Chapter Text
The beast has not been so close. Not since he first landed at the south gate, a full two moons prior. His days were spent lording over the wolfswood, plunging its stores of prey and predator alike. A small, armored mountain, taking whole bears for supper and roasted elk for tea. His reign, though merciless, is not a cruel one. Such is the order of things. Nature knows no virtue, good or bad. It only knows instinct.
He watches them now — the long, rock column of his neck, unwinding onto the wall near the First Keep. It brings a shudder through the courtyard, this giant mouth in the sky, the scaled vulture that had picked the forest clean. In training, his cousins are more lambs than wolves. Cregan hopes the dragon has an appetite for sheep.
In truth, he is distracted too. His thoughts are not taken with Vermax, but his keeper. A dragon in his own right, just with softer skin.
It was a cold day, the first time the prince missed training. Cregan thought not of it. Jacaerys was given their finest room and softest furs. It made enough sense for him to have chosen comfort over snow. Neither did he dine with Cregan, that dark and lonely night. His absence stretched over the next day, and the day after that. When Cregan found himself, once more, breaking his fast alone, his patience had been thoroughly worn.
The prince’s chambers were not so far from Cregan’s. He waited on a word, a footstep, a rustling. Jacaerys, it seemed, had been too proud to face him, since their last day in the wolfswood. What happened between them need not be such a matter, and so his petulance angered Cregan. That afternoon he went to confront him, to demand he show a little spine, but when he happened upon his door, he found no such spine. In fact, he found nothing.
His featherbed had been stripped, and his room was just as bare. It was if he’d never been there at all, and Cregan might have believed himself a mad man were it not for the servants, traversing in and out with his possessions, delivering them elsewhere.
Where that is, Cregan knows not. Of Jacaerys, all that remains is his dragon.
Vermax stares down at Cregan, and when he looks back into its golden eye, he swears it weeps.
Cregan thinks there is pity to be found with the beast. For how should such a great hunger ever be satiated?
***
BEFORE
Prince Jacaerys arrived with the turn of Spring.
There was a fog of nervous breath about, a stench of horror thick enough to drink from. When the first screech came, all eyes turned to the skies, and their fears curdled on Cregan’s tongue. It took a cloud down with it, green-scaled and dreadful, and the bodies that had hustled for a glance scattered before claws reached earth.
They waited for something ugly to demount the beast; a brutish, white-haired creature — pale and unholy. What else should command winged death?
The answer was a boy, dim-haired and thin. His boots touched the snow and his cloak followed behind like a long shadow. Cregan’s Lord Uncle stepped forward and welcomed their noble ward, though his eyes were still taken with the creature behind him. When he bowed to Jacaerys, he was really bowing for the beast.
Cregan was only looking at him. The boy seemed a motherless, baby bird in his waddle over to the men. Nothing like the Dragonlord he expected. He must have been the runt of their lineage. A beta not unlike their own. Pretty as he was.
The blood of the conqueror ran tepid within the young prince. He wore snowcloaks on warm days and sheltered himself away in the library. Maester Kennet claimed he burned through a herd’s worth of tallow reading into the night, familiarising himself with the history of the lands his ancestor conquered.
Jacaerys was sent for a different education. So one fine day, Cregan and his cousins tore him from his literature and turned him to the courtyard.
He kept back with his personal guard and watched them spar, gloved hand on his bronze pommel. Cregan detested his sensibility, the clothes that were too new and pretty. He thought he could use some dirt on his face.
The guard instructed they use squire’s swords. Cregan stopped using dull steel when he was one and ten. He could have stopped at nine. But Jacaerys was a prince. Princes did not play with real swords. Not so far from home.
The boy did not heed the careful words of his protector. He was not a squire anymore, and his was too fine a sword to be sheathed.
He passed his cloak off to the guard, unmasking a figure as slender as his sword, and just as finely forged. Cousin Elric stood to face him. He was a beta his age and as fair an opponent as they came, though sixteen years meant something different here.
Jacaerys swung like he talked, prim and proper. The Southern nobles dance that made him too predictable and too taken with preservation. He turned each strike aside, steel biting steel, and never once made an advance. Cregan had seen this restraint before. The prince had been trained to protect himself, above all else. His master-at-arms must have cared greatly for him.
Left with no openings, Elric sought to disarm him with another sharp weapon.
You look scared, my prince.
Are your feet rooted to the ground?
A pell would make for a better opponent.
While Elric wasted breath, Cregan told Jacaerys to strike back. He looked once at Cregan and gripped his hilt tighter. He was late with his attack. He’d become too reliant on flat training grounds. The muck threw his feet askew, and Elric, dodging his blade, did the rest.
He shoved Jacaerys into a post. The prince’s face took a solid hit of wood before he toppled to the ground. Elric laughed as he cornered him, the tip of his sword pressed beneath his jaw. Jacaerys’ guard drew closer, but Elric had no care. He tucked the blade under his chin and forced Jacaerys’ eyes to meet his.
“Will you beg for my mercy, bastard?”
The bastard did not. His anger glared off the steel, cheek weeping red and eyes burning like a black sun. A man with a sword at his throat had not the luxury of choice. They played the coward or the fool. Death so often favoured the brave, and Jacaerys showed too much pride for a man unarmed.
He clothed his hand with his surcoat and hit the blade away. It was a stupid risk for mere swordplay, but this was no game to the prince. He kicked Elric’s shin and pounced up into his breastbone. The tackle downed them both. Elric yanked Jacaerys’ hair and rolled atop him, palm crushing the side of his face into the sludge. The prince writhed until one of his hands slipped free, then he grabbed Elric’s wrist and latched his teeth around his thumb.
Elric shrieked, and Jacaerys gnawed until his prey was torn from his jaws.
The fight was broken up and Jacaerys ushered away. Elric cursed after him, and Cregan laughed at the ring of blood on his knuckle.
They had taken a soft boy from his books to make a spectacle of him, but they had forgotten themselves. He was a boy who rode dragons, and he had shown his teeth.
***
NOW
Cregan takes a controlled breath, two hands closed firmly on the hilt. A line of strawmen wait before him, plated with stiff leather and lit by a cold moon. His palms bear a weight lighter than ordinary steel, though the sword is heavy in its own right. Tonight, he trains with Ice.
His ancestral sword has been laid away too long, reserved for single swings on still necks, or when his uncle wished to play as Lord. Cregan will instill in it a new purpose, past beauty and reverence. In battle, he will bring the whetted edge of an executioner.
A dangerous power to wield, but what power it would be.
The mastery of such a blade is its own ceremony. It did not seem so long ago when he was unable to lift it, when it was still his father’s sword. Sometimes it feels as if it still belongs to him, and Cregan watches for corners he does not appear from, waiting to be disparaged for wasting such sacredness on cheap leather and reed men. Perhaps he would’ve been proud. He is dead, so Cregan knows not.
He picks Ice up again. Cold steel and a firm stance — this is what he knows.
Ice demands more than a longsword. It has no patience for recovery or misjudgement, for sparing minds and men of half-measures. It is commitment, in its cleanest, sharpest sense.
Cregan cuts into his targets, dust and straw bleeding through their wounds. Like them, he is unfeeling. Empty of thought, fear and rage. When he swings, he can only succeed. They are fodder and he is a blade.
To his last opponent, he brings a new technique — a down strike that flows into a one-handed back pivot. It’s a move that is hard on mind and muscle, and a feat he has not yet perfected. His lungs fill and his grip tightens. The blade rises, then it falls, he releases one hand, he turns and —
He misses.
Cregan’s breath mists, his sword’s tip dropping to the snow.
His head is unclear. There is a change in the air, a scent he cannot place. It carries slowly in the wind, rich and oil-thick, enticing — like the smoke of a hot supper on an empty stomach. It is not like any food he has tasted, though it fills his mouth with water.
The yelp of his wolf pulls him back. Shimmer is hungry, and she smells it too.
He tucks Ice onto his back and leads her to the kennels. The smell is but a wisp here, displaced by raw meat and wet fur. Something in him mourns its loss.
Cregan was born with a hunter’s nose. He can smell when a faraway tree leaked sap, or the brush of wind over wild mint. He can tell where a boot has been by what lingers on the outsole. And yet, he does not know how he lost Jacaerys.
An illness has supposedly sequestered him to the First Keep, but the traces of him are thinning from the air.
Cregan pushes on to the Great Hall. Before the doors even open, he knows his Lord Uncle awaits him. He stinks of grease and drunken whores. Cregan can not fault them, the poor brothel workers made to take his company, for indulging in the drink. The mere thought of what lies beneath his smallclothes makes him too crave something stiff.
By him is his trusted circle, cousin Benjen and old Cayn, partaking in their nightly ritual; washing themselves in dark ale and sharing in the glory of men braver than them.
“He joins us,” Cayn hails, voice rising with his cup. For all the duty his uncle shirked, one could always count on him to have the Captain of the Guard drunk.
Cregan approaches his chair as a serving girl fetches him a bowl of stew. He has a spoonful of it in his mouth before he is fully seated.
Uncle arches a brow his way. “Back to sulking, I see.”
“He misses his sparring partner,” Benjen mocks.
“Young men do love play,” Cayn tacks on.
Cregan chews and swallows. “How is he?”
“But a fever, they claim.” Uncle’s lips quirk. “It seems the cold does not agree with him. You might find caution in his condition. Keep out so late, you may be taken ill too.”
“A nasty fever it must be,” Cayn says, face red and fat as he laughs. “A princeling, locked away with ravens and rat shit.”
“It is preservation,” Uncle asserts. “Dragonlords cannot tarnish their impeachable image. Gods do not fall ill.”
Cayn hums. “Perhaps it has disfigured him. Face boils are a sordid lesson in humility.”
“So is the saying. The gods deal strange favours.”
Cregan’s mouth stiffens. “I do not think we would find favour to allow a prince to wither within our walls.”
“His men have full reign of him. Kennet has supplied poultices and dreamwine, and they ask no more of his aid.” Uncle shrugs one shoulder. “There is nothing else to be done.”
“So we wait?”
“We wait,” Uncle affirms, too spirited. “The boy’s time here is well and done. If he is fit to ride again, he will journey home.”
Benjen snorts, ale leaking down his chin. “He may well return in a cloth shroud.”
Cregan stares into his bowl, then picks up a dry leg of mutton. He thinks of Jacaerys, gaunt and infant blue, and chews until he tastes blood.
“Perhaps this mysterious ailment is a ploy. A means to escape your attention,” Uncle says, mouth cutting into a smile. “Gods know it is hard to find good company with you.”
Cregan’s chair drags as he stands. “Nor you with a dry cup.”
***
BEFORE
The hall was ablaze with colours — flowers strewn out like curtains and tabletops a stiff parade of dead and tasty things. There was a storybook excitement about, rows of men and women all singing the same, endless song. Cregan found great irony in a feast. So high was the revelry, there were some who did not stop to eat. It wasn’t so long ago they were fighting for scraps, gnawing pork bones and boiling leathers for broth. Winter scraped grain barrels bare and led old men on walks they did not return from. These walls knew starvation well, though tonight, the North does not remember.
When the hour grew late, he and Jacaerys stole away from the crowd in search of another adventure. Really, it was peace they sought. They found it a hundred feet from the ground, atop the east gate. Jacaerys was not afraid of heights, and Cregan was not afraid to fall.
They swung their legs off the wall, a sheepskin passing between them, and looked over the muddy lines of Wintertown. Jacaerys told tales of the conqueror’s wedding feast — of blood vows and whole-roasted swans and a man with such an appetite, he took two wives instead of one. The prince, in keeping with this Valyrian greed, choked on a hefty sip of wine. Cregan patted his back, and the touch was too sudden for Jacaerys. The sheepskin slipped right through his fingers and took the lengthy drop beneath them.
It did not matter. Jacaerys was full with harsh northern wine. He was in want of something sweet.
Cregan led him into the kitchens. His own taste was for cured and pickled things — salt and fat. He tucked into a wedge of white cheese while Jacaerys ate puddings, topped with coarse, dark sugar and spiced cream.
They returned to the hall in the aftermath of things. Men dribbled on tables while servants collected their plates. The luckier of them had already taken to bed, with company that was paid or wooed. Jacaerys was at an age where such company should interest him. Growing betas had their own selfish needs, and a prince had his pick of the flock. He could have taken three if he wanted. But Jacaerys was shy and green, ensnared by a duty that kept him at arms length with any fair thing that invited him to dance.
He would not become a man tonight. A boy he stayed with Cregan, drinking his share of the Arbour red they unbottled. It showed up on his skin with a laugh most unbecoming of his stature, blood-red finery running off his shoulders with each shake of breath.
He grabbed Cregan’s arm like they were old friends, and Cregan did not shirk away. The little prince had grown on him. His home was full of hardened men and women, it was nice to be around something soft.
And softened, was Jacaerys, by the drink. He leaned in and stirred his cup under Cregan’s nose. “What can you smell in this?”
Cregan humoured him. Cherry. Plum. Blackberry. Oak.
Jacaerys’ eyes were warm, impish and full of trickery. He took his cup back and smiled into his sip.
Then Cregan’s nose caught something new. A note he could not name.
Fragrant and sun-warmed.
Dizzying, then gone.
***
BEFORE
Rickon was born from her corpse. For two, frigid nights Arra laboured, wailing through days that were no warmer. It was no great shock that when he finally came, he looked as if he’d been left out in the snow. Blue toes and blue lips, just like his mother’s.
The healers were quick to lay him on her unbeating chest, as was his best hope for survival. He would have had more luck bonding with a block of ice, and so he tried to cry his misery. Any breath he could give was but a weak rasp, and any milk he got from the wet nurse bubbled from his mouth like poison.
Cregan sat with Rickon before the fireplace and waited for the warmth to come to him. Maester Kennet said he was not long for the world. Cregan did not cling to any false hopes. He only held his child to his chest and hoped he would see the sun.
All he’d known was dawn. A single ray of light, curled into his purple palms. He was taken with Arra to the crypts, and darkness held him since.
It was unseemly how long he mourned. Broken bonds were gruesome wounds, but they were still just wounds.
Livelier prospects were brought to him. Fruitful brides with round hips. Hips larger than Arra’s. Cregan would be wed to a new mate, lest his madness fester. The Alpha of the North could not be a mad man, nor could he be a weak one.
His great house feared bad seed. They’d seen too many years of fevers, of lords that dropped like flies and offspring that presented wrong. It was from desperation a new order was established. A lord that could not sire a healthy babe could not rule, and so it was his title that his uncle kept, so long as Cregan was unable to remedy what he had failed. To fulfil the promise of his birth.
Those vapid words meant little to him now, nor the eyes that watched him — fearing for what would become of his legacy, or what would become of him.
He did not think much of his fate. Put him in the crypts with his blue boy and cold wife.
***
BEFORE
They walked along a path of melting snow. Each time they travelled further, deep into the thicket where winter still reigned. Jacaerys was quiet, eyes on all sides and feet careful. Real danger lurked here, though it was the mild things that spooked him — the gnarl of his wolf or a bristle of leaves. The dragon prince donned bravery like a cloak. Under all that fancy hide he was still a boy, and Cregan thought it fun to see him shake.
On this day, Jacaerys made a request for warmth. Cregan took him to a windy clearing with thin trees and lace-frosted grass. The sun did not trickle here. The light was full and honest, purging the land of all its secrets.
With each noise and shadow accounted for, Jacaerys closed his eyes and sighed. He relaxed in the warmth and shared his fondness for this gentler season. Cregan did not know why. Warmer weather brought out weeds, and weeds brought out little terrors — snake eggs, flies and rats. More things bite in spring.
They rested their crossbows on a tree and gave the herd a break. Jacaerys seated himself on a rock, buds sprouting from the ground and curling around his ankles. Shimmer sniffed around bushes and upturned her ears at the flight of wings. Vermax was never too far when they were out here. The tyrant of the sky was quite fond of his master. With each passing day, Cregan was beginning to understand why.
There was no footwork or sparring. Under sunshine, plans for the future were founded; the camps they would build when it thawed and a quest to the place where their ancestors treated. They talked of simpler times, of lessons in courtship and horse riding, of hopfrog and the games of make-believe he and Arra grew up with — and though she was no lady, she was fond of playing come-into-my-castle, and how fine a hostess she matured into when she gathered up her skirt and welcomed him in.
Jacaerys had this wide-eyed way of hanging onto his every word, so Cregan showered him with many; the touch of a lover, his first rut, how the taste of warm cunt was a delicacy sweeter than any treat.
Jacaerys flushed. “There is no need to be so vulgar.”
“You will need to be vulgar,” Cregan returned. “Soft words are easily lost. It is nerve you will be remembered for.”
It was wasted telling him this. Betas were poor warriors and timid politicians. Whatever seat Jacaerys should take at the dragon’s counsel would be small, however fair his reason and strong his ambition.
And yet, it was a great injustice to name Jacaerys as little more than ordinary. He had an impossible wisdom. Common men did not fly as he did. He knew a view of Winterfell Cregan only saw in raven’s dreams.
Jacaerys looked away and crushed a leaf. Cregan could smell the bitterness on his fingers. “Nerve or not, who should ever listen to a bastard?”
Cregan smiled softly. “Those who do not wish to be eaten by his dragon.”
Jacaerys’ eyes lifted from his hands, his own shy smile forming. “You are unlike so many I have met.”
“I am sorry for your poor company, my prince.”
Jacaerys huffed, smiling still. A short silence loomed over them, and their sun was taken by a drifting cloud. Cregan hoped it would return soon. Jacaerys was not one for the cold, and this was a moment he did not yet want to leave behind.
Jacaerys looked sidelong at him, nose turning pink. “Why do you allow your uncle to rule?”
Cregan’s eyes fell, and Jacaerys uprighted his posture.
“You are of age,” he pressed on. “You have a sound mind and an adept sword hand. The best I have ever seen, in truth.” He paused, gaze searching Cregan’s. “It is yours, by right.”
The prince’s words were so crisp and clean, there was nothing for Cregan to do but turn away and clench his jaw. He would not be lord. Jacaerys knew this. Those parts of Cregan had rusted over. His body took no delight, as it once did, in the intimacy of chambermaids and stable boys. Arra’s mark decayed with her. Cregan’s was still on his neck.
Jacaerys did not like his sullen silence. “Nerve,” he scoffed. “You speak one way and live another.”
“My life is with hers,” he said plainly.
“You must go on living. You have a duty to your—”
“You know nothing of what you talk about,” Cregan spat, baring his teeth. From his chest, a low growl burned. It was a sound he had not heard for a long time. An anger he did not think himself capable of anymore.
Most men would heed this warning, take it for the threat it was. But Jacaerys was still a child. He scraped together a palmful of dirt and launched it at Cregan’s chest.
It crumpled down his tunic, sitting in the grooves of his wolf sigil. Cregan, without a word, glanced up at him, and Jacaerys smiled with all his teeth.
Cregan made the next shot. Jacaerys sprang to his feet to avoid it, laughing as the earth struck his shoulder. Theirs became a war of simple savagery — digging for mud balls and using trees for shelter. Cregan fastened a battle-ending mound, the size of two fists, and waited for Jacaerys to reappear.
When the princeling attempted to flee, he tripped over his own cloak. He laughed through his surrender, palms yielding mercy. Cregan could sniff out a ruse from a hundred feet away, but sometimes it was fun to pretend. He offered Jacaerys a hand and allowed himself to fall when the other pulled him down.
Jacaerys swung a leg over him and held him down by his shoulders. He raked up a quick handful of soil and lifted it high above his head. Jacaerys did not go in for the kill. He gazed down at Cregan with a wild look of victory, mud-slicked curls in disarray and mouth stretched wide as he caught his breath.
Some seconds passed, but Jacaerys’ breath did not slow. Neither did Cregan’s heart calm. Jacaerys had his body pinned with no more weight than a furred cloak, and still Cregan could not move.
Jacaerys dropped the mud to his side, though he held his position. Cregan watched his pulse kick in his throat; his two, pensive eyes bearing into his. Jacaerys swallowed, palms moving to the breast of his leather tunic, and it felt, as if all at once, that the air stilled.
With a scarce and shivery breath, Jacaerys rolled his hips, the knot of Cregan’s belt firmly between his thighs. There he chased his pleasure, eyes closed and fingers twitching on his chest.
Cregan’s belly warmed at the sight of him, the frosted sighs that left his lips. The feeling was both new and familiar, a vestige of a past spring, when the earth did not seem so barren and Cregan believed things could still grow.
Jacaerys’ body moved with a natural rhythm, as if he did not know he was doing it. His small hands splayed wide, mouth dropping on a deeper breath. Cregan became fixated on the skin pinkening at his neck. He wondered for the skin that was hidden by his cloak, of which he’d caught glimpses of in the hot springs, and would now like to see again.
The prince jolted back at the screech of a bird. His eyes shot wide and his body stilled. Cregan could no longer smell the forest, all he smelled was fear.
Jacaerys hurried off him. He made for the grove and Cregan, springing to his feet, followed after him. He did not call for Jacaerys, he only knew he could not let him slip away.
They ran along a stream, bracketed by glimmering wildflowers and wet stones. Jacaerys’ cloak billowed from his back and Cregan was not far behind. He shouted for him to stop and Jacaerys’ body broke against the ground, feet caught on an old root, and something of his split open.
His blood sweetened the air. Jacaerys rolled to his side and winced, hands on the torn cloth of his leg. The wind worried through the grass and Jacaerys laid there, under the tree, a bruised and fallen fruit, fresh off the branch.
The hairs lifted from Cregan’s neck. With frightened eyes staring back at him, he stepped one foot forward.
Then there was movement — two, great wings decapitating tree tops, and hide that shined like beetle shells. Vermax curled around Jacaerys and snarled, warming Cregan with a wall of hot breath. Shimmer growled back, hackles raised and mouth drawn tight. Neither predator would bend. Vermax’s nostrils flared with smoke and Cregan’s chest burned so hot, he thought he too could breathe fire.
Jacaerys stood at once, speaking in a hasty, foreign tongue. He limped atop his dragon and he did not look back.
***
NOW
Hard rain blows in from the east, carried on a long and howling wind. Clouds darken overhead and the moon, his lone, golden witness, shines despite it. The skin under his sword’s hilt is blistered pink, but Cregan’s hands do not tire. He batters the pell into a wet stump, each blunt crack louder than the last, and wood splinters scattering like needles. He swings not for skill. He swings because he wants to break something.
His steel is dull and his enemy carved thin, but he does not find his peace. It has not sweated the heaviness from his bones, the anger curling under his skin. He is frustrated. He is growling. He fights his teeth from snapping at the air and keeps his nails pressed sharply in his palms.
The scent is strong tonight, pungent and redder than a forest fire, flaying his mind and body raw.
It calls for him like a ghost. And it brings hot blood.
His sword falls to dust, storm air sweeping through his hair. The scent ropes around him and like a blind man, he marches. The dark and empty courtyard is quickly behind him. When he reaches the base of the old tower, it is unthinkable he should be anywhere else.
His visits to the First Keep have grown in frequency. Lately, he dreams he is an owl, perched on the window’s ledge and watching Jacaerys — bedridden and feverish, writhing with pain. The view is different from below. The ironwood door is held by the king’s men, two blank white shields with stiff faces and airy southern accents. The tower is theirs now, and so they have decreed: no man may enter.
Cregan is closer to the stones before he knows what he is doing. There is no ladder for him to climb, only jagged, wet rocks. The oldest in Winterfell. One slip and he would plummet. One slip could mean death. But the scent is thickest here. He is envious someone else might have smelled it. Mad, they might find it first.
He pulls himself up, cuts on both his palms and rocks flaking at his feet. He’d made this climb as a boy, when his maester fell asleep in his chair and he tired of writing numbers. It seemed endless then, before his visit to the wall, when this tower stood amongst the largest things his young eyes had seen. He is a man grown now, and as the trail grows warmer and his patience frays, it seems even more without end.
He moves quicker, rain and wind beating against him. A stroke of lightning hits close and his footing is almost lost. Through the thunder, it feels as if the gargoyles are laughing at him.
He pushes on, hands at last finding the ledge. The window is ajar and the air inside warm. He hoists himself up to the loose pane and his body sinks into the room, heavy like a hot spring. Light simmers off the fire and on the bed a shadow stirs. The blankets muffle small, broken breaths, no louder than the crackling logs.
Cregan steps forward and the soft sounds stop. From the furs, a dark head rises into view.
“Cregan?”
He knows it is Jacaerys, but it does not smell like him. He sits with bare shoulders, coated in a sheen of firelight and sweat.
Cregan frowns, pressing forward. “What are you doing?” he asks, nose twitching, rain-soaked boots wetting the stone.
Jacaerys blinks, then hastily gathers his blankets in a heap. Cregan stops at his bed’s side, looking once, as Jacaerys bundles himself deeper from sight. Cregan places the back of his hand to his forehead and Jacaerys gasps weakly. He burns like a furnace, his eyes blacker than coals and his knuckles white from the fabrics he clutches to his chest.
He is hiding something from him.
“You should not be here,” Jacaerys says, voice little more than breath.
Cregan withdraws his hand and kneels one leg onto the bed. Jacaerys shifts closer to the headboard. Cregan rummages through his layers, the pelts and sheets and nightgown he holds close. Some parts are warm and others are cold. All of it is wet.
“You must go,” Jacaerys orders, exposed knee wobbling.
Cregan crawls before him, hand stilling his knee. His fingers wrap around his calf, widening his legs a fraction, thumb tracing the thin, red cut from his fall in the woods. Jacaerys’ mouth parts as though he wants to speak, but no words come. Cregan slides his palm up the length of his leg and the white cotton of his nightgown lifts with it. His legs are like two, pale candlesticks. He peels them apart, and between them is melted wax, sweet and hot, pungent as rose salt, puddling from his thighs.
Cregan breathes the scent deeper. He inches the fabric up to his knees and Jacaerys, in his treachery, pushes his legs together. He catches Cregan’s hand before it could move further. Cregan grabs his wrist in turn and pins it to his side. Jacaerys winces, so he lets his hand go free. Cregan hopes he will not do it again. He does not want to hurt him.
Jacaerys, lying back on his elbows, does not fight when the hemline reaches his stomach. Cregan deciphers what he can by firelight — the sparse hair and milk-white skin, a small cock, not stiff. Jacaerys shudders at the finger he brushes along it, but he does not fill out with blood. Cregan’s touch deepens between his thighs and there, he finds flesh.
He lays his palm there, skin tingling with the warmth of a cupped flame. Jacaerys’ breath quickens. This part of him is delicate. His bottom lip, trapped beneath the other, trembles as Cregan’s middle finger maps out this new landscape; learning him by touch, smoothing over where he parts. He reaches the crest, a nub of flesh that is most sensitive, given the way his body stutters, and Cregan knows if he rubs him here, he can make his body do so much more than stutter.
He has a cunt.
There is awe in his discovery — anger, he has kept this from him. Most consuming, is the feeling blackening his gut. An expression more ancient than language, a force more powerful than any king. It guides him to his entrance, and this thing in him has tasted too much to stop.
He slides one finger in. Jacaerys exhales, eyelids drooping but not closing. He fights to keep his focus; the brown of his eyes wavering as Cregan works in another finger. He blooms hot around him. He curls his fingers and Jacaerys breathes heavier. He grows wetter. Cregan’s hand is beckoning a river, and what leaks from him is so unlike anything he has ever smelt. He is seeping want.
He pulls his fingers back and Jacaerys whimpers. His scent spikes, brimming with musk and milk. It is a cruel thing to leave an omega so empty. Particularly one so brand new.
Cregan leans over him, slicked fingers touching the soft skin of his stomach. From his hair, cold rivulets of rainwater fall onto his ribcage, quaking like a rabbit in a snare. He does not know if Jacaerys tells him to go again. He cannot hear it against the pounding in his ears, and it seems so ridiculous a notion when the boy is feverish-hot, smouldering in a wet pit of his own desperation, when he knows the feeling of his cunt, swollen and achy, and when he feels his own heavy ache between his legs, straining against his leathers.
The edge of the firelight reaches Jacaerys beautifully. It falls in the oily parts of his hair, the crevice of his neck and the deepest part of his lips. So much of him is still the same, he has only ripened.
Cregan lays his hand on his naval. “Be still.”
Jacaerys’ eyes widen, darkening a fraction when they reach the print of Cregan’s cock. His throat pulses, and Cregan throbs with it.
“I do not think we should—”
Cregan tugs the lace of his trousers free. The sweet boy closes his legs, but it is nothing to push them open again. He is less sweet when he covers himself again with his nightgown, pulling the useless white cotton below his knees to shield his precious organ.
Cregan fists the hem of his nightgown and tears it up to his neck. He can see so much of him this way. Jacaerys lays before him, as bare as a babe and pinker than a suckling pig — served on a tray of soft furs. Cregan’s appetite takes his hand up the curve of his waist, chest rumbling satisfaction, and cock weeping at the sight.
Jacaerys kicks up the bed, heels shifting furs and stirring up his scent. When Cregan follows after him, Jacaerys’ foot strikes his groin. It’s a heady mix of pain of pleasure, and spurs Cregan’s senses to keep him on the bed.
He turns him belly-down with a hand pressed to his back. Jacaerys fidgets — his chest and arms do not wish to stay against the featherbed. His mouth makes these helpless little sounds Cregan does not want to hear from him. He covers his body with his own, knee filling the space between his thighs.
“I cannot help you if you run from me,” Cregan says, breath touching the skin behind his ear.
Jacaerys shivers, neck craning to the side. He does not look back at Cregan, and Cregan’s temper flares at the thought he is looking for escape. But Jacaerys does not struggle. His shoulders relax and his breathing slows. He blows one last puff of air through a loose curl, then his head sinks into the pillow.
When Cregan unfolds himself from him, he is pliant. His eyes fall down the length of his spine as he kneels behind him. He grabs his hips and raises them to meet his own. It pulls another sound from Jacaerys, weak amidst the storm’s own dread. Cregan’s tip, wet with anticipation, kisses his entrance, and as he pushes forward, the skies cry louder for Jacaerys.
There is some resistance. Jacaerys’ body has not known another, and Cregan’s instincts trill at the thought of being the first, of being the one the boy prince bleeds for. Teeth grit, his cock sinks deeper. There are faint, little breaths coming from the dark head of hair. The stretch barely accommodates him, and the sensation borders on sacred. There are years taken off his shoulders, a tension melting with each inch he feeds into his cunt. Jacaerys is tight and warm — sickly warm. No fire burns hotter than an omega in heat. He does not know how he has allowed himself to forget it.
Cregan exhales, drawing back to press into him again, and again. He is rewarded, each time, with a deep and gratifying bliss; a slick heat enveloping his cock, squeezing him breathless, and filling his gut with a burn harder than pure liquor. What a blessing it is to be able to experience it, all over again, with a simple roll of his hips.
His strokes become repentance. For so long, he has been deprived of this. His hands slide to his waist, red indents left on his hips, and fucks deeper into him. He guides Jacaerys through it, rocking his body back and forth, sheathing and unsheathing his cock, taking all he needs and still not having enough. Jacaerys, cheek to the pillow and hands clenching his sheets, breaks into a high whine, tightening around the next thrust, and Cregan grunts like a mutt, hands crushing his waist, so reckless with his greed, he fears for Jacaerys’ spine.
The worry falters. He is pleasure-blind to anything that isn’t the flushed, bare cunt keeping his cock happy and warm. And Jacaerys is so good for giving it to him, for falling to his chest and sharing his most intimate possession, for allowing Cregan to fulfil his born purpose.
Something changes; the wonderful scent he was fucking out of him has started to spoil. Now, it is a nauseating, anise-like sweetness, tarter than the cough medicine his mother would force down his throat. Under the laurel of dark curls, there is sniffling. Cregan slows, still deep inside him when he tugs his hair back. Jacaerys’ eyes shine in the light, pearlish tears spilling off his red nose and dark lips. His mouth tightens when Cregan examines him, frail but determined not to wobble. Cregan’s hand relaxes from his scalp, hushing the boy as he lays his bodyweight over him.
“Breathe,” he says, hugging one arm around his chest. His mouth touches his freckled shoulders and his nose brushes the hair from his nape. Cregan nuzzles deeper into the crook of his neck, parting his lips to lick along his jawline, savouring the damp taste of musk and salt he preens off him. Slick, tears, blood — everything that seeps from him is glorious.
He continues lapping the sweat off his skin, hand firm on his left breast. Jacaerys remains still, lashes blinking slowly and fingers curled in his furs. A faint hum leaves him — cautious to the affection, but soothed by it nonetheless. Jacaerys’ scent sweetens under his nose and Cregan thinks what a gift it is for the boy to find praise with his tongue, and he needn’t say a single word.
The skin is left softer from his mouth. Cregan’s spit coats him like a fine oil, and when there is nothing left of Jacaerys to taste, he grazes his teeth over his scent gland, chasing the source. A shudder carries throughout Jacaerys, arching along his back and pushing his hips back into him. Cregan feels the plump muscle of his ass nudge against him, asking but not begging for more, and growls his approval. He unsticks his chest from his back, lifting as his fingers roam up the wet slope between his shoulder blades.
He holds him down by his neck, deep into the featherbed, and moves inside him again. Jacaerys’ breathing turns laborious, mouth wetting the pillow with each blow he is dealt, and Cregan is thankful for the spring storm to drown them out, for Jacaerys is no longer hissing through his teeth. The pressure in his cock builds, enraptured by the hot choke of Jacaerys’ cunt, fluttering around him as the prince sings his final, breath-laden song.
The scent of his release hazily fills the air, and Cregan, breathing deep, becomes drunk on it. He shoves his cock back into Jacaerys and sighs, one hand propped on the featherbed and the other curling his hip. He is no more than a beast now, entranced in their red-blooded dance, chest rumbling as the boy takes every rough stabbing of his cock.
As the burden unspools from his gut, he moves with a mounting desperation. Jacaerys whimpers into feathers and Cregan, frenzied with lust, expels a guttural groan as he buries himself deep inside him. Jacaerys’ cunt milks all it can from his cock. His hips stutter, pleasure coursing through his blood and deboning his limbs. Soon, he falls limp, anchoring Jacaerys deeper into the bed, nose nestling into the earth of his curls.
It is a loud crack of thunder that pulls him back — rips him from the smooth body of his skin and onto the harsher sheets of his bed. Jacaerys shivers when Cregan withdraws from him, his cunt open and used; raw and defiled and stolen, with no permission from the royal court it belongs to.
The weight of his mistake moves through him like gravel. He has deflowered a prince.
He clambers quickly out of the bed and Jacaerys rolls shakily onto his back. He wipes his eyes and watches Cregan lace up his breeches, his own naked body curled and small.
Cregan walks for the window, the midnight sky opening up before him. Jacaerys, knees to his chest, speaks shyly after him.
“Will you come back?”
Cregan looks once at the floor. He does not allow himself to turn back.
***
The hours pass, but the storm does not. The rain shatters against Cregan’s skin like sharp, pricks of ice, though he does not feel the cold. The early morning air finds him without a wink of sleep. His clothes sag off his body, half-dry from the shelter he sought by the entrance to the crypts. It is not unlike him to frequent this place, where once, in his hazy-eyed grief, he slept for days by his son’s grave. But today, he is not here to haunt the dead.
Since his descent, the tower has not left his sight. He saw it lighten in the sun and darken by evening. All day, with only crows for company, he looked upon those stones, plagued by last night’s memory and the smell of him on his skin.
He left Jacaerys, but he did not travel far.
The glum weather has brought the castle to a slow crawl. Those who happened upon him did not stay long. He is in no state to be among decent folk. His stench alone wards off the bravest of them. There is nothing so unpredictable as an Alpha sinking into a rut, and Cregan’s has been a long time coming. He is not offended by the lack of company. They all feel like strangers to him now. His hands feel empty.
Shimmer sits beside him. She, like him, is restless. Her ears are taut with concern, whimpering when he neglects her attention. She leaves by nightfall, in search of food or water, of which Cregan desires neither. His need resides in that tower, with a boy high above the rest of them. The prince’s condition, indeed, is a delicate one. The grounds are well protected, but Cregan knows how to get in.
With the cover of dusk and the wind at his back, he makes that same dark path. He is no trespasser here. This land belonged to his ancestors, and by all sane rights, every building that touches it belongs to him. He carries this urgency up the tower, Vermax’s silhouette circling like a grey and dangerous cloud.
It would be a worthy cause to die for, should dragon fire find him. Too long he has left the omega alone, and no one else should find his wet prize.
The open window grants him entry. Jacaerys stands, back turned to him, in a wispy gown. The secret of his body is illuminated by firelight. He stares intently into the flames, an illustrious picture in a room so depressing.
Jacaerys seems to gather himself, turning only just at the shifting of Cregan’s boots. This nightgown is finer than his last, a white tapestry of patterns and lace. Cregan wishes to study it by hand.
“You have returned,” Jacaerys says, arms folded over his chest and brows creased. “I suspect you want the same thing.”
Cregan crosses the room and Jacaerys swallows thickly, posture going stiff and hands tightening around his arms. This close, Cregan can see the black honey of his eyes, the blood that burns his cheeks. Jacaerys’ scent does not suffocate him as it had. He is in the waning phase of his heat. Last night had settled him, but Cregan can sense his lingering discomfort, the wetness between his legs.
Jacaerys senses him too. His arms unfold as Cregan draws close, scent rising to meet Cregan’s own. Cregan takes his waist in his hands and presses his face into the curve of his neck. Jacaerys exhales, tilting his head back as Cregan breathes in the fairness of his skin.
Jacaerys had a smell before he presented; smoke from his dragon, sweat from the training yard, ink on his wrist and the oil he used in his hair. Sometimes, Cregan could smell his bathwater on him when they sat for supper — dried petals and stinging herbs that made him more appetising than whatever was on his plate.
Often, he would follow Cregan back to his room for a final drink, a mead or hot milk to aid sleep. Jacaerys would roll his sleeves up by the fire and Cregan’s fingers would twitch around his cup. His hands hold him now, bunched in the fabric around his waist, his mouth in the hollow of his collarbone. Jacaerys was sweet then, but what a fine thing he has flowered into.
His hands slide to the curve beneath his ass. It is a tease, the warm friction of their bodies pressed together. When he can no longer take it, he backs them into a three-legged walk to the wall. Cregan unfastens himself with one hand, body slotted between his legs. Jacaerys, with a new fervour, gathers up his nightgown to allow him access. Cregan’s hand rests under the delicate skin of his thigh, breathing deeper as Jacaerys exposes more of himself. Cregan looks upon his face as he presses inside him, fascinated with the way his composure slips, the broken shape his mouth takes when he moans.
Cregan fucks him like that, Jacaerys pinned to the wall and his nails in his back. He is rendered legless, wrapped around Cregan like a cloak. Cregan takes great care to fill him, enamoured by his sighs, the eyes falling into half-moons as his cunt sucks him back in. He has seen this expression before, in the wolfswood, when Jacaerys, white in his lashes and mud in his hair, humped him like an antsy pup. He would have taken him then, if Jacaerys had allowed him. Perhaps even if he had not.
With that thought, he thrusts harder. Jacaerys’ head drops back into the wall, ankles pressed deep into his backside. The sounds he makes are sacrilegious, more belonging to a well-paid courtesan than a Velaryon prince. Each one lands hotly on his skin, arousing him in the most primitive of ways, as if he were a boy again, staring at indecent art and rutting into his fist.
Jacaerys is a finer picture than any of those erotic tapestries. No artist, living or dead, could capture such reverence; a beauty men would fall on their sword for.
The portrait looks upon him, sharper than he had been. His eyes are covetous — two dark tunnels that wish to lead Cregan somewhere.
Jacaerys holds him closer, as if to take him there. “Bite me.”
Cregan chuckles under his breath, raspy in this state.
“You have ruined me,” Jacaerys says, harsher through his pants. “It is the — ah, honourable thing to do.”
The words do not reach Cregan. He is in no condition for such talk, to entertain the musings of a cock-drunk heretic. Jacaerys’ mood shifts as his request goes unanswered — his scent sours and the hands that were but a moment ago curled around his neck now hammer into his chest and pull at his hair.
Were Cregan deeper into his rut, he would have fucked him through his fretfulness. And though it pains him still to do so, he slows to a stop. He keeps him pinned on his cock. Jacaerys does not have the strength to elude him, and Cregan does not have the restraint to let him go.
Jacaerys grabs the front of his tunic. “Claim me,” he demands again.
Cregan feigns unaffectedness, as if the thought does not stir something in his belly. “You do not command me.”
Jacaerys’ face hardens into cruelty, and his words are crueller still. “I will not let you back into my bed.”
Cregan all but growls. “You will not be able to stop me.”
Before Jacaerys can speak again, Cregan carries him to the edge of his bed. He has lost his patience, and it is nothing to move him there, to lay him on the fur of a dark and dead animal. He crawls atop him and warms his body once more with his own. Jacaerys, despite his petulance, spreads easily for him. His body does not wish to argue with his, in the end. And so he is pliant when Cregan removes his nightgown, treating it with a care he did not afford his last one, uncovering the bruises his hands had left the night prior.
Cregan undresses too, and when he returns to Jacaerys, he relishes in the softness of the boy’s naked skin against his own. Jacaerys makes the most beautiful noise when they are whole again. He is mollified by the touch; legs smooth around his back, and eyes wet with relief as Cregan hits his sweet spot over and over.
Jacaerys’ mouth spills pretty words; oh gods, yes, please. He fucks him until he is incoherent, until his lips only part for breath, for sounds that he catches in his palm, lest they be overheard. They are both weakened by this desire, and so they pant together, the muscle of Cregan’s hands bracketing his shoulders, watching the prince he knew succumb to pleasure.
Knowing him like this, it is hard to think he was ever anything else. He may have been bestowed a title, but he is no prince now. This is an animal that wants to fuck; mindless and moving to nature’s reason, undone and emptied of everything spare the cock inside him, concerned only with soothing the ache between his legs.
Cregan’s whole body is alight, but the heat is strongest in his stomach. With it, the base of his cock swells. He ruts harder, collapsing to his forearms as the pressure of his knot builds, falling for the trap of Jacaerys’ searing cunt, soaked with slick and pulsing around him. Cregan, impulse-blind and riddled with sweat, deals a final, gratifying push of his hips, forcing his knot deep inside the boy and bonding them with a power beyond the breadth of logic, of mind and rationality and sense. There is only pleasure — profound, visceral bliss.
Stuffed full, Jacaerys’ mouth warms Cregan’s palm with the sob of a second release. His seed runs hot inside him, spilling until there is nothing left to give. He would have gladly given him everything, and Jacaerys, tied firmly to him, would have been happy to receive it.
Cregan’s weight settles warmly over him, whole body rumbling with contentment. It is the pride that comes with knowing he has satiated his omega, a feeling he has not known since his late wife’s heat. At this moment, deep within Jacaerys, he does not remember her name.
Jacaerys wears a crown of sweat, eyelashes closing like two, dark butterflies. His cheek softens into the featherbed. Cregan looks upon his white neck and feels his canines ache.
***
He awakes with his lips on Jacaerys’ throat. The sunlight touches the soles of his feet, and the rest of it trails in like smoke. Jacaerys is pearlescent underneath him, clammy from the heat of Cregan’s skin. He wears a necklace of plum-coloured bruises, marks Cregan cannot recall giving him. The night before is but a haze to him, and he has no desire to ruminate in the past.
Not now, while he lays atop Jacaerys, legs tangled and his cock soft inside of him. They have made a new scent together, akin to a freshly watered rose bush, or wind off the salted sea. It fills the room like steam, and Cregan is made delirious by it.
He is warmed by a slow heat, feeling his cock thickening inside of him. He rocks lazily into him and noses softly at his jaw.
Jacaerys awakes with a sharp inhale. His tawny gaze instantly finds Cregan’s, as if sleep hadn’t touched him at all. “You must go.”
Cregan hushes him, finger on the cleft of his lip. From there, his hand slips between his thighs, where they meet, and finds him wet. It is sweeter than morning dew, and Jacaerys shudders from the touch.
“They will be here soon,” Jacaerys warns, voice weakening. “I do not think — I cannot take you again.”
He is surreal in the light of day — a vision of freckles and cream skin, a radiance only conjured by feverish eyes. He moves to hook Jacaerys legs up by his knees and rests them over his shoulders. He presses his cock once more into him, unmoved by the sound of footfall coming through the stone.
“Cregan,” Jacaerys gasps, thighs quivering. “Please.”
Cregan buries himself deeper, one hand wrapped around his knee. Jacaerys plants his own on Cregan’s chest, eyes frantic and words woven with desperation.
“No, you need to — they will have your head.”
Three knocks ring against the door, and Cregan thinks he would kill anyone that should interrupt them.