Benjamin smiled at his girlfriend without much enthusiasm. Lyra could feel it and hence smiled back with better enthusiasm hoping to cheer her boyfriend up. She came and sat beside him but unlike usual, he did not put his hands on her knees nor hold her hands. He simply waited for her to speak.
She asked, "Did something happen?"
Benjamin looked at her and said, "Nothing special. I have to decide on few things."
She smiled and said, "If you need my help in deciding anything, you can ask me."
He smiled and nodded. They had talked about getting married when her status reached enough to not named just his concubine. Even though her brother had awakened aura and was a frontline fighter, she held not so high status as his family had lived a long time to achieve the status they had due to merit. But now he found that unless she awakened her own aura, she was not worthy of being named his wife. He could name her his wife if he wanted to but she was too prideful to accept it.
So he had to think about their relation. As for her awakening an intent, the chances were low as anyone other than him or the ones that hid the truth who had awakened the intent had first awakened aura when they were too skillful in any one of the skill and had awakened intent related to that skill. Special cases were only when some people had extreme desires and lived in their dreams or had extreme emotion and only lived for that emotions. Only such people had awakened intent and then used the intent to awakened aura.
So he could not think about any manner in which she could climb to a higher status similar to his own. Even the ones that could talk to an intent lord as per the status in the human nation were at least planetary governors. Only Councilmen could talk to them on equal status but even then, in finality only an intent lord could talk to an intent lord as an equal.
So he decided to force her to get married to him. She was his girlfriend although she was not his first girlfriend. He was not someone who would just leave her due to the disparity in status even when he could save tens of years of time if he simply married the princess born to another intent lord.
He sighed as he wanted to do that. He could simply make Lyra the concubine and get married to someone worthy of his status as the legal wife and his lady. He shook his head. He had no plan to do such things.
He smiled and said to Lyra, "How about we get married?"
She had an annoyed look and said, "We already talked about it. We will get married when I get promoted to a junior researcher or when my brother gets the rank of a lieutenant after he finishes his training."
He looked at her and said, "You getting married to me will strengthen your positioning and you can get promoted easily."
She asked in angry but hushed voice as she was ensuring that she does not accidentally raise her voice. "Do you want me to gold digger who marries for getting a higher status. Your parents and grandfather will not allow it."
He looked at her and said, "I will take care of my family. Not a single one would speak against it or you. They will also respect you as my rightful wife. But you have let go off the ego and marry me."
She sighed and asked, "Why? What happened?"
He looked at her and said, "Once you get promoted you will have higher status and many men might approach you. I do not want to lose you."
She asked in her husky voice, "Do you mean to say that I will leave you who have helped me till now for someone who might not exist but would be potentially better than you."
He nodded and said, "It is not a question of whether you are faithful or not. When a person has a choice and the only thing stopping him from getting a higher reward is just a pure oath without any standing value in the society, they will be willing to break it easily. You just need to feel sorry for yourself or let your family force you in a dramatic manner and could feel good about yourself for the rest of the life while I would have become a joke."
She had red eyes and her hair was slightly glowing which showed that she had fen ancestry. Seeing her hair start to glow, he could know that she was indeed getting really angry. She asked, "Is it about your ex-girlfriend who left you? You broke up because you were incompatible."
He looked at her and said, "That was not a question of incompatibility. She wanted to be a planetary governor and hence planned to start as a city lord in a M type planet. If she is going to break up with me for just not going along with her need just to fulfil her wish, she will surely betray me when she gets a better offer."
She sighed and said, "Elena is still single since then. She is not someone like that as she still waits for you and remembers you."
He shook his head and said, "I am a pragmatic. It is better for us to get married. I am already tired by the long time we had spent dating without getting married."
She spoke in anger, "I will not betray you as I love you. I would not have left the army to join your research centre otherwise. I would have backed off otherwise when Elena's family threatened me. What would make you believe in me?"
He looked at her and said, "I do believe in you so believe me when I say, if you want to get married to me, lets us get married as soon as possible otherwise due to my status we cannot get married. At least my family would not allow it."
She asked in doubt, "Why? What happened? Did someone from your family climb higher."
He shook his head and said, "I cannot speak out loud. But if you really want to be married to me, do it as soon as possible, mostly within this week. Otherwise, it will only get harder for you to be my wife."
Each intent lord was the face of the human empire. At present there were only 9 documented intent lords even counting the long period of life they had to live. So the legal wife of the intent lord is not something that anyone could be. The lord does have the right to get married to anyone as he or she wants and can marry as many mates as he or she likes. No one can even suggest against it. But the lady of the lord when the intent lord was a male and lord consort of the intent lord when the intent lord was a female should be someone who had passed the review of the federation if the lord plans to take on an official position. Unless he plans to live just as a citizen with better rights, he will surely have to follow such conditions.
But which lord will be willing to give away the right to wage war, the right to enslave, the right to destroy and even the right to veto of the Council of ethics. It would not matter if the lord did not have a legal main wife and had many side-wives but he cannot have a worthless wife.
Hence it was expected of such ladies to possess willpower to stand still when in front of the intent pressure or other kinds of pressure affecting the will and mind. They should be capable of being absolutely graceful. They will given the right to hold 2 clusters of towers and hence should prove that she can indeed wage war. Sometimes lords cannot take action and it is not unheard of ladies waging war for simple comments. Humans had deliberately made this as a feature of their humanity so that other races could not speak against it. They had to be vary of the lord and his lady too.
These conditions were the most basic condition as she should also be capable of speaking all the main 332 languages of 332 races and understand their culture and since many languages cannot be spoken by humans directly, she should at least be an aura master so that she could mimic the technologically products of humans and speak without using such products. She should also be capable of not dying when using the RTX-000 gene potion extending the lifespan by 10,000 years and awakening aura. So in all manner, he could not see Lyra being worthy of his lady.
So the only thing he could do was to simply get married to her and announce that he was an intent lord. If so, they could not speak against him or his wife and she would still have the legal status as his main wife even though she would not be made a lady. He would then have no right to have a lady unless he demotes her or she trains herself to be worthy of being a lady. But that was better than demoting the women he loved to as a concubine just for some rules.
So he was dead serious about it when he said that he planned to get married to her within a week. Seeing his serious expression she asked in a slightly hearable voice, "Is it necessary to get married. We do everything that a married couple does."
He looked at her and said, "It is indeed necessary if you want to be married me ever in this life. If not, you can only break up with like Elena."
She cried slightly and said, "I have already sacrificed a lot. I love you but I do not want others to speak about how I just suck up to you and your family to climb the social ladder."
He sighed and said, "This time I will take care off all such voices. After you get married to me, no one will question you and no one will speak ill about you."
She approached him and asked in doubt, "You will not back off, right?"
He smiled at her and kissed her eyelids. He put his arm around her and said, "You are the cleverest women I had met. If not for your lack of background, you would have already have become a regional commander in the army. Let me be your backing. Do not care for others' words as they will surely want to be in your position when you climb higher. You just need to hold onto power and use it for yourself."
She nodded. She closed her eyes. He did not speak too much as she had indeed suffered too much due to his higher status. Not every man with his background, talent and status was of the marriageable age without any problems in their daily life. Many like men, many like non-humans and some even fell in love with non-humanoid life speaking about the freedom of love. Many just want to use their status and sleep with as many women as they can and many do not plan to have children. So when there was someone like his who was huge background, showed enough talent to climb higher, had enough status in the federation as the citizen of the first native planet and was off to marry, many women wanted him. Even Elena had approached him initially for his status although she fell in love with him later. But her love was not good enough.
He does not plan to test the love of Lyra as if the love needed as he was sure that she could indeed leave if under certain criteria. Humans were like that always going behind advantages. He could only say that she would not leave him for a slightly bigger advantages as per the love she had for him and that too might fade away one day. That was the reason why he planned to make her his head wife rather than making her his only wife. He had higher advantage and he took it. He too was a human in the final sense.
And hence due to his love for her, he could not simply make her his concubine or one of the head wives even though that status was indeed more than enough as per her strength and status and his personal honor as repayment. But his love made her the main wife even letting go the chance to have a lady. Maybe after a hundred years he might denounce and demote her to a head wife and marry a lady. Or he might find a lady wife for himself when she dies when she reaches 300 years of age. RTX-000 was not available for everyone as it needed 5 intent lords to make it. As for making her his intent slave and letting her free without controlling her self or will was not something that she might agree even though that will make her possess aura and strengthen her body beyond the limit as not all will like the status of a slave.
He sighed as he planned about the marriage and the procedures that needed to be done. The scale of marriage showed how valued the one with the lower status among the couple. As he was too high above her, he had to arrange a good wedding.