"Good morning, Anastasia"

"Good morning, Mikachu. What else do you have to say?", She tells me with an expectant look.

Uuuuhh...

"Did you have nice dreams?"

"Nope"

"Good morning, my queen?"

"Nope"

"Can I hump you?"

"Wait, what? NO! IT IS WOMAN'S DAY TODAY!"

"Aaaah! Happy women's day!"

So! Happy women's day (for that one lady reading this novel).

Enjoy the novel!

Valeria Ern POV

WHAT? Were we looking at the same thing? DID YOU EAT SOME MAGIC MUSHROOMS? If you did, then first of all… I WANT SOME! They must be good shit!

Second of all: you should probably rethink that, Eliyon!

I can see Akif freeze – the same freeze my husband got after I told him I was pregnant.

“Aaahaahaahaa… Uuuh… Suuuure… Yes! Suuure…! We can…uh, do that! Sure…”

Atre and Venali is laughing their asses of right now, and with an awkward voice, Akif stutters out that reply. It is oddly similar to the sound Levin made when I asked him if he were going to marry me now that I was pregnant. That was 16 years ago, and today my boy became an adventurer!

Aaah… yes… the sound of responsibility suddenly emerging from a bit of fun…

Granted… the process of him getting his licence - which he wasn’t conscious when receiving - could have gone a tad smoother. That being said, he did eventually get it!

“*cough*, I don’t mean to be rude, but you might want to rethink that, Eliyon. I think you guys might be slightly too young to have kids. Take it from a mother that knows first-hand how it is to raise them”, I tell the expectant princess. She doesn’t seem to mind me telling her that, and with a;

“Yeah… you are probably right... Sera! We need to go to the alchemist again. I am all out of… you know… Stuff”, she luckily pushes that idea out of her head.

Phew! Another child saved!

My son lays promiscuously spread out on the back of their Dunedime beast. The same position I was in when his father made me pregnant, to be more specific.

Well… at least it was a prince that put him in that position. Wait… that didn’t sound right…

The carriage we came on is following us as I ride one of the horses that used to pull it before we released it from the tethers. I have no clue why Akif didn’t place Lukas inside the carriage, but ooh well… He didn’t. I am not going to complain about it.

And what is the deal with “Don’t worry! We will be bringing him back!”

DID YOU REALLY THINK WE WOULD COME HERE WITHOUT ANY TRANSPORTATION BACK?

We ride through the streets of the outer layer, and most of the eyes are on me. They all know who I am, but somehow the princess and the prince`s manage to go unnoticed through the streets. It is as if they don’t know who they are!

The girls quickly run into an apothecary, and I have a feeling I know what they are going to buy!

Oh my! Look at the little minxes run! Atleast they are smart about it. Not like I was.

Aaah… the memories… Levin doesn’t seem to care about me any longer. We had sex TWICE last year!

It feels nice to be ogled again. It feels even nicer when it is a man half my age doing it, and – now – a prince!

I need to get laid…

I ride through the streets with a smile on my face and a slight blush after remembering how Akif were looking at me the first time he saw us. After the fog of war has lifted from my eyes, I can see that he isn’t as bad as I first pictured him to be.

To my surprise, he is actually a pretty decent young man. Yes… He was harsh with Lukas, but I could see Lukas enjoying himself.

The look in his eyes was widely different from the ones he had when he was training with Levin’s guards. Looks of boredom and weariness could be seen in my son’s eyes as the guards tried to teach him what they knew.

Their teaching methods is widely different as well! The guards gave detailed descriptions even I didn’t understand, and expected that Lukas could do it correctly just after they have finished this incredibly detailed explanation of things. Hell… Even Ragamond Heir couldn’t do what those guards told my son to do. Half of it didn’t make any sense, and the other half was buried in code words – I think.

Akif told him what to do with simple words, and why. If Lukas didn’t do it correct, he got hit with the pummel of his daggers. Lukas didn’t seem to mind the pain, but he swiftly corrected his mistakes. What really made him learn was to see Akif doing it. I think the guards were too afraid to hurt my son, because I have never seen him spar before.

“What the hell have your teachers been teaching you”, escaped Akif’s lips on more than one occasion.

“Combat is honour. Honour is combat”. What does that even mean? No one can be honourable except for soldiers?

No… I agree with Akif`s point of view. Combat is a dirty business. You have to take what you want. If you want to live, you have to take your life back from your opponent’s hands before he can finish you off. There is nothing honourable in dying. As Akif told us so graphically;

“Everyone dies the same way”. He should know. He has taken hundreds of lives in that Arena.

That same logic holds true for any aspect of life. You can’t just sit there and wait for it to plop into your lap. You have to reach out and take it with your own hands. There is nothing honourable in what you do. What can be honourable is who you are. Being a king isn’t honourable, but being a good leader, is.

That being said, I don’t think he is ready for a child yet. Children are a lot of work. You can’t just up and go somewhere when you have a child. You are locked for at least 12 years. Those 12 years are spent guarding your child, and the instinct to guard your child doesn’t go away, no matter how old you are.

We ride through the Inner circle, and I can feel the familiar presence here. It isn’t bad to be in the outer circle, but somehow I feel more at home here. Maybe it is because no one keeps looking at you in shock?

Akif is talking with the girl named Venali. They seem to be friendly, but I can hear some carefulness in his words. Not because of social status, but… mistrust - I think. The girl hasn’t done anything to earn that mistrust from what I have seen, but she seems very close with Atre. Maybe that is why he doesn’t trust her? Atre and Akif seems like two peas in a pot, and if I were to believe the rumours, Akif is teaching Atre swordsmanship from time to time. No wonder he told us that he could slay us before we even knew we were dead.

She was introduced to me by Princess Eliyon. Apparently she is a close friend of Atre, and the girls suspect there might have been some romance involved. They don’t have any definitive proof for this, but their intuition was screaming. Of course I chose to believe their intuition – I know it is correct at least 95% of the time.

That is why I know Levin is probably sleeping around with other women. No man goes from having sex at least once every two days, to twice in a year without getting some pussy on the side.

We enter the courtyard of my mansion, and a sleeping Lukas is carried in by Akif. He tosses him into his bed like he was a sack of potatoes, and walks off, with a;

“Buy him a couple of short swords, and bring him to the castle tomorrow morning”, they leave our mansion.

It seems like Lukas has gotten himself a tutor!

Akif POV

We leave the mansion Valeria is living in. Lukas must have been pretty tired, because he slept like a log the entire way back. For some reason Valeria kept looking at me while having a thinking face on, and she even blushed once.

I wonder what she was thinking off.

“So! Venali! Where can we drop you off?”, I ask the girl riding on Atre’s deer.

“Aaah… I was thinking of bringing her home with us. Now that the cat is out of the bag, there is no point in not showing her around the castle, is it?”, Atre tells me with a smile.

Well… at least he looks happy? I guess I should let her off then. She doesn’t seem too bad.

Atre is resting his hands on her hips. Not in a perverted way, mind you. Just for… stability? An extra squeeze from time to time won’t hurt either. Her hips are nice and formful.

She doesn’t say anything about it, so I guess she doesn’t mind it either.

Venali looks at me with gentle eyes as I ponder about her. There is no malice in her look. I can feel no bad emotions coming from her. Not a single one. She is just a nice girl, I think.

“I really am sorry for what happened earlier, Akif. What happened earlier today is not something I thought would happen. I just wanted to meet a friend I hadn’t seen in years. A friend I missed dearly. If me coming to the castle is a problem, then I honestly don’t mind being let of in the outer circle. My house isn’t too far away from the gates to the inner circle. I know you care about your friend. It is one of the many things I like about you”, she tells me with a soft smile on her face.

“Atre is lucky to have someone like you in his life. I think the life after he left us was hard on him from what I heard. He was a lonely man, but now he has gained two very good friends in you and Sera. His niece is even there to keep him entertained”.

“That being said, I am not intending to let Atre go just because you are worried about your friend. I don’t mind any harm, and when you hear the full story, you might come to realize that. I will not be the one to tell you that story, so just wait until Atre is ready and willing to tell you”.

“I came over to him to re-establish contact with my friend. He is a good man. A man I missed, and a man I need to have in my life. I accept that you are weary of me, but I am not going away because of that. What I want is for us to be friends as well. Atre told me a bit about you, and I think we can be mutually benefit from each other’s company. I also really like Sera and Eliyon, and I hope to spend some time with them as well”.

“I hope as time goes you come to see me not as a threat to your friend, but as a friend of your own. That is all I want, Akif. I don’t know what will happen between me and Atre, but I can promise you that I will never hurt him. I can tell you that the reason he was crying both is, and isn’t because of me. I never did anything to wrong him. What hurt him may have been my ignorance”.

Well… that is pretty much as clear as it can get! Why can’t everyone say stuff this clear. THIS I can understand. Vague words and hidden insults? Nope…

“Venali. I am not an unreasonable man. I was worried about my friend earlier. He was in pain, and I wanted to help him. I also realize that you don’t mean any harm to him. I don’t have any issues with you coming with us to the castle”, I tell her with a smile of my own.

She smiles back, and I can see a warm look erupting in Atre’s face.

“Soo… what was the deal with the fart earlier”, She asks me.

“I just wanted to see how people reacted. They seemed to take it oddly well, but I don’t think I will be doing it again. It was a one-time event. People seemed to mostly just stare at me in disbelief. As if they were saying; “I can’t believe you just did that””.

Eliyon gives me a gentle nudge in my ribs. As usual, I am riding in the back while holding around my princess.

“Akif. Don’t do that again, please?”, she asks me with a gentle voice.

That was NOT a question…

“Don’t worry. I am just experimenting with what reactions I would get in different social situations. It isn’t often I have the chance to try out something like that!”.

“You could have asked us, you know. “Eliyon? What would the reaction be in a room if it is dead silence, and I let out the wettest fart anyone has heard in a while?”.

She has a point…

“You have a point there, Eliyon. However, that wouldn’t have given me the detailed information I gained from my little experiment. You would have just said “They will stare at you in shock”, or something like that. Now I realize how that feels”.

“Yes… but before you do something like that again, please prepare us?”.

“I will try, but I can’t promise anything. What I can say is that I will not do anything damaging to you ladies. I love you, and I want you to have a good life. That doesn’t mean I can’t make it an exciting life!”, I tell her with a smirk.

“There is one thing you ladies don’t seem to realize. I am deeply in love with you, and I let you do and say whatever you want to me. I am fine with being denied food just after I have eaten breakfast. I am fine with all of that. I am your lover. You ladies have some rules I have to conform to.

Rule number one; No food after breakfast.

Rule number two: No farting in public.

Rule number three: Listen to us when we say something. There is a reason we are saying it.

Rule number four: Tell us before you do something stupid.”

“I am fine with those rules, and I will try to adhere to them as much as possible. I know I am still far out of my depths. I know I need your help and advices. I know all of that. I will probably let you ladies do the talking in the future, but what I will NOT do, is blindly listen. I may not ask questions, but I will be asking them in my head. If those questions aren’t answered, then I will ask you personally. If I can’t even fathom why you tell me to do something, then I will ask you “Why?””.

“That doesn’t mean I will not go and get, say… your panties across the room if you ask me to. I do that because I am a decent human being, and it is easy for me to do it. If you ladies are unwilling to get up from bed, and I am, then sure! I will get your panties”.

“I love you ladies, and I love being around you. I actually have friends now – something new and exciting for me. Sera was my friends for years, but she had to sneak out of her house, and sneak into the slave barracks without anyone noticing, to spend time with me. That meant we didn’t have much time together, and the times she came, she usually needed my support. Having her in my arms was probably the best thing that happened with me”.

“You ladies keep me sane. I would not have been able to function the way I do without you. I would have been so lost in this world, I might have just said “fuck it”, and ended myself. I realized how different this world is to the one I am used to, and I would have had no idea how to handle it if it wasn’t for you. I had been looking forward to my day of freedom without actually preparing myself for that day. I didn’t know the life I lived was so different from the life I am living now. You ladies rescued me from a very harsh fate, and I am truly happy for that. The best thing in the world was for me to become Sera’s body guard. I got to spend time with her, and meet you, Eliyon.”

“My future was saved when that happened, and I love you ladies for that. You saved me just as much as I am keeping you ladies out of harm’s way. My job is easy in comparison to yours. You ladies have to constantly keep watch over me. Who knows when I do something weird again? I don’t think I ever told you my honest feelings, Eliyon, but here they are. Thank you, Eli – My princess. That goes for you too, Sera. You should be a princess as well, right? Or is that not how it works? Anyways! Thank you Sera – my princess. I love you two more than my own life. I truly do. You are what makes my life worth living”.

After that confession, the people around me got eerily quiet. I don’t know what I did, but for some reason they keep as quiet as church mice.

Did I do something bad again?

“Dude… that was some heavy shit you just dumped on us!”, Atre told me with an exasperated voice.

“Uuuh… did I do something bad again? I just spoke what I was feeling? Is it bad when I do that?”.

The rest of them doesn’t quite know what to say to that, so I let them be.

The whole ride through the Inner district is filled with crushing silence. At least I feel like it is crushing. The mood is heavy for some reason. As if I can actually feel pressure in me.

The beautifully decorated houses can be seen everywhere, and the cheerful laughter of nobles can be heard. A restaurant seems to serve fried meat, and it smells freaking fantastic. All of that amplifies the crushing feeling I am harbouring right now.

What is that feeling? Why am I feeling like this?

Atre just tells us “We are heading to my private quarters. Will I be seeing you tomorrow morning, Akif?”.

With a light “Yeah” from me, he heads off to do whatever he is going to do.

It isn’t until I help my beauties off the Dunedime beast I get a reaction from them.

“We love you too. What you just did was nothing bad. Me and Sera loved hearing your true words. The reason no one said anything was because no one knew what to say. It is hard to say something after a heartfelt admittance like that. You gave all of us something to think about. We love you too, Akif. We love you more than you could have ever imagined”, She tells me as the two of them leans in and kisses me on my cheek.

“So… what was that crushing feeling I was feeling earlier?”