Chapter Text
Aerion likes to think he is remarkably well-adjusted for his age.
At three-and-ten, it had been three moons since his lady mother had died in childbed. The world still regarded him with the same cloying sorrow reserved for broken things. He had endured three long moons of ceaseless whispering that followed him through the halls of Summerhall and now dogged his steps through the Red Keep itself.
And that irritated him beyond measure.
He is a dragon, not some delicate little Myrish doll to be coddled and cooed over. Were they at Summerhall, he would have lashed those fools with his sharp tongue until they wept and then sent them off to muck out the stables where they belonged, fit only for shit and straw.
Even his own father, Prince Maekar, had taken to watching him these past days with that heavy, brooding stare, as though he were still a mewling babe in swaddling clothes.
Unlike his useless siblings, who went about their day with red-rimmed eyes and long, gloomy faces, Aerion refused to snivel. It was beneath him to hide underneath his blankets and sob like some frightened child he no longer was.
After all, weeping was for omegas and weaklings.
Yet here in the Red Keep, visiting his grandparents and his uncle Baelor Breakspear, the heir to the Iron Throne, he was forced to play the part of a well-mannered princeling befitting his high station. He must smile when spoken to, hold his tongue when he wished to bite, and carry himself with the grace expected of a Targaryen prince.
His grandparents, King Daeron the Second and Queen Myriah, had taken quite a liking to him. His grandmother often pinched his cheeks with her soft hands and called him “my little moon,” while his grandfather would pat his silver-gold head and murmur fondly that he had “the fairest face to grace King’s Landing since Queen Naerys herself.”
The compliments made Aerion’s skin crawl with equal parts of pride and mortification. He wished their praise were not so… feminine in nature. Still, he supposed it was better to be compared to Queen Naerys than to that whoremongering wretch Aegon the Unworthy, whose lechery still stained the Targaryen name to this very day.
There were also far too many useless uncles, aunts, and unworthy cousins crawling like insects who Aerion must keep up with in the Red Keep.
Not a single one of them was truly worthy of House Targaryen. The lot of them made Aerion’s blood boil with rage. How dare such weak, diluted creatures share the same blood as him? He sneered inside at the very thought.
Aerion could scarcely stomach the sight of them. His uncle Aerys was a pathetic bibliophile who would sooner lay his cock in the open pages of his book than between his own lady wife’s thighs. His uncle Rhaegel was a halfwit with equally halfwit whelps spawned from his halfwit seed and the cunt of that spineless, mouse-hearted wife of his from the Reach.
Only his favorite cousin, Matarys, made the visit bearable and it had been many moons since they last saw each other.
Sweet Matarys has always been the warmer of Baelor Breakspear’s two sons. He was quick to laugh, slow to anger, and fiercely loyal. Even after the death of his own lady mother, Lady Jena Dondarrion, he had never turned cold or distant like so many others at court who loved the late Lady Jena. Aerion sometimes thought that if he had to suffer the company of any one person for the rest of his days, he would choose Matarys without hesitation.
He could still remember their childhood days at Summerhall with a fondness he rarely allowed himself. In those gentler years, before grief had sharpened his edges, he and Matarys would sneak away from the keep at first light, armed with nothing but strings and bent pins stolen from their mothers’ sewing baskets.
They would sit by the lake with their legs dangling over the cool water, whispering and giggling like little conspirators plotting the downfall of some poor lord.
Later they would claim their own little kingdom beneath the shade of the olive tree his father had planted for his mother, trading scandalous gossip of their households—such as how a stableboy had been caught with his breeches around his ankles, rutting with a serving girl behind the hay bales like some beast in heat, or how a despoiled maid had been found weeping because the cook’s alpha daughter had promised her marriage after she made her cunt bled and then vanished with a peddler’s wagon.
Meanwhile, his alpha kinsmen would ride off hunting like loud and sweaty brutes, blowing horns, and trampling through the woods while Aerion and Matarys remained behind with their mothers and other nobles deemed unfit for the hunting games, along with their most trusted servants and Kingsguards.
They would watch from afar in envy as the hunting party returned at dusk, their horses laden with the spoils of the chase. Aerion recalled vividly the great stags slung across saddles, boars with wicked tusks, and strings of fat rabbits dangling from poles carried by grinning squires. A sharp, coppery scent of blood permeated the evening air as the men strode through the gates, laughing and boasting of their kills.
Aerion’s eyes would always linger the longest on his eldest cousin Valarr.
In one particular evening, Valarr had manhandled the largest great boar he had ever seen, even larger than the prince himself. He slings the massive carcass down from his horse with nothing but his raw strength, his black hunting leathers looked even darker from the fresh stains of blood flowing. A single speckle of blood marked his cheek like a warrior’s brand and in that moment he look truly menacing—
And undeniably Targaryen.
For the first time in his life, his cousin looked every inch the dragonlord he was meant to be and the awe of it had crept through him unbidden, settling somewhere beneath his ribs.
Yet even then, his gaze had snapped away when he noticed Valarr suddenly turn and fix those strange two-colored eyes directly upon him across the yard, as if the man could sense his stare all along.
Aerion’s stomach had twisted sharply. He quickly looked down at his own boots, heart beating faster than it should.
Besides him, he could hear ladies and young omegas fluttering about his cousin like moths drawn to light, giggling and swooning as they pressed even closer to the third in line to the Iron Throne.
There is no doubt that Valarr is the most sought after alpha in all the Seven Kingdoms.
Aerion could not help but scoff under his breath.
They have no taste at all.
He knew his cousin personally and what he saw was far less impressive. His eldest cousin was a dull creature, solemn and humorless, the sort of man who could suck the warmth from a room simply by entering it. His presence could turn from merely intense to deeply unsettling in the span of a heartbeat, like a hailstorm descending upon a summer's day without warning.
His cousin had once been his favorite when he was a boy of eight. He enjoyed the special attention he received from his cousin. In those days, the letters came often, thick with his careful elegant script and curious questions.
How do you fare, little cousin? What toys I’ve sent pleases you the most? Did you enjoy the wooden dragon I have carved for you?
Each moon’s turn seemed to bring another gift besides some finely made trinkets, delicate daggers, soft lacy silks and curious baubles sent from afar. The presents grew so excessive to the point that his father had moved at last to pen a letter to his brother, urging him to restrain his son’s generosity toward his youngest boy.
His lady mother had laughed, “You are a lucky boy, Aerion,” she said, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. “A sweet older cousin who looks after you as if you were his own child. Prince Valarr would make a fine father one day for his and Lady Kiera’s future children.”
Aerion thought, with a sudden sharpness, that his two-and-eight-year-old cousin could indeed have been his father. Valarr was the same age his own father had been when he had already sired four children with his mother.
And yet… Valarr had not sired a single child.
Perhaps, Aerion wondered, that was why his cousin treated him as he did—pouring gifts, letters, and attention over him. But then his mind drifted to Matarys, Valarr’s own blood and youngest brother, who was only two years his senior.
Did Valarr treat Matarys this way? Or was Aerion something unique in his cousin’s eyes, something chosen for reasons he could not hope to understand?
When Lady Jena died, they journeyed to King’s Landing to mourn the sudden death of his aunt. It was there that he saw his cousins again—Valarr and Matarys.
And there, something had changed. His cousin’s kindness had not vanished, but it had changed into something he couldn’t figure out the intent.
He hated not knowing things, hated the gnawing uncertainty of why Valarr’s gaze lingered far too long upon him. Those unique eyes, inherited from his sire, were merely no longer familiar. They seemed to measure him, weigh him, and mark him for some purpose known only to Valarr.
Each time Valarr’s gaze fell upon him, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and a chill crept beneath his skin.
Once, when they were younger, Aerion had dared complain of it to his eldest brother Daeron after catching Valarr staring at him again across the yard while Matarys laughed at some jest besides him.
“He watches me like a hawk eyes a rabbit,” He remembered he had shamefully whispered to him, frozen with half-fear. “What if he means me harm? He must dislike how I steal Matarys’ attention from him.”
Daeron had only thrown back his head and laughed, sour Arbor red staining his lips, a flagon swinging loosely in his hand.
“Valarr would never do that, little brother. He’s no kinslayer unless you’re a Blackfyre. Now cease these foolish thoughts and go find yourself a cup of fresh milk. Play with Matarys if you must, but leave me to my wine.”
The dismissal had stung more than any blow. Daeron was always too drunk. He was either too deep between some whore’s thighs and catching some malady in the brothels near Summerhall or drinking himself senselessly on some wine to spare a moment's true thought for him. His eldest alpha brother treated kinship like an afterthought, a duty to be shrugged off with a jest and another wineskin. Aerion had long learned to expect nothing more since then.
His second brother, Aegon, was a little better in his own way. But he too wandered off on adventures with that knighted hedge knight he had squired for in his youth, laughing with smallfolk as if they were equals, much to their father’s grim disappointment.
How could one so highborn lower himself so? Their father often growled in private. Aerion agreed, but held his tongue, lest his father’s heavy hand find his backside again for speaking ill of his elder brother.
And Aemon… well. The third brother, a beta, had chosen the path of the maester rather than the honorable battlefield his father had dreamed for his eldest sons. It seemed almost laughable to Aerion that a Targaryen prince would rather spend his time with ink and parchment rather than for their swords and dragons.
He just simply couldn’t wait to have his presentation ceremony as an alpha.
Soon he would make his father proud. Soon people would stop seeing him as soft and feminine, cease comparing him to dead queens and pretty waif things meant to be looked at rather than feared.
Alphas commanded respect. Alphas took what they wanted. No one would pinch the cheeks of an alpha or call him “little moon” unless they wished to lose a hand.
Only then would the court stop treating him like a little girl in boy’s clothing.
He wondered briefly, if Matarys had already had his formal presentation. He was three full years older, nearly six-and-ten now. Aerion hoped desperately that Matarys would present as an alpha. Then, they could stand together as the next Hammer and Anvil, fierce and unbreakable, defending their royal bloodline against all who would dare weaken it.
Just like their fathers before them.
Aerion sat straight-backed on a marble bench in the gardens of the Red Keep, a book of Valyrian poetry open in his lap.
He wasn’t truly reading it. It merely served as a prop to simply allow others to see that he had far better things to occupy his mind than join their giggles, their mindless gossips, and their petty scheming.
As he turned a page with deliberate grace, his ears pricked at the sound of his insipid maternal beta cousin, Edric Dayne, whispering nearby–too loud for any pretenses of secrecy.
“They say Prince Valarr still hasn’t taken another consort,” Edric murmured. “Twelve years wed to Lady Kiera and it produced nothing but stillbirths and one malformed thing that drew half a breath before the Stranger took it. I heard she fled back to her Tyroshi kin in the end, cursing his name.”
Cassian Dayne, his plain-faced cousin with the look of a common squire despite his noble name, gave a wet snicker.
“Mayhaps his alpha cock is limp as a dead eel. Or worse, the smallfolk whisper he has no taste for the fairer sex at all. That he eyes his own sex, alphas especially. Unnatural, is it not? ‘Tis why the Gods punish such inclinations, don’t they? No true heir shall be born for a dragon who’d rather mount his own kind.”
Aerion’s fingers tightened on the edge of the page. The insinuation was almost enough for him to lunge out of his seat and smack both of his cousins across their faces. However, he was in no mood to be disciplined by his father tonight. His arse cheeks still felt the phantom sting of his sire’s large palm striking him a days ago.
But it appears that his perfect cousin wasn’t so perfect at all.
The rumors were not new. Aerion had heard them before, long before his family arrived in King’s Landing. Each empty cradle presented at court over the years lent them weight.
For twelve years of marriage, the Gods had seen fit to close Lady Kiera’s womb. Some septons and other nobles who grew more daring in their cups spoke of a divine wrath for Valarr’s unnatural hedonistic appetites.
Blood of the dragon or not, such things invited barrenness. The Seven and the Old Gods besides had marked the prince as a sinner.
Prince Valarr, the solemn heir of Prince Baelor Breakspear, the silver-streaked exemplar of their line, had been reduced to this—
An impotent, a deviant, or both.
Aerion’s violet eyes narrowed. Insolent sheeps. His hand stilled upon turning another page from his poetry book.
Valarr might be dull as rainwater, but regardless of his cousin’s inadequacies, it was not an excuse for lesser blood to insult a prince of the dragon. The arrogance of sheep always sickened him. These curs could mock Valarr’s failures, his rumored tastes, his empty marriage bed—all of it. But these curs had no right to drag his name through the muck.
Only dragons can devour one another. Sheeps, wolves, and stags had no place at the feast.
“Hmph.” His voice clear and ringing through the greenery, “I don’t give a damn who my cousin beds or fails to bed or whether his cock rises for omegas, for alphas, or for nothing at all. He is still the blood of the dragon. Speak of him with respect or pick a God and pray that one of the Seven may feel merciful to save you from my displeasure, even though you are my mother’s blood.”
The garden fell silent. His maternal cousin's cow eyes looked properly cowed. Aerion rose smoothly, letting the sunlight gild the silver-gold glory of his hair, and left them among the roses without a backward glance.
Later that afternoon, Aerion sought the quiet courtyard, slipping into their secret place where the ivy clung thick to the old stone walls.
Matarys was already there, swinging a blunted practice sword in lazy and powerful arcs. His reddish-brown hair was tousled from exertion, the single silver streak shining bright as moonlight on steel and potent alpha scent drifted through the warm air.
His scent of fresh lemon, was pure and masculine— curled at the entrance of the courtyard like an invitation.
When he saw Aerion stepped in, his whole face lit with that warm, uncomplicated smile that never failed to loosen the knot in Aerion’s chest.
“Aerion!” Matarys called happily. “Spar with me?”
Aerion crossed his arms, pouting. “No. I’ve no wish to sweat like some hedge knight today. You only let me win anyway, because you like me too well.”
Matarys laughed softly and lowered the blade. He stepped closer, his eyes remaining warm. “I wouldn’t let you win this time… maybe.” His gaze lingered. “You look…..wonderful today. The sun makes your hair shine like a spun of silver silk.”
Aerion blinked, faintly unsettled by the familiar odd thickness and unusual weight in his childhood friend’s voice, but still, he flicked the stray leaf from Matarys’ shoulder with fastidious care.
“Obviously it does. It is Valyrian hair. You should cut your stupid red hair shorter. It’s a pity you don’t look more like a real dragon. You’d be perfect if you did”
He sat on the low stone wall, close enough that their thighs pressed together. Aerion watched as Matarys turned a little pink beneath his freckles but smiled all the same, undimmed by the insult.
“I’ll think about it,” Matarys murmured, agreeing at once in that habitual manner of his. He had never once said no to him, Aerion thought with a flicker of satisfaction. What a pushover, my sweet Matarys.
“Tomorrow I will have the servant cut my hair to your liking,” Matarys added, almost eagerly as he scooted closer to his side, “Tell me what the garden kids were saying. I’ll listen.”
Aerion then immediately launched into a dramatic, whiny retelling. Complaining loudly about how utterly boring it was.
Matarys listened to every word, nodding at the proper moments and laughing softly as Aerion’s gestures grew grand.
It always made Aerion feel better when he spoke with Matarys. Truly, Matarys was the only one in all the Red Keep who ever had the patience to really listen to him.
But even as he spoke, the thought of Valarr kept creeping back into his head like an annoying gnat.
“Valarr is the worst,” Aerion grumbled, kicking a pebble across the flagstones so that it skittered into the grass. “He’s dragging our name through the mud with his lame cock and debauchery.”
Before Matarys could deign to answer him to perhaps defend his brother, a calm and familiar voice came from the entrance of the courtyard.
“Matarys. Cousin. ”
Speak of the Devil, Aerion thought.
Prince Valarr stood there, tall and composed in his simple dark doublet and breeches without embellishments, so much like his father. His scent reached to them first, a rich bitter orange laced with old parchment and ink indicating he just left from a council meeting.
His queer two-colored eyes moved slowly between them, taking in the press of their thighs on the stone wall, of his flushed face, and the easy way his younger brother leaned into him.
For the briefest moment, something cold and unreadable flickered in that gaze, like a dragon stirring beneath still waters. His jaw tightened visibly.
Aerion lifted his chin in defiance. So be it. He’s feeling jealous at me again for hoarding his younger brother’s attention.
“Still playing boyhood games, brother?” Valarr said pointedly. Matarys flinched as the cold stare turned fully upon him. “You have presented as an alpha Targaryen prince. You must train harder. The realm does not wait for boys who waste their afternoons lounging upon walls and trading in garden gossip like fishwives.”
Matarys straightened his shoulders, though he did not pull away from Aerion’s side. “We were only talking—”
“—about my cock and my supposed debauchery, I gather,” Valarr finished smoothly. He did not depart like he usually does, instead he stepped even further into the courtyard and leaned his shoulder against a weathered pillar across them with his arms crossed over his chest.
His gaze kept returning to the narrow space between him and Matarys, to Matarys’ hand resting casually near his own. The bitter-orange scent sharpened suddenly, edged with something darker and almost smoky.
Aerion swallowed, his mouth gone dry at the sudden weight of mingled scents in the air. A strange faint tremor stirred low in his belly.
“The smallfolk do love their tales,” Valarr went on, his lips curving in a charming way that had people swooning and made Aerion bristle. “Impotence. Preference for alphas in one’s bed. The gods’ righteous punishment visited upon the wayward prince. Tell me, little cousin, do you find such stories entertaining?”
Aerion’s lip curled in a sardonic sneer. “I speak what I hear, cousin. You should have been a better alpha and sired the realm its heirs rather than leaving us with all this… instability.”
The words hung heavy between them. Matarys shifted uncomfortably beside him, caught between the two princes. His lemon scent was now tinged with unease.
Valarr’s eyes narrowed, yet he remained where he was. His own cousin’s scent wrapped around them both, growing sharper and more bitter, while Matarys’s bright lemon scent fluttered uncertainly against it.
Aerion himself had no scent as yet—unpresented and untouched, but even in this half-state he could feel the heaviness that had settled over the courtyard. It felt thick as molasses and oppressive which he could feel regardless of his predisposition.
“Careful, Aerion,” Valarr countered softly. Aerion flinched and huddled closer to Matarys in defense. “Your presentation draws near, but I am not beyond being angered by a boy of ten-and-three and his petty spite.” His eyes then flicked meaningfully to Aerion’s belly.
Once again that strange trembling returned to his lower stomach, deeper this time, with an intense ache that made his breath catch. His hand twitched instinctively, wanting to clutch at it, to press the unease away. He caught himself just in time, but not before he saw Valarr’s gaze drop to the motion, fixing upon the spot below his umbilicus with an unnerving and unsettling intensity.
The older prince’s smile grew thin and knowing, as though he could feel every unspoken flutter beneath the thin skin of his belly.
At last, after a long and weighted silence, Valarr pushed away from the pillar. “Train harder, Matarys,” he advised, his boots echoing as he retreated. “And you, little cousin… mind whose company you keep so closely. Not every man is content to watch another claim what he desires.”
His final words carried a sharp edge as his eyes lingered one last time on Matarys, heavy with meaning, before he turned and walked away.
The heavy scent of bitter orange lingered long even after his footsteps had faded into the courtyard.
Aerion stuck his tongue out at the retreating back like a petulant child. “Gods, your brother is a dolt. Even my eldest were never this possessive. His presence always brings some kind of misery.”
As he spoke the words, the unease in his gut coiled tighter. He leaned a fraction closer to Matarys, seeking the soothing comfort of his lemon scent.
He waited for Matarys to deny it, just like long ago in Summerhall, when he had asked if Valarr hated him for stealing his attention. Back then, Matarys had laughed, patient and warm, before gently telling him that he had misunderstood Valarr yet again. But the older boy had stopped mid-sentence, as if something had held him back. Aerion had puzzled over his words for hours and when he asked again, Matarys had never answered the same question ever again.
When he glanced up, he saw Matarys offering a tense smile in return. The older boy’s shoulders were stiff, his jaw tight, and the blunted practice sword he had used now lay cracked and forgotten beside him. The easy warmth that usually radiated from him had dimmed and overshadowed by his elder brother’s earlier presence.
Aerion said nothing of it. He did not like it when Matarys grew quiet.
That evening, as the sun bled crimson across Blackwater Bay, Aerion stood alone upon on a high balcony overlooking the sea.
He had endured supper with his father, his brothers, and the extended tangle of Targaryen kin, playing the part of the sweet, silver-tongued princeling to perfection.
Now, at last, he was free of their eyes.
He pressed a palm against the flat of his belly. The trembling had faded, but the memory of it—of Valarr’s eyes upon that very spot—remained.
The presentation ceremony is only a few weeks away now. He could feel it coming closer. Maesters and septons had watched over him night and day under his father’s orders, waiting for his boy’s presentation.
He knows nothing, Aerion told himself fiercely. I am Aerion Targaryen, of the blood of old Valyria. I will present as an alpha. I will rise greater than my cousin—stronger and more fertile.
Aerion then yawned, blinking the last wetness from his eyes, as he turned away from the balcony. He made his way to his temporary chambers, the torches flickering along the stone corridors as the crows cawed outside. When he finally collapsed onto his soft featherbed, clad in the delicate silk kirtle his beloved late mother had bestowed, a final thought drifted through his mind as sleep claimed him.
Anything else is simply impossible.
