Chapter Text
Aerion hated everything about what was happening.
He was kneeling in the Great Sept of Baelor, clad in the wedding colors of his House, and he felt himself neither bridegroom nor prince nor son of the dragon’s blood, but rather the butt of some cruel jest the gods had chosen to make.
The air beneath the high vaults hung heavy with incense, candle heat, and the weight of other people’s eyes. All of it ought to have felt solemn. It ought to have inspired reverence. But all Aerion wanted was to curl his lip.
His future husband did not even possess a banner of his own to cloak him with for the marriage rite. So Aerion was covered instead with a cloak bearing the red dragon on a black-and-crimson field—the cloak of his own family. His own House. Not because there was any beauty of symbol in it, but because his alpha had nothing. No ancient sigil, no hereditary lands, not even a name of consequence.
The Great Sept of Baelor had seen no few marriages in which husband and spouse were cloaked in the same family colors. Marriages between Targaryens, after all, were no rarity there, but something near a family custom. And some part of Aerion had always hoped it would be the same for him. That his shoulders would never be covered by the arms of some lowborn stranger. That he would wed a Targaryen as a Targaryen—and remain one still.
Well. In a sense, one of his wishes had been granted after all.
The alpha cast no cloak of his own about Aerion’s shoulders, but the cloak of his birth.
Because he had none of his own.
Never before had a Targaryen prince been given in marriage to a hedge knight of no birth. So the matter of the cloak had been settled in the way the court always settled awkward things, things so awkward they bordered on the indecent: by behaving as though there were no awkwardness in it at all. Duncan had been permitted to use a cloak bearing the Targaryen standard. Else the shoulders of Aerion would now have been covered by the white cloak of the Kingsguard, with its golden crown and seven white swords.
The very thought of it made him sick.
To think of it: that border knight was now not only a brother of the Kingsguard, but in some fashion a Targaryen as well. Aerion wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or better yet, burn the whole of it to ash—the sept, the candles, the finely dressed witnesses, and that tall, silent idiot standing beside him.
By what right had such an honor fallen to some street cur?
Mud that had dared raise a hand against a prince was now clothed in white and gold, rewarded with a royal omega and Dragonstone besides.
Aerion could feel everything inside him burning with fury.
He hated.
And he would never forgive this.
Not his father. Not his grandsire. Not all those who stood and watched as he, a prince of House Targaryen, was handed over to a man with no blood, no name, no right even to stand beside him. Was he the only one left who still cared for the purity of their blood and the honor of their House?
When the dragons returned, perhaps they would no longer know the blood of their riders.
It had been too thoroughly mingled with filth.
The omega felt sick.
His throat tightened with nausea—with the incense, the candle heat, the humiliation he was being made to swallow before them all. But he would show no weakness. Not for anything. That was what they wanted, after all. His disgrace. His tears. They wanted to see him break. They wanted him hurt.
Even his father.
Best not to think of his father at all.
Traitor.
He rose from his knees on trembling legs. Luckily, his wedding garb was long enough to hide that weakness from prying eyes. No one would see the shake in his knees. No one would be given that small satisfaction.
Aerion turned slowly, giving his back to his bridegroom.
He would not help him. He would not bow his head. He would not lower his shoulders. He would not ease a single movement for this wretch. Duncan the Tall, true enough to his name, stood a head and a half above him, if not more. Let him manage it himself. Let him bend, reach, humble himself, if he meant to leave his mark upon him.
From the corner of his eye, Aerion saw the septon purse his lips in disapproval.
Another sound reached him as well—the soft rustle of whispers moving through the gathered nobility.
Aerion felt only the weight of those great hands upon his shoulders, the cloak slipping lower over the cloth, and the hot breath at the nape of his neck.
And then—pain.
Aerion was an omega, yes. But he was a knight as well. A warrior. A man who had been taught from childhood to endure pain without flinching, without complaint, without retreat.
And yet, when Duncan the Tall’s teeth broke the tender flesh at the back of his neck, Aerion’s violet eyes began to sting.
Aerion held.
He did not let the tears fall. He made no sound. He did not even clench his fingers into fists—he would not give them so much as that. He only stood motionless and waited for it to end. His nightmare. His humiliation. Strange fangs at his neck. Strange hands upon his shoulders. Dozens of eyes fixed upon him.
If only his mother had still been alive… what would she have said?
Aerion did not even want to turn his head toward his father. Whatever he might have seen there would not have made it easier.
Then the alpha stepped back.
And Aerion knew the fangs were gone not because the pain in his skin had lessened, but because it grew quieter behind him: the чужое scent weaker now, the чужое warmth farther away.
The sept was watching him.
Lords, ladies, knights, courtiers, septons—all of them. Dozens of faces blurred together before his eyes into one smeared haze of gold, jewels, candlelight, and hungry curiosity. Some were smiling. Others lowered their gaze with a show of delicacy that offended him almost more than open staring would have.
Aerion lifted his chin higher. If they had come hoping for his humiliation, let them choke on it.
He felt something warm creeping slowly down the back of his neck.
Blood.
Only a little. No more than there ought to be. Enough to make the mark true. Enough that by evening the skin would ache, and by morning everyone at court would know what color a prince’s blood had been when he was given to a hedge knight.
Only then did Aerion fully realize that all this while he had been wrapped in alpha pheromones.
And not merely alpha pheromones—calming ones.
He flushed so sharply it felt as though he had been bitten all over again. For the first time that day, it became truly difficult to keep his face still. How many more ways would this accursed knight find to humiliate him? Aerion was not some fluttering girl who needed soothing with scent lest she make a scene in the sept.
For one moment it seemed his fury was about to break loose.
He had to take several slow, deep breaths to dampen the fire rising in his chest. No. They would not see the dragon today. They would not have it. Today he would give them neither a cry, nor tears, nor the spectacle they were so greedily waiting for.
That was what all of them wanted.
He would not grant them that pleasure.
***
Aerion hated even the fact that he had to walk beside this oaf.
The knight, however, did not touch him. He merely strode at his left, half a step behind, silent, enormous, and infuriatingly calm. And, praise be, he made no attempt at conversation. The guests still remained in the throne hall when the newlyweds were dismissed before the rest—of course for the sake of conjugal duty. For what else.
The very thought made Aerion want to tear the wedding cloak from his shoulders along with his skin.
He would sooner gnaw off his own hand than allow that cur to touch him.
So when at last they reached his chambers, Aerion did the only thing that seemed right to him. With pointed, almost languid carelessness, he passed inside as though Duncan did not exist at all, and with his own hand shut the door in the knight’s face, without granting so much as a word either to him or to the guards by the entrance.
The slam came out dry and sharp.
Aerion went still on the other side of the door, his back pressed against it. For a few moments he heard nothing but his own breathing. Then—the knight stopping outside. He could see the strip of shadow from his boots beneath the threshold. And, to his even greater irritation, he could feel the man’s bewilderment as well—dull, heavy, almost doglike in its ridiculous plainness.
But the alpha did not knock.
He did not demand to be let in. He did not grow angry. He did not shout. He did not try to remind Aerion of any rights he might claim.
He only stood there a little longer.
And then he went away.
Aerion did not move until the heavy tread of his steps had faded from the corridor altogether. Only then did he allow himself to let out a slow breath.