Chapter 7
Iline up my warriors. Elves are permitted to train young, the equivalent of a pre-teen in Markaytia, but these Elves have been in the world at least thirty years.
Some of them barely reach the middle of my torso, but they are Elven children and many of them can run circles around even me.
I’m not really in charge, Deglan is, but she trusts me to take them through the standard training exercises without her instruction and some of my own she’s approved of.
Some of these Elves will be the future archers of the Aldrien army. Deglan decides who will be presented to Bayaden’s general and the general will work with that crew until she has a few Elves she can present to Bayaden for selection.
Bayaden is aware of my choices. I informed him as to who was going to make it and who wasn’t. I’m certain and when I’m right, I’ll tell Bayaden I told you so. I might be old and grey by that point, but I’ll make a scene about it no matter what age.
It’s weird to think that I’ll be so old-looking while Bayaden will remain young.
Becoming Elf is off the table for me now and so I will grow old and die within a regular human lifetime.
I never thought too much about becoming an Elf—it was what I had to do, as part of the marriage contract.
There’s a bit of relief, the thought of living for so long was hard to contemplate.
A human can’t comprehend time in that way.
“I want fifty rounds through the obstacle course,” I tell them once I’ve shown them what to do.
I get some scowls, but they don’t dare argue.
I can’t do anything about them if they do, but Deglan can; I reported them to her, and they eventually learned to behave for me.
I’m still proud of every one of them as I watch them progress, even the ones who hate me.
Not all of them think I’m human scum, though.
A few appreciate and even seem to like me.
They return tired. I’ve gotten good at finding ways to exhaust them. “All right. You can head to the baths,” I tell them in Elvish.
“Thank you for today, sir,” Coldera says. “You’re a good teacher.”
The little guy smiles at me and I ruffle the dark hair on his head. He’s the smallest of the pile and I tend to worry he won’t make it. “Thank you. Happy to be of service.”
When we’re on, we’re on and I don’t allow for such softness. I’m more like Father on the field. But off, I’m all Papa. They know the difference. Bayaden joins me as Coldrea scampers off. He yanks me to him. “We’re done for the day,” he declares.
“Oh, we?” It’s early to be heading off the field.
“Yes.” He stares at me, his smile soft like his eyes. “I’m exhausted and my cock isn’t going to suck itself.”
I whack him. “Bayaden.”
“It is your job.”
“I’m telling your sister on you,” I say.
“What’s my brother doing now?” she says coming behind us.
“He’s being his usual arrogant self,” I tell her, still looking at him, trying to memorize him.
Something big’s going to happen, my gut reminds me.
Without warning, he lifts me over his shoulder, bow and all, giving a hefty swat to my arse. “I don’t deny it,” he says, as I complain for him to put me down; all my demands go ignored. “We’ll be occupied for some time Deglan. I’ll need you to finish up here.”
“I can do that.” I can’t see her, but I feel her smirking at me. “Good luck to you Tristan.”
“You never liked me!” I shout.
I can’t see her but her tinkling laugh imprints into my memory.
I have to suffer the embarrassment of being carried across the grounds. “Do you intend on carrying me the whole way?”
“Yes.”
“I hate you, for the record.”
“Noted.”
We travel through the palace, no one paying too much mind to us, except for a couple of guards who love to see me in such predicaments. “What did you do now, Tristan?” one of them says to me, his fine Elvish reminding me how much I still need to work on my accent.
“Wait till I’m upright again,” I curse at them.
“Tristan,” Bayaden warns.
I can get away with some of my banter with Bayaden because we have a special relationship, but it’s not how I’m supposed to treat Elves.
I settle down, having learned about creating trouble I can’t handle.
Bayaden is as obligated to the rules as I am.
“Sorry, but they’re the worst,” I say as Baya continues to cart me off.
“They are.”
We don’t head to his chambers like I expect; instead we go to the room. I should have known with the way he was looking at me on the field.
It was a couple of months into my “enslavement,” just after I promised myself to Bayaden forever, in exchange for them releasing Diekin that Bayaden went all territorial and brought me to this very room, chained me up and strapped me for the first time.
It feels like forever ago.
We’ve been back many times since for a variety of reasons, punishment being at the top of that list. I’m not a well-behaved pet.
But I know I haven’t done anything to earn a punishment, not recently anyway. We’re here for another reason.
He sets me to my feet and because there’s no one here today, I can let him have it. “Carry me like that again Bayaden, and I’ll gut you in your sleep.”
Bayaden snickers. “You wouldn’t. Who would you have to spank your naughty bum?”
No one is here, but I flush anyway. I don’t, however, deny I need him to do that.
I understand something fundamental about myself—I am a brat.
Brats need handling in a different way than a submissive does and Bayaden seems to know just how.
He lets me run and then reels me in with a sound spanking.
He’s strict but relenting at the same time.
What would’ve happened between Corrik and I?
He wanted a submissive husband. And it’s not that brats are not submissive, we are, but it’s in a different way than someone who weighs more heavily toward the submissive end of the spectrum.
Bayaden is no less strict, but there’s a give there; I need that bit of freedom.
I don’t mean to smile in return, but I do. “What are you going to do with me?”
His dark eyes sparkle. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Undress.”
The room has areas, and each area has a variety of equipment.
The area Bayaden’s chosen for us has a high bench with tall posts in each corner—like a four-poster bed but a bench in the middle.
As I undress, Bayaden pulls out rope and my cock is hard at the prospect of what he might do, even though it’s likely to be a very long time before he gets any kind of release. “Lie back on the bench,” he says.
“Yes, sir.” There is still a bit of protocol when we do these things, like with spanking, but it’s not as formal. Bayaden just isn’t the formal sort of person and it comes through in everything he does.
The only exception being when he’s on the field. He takes that seriously. If he doesn’t Elves can die.
My nakedness always feels more when Bayaden is clothed, the textbook symbol of power exchange. “Bend,” he says, and I know he means my left leg. He begins tying my calf to my thigh, with the sole of my foot flat on the bench. “When I first saw you, I didn’t like you much.”
It’s a random thing to say, he hasn’t talked about that in a long time, though maybe it’s not so random and maybe this is a whole lot of foreshadowing to the thing, the thing I can feel but can’t touch. I pay attention. “That’s an understatement. We hated each other. Passionately if I remember.”
He begins working on my other leg. “Did we though? I tend to think that underneath all the dislike, there was something.”
I didn’t believe Deglan when she told me how much the Warlord had taken to me, but after an explosive two months of hate-sex, he dragged me around everywhere and it became clear.
Sure, I’m his manservant, but no I didn’t need to be attached at his hip.
He doesn’t even sleep without me any more like I’m some kind of fucking teddy bear.
I pretend to mind, but he knows better. I’m happy to follow him like a puppy.
“There was something,” I tell him. With my legs tied the way they are, I’m exposed, my hard cock throbbing at the thought of how I’ll look to anyone walking in because anyone could walk in and they’d see me spread for Bayaden like this.
I could close my legs, but I don’t. Baya will just swat them open.
“You were such a brat, but I … I got excited to see what you would do next.”
“You just liked getting to spank me.”
“I’ll never deny that.” His smile is wide enough to show his sharp, Elven, eye-teeth.
Next, he works on tying my arms open in a T-shape, flattened against the bench, but attaching cuffs to each wrist and clipping them to straps that hang from the posts.
Now I’m vulnerable for whatever he’ll do, I shiver.
“If someone told me I could fall in love with a human, I would have had them banished.”
“Don’t hurt yourself over it,” I snark at him.
He swats the side of my arse. “I’m trying to tell you something if you’d behave for two minutes.”
I laugh. “Shutting up, sir.”
“I no longer think about humans as I used to. I never should have; you’ve changed me.”
My heart clenches and I don’t want to think about why he’s getting like this.
I don’t even know how he’d, how we’d separate if we tried.
Aside from obvious Andothair compilations, I made a loyalty oath through magic.
Can it be undone? Regardless, I don’t want to go there, so I act my usual self.
“Damn right you never should have. Elves I tell you. The lot of you are arrogant fools.”
He scowls. “That’s it. You’re in a bad position to be so cheeky.”
“Do your worst, Warlord.” Something you should never say to the Elven Warlord.
“I plan to.”
His fingers ghost up and over my bent knee and up my thigh. I feel every callous, every mark he left on his skin, preferring to keep the proof of his hard work rather than allowing it to heal away. He visits my cock too soon, to tease it and my hips buck off the table. “Please.”