Ringed Love

Prologue It could never be said John Ruger didn’t live his life on his own terms. Like most sentries, he’d been born into the job. It was his life and, for John, his first love. It was the tradition of sentries that skills and knowledge were passed from parent to children. Sometimes a family would take in those not born into a sentry family if they showed aptitude and interest. The Rugers took in one such young man: Victor Raleigh. Victor and John learned, lived, and worked together along with others in their age group to become full-fledged sentries. Being born into a sentry family or being trained by one certainly didn’t guarantee one would become a sentry. John and Victor competed for everything, including the love of a woman and to join the elite ranks of sentries. John became a sentry; Victor washed out. While both were excellent at tracking down and dispatching supernatural threats, John excelled in one area where Victor severely lacked. It was unwritten code that sentries were protectors, guardians of the innocent as well as each other. John would put his life on the line to save someone else. Victor worked for the highest bidder, with no concern about whom he needed to sacrifice to get the job done. The woman they competed for eventually chose John Ruger over Victor Raleigh, the man who fathered the offspring she carried. Those babies would become slaves. Time passed, and John and his new wife settled into their lives. She would sometimes mourn for the offspring she gave up. Several years later John hoped the arrival of their first child, a boy they named Todd, would ease her grief. Instead it set off a chain of events, throwing Todd’s mother into a deep, overwhelming depression she couldn’t climb free of. No amount of love from John or advice from doctors helped, and when Todd was a toddler, she ended her life. There was nothing John could do to change what had happened, so he took the only option left for him. He moved on and built a new life for himself and Todd. John took his son and moved to New Colorado City, raising him to be resourceful, to be honorable, to think for himself, and to be a great sentry. Todd rose to the occasion, learning his lessons and excelling in his family’s calling. John wanted nothing to do with the slave program, but as fate would have it, he and Todd became so deeply embedded in a conspiracy involving certain unique slaves that there was no getting free of it. Reluctantly, John agreed to the binding of his son to a younger boy, a special slave in need of a sentry to protect him. John didn’t like it, and years later, when Nick became Todd’s mate, he liked it even less. Victor Raleigh rose to the position of Vice Chancellor of New Colorado Protectorate. When war between New Colorado Protectorate and West Caldera Protectorate broke out, Todd and Nick became the weapons that thwarted Victor’s twisted plans. Victor made sure New Colorado Protectorate lost the war, condemning all owners and slaves to death. That death would only come if they could be found. John, ever the protector and defender, had the means to prevent that from happening. He loved his son and tolerated his slave, but what Victor had allowed to happen was wrong. John had sworn his life to safeguard others. Guarding those like Todd and Nick was the right thing to do. John Ruger did what was right.