Read Online The Hunter's Surrender by Kaenar Langford - Free Book Online

fertile, you took Protoron thereby thwarting any chance of achieving pregnancy with the subject?” His interrogator’s tone was skeptical.
    “Maddie,” King Rochar responded.
    “I beg your pardon?” came the haughty reply.
    “I said, her name is Maddie, and I accept your apology,” the king replied coolly.
    “My apology? I gave no apology,” the High Solicitor blustered.
    “You said, ‘I beg your pardon’, and I assumed you were apologizing for referring to the woman I love as ‘the woman in question’, and ‘the subject’,” King Rochar said in a dark, broach-no-argument tone.
    Subdued laughter broke out among the council members.
    “I’ll rephrase the question,” the solicitor conceded. “Did you take Protoron, a substance known to prevent pregnancy in the receiving female, when you were with…Maddie?” He said her name as if it were a sour taste in his mouth.
    “The Protoron was necessary,” King Rochar said.
    Lord Marberry drew his eyebrows together in a scowl. “Necessary? In what way?”
    “Maddie had been surreptitiously injected with an implant that allowed us to monitor her female cycle,” the king said.
    The shake of his head indicated that Lord Marberry had no idea where the discussion was headed. “That’s common practice for all our ‘subjects’,” he said with a thin smile.
    “Yes, that has always been our practice. Our scouts find suitable women then discreetly touch them, allowing the receptor implant to migrate beneath the skin and pass its information to us.”
    Marberry nodded in agreement and managed a small smile.
    “And up until Maddie’s arrival, I had never really thought much about it as I had few women brought to me.”
    “That was before your thirtieth birthday, Your Majesty. The law states that when the monarch’s thirtieth birthday is reached, he must couple with a woman specifically chosen for her attributes and produce an heir. A suitable ‘subject’ had been vetted for you months ago, and as you had reached your thirty-year milestone last week, she was retrieved and brought here to achieve that end. After her future memory had been expunged, she should have stayed with you until the soprac bells rang, by which time you would have impregnated her, and she would have been taken to the satellite nursery. The implant would have ensured your sperm performed appropriately, and your presence or repeated impregnation would have been superfluous.”
    King Rochar cringed at the offhand way in which the High Court Solicitor spoke of Maddie’s kidnapping for he had come to realize that was precisely what it was. But he spoke in a measured, even tone. “And that is what I had planned to do.”
    The High Solicitor continued to nod and smile, obviously hopeful that his king was finally able to see the light and would therefore perform his duty.
    “But I can do that no longer.”
    The rumblings from the council members grew in volume.
    “Whatever do you mean?” Marberry demanded.
    “We send out scouts to kidnap women and bring them here so they can be impregnated.”
    “As it has always been,” agreed the solicitor. “We choose women who are widows and who also have no living relatives or unattached female warriors.”
    “Ah yes, I know. That’s so we can take them to the nursery satellite that revolves around Tentalia and keep them there until they deliver. Then we take them back to where we found them, wipe their memories and keep their sons. If they happen to have daughters, we arrange a marriage for the mother and change her memories and her husband’s to let them think the courtship, marriage and baby have all come about in a perfectly normal way.”
    “As it has always been,” intoned Lord Marberry and the councillors.
    “I think it’s time to make some changes,” King Rochar flatly stated.
    “These proceedings are not about changes. They are about deciding your innocence or your guilt.” The High Solicitor’s voice was high and thin, anger