A/N: MUST READ! This story requires some explanation. It expands on the story a fellow writer (the rat in the hat) posted called "The Boys of Colony Theta." Googling that term will bring up the story on its home site, and I highly recommend you read it. It's extremely well written and tells the story of the world after an uber radical feminist terrorist group introduced a deadly plague that targeted only males.

Some 400 years in the future, the world and its population are still recovering, and the surviving males have helped increase the population, leaving the women to fill the roles men formerly held. The catch is that the males are not merely subservient, but are pretty much slaves, including sexually. And Big Brother – or in this case, Big Sister – is definitely watching. She really likes to watch.

Males are raised in sterile breeding colonies named after the Greek letters of the alphabet. The colony on the eastern side of what are called The North American Territories in 2454 is Colony Alpha. An ordinary woman in a Nashville suburb finds a young man from that dystopian time. His name is Damon and he's a government sponsored prostitute.

You may notice a few similarities between this and the very beginning of "Time of the Season," but any time you're dealing with time travel, you're going to cover some of the same territory. I hate to say it, but the more I write Elena, the less interested in her I am (but I DO intend to finish "The Real Thing" and I'll get your Regency written, Jairem, dear!) So this is Damon/OC. And in the beginning, a very different Damon, although his real personality will start to emerge as we go along. I hope you'll give this a shot, and definitely go read rat's story. He's an excellent writer and I am posting this story with his permission. This is M for dark themes and some explicit content, so you've been warned. Enjoy! Review!

Disclaimer: I do not own or operate "The Vampire Diaries" or "The Boys of Colony Theta."

Chapter 1: Strange Day

"What possessed me to do any kind of shopping when it's 100 degrees out?" Kate Frost wondered to herself. Even sundown wasn't doing the job of cooling off the air – not much, anyway. She was carrying a couple of bags back to her car when she heard a commotion. She saw a group of teen boys between two buildings and they were fighting - or rather, they were taking turns kicking and hitting one boy. He was on the ground, curled up, instinctively protecting his head and abdomen. They were throwing dirt on him and also yelling homophobic slurs at him.

Kate, knowing the cops couldn't get there as quickly as she could, ran to her car, started it, and with the reckless streak that occasionally showed itself, she gunned the engine and drove right to the alley. She turned the headlights on bright, along with the fog lights, and a blast on the horn reverberated down the walls. The little punks looked up, scared, and scattered, leaving their helpless victim in the gravel.

Kate went to him. He was covered in dirt, bruises and scrapes, but it was his clothing that really made her look at him. He wore - a kilt? Really? And black leggings of some kind. His shirt was torn beyond repair, and he had what looked like a red plastic collar around his neck. Holy crap. What kind of weirdness was this?

He turned over and she knelt beside him. "Are you OK?" she asked.

The headlights illuminated one of the best looking guys she had ever seen, in spite of the dirt on his face. He had angular features, a strong jaw, incredible blue eyes and black hair. He was beautiful! And he looked at her and said, "Please Mistress. Help me," before he lost consciousness.

Mistress? What? Curiouser and curiouser. Well, Kate clearly couldn't leave him where he was, so with difficulty, she hauled the man to his feet. He roused enough to stumble to her car and she put him in the backseat. She didn't think he needed medical attention, but she would see how he did. The only thing she could think to do with him was get him back to her house. She sure didn't want to sit in the ER for the next six hours, trying to explain how she found him. No, better to take him home and see if he showed any signs of a concussion. Then she could call 911 if she had to.

Kate got him inside the house and helped him to her bed. He immediately went to sleep. A couple of hours later, he was up, though. She could hear him moving around. She went to her room, where he was sitting up in bed, looking around, obviously confused.

"Hey. How are you feeling?" she asked her mystery guest.

"Better, thank you, Mistress. Thank you for rescuing me."

Mistress again. "You're welcome. Are you thirsty?" He nodded and Kate brought him a glass of water, which he drank gratefully and thanked her.

"Why would those boys attack me?" he said. "I was just walking down the street and they started yelling at me. I ran, but they caught me where you found me."

"Not sure why they would come after you," she answered and sat on the edge of the bed. "Maybe they thought you had some money or something. I'm Kate Frost, by the way. What's your name?"

"Damon Alpha 120878," he answered. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Frost."

What kind of name is that? This is getting seriously weird. "Just Kate is fine. What's with the clothes and the collar?" she asked.

"I'm a Consort."

"A what?" she said, completely dumbfounded.

"A Consort. Haven't you ever seen us before?"

"Not that I recall. What is a Consort?"

This woman had never heard of Consorts? "We work for the Maison Service and serve women's sexual needs. I'm with the Greater Tennessee House," he answered, sounding puzzled.

"The Maison Service."

"Established by the United Global Council. For women who cannot afford to buy males from the breeding colonies." Did she really not know what they did?

Kate looked at the man. He sounded sane, but was he delusional? Breeding colonies? What the what? It was almost like they were speaking two different languages. "Damon, are you under any psychiatric care?"

"No, Mistress Kate. Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering. How did you get here?" Maybe this would provide some answers.

He shook his head. "I don't know. I was at a client's home. She had not arrived and her male let me inside. She's a physicist and had all kinds of projects and computers and odd machines. Her cats ran across the keyboard of one of the computers and here I was. Where is 'here' by the way?"

"Suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. How long have you been here?"

"Since last night. I walked around for a long time and finally found a place to sleep at some sort of shelter." He didn't go into details about how many times he had nearly been hit by cars, since there were apparently no taxi pods or hover trams here. Or, how many times he was propositioned for sex - by other males. He knew he was in some kind of alternate reality, but had no idea what kind.

"How long have you been a Consort?"

"For four years. Since I turned eighteen and left the Colony."

Kate was stunned. This guy obviously believed he was telling the truth - and crazy as it sounded, she was inclined to believe him, too. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but when you were at your client's home? What year was it?"

"The year 2454."

Holy shit. Down the rabbit hole, nothing. This was straight out of Oz. She was glad she hadn't taken him to the ER, now. They'd have had him on the psych floor in nothing flat. "Do you think the device in that home sent you here, somehow?"

He thought, puzzled, and said, "I have no idea. Do you think it might have?"

"I don't know." Kate was no physicist. On the contrary - she taught middle school language arts. She had not the first clue how her guest arrived in this time. She couldn't even begin to put it together.

"Mistress Kate, you asked me the year. What year is it now?"

"We're in 2015." No use lying to him.

Damon's blue eyes widened. "The Time Before! I'm in the Time Before?"

Her head was starting to hurt. "The Time Before what?"

"The Time Before the Andrasta plague. Before all the males died."

Kate's mouth dropped open. "Andrasta plague? You've got to be more specific, Damon. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"No, you wouldn't. But in the near future - I think 2038, a terrorist group called the Sisters of Salinas will rise up and will start terror activities against males. Their aim was to eradicate males from the earth, to erase the patriarchal system that existed. Several years later, they released the Andrasta plague into the environment. It targeted only males and billions died. The World Health Organization sealed several thousand males in old coal mines to protect the human race from extinction, and the breeding colonies started from there."

"And Consorts? And buying people?"

"Only males are bought and sold. Women are not. This is because a male's purpose is to be obedient and subservient to all women." His tone was reasonable, but Kate could hear the resentment in it.

"Seriously? Oh, my God," she said. "After all the progress we made during the Civil Rights era and in the 70s? I mean, it's not perfect, but gender equality is more of a reality now than it ever has been! I can't believe humanity fell so far, so quickly. And people like you - Consorts - are accepted in society?"

"Of course, Mistress Kate. The government provides our services to women who cannot afford to keep a male in their homes."

Kate sighed. Her head was really starting to pound. She was definitely going to need an aspirin. "So that's why you're calling me Mistress Kate. Respect, right?"

He nodded. "I'm obligated to call all females Mistress."

"What do men call each other?"

"Men?" Damon looked confused. That made two of them. Had the word "men" dropped out of use, Kate wondered.

"Uhh- Males," she clarified.

"Oh, I see. We call each other 'Brother.'"

Kate squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again. "Damon, I think I've had about as much information as my brain can hold for right now. When was the last time you ate?"

"I had breakfast at some place called the Salvation Army this morning," he answered. He was glad he stumbled on it.

"O.K. I know you're starving. Let's see what I can rustle up to eat around here."

"You cook, Mistress Kate?" He looked surprised.

"I come from a long line of good cooks. So, definitely. Do you?"

He nodded. "All males are taught cooking in the breeding colony. That's one of our functions in a woman's home."

"Not in my home. Life is different these days." She started to go, then turned back to him. "Do you even want to go back to your time?" Might as well assume he was who and what he said he was, even if the very idea made her eyeballs ache.

He thought about it and shook his head. "No. I have friends there, but I never wanted to be a Consort. No. If I can do something different here, no. I don't want to go back."

Kate thought about that. "Well, you can work fast food if nothing else, but you certainly don't have to do what you were doing. I need to get you some decent clothes, though. Guys don't wear kilts in 2015. I'll have to get you something. But first, you get cleaned up and let's eat some supper." She decided delivery would be the easiest thing to do, and ordered deli sandwiches. Damon gorged himself when the food arrived, even though he was so sore from the beating he could hardly move. But Kate enjoyed seeing him eat. She still wasn't sure he was telling the whole truth, but he apparently thought he was.

After supper, she said, "Tell you what. Let me get your measurements and I'll go find you some clothes." She was glad she worked a Christmas season at a men's store, and had learned to measure men for most clothing. But she'd start with T-shirts, jeans and underwear. She wasn't sure what was going to happen with this situation, but something about Damon touched her heart. She liked him. Her friends in college occasionally called her "Crusader Rabbit" because when she acted on impulse to help someone, the results could be interesting. But she had a good feeling about the compulsion that made her bring this guy home.

Kate went to get her measuring tape and asked Damon to stand up. He obliged and she measured him around the chest and waist, jotted down the numbers on a sticky note, and then asked him to hold his kilt up so she could get his inseam. That was always tricky, but she managed and as she measured, she noticed the bulge in the front of his leggings, and her gaze involuntarily flicked to his.

"That's why I was forced to be a Consort," he said.

"Because of the size of your, uhh, parts?" she asked.

He nodded. "A penis size over seven inches when fully erect automatically puts a boy in the Consort service. Mine is 7.5 inches, to save you the trouble of asking."

"I wasn't going to, although I'll admit to being curious." She shook her head.

"Would you like to taste me?"

Kate's eyes popped. "Say what?"

He looked puzzled. "Taste me. Pleasure yourself orally with my penis. Or is that not done in this time?"

She coughed. "It's done, but it's usually considered kind of a mutual thing. Thank you for the offer, but I don't even know you, Damon! And you're not a Consort anymore. You don't have to do that, now. Not here."

"I see," he said, not knowing how to take that answer.

Change the subject. Quickly, she thought, as she stood. "That collar you're wearing. Do all Consorts wear them?"

Damon nodded. "It marks us to other women. It's illegal to use the services of a Consort without paying."

"Cow. Looks like it doesn't come off, either."

"Only when our tenure is up. The collar is removed when we're released from the Maison Service, and not before."

"What happens to Consorts who're released?" Kate had a feeling she wasn't going to like this answer, either. She wasn't particularly pleased with the way the women in charge screwed up society when they got the opportunity to run things.

"If a woman is interested in a former Consort, she can offer to buy him from the Masion, or we're sent to some kind of government halfway house. I'm not really sure," he explained. "It's better than being a copulator, though."

"A copulator. Again, I know I'll be sorry I asked, but what's that?"

"Boys with a high sperm cell count are sent to act as copulators when they are 18. For five years, they service women who come into the colony to be bred. When the woman has a child, if it's a boy, she leaves him at the colony. If it's a girl, she takes the baby home to raise it. The Andrasta plague is still in the environment and leaving without the vaccine is fatal. But the vaccine produces sterility, so a copulator has to stay in the colony."

"So, what happens to boys who aren't copulators or Consorts?" she asked.

"Women buy them as their personal companions, slaves – whatever you want to call it," he answered.

Kate shook her head yet again. She was doing that a lot tonight. "Wow. Well, you're still gonna need some clothes, so let me go do some shopping. I'll be back as quick as I can. You can watch TV, read, sleep, whatever." She gave him a brief tutorial on the TV remote.

He smiled at her and her heart missed a beat. He really was one more good looking man. "I'll be fine here, Mistress Kate. Thank you again for taking care of me."

"You're welcome. Back in a few," she said and set off to shop, her mind still reeling. She wasn't worried about him being in the house; he could barely move from the pounding he took from those little snots. Nothing about him read thief, serial killer or other no-goodnik. She couldn't explain why she knew Damon was no threat to her, but she had no doubts about him.

As she drove, she pondered. Time travel was a concept going back to Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus. Ever since man became aware of the passage of time, he was fascinated by the concept of traveling forward and backward in time. Now, Kate was faced with a traveler - apparently from a very dystopian future - and he didn't want to go back. She didn't want to send him back, either, if he was telling the truth about his life. And she felt he was. But the question was HOW did it happen? And what if someone from his time managed to get back to look for him? What then? Well, those deep thoughts would have to wait. Just now, this guy needed some decent clothes and some personal items. She couldn't keep the song "Roxanne" by The Police out of her head.

Kate bought T-shirts, jeans, underwear, some sleep pants, socks, shoes, since she measured his feet too, a toothbrush, deodorant, shower gel, shampoo and a pack of razors. She chuckled, realizing she was benefiting from the back to school sales. She also had no idea how long he could – or would – stay with her, but if he was telling the truth, he was going to need someone who believed him.

When she got home, Damon was sitting on the sofa, watching TV, mesmerized. He found the classic movie channel and was watching "Singin' in the Rain."

"That's one of my very favorite movies," Kate said with a grin.

He nodded enthusiastically. "It's so colorful! And the dancing! How do people do such dancing?"

"Lots and lots of hard work," she answered. "The studio that made this movie, MGM, was known for big, splashy, colorful musicals. This is one of the best examples."

"It's incredible," Damon said.

"I agree. So, do you want to check out your new clothes?"

He nodded eagerly. "Mistress Kate, I can't thank you enough for your kindness to me. I don't know if I can ever repay you."

"Don't worry about it, Damon. You need help. I don't often get the opportunity to help someone like this." She pulled out the clothing and said, "Why don't you go into the bedroom and see how it fits?"

"All right." Damon went into the room and looked at the array of clothing in front of him. It looked a lot like what women wore in his time. Still, he opened the package of underwear. It had a photo of a male wearing the underwear on the package, so it must be for males. He undressed and removed his lacy thong and put on what the package said were boxer briefs. He liked them. He felt much less exposed. Of course, when a male was a Consort, being exposed – or at least accentuated – was a selling point. Then, he slipped on the jeans. They were soft and had a faded look. One of the shirts was blue; it matched his eyes. He put it on and surveyed himself in the mirror. Except for his red collar, he no longer even looked like a Consort. He went back into the den and presented himself for inspection to his new Mistress, who was not really like a Mistress at all.

Kate's mouth dropped open when she saw Damon. That other stuff he was wearing did nothing for him. But a simple T-shirt and blue jeans? Now he looked his age - and he was hot. "I like it. That blue is definitely your color, Damon. You are a handsome man, I have to say."

"Thank you, Mistress Kate."

"Please drop the Mistress. I'm just Kate. I was thinking about that collar. It's got to go. You want me to take it off?"

He nodded eagerly. "Please M- Kate. I hate it."

"Allrighty then. I found these in my tool chest." She produced a small pair of bolt cutters. "That thing's only about an inch wide, so they should cut it with no problems." She moved the collar on his neck and hooked one of the blades in it. "Stand real still for me, please." She closed the cutters as hard as she could, and the blades snipped through the red plastic. "OK. Let me get a piece out so it'll be easier to get that thing from around your neck." Suiting actions to words, she cut a large piece out of the collar and eased it from around Damon's slim throat. "So much better," she said.

Tears stood in his eyes. "Thank you, Kate. You have my eternal gratitude." He put his hand to his neck. "I'm not a slave anymore."

Kate's eyes became teary, too. "No, Damon. You're not a slave. You're a human being."

"Can you take my chip out, too?"

"What chip?"

"The information chip in the back of my neck. It tracks my movements and has all my information on it."

Kate felt Damon's nape and could just barely feel the plastic embedded under his skin. "I can't do much about it, but give me some time to think and maybe I can come up with someone who can," she said. But that did raise a whole host of other questions. If he stayed, how would he survive without the customary identification most Americans had? With no birth certificate, no Social Security number, nothing? This was also going to require some thought. Fortunately, she was creative - and had a good friend who was an attorney.

Kate patted his shoulder. "It's getting late and I know you're worn out. Let me get the other bathroom ready and you can shower and get ready for bed. I hate to tell you that you'll have to sleep in my bed, unless you want the sofa. My other bedrooms have been converted into a home office and storage. But my bed's a king size, so you probably won't even know I'm there."

"I don't mind, Kate," he answered. "I'm thankful for what you've given me."

"You're more than welcome, Damon. I'm just glad I was able to help you. I guess you saw the sleep pants in the bag. I also got you an oversized T-shirt so you can be comfortable."

He nodded. "I can manage."

She smiled at him. "I know you can."

Damon took a long shower, relishing the feel of the water, and of being clean. That was one thing he didn't mind about being a Consort- he liked being clean. Kate also gave him some tablets to take which she said would help ease the pain from the beating. He swallowed them gratefully.

When he went into Kate's room, she was sitting on the bed, glasses on, reading. She was an attractive woman – she looked nothing like the women of his time. She was shorter than he was, with a curvy figure that stirred something deep inside him. Her hair was long, wavy and golden brown and she had merry brown eyes. She looked up at him. "What is it, Damon?"

"You don't look much like the women in my time. They're all much taller and stronger. Not that you aren't strong…" he looked miserably around him.

She grinned. "It's all right. I think I know what you mean. I'm not offended. Lie down and make yourself comfortable. I'm about ready to turn the light off. How about you?"

"I'm very tired and sore, Kate."

"I know you must be. You're gonna be one solid bruise in the morning, I'm afraid. But lie down and let's get some sleep."

He snuggled into the bed. He was used to sleeping in the dormitory bunks at the Maison, so it was nice to sleep on such a large, comfortable bed. Kate turned out the light. "Good night, Damon," she said.

"Good night."

Well? Leave reviews or PM me with questions, if you have any. I'm all ears (or eyes, as the case may be).