Chapter 2

Mark looked around his gilded prison.

At first, he was treated like an honoured guest, and while he struggled to understand how this society worked, he had bided his time and watched what he said and did. The fact that he had been disorientated upon waking and that the local language was slightly different from his own, meant he could play the ignorant foreigner.

If bloody Trish hadn’t tried that stupid spell while he had been gathering the Quaz crystals, he wouldn’t be where he was. His medallion had blocked the worst of the blast, but he had been tossed back onto the dais and knocked out when the crystals in his hands had exploded.

He knew as soon as he opened his eyes that he wasn’t in his world anymore. The odd thing was that the room didn’t have any crystals in it. He couldn’t work out how he could have gotten here if there were no crystals. He sure wasn’t going to get home again in a hurry.

When the healer had touched him, he determined that she was a novice and a Shifter but not a Paragon. They had no ordinary Shifters or any of the other distinct races on his planet anymore as everyone displayed the Paragon genetics and mixtures of genes from the original races.

It had only taken four generations after his great-grandfather had rescued a group of Keltrians from a section of a broken wheelship for this to happen. The Keltrians had been escaping their planet. They had then become stranded on his planet, Torus, when their form of a spaceship had failed. It had broken up into its sixteen sections. Several of them had made it to the planet’s surface.

Mark’s people, the Paragons, differed from the Shifters on this planet in that they had phenomenal abilities to remember all that they were taught and learnt, due to the inclusion of alien DNA in their genetic makeup. Most of his people were born with genetic memories.

A fifth of Mark’s people had strong magical abilities and could wear mage items. Nearly all of the rest had latent abilities. It was now less common that a person didn’t at least obtain the low novice class of a single item, by the time they were thirty-five.

Mark wore a full four gem set of items that included a diadem, a medallion, a ring and a wand. He was classed as a High Mage, and he was only twenty-one. At the time of the accident on Torus, he was supposed to move to one of the new outposts and to manage it, so he had been gathering new crystals to take with him.

Mark had never heard of anyone ending up on a new planet or just plain disappearing when going through the portals. The transportation rings had worked flawlessly between the settlements for a hundred years on Torus. He knew some people had tried to get the rings to take them to different planets, but they had never been successful.

Mark could only assume that the explosion had something to do with why he got to be the lucky candidate to go off planet. He bet his mum and Cara were really pissed at Trish. Cara had been chasing him for years to marry her. He had a strong affection for her, and she had birthed his first child, but he wasn’t sure that he loved her enough to choose her as his first wife.

In the year that he had been stranded on this planet, going by the local calendar, he hadn’t really missed Cara that much. He missed his sons, Ivan and Jake, and his mum more. To his knowledge, he was the only male born Paragon to produce two male born sons.

Being born in male form was still very rare on Torus. He was surprised that here, many of the Shifters were born male but they could only change to one or two animal forms and not to female in any form. Mark could change to twelve different forms in a blink of an eye and be of either gender.

Tory, the Controller on his planet, who created his race, said that he was an oddity like his great-grandfather and Mark could only agree. The disadvantage here was that his forms were not quite the same as their cousins. While many common animals were similar and even had similar names, they varied just enough that he’d not been able to use this as a means of escape.

He also couldn’t blink (teleport) as long as he was kept in the palace. A spell in the shield over the palace and its grounds prevented people not of royal blood from blinking in or out. He hadn’t worked out how to get around the spell yet, but he was close.

After his arrival, it didn’t take Mark long to work out that his differences were a fascination to the medical scientists here and the Queen. He had been given a suite of rooms near hers, and that was where he was right now. Awaiting her ladyship to come and be entertained by him.

If he hadn’t knocked up two of her ladies, they might have allowed him more freedom. At first, he was encouraged to fuck whoever was interested. He’d had a bevy of fine arses sashaying through that door. The ladies in question had been deliberately sent to him while in season. They were high born but not considered heirs.

For the female Shifters here, they only became fertile once or twice a year. Once they had birthed a child, this could extend to only once a year or even longer as they aged. With the male Shifters having low sperm counts or being infertile, they were not generally used for breeding purposes. If they did get lucky, the child was rarely born in female form, and so it couldn’t inherit.

The production of a child here was taken as a scientific endeavour. It was often negotiated between the different parties. The father of the child has no rights over the child, as it was a matriarchal society. Even the non-shifters tended to look for a father who produced female offspring or came from a family that was dominantly female.

Queen Vasari had wanted to know if the fact that Mark had tested virile made a difference to his offspring. The doctors informed her that both ladies had fallen pregnant after just one night with him. Since then, they had both given birth to female children, so his worth suddenly increased and so did the restrictions on his movements.

Mark had been told that he now had six children and four other ladies were expecting. Each of the ladies who had given birth had shorter than normal gestation times of only four months, and they all had delivered healthy female children.

Mark was pissed that while he had personally implanted four of the kids, he had not known about the rest. He wasn’t happy when he discovered that the Queen was selling his sperm to the highest bidder and expecting him to supply it whenever she wanted it. He had been supplying it for the scientists as far as he knew.

He’d become suspicious when she sent him two young women who were non-shifters. They’d had an odd smell when they first came to him. He suspected that it was a contrived potion to make it appear that they were in season. He was happy enough to screw them but wondered why they wanted him to think they were in season.

The joke of it was that after a week of their visits, he did manage to knock both of them up. The Queen wasn’t happy about this development at the time. The fact that the girls had since delivered two fine girls and that they both tested to be Shifters had a profound effect on her.

Since then, she had tried to limit Mark’s physical interactions to herself, in the hope that he got her to come into season too.

When Vasari came into his room, Mark didn’t look up.

He was seated with one leg over the arm of the chair. He was reading, and a tea service with an empty used cup sat on the small table beside his chair. Vasari cast her eyes over his body and liked very much what she saw.

“How is your ability to read our language going, Mark?” she asked him when he didn’t immediately acknowledge her. He shrugged but didn’t remove his eyes from the book. Vasari bristled, “I’m speaking to you, young man.”

Mark let out an exaggerated sigh but didn’t look at her. “Where I come from, a person’s private chamber is theirs to rule. A knock and asking for permission to enter is considered polite. But then again, a prisoner has no rights do they, Vasari?”

“Mark, you are my guest, not a prisoner,” Vasari retorted. She found him an aggravating young man when he got into one of his moods. His attitude of late was really starting to irk and worry her. If he wasn’t so bloody good in bed and her one means of begetting an heir that the Crown would accept, she would have had him removed to the dungeons months ago to teach him a lesson in humility.

“Vasari, I’m sick of the games. I’m not interested in having sex with you as I told you weeks ago. You are not in season and never will be again. Are your people that afraid of you that they are not game enough to tell you? Healing may not be one of my strong suits since I’m primarily an Earth mage, but I do have Lore and Psychic abilities.”

“You have run your race in the reproductive field. I believe you have been barren since not long after your son Ricardo was born. You do not have any eggs left to release. Your best hope as far as I’m aware is your daughter, Halina. However, I won’t fuck her again either. One night was enough for any male,” he replied in a sardonic voice and faked a shiver.

Vasari looked at him in horror, “When did you service my daughter?”

“About ten months ago, when she came into her season and visited me. I think it was the worst experience of my life. Does she have to pay her males to service her?” he replied straight faced.

“Whatever do you mean? Many Shifters wish to have the honour of getting her pregnant,” Vasari replied, indignant on her daughter’s behalf.

“They may wish the honour, but I doubt they enjoy the experience. That woman is incapable of enjoying sex as a female. Even being in season didn’t stir her juices. I’d have had more fun giving myself a hand job.”

“She hates to be penetrated by a male in any hole. Nonetheless, from what I’ve heard, she is more than happy to penetrate them. Also, I don’t believe she had released an egg. It is possible that her reproductive cycle is no longer effective, as she hasn’t come into season since. If she had received a magical item sooner it might have made a difference,” Mark replied.

In her eighty years, Halina had only had two sons. Mark had not been terribly impressed with either of them. She hadn’t given birth in the last thirty years. Halina also only wore a ring with a single gem for Nature, and it had taken her forty years to earn it. She hadn’t given birth until she wore the ring. Mark didn’t consider the spoilt woman a good candidate for the position of Queen.

“Bloody Hades,” Vasari swore and plonked her arse down in a chair in a very unqueenly manner.

Mark studied the woman’s face. He did feel sorry for her predicament, but he didn’t see how to solve it without further cost to himself. “So, what do I have to do to gain my freedom?” Mark asked her.

“I need a bloody heir,” Vasari snarled.

“Fine, find me a female relative young enough to have a child, and once she has given birth, I will expect you to honour my wish to be set free. If she can’t come here, I’ll go to her, and I promise not to leave her until she has delivered a child with magical abilities.”

“I doubt I can go home to my world, but I’m sure I can find something to do here that is more productive than providing sperm to service your women on demand. I have found being wrongfully enslaved distasteful and hard to endure.”

“Your treatment of me and disregard for my feelings has been disrespectful and bloody cruel. Not to mention that it isn’t the behaviour of a good mage. You have stomped all over my rights and used me for your own gain. You have kept me imprisoned when I have committed no wrong by your laws.”

“I believe I have the right by your laws to have a Guild Mage to judge my case. So unless you keep me locked in a mind shielded room or we find a solution, I shall call on the next mage who enters this palace to ease my plight,” Mark informed her with a hard edge to his voice.

Vasari looked at him in shock. “Who has been telling you of our laws?” she demanded.