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Jace and Helaena were opposed to a wet nurse, unwilling to hand their first child to a stranger when Hel’s milk was coming in perfectly well.
When they brought this concern to the Hand of the King, Helaena’s teats as full as her belly, he denied them.
“The realm requires an heir and a spare,” Otto said, as if departing sage advice on the young couple. “Babes suckling at the breast for too long impedes more babes being made. I thought your mother would have informed you of this, Jacaerys.”
When Rhaella is born, pride of the realm, she is not given to her mother to feed, but to a wet nurse. One carefully chosen by Jace and Hel, but a stranger all the same.
It does not stop Helaena’s milk, even three moons after the birth.
“It is the crying,” Jace’s mother explains, cradling her first grandchild while Helaena is tended to by her maids, her gown drenched. “Whenever you boys cried, I would leak everywhere. It made meetings quite impossible.”
“The maesters say she will not fall pregnant again if she’s still producing milk,” Jace says, worried. “The Hand—”
“Maesters and Otto Hightower know very little of a woman’s body, sweet boy.” His mother coos at Rhaella, doting on the girl named in her honour. “Do not fret. Bed your wife as you wish.”
Jace hesitates. “But—”
“Jacaerys,” Rhaenyra says, quite serious. “The realm is not in want of heirs, and your wife is hurting now. Look after her, and a babe will come in time. Believe me.”
Jace wants to believe her, but his own position in this world—despite being a dragonrider, despite his title, despite his blood—is tenuous and dependent on how useful he can be to the throne, and currently his usefulness is quantified by how quickly he can get his wife pregnant again.
It is not until a moon later, in the middle of the night, when Jace sees the wisdom in his mother’s words.
He wakes in waves, first roused by the sounds of the Blackwater from his window, then the gentle movement of the featherbed, then the soft sniffles beside him.
“Hel?” he asks blearily, blinking the sleep from his eyes. With only the moon for light, it takes him a moment for his eyes to adjust. “Are you awake?”
“It is nothing. Go back to sleep,” his wife whispers, but Jace knows her now after a year of marriage.
She never seeks to disrupt or worry, even at the expense of herself. It is a habit he is working on mending—she is a princess, will one day be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and is allowed to take up space—but it is slow going.
This is why Jace does not go back to sleep, and instead sits up to see what is keeping Helaena awake at this hour when she should be sleeping.
“You do not need to…” Helaena trails off, her shoulders curled in, arms wrapped tight around herself. Her hair tumbles down her back, soft, glowing in the moonlight, and Jace is momentarily breathless, for how did he end up with such a beautiful wife?
“How can I possibly sleep knowing you are awake?” Jace brushes aside her hair to gain a better look at her face, and finds it wet with tears. He sits up properly. “Helaena, what is it?”
She hiccups, her shoulders shaking with the effort to keep everything contained. “It is only…”
“You can tell me,” Jace implores, curling his hand around her thigh, holding tight. Reassuring, he hopes, for Jace has no example for a healthy marriage. He can only guess how to best help his wife. “I am here for you. Only you. You and Rhaella.”
Helaena muffles a sob, and buries her face in her hands. “I cannot.”
What could possibly be so terrible that she feels the need to hide from him? He thought they had become close since their betrothal, their marriage, the birth of their first child. He believed they shared everything, and yet she hides from him even in their own bedchamber.
Frustrated, he tugs her close.
“Jace!” she exclaims, and tries to cover herself again, but it is too late.
Jace sees her drenched nightgown, how it sticks to her chest, outlining every curve and every divot. How her nipples stand erect, demanding attention, how they’re dripping.
Helaena has been producing milk in their bed, right next to him while he slept. How long has this been going on?
“Helaena,” he murmurs, still holding her wrists. “You’re—” Drenched, dripping, soaking wet. “—You’re probably cold. Here, let me get another nightgown for you.”
He offers because he does not know what else to do, because he can’t continue to stare at her, eyes damp and teats soaked, without also getting hard and feeling like the worst man to walk the Seven Kingdoms.
When he returns, Helaena has removed her nightgown entirely, breasts bared to the open air, pebbling gently, round and full to bursting, and Jace fails.
He hands her the nightgown, but Helaena does not move to put it on.
“Mother said to ignore them,” she sniffles. A droplet beads at the tip of one nipple and dribbles down the underside of her breast, disappearing among the rest. “She told me her own milk dried up quickly, but mine hasn’t and I—Jace, I am trying. I know you want another babe, but I… I am trying my best. I promise.”
Jace realises his folly, his desire drooping as he curses his selfish nature—that is innate with bastards, is it not?—and cups her cheeks between his hands.
His heart is breaking for his precious wife.
“Hel, I do not want another—” He stops himself, because it would not be fair to lie to her. “I do not want you to suffer. Not like this.”
“But it is my duty,” she cries. “What use am I to you if I cannot give you what you want?”
And oh, Jace is the worst sort. He is sick with it, how he has failed Helaena so terribly.
“What I want,” he says slowly, and presses a kiss to her left cheek, “more than anything in this world,” He kisses the right, “is for my pretty wife,” Her forehead, “to be happy.”
She sniffles. “I do not…”
He kisses her lips. Softly and sweetly, with all the love he has inside for her. “Think about what you want. You do not have to answer me now.”
The gods know she has spent her life serving the whims of others—her mother, her grandfather, her siblings, and now Jace is included in this selfish list.
“I want…” She inhales, wipes her tears away, and stares down at her breasts. “I want to not be in so much pain.”
Jace nods. Yes. Yes, he can fix that. “Shall I retrieve Rhaella—?”
“No!” Helaena tugs him back. “No, she is sleeping. I would hate to disrupt her routine.”
“Then how—Oh.” A frisson of heat runs down his spine, desire pooling in his gut. Surely she is not suggesting he….
“Just a little, husband?” she begs, and proceeds to cup her wet breasts. Even the slightest movement has new droplets dripping from her nipples. “I know it is distasteful, but they ache, and I only require some relief. Then I will sleep easier.” She flushes red, is practically trembling under his hands. “Please?”
How could he possibly reassure her without revealing how deep his perversions run? That suckling at her teats like a babe would be a blessing, not a chore, not something he does with reluctance or disgust.
Words will never be enough—and he is terribly afraid he might incriminate himself—so he gently lowers her to lay on the bed.
Her large, full breasts splay out, still trickling milk in tiny rivulets, like the world’s smallest rivers.
Without saying a word, Jace chases one with his tongue, from her belly to her nipple, before taking it into his mouth.
“Oh,” Hel sighs, her arms immediately coming up to curl around his head, to pet his hair. “Oh. Thank you, Jace, thank you.”
There is no need for gratitude. Jacaerys is the one taking, the one gifted this joy.
He suckles, and the first burst of milk on his tongue is sweet and rich and heady, better than the oldest wines, the finest food. She is decadent, a feast, and Jacaerys takes.
“So good, so good,” Helaena babbles, raking her nails across his scalp, squirming under his ministrations so fitfully he has to hold her in place, one arm a bar across her stomach while the other massages her breast. “Jace, oh Jace, I love you, I love you.”
Jace groans around her tit, belly growing fuller as he swallows mouthful after mouthful of her sweet, nourishing milk.
“The other,” she urges, tugging him off and guiding him to her other breast.
When he releases her nipple with a pop—a string of milky salvia connecting them still—he sees her breast is less swollen, with a ring of red around her areola from his firm suction.
Jace kisses it gently, awarding him a soft mewl, before he moves to her other breast.
This time, he slips his fingers between Helaena’s plush thighs to slide through her sex.
“Oh,” she breathes, holding him close as she spreads her legs wide, welcoming his touch. “Please, oh please, more.”
Jace smoothes two fingers along her inner lips, squeezing her swollen pearl between them, rolling it around, gently teasing it in time with his suckles.
Helaena tenses and trembles, her body alive with the pleasure he wrings out of her, all while Jace sucks the last mouthfuls of her sweet milk from her bountiful teat.
“Good, yes, yes, oh—Jace, there!” Hel cries as Jace flattens three of his fingers against her sex and grinds. “Mhmm!!”
Helaena trips and falls over the edge, back arched, face slack as her release comes over her. Jace watches her with rapt attention, lips still latched to her nipple, gazing up with pure adoration.
The sight of her turns him desperate. It takes but a handful of loose, reckless grinds of his cock against their featherbed which has him spilling onto the sheets, mixing the white of his seed with the white of her milk. A shared life essence, conception and birth, mingling together.
Jace comes down slowly, face buried between her breasts, tonguing lazily at her flesh. “My lovely wife.”
Helaena laughs, breathless and happy. “My generous husband.”
“There will be time for more babes, Hel,” Jace murmurs into her breast, milk drunk and sleepy and in love. “They will come.”
Helaena strokes his hair, carding her fingers through his curls. “I would like to nurse the next one,” she says dreamily.
Jace nods, drifting off, already dreaming of babes. “Anything you desire, wife.”