No Lawyer, No Problem

“Silence.”

The judge’s voice cracked through the courtroom, and the room that had been drowning in chaos finally quieted down. The screens above the walls still flashed with live comments, public votes, and case summaries, but the actual room went still enough for every breath to sound too loud. The defendant sat inside the enclosed cage in the center of the courtroom, her eyes closed, both hands resting over her round belly as if the entire court, the cameras, the angry lawyers, and the noble families watching from the upper balconies were nothing more than background noise she had already grown tired of hearing.

Three lawyers and their representatives from the plaintiff’s side stood in front of the judge’s bench, still half-turned toward one another like they wanted to keep fighting even after being ordered to shut up. They had spent hours yelling over each other, not because they disagreed on Vera Ross’s guilt, but because each side wanted the harshest punishment attached to its own client’s name. 

Vera Ross, a human girl who somehow ended up in the same room with three powerful males during their heat, had become the center of the biggest scandal in the galaxy. The official story was simple enough for the public to swallow: she entered the room, drugged them, took advantage of them, and walked away pregnant with their babies. The part everyone kept avoiding was how a tiny human waitress was supposed to overpower a dragon prince, a high lord, and a war general in one night.

The evidence they presented painted Vera as a virtuous woman before the incident, which only made the courtroom more restless. She had no criminal record, no connections, no known family power, no money trail, no access to rare heat suppressants or stimulants, and no reason to be standing in front of three noble houses unless someone had thrown her there. 

The real problem was that Vera was not actually Vera to begin with. She had been sent into this body a week ago, dropped straight into a mess that already had claws around her throat, and now she was expected to play along with laws, titles, and noble pride she barely cared about.

In reality, Vera had no real complaints. The situation was far from ideal, yes, and waking up heavily pregnant in another woman’s body while three powerful men tried to erase their responsibility was not exactly a dream, but compared to where she came from, this was still a better outcome. Her old world had been fully destroyed. People fought for the last drops of water. Pollution had poisoned the sky, the soil, and half the things still breathing. Zombies had taken over entire cities, and the ones who remained human were often worse. Everyone betrayed everyone eventually, and the idea of a simple life, a quiet home, or children who could grow up without learning how to kill before they learned how to read had become impossible.

Vera had been one of the survivors who had to grind harder, hunt harder, and cut more heads than anyone around her just to stay alive. She had never received an ability. Her body had never mutated into anything useful. By the end, she barely looked human at all, all sharp bones, old scars, sunken cheeks, and eyes that had seen too much rot to believe in mercy. Still, she had stayed alive until betrayal finally caught her by the throat. That part was not new either. Betrayal had been as common as breathing where she came from, but it still hurt to know her own brother had been the one to send her to her death.

The noise in the courtroom continued rising again, soft at first, then louder as the lawyers began arguing with each other in clipped voices. The prince’s side accused the lord’s side of using this trial to attack the royal bloodline. The lord’s representatives snapped back about damaged reputation and sacred blood rights. The general’s lawyer spoke over both of them, demanding the court recognize military distress, battlefield trauma, and the humiliation of a decorated commander. Vera listened with her eyes closed, her fingers still over her belly, feeling the babies shift under her palm while grown adults screamed about honor like honor could feed children or keep them safe.

“Are we going to finish this?” Vera finally asked, opening her eyes.

Her voice was not loud, but it cut through the room better than the judge’s command had. The lawyers stopped mid-argument and turned toward her. Vera’s gaze was cold and ruthless, the stare of someone who had not only seen death but had walked beside it long enough to stop being impressed. To those who had never seen a look like that on a human woman’s face, it was frightening. She was small, too thin for someone carrying three children, and sitting in a cage built for violent criminals, but her eyes made several people in the room lean back without noticing.

[That woman is definitely guilty.]

[Look at her eyes. No innocent person looks like that.]

“What do you mean?” one of the lawyers snapped, his face red from yelling. “You are guilty. You took advantage of my client’s heat and drugged him.”

“Same here, Your Honor. Look at her,” the second lawyer said, pointing at Vera as if her sitting calmly was proof of something. “She shows no remorse.”

“My client suffered great distress, Your Honor,” the third lawyer added, his voice lower but just as sharp. “The court must consider the damage done to his reputation, command authority, and mental state.”

Vera stared at them for a long second, then started laughing. It came out dry and ugly, not sweet, not nervous, not apologetic. It was the laugh of a woman who had heard men say stupid things in every world she had ever lived in and still somehow managed to be disappointed by the creativity of their cowardice.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Okay, Your Honor, here is the deal,” Vera said, leaning back against the chair inside the cage. “This courtroom is so noisy that I would rather sign whatever paper says I am guilty and be done with it. First, I have no money, and I am not sure what all of you are yelling about because I know you checked my records. Second, I have no money now, and I had no money back then. Even if I drugged them, where exactly did I get the drugs from? I was a mere human working as a waitress in that damn restaurant. It was my first day of work. Third, and most important, who took advantage of whom?”

The room froze as she lifted one hand from her belly and pointed directly at the first lawyer.

“Your prince is a goddamn dragon, two heads taller than I am and twice my size. How was I supposed to fight him off?”

The first lawyer opened his mouth, but nothing came out fast enough. His representatives shifted behind him, their polished clothes and expensive jewelry suddenly looking very useless under the attention of the cameras. Vera did not wait for them to recover. She turned her finger toward the second lawyer, her face calm in a way that made the calm worse.

“Now you. Your lord has magical abilities and the same build as the crown prince. Are you telling this court that I, a mere human, had enough strength, magic, money, and planning to trap him, drug him, and force him while he could have snapped my neck with one hand?”

The second lawyer’s jaw tightened. Somewhere in the room, someone inhaled too sharply. Vera saw the shift begin. People who had been watching her like a monster were now looking at the men’s side of the courtroom, then back at her body, then at the cage. Common sense was finally crawling into the room, slow and embarrassed, but at least it had arrived.

“And you,” Vera continued, pointing at the last lawyer. “Your client is a general. Stronger than the other two, according to half the articles your own side submitted to praise his honor and ability. He has survived wars, assassins, border raids, and whatever else you people brag about when it is convenient. But now I am supposed to believe he was helpless because a broke human waitress with no magic looked at him too hard?”

The public screens flickered faster as the comments exploded.

[Wait, she is right.]

[How did she drug THREE of them?]

[Did anyone explain where she got the drugs?]

[Why does she not have a lawyer?]