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The alchemists called it Ghost’s Breath, a bitter, chalky draught that tasted of ash and suppression. Aerion drank it every morning, choking down the nausea that followed, willing the unnatural stillness into his blood.
It was the price of perfection.
The world believed Prince Aerion Targaryen to be a force of nature, a creature of fire and high ambition. They did not know he was fighting a war beneath his own skin.
He was born with the defect of the softer sex, a biological designation that demanded he soften, that he yield, that he open himself to be conquered. An Omega. A womb for some lesser lord’s get.
The thought alone made his vision swim with red fury. He was a dragon in human form.
Dragons did not submit. Dragons did not offer their necks. Dragons burned.
So he poisoned himself to stay pure.
The draught soured his stomach and sharpened his mind until reality seemed to vibrate with a manic, jagged edge. It stripped the scent from his skin, leaving him smelling of nothing but expensive sulfur and cold iron. It killed the cycles, the heats, the weakness.
But it left a hollow, gnawing ache in the center of his chest—a void he filled with cruelty.
The Ashford Meadow was stifling. The air was thick with the reek of unwashed smallfolk, roasting meat, and the oppressive, musk-heavy pheromones of common Alphas posturing in the dust.
It disgusted him. They were livestock, all of them. Cattle pretending to be men.
He moved through the crowd with his guards, his bright armor gleaming like a second skin, a hard shell to protect the soft rot inside.
"Your Highness," one of his men murmured, but Aerion waved him off.
He heard the music first. A lute, plucked with surprising skill, and the laughter of children. He drifted toward it, drawn by the splash of color against the drab earth.
A puppet show.
Aerion sneered, his lip curling. It was a crude wooden stage, painted in gaudy primary colors.
But then he saw the dragon.
It was a marionette, crafted with an artistry that offended him in its accuracy. Red scales, painted with care, shimmering in the sunlight. It danced upon its strings, snapping its jaws, breathing streamers of red silk fire. It was magnificent. It was him. Fierce, terrifying, above the laws of men.
For a moment, the ache in his gut subsided. He watched the wooden beast rear up, dominating the stage, and felt a kinship so profound it nearly brought tears to his violet eyes.
Yes, he thought. That is the truth. That is what I am.
And then, the knight appeared.
A clumsy, blocky thing of painted oak, wielding a silver sword. The puppeteer, a tall woman with skin like polished walnut, maneuvered the knight with swift, practiced jerks. The narrative was older than the Seven Kingdoms, a story for peasants to make themselves feel brave in the dark.
The knight struck. The dragon roared—a sound made by the woman’s own throat—and recoiled.
Aerion stiffened. The alchemical poison in his veins turned cold. No.
The knight struck again. The dragon faltered. The crowd cheered.
They cheered.
A low buzzing started in Aerion’s ears.
It was the sound of his own blood, the sound of the lie he lived every day. They were cheering for the conquest. They were cheering for the Alpha to strike down the Omega, for the human to bind the beast, for the mundane to slaughter the divine.
"Kill it!" a child screamed.
The woman pulled the strings. The dragon convulsed. It fell, its red silk fire limp, its head lolling in a mockery of death.
The knight placed a wooden foot upon the beast’s neck.
Something inside Aerion shattered.
It was not a puppet show. It was a prophecy. It was a public execution of his own soul.
It was the world telling him that no matter how much poison he drank, no matter how hard he prayed, no matter how brightly he burned, he was destined to be under the boot.
The shame was instantaneous, hot and blinding. It washed over him, followed immediately by a defensive, incandescent rage.
"Traitor!"
The word ripped from his throat before he chose it. He vaulted the low bench, his cape swirling like a storm of fire. The crowd gasped, parting like water before a shark.
He reached the booth in three strides. The tall woman looked up, her eyes widening. She was an Alpha—he could smell the faint, dusty spice of her designation even over the crowd—and that only made the offense worse.
An Alpha woman killing a dragon. A lowborn Alpha mocking a highborn Omega.
"You dare?" he hissed, his voice trembling with the force of his suppression. "You dare mock the blood of the dragon?"
"My prince?" she stammered, backing away, the dead puppet still dangling from her hand. "It is only a story—"
"It is treason!"
He kicked the booth. The wood splintered with a satisfying crunch. The painted castle fell; the knight tumbled into the dirt. But the dragon... the dragon lay there, limp and broken.
He could not bear the sight of it. He grabbed the puppet from her hand, ripping the strings.
"The dragon ought not die," he whispered, the words frantic, spoken more to the universe than to her. "The dragon must not die."
He crushed the wood in his gloved hand, feeling the delicate craftsmanship snap. It wasn't enough.
The mockery was still there, in her eyes. She had made it die. She had decided the dragon was weak.
He turned his fury on her. He seized her hand—the hand that had manipulated the strings, the hand that had played god.
"These fingers," he said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, silky calm. "They are wicked things. They rewrite the truth."
"Please," she gasped, trying to pull away. Her strength was considerable—Alpha strength—but Aerion was fueled by a manic, chemically induced adrenaline. He twisted her wrist, forcing her to her knees.
He needed to break her. He needed to prove that he was the predator here. If he could make the Alpha bleed, if he could make the Alpha beg, then he was not weak. He was not prey.
"Break it," he commanded his guards, shoving her toward them. "Break the fingers that killed the dragon."
The violence that followed was a blur of noise and color, but Aerion felt detached from it, floating in a haze of vindication. He watched the brutality with a hungry, desperate eye.
See? he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. I am the monster. I am the terror. I am not what I was born to be.
"Stop!"
The voice was like a thunderclap, deep and resonating in the marrow of his bones.
Aerion spun around.
A giant stood there. A hedge knight, towering seven feet tall, blocking out the sun. The man was immense, a wall of muscle and shabby mail. But it was not his size that made Aerion’s breath hitch.
It was the scent.
Even from here, through the dust and the suppressants, it hit him. Elm and rain and an overwhelming, undeniable Alpha dominance. It was the scent of a creature that could crush him without malice, simply by existing.
The biological terror flared in Aerion’s gut—the ancient, lizard-brain instinct to bare his throat to something so much larger.
The shame of that instinct burned hotter than wildfire.
He drew himself up, his hand going to his sword hilt, trembling not with fear, but with the effort to deny his own nature.
He would not kneel. He would not cower. He would burn this giant to ash before he let himself feel small.
"And who are you," Aerion sneered, his voice pitching high and sharp, "to command the dragon?"
He stepped forward, walking straight into the shadow of the giant, begging the world to believe the lie one last time.
For Dunk, the world narrowed to the span of a heartbeat. His body, trained in the hard knocks of Flea Bottom and the dusty roads of the Reach, reacted faster than his mind could process the treason he was committing.
He launched himself at the Prince.
It was like tackling a statue of painted glass. Dunk was seven feet of heavy bone and muscle, a wall of pure, unadulterated Alpha force.
When he hit Aerion, the impact was jarringly uneven. The Prince weighed nothing. He was light, hollow-boned, a creature of air and fire meeting the unforgiving earth.
They slammed into the mud of the Ashford meadow, the breath leaving Aerion in a sharp, shocked whoosh.
Dunk scrambled for purchase, his massive knees pinning the Prince’s arms, his left hand gripping the enamelled breastplate, his right fist drawn back to smash the face that had ordered a woman’s hand broken.
The rage in Dunk’s blood was a roar, the ancient Alpha drive to protect the pack, to silence the threat.
But as he hovered there, fist trembling in the air, the roar suddenly cut out.
It was the smell.
Up close, beneath the layers of expensive velvet and the cold, metallic tang of the armor, the chemical mask of sulfur and ash had cracked. The violence of the impact, the spike of genuine terror in the Prince’s eyes, had forced a biological slip.
A scent hit Dunk’s nose—faint, frantic, and unmistakably sweet.
It was the scent of distress. Not the challenge of a rival Alpha, not the musk of a Beta. It was the sharp, cloying spike of a terrified Omega.
Dunk froze.
The realization didn't come as a word, but as a biological imperative that seized his muscles and locked them tight: You shouldn’t hit this.
Every instinct Dunk possessed, every lesson ingrained in his biology, screamed at him to stop. His fist, which had been a hammer a second ago, suddenly felt heavy and wrong.
Aerion was writhing, his face twisted in a snarl that looked less like a dragon’s fury and more like a cornered cat’s panic. The Prince’s pupils were blown wide, swallowing the violet irises.
He was panting, short, shallow breaths that reeked of that suppressed, sickly-sweet fear.
He’s not a monster, Dunk thought, the floor dropping out of his stomach. He’s prey.
The cruelty, the posturing, the bright armor, the demand to be treated like a god—it all clicked into a horrifying, pitiable shape in Dunk’s mind.
It wasn't power. It was camouflage.
The boy beneath him was terrified of his own skin, lashing out at the world before it could discover the secret Dunk was currently pinning to the mud.
Dunk’s grip on the breastplate loosened. Confusion washed over him, dousing his anger. He felt like a giant who had accidentally stepped on a fledgling bird.
Aerion saw the change.
He saw the rage drain out of Dunk’s eyes, replaced by a sudden, dumbfounded awareness. And then, worse—Dunk’s expression shifted to pity.
That was the spark that ignited the powder keg.
"Get off me!" Aerion shrieked, a hysterical plea. "Get off me, you filth! You dog!"
He thrashed, his struggles wild and ineffective against Dunk’s mass. But Dunk, sickened by his own aggression now that he knew the truth, rolled away. He scrambled backward, his boots sliding in the mud, hands raised not in surrender, but in a gesture of placation.
"I—" Dunk started, his voice thick. He didn't know what to say.
I didn't know? I’m sorry?
Aerion scrambled to his feet. His beautiful armor was smeared with muck. His cape hung in tatters. The mask was back in place, but it was fractured.
He was shaking—vibrating with the humiliation of having been pinned, dominated, and sniffed out by a hedge knight.
"Guards!" Aerion screamed, his voice cracking. He pointed a trembling finger at Dunk. "Take him! Kill him! He struck the blood of the dragon!"
The men-at-arms, who had been momentarily stunned by the sheer audacity of the assault, shook themselves awake. Spears lowered. Swords rasped from scabbards. They were Alphas and Betas, big men in liveries, and they smelled the blood in the water.
Dunk backed up until his heel hit the wooden stage of the puppet show. He was unarmed, unarmored, and facing a dozen steel points.
The realization of what he’d done finally caught up with the biological revelation. He had assaulted a royal Prince.
Omega or not, Aerion was a Targaryen.
I’m going to die, Dunk thought numbly. For a puppet.
"Cut him down!" Aerion commanded, his eyes wet and wild. He needed Dunk dead. He needed the only witness to his vulnerability erased from existence. "Do it now!"
A spear lunged. Dunk dodged, clumsy and desperate, throwing up an arm.
"Stop!"
A small body launched itself from the crowd, blurring past the guards.
"I said STOP!"
The figure placed himself squarely between Dunk and the wall of steel. It was Egg. He looked absurdly small against the armored guards, a child standing before a stampede.
But he stood with his feet planted wide, chin jutting out with an authority that had no business belonging to a stable boy.
"I am Aegon Targaryen!" Egg’s voice rang across the silent meadow. "Son of Maekar. Prince of Summerhall. And you will stand down!"
Silence. The guards froze. The spears wavered.
Dunk stared at the back of the boy’s head. The world tilted on its axis for the second time in as many minutes.
First the Prince who was an Omega, and now the squire who was a Prince.
Aerion halted. The fury was still there, burning hot and bright, but the political reality had slammed down like a cage door.
He could kill a hedge knight. He could kill a stable boy. But he could not kill his own blood in front of a hundred witnesses.
The dragon had been leashed, but the look he cast Dunk was a promise.
You saw, his eyes said. And for that, you will bleed.
”Take him away,” Aerion snarled.
The guards didn’t need to be told twice.
The mud of Ashford dragged at Dunk’s boots, heavy and cold, but the grip on his arms was harder. Iron gauntlets dug into his biceps, wrenching him backward, away from the wooden stage, away from the splintered puppet, away from the two princes.
Dunk didn't fight them. His strength, usually as reliable as the rising sun, had drained out of him, leaving him hollow and reeling.
He craned his neck, ignoring the guard who slammed a pommel into his kidney, trying to get one last look at the scene he was leaving behind.
It was a tableau of lies, shattering in the sunlight.
There was Aerion. The Brightflame. The monster who would’ve broken fingers for a story. He stood shivering in his soiled finery, his chest heaving with that thin, reedy panic Dunk had felt against his own chest.
The wind shifted, carrying that scent to Dunk one last time—not the smoke and brimstone of a conqueror, but the cloying, desperate sweetness of rotted fruit and fear.
He’s just a boy, Dunk thought, the realization making him feel sick and heavy. He’s a scared, angry boy in a dress of steel.
The cruelty made a terrible, twisted sort of sense now.
The madness wasn't power. It was a wall.
Aerion screamed and burned and broke things so that no one would ever get close enough to smell the truth: that the dragon was soft. That the dragon could be hurt.
Dunk had touched that softness, had pinned it to the dirt, and the look in Aerion’s eyes as he watched Dunk being dragged away wasn't just hatred.
It was the terrified, venomous look of an animal that knew its throat had been bared.
I know, Dunk thought, staring at the violet eyes. And you know I know.
And then, there was the other lie. Egg.
Aegon.
The name rattled around inside Dunk’s skull, numb and clumsy. Aegon Targaryen.
Dunk had cuffed that head. He’d let the boy scrub his mail. He’d shared his salt beef and hard bread with him, treated him like a guttersnipe, like a servant, like a squire. He had looked at the boy and seen nothing but a brave, bald-headed brat.
He hadn't smelled a thing. No royal musk, no highborn arrogance. Just dirt and boy and the clean, honest scent of rain.
The irony tasted like copper in his mouth.
He had tackled a Prince who smelled like a victim, and he had been saved by a squire who commanded like a King.
The two dragons. One hiding his weakness behind fire and blood, screaming for the world to kneel so they wouldn't see him trembling. The other hiding his strength behind a mule and a straw hat, kneeling in the dirt so he could learn how to stand.
"Move it, Ser," a guard grunted, shoving him toward the castle keep, toward the darkness of a cell.
Dunk stumbled, his feet tangling in the grass. He looked from the bright, false fire of Aerion to the small, hard truth of Egg.
I am as thick as a castle wall, Dunk thought, closing his eyes as the shadows of the gatehouse swallowed him whole.
I didn't see either of them.
The cell was a weeping sore of stone and damp straw, but when the door creaked open, the visitor brought a terrifying, artificial brightness with him.
Aerion stood in the threshold, silhouetted by the torchlight from the corridor. He had changed from his mud-stained armor into a doublet of black velvet slashed with red satin, stiff with embroidery.
He looked immaculate. He looked sharp enough to cut the air itself.
But Dunk, sitting in the gloom with his back against the cold wall, smelled the lie before he saw the Prince.
The scent was suffocating.
It wasn't the honest stink of the dungeon or the sweat of the guards. It was that alchemical draught again—acrid, metallic, like ozone before a lightning strike.
It was a scent designed to strangle anything softer underneath it.
"Stand up," Aerion commanded. His voice was light, high, and brittle as glass.
Dunk unfolded himself slowly. He rose, and rose, and rose, until his head nearly brushed the low arch of the ceiling.
In the cramped cell, his size was oppressive. He sucked all the air out of the room just by existing.
Aerion did not step back, but his chin jerked up. The sheer biological mass of the hedge knight—the radiating heat of a prime Alpha in his prime—seemed to offend him.
"You take up space," Aerion whispered, disgust curling his lip. "Like a weed. A great, dumb weed choking a garden."
"My prince," Dunk said. His voice was low, rumbling in his chest.
He didn't bow. He didn't have room to.
Aerion stepped into the cell, the heavy door clanging shut behind him, leaving them in the dim flicker of the single torch he carried.
He circled Dunk like a cat circling a bear caught in a trap.
"Do you know what I can do to you, Ser Giant?" Aerion murmured, trailing a gloved hand along the rough stone wall. "I can have your hands removed. I can have your tongue cut out. I can have you gelded and sent to the Wall to freeze your baseborn blood."
He stopped directly in front of Dunk, looking up.
The height difference was comical, but the malice in Aerion’s eyes bridged the gap.
"Beg," Aerion hissed. "Beg me for your life. Show me your belly, dog."
Dunk looked down. He looked at the fine, pale features, the violet eyes that were swimming with a frantic, chemically-induced dilated energy.
He saw the tremor in the Prince’s hand where it gripped the torch.
He didn't feel fear. The adrenaline of the meadow had faded, leaving only a heavy, weary clarity. He looked at Aerion and he didn't see a dragon.
He saw a creature that had been born into a cage of its own making, thrashing against the bars.
He saw the fear.
"I won't beg," Dunk said, softly. "And I think... I think you know why."
Aerion stiffened. The torchlight reflected in his eyes, making them look like pools of wildfire. "What did you say?"
"You aren't angry about the puppet, my prince," Dunk said. He wasn't trying to be cruel. He was just speaking the truth as he felt it in his gut.
"You're angry because it fell down. Because it was weak."
"Silence," Aerion snapped.
"And you're angry at me," Dunk continued, his voice steady, "because when we hit the mud... the wind shifted."
The silence that followed was louder than a scream.
Aerion went perfectly still.
The air in the cell seemed to freeze. The chemical mask on his skin couldn't hide the sudden, sharp spike of pheromones that leaked through—a sickly, terrified sweetness that hit the back of Dunk’s throat like rot.
"You smelled nothing," Aerion whispered.
It was a threat.
"I smelled you," Dunk said. He didn't move. He kept his hands open, palms out. "I know what you are. That’s why you hate me. Not because I hit you. But because I know you're not..."
"Say it," Aerion breathed. His hand dropped to the dagger at his belt. "Say it and I will carve the word from your heart."
"You're not a monster," Dunk said, ignoring the blade. "You're just... terrified. You act like a beast so no one tries to claim you."
It was the understanding that did it. If Dunk had mocked him, if Dunk had laughed, Aerion might have killed him cold.
But the pity—the gentle, bovine, Alpha pity in Dunk’s eyes—shattered him.
Aerion screamed.
It was a raw, animal sound.
He lunged, not with the dagger, but with the torch. He slammed the burning brand against Dunk’s chestplate. Sparks showered them both in a cascade of orange fire.
"I am the dragon!" Aerion shrieked, striking Dunk again and again with the wooden haft. "I am fire! I am not weak! I am not yours to understand!"
Dunk didn't raise a hand. He took the blows.
The wood splintered against his chest. He let the Prince rage, let the smaller man exhaust himself against the wall of muscle that Dunk provided. He stood there, an immovable object absorbing the hysterical force of a storm that had nowhere else to go.
Aerion was panting now, his chest heaving, his hair falling into his eyes. The torch lay guttering on the damp floor.
He grabbed Dunk’s tunic, his gloved fists bunching the rough fabric, pulling the giant down to his level.
"You are nothing," Aerion sobbed, the words wet and broken. "You are dirt. You are a mongrel dog."
He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered. The suppressants were failing under the stress. The cell was filling with the scent of an Omega in deep, profound distress—a scent that begged for comfort, for a nest, for safety.
And Aerion hated it.
He hated his own biology with a virulence that twisted his face into a mask of agony.
"You're right," Dunk said, his voice a low rumble against Aerion’s forehead. "I'm just a hedge knight. I'm nothing."
He offered the lie like a shield, a way for the Prince to retreat with some scrap of dignity.
Aerion stared at him. He saw the offer. He saw the mercy. And he despised Dunk for it more than he had ever despised anyone in his life.
An Alpha who refused to conquer. An Alpha who forgave him for being an Omega.
It was the ultimate insult to Aerion’s worldview.
He shoved Dunk away, stumbling back toward the door. He looked wrecked, his finery twisted, his eyes wide and hollow.
"You will die tomorrow," Aerion whispered, but the fire was gone from his voice. It sounded hollow. "I will have the Kingsguard cut you to pieces. And when you are dead... I will be the only one who knows."
He turned to the door.
"Wait,” Dunk muttered.
The word didn’t come out as a request.
He hadn’t meant to do it. He hated the feeling of it rising in his chest—that deep, vibrating hum that lived behind his ribs, the thing Ser Arlan had told him was a gift but always felt like a burden.
It was the Command. The sound that made horses steady and men freeze.
He let it loose, just a fraction of it. It rolled across the damp cell like a physical weight, heavy as a falling oak tree. The same voice he used to command the meadow to stop just two hours ago.
”Prince Aerion.”
The effect was instantaneous.
Aerion’s hand, white-knuckled on the iron latch of the door, locked up. His entire frame seized.
The biology he tried so desperately to poison into silence betrayed him instantly.
His Omega instincts heard a Prime Alpha voice, deep and resonant, and his body obeyed before his mind could scream treason.
He stopped. He didn't turn around, but he stood frozen, shivering violently, his velvet doublet trembling with the force of his restraint.
Dunk swallowed hard, the taste of the command sour in his mouth.
He felt like a bully. He felt like he had just kicked a dog that was already limping.
"I shouldn't have... I didn't mean to use that tone, m'lord," Dunk mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck, his other hand hanging uselessly at his side.
He shifted his weight, his boots scraping on the stone. "But you weren't listening."
Aerion didn't move. He was breathing in shallow, ragged hitches.
Dunk looked at the back of the Prince's head. He tried to find the words. He wasn't a maester. He wasn't a poet. He was just a hedge knight who knew horses and rain and the ache of an empty belly.
"My old master, Ser Arlan..." Dunk started, then stopped.
That wasn't right. "Look... I ain't good with words. I'm thick as a castle wall, mostly. Everyone says so."
He took a half-step forward, careful not to loom.
"But... it ain't a sickness, m'lord. Being... what you are."
Aerion’s shoulders hunched, as if he expected a blow.
"You're acting like... like it's a poison in your blood," Dunk said, fumbling through the thought, trying to shape it with his clumsy tongue. "Like if you stop burning things for one second, the... the softness is gonna eat you alive. But it won't."
Dunk sighed, a heavy, rattling sound in the quiet cell.
"I’ve seen warhorses like that. They get spooked, and they trample everything cause they're scared of their own shadow. You don't gotta be a dragon every second of the day, my prince. You don't gotta break people just to prove you ain't... breakable."
He looked at his own large, calloused hands—hands that could crush a throat or cradle a bird.
"Being an Omega... it doesn’t make you weak," Dunk said, his voice dropping to a rumble that was almost gentle.
"It just makes you... not a rock,” he continued. “And that's alright. Even dragons gotta land sometime."
Aerion slowly turned around.
His face was a ruin of shock. The malice was gone, wiped clean by sheer, stupefied bewilderment.
He looked at Dunk not with hatred, or fear, or arrogance, but with a terrible, silent confusion.
His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. He stared at the giant hedge knight as if Dunk had just spoken in a language that hadn't been invented yet.
His violet eyes, usually so sharp and predatory, were wide, the pupils blown black, trembling with a frantic, wet sheen. He looked like a man who had been slapped in the face with a gauntlet of velvet.
A laugh bubbled up from his throat—a wet, splintering sound that cracked in the middle.
"A horse," Aerion whispered. The word sounded foreign on his tongue. "You compare the blood of Old Valyria... to a horse."
He took a step forward, his movements jerky, fighting the invisible tether of Dunk’s earlier command. The proximity to the giant Alpha was doing something terrible to his blood. It was singing.
The suppressants he drowned himself in were dissolving under the sheer biological pressure of Dunk’s presence—that steady, unshakeable calm that rolled off the hedge knight like heat off a sun-baked stone.
It was repulsive.
And it was the most comforting thing Aerion had ever felt.
"I am a Prince of the Seven Kingdoms," Aerion hissed, stepping closer still, until he was well within Dunk’s personal space. He had to crane his neck back to look Dunk in the eye. "I am the fire made flesh. And you... you are a flea-bitten giant from the gutter who smells of wet dog and rust."
He raised a gloved hand, intending to strike Dunk, or perhaps to push him away.
But the hand hovered in the air, trembling. It didn't strike.
It drifted, almost against his will, toward the warmth radiating from Dunk’s chest.
"I didn't mean no offense," Dunk said quietly. He didn't flinch away from the hand. He stood his ground, a massive, warm stillness. "Just... horses are honest creatures. They don't lie about what they are. That's all."
"Honest," Aerion spat the word, but his voice lacked its usual venom. It was breathless. "You think honesty is a virtue? In this world?"
His hand finally landed, not a strike, but a grip. He seized the rough fabric of Dunk’s tunic, right over the heart. He clutched it tight, his knuckles white.
"If I were honest," Aerion murmured, his voice dropping to a frantic whisper, "they would eat me alive. My father. My brothers. The lords. They would see a womb. They would see a thing to be bred, to be traded, to be locked in a tower."
He pulled at Dunk’s tunic, shaking him slightly, though Dunk moved no more than a mountain moves in a breeze.
"You think you understand?" Aerion’s eyes were wild, searching Dunk’s face for a trace of mockery. "You think because you are big, because you are Alpha, that you can look down on me and tell me it is alright?"
"I ain't lookin' down," Dunk said. "I'm lookin' at you."
The simplicity of it tore through Aerion’s defenses like a blade.
For his entire life, people had looked at the Prince, the Dragon, the Monster.
No one had ever looked at the boy shivering inside the armor.
No one had ever smelled the terror beneath the sulfur and simply... stayed.
Aerion hated him for it.
He hated this hedge knight with a violent, searing passion. He hated him because Dunk had seen the one thing Aerion had killed to hide, and instead of using it as a weapon, Dunk had offered it a hand.
It was an insult to Aerion’s suffering. It made all his cruelty, all his madness, seem petty and small.
"I should kill you," Aerion breathed, the scent of his distress spiking—sweet, cloying, and desperate. "I should have your tongue ripped out right now. I should burn you until you are nothing but ash."
He leaned in, his forehead almost touching Dunk’s chest, his grip on the tunic tightening until the fabric groaned. He was vibrating, his body betraying him, leaning into the Alpha’s warmth, seeking the stability he had been denied since birth.
"Why aren't you afraid of me?" Aerion demanded, his voice cracking into a sob he refused to release. "Why don't you fear the dragon?"
Dunk looked down at the top of the Prince’s head, at the silver-gold hair that shone even in the gloom. He felt the trembling of the smaller man against him, the frantic, bird-like heartbeat fluttering against his own chest.
"Cause you ain't a dragon right now, my prince," Dunk said, his voice rough but kind. "You're just a man in the dark."
Aerion let out a sound—half gasp, half snarl.
He didn't pull away. He couldn't.
He stood there, anchored by the giant he was sworn to destroy, caught in the terrible, jagged space between wanting to murder the only person who truly knew him, and wanting to collapse into his arms.
"Stop it!" The scream tore from Aerion’s throat, raw and wet. The fragile tether of his composure snapped.
He threw himself at Dunk.
It was a frantic, uncoordinated tackle, a burst of hysterical violence that had no strategy behind it. He slammed his shoulder into Dunk’s chest, driving the giant back a single step until Dunk’s shoulders hit the stone wall with a dull thud.
"Don't you look at me!" Aerion shrieked, his fists hammering against Dunk’s ribs, his chest, his arms.
"Don't you dare pity the dragon! I am not weak! I am not weak!"
Dunk didn't raise a hand to defend himself. He didn't need to.
Aerion’s blows were fast and vicious, but against Dunk’s sheer mass and the layers of boiled leather and roughspun wool, they felt like rain against a mountain.
Dunk simply stood there, his back braced against the damp stone, letting the Prince exhaust the poison in his blood.
He could feel Aerion unraveling. Every punch was a denial of his own nature, a desperate attempt to beat the truth out of existence.
"Fight me!" Aerion sobbed, striking Dunk’s jaw with a gloved fist.
It stung, split Dunk's lip, but Dunk didn't flinch.
"Fight back, you mongrel! Prove me right! Hurt me!"
He wants me to hurt him, Dunk realized, the copper taste of blood in his mouth. He wants me to make him a victim so he doesn't have to feel like a fool.
Dunk refused. He kept his hands open and down, his breathing steady, his scent an anchor of calm earth in the storm of Aerion’s wildfire.
The lack of resistance broke Aerion faster than any blow could have.
His punches slowed.
His breath hitched, turning into a jagged, suffocating wheeze.
The fury drained out of him all at once, leaving only the crushing weight of his biology. His knees buckled.
He collapsed against Dunk.
Aerion slid down the front of the hedge knight’s tunic, his hands grasping at the fabric to stay upright, his forehead pressing into Dunk’s chest. The sobbing started—a horrible, gasping sound that shook his entire frame.
It was the sound of a lifetime of suppressants and shame finally failing.
Dunk looked down. He didn't know what to do with his hands. He felt huge, clumsy, and intrusive.
Slowly, awkwardly, Dunk raised a hand.
He didn't touch the Prince—that felt like a crime—but he hovered his palm just behind Aerion’s trembling shoulder, shielding him from the empty air of the cell.
"Easy," Dunk murmured, his voice a low rumble in his chest that Aerion would feel against his cheek. "Just breathe. It's just... it's just air. Ain't no dragons here."
Aerion didn't pull away.
For a long, terrible minute, the Prince of Summerhall, the Brightflame, clung to a Flea Bottom hedge knight, weeping into his dirty tunic like a lost child seeking a parent.
The scent of distress was overwhelming now—sugar and rot and despair.
Then, the moment shattered.
Aerion seemed to realize where he was. He realized whose chest he was crying on.
He realized he was seeking comfort from the very Alpha he had sworn to destroy.
He shoved himself backward so hard he nearly tripped over his own boots.
Aerion scrambled to the far wall, his chest heaving, his eyes wide and red-rimmed. He wiped his face with the back of his glove, smearing tears and snot across his expensive velvet.
The shame that flooded his expression was more violent than his rage had ever been.
He looked at Dunk, and the hatred that returned to his eyes was cold, absolute, and crystalline.
He stood up straight. He smoothed his doublet with trembling hands. He fixed his hair. He rebuilt the wall, brick by brick, right in front of Dunk’s eyes.
"You," Aerion whispered. His voice was no longer hysterical. It was dead. "You are a disease."
Dunk lowered his hand, feeling a strange ache in his chest. "My prince—"
"Do not speak to me," Aerion cut him off, his tone sharp as a razor. "You think this... this moment... changes anything? You think because you saw me bleed, we are kin?"
He laughed, a short, sharp bark that held no humor.
"You are mud," Aerion sneered, curling his lip to show his teeth. "You are the dirt beneath my boot. That is all you will ever be. And tomorrow, when the trial begins, I will not just kill you, Ser Duncan."
He walked to the door, his movements stiff and precise, like a marionette whose strings had been pulled too tight. He paused with his hand on the latch, looking back over his shoulder.
"I will make you beg," Aerion said, his violet eyes flat and dead. "I will make you scream until you forget you ever saw me. And when you are nothing but meat on the sand... I will laugh."
He yanked the door open. The torchlight from the hall flooded in, erasing the intimacy of the shadows.
"Sleep well, Giant," Aerion spat. "It is the last peace you will ever know."
The door slammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid, leaving Dunk alone in the dark, the scent of the weeping dragon still clinging to his tunic.
The silence in the cell was heavier than the door.
Dunk sat back down on the damp straw, his legs sprawling out like tree roots. He stared at the darkness where the Prince had stood, listening to the fading echo of boots retreating down the corridor.
He raised a hand to his chest. The wool of his tunic was still damp.
It wasn't blood.
It was tears.
Dunk rubbed the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the moisture, trying to make sense of the madness that had just stormed in and out of his life. The smell was still there, clinging to him like burrs to a horse’s tail—that sharp, stinging sweetness of burnt sugar and terrified animal. It sat in the back of his throat, coating his tongue.
He’s just a boy, Dunk thought again. The realization felt like a stone in his gut.
He had spent his whole life looking up at highborns. They were the sun and the moon, distant and blinding. He had thought they were made of something different—gold and Valyrian steel.
But Aerion... Aerion was just meat and bone and a heartbeat that fluttered like a trapped sparrow.
Dunk looked at his own hands. Big, scarred, calloused. Hands made for holding a lance, for grooming horses, for digging ditches.
Those hands had felt the Prince shaking.
They had felt the heat radiating off him, the fever of a creature fighting its own skin.
I should have hit him back, Dunk thought, numbly. A true knight would have defended his honor.
But he couldn't find the anger. He searched for it, hunting for the rage that should come from being threatened, spat on, and beaten.
But all he found was a deep, aching hollow.
He remembered the way Aerion had leaned into him. For a second—just a heartbeat—the Dragon had stopped burning. He had rested. He had let the weight of the world drop off his shoulders and let Dunk carry it for him.
It was the most dangerous thing Dunk had ever felt.
He’s going to kill me, Dunk realized, closing his eyes. Not because I hit him. But because I held him up.
And the worst part, the part that made Dunk feel truly thick as a castle wall, was that he didn't hate Aerion for it.
He just wished, with a stupid, heavy sadness, that he could have held him a little longer. Just until the shaking stopped.
The corridor was a tunnel of fire.
Aerion walked fast, his boots clicking sharply on the stone, a staccato rhythm that matched the frantic hammering of his heart. The guards snapped to attention as he passed, their armor clattering, but he didn't see them. He saw only the darkness of the cell.
He saw the giant.
He reached his chambers and slammed the door, throwing the bolt with trembling fingers. He ripped the gloves from his hands and threw them into the hearth.
They were contaminated. Everything was contaminated.
He paced the room, clawing at his doublet. He couldn't breathe. The air in the castle was stale and dead, but his lungs were full of him.
Elm. Rain. Earth.
The scent of the hedge knight was branded into his senses. It was a common smell, a peasant smell.
It should have made him gag.
Instead, it made his knees weak.
Aerion let out a strangled cry and swept a pitcher of wine off the table. It shattered, red liquid pooling like blood on the rushes. He stared at it, panting.
He saw me, Aerion thought, the panic rising like bile. He saw the thing inside.
He hated Dunk.
He hated him with a purity that felt like a holy calling.
He hated the size of him, the dumb, bovine kindness in those brown eyes, the way he had stood there—solid, immovable, warm—while Aerion shattered against him.
But beneath the hate, coiled like a viper in his belly, was something worse.
It was hunger.
Aerion squeezed his eyes shut, and immediately, the memory washed over him. The feeling of that massive chest against his cheek. The rumble of that deep voice vibrating through his own bones.
The terrifying, intoxicating safety of being small in the shadow of something that would not hurt him.
For one second, in that cell, the noise in Aerion’s head had stopped. The shame had vanished. The dragon had slept.
I want it back, the traitorous voice whispered in his blood. I want him to cover me. I want him to hide me from the sun. I want to crawl inside his ribs and never come out.
The thought was a blasphemy. A surrender.
"No," Aerion whispered to the empty room. He wrapped his arms around himself, digging his fingernails into his own skin until he felt the sharp bite of pain. "I am the blood of Old Valyria. I do not need."
He needed to destroy the source.
He needed to see Dunk broken, bleeding, and dead.
He needed to watch the life leave those brown eyes so that the mirror would be shattered, and no one would ever look at him with that unbearable, crushing understanding again.
But as he stared into the fire, imagining Dunk’s death, the tears came back—hot, angry, and treacherous.
He would kill the giant. He would burn him alive.
And then, he would spend the rest of his life mourning the only place he had ever felt safe.