Betas: sheswatching, binglejells, and crabby_lioness

Story has been toned down to M-rated version.

Warning: implied past non-con, dub-con, minor character death

Note: Story is complete, but it'll take time to make changes to a M rating.

/^\SEVENTEEN YEARS/^\

'Don't fight back. Just let them take what they want.'

This was one of the first lessons Merlin learned growing up in Ealdor, a small village residing on the outlaying borders of Cenred's kingdom. Merlin's been told that the village was too insignificant, compared to the vital affairs of the kingdom. Merlin understood that King Cenred did not care for Ealdor and its troubles.

Growing up, Merlin had seen more raiders tramping through Ealdor, than Cenred's knights or soldiers. At every harvest the raiders would come and demand food. On rare occasions the raiders would stay for days inside the village, taking over homes, women, and sometimes men, along with their harvest. As it became prominent that Cenred would send no one to Ealdor's rescue, the raiders began to rule their village as kings. One after another.

Merlin's lifetime had witnessed many different groups making a stake for Ealdor, while the tiny village's inhabitants couldn't fight back. Otherwise, they'd be decimated. And if they'd won, more would come anyway.

Merlin was the result of a raid.

He understood that he wasn't a choice his mother made. Don't fight back. That his mother didn't have a choice to begin with. Just let them…. And still his mother had kept him. …take what they want. He learnt about the circumstances of his birth, continually asking his mother about his father. Hunith, at those times, could only look away in shame. He didn't understand, but those that looked at him with disdain forced the truth onto him.

Maybe they looked at him with apprehension because he wouldn't completely yield to the raiders-he was always in trouble. Merlin would like to think that, instead of them fearing his natural talents which weren't natural at all. Merlin never revealed it, kept it secret. Yet, by a manner of human instincts, somehow his difference easily set them away from him. His mother died when he was fourteen, trying to protect him when he wouldn't give in. His first lesson finally stuck with the pain of loss.

The villagers didn't know what to do with him, so they did nothing. Merlin stayed in his small home the first weeks. His only friend, Will, would help him at the beginning until he regained his footing. He began working in the fields, harvested the grain, and continually provided towards any whims the raiders had.

When Merlin was seventeen, Ealdor had seemed to gain a stable 'ruler.' The leader, Kanan, established the village as his, after fighting off every other raiding group within the area. So instead of unwilling providers of many, they were now slaves for one. Their homes were no longer theirs, taken as residency by Kanan's men. Will had left in the beginning of the 'rule,' had killed one of the raiders in the process. Kanan killed five people as an example, and Merlin was happy he said "no" to Will's offer of escape.

Merlin had grown accustomed to one raider in particular: Osric. The man had taken a fancy to Merlin, making use of his home and body, whenever the group returned from attacks on other villages. At this point in life, Osric wasn't Merlin's 'first,' yet it was the first time that the 'partnership' had been steady. If he dared think of it that way.

Merlin thought all of this while Osric fucked him from behind, unperturbedly wondering when the next 'ruler' would take Kanan's place.