Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from "Sons of Anarchy." They are the property of Kurt Sutter and Fox Network. No money is changing hands in the writing, reading or distribution of this story.

The Dark Ages

A sequel to "Intended" and "Three Princes"

Chapter 1

How many days had it been now? Joss's mind drifted here and there, in and out of centuries…the grip on reality she took so much for granted slipping minute by minute. Joss used to measure the time by the drop in the evening temperature, when she was cold, when she lay on the dirty asphalt, doing what she could to tuck her naked body up into a ball for warmth, she knew it was night…the freezing night. Suffering the cold had been the only sure way she'd had of knowing she'd passed another day, her eyes were no longer trustworthy, one still swelled shut and the other crushed close by the leaden heaviness of her headache…dehydration…she'd been without water for far too long. Despite the incinerating heat of the day, she no longer could sweat, just lay here roasting inside and out…watching water drip slowly and slackly from a sun bleached garden hose…only six feet away...but it may as well have been miles. Her mouth was dry, no spit remained to swallow; she swore she could feel the usually soft, moist, supple skin of her inner cheeks beginning to shed off like a snake's skin, rolling back against her throat and choking her like dust. She prayed sometimes that the rest of her skin would peel away as well; when it wasn't night, the desert sun was unrelenting and her fair, creamy skin baked red and blistered, too sore and tight to allow for very much movement. There was cover not far away, the overhanging tin roof of the old warehouse that sat centrally within the fenced salvage yard, relief from the hell of the sun's rays, so tempting…so maddeningly close…but Joss couldn't move.

The steel cuff around her right wrist had at first left sharp indentations that over the last three days had deepened into bloody crevices, but Joss couldn't feel them. Her hand was stretched upwards above her head, held to the support pole of the thick gauge chain link fence with a heavy screw lock at a torturous height; if she stood, the placement of the handcuffs and lock was low enough to make her have to stoop over, and when she collapsed to the ground, as she'd done what she estimated to be two days ago, her right arm was pulled upwards with enough force and tension to be slowly working her collar bone away from her humorous. If not for feeling that agonizing pull of her limp fist in the cuff, Joss would have thought she no longer had a right hand. There was nothing but cold numbness above her elbow, and the march of prickly, pins and needles was now creeping down into her biceps, eating away at the sensation that still remained in her fettered arm. Good, if she could no longer feel her right arm, perhaps it would be easier to get rid of it…to give into the beast that raged and raged whenever how trapped she was hit her full force, left her a howling, wailing, thrashing monster, chained up like a rabid junkyard dog. The beast had turned on her several times, for it had no one else to set itself upon here where it was tethered to the fence, and her skin was hacked and slashed by her very own broken and ragged fingernails, her shoulders, her left forearm, even her lower lip shredded by her own snapping teeth…perhaps when night fell again, the beast would bite or claw off her right arm, and then she'd be free…free…

It wouldn't be much longer now…it wouldn't be long…she'd started telling herself that the moment Ope had reluctantly driven away…she'd had to order him to harshly, there'd been tears in his eyes, it hurt him to leave her here; through it all Ope still loved her, Joss knew he did, knew he always would in the same odd way that she also loved him. Opie loved her, and he would be back for her, that she didn't doubt…but what would she be when he finally came? Both Joss and Opie knew how she'd be treated, the spectacle that would be made of her, the things she would suffer if Joss, SAMCRO's princess, made collateral of herself to Martin Drackmond. "Drack" as he was called was the president…no, he was the tyrant who reigned for more than twenty years over The Horde, unopposed, the heads of any that challenged him still on display along the poles of the chain link fence behind the old warehouse. In her transience, Joss had come to be traded to The Horde years ago, before Tig had patched her and married her. It was the only successful escape she'd ever made from an MC, and also her most desperate, she was successful in getting away because she had to be…it was the only way to survive…and Drack remembered her for it and hated her even more for getting away…she'd been the only girl to ever make him look as pathetic and foolish as that.

But SAMCRO was weak; Jax had sunk the club before he'd left it, dealing out his brothers to anyone who would listen, SAMCRO's numbers were decimated, so many patches in jails and prisons. The club's income was sporadic and more often than not, there was no income at all, legal fees still piling up, bail moneys paid out long ago never replenished. SAMCRO was broke; it was impossible to make any money with so many brothers in prison…Clay…Juice…Happy…Tig…Tig…oh God…Tig, her man, her lover, her husband, the man that owned her…Tig, her Tig! Joss was here, chained naked to this fence, dying in the sun, for her man and his club. She had agreed to be SAMCRO's payment to Drack for guns and for men, The Horde was a mercenary club, up for hire by anyone with a big enough checkbook…and there was a war on, Jax had chosen now to hit SAMCRO…and all Drack would accept in exchange for weapons and his best soldiers…was Joss…making her suffer, prolonging her intended death in every way he could, tearing her apart in mind, body and soul…humiliating her, leaving her naked in the elements, Drack letting his pitbulls lick the blood from her open wounds, his men encouraged to use her as their urinal, Drack laughing as he sent jolts of electric current through the metal fence she was bound too, her body shaking and jumping so wildly and violently that the muscles in her legs, ribs and arms had torn, making it impossible to even try to duck or dodge the crowbar Drack frequently took to her. She used to cry…she used to be scared…she used feel pain…no more…

…once again there was music…Joss could more than hear the now familiar polyphonic chanting of medieval prayers and melodies, the hollow and haunting voices of men, or of women, monks and nuns, echoing down the stone corridors, shimmering in the air waves, notes rising and falling so smoothly and gently, like floating ghostly up and down the tight spiral, stone staircase. She was writing…words flowing freely through her mind as though her fingers danced effortlessly along the keys of her laptop…castle walls began to surround her, trapping octaves so luridly ethereal they penetrated through to the soul with the power to momentarily lift the princess from her dark turmoil. She could feel the lyrics inside her head, her lips moving silently along in sync with each word of Latin; "Tantum ergo sacramentum, veneremur cernui: et antiquum documentum, novo cedat ritui: praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui…" She was often unaware of what she intoned, but its meaning wasn't important…only hearing it was. As another breath left her tired, sore body, instruments were becoming discernable, wooden flutes, mandores and dulcimers, the tempered whistle of the flute clothed in the purring, plucky strum of the mandore, the dulcimer hammering out the tinkling heartbeat of the song that grew and grew to a dizzying crescendo in her head. A cold wind blew in through the tall, narrow window in the stone walls, the shadowy depth of the large, brownish, blackish, chiseled field stones giving rise to thick, oak ceiling beams. Hides of cattle, of bears, and deer covered the basalt floor and tapestries of rich reds, blues, purples and gold dressed the stone walls…she was almost there…almost back there, centuries back…

…Juliana was fearful, and had great right to be so. She'd well defamed her royal station, King Cedric, her father would disown her, Queen Grecia, her mother would weep and cry out, "Wherefore? God in heaven, wherefore?"

Her royal half brother, son of her mother, Queen Grecia and the dead king Johan, seethed before Juliana now within this thing she'd poured out to him, making him an unruly vessel of her sad and shameful truth…her prince and confidant, James…eight years her senior, always like her second father. James loved her well and Juliana adored him…and James had been all she had in this her time of need.

"You are but ten and five autumns, Juliana!" James's princely head wagged back and forth upon his shoulders still, but he ceased flailing his arms, his gold and blue robes settling against his powerful frame, his long straw colored hair compressed to his head by the angry force in his uneasy hands. "It is your father's intent to marry you to Sir Oakley come the summer next, but you have brought forth this plague upon Samcroa's peace!"

Juliana's tears still fell, her breath still quaked, but she would try to make her half brother comprehend, he had to comprehend…he had to still love her as he once did. "In faith, I meant not to," she pleaded, but James only turned his caped back to her, gazing out the slat of window in the castle wall and he stared down at the busy courtyard below…and Juliana knew which of her father's knights the prince's eyes sought out. "Sir Amalric is wondrous well a general and loyal to our king, but he is foully depraved and false! His words come forth with the piteous grace of a beggar's…a skin…he pleaded for a second skin to ward off the cold of his injury, and after I had given it, he had only shivered more and cried out that the chill would take him…the poor man…his skin looked nearly as blue as the light azure of his eyes, a ghastly site a'side of his hair's darkness…he asked if I would lie beside him, only for so as long enough that his blood might be warmed…I feared his majesty to be losing his best knight…I feared the suffering of one of God's creatures…" Juliana's voice broke and more tears came, the betrayal and shame she'd felt ever since that moment while standing near to the sickbed of Sir Amalric, trampling all else within her. "And so I lay down…beside him…to save him from death of cold!"

"'Death of cold,' Juliana?" Prince James spun on his heel to face her, his voice booming and hazel eyes flushed with ire. "Would not Amalric 'dead of cold' be more preferred than is his child within you?" His voice shook the very stone walls around them, her brother's scolding and disenchantment of her, the sister he'd always so loved, sending Juliana sinking down upon her knees, the red wool of her dress and the white muslin of the sheath beneath it cushioning her fall…but James was soon beside her, knelt down, taking her into his embrace, his brotherly instincts not subdued.

She wept, unable to stop, her face buried within the veil of her white wimple. "You reproach me for that which I can no longer undo." She cried, did her utmost not to lean against James's offered strength, she no longer deserved it…but oh she'd had hopes that her brother would hold answers for her, that his scheming mind would concoct some perfect preparation for making this announcement to the King. But it was not so…James was astounded and vexed, and he offered up little more than that. "I carry Amalric's bastard…there's nothing for it."

James sighed over his forlorn sister, his arms going more around her as a stillness overtook them both, Juliana weeping and the Prince searching out himself. She felt her brother's hand stroke over her trembling shoulder where her long, black hair would have laid if not for the wimple she wore. "Dear sister…" he spoke lowly and full of sorrow. "You have a kind and good and trusting heart, but it creates you as naïve and impulsive," he lamented, but then took her shaking, white hand and raised it to his mouth, his yellow whiskers pressing into her skin as he kissed the back of it softly, calming this tempest, for the moment hence. "I will speak to your father the King."

Author's Note: And now you've finished…and I must be honest in saying I am more than nervous about what you think! It's funny how no matter how much you love something and what a neat idea you think it is that when you actually post it and share it with the world, it suddenly has the potential to be so…stupid. Truly, I am on edge…I hope that this went over well with you, and I hope even more that you will leave a review and share your opinions and reactions! I sincerely thank you for reading, and I am much in debt to those of my readers who do review, because if you read this and enjoyed it, it is due to as much your own work as my own. Thank you! As always, I am open to and look forward to incorporating whatever ideas my readers have and would like to share!

If you did enjoy this first chapter, then I am happy to let you know that it isn't over with just yet! Please go to my profile page where you can click on a link to photobucket to see the characters you have just met in "The Dark Ages." I worked just as hard on, and am just as nervous about, the photo album as I am the story, so I hope you enjoy what you see there. Again, please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment on the photo itself in the album, or in your review. Thank you all again, and as always, it is a great pleasure and privilege to entertain you! - Grace