“No.” I told her directly and the pop-up disappeared. “Isabella, you’re my wife. I don’t want you to be my slave as well. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that,” I said while looking at Brandr.

“Why would you even want to be a slave?” I asked her.

“I think it might be for the best in the long run,” Isabella told me.

“Why?” I was confused.

“For starters,” Isabella began, “there’s a few nice and powerful bonuses that a slave gets that’s hard to ignore. ‘100% immunity to mental effects,’ is something dang hard to ignore the benefits of. Especially in light of what happened yesterday. I lost my ability to think and reason properly due to the changes my body was undergoing. I’d imagine that the slave-sworn advantage would protect me from that in the future.”

Gently she leaned up and kissed me on the lips. “And it’s not like it’d really change a whole lot between us. Even before I wasn’t going to refuse what you told me to do. Very little would change between us, and the benefits seem to me that they’d outweigh any negatives.”

I thought about what she was saying for a few moments and then shook my head from side to side. “I don’t like it.” I told her. “For starters, I simply like you being you. You don’t need to become an extension of me. You have refused me in the past, and I was thankful for it – even if I did punish you with a nice little song and stroke routine. If you were mine, you could never truly disobey me, and that might be something very important sometime.

“Second, it’s putting all our eggs in one basket. If something were to happen to me, like I end up charmed or under the control of someone else, then all of us would be trapped under that person’s or beast’s control. In some ways, separate, but joined, makes us stronger than simply being all under a single command. Democracy is stronger than a dictatorship, or something like that.

“And third,” I continued, “we don’t know what will happen to the two slaves you already own – Flibi and Lucy. Can a slave own a slave? Would they become mine?” I came right out and told her, “I don’t want them. Never have. Never will.”

I stared directly into her eyes to make certain she could tell how serious I was about the two of them. I was doing the best I could to try to help take care of them, but they honestly still gave me the creeps. I didn’t want to be around them any more than was necessary, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be responsible for them. I already felt bad about the state they were in, and if they were mine I’d probably do something stupid like spend my personal points when I got them to try and help them – and even though my brain knows that’s a bad idea, I don’t think my heart would ignore it.

The best way to avoid temptation for something stupid like that, is to simply never put myself in a situation where something like that is possible. They can be someone else’s, or they can die. They’re never going to be mine.

Isabella frowned a few times and then slowly nodded. “I understand.” She sounded disappointed, and for some odd reason Brandr stuck her tongue out at her. How the hell can a slave taunt a free person over not being allowed to become a slave? I always thought freedom was the desirable state and not slavery? What the hell is wrong with the world? Or was there something wrong with the way the old world used to teach us?

I’ll be damned if I knew anymore.

Slowly Isabella leaned up and kissed me. “Then can I at least renew the old promise between us? Or maybe make a slightly better one for the future?”

“Sure,” I told her. What guy is going to say no to having a woman swear to obey him most of the time? To be honest, I wasn’t certain why she wanted it so badly. Maybe it has something to do with her race now. In the stories I remember talking about demons and such, didn’t they usually serve some type of dark lord, or wizard, or something? Maybe it’s a quirk of her race?

If so, I could kind of understand it – but it doesn’t explain why she made the promise to me before she ever got the book to begin with. Maybe her promising to obey me already somehow shaped the choices that the book offered her? Like it viewed her as a slave of some sort already, and was giving her a choice of classes that follow that path? If so, those skill books might be very interactive and very scary things. Who knows what choices one would give me, if I picked it up now with my negative spirituality, harem of girls, and being a slave owner…

I wasn’t certain I liked where that idea might lead me, and even thinking of it made me shiver slightly. Hero class material, I probably wasn’t anymore. I don’t know what the hell I might be suitable for, but honestly it probably wasn’t anything good and decent anymore.

While I was lost in my own inner worries, Isabella was lost in her own inner thoughts as well. Finally, she leaned up and kissed me slightly on the lips to make certain she had my attention. “I’m ready,” she told me while wiggling and straightening herself in my lap lightly.

“Bloody Hell, I promise that from now on, I’ll obey you as I did in the past. As long as you don’t kill me, nor harm me for no good purpose, then I’ll obey your commands or else willingly pay the punishment – whatever that may be – for disobeying them, from now on.” She was staring me straight in the eyes and I could see electric sparks flickering wildly throughout her irises.

“I also swear, to obey you completely, without restraint or limit, if all of the following conditions are fulfilled. First, you must speak my true name, either aloud or through the private or party chat, or even some other undiscovered means that we haven’t found yet. Second, you must be in your proper state of mind and in control of your own actions, and not under the control or orders of another. And third, I cannot be in the proper state of mind nor in control of my own actions and able to consciously refuse you.

“When these three conditions are met, I swear that I shall obey you completely and without hesitation, or resistance, until such time when you choose to release me again, or if you lose control of your own will and freedom to another. This is the promise that I make, to bind us and hold us, to protect us and strength us, forever more.”

DING!

Congratulations!

Oathbound Starchilde has offered you a heart-vow!

Do you wish to accept?

“I accept.” Somehow it didn’t seem adequate as a response to what Isabella had just offered, but I’m not one for fancy speeches and would probably just screw something up if I tried to make one. Best for me to just keep things simple.

Slowly a pale blue glow seemed to rise up out around Isabella, spreading out gently from her to me, before settling around me and seeming to sink into my skin. It light was warm and comforting, and for a moment, the whole world melted away and there was just me and Isabella in it. Gently, I leaned up to kiss her lightly on the lips – she stuck her tongue down my throat and tried to swallow my tonsils in response.

As we pulled apart, Isabella lightly giggled and then wiggled her hips back and forth in my lap. Her eyes were a deep violet now, her hair was thick and draped down past the couch and into the floor, and the mounds in the front of her chest were much larger as she leaned herself up against me and started to squirm – but that mischievous spark and light laughter was back. Isabella was truly Isabella once more.

And from the way she was starting to wiggle and giggle, it seemed as if she was planning on getting her morning meal now – no matter how fine a job Brandr had done handling the situation this morning…