Chapter 248
When I became winded Master Damien called a halt to me and I knelt before him. He wanted me closer to him, so I crawled into his lap and rested.
“So, Ronal, you’ve seen a slave that had this problem before?” he asked stroking my stomach.
“Yes, many lunar cycles ago,” Ronal said simply.
“I believe they were from the red mountains.”
Master Evan was irritated. Ronal was being evasive and dragging this out. First the dancing and now he was giving the same information he’d already told them. Master Bane agreed and his anger started to rise. Their emotion was combining and mixing internally, readying to spill over.
Men don’t think right when their tempers are up, I reminded them and the fire all receded into the background.
“You’ve mentioned that, Ronal. What else do you know?” Master Damien asked calmly.
“Slaves,” he said leaning forward, “become very attached to their young. The night the boy chose his family and they put the mark, the woman had to be kept tied to the bed. When it was sent to the Child Keepers, I thought we’d never hear the end of the screaming.” Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org
That made me feel better. The women would mark the child even if it was mine. It would not be an outcast. The bit about us being “attached” to our children wasn’t really news to me, but it was to my men.
I felt the discomfort they all had about that part, but I ignored it. My curiosity had to deal with how they sold the boy. Who made sure his owners would be good enough?
Angela’s Library
Master Damien asked Ronal who sold the boy and the other man grunted.
“Your family’s offspring are valuable. Mistress Nu-reeh will claim the child as hers. That’s what the other woman did. She put the boy in a family. What I heard at the time was she handled the sale Like it was her own,” Ronal answered.
“Anything else about the men strike you as unusual?” Master Damien asked. “They seem to have any special attachment to their slave?”
“No more so than any of you that choose this Life,” Ronal said Looking confused. “You have some unusual attachment to your slave?”
Master Damien scoffed and cupped my cheek as though examining me, “Only wondering why this happened to us is all,” he said.
I met his eyes and the understanding passed between us. The bond was unusual. That was what they had wanted to know and Ronal_ had inadvertently answered the question.
The rest of the conversation was pleasant and not that enlightening for me. My men had never seen things Ronal described, like nursing, but I had. They neglected to tell Ronal they were already intimately aware of what my breasts could produce. My Masters Listened intently as Ronal described the life of a child.
“How Long does it Last?” Master Evan asked.
For a human child I knew a mother kept them for eighteen years, but this wasn’t Earth and this child wasn’t human.
“They kept it for six full turns of the small moon,” Ronal said.
That had meaning to me now. About four hundred twenty days, if the calculation Master Damien did was correct.
I was sad and my eyes started to tear. A little over a year to know my child and release it into this wild world forever. It was too soon, much too quick for any mother.
Water touched my Lashes and threatened to spill over as my body started to tremble. It took all my fortitude to sit stoically on Master Damien’s lap as the men talked. I’d never lost anything this precious before.
Master Bane grunted and stood up. Master Kein made a show of stretching. They felt my pain and I was breaking. It would be better not to do that in front of these men.