Enslaved by a King [Sold! 5] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) by Anitra Lynn McLeod Page A

the people who worship me.” Mingor felt his soul shattering like ice dropped from a great height. “My advisors think of the worshipers as fools. Fools.” He shook his head. “They mock them. How horrible that they spend their time encouraging them to worship me as a god when they know I am not and then mock them for their reverent beliefs.”
    Noah reached up and gently touched Mingor’s cheek. “What can I do?”
    “Nothing.” Mingor cupped his hand and kissed his thumb. “I knew you would wish to assist me, but there is nothing to be done.”
    “Can’t you fire your advisors?”
    “How would setting fire to them help?”
    “No.” Noah laughed, but lightly, and not with mocking intent. “On Earth, when an employee isn’t working out—not performing well, coming in late, being a slacker—he’s fired. It means he no longer has a job.”
    “I cannot release them from service when they are born into the role.”
    “They are born to be your advisors?”
    “It is a station passed down through a family line.”
    “From father to son?”
    “From parents to child.” Mingor considered Noah for a moment. “Is your culture very male centered?”
    “Yeah. I think they call it patriarchal. Everything runs from man to man rather than woman to woman. But there are some cultures on Earth that are matriarchal. Just not as many. Yours isn’t like that?”
    “The sex doesn’t matter. The parents do.”
    “Then why don’t you have a predestined sephir ?”
    “I did. She died.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I did not know her well, so I did not feel tremendous pain when she passed.”
    “How old were you?”
    It took a moment for them to translate each other’s time increments, but eventually Mingor explained he was a young boy of two hundred nineteen passes of the moon, which was about six years in Noah’s terms.
    “You already had a destined mate at six?”
    “She was chosen for me when she was born. She was the daughter of the eldest advisor.” Aido’s harsh face flashed in Mingor’s mind. “I was aggrieved because the loss of a life is always sad, but there was no emotional attachment to her.”
    “She was destined but you never spoke with her?”
    “She died when she was still a babe. But she would have been sheltered from me until such time as she was deemed of age.”
    “And then?”
    “I would have spoken to her only after the trial by fire.”
    “Holy fucking shit! Let me get this straight. They would have taken some lovely purple lady, set her on fire, then what, expected you to put her out?”
    “That is the way of things.”
    “It’s fucked up.”
    It took a moment for the phrase to translate but Mingor had to agree with the sentiment. “It is indeed.”
    “Has a sephir candidate ever died during the ceremony?”
    “I am not going to subject you to that.”
    “I didn’t say you would, but I’m curious.” Noah kissed Mingor’s forehead. “You’ll find it’s a twisted facet of humans. We can be a morbid bunch.”
    “You sometimes talk about yourself in such a curious way.”
    “I am a curious man.”
    “That you are.” Mingor kissed his chin then moved up to his lips. “But I find your strangeness meshes well with mine.”
    Noah laughed with genuine delight. “I think it was Dr. Seuss who said everyone is a little weird so if we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
    “Love?” The word on Thand was different, but the idea was the same. “My kind loves, too.”
    There was silence between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, it was sweetly reflective. Mingor didn’t know Noah well enough to love him, but what he knew so far made him know that his feelings would only intensify. Noah was kind, considerate, gentle, and almost painfully generous. Mingor knew if he asked Noah to perform the trial of fire, he would, and he would trust Mingor completely. But Mingor didn’t need such a show of faith.