Forced To Kill The Prince

by Hollie Hutchins

  "Yes, that is what I call it," Ronan replied. "It sounds more civilized that way. And I'd rather it sounded civilized, and better it actually were civilized, because whether you believe it or not, I know the way the laws are on our planet--and I wish they weren't."

  "You don't agree with the Pavonian indenture laws?" Cassie asked incredulously.

  "No, I don't," said Ronan. "I don't agree with them and I don't like them, and I'd change them if I could, but I'm not a Ruler. I'm only a Prince."

  Cassie studied Ronan, looked long and hard at the look and the lines on his face, searching for any sign of insincerity or deception, anything to tell her that the man who had laid claim on her life the way someone would hold a deed on a house were having some cruel joke on her. To her bewilderment, Ronan's expression did not change, made no hint that he was being anything less than honest. She furrowed her brow at him, suddenly feeling lost.

  "If you don't believe in the laws, why did you use them?" Cassie demanded. "What am I even doing here? Why didn't you leave me to serve out my damned sentence in your prison?"

  "Would you rather serve time in prison?" Ronan asked.

  "No!" Cassie half-shouted, heedless now of the difference in their stations and the power that Ronan held over her. The confusion that she felt overruled everything else. "No, I don't want to be in your damned prison and I don't want to be bought and sold the way I bought this ship! But I don't understand what the hell it is you're about, now!"

  "I don't supposed you'd believe me," said Ronan, "if I told you that your case came to my attention and that I saw a human female that I thought was too good for what had happened to her, and too good for what was in store for her, and I decided to do something to help."

  Cassie balked, "Buying me is your idea of helping?"

  "It could be," Ronan replied. "After all, even if I have 'bought and sold' you, as you put it, being in my custody must be a better thing than to spend years caged up by the government. Being in the custody of a Prince, in the home of a Prince, must be better than being incarcerated like the common felon that, by the way, I know you're not."

  "There are different kinds of prisons and different kinds of cages," Cassie argued.

  "True," said Ronan. "And I'd say you're better off in some than in others."

  Skeptically, warily, Cassie said, "So I'm supposed to believe you 'optioned' me because you're so generous and so interested in my well-being? Really? What was a Prince even doing, paying attention to the conviction lists and the prison rolls? You must have a thousand better things to do."

  Ronan replied, "It could be that I wasn't so much interested in who was being tried and convicted than I was in what they were tried and convicted for--and who else had a hand in it."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means," he said, "that as you've pointed out, I happen to be a dragon Prince. Do you think anyone lives as a Prince on a planet populated by rival clans of shape-changers without having rivals, even enemies? It's not only the laws on Pavonis III that have a way of being harsh."

  At that, Cassie paused for a moment to reflect on all the realities of the planet where she now found herself. In the late 21st century, Earth’s military began to experiment with splicing genetic traits of animals into soldiers to create soldiers with physically superior abilities in combat. The political and religious outcry against this practice and the resentment of the altered soldiers were so great that many of the shape-shifting personnel left Earth to live on other planets where they could carve out their own societies with their own sovereign laws, independent of Earth. Such a planet was Pavonis III, which was jointly settled by weredragons and werebears. In the social climate of a planet with two dominant life-forms, both of them combinations of humans and other predators, competition had always been especially fierce, and in the early days when the planet was untamed and the colony was rough-hewn, the struggle between civilized life and "survival of the fittest" was especially harsh. Dragon men and bear men had engaged in bitter and often bloody struggles for dominance, often at an appalling cost of lives, and their laws, many of them wanting redress after so many years, still reflected the harshness of those early days.

  Cassie Sladen had come into her present dilemma in a volatile sector of space in the course of her work as a space transport pilot. Sometimes she transported people, but most often she carried physical goods. She carried borderline-legal cargo when she could get away with it. Her latest cargo was a shipment of a plant derivative called Asteria, which had medicinal uses but could also be processed into the drug Phantasos, a powerful dream-inducing narcotic. When rival smugglers and raiders attacked her ship, she was forced to make an emergency landing on Pavonis III, where she and her cargo are seized. Under the laws of Pavonis III, the sentences of convicted lawbreakers fed into the meat grinder of the colony's predatory legal system could be purchased for indentured servitude by anyone having enough money to "buy" a convict, and that was exactly what Prince Ronan had done with her. This was how Cassie now came to face years of bondage on an alien planet.

  Snapping back to the present, Cassie asked Ronan, "Is that why you and this Prince Benno bought out my sentence? I'm, what, the object of some kind of rivalry between the two of you?" Her indignation over all of it was overriding any sense of discretion she may have had in addressing a man who could have her punished for any offense. The entire thing was such an offense to Cassie's dignity and to her very integrity as a person, she was quickly growing not to care what she said or what consequences it brought.

  With more patience than he was obliged to show, given that he had the upper hand, Ronan explained, "Not exactly. Well, yes--and no. It's a bit more complicated than that."

  Cassie's blood felt like a hot stew inside her now. "Please don't play word games with me. Just tell me what it is and why you've done this."

  His patience unwavering, Ronan began, "Benno and I, as you know, belong to two breeds of shifters who don't really get along. My people, the dragons, and his, the bears, both laid claim to this planet as the only non-hostile planet in this sector and our clans and theirs were prepared to kill each other off to keep it. Since the loss of life would have been too dear and neither side had the resources to keep searching for another unclaimed planet, they worked out a joint colonization in which we've lived in varying degrees of peace. Sometimes members of the two sides have even found it in themselves to become friends, or at least friendly rivals. And that is the way Benno and I grew up, I as a dragon Prince and he as a bear Prince. We're friends--but it's always been a competitive sort of friendship."

  "So you decided to 'indenture' me and then compete to see which one of you gets to keep me, is that it?"

  "Not exactly," Ronan continued. "I didn't even know anything about you--at first. Not until Benno started to talk up his eligibility for mating."

  Cassie turned pale at the thought of it. "Oh no. No. You're not telling me that some...bear man...wanted to buy out my sentence and make me some kind of mail order bride!" She took a step away from Ronan, her skin turning clammy. She felt dizzy and sick with more emotions than she could name: the anger and outrage that she'd felt all along, combined with such utter and unutterable dread that she feared she would pass out any second. In all her life Cassie had never felt so furious and so terrified all at once. She felt like a wolf on Earth centuries ago with her leg caught in a trap, ready to gnaw off her own leg and maim herself for life to escape.

  Ronan, seeing Cassie almost ready to collapse against the wall of her ship, raised his hands in an attempt to calm her. "Please," he said, "just listen. There's more to it than that."

  Leaning back against the wall and feeling ready to slide down it and crumple to the floor, Cassie said, "What more could there be?"

  Ronan replied, "Benno doesn't actually want you for a mate. His clan would never allow him to take a human mate; they'd cast him out if he tried. He wants something else. Taking a mate--who could only be another werebear female--means that B
enno must take up a monogamous life. Knowing Benno as I do, I know that he likes the idea of having one female to share his bed regularly better than he likes the idea of having to bed only his mate. He's never cared for monogamy. What Benno wants is another female who is obliged to serve his desires outside of his marriage and satisfy his need for more than one partner. He wants a mistress--one who can't refuse him. Since the two of us have always confided everything in each other, he told me what his intentions were. And he told me that he was interested in buying the prison sentence of a female, the most beautiful female he could find, to be his...obligated mistress."

  Cassie put her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. She was now drowning in disbelief. She was not merely being pressed into indentured servitude. She was being made an indentured concubine. "Please, no," she moaned. "Just send me back to prison. Just put me back in a cell. Please..."

  As gently as he could, Ronan went on: "When I learned of Benno's plans, I wasn't surprised. His attitude towards females has never been the most advanced. But I grew curious to know what poor female might find herself spending years drafted as his extramarital partner. Being a Prince, I have some influence and some people who'll gladly do me a favor if I agree to favor them later, so I was able to get access to the conviction rolls and discover who had entered the court system and might catch Benno's eye. And that was how I discovered you and learned that you were the one on whom he wanted to take an option." Cassie raised her head and looked at him. Something in the sound of his voice suddenly caught her curiosity.

  "I looked up your record, Cassie," Ronan continued. "I learned about you, how you'd come to be arrested on our planet. I know you were doing an honest job. I know you're an honest woman. Yes, the plant compounds you were transporting can be used as a narcotic in the right combinations, but you weren't carrying them in anything but their pure forms. You weren't smuggling illegal drugs, but our planet's damnable laws flagged you as carrying the ingredients of illegal drugs in potentially dangerous quantities, and in cases like this the potential of a crime may carry the same penalty as the crime itself. I don't like these laws. I think they're extreme, excessive, and destructive, and I'd like to see them changed. I hope one day I'll be in the position to help change them. But I looked you up. I found no other crimes on your record. I saw nothing that made you deserving of the sentence handed down to you--or to being sold into indenture. And...all I can say is, I knew Benno's intentions and I wanted to help."

  "You didn't know anything about me except what I do for a living and how I got caught up in your planet's insane legal system, and you wanted to help me? Is that really all there is to it?" Listening to Ronan, hearing the tone of his voice and seeing the look on his face and in his eyes, Cassie wanted to believe him, for believing him might mean that her situation was a little less than completely hopeless. But still she was wary.

  "Should there be anything more to it than that?" Ronan asked. "Do you believe that because I'm a Prince I'm unaware of the way other people live, or the way life is for them? Do you think I've never seen hardship, or want, or just the need to keep oneself fed and clothed and sheltered and healthy? I have servants and I hear the things they say when they think I'm not listening. I know a little something of lives other than mine. And whether you believe it or not, being born into wealth and position doesn't always leave someone heartless. It doesn't always mean someone has no conscience. I know right from wrong. And I knew what's happening to you is wrong."

  "So you took an option on me at the same time as your friend Benno did? So you both have a claim on me? Why is that allowed? Why doesn't the first one to take the option win the prisoner?"

  "If we were anyone else," said Ronan, "the first bidder would take the claim. But because Benno and I are both Princes, and because allowing only one Prince to make a claim might start hostilities between clans, and those hostilities could escalate, my position allowed me to make it a joint purchase."

  "So, what then? You and Benno are going to share me? You're going to pass me back and forth between you?" Cassie could feel the bile rising inside her again. Her emotions were becoming a race from despair to disgust to wrath, all of which were impotent and futile. She was fast growing afraid she would go mad before her sentence was over.

  "To be honest," Ronan explained further, "Benno has been furious with me ever since I made the joint claim. He doesn't want to share his mistress with anyone else, especially me. But I have a plan. If you must spend a part of your time with me instead of with him, I might be able to wear him down. In the best case, I might even be able to persuade him to relinquish his claim. If that were to happen, for the ten to fifteen years of your sentence...you'd be only mine."

  "Only yours?" Cassie cocked a wary eyebrow at him.

  "Yes, only mine."

  "And I'd be bound to serve you and obey you in any way you wanted?"

  "Yes. Any way I wanted. Any way I asked."

  "Or commanded," she said.

  "Who knows, Cassie?" Ronan replied. "In time you might even come to see the things I required of you as...something other than commands."

  Cassie looked off and sighed as if to breathe out the roiling tempest of everything she was feeling. It was all too much. She'd been bought by a bear who wanted to treat her as his property, and at the same time she'd been purchased by a dragon who wanted to treat her as...who even knew what. His entire manner towards her was nothing that one would ever expect of a master towards a slave. She looked back at him again. She wanted to hate him. It would be so much easier to hate him if only he didn't seem to be so basically decent--and if only he weren't so beautiful. Realizing the way she was thinking about him, she put her guard up again. She mustn't be taken in by his handsomeness and his male beauty. It would make her more vulnerable, and that could make her even more of a victim than she already was.

  She tried to find something of his real meaning, the real intent behind his words, in the way Ronan looked at her. How did he really see her? If he viewed her not as a possession and not as chattel but as a person, might there be something even more behind it? Might he actually be looking at her in something like the way a woman wanted a man to look at her? Might he actually find her as beautiful as she did him?

  Wearily but still wound up with conflicting emotions, Cassie said, "It's pretty clear what Benno expects of me." And she fought a wave of nausea that came rolling in over her other feelings and made herself pose him the question, "So what is it that you want? There must be something you think is in this for you. Maybe you're a generous Prince. For all I know you're some kind of dragon philanthropist. What do you expect to get from helping me? You said you thought maybe you could persuade Benno to give up his claim. Or maybe you're trying to make him not want me, make me undesirable to him, because he doesn't want the competition. Is that what it's about, wanting to frustrate your friendly rival?"

  "It could be," replied Ronan. "It could be...different things."

  At this, Cassie studied him again. Ronan's manner was still not that of a master lording it over her. This dragon was a gentleman of some sort. He had yet to behave as anything but a gentleman. But even gentleman were not above ulterior motives.

  "What things?" Cassie asked.

  "Cassie, on my word as a Prince, I promise you this," Ronan replied. "I mean you no harm. No harm whatsoever. I will never do anything to hurt you. I will never abuse you, or be cruel or unkind to you or mistreat you in any way. Your time will be divided between Benno and me, but on my word you will not suffer from being my servant. You will be bound to obey me. But I will never ask anything of you that would hurt you. The first thing I'll ask of you...is that you simply believe what I tell you, and trust me. As your master I'll be obliged to place a certain amount of trust in you. What I'll ask now, at the beginning, is that you place a certain trust in me, and that you believe my intentions are what I've said they are. Will you do that, Cassie?"

  Now Cassie truly did not know what to think. What kind of ma
ster was it that addressed a servant who was in every legal sense his property--and issued a command in the form of a request? What kind of Prince, what kind of dragon, and what kind of man was this Ronan? What was she truly to believe about him? In the end, the nature of their relationship gave her only one choice, only one way to answer him.

  "Yes, Your Highness," she said. "Yes...I'll believe you."

  Ronan smiled at her--actually smiled, not the triumphant smile of someone who had the upper hand, but a smile of actual warmth, which only made Cassie more confused. "Good," he said. "And for my next command: When we're in private, when it's only the two of us...you're to call me Ronan, not Your Highness."

  She shook her head at him: "R...Ronan?"

  "Yes, Cassie. Ronan."

  Mystified, she said, "All right, if you say so...Ronan."

  "Good again," he said. "Now you've been transferred into our joint custody, Benno's and mine, we'll need to get you prepared for your release. We'll have to return to the prison and get you unrestrained and injected. And then you'll be coming with me to my estate. I'm sure Benno will be meeting us there."