The Romans came and conquered, land after land and territory after territory. Our characters used to live in a decently sized Saxon/Gaul/ Thracian village, YC a young warrior and MC a hunter, a farmer's son. They were only a few years apart in age so it was natural they would have played together as children, trained together as teenagers. Captured by the invading Romans into slavery, they were separated on the markets and bought by different masters. YC became a gladiator, a champion of the arena, celebrated and adored by the audiences. MC had a very different fate, one of a pleasure slave, molded into the likes of his Roman master.

Years pass and they believe everyone from their clan to have died either in the mines, on the sands of the arena or executed for attempting to escape. Until one day YC's master buys MC from his current master and they are reunited. As they begin to familiarize themselves again with who each of them has become in the past years of captivity, a plan of escape forms somewhere deep in their minds. A plan of freedom they hadn't dared to dream of before.

The kingdom is torn by civil war and ravaged by famine, every able-bodied man conscripted into the king's army to fight against the rebelling forces trying to overthrow the monarchy. Those who refuse do so under threat of death and have no choice but to flee and join the rebellion. YC is a young general in the king's army sent to MC's city to oversee the conscription and investigate the rumors of the villagers helping the rebellion. MC's father and older brother had been among the first to volunteer for the king's army some years ago and, similarly, among the first to die. MC's mother withered away, died of a broken heart, and left MC alone to tend to their farm outside the city.

MC knew he'd never survive through a single battle if he was forced to sign up, so he forged a letter of proof that both sons of the family had already died and disguised himself as the daughter and only surviving member of the family. Catching YC's interest was the last thing he needed in his life right at that moment.

YC is a pirate captain feared for his ruthless ways upon the seas. MC is a prince of a small but prosperous kingdom, set to marry a foreign princess against his wishes. On his voyage to finalize the marriage treaty, his ship is set upon by YC's pirates and MC is taken as a hostage to be returned on a ransom. He never thought having a little fun with his royal guest would turn into feelings though, and the choice between returning MC like agreed upon and running away with him with the royal navy in their pursuit is a difficult one.

YC is the second-in-command, the son of a mafia leader, set to assume his father's position in time. MC is an undercover cop sent on an assignment to bring down YC's family. He's managed to infiltrate the ranks and rise from a goffer to a lieutenant, but he needs to find a way to get closer to YC to gather more intel. That chance presents itself when he manages to impress YC enough for him to want to personally mentor MC. Neither of them thought there would be an attraction between the two of them, but after a night spent together they find themselves re-evaluating their entire relationship.

Only, MC finds he doesn't know if he's doing this only for the job anymore. Navigating a relationship when YC would no doubt have him killed if he knew who MC really was proves to be more difficult than he ever imagined.

YC has been investigating an art theft/fraud ring for a while now. MC is the department's most established expert on fraudulent art. They have been cleared for a one evening undercover job to attend a gallery opening where they have intel the leader of the crime ring is going to be. They never thought they'd actually get to speak to the leader, let alone intrigue them enough to be invited to a more exclusive gallery opening as guests. The problem? Their cover is being a young couple about to move in together with a shared love for art. And in reality they can't stand each other.

This is a rare opportunity however, one to try to get into the inner circles of the crime ring like they probably could never again. And our characters will just have to pretend to get along as they're thrust into a longer undercover job they never had expected.

MC, the firstborn son of a duke, finds his twin sister in the family way - unmarried and disgraced. The family can't afford such a weighty scandal, his sister ruined forever if anyone were to ever find out about it. MC has always been scorned by his parents for not being the heir they wanted, while his sister adored by them for being nothing short of perfect. She's beautiful, well-mannered, accomplished in the arts, in several languages and a master of conversation. She was supposed to be presented to the good society that year, to be announced ready for marriage and they all knew she would marry on her very first social season. There would be no shortage of suitors, to say the least, especially with the rumors going around of the duke meaning to leave his lands and title to the future son-in-law rather than his own son.

This social season is the one when YC, a self-made man of wealth but lacking a title of the peerage, has decided he will find himself a wife. A pretty little thing to hold on his arm, one who will give him that much coveted title. He, too, has heard the rumors of the duke's intentions and knows if wooing her will not win him her hand, then compromising her will. Delaying MC's sister's coming out to society by a year would raise unwanted questions for MC's family, so when she is sent out to the countryside to discreetly carry out the rest of her pregnancy, MC is roped into taking her place.

As if pretending to be his sister didn't already sound difficult enough, their entire good family name would be ruined if anyone were to discover the daughter presented was actually MC. When YC by chance finds out the truth, he realises forcing a marriage to MC is his chance to achieve everything he aspired for.

When the virus began to spread, MC was - in his own words - between jobs and apartments. He should've been among the first to be attacked when people began turning into the living dead. Somehow, with luck, he managed to survive long enough to run into a group of people who agreed to take him in. These people had been thought crazy before the virus, a cult that prepared for the end times, but now that everyone else was scrambling for survival, they were prepared. It seemed too good to be true, but MC went with them anyway.

YC served in the army when all hell broke loose. He was at the forefront of trying to stop it, but eventually governments fell and the troops scattered. He had a group of good men to survive with, but now, two years later, he's the last one left. Being alone means death, so YC is actively looking for other survivors he can join when he comes across the community MC has spent these past two years with. On the outside everything looks almost perfect - and they welcome YC to come with them as someone who's a trained fighter. YC finds quickly the community demands everyone do their own part, everyone needs to have a role in the community or they can't be there.

MC has found his role as the... entertainment to those who want it. Despite MC's subtle warnings to find somewhere else, YC stays. And soon finds perhaps people, sometimes, are even scarier than the zombies roaming outside. Our characters plan to escape the cult they've been sucked into together, but it's tough surviving out there with just the two of them.

Ever since the war that nearly ended humanity, people have been living in small communities secluded from each other. These communities are often run by a very select few, the rich and powerful, who run their communities with an iron fist and only very occasionally communicate between each other. MC is the son of one of their community's leaders, spoiled, living in luxury and oblivious to how the common people live every day. YC grew up in the slums, the lowest of the low.

Everyone goes through a test that has three parts at certain ages and the results of the test determine one's place in society. The first test, held upon graduating middle school, leaves 2/3rds of the people to work the menial jobs, the hard labor, while 1/3rd goes on to high school. At the end of high school, again 2/3rds of these people get regular office-level jobs and get to live in relative comfort while 1/3rd goes on to university and have a chance at really becoming something in life. One of the few who get to live in comfort and luxury. The last test appoints these people's jobs and places in society and it is the next step for both MC and YC.

Against all expectations, MC fails the last test miserably while YC scores the highest of all those who take the test this year. MC has already secured himself a comfortable life by making it this far, but for someone who grew up in such luxury it'll never be enough. YC sees the perfect opportunity to humiliate MC for the years of humiliation and torment MC and the other privileged kids put him through and makes MC an offer he can't refuse.

The blistering heat of the summer sun had even the toughest man seeking out shade, a way to get some relief from the punishing heat of the humid Roman air. It was at times like these when Aquila begrudgingly thought he was more fortunate than many other slaves, being allowed inside the cool house of his master. Not made to struggle with harsh physical labour or as the gladiators, train all day in the sweltering heat without break, not forced to stay outside, not made to take care of the master's children regardless of his own needs or do chores in town, where the smell of human waste, sweat and dirt never ceased on such hot days. No, all he was to do was to look pretty and make sure his master was as comfortable as a man could ever be.

In the years following his capture, he had often cursed his fate, cursed all the gods, his own and the Roman ones he knew of, for letting it happen. For being made to give up the right to his own body, the right to decide who sought pleasure from him. With wounds from the battle preceding his capture, Aquila had almost met his death on the boat sailing across the seas from their lands to Rome. He had been in horrid shape, bad enough to already accept and welcome his death with sadness in his heart and longing to see the fertile lands of his clan and the green, lush forests around his home town once more. But it seemed the god of death didn't want his soul yet, because as he watched his clan brothers and sisters perish and pass to the next world in conditions not fit even for an animal, his breath would not leave him. He could not follow them.

It was a miracle in itself he had made it to Rome at all. With their arrival, Caio had been introduced to many a lannista. The slavers had tried to sell him to fight in the arenas, to train as a gladiator. "Small, this one, but swift. Quick and young", they had said, though Caio could not understand their strange language, "Puts up a good fight, certainly." Not that they would know. He had been the son of a hunter, a farmer, not a warrior; Caio had known how to wield a sword, barely, how to use an axe. But he was no warrior, he did not know how to fight, how to read his opponent or attack without leaving himself wide open to another's attack. It was his last day on the market, the day before he would be sold to some mine to be worked to death, when someone finally saw something in him.

His first master, Lucius Gaius Aetius, had paid a fair price for him even when he did not speak their language nor did he intend Caio to fight, to bring him glory and money on the arena. The elderly man had looked at him, as if weighing him from head to toe, and he had said, "Your name is Aquila, now."

And that was when Caio died. His old identity ceased to exist, a new one by the name of Aquila emerging to take care of his master's needs, to spread his legs when he was so ordered to do, to let his master touch him whenever he saw fit. Perhaps this was the life the gods had chosen for Aquila, but he did not make it easy for them. A vicious circle began, of insubordination and punishment, for years. It was in this new environment that Aquila finally discovered why he had not died on that boat on the way to Rome; his will to live, to survive, was stronger than that of many others. If he was to spend the rest of his life in chains, humiliated and treated worse than an animal, Aquila at least wanted his death to be a good one. He needed something to show the gods he deserved good judgement to pass on into the afterlife.

It was this will, strong instinctive need to survive that kept him alive through the worst days when he held a knife to his wrist, his cheeks streaked with tears and his body sore and aching from yet another punishment. It was his will to someday have something better that kept him from going insane when he was shackled to a bed or left to suffer in a blindingly dark cell for days on end, awaiting his next punishment. It was his simple stubbornness that kept him trying to escape, trying to resist each time, even with knowledge that he would be caught and punished again.

Aquila believed it was that stubbornness and refusal to break even with the harshest of beatings that finally ended his master's interest in him. Had he still been the same person he was when Lucius Gaius Aetius had bought him, he would have felt awfully sorry for the poor creature that would replace him as the man's pleasure slave. Romans loved to call them barbarians, but he was sure most of them acted more inhumane than any barbarian he had met in his life. Ruthless and self-righteous - a lesson hard learned, but Aquila had learned that is what Romans were. Monsters more than humans, who used others for their own gain with no mind to the lives lost in the process.

Caio had worn his feelings on his sleeve, ready to show himself to the world. Aquila locked them away so deep he himself did not always know how to let himself feel anymore. How to be anything but numb and unfeeling. It was better to not feel than it was to be in pain each day, to feel the despair and shame of what he had been forced to become.

His once tan skin had lost some of its color from years spent inside since his capture, his once short hair, blonde like dry hay, had grown out at the order of his first master. It now reached the mid of his back, half of the silken strands tied up in elaborate braids. Once, long ago, his frame had been healthy with lean muscle beneath his skin, developed over years of hunting and helping at their farm, but now he was soft and almost frail. Lucius Gaius Aetius had shaped him into what he wanted, more fragile, less masculine and over the years he had succeeded.

A new master had bought him for his gladiators to enjoy as a reward. After all, he was beautiful enough, but he could not accidentally bear their children. Marcus Livius Thirinious was a confusing man. Perhaps not only because the man did not leer and grope at him like he was only a piece of meat for his own pleasure, but because his voice was gentle as he spoke, calm and reassuring. He didn't bark orders at him. He talked to him, like a human being, like he wasn't a slave to be used. It made Aquila even more suspicious of the man. No Roman had treated him with kindness since he arrived in this godforsaken empire six years ago. Not unless they wanted something from him.

Now, after having been allowed some days of rest and time to heal, only having had to do light work such as fetch wine for his master and mistress or do the mistress' hair in the mornings, Marcus Livius Thirinious finally requested him to tend to one of his gladiators. Aquila had known it would be coming, he wasn't free of this yet, but he had hoped he would be allowed more time.

Dressed in a plain, dark red robe of what was supposed to be the attire of a house slave, Aquila made his way down to the private room of the champion. He had heard a lot about this gladiator; how he had survived the pits and the arena for this long, rising to the honored position of champion. His new master had even told him he was of the same origin as Aquila himself. For the first time since his enslavement, Aquila found himself curious about a man he was told to pleasure for the night. A swift knock to the wooden door announced his presence to the gladiator before Aquila stepped in.

If in his time of service he had learned anything, it was the art of allure. How to speak, how to move, how to look at someone. How to smile or even how to stand to make himself desirable. Aquila's voice was rich, gentle like flowing honey as he said, "Master has sent me to be your reward for a battle well won." His brilliant blue eyes were fixed on the ground as a sign of respect, but also for the fact he had picked up on over the years that gladiators generally seemed to desire soft, coy partners. Shy, but not too shy. Gentle, but someone who could take what they were given.

"How would you want me?", he asked, starting to slip the strap of his robes off his shoulder, finally glancing up at the man before him. His body froze, his veins ran cold with ice and he was sure, for a moment, his heart stopped.

He knew that face.

The duke of Tamsworth was a serious man. A respected man. He did not participate in foolery and frolicking of the same kind many a man with title did, kept his finances in order and always paid his debts. He was a sly man, and for it he was feared as much as he was revered.

Never would it have crossed the minds of the members of ton in attendance at the season opening ball, traditionally held by the old, widowed lady Garleigh, that the beautiful thing on the duke's arm tonight was not his adored daughter, but his scorned son and heir. Certainly, there was nothing that gave it away; from the dark, cascading locks carefully pinned up in a crown braid, the locks of silken hair that fell freely down his shoulders curled expertly - jewels and shiny powder in his hair making him sparkle and glow like one of the princesses from the fairytales that he and his sister used to read - to the beautiful blue gown that had no doubt been made by the finest modiste in town, extravagant in its silken luxury and yet radiating elegance.

To all of them it was clear it was Emily Griffiths, no doubt one of the season's most sought after debutantes, who clung to her father's arm for protection at her very first high society attendance. A young, talented, well-mannered and most beautiful thing she was said to be and surely tonight there weren't many who outshone her beauty. The graceful line of her neck, the slim and yet healthy figure of her body and her delicate facial features had always attracted potential suitors, who much to their chagrin could not court the young lady previously. Her introduction to high society had been long awaited, indeed.

Little did they know the true Miss Griffiths was currently at the Griffiths manor in the country, the duchess nerve-wrecked at home in their city residence awaiting a letter from her daughter on her delicate condition and too distraught to attend any social events, and indeed, the soft beauty present at the ball was Amé Griffiths, future duke of Tamsworth.

Amé had not dared utter a word all evening. He could feel the ire radiating from his father, and it certainly did nothing to calm the churning fear and worry in his chest. One hand tightly grasping his father's arm and the other holding a fine fan of soft, white feathers, fanning at his heated face in controlled and precise movements, Amé tried to keep his eyes anywhere but on the duke.

"Remember, do not speak to anyone too much", James grunted at him quietly, obviously fighting a frown as he nodded at a couple walking past them, "Be pleasant, but do not overly encourage anyone." Amé fought a roll of his eyes. He had been reminded so many times to be desirable, but to keep his distance that one would think he was either hard of hearing or lacking the mental capacity to understand the words. He was not a simpleton, no matter what his father might have thought.

"Yes, I am well aware", was his hushed response, as he cast a charming smile at a gentleman who seemed to be looking their way. It was nothing but luck, or perhaps the glowering glare of Lord James Griffiths, that no one had asked him to the dancefloor as of yet. Amé was quite an excellent dancer, even if he did say so himself, but dancing the woman's part was yet something he felt he might slip up in. Dark blue eyes swept over the room once more. "I'm quite parched", he said, looking up at his father, "Shall we at least get a drink?"

They had done nothing but stand at the edge of the room all evening. It was not that he particularly wanted to join the revelries, but standing in one place in the heels and the too tight corset he had been forced to wear made him feel light-headed. He wondered to himself how it was that women breathed, when it felt as though their insides were being squeezed out of them by a corset. Before James could answer him, another figure joined them from across the room.

Amé lowered his eyes quickly, shyly glancing at the new addition to their company from below dark lashes. His breath caught momentarily, when his gaze was met by that of the worst rake in town. Perhaps it was a good thing his sister was not here tonight after all, Amé thought to himself. He had heard the name of this man whispered in conversations between his father and his business partners, in passing, but with what could be called worry. The duke was not easily intimidated, so Amé could only assume this man was as ruthless in business as he was with the attentions he gave to the poor women who fell into his trap.

"Good evening, sir", he curtsied politely, having been taught the proper form by his mother, voice soft and curious as he made polite small-talk, "A most lovely evening, is it not? The ice sculptures are particularly stunning."