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He wakes to the darkness of the cell, to the memory of pain easing back into his consciousness.
Dunk’s mouth tastes sour as if he’s already thrown up, and when he pulls himself from the stone floor, his body aching and heavy, and sees that he has, dried vomit on the stone under him and–he reaches his fingertips up to touch his cheek and vomit is there too, caked into his skin and in his hair.
His brain is muddled and loopy, unable to grasp at his own thoughts, unable to even feel his own pain, but it is coming nonetheless, sneaking up on him, simply delayed. Two candles flicker in and out at either side of the arched doorway, and Dunk realizes then that he doesn’t quite know where he is, doesn’t remember what happened after they’d hit his head in that puppeteer's tent, after they’d dragged him away.
He starts to drag himself closer to the wall, under the window, wanting to feel the soft spray of the rain on his face as it splashes past the windows bars, but that is when he feels it; he moves and the pain shoots through him like a lance, back and forth from his mind to his cunt, from his cunt to his mind, stopping on the way to give him a good kick in the stomach for good measure. Falling back, resting his head on the stone, closing his eyes…his hand rests on his stomach, where the worst of the pain sits, but he moves down further, between his legs; Dunk almost expects the wetness he feels to be blood, but even for as dark as it is in the cell, he knows that it isn’t. Wetness spreads all over the stone under him, soaking his trousers straight through; his stomach and head pounding, his skin feeling like it’s on fire, his pussy feeling worse, much worse.
No, no, not now, please not now.
Dunk hadn’t gone into a heat since before Ser Arlan had passed. Ser Arlan had always been there to protect him in those moments of vulnerability, those moments where the intensity of the heat made it so Dunk couldn’t see straight, couldn’t walk upright, couldn’t think of anything other than making the feeling go away.
Ser Arlan, an old and grizzled Alpha, helped in the ways that he could. He even, sometimes, when they had the coin for it, bought Dunk the potions that would help ease the pain and soften or hide his scent, or sometimes stop the heat from coming altogether; but they were expensive and rare. Ser Arlan said it was always worth it, that to be an Omega on the Kingsroad was a dangerous gamble even for someone as big as Dunk; perception as an Alpha due to his size only mattered until anyone got close enough to him to really smell him, and Ser Arlan said Dunk always smelled.
Not the praying type, if the Gods were ever to intervene in Dunk’s life, he wishes it would be now. How had this all happened? Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. He couldn’t bring himself to be sorry that he’d defended the puppet-girl, Tanselle. And as much as he’d wished he’d left the little Princeling on the side of the road, that he’d never agreed to let the boy squire for him, he couldn’t bring himself to truly wish it hadn’t happened either.
Poor Egg, he thinks. What will happen to the little Prince? Who will he squire for now?
Another wave of pain flows through him and he can’t stop his body from falling back into the floor, his cheek burning against the stone. His stomach twists and he feels slick flowing from his cunt down his leg; he’ll need new pants, won’t be able to wash it out. His breathing is shallow and heavy, and he wraps his arms around himself as if he can protect himself from something happening on the inside; it brings no comfort.
Why now? Why now?
The heats had come on a cycle, or they’d been triggered by something outside–Ser Arlan seemed to always know when something would bother him enough to send him into a state, and could always predict it before he could. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. He’d been in this body all his life, yet he still doesn’t understand it.
Whimpering, whispering nonsense to himself, he hears something outside of the walls of the cell. Just a faint something, and then something more concrete, more present: the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.
Dunk tries to pull himself back up into a sitting position, but he moves too fast, his muscles not following his commands. He closes his eyes, rests his head back on the wall again; he tries not to pass out.
“Huh. They said you might be dead.”
The voice springs him out of it. Low and easy, unhurried, he would recognize that voice anywhere now; his body responds immediately, but the feeling that spikes in him isn’t just the pain, exactly, not this time, but something deeper inside him, something that makes the puddle of slick below him grow, as well as the crimson embarrassment on his cheeks.
The pain, he wants it to go away. Wants to feel in control of himself. But the desire that fills him makes him sick; the pathway to easing his pains, worrying him.
He opens his eyes and finds just what he had expected: the Dragon Prince standing over him, the door behind him cracked so that a little more light makes its way into the cell. In that strip of light, Aerion seems to live up to his name–Brightflame. His skin is illuminated, but he looks no more warm than he had when Dunk had watched him twist Tanselle’s finger back.
“Your Grace,” Dunk’s voice is a wretched thing, barely holding on. Dunk hates to hear himself sound like this, weak and afraid for such an unworthy party. He realizes slowly that his body responds not just to the heat itself, but to what stands before him: an Alpha. It makes his stomach twist even more.
Aerion raises an eyebrow, the edge of his mouth twitching.
“They didn’t work you over that badly,” he says flatly. “You big ones are more fragile than you look.” The Prince’s eyes look over the empty cell, and stop at Dunk’s legs, the cuddle of slick reflecting in the light, no doubt seeing the wet of Dunk’s trousers and noticing now the way he holds himself, really holds himself, half bent over. How bad Dunk must look, after the way they’d beat him, although they hadn’t gotten him as good as they might have had he been a smaller man, had no training at all; still, he knew his face was bloodied, and it isn’t just the heat that brings on the pain.
Aerion puts his finger up to his nose, sniffs his skin, then places the back of his hand against his forehead.
“Father insists, but…” He laughs shallowly. “Now I can’t smell you at all. Coming fallen apart as you are, and I can’t smell you…” He steps closer to Dunk and Dunk flinches, but he’s too tired to move away.
“An Omega,” Aerion says slowly. “The maester suggested–” He pauses, and Dunk can see him bite his tongue. He’s standing right over Dunk now, barely a foot away from him, and Dunk is cowering, doing his best to make himself small, an impossible task, and the instinct to do so is maddening, but he can’t stop himself. Yet even on the ground he and Aerion are almost face to face.
“An Omega knight.” He says it like he’s astonished. Like he’s never heard of something so silly. “It’s no wonder you had to go begging my uncle to put your name on the lists,” he says. “You’re no knight at all, are you? The Liar Knight, that’s what they’ll call you before they hang you.”
Worse pain than anything in his body, he feels unable to defend himself now. It’s true, his mind says. What kind of knight could I really be? Worse than losing a hand, I’ll hang.
“Please, Your Grace,” Dunk struggles. “I’ll–I’ll take my punishment, I will, but I’m no liar,” he lies. Again pain sizes him. He bites so hard into his lip, trying not to cry out, that he draws blood.
Aerion’s eyes narrow in on the blood, Dunk swears it. Eyes like a lizard, like a dragon…
The Prince reaches his hand out, lets a finger rest on Dunk’s lip for just a moment, wiping the blood off with his thumb. Then Aerion brings that thumb to his mouth, allowing himself to savor the blood. Though the pain inside Dunk’s stomach has reached its crescendo, this act works to dull it, for he can’t take his eyes off the Prince tasting his blood. One instinct tell him to avert his eyes, scream to him that this is the danger that Ser Arlan had so often worried about, that this was the danger being stupid could get him in the path of; another deeper instinct says he can’t possibly look away, not now. Not when an Alpha has taken Dunk’s blood into his mouth, has tasted him.
He can’t look away. His lip is stinging, quivering, and he can’t look away. The phantom of Aerion’s thumb is still on him.
“Oh, you will get your punishment, ser,” he says after a moment. His violet eyes look black without any light to show their true color, and his cheeks look hollow in the shadows. “I’d come down here to see which limb you’d rather keep, since my uncle will only let me take one.” He steps back from Dunk, looking over him again. Dunk feels humiliated, the Prince looking at him in such a state. The Prince calling him what he is. “But now I’m thinking, it would be cruel to take the limb of such an already sad creature, wouldn’t it?”
As much as Dunk would like to think that this is some sort of attempt to save him, as much as Dunk would like to believe that, perhaps, he’ll get out of this situation unmaimed, with his body intact, he knows better. He tenses for whatever the next words are, knowing that they’ll be worse than the last.
“An Omega shouldn’t be allowed to wander the Kingsroad, it’s improper,” Aerion murmurs. He’s no longer looking at Dunk; instead, he’s staring up at the open window, rain pouring down the stone walls. “How many Omegas, everyday, and raped and killed and thrown into ditches on the sides of the Kingsroad left for anyone to find? It’s a very sad life.” Dunk hears no sorrow in his voice.
“I know how to take care of myself, Your Grace.” Dunk attempts to defend himself, but the words come out flat and lifeless. Aerion looks at him sharply. “I am a knight.”
“You are no knight,” he says dismissively, stepping back. “I doubt even your Ser–” he waves his hand “--whatever his name was, would be so stupid as to knight an Omega. Stupid and treasonous, by Gods. You can take care of yourself, hm? Is that what you call yourself doing, giving your life away for the whore? Is that what you were taught to do?” He shakes his head. “My father’s right, the Realm is full of idiots who desire their own suffering.”
Aerion turns his back on Dunk, circling the room, looking at its walls, then back at the door, back at the window, before turning his eyes on Dunk again.
“And if I were to bring you to King’s Landing,” he says after a moment. “You could be my–” He pauses, thinking of the right word. “I won’t be married for another few years. Omegas are valuable, do you know that?”
Dunk does. Another thing that Ser Arlan had warned him of. But this was not something he needed to be told; memories of Flea Bottom flash before his mind. Slavers who were not slavers, picking Omegas off, sending them to the Free Cities to have Gods know what done to them.
But Dunk does not want to go back to King’s Landing. He certainly doesn't want to go back as the Prince’s plaything. The small light shining in from the door beckons Dunk’s eyes, and he wonders pitifully if he could still make a run for it; Omega or not, in heat or not, he is a head and a half taller than the Prince. Pushing past him would be no real trouble, not unless…
“So tell me,” Aerion says. “Do you want to go to King’s Landing?”
Dunk wants to speak the truth. He desires to speak the truth so deeply inside him that it cuts his heart. But his mouth does not work with his mind; his mouth, his body, is paralyzed in his fear, and a worse desire, a desire that claims his mind the way that the Prince had claimed the blood from his lip. He doesn’t want this, truly, he doesn’t. But it does not matter. His body responds…
But something is still wrong, still. He can’t comprehend why the Prince would want him—Dunk, barely a knight as the Prince had said, an embarrassment to the Realm. Ser Arlan had protected him from things like this, from those who might want to use him the way Omegas outside of the protection of an Alpha or a Great House were used. He had known that to be a hedge knight alone on the road, an Omega hedge knight alone on the road, would mean that he would have to protect himself more than others might–that there would be dangers for him that other knights might be free from. That, even, other knights could be a threat to him.
But a Prince, a Dragon Prince? It makes no sense. Dunk will only be a pastime for him, something to toy with until he gets bored or married. And then what will happen to Dunk? The question, the thought, mortifies and terrifies him.
”You understand you have no protection?” Aerion continues. He offers this thing, yet his expression looking down at Dunk is still—
Dunk doesn't think he understands just what he’s doing either.
“If it pleases Your Grace,” he says, afraid. “But I don’t understand. I’m not…” he grasps for the word. “You could have any Omega in the Realm.”
“Right that I can,” Aerion agrees. “And I’ve decided. That Omega will be you. You ought to be proud of yourself.”
Of course Dunk wants to keep both of his feet, both of his hands. But what would he pay for them with? On a better day he might struggle for the words to make himself be understood, but today he struggles to even make sense of himself–his body constantly betraying him, his head spinning, and the wet heat of the dreary summer day closing in around them making him feel no better, and likely making Aerion no kinder.
It’s a kindness thinks he’s doing for him, Dunk is sure. Maybe in another world it would be. But Dunk had seen enough of the Little Prince to know what he was.
”Alphas will try and get into your head, Dunk, if they can’t overpower you,” Ser Arlan had once told him. Dunk can’t be sure whether Aerion is truly in his head, or if he’s just exhausted.
“I can’t smell you,” Aerion says again. “The maester gives us a—“ He waves his hand. “You don’t need to know what he gives us. But I can’t smell you. And yet I still—“ He balls his hand into a fist. “Hm. I desire you, hedge knight. I can’t smell you but I desire you. What does that mean?” Then he laughs to himself. “An Omega hedge knight. Who can take care of himself. And I desire you.”
”I can, Your Grace, I can.” Dunk doesn’t know what the point in pleading is. Is he attempting to convince the Prince or himself that there is still a way out of this situation with his freedom? He just what? He is just an Omega in his heat, unable to defend himself now, perhaps, but surely he can later? Dunk realizes unlikely this sounds to an Alpha, a Prince. Aerion’s tone is no more dismissive.
“So you’ll reject the protection of Dragon, is what you’re saying.” Aerion seems to muse over Dunk’s words. “I see. A leg or a hand, then?”
Dunk sputters over his words. “Your Grace, please–”
But Aerion will have none of it. “A leg or a hand, I said. Tell me. If you don’t want to be my Omega, if you don’t want me to take care of you, fine.” He shrugs. “You’ll get the punishment fit for your crimes, and I’ll look foolish for having tried to extend charity to you, which I’m sure is your ungrateful purpose..” As he loses his words, Dunk notices the Dragon’s eyes light up, just slightly, the darkness of the room still mostly surrounding him. He leans in a little to sniff the air around Dunk, and closes his eyes. “Ah,” he says, breathing in. “There it is. Just a little. Damn that maester.”
Then Aerion opens his eyes. “Sweet like dirt,” he says, but there is no mocking in it. Staring at Dunk, he shakes his head slowly.
I desire you. And Dunk desires him. He feels sick with it, monstrous, yet he desires him. Dunk knows it’s only the heat, forcing his way into Dunk’s sense, but for the first time in as long as he can remember he is unable to push past it.
But his desire to continue on the road, to be a hedge knight, fights with his inability to say no to the Alpha in front of him. You wanted to be in service to one of the Great Houses, he tells himself, trying to make it better. Now you can be.
Perhaps because he doesn’t have Ser Arlan to guide him through it; perhaps because he is spending his heat in a dungeon cell, he cannot leave the thought alone, he cannot abandon it. Either way, he feels his ability to keep strong slipping. He feels his ability to hold onto himself slipping.
“I want to come with you,” Dunk says. He doesn’t know what part of him has said it, but once the words are out there the air in the room seems to change, and now Aerion is looking down at him with a sort of hunger, an eagerness that hadn’t quite been there before, when Dunk would not submit to him.
He knows the lie in the words. He won’t be in service to a Great House but in service to the Prince. And that service will not be to project him, to serve as his knight, but will be one of humiliation, barely better than a slave.
Yet, he said the words. They came out of him smooth as oil. As he says them, he’s also wondering whether he couldn’t live without a hand or a foot. Whether it would be so much worse than whatever he’s letting himself be forced into.
It feels so much better, to simply submit. To let go and allow him to take him where he pleases. Dunk feels it in his body immediately, the ease of compliance and submission.
“A smart Omega,” Aerion purrs. Dunk’s body responds to the praise, if it is praise. “Come here, boy,” Aerion says, but it is he who steps closer to Dunk, allowing a hand to touch Dunk’s cheek. “I wonder how long it will take, without the maesters damned potions, until the smell of you makes me go mad.”
His touch is soft, softer than Dunk expects. So close to him he can see the places where his hand has hardened from holding a horse's reins or a heavy sword, yet they're still soft to Dunk, as soft as a girl, as soft as anyone he’s ever touched.
Dunk does not want the Prince to touch him, yet he is completely unable to stop him. Or, he tells himself he does not want Aerion to touch him. But he leans into that touch, and with that touch the pain is calmed. He knows why this happens, yet he doesn’t understand it. “I want to come with you,” he repeats, trying at least to scrape up some of his dignity. “But I can’t be just your Omega,” he says this as the Prince moves his hand from the place he had been caressing. “I cannot be your toy or…” Every word that goes through his mind is worse than the last. “I am a sworn knight, Omega or not. I’m supposed to have a sword in my hand, Your Grace, not be on my back.”
”Ha,” Aerion laughs. “You’d be on your knees, dog, not your back.”
The embarrassment and shame has a physical presence in his body, between his legs.
“I swore,” Dunk struggles. “It would be a sin against the Seven, to go back on my vow.”
”Oh, please.” Aerion places his fingers under Dunk’s chin and tilts his head up. Dunk tries to pull away, to pull back from him, but he is unable to, pressed as far back against the stone wall of the cell as he can go.
“So you want to be my knight and my Omega,” Aerion says. He’s looking hard at Dunk’s face, turning his head side to side with his fingers. He lets his hand go further down Dunk’s body, to his neck, and then his fingers run themselves over Dunk’s collarbones, making the hedge knight shiver.
”You don’t want me to be your knight,” he says, and the Prince shrugs. He lets his hand go further down, pressing his fingers against Dunk’s chest, and when he gets as far as Dunk’s stomach, Dunk flinches back from his touch. Aerion frowns.
“You’ll need to get used to being touched, Omega.”
”You don’t want me to be your knight,” Dunk repeats.
”Alright, fine,” Aerion says, exasperated. “Be my Omega, be my knight, what’s the difference? Fine, I tell you. Stubborn as an ox, I’ll let you be my man. I’ll let you call yourself whatever you’d like.”
For some reason, this does not make Dunk feel any better. And he isn’t far enough away for Aerion not to continue touching him.
He will have to get used to being touched, he thinks. If he goes with him.
Now Aerion is touching him, yes, becoming familiar with the feeling of the skin on Dunk’s face, but Gods know he is talking to him himself.
“You’ll wear my colors, like an Omega should,” he muses. “I’ll keep you with me day and night, as my knight and my wench…”
Dunk does not want to hear it. But Aerion’s hand keeps moving down, until he’s slightly bent over Dunk. “How do you like that?” he asks in a low voice.
To speak is a struggle. “It’s good, Your Grace,” Dunk chokes out. “I’ll wear your colors and it will be an honor.”
“You’re damn right it will,” Aerion says, seemingly satisfied. But not satisfied enough not to keep moving his hand. When he’s at Dunk’s waist his instincts tell him to freeze, yet he still wants so badly to pull away. You’ll have to get used to it, he thinks, but deep in his core he knows that he never will.
“Let me see your cunt, Omega,” he whispers finally. Dunk flinches at the words, doesn't move.
“Your cunt,” Aerion says again, and when Dunk doesn’t move Aerion slaps him across his face. The rage in Dunk rises up to a boil, the rage and the humiliation, but he doesn’t think to hurt the Prince, doesn’t think to fight back, not truly; all of his energy taken up, he feels as if he’s already been spoiled and soiled by Aerion, and finds himself unable to lift a hand to him.
“I–I–” He doesn’t know what he wants to say other than to deny the Prince. But he can’t deny the Prince, not anymore.
“Let me.” Aerion’s voice is softer than Dunk has ever heard it, but he knows he shouldn’t take too much stock in it. And, too, he has been wishing to pull these soaked trousers off his body since he regained consciousness; the way they stick to his itch makes him uncomfortable, makes him itch.
Dunk puts a hand to his waistline and begins to pull off his pants. Aerion steps back to give him space, but only long enough so that they’re down Dunk’s thighs, and then Aerion is using his foot to pull them the rest of he way off, the sharp toe of his boot.
Then, with little hesitation, Aerion is down on his knees in the hell. Dunk’s face is as red and warm as the sun, and he can’t look at Aerion as he crawls between Dunk’s legs. Surprising to see him on the ground like this, Aerion does make a face when he notices the dust and slick from the cellar floor sullying his pants. But as soon as he pushes Dunk’s legs open, as soon as the scent and sight of his cunt is right in Aerion’s view, these trivial things are lost, and he’s reaching a finger out to graze the outer skin of Dunk’s pussy.
Dunk whimpers then puts the back of his hand to his mouth to keep the noise from going too far. Behind Aerion’s crouched back he can still see where the door to the cell is slightly open, and though he does not actually see the Kingsguard or the Ashford’s household guard, he knows that they are there, watching and listening to his humiliation.
You’ll have to get used to this, goes through his mind again.
A hand or a foot. Is the humiliation worth it?
“So wet, so much trouble for me,” Aerion is murmuring. With two fingers he spreads open Dunk’s lips, the expression on his face hard and pondering as he looks him over, as he runs a soft finger over Dunk’s clit, and Dunk’s hips buck up involuntarily, seeking contact with Aerion’s flesh.
The Prince glances up at Dunk, a smug look on his face. “You like the way I touch you, Omega?”
A small nod. Aerion’s grin gets wider. He looks back down between Dunk’s legs and gets closer, Dunk’s heavy thighs enveloping him. Aerion places his pale palms on either of Dunk’s thighs, and pushes him open even more, as far as his thighs will go.
Dunk bites the back of his hand. He moans and tears perk up at his eyes. But Aerion is still grinning.
Aerion rubs his thumb against Dunk’s hard clit, slowly and then faster. Dunk’s cunt aches and contracts with the sensation, and he finds himself wishing that Aerion would touch him there too, that Aerion will slip his fingers inside, and then that Aerion will slip his cock inside. The thoughts roll over Dunk unexpectedly, even with the intensity of the heat. He can’t smell Aerion either; the potions doing their work. But his closeness, his sureness.
Yes, Dunk thinks, crying out in his mind. I want you to fuck me.
But then Aerion pulls his hand away. Bent down he backs up a little and then stands, pulling a cloth from his pocket and wiping off his fingers. Dunk’s cunt screams for his touch, for the lack of touch, and Dunk’s mind has slowed to the point he doesn’t understand why the Alpha has pulled away from him, doesn’t understand why he’s denying him his touch.
“It’s not so good, when I can’t smell you,” he says. The Prince shoves the dirtied cloth back into his pocket and looks down at Dunk, giving him a once over. Dunk, pants still off and legs still spread like a maiden ready to be fucked, his eyes glassy and his face looking lost, confused.
“Are you…?” He feels his world falling apart. He’d agreed to the Prince’s awful request, and now the Prince is rejecting him. “Am I…is it not good enough?”
But Aerion only laughs. “Good enough? You’re leaking like a faucet. Your cunt is untouched.” The Prince shrugs, stepping back towards the door. Inside, Dunk’s instincts are screaming: a failure, worthless, useless.
“We leave on the morrow,” Aerion says. He turns towards the door, but then looks back at Dunk, his gaze bored and hungry. With a sigh he says, “I’ll send for better clothes. Although anything would be better than whatever that is.” He tilts his head towards Dunk’s discarded pants. Dunk opens his mouth and Aerion raises an eyebrow.
Suddenly, the Omega is grateful for Aerion’s mercy. “Thank you,” he says in a weak voice.
The Dragon Prince just looks at him.
“Good,” he says after a moment, gripping the edge of the door. “I like my Omegas dutiful and thankful.”
When he closes the heavy door, Dunk can hear the footsteps of he and the Kingsguard leaving the cell. The darkness surrounds him, heavy and thick, and his mind is no lighter.
He falls back against the stone wall again, bone tired. He closes his legs slowly, achingly. Outside, the rain still falls hard against the ground, some of it straying into the cell and running down the stone walls.
Dunk closes his eyes, listens to the rain. He wonders whether it will sound any different in King’s Landing.