance myself from him. I never even thought of him as my child. How could there be anything of me in him? How could he even be mine with how he was made?”

Brian sat back down in the chair in front of the bed, and placed his hand on top of Marcus’s on his stomach.

“I didn’t hate him because I didn’t feel anything at all towards him. I never thought of holding him, or about him growing up. All I could see was a monster. I know you told me that I didn’t have to worry about it, but I didn’t know if I could believe you. There was so much going on in my head that I didn’t know, and still don’t know, what to believe. When I told the doctor about not feeling him move ever, he did an ultrasound, and he made me feel him. When I felt him kick, it was like I could feel him inside my head and my heart. It hurt so much, and everything that I thought I had kept safe from the world came crashing in. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“Why? Why do you doubt my love for you? Why do you doubt me?” Brian looked stressed, but his level of anger had gone down by a lot.

“You didn’t give me a chance to have any doubts and fears. You told me how I was supposed to feel and that was the end of it. You only gave me two options and neither of those had anything to do with how I was feeling. You have no idea how it feels inside me. I am fat, can barely move, I pee every five minutes, and if I don’t get my chocolate or ham when I want it, I break down in tears. I go from happy, to sad, to angry so fast that I give myself whiplash, and you don’t want anything other than the happy. What was I supposed to do?”

“Ah, love. Why didn’t you say anything sooner? I swear that I would have listened,” he said as he climbed on the bed and grabbed his husband tight. “I would have tried to figure out a way. I wish that I would have noticed. You always seemed so happy, that I just let it go.”

“Well, I’m not. I promise to work on it from now on, okay? Just please give me my doctor back.”

“Okay, I will see what I can do.” He leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Quit squirming around.”

“I can’t; I have to pee.” Brian let out a light sigh and stood up to help his man out of bed, and watched him waddle off to the bathroom. He seemed to have flourished in his day spent in bed, and was even bigger than before.

There was a soft knock on the door. He got up to answer it and found Carl standing in the doorway.

“Viceroy Gochnauer is on the phone again, and he won’t talk to anyone else. You need to take this call.”

Brian turned and watched his man waddle his way back into the room and stop when he saw who was standing there. He took a deep breath then made his way back to the bed. Brian rushed over and helped him into it and tucked him in.

“I have to go take this call, but I will have a plate of food brought up right away, okay? Unless you feel like heading down to the dining room?” Marcus shook his head no at this, “I will also see about the doctor.” Placing a kiss on his forehead, he walked out of the room.

****

Brian was angry. Never in his life had he been this angry. Nothing that had happened up to this point had managed to get him this upset. He still held the phone in his hand, so he grabbed it and the base it was attached to and threw it through one of the windows of his office. This could not be happening.

“Carl, in here now!” he screamed out. He knew who to blame for this. There was only one person in this house who would betray him like this.

“You called the Viceroy?” The man walked in with a smirk on his face. He was well aware of what he had done.

“Who do you report to?” Brian asked

“You, Viceroy,” the man replied

“Then why did you feel the need to contact the European office with concerns about my husband instead of coming to me first?” Brian sat back down at his desk, trying to calm his temper.

“I don’t feel that you can be impartial to the problem in this situation. You have become too attached to the subject.” The man stood there at military rest, stiff as a board and proud. Proud of what he had done.

“By ‘subject’ you mean my husband, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I don’t believe that you are able to see that your husband raising the king is a very bad idea. He isn’t stable enough, and doesn’t seem to be embracing the ways of the Archers.”

“And you felt like you couldn’t bring that to me? You had to contact the others?”

“Yes, sir. As I said, you are too close and don’t see the problem.” The smirk was at full force now. The man was well aware that the call he had received demanded his child be handed over as soon as he was born, and his husband would be picked up to be dealt with.

“I think at this time I need to end your employment with me and our branch.”

With that, Brian pulled out the gun he had under his desk and shot the man between the eyes. He put the gun back in his desk, walked around the body on the floor and called for Carl’s second. When the man reached him, Brian opened the door to the office, letting the other man in.

Looking him directly in the eyes, he took a step back letting what happened to his commander sink into the other man. Then he stepped forward and got into the man’s personal space.

“Who is your loyalty to?” Brian asked.

“You, sir, first, and then the Archers.”

“Good. Congratulations, Jonah. You’ve been promoted. Now take out the trash.” With that, Brian walked out of the room and left him to deal with the dead body on his office floor. He had more important things to worry about.

****

Marcus wasn’t stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Something had happened and nobody in the house was talking about it. He had asked Brian repeatedly and was told not to worry about it. There was just a slight communication problem they were having, but it would be worked out. He called bullshit on that one. There was something big going on, and he hadn’t seen Carl in days. Not that he minded, but the man was the second in command. It wasn’t like he would just disappear. When he asked, Brian just told him the man was reassigned. His new second and head of security was a lot less threatening to Marcus, as they didn’t share the history that he had with Carl. But it just didn’t seem like it was as simple as that. The staff all seemed to be rushing around all the time and there seemed to be a panic in the air.

Brian spent most of his days locked up in his office. He thought maybe the man was hiding from him. When the doctor finally came back to see him, his face was covered in bruises. He wanted to confront his husband about this, but the doctor told him to forget about it. There was no way he was going to let it go until he saw the desperate look on the other man’s face. The doctor just looked him in the eye and asked him again, so he decided to drop it, for now.

His pregnancy seemed to be moving faster than ever, and he seemed to be growing at a scary rate. The doctor was guessing the delivery to be not in days, but in hours instead. This freaked the hell out of him. How had he managed to get to this point in his pregnancy and not once thought about how he was going to get his son out?

Of course now that it was brought up, that was all he could think about. Everything else seemed to drop off to the side as he thought about what was ahead of him. He was driving Brian nuts, when he was able to see the man, making sure that he would be there the whole time. Brian assured him that he would never miss it for anything in the world.

Then he found the passports and birth certificates. It had always been in the back of his mind that something could happen and he could be shipped off somewhere to be killed and his baby taken away. Before, what scared him was knowing that he would die. That had been a guarantee. Now the thought of someone taking his baby from him scared him to the core.

Brian blew him off when he brought it up. Assured him, again, that there was no way that his son was being raised anywhere than with his dads. The paperwork was a just in case they ever needed to take the baby to the hospital. He wanted everything documented so there would be no question as to who the baby belonged to.

He even showed him the adoption papers that had been drawn up to look like they had used a surrogate. The names on the paperwork were not theirs. They were the names that were on the passports he found. Again, Brian said they just needed everything straight and away from the lives they were living before.

So Marcus lived under the mushroom cloud that had been created for him. There seemed to be answers for everything, but it just didn’t feel right. Brian would hold him so tight at night that he had to ask the man to let him go. The other man hadn’t made love to him since his last little breakdown. This was fine by him as he felt about as sexy as a whale, which is what he looked like. Brian would just hold him at night and tell him he loved him over and over again.

His time was spent mostly in his room sitting on his chair talking to Michael Anthony, the name they finally settled on. He found himself telling him about his grandmother most of all. He wished his mother would have been able to meet him. Not that he would ever want her to hear how he came to be the father of a baby, but he would like to see her hold her grandson. That’s where he was sitting, with the doctor sitting in the only other chair in the room, when he felt the first blinding pain.

He gasped out loud at the pain as it ripped through him. It felt like his stomach was being ripped apart. The doctor was at his side immediately, looking at his watch and telling him to breathe as they practiced.

“Can’t breathe,” he wheezed out. The doctor was rubbing his shoulders and talking calmly. When the pain finally passed, he shoved the doctor’s hands off of him. “Breathe, that’s your answer?!? I can’t breathe through that. If that’s what it feels like, then you better knock me out now.”

The man gave him a smile and helped him out of the chair. They had set up a delivery room just down the hallway from the bedroom and he was being ushered there while the doctor was yelling at one of the guards who had shown up a week ago in the hallway. There was always at least one of them there at all times.

Marcus looked at him, and couldn’t for the life of him think of the man’s name right now. All he could do was to shuffle his feet forward, trying to get to the delivery room.

“Drugs, gimme drugs,” he managed to get out before another pain hit him. He leaned up against the wall and the doctor was there helping to hold him up. Again rubbing his back, trying to smooth out the pain that he was going through. No amount of rubbing his back was going to help him.

Once the contraction had passed, they finished making their way into the room. He had been situated on the bed, and his pants taken off when Brian came rushing in. He looked like he had the hounds of hell chasing him. His hair was all disheveled like he had been running his hands through it over and over again. His clothes were all wrinkled, and Marcus tried to remember if he had even made it to bed the night before.

He rushed over to him, took Marcus’s hand and pushed the hair that was already falling into his face away.

“I love you so much, Marcus. You are my life.” Just then another contraction hit and Marcus was unable to respond to him at all. He just squeezed the man’s hand as hard as he could, trying to transfer some of the pain onto the man who had gotten him into this situation.

Once it was over, he was once again begging for meds. The doctor went over to the cabinet where anything that might be needed was ready to go. Brian let go of his hand and went over to the doctor and whispered something in his ear. The doctor flinched at whatever he was being told and then let his head drop.

“What’s wrong? Brian, what’s going on? What’s wrong?!?” he yelled, but the other two men in the room ignored him. He started freaking out, when another contraction hit.

Brian rushed back over to his side and the doctor came back with a needle, but instead of giving him the shot, he laid it on the table beside him. Marcus started freaking out even more now.

“Nothing’s wrong, Marcus. I just need to see how far along in labor you are before I give you anything for the pain. It could not only hurt you, but also the baby. The Viceroy was just reminding me of this.”

“Bullshit. He’s not the one that’s going through this. He doesn’t all of a sudden get to decide what meds I can and can’t have.” He was panting hard now. The pain in his backside was actually taking over the pain of the contractions. He felt like he was being ripped apart in both places, and he wanted the damn meds.

“Oh god, Doc. It hurts so much.” The man had laid a blanket over his legs and now went under the blanket to look at his ass. He should have been humiliated beyond belief at this point— who wanted someone staring at his hole?— but he could have cared less. When he felt a slicked-up, gloved finger slowly enter him he freaked out.

“What the fuck?!?” Brian tried to calm him down a little bit, but it was no use. Marcus was losing it.

The doctor ignored him and put a hand on his stomach, pushing down on it. The doctor quickly added a second finger and felt for what, Marcus didn’t know.

“If you’re looking for my tonsils, I had those taken out. Brian, do something, please.”

“Baby, you are in labor; just relax and let the doctor do his thing.”

“Don’t you ‘baby’ me. Let the doctor reach up your ass for your tonsils, and see how you relax.”

The fingers were pulled out of his ass none too gently, and the doctor stood up. As soon as he did, there was a big gush of water coming out of him.

“Okay, you were just about fully dilated so I just broke your water to move things along a little more quickly. I’m sorry Marcus, but there is no way I can give you any pain medication this far into labor. You need to get ready to push soon.”

Marcus could feel the tears running down his face, and for once, he didn’t really care that he was crying. He was in pain and covered in fluid, and now he was going to have to push the baby out of his ass without the promised meds. He was so scared of this, and was in no way prepared for what was coming.

When the door flew open and Jonah came rushing in, Marcus growled at him. Brian’s hand tensed in his and he could see the fear that crossed his face.

“They are on their way. We have two hours.”

With that, Jonah turned and fled the room, but Marcus didn’t have time to think about it. Another contraction hit and he just tried to survive it. When it was over, he looked at Brian who looked to be in worse shape than him.

“Who’s on their way? What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t worry—” Brian started, but it was the doctor who cut him off this time.

“If you don’t tell him, I will.”

“Tell me what!” Marcus screamed as he started to bear down. The doctor rushed and grabbed his seat and moved it between his legs.

“The Archers are coming.”

“To what, meet Michael?” Marcus managed to pant out as he pushed hard through his next contraction. The doctor didn’t interrupt them, just gently gave out orders on when to push. “I thought that these things could take hours!” he yelled down at the man.

“I guess your son is eager to meet you,” the doctor said, looking at Brian.

“No, they aren’t here to meet Michael. They are here to take you both away.”

Marcus looked at him and wrenched his hand away. He focused all his attention on his next push, ignoring the pain those words caused. He felt like not only was his body being ripped apart, but also his soul. He knew they didn’t mean together, they were here to take his baby and Brian was letting them.

“Get out,” he said, as he bore down again. When Brian went to wipe his brow again, Marcus let go of the handles on the bed and shoved his hand away. “Get out now.”

“No, please don’t do this. Please, let me be here.”

Marcus was unable to reply. His passage was stretched so wide he could feel the head of the baby on his back. He worked on pushing as hard as he could. He wanted the pain over; he wanted this whole thing to be over.

The contractions never stopped, and Brian never left. He stayed by his side and offered small words of encouragement but didn’t try to touch him in any way. It felt like an eternity to Marcus. The pain was indescribable, but then he felt something push through his outer ring and the doctor asked him to stop pushing. A tool was grabbed and the doctor did something.

“Okay, Marcus, head’s out, and I cleared his airway. I just need a couple of good pushes and then you can meet this beautiful boy. Come on you can do this. I know you can.”

Marcus pushed with everything he had, but he was sure he was going to black out at some point. He knew that they said his body would adjust to not only carry but to give birth, but whose body could adjust this much? He was not actually made to be doing this.

With one final push and what seemed like the last of his energy, he felt a great release and could hear the cries of his son. He felt such joy as the doctor handed him his son and gently placed him on his stomach. He was perfect in every way. Ten fingers and ten toes, and a good set of lungs on him.

“Oh, he’s perfect,” Brian said in awe. He looked over and placed a kiss on both of their foreheads. “Don’t say anything, please. I will find a way to make this all right. I swear.”

Not taking his eyes off his son, he said, “How do you plan on doing that, when they are coming here to kill me? Please don’t ruin my only time with my son.”

The cord had been cut, and the doctor took him away quickly to clean him up and get him dressed before handing him back to his father. The doctor ignored Brian completely and focused on Marcus and the baby.

He walked him through the after birth, but Marcus didn’t even notice. He was trying to memorize everything about his son.

“Hey there, baby. I know that we haven’t formally met, but I’m your daddy. Did you know that? Do you recognize my voice? Do you think that you will remember me? I know that I will remember this for the rest of my life. You know I didn’t want you, but now that I am holding you, I know something that they don’t. You are special. So very special to your daddy. I love you so much and I just met you.”

He couldn’t talk anymore as he was crying too hard. How could something he never knew he wanted be in his arms and be the only thing he wanted in his life now? The feelings were too much on top of everything else going on around him.

“Marcus. I am not letting them take you. I have a car all ready to go and the doctor is going to get you out of here right now. That’s why you couldn’t have meds. I need you to be able to get into his car and get out of here. I will see what I can work out with the other factions. Once it’s safe, I will bring you back here and I will get Michael back and we can all be together. I swear it’s not forever. It’s just for a little while.”

Looking at him, Marcus could tell he was trying to believe with his whole heart. That, somehow, he would find a way for them to be together. Yet how alive would he be knowing his baby was halfway around the world from him?

“Brian, let’s just take the baby and go. Please. We can be together. Please don’t take him away from me. I love you, please don’t do this.”

“They would hunt us both down and kill us without a second thought. Then I would not be able to have any say at all in who is raising him, and where he lives, and how he grows up. At least this way, we will be together until I can figure this out.”

The doctor had come up behind him while he was talking, and he never even saw the needle that was jabbed into his neck until it was too late. Marcus watched as Brian slowly slid out of his chair to the floor. Shocked at what was happening, he held Michael closer to his chest.

“I guess we’ll find out now what you will do,” the doctor said to Brian. He turned to Marcus and held out his hand to help him out of bed. “I know you don’t think you can do this, but I need you to come with me now.”

“Why? Where are we going?” Marcus struggled to stand with the baby in his arms and he was just able to do it. He was shaky on his feet, but when the doctor held out his hands to take the baby from him, he just hugged him closer. There was no way he was handing his baby over to anybody.

“When he asked me to take you out of here, I never told him where we were going. The less anyone knows the better. I have your bags here all ready to go. I packed them myself so there was no chance of being tracked. We are going to have to put Michael in one of the bags and zip it up part of the way so it looks like we are leaving the baby here.”

Marcus got dressed as fast as he could, given how tired he was and how much pain he was in. But he finally managed it. The doctor had pulled all the bags out and had one ready to go to put Michael in.

“Hey, baby. I need you to do something for Daddy. I need you to be really quiet for a couple of minutes. Think you can do that for me?” He laid him in as gently as possible and made sure none of the blankets were covering his face. He grabbed one of the soothers from the stash of baby stuff and put it in his mouth.

He grabbed the bag with him in it and started for the door. When he turned around, he looked at Brian lying on the floor and knew that the man had been doing what he thought was right. He wanted to tell him he understood in a really fucked up way, but the man was out cold on the floor, so he followed the doctor out.

There were now two guards waiting at the end of the hall, and the doctor stopped in front of them.

“Brian’s with the baby now. Give the man some time while I get the Chosen One to safety.”

They both nodded their heads. “Safe travels and we hope to see you soon, Marcus,” the tallest one said, his name still escaping Marcus, but he didn’t even care about that now.

His heart was pounding so loudly he was sure that everyone could tell he was hiding something, but they just tipped their heads at him as he passed. They knew that he would be leaving his baby, so why wouldn’t he be acting strange? The fact that they all knew and not one person here warned him made him want to burn the place to the ground.

When he passed by Brian’s office, he stopped. There was a pull there that he couldn’t seem to stop. It was so strong that he didn’t even know he had opened the door and walked in till he was standing inside. The doctor had stopped and came to stand in the doorway.

“What are you doing? We need to get out of here now.”

“Just give me a minute. I have to leave him a note. Please, just give me a minute.” When the man made no move to leave, Marcus just stood there and stared until the man turned around and left the room.

Marcus looked at the desk with all its neat piles of paper and the two big computer screens. There didn’t seem to be a notepad on the top, so he opened up drawers till he stopped cold. There in one of the drawers was a gun with a silencer on the end. He had no idea what kind. Marcus had been to the shooting range a couple of times in his life so he could shoot and knew gun safety, but he’d never really paid attention to all the different kinds. Looking back into the doorway, he checked to see if anybody was watching before he tested the safety and slid the gun into the back of his pants, covering it with his shirt and sweater.

Finding a notepad in the same drawer he quickly wrote out a note:

I could not let you take my son from me. I do love you and will let you know when we are somehow safe. Please, don’t look for us.

Marcus

Leaving the note on the desk, he ran for the garage, carrying his bag as carefully as possible.

The guard at the gate was expecting them. He made sure the doctor was aware that he couldn’t take the main road; he would have to take the side road down. The doctor nodded and then they were gone.

Marcus couldn’t help but turn around and stare at the house that he had been calling home for the last couple of months. How screwed up in the head was he that he was sad to see it go? Maybe once they found a safe place he would start going to therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Michael made it for another couple of minutes before he started fussing. The doctor pointed out a bag that he had packed with formula and bottles. They had talked about caring for the baby before the baby came, and he had watched videos and read books. But actually sitting here feeding his son was a feeling like no other. He was scared outta his mind, but nutso in love with the little man in his arms, so that it didn’t even matter. Once he fed and burped him, he laid the seat back so that they were lying back and held his son on his chest and went to sleep.

He was not sure what woke him. He all of a sudden had the feeling that he needed to be awake and it had to be now. He was alert but didn’t open his eyes, wanting to check out around him before he gave it away. The car had stopped moving, and he was alone in the car, except for the baby that he was holding to his chest. He could hear someone talking outside and recognized the doctor’s voice. Whoever he was talking to must be on the phone as there was no other side to the conversation.

“Yeah, him and the boy… No, I knocked that fucker out. Should have killed him but it was what I had handy… No, we should be there in a couple days… Yeah, switching cars here shortly… No, I made sure that there was no way anyone could track us… Yeah, yeah, it’s all ready. You just have my goddamn money ready when we get there.” The voice faded away and he wasn’t able to catch anything else.

Marcus slowly lifted Michael off his chest and put him back into the small bag on the floor. Once he was situated, he called out for the doctor.

“Hey are we there yet? I could really use a bed to sleep on.” He opened his door and climbed out. They were in the parking lot of what looked to be an old forest ranger’s station. The other man was opening up the shop door and inside was a large black SUV.

“Wow, way to blend in there, Doc,” Marcus said, as he slowly made his way over.

The older man chuckled, reached underneath, and patted the underside, until he found what he was looking for. Marcus tensed now, scared of what the other man was going to do till he yelled out “Yes!” and pulled the key chain out.

“How you feeling? I know that sounds like a stupid question, but I figured once the adrenaline wore off you would be hurting. Sorry, I can’t give you anything till we get somewhere for the night. Just in case we need to run.”

“No problem. May I ask what you are doing now?”

“Well, I had this parked here. I just want to make sure that no one found it and tagged it or something. Don’t want to have anyone tracking us or anything.”

“Yeah, I guess. Sorry, I am so out of my element here. I don’t know about any of this, but I need to thank you for getting us out of there.”

The doctor walked back to the car and grabbed their bags out of the trunk. He pushed a button on the key fob and the back gate lifted on the SUV.

“I am just really sorry that it had to end this way. Never did I think that Brian would be such a cold-hearted bastard as to try to separate you from your child.” The doctor made his way over to the back of the SUV, and Marcus followed him. What was in there confused him even more.

The SUV was full of baby stuff. There seemed to be a playpen, blankets and clothes and even a car seat in the second row.

Reaching into the back of his pants he pulled out the gun he had taken from Brian’s desk and pointed it straight at the man.

“What’s with all the baby stuff? I thought the plan was just to get me out and bringing Michael was a last minute change of plans?”

“Well, well, the little kitten has some claws does he? What do you plan on doing with that? Huh?”

Marcus refused to move. His son was in the other car and was counting on him to get him to safety. “What’s going on? Tell me now or I will shoot you!”

“God, you are so naive. You think that I would willingly incur the wrath of the Archers for some little twink and his baby? Get real, kid. This thing is bigger than you. The price for the two of you, alive and kicking, is fifty million dollars. Who the hell is going to pass that up? Now put the gun down and let’s go.”

Marcus had that feeling again; somehow he knew what was going to happen. He needed to do something right now. He was out of options and his son needed him.

So he pulled the trigger.

Watching the other man fall, he thought that he would feel something. Horror, pain, sadness, anything over the fact that he had just taken a person’s life. Yet all he could feel was relief. After he had lowered the gun, he checked the back of the SUV to see what all they had.

It had been fully stocked with food, medicine, clothes and pretty much anything he could possibly need for Michael. How close he had come to losing his son to someone else had him throwing up what was left in his stomach. When he was feeling a little steadier, he went to the car, grabbing Michael and the rest of his bags. Getting him strapped into the car seat was a lot harder than he thought it would be, and he was getting frantic knowing that at this point every second counted.

When he climbed in the big SUV and pulled out of the shop, he couldn’t stop the shaking of his hands. He knew he had to get away from this place. He needed rest and time to heal. There was only one place in the world he knew he could go to. Now he just needed to figure out where the hell he was and make his way to safety.

****

Epilogue

Brian sat at his desk and stared at the drink in his hand. In the last three months, he had more than his fair share of drinks. He was lost in a war, right now, that he didn’t know if he would win. With no sign of Marcus and Michael at all, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to win.

His whole life had been working to that point. His father had never made it to Viceroy and he was so proud of him when he did. His life was the Archers. From when he was born, he always knew that he would be in charge one day. He lived it, breathed it, and hadn’t cared what they asked for in sacrifice.

He still believed in it. He still believed that, one day, his son would rule the world; that he would be the most powerful being on this planet and others would bow down to him. That was what he wanted. The fact that it was his son, and the carrier was his husband, was enough to get him on the path that he wanted to go down. He knew there was only one thing for him to do. He needed to find The One and take him out, getting himself appointed to the head of all the Archers.

His plan was actually pretty simple, in theory, but in reality it was a lot harder. He was at war with every faction over his failure to control his husband and losing their future king. Every single other Viceroy was calling for his death. He would be doing the same thing if the situation were reversed.

However, it wasn’t reversed, and he was stuck in his office trying to figure out what to do. If he didn’t decide fast, he knew he would be dead within the week. It was a guarantee. All he needed was some hint that they were still alive, and maybe he could go on. There was nothing so far. However, when he became The One there would be nothing stopping him at all, and he would hunt down his husband and child and bring them home where they belonged.

At this point, he needed to find out if they had been sold by the doctor to another group, or if Marcus had killed the doctor himself and got away. Finding the doctor’s phone had been lucky and a fountain of information. Right now, holding that information was the only thing keeping him alive.

Rising to pour out the contents of his glass the phone rang. He stared at it for two more rings before he lifted the receiver.

“Yes”

“In one week at 11:30 am local time The One will be at 60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.”

The phone went dead. Brian stared at the drink in his hand and back to the phone. He felt a smile come over his face. He knew that they would in no way be expecting him to attack. With everything going on, he would be expected to be at home searching for his son. Now that he knew he would be able to take out The One, he had other plans to make.

Soon the hunt would be on.

The End

Author Bio

KM loves her man-love stories. Unable to afford her habit she has picked up her laptop and started writing her own. She lives in Canada with her teenage twin boys and a cat that hates her.

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