Chapter Text
Dunk had meant to leave Ashford before anyone could smell him.
That had been the plan. Not a knightly plan, maybe. But it was the only plan he had.
Get away from the road. Find water. Find trees. Find somewhere low and dark where no man would come looking. Three days, maybe less if the gods were kind, which they seldom were to hedge knights. He had done it before. Just a few times — Dunk’s heats were rare and unpredictable. Ser Arlan had known the signs better than Dunk had, in the beginning. The old man would see him go quiet, see the sweat start at his neck, see him breathing through his mouth like a green boy trying not to be sick.
Then Ser Arlan would say, very gently, “Best we find a place off the road, lad.”
Never shame in it. Never disgust.
That had been the worst part, sometimes.
It would have been easier if the old man had looked at him the way others might have. A giant boy with an omega’s blood in him, too big for pity and too soft for safety. But Ser Arlan had only taken up his sword, sat outside some cave or ruined hut or hollow in the trees, and let Dunk suffer through it without making him feel like filth.
There was no Ser Arlan now.
There was only the elm tree, the cold grass under him, and Ashford’s lights wavering beyond the dark.
Dunk sat with his back to the trunk and one arm pressed hard across his belly.
His side ached where Aerion’s lance had pierced him. His ribs were sore enough that every breath came shallow. His face throbbed. One eye had begun to swell. The maester had put some bitter paste on the worst cuts and told him he was lucky.
Dunk had not felt lucky.
He felt dirty.
He felt hot.
His skin prickled under his torn tunic. Sweat slid down his neck, cooled in the night air, then came again. There was an ache deep in him that had nothing to do with swords or fists.
Dunk shut his eyes and tried to breathe through his mouth.
It did no good. He could smell himself now. Bread, rain on wool, horses. His ordinary road stink, Ser Arlan used to call it, though never unkindly. But underneath that, rising brighter with every breath, came wildflowers.
That was the heat.
Soft, and sweet, and terrible.
Dunk pressed the heel of his hand hard against his mouth.
No. Not here.
He had paid too much for the serum. More than he should have. Coin that should have bought oats for Thunder and decent food for a week. The woman who sold it had sworn it would delay the heat for three days, perhaps four if his blood ran cool.
Dunk arrived at Ashford the same day he drank it. The same day Aerion Targaryen had come close enough for Dunk to smell him through dust, blood, and churned earth.
Tar.
Blood.
Campfire smoke.
Aerion smelled like a torch tossed into pitch, like blackened wood, like blood on hot stone. He smelled young and bold and unmated, and Dunk’s body had known it before his mind could deny it.
That was when the serum had failed.
Or maybe it had not failed. Maybe it had simply never had a chance.
Dunk’s blood did not run cool ever since.
He tried to stand. His knees weakened at once.
“Stupid,” he muttered.
The word sounded like Ser Arlan. That nearly broke him.
Dunk gripped the bark of the elm and hauled himself upright by inches. The roughness scraped his palm. Good. Pain was good. Pain belonged to the world he understood. Sword bites, bruises, hunger, rain in his boots. These were honest miseries. He knew what to do with those.
The heat was not honest.
The heat made a liar of him.
He had just got his feet under him when the wind shifted.
Dunk stopped breathing.
A shape moved between the dark trees and the torchlit tourney ground. Pale hair first, catching what little moon there was. Then a narrow face, bruised along the cheek, the mouth cut and dark at the corner. Fine clothes, though dirtied now. A prince’s clothes.
Aerion Targaryen came through the grass as if he had every right to be there.
Dunk reached for his sword before remembering he already packed it. His hand found only the knife at his belt.
Aerion saw the movement.
“With a knife, ser?” he said. "Is this how you greet your prince?"
Dunk’s fingers tightened on the hilt.
“You should not be here.”
“Nor should you.” Aerion’s gaze moved from Dunk’s face to his throat, then lower, to the open laces of his tunic and the bandage showing beneath.
Dunk tried to breathe shallowly. It only made Aerion's scent sharper.
His body stirred toward it like a dog lifting its head.
Dunk hated himself.
“I said you should not be here.”
“And I heard you.” Aerion came closer. "You bellow like an ox at the plough. It is hard to miss."
Dunk should have stepped back. Instead he held still, because stepping back would show weakness, and he would not show weakness to Aerion.
He looked smaller out of armor. That should have helped.
It did not.
Aerion was shorter than Dunk by a head and a half, fine-boned under the bruises, silver hair rough where it had been raked back with his fingers. He was not broad. He was not built for swinging hammers or hauling stones or lifting logs.
Yet there was nothing fragile about him.
He had a way of standing as if he owned the space already and was waiting for others to realize.
“My prince,” Dunk said.
Aerion’s smile sharpened.
“There. The ox remembers courtesy.”
Dunk said nothing.
“I wondered. After you threw me into the dirt.”
“You yielded.”
Aerion’s eyes flashed.
For a moment, Dunk saw the wound there. On his face. A deep thing, red and ugly. It was not just his face that hurt, his pride too.
Dunk had done that.
Something dangerous stirred behind Aerion’s eyes.
“Yes,” Aerion said. “I did wonder about that.”
Dunk’s mouth went dry.
Aerion stepped nearer. “I wondered why I could not draw a clean breath in the yard. Why every time I came close to finishing you, there it was again. You did not beat me. You cheated me."
Dunk’s grip on the knife went slick.
"You cheated me," Aerion said again, soft and patient as a man explaining a small thing to a child. "Twice I had the angle. Twice I missed. Twice the air went thick with the smell of some bitch and my head emptied out."
Dunk's grip on the knife went slick.
"Who was it?" Aerion's voice did not rise. "Some servant girl you paid? Some whore you rubbed against? Tell me her name, ser. I would like to see her."
Dunk said nothing.
"She must be something rare." Aerion's mouth shaped the words mockingly, but his eyes did not match the mouth. There was a hunger in them now, naked enough that Dunk could not look at it. "She must be a marvel, ser, to have carried through dust and blood and a horse's stink. I can still smell her on you. Tell me where she is."
Dunk understood it then, with a slow cold sickness in his belly.
Aerion was not raging.
Aerion was looking.
He had liked the smell.
He had liked it well enough to come hunting it.
"There was no one," Dunk said.
"You lie poorly."
Aerion stepped closer still. The wind moved between them.
"There was no one," Dunk repeated, quiet.
Aerion’s mouth curled.
"The old man could not teach you to win, so you have learned to cheat. He could not teach you a knight's worth, so you brought a whore's trick."
Dunk moved before he thought.
He caught Aerion by the front of his doublet and shoved him back against the elm.
The prince hit the bark with a hard breath. Leaves trembled above them. Dunk's fist was full of fine cloth, and under it, the narrow heat of Aerion's body. Smaller than him. So much smaller. He could lift him. He could crack him against the tree. He could put his hand around that white throat and make him stop smiling.
“Say that again,” Dunk said, “and I’ll knock the rest of your teeth loose.”
Aerion looked up at him.
He did not look afraid.
That was the trouble with him.
He looked interested.
Then his nostrils flared.
His eyes widened for a heartbeat, and Dunk saw, in awful slow clarity, the moment the prince understood. The moment Aerion stopped looking for a girl and started looking at him.
"Oh," Aerion said.
Dunk’s heart beat hard in his throat.
Aerion’s scent rose between them, dark and hot. It filled Dunk’s head until the ache in his body answered with a pulse so deep his knees almost softened.
Dunk let go as if the cloth had burned him.
Aerion did not move away from the tree. He smoothed the front of his doublet where Dunk had wrinkled it, each gesture neat and slow. Then he looked at Dunk again, properly this time.
“You great stupid thing,” he said.
Dunk stepped back.
Aerion followed.
“It is you.”
“No.”
“I thought it was a trick.” Aerion’s voice had gone lighter, which was worse than anger. Teasing. Bright with malice. He started circling him, and Dunk was turning, following. “I thought, what little hedge-born filth has he brought into a trial? A charm? A rag? Some omega’s scent smeared under his gorget?”
Dunk swallowed.
“But no.” Aerion came closer. “It is you.”
Aerion stepped forward.
Dunk’s back met the elm.
The bark pressed between his shoulders.
Aerion’s gaze moved over him with a shameless care that felt worse than hands. His torn tunic. His bloodied mouth. The sweat at his throat. The breadth of him, all of it useless now, all of it seen.
“No one would guess,” Aerion said. “That is the funny part.”
Dunk’s jaw clenched.
“Did you truly come to the tourney with your cunt wet under your rags?” Aerion asked. “Were you out of your wits?”
The words hit like a slap.
Dunk’s hand closed around Aerion’s throat before he knew he had moved.
He did not squeeze. Not really. But his fingers were there, huge and rough against pale skin, and Aerion’s breath caught under them.
For one second, both of them were still.
Dunk could feel the prince’s pulse.
Fast.
Not afraid.
Excited.
That knowledge went through him like a knife drawn slow.
Aerion’s eyes glittered. “Careful, ser.”
Dunk snatched his hand away.
Aerion laughed. It was a low sound, pleased and poisonous.
“There,” he said. “That is better than denial.”
“Leave.”
“No.”
“Leave, my prince.”
Aerion's smile flickered at the title, then put it aside as if it were a small coin not worth bending for.
"Tell me a thing, ser." His voice dropped. Gentle, almost. The way one speaks to a hooded hawk. "Has anyone touched you before?"
Dunk went still.
"No," Aerion said, watching him. "I thought not."
Dunk's face burned.
"Look at you." Aerion was almost soft now, which was worse than anything. "All that might. All that height. And no one has ever had you."
Dunk shut his eyes.
Bad mistake.
Without sight, Aerion’s scent became the whole world. Dark and hot. Blood underneath. Want beneath that.
"Open them."
Dunk did not.
"Open your eyes, Ser Duncan."
He opened them.
Aerion was looking up at him.
That should not have undone him. The prince was close enough that Dunk could see every mark his hands had left on him: the split at the corner of his mouth, the dark bloom of bruising along one cheek, the swelling near his eye where Dunk’s fist had caught him. His silver hair had come loose and rough around his face. There was blood dried at his lip.
Dunk had done that.
He had put his hands on a prince and left proof.
Aerion should have looked spoiled by it. Less princely. Less beautiful.
He did not.
Dunk looked at his mouth.
Want moved through him so suddenly he almost swayed.
Aerion saw enough of it.
His smile came slow.
"You have never said it aloud. Not once." Aerion smiled. "Have you?"
Dunk could not answer.
"Have you ever even thought it, properly? Or do you only feel it, and turn your face away, and find a place to hide until the wanting passes?"
Dunk's breath shuddered.
Dunk saw it with sudden clarity. Aerion poked at wounds not because he could not help himself, but because he liked the jump. Liked the proof that he had reached flesh. There was a bright childish pleasure in him, vicious as a boy with a stick.
“You like that,” Dunk said.
Aerion blinked.
“You like making people angry. You like hurting them.”
Aerion stepped in closer. He had to tilt his head back to keep Dunk's eyes.
"Don't you, Ser Duncan?"
Then, before Dunk could answer, Aerion reached up and took Dunk's hand — the great heavy thing, callused and still trembling at the knuckles — and drew it down between them. He pressed Dunk's palm flat against his own jaw.
Dunk forgot how to breathe.
The prince's skin was warm under his hand. There was the faint scrape of stubble along the line where Dunk's thumb rested. A bruise sat livid under the cheekbone, where Dunk's fist had put it earlier in the day. Dunk could feel that too. Soft skin gone tender. He had done it.
Aerion did not move.
"Look at me," he said.
Dunk looked.
He should not have. He had been holding himself together with the not-looking. With his eyes turned anywhere but the cut mouth a foot and a half below his. Now he looked, and the wanting rose in him so hard and so plain that he thought he would choke on it.
He wanted to kiss him.
Gods help him, he wanted to bend down and kiss him.
He had been kissed once, in Lannisport — clumsy and warm, the memory of it kept like a coin in a pocket, smooth from being turned over. This was not that. This was a hand pulled in toward a fire.
Aerion saw it on his face.
His mouth curved, slow and pleased.
"There," he said. "Now we begin to understand each other."
Dunk pulled his hand back.
Aerion let him take it.
That, somehow, was worse than holding on would have been.
Dunk could feel the wave of fever rising from his belly, red and hot — to his chest, his neck, his face.
Aerion’s gaze dropped to Dunk’s mouth.
Then lower.
“You are getting worse.”
Dunk turned his face away.
Aerion caught his chin.
Dunk could have broken his wrist. Instead he let the prince turn his face back.
“Look at me.”
Aerion’s scent had thickened, smoke sinking into wool, fire warming the coals. Alpha, alpha, alpha.
Want.
Aerion’s hand slid from Dunk’s chin to his throat. His thumb rested where Dunk’s pulse hammered.
“You smell like bread,” Aerion said.
Dunk blinked.
“Bread. And rain. And horses.” Aerion’s mouth curved.
Dunk swallowed under his hand.
Aerion’s eyes went half-lidded. “And wildflowers.”
Dunk’s whole body stiffened.
The prince touched the sweat-damp skin below Dunk's throat, then traced down past the open laces to the edge of the bandage around his ribs. Dunk's breath caught when the touch skimmed a bruise.
Pain sparked.
Then heat swallowed it.
Aerion watched the catch of his breath the way a man watches a hawk hood-shy on the wrist. Patient. Interested. Slow.
"You have not made a sound, ser, since I started." He pressed his palm flat against Dunk's chest. "I would like one."
Dunk was silent.
"Only a word."
Nothing.
"Any word."
Dunk shook his head.
Aerion smiled like a boy.
"You will."
Dunk's hands curled at his sides.
"Why are you doing this?" His voice came rough.
"Because I want to."
"Because it hurts me."
Aerion's hand paused.
"Yes."
"Because hurting is a thing you like."
Aerion's eyes flicked up. He did not answer at once.
"You hurt the puppet girl," Dunk said. "You would have hurt her worse. You hurt me in the trial. You are hurting me now."
The night was quiet around them.
For the first time, the prince looked annoyed rather than pleased. Not guilty. Dunk did not think Aerion knew how to look guilty. But the words had blocked his path.
Dunk saw it pass over his face and disappear.
"And yet," Aerion said, very softly, "you smell like wildflowers for me."
Dunk’s hand shot out again, but Aerion was ready this time. He caught Dunk’s wrist with both hands. He was quick, and Dunk was fever-stupid. He shoved Dunk’s hand back and pinned it to the elm beside his shoulder.
Dunk let him.
That was the shame of it.
Aerion’s body pressed close, smaller and hot and hard with want. His mouth, by the height of him, came no higher than Dunk's collarbone, and even that he had to lift his chin to reach.
“You want to hit me,” Aerion said into the open laces of his tunic.
“Yes.”
“You want to throw me into the grass.”
“Yes.”
“You want me to touch you.”
Dunk’s breath stopped.
Aerion smiled against his chest.
“There. My favorite answer.”
Dunk should have denied it.
Instead he stared over Aerion’s shoulder at Ashford’s distant lights and tried not to come apart.
Aerion’s mouth brushed his chest. Not a kiss. A threat of one.
Dunk’s body answered with a deep clench that made him bite down hard on his lip.
Wildflowers rose in the air between them.
Aerion groaned.
It was soft. Nearly nothing. But Dunk heard it.
One hand on Dunk’s wrist tightened, and the other slid to Dunk’s waist.
For all the prince’s sneering, for all his control, he was not untouched by this.
That knowledge steadied Dunk in a strange way.
“You want this too,” he said.
Aerion went still.
Dunk should have been afraid.
He was, a little.
Aerion lifted his head.
“What did you say?”
Dunk’s voice was rough, but it came. “You want this too, my prince.”
Aerion’s face changed.
Anger first, bright as a struck match. Then hunger. Then something possessive and worse than both.
He shoved Dunk harder into the tree.
Dunk’s ribs protested, and he hissed.
Aerion’s eyes flashed.
Then his hand returned to Dunk’s waist, lower this time, fingers digging into him through the cloth.
Dunk’s heart beat hard.
Aerion's voice dropped. “You know what you are?”
“An omega?”
“Mine.”
The word went through Dunk like a blade under the ribs.
He shook his head at once.
“No.”
Aerion smiled.
There was the boy with the stick again, delighted by the refusal, fed by it.
“No? You think some other alpha should have you? Some butcher's son? Some knight with half his teeth? Some drunken lord who smells wildflowers in the dark and follows you?”
Dunk’s stomach turned.
Aerion’s smile faded as he said it. His own words seemed to work on him. The thought crawled under his skin and found something there.
His hand tightened.
“No,” Aerion said, but this time it was not teasing.
Dunk stared at him.
Aerion’s eyes had gone strange. Bright, furious, almost fevered.
“No,” he said again. “If anyone touches you like this, I will cut the hand from him.”
Dunk's mouth opened, then closed. He had no answer for it. The words ought to have been a threat. They sounded like a vow.
Aerion's mouth tightened, as if the vow had startled him too.
He covered it with cruelty.
“You are in heat under a tree, too honorable to ask and too stupid to hide. Someone will decide. Better me.”
Dunk wanted to tell him to leave.
He also wanted to pull him closer.
His body chose before his mind could stop it.
He leaned in.
Only a little.
Aerion saw.
The prince’s expression softened into triumph.
“There.”
Dunk closed his eyes.
“I don’t want this.”
Aerion’s hand slid up to his jaw, forcing his face back toward him. “Liar.”
Dunk opened his eyes.
Aerion had risen onto his toes to gain the inches between them. Even so, his mouth came only to Dunk's throat — but Dunk could feel the prince's breath against his skin, and the smell of him was unbearable. Underneath the tar, the blood, the smoke, there was a hot possessive thread that made Dunk's heat twist toward him with humiliating joy.
“I don’t want to want this,” Dunk said.
For once, Aerion did not mock him.
He looked at him.
Then he smiled, slower now.
“That I believe.”
Dunk’s breath shook.
“If you mean to mock me,” he said, “go.”
“And if I mean to have you?”
The words landed low in Dunk’s body.
He swallowed.
He bent.
He did not decide to. It was as if some old hinge in him gave way and the height between them folded.
Aerion's hands rose to meet him — one to the back of his neck, the other to his jaw — and he drew him the rest of the way down.
The first touch of the prince's mouth was nothing like cruelty. It was hardly anything at all. A press. A held breath. Aerion's lips, the cut at the corner of them, the faint copper tang where they had bled earlier in the day.
Dunk's whole body went still around it.
Then Aerion made a small sound into him — low, surprised, almost angry at his own wanting — and kissed him properly.
The coin in the pocket was gone.
There was only this. The prince's mouth, sharp and warm, opening his own. The narrow body pressed up to him on its toes. The hand at the back of his neck holding him bent, where the prince needed him to be.
Wildflowers and smoke filled the air between them.
Dunk shut his eyes against Ashford's distant lights and kissed him back.