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The dead were three days burned, and still Winterfell smelled of smoke.
Daenerys stood at the narrow window of the chambers they had given her and watched the last of the pyres smolder in the yard below, grey ash drifting down like snow that would not settle. The Long Night was over. The army of the dead had broken and scattered into nothing, and the living had crawled up out of the crypts and the ruin to find, to their astonishment, that the sun still climbed the sky. It should have felt like triumph. Instead it felt like the terrible quiet that comes after a scream.
She had meant to march south the moment the fighting ended. Cersei Lannister still sat the Iron Throne, still held the city and the crown that Daenerys had crossed the width of the world to claim, and every day spent shivering in the North was a day her enemy used to sharpen her knives. But the cost of the Long Night had been ruinous. The Dothraki had been all but swept away in the first mad charge into the dark; the Unsullied who yet lived were thinned and grieving; and her dragons flew low and slow over the wolfswood, Drogon's great wing still stiff where the dead had torn it, Rhaegal favoring his wounded side. They needed rest. They needed to heal. And so, against every instinct that had carried her from the grasses of the Dothraki Sea to the walls of this frozen keep, Daenerys Targaryen had done a thing she was little practiced at. She had chosen to wait.
It was not the waiting that unmade her. It was him.
The feast had come the same night the pyres were lit, the great hall of Winterfell crammed wall to wall with everyone still drawing breath. There had been ale enough to drown a city and laughter loud enough to shake the rafters, Tormund Giantsbane roaring atop a table with a horn sloshing in his fist, bellowing of the little crow who had climbed onto a dragon's back and lived.
And beneath all of it, unspoken, there lay the thing that only four souls in all the world yet knew. Bran had seen it in his green dreams and Samwell Tarly had found it set down in a dead septon's careful hand, and between them they had pressed the truth into Jon's keeping in the cold dark of the crypts — and Jon, in his turn, had given it to her. That he was no bastard at all, but the hidden trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Aemon Targaryen. Her brother's son. A claim to the very throne she had bled half the world to win, older and stronger than her own. Four of them carried the secret between them — Jon, and Bran, and Sam, and now her — and not one soul in that roaring hall so much as suspected it. There were moments she felt the sheer weight of it would crack the bones of her chest.
She had watched him the whole night from across the hall — the way the northern lords gripped his shoulder and toasted him as the Stark who had led them through the long dark, the way Sansa Stark's cool eyes moved between the two of them like a woman quietly counting swords and finding a foreign queen wanting. None of them knew what she knew. And all the while she had felt the child the way she felt everything now: too keenly, a small and certain weight low in her belly. Missandei knew of it — she had wept the truth into her dearest friend's arms only the night before, and Missandei had held her and named it a blessing rather than a burden — but no other soul in all the world yet did. Not even, as of that morning, Jon.
She had gone to him late, when the feast had guttered down to a murmur and the hall begun to empty, slipping through the cold passages to the chamber they had given him in a quiet corner of the keep. He had still been awake, the firelight low upon the walls, and he had risen the moment he saw her in the doorway. And she had told him, the words coming out steadier than she felt them. "I am carrying your child."
For the space of a breath his whole face had opened — wonder, and a joy so fierce and unguarded that it frightened her. He had crossed to her and reached for her, and this time — gods forgive her the weakness of it — she had not stepped away. She had let him gather her in. She had let him kiss her, soft and reverent and trembling, his hands framing her face as though she were something holy, and she had kissed him back, because she wanted to, because for one perilous moment she let herself believe it could be as simple as that.
Then she had made herself draw back, her palm coming to rest flat against his chest. "There is something I must ask of you," she had said. "Your blood. The truth of what you are. I need you to keep it buried, Jon — not for my crown, whatever you may believe of me. For this." She had taken his hand and pressed it to the small curve of her belly. "A child got between two dragons, born into a realm that would tear itself to pieces over which of us ought to rule — they would never suffer such a babe to grow in peace. Let your claim be known, and there will be men who rally to it and men who would see it drowned in the cradle, and our child will spend its whole life a threat to be removed or a sword for some other hand to wield. I will not have it. Swear to me you will keep the secret. For them, if not for me."
And then the old fear had risen, the one thing she could never seem to master. For she had seen the way he looked at her now, with the babe a bright new thing between them, and she could not bear to be chosen for the child's sake and not her own. "And do not," she had said, her voice thinning even as she fought to hold it, "do not stand before your lords and your sister and pledge yourself to me because of what grows in me. If you want me, Jon Snow, then let it be me you want — not the babe, not the dragons, not the crown you might set upon my head. Me. And if you cannot swear that it is me you choose, then swear nothing at all."
She had not waited for his answer. She had turned and walked from him with her spine straight and her chin high, every inch a queen, and she had not let the first tear fall until the door of her chambers was shut and barred behind her.
That had been three days past. Three days of passing him in the yard and the hall with nothing to say. Three days of him watching her across every crowded room with those dark, wounded eyes, keeping to the very distance she herself had demanded of him. It is what I wanted, she told herself. She had told herself a great many things these three days, and believed fewer of them with each passing hour.
On the third evening she could bear the walls of her chamber no longer, and so she walked the perimeter of the courtyard with Missandei and Grey Worm at her side. The cold bit through her silver cloak — but it was nothing beside the ice that cracked through her chest when Tormund Giantsbane's booming voice carried to her across the frosty air.
" — always thought the Lord Crow would've taken Val as his before the mutiny tore things apart," the wildling was saying to a cluster of his men, their breaths fogging as they laughed. "A man can only resist a spearwife's warmth for so long, eh?"
Val. The name landed like a blade slipped between her ribs. Daenerys stopped mid-stride, her violet eyes stinging in the cold. She knew the woman — had met her but once, in the days before the Long Night, when the free folk came streaming through Winterfell's gates in their furs and bones. The crows called Val a princess, though Tormund had laughed and told her the free folk kept no princesses; she was only sister to the woman who had been wife to Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-the-Wall, and aunt to the babe that woman had died to bring into the world beneath the shadow of the Wall. Daenerys remembered her plainly. Tall and fair, a long honey-colored braid falling near to her waist, a bone-handled knife worn easy at her hip — and sky-blue eyes that had met a dragon queen's stare across a crowded yard and had not once dropped, nor bent, nor asked her leave. A wildling woman who bowed to no one, least of all a queen come from across the sea.
Her throat drew tight. She had told Jon not to choose her because of the child. She had pushed him away with her own two hands. And now she could set a face to the name the men were laughing over — a beautiful, unbending face — and picture it beside his own: the two of them fair and dark and of the same wild North, as though they had been carved to stand together. It was worse, somehow, for knowing exactly what the woman looked like.
"I am retiring for the evening," she said, and was proud of how level she kept her voice. Missandei gave her a searching, knowing look, but Daenerys turned before it could unmake her, and let her friend and Grey Worm fall into step at either side of her as she made for the warmth of the keep.
The walk back to her chambers stretched on without end. Her mind ran wild with pictures she could not put down — Jon laughing low with the wildling woman, the two of them sharing furs against the cold, sharing warmth, fair head bent to dark. She held her face a queen's smooth mask the whole way and did not let it slip, not once, though the effort of it sat like a stone behind her ribs.
At the door of her chambers she stopped and bid the two of them good night. Missandei lingered, worry plain in her dark eyes, and Daenerys mustered something near to a smile and told her to go — to take the evening for herself, and for Grey Worm. "You have both earned a night that belongs to no one but the two of you," she said softly. "Go, and be happy. Do not waste it standing watch over a queen who means to do nothing now but sleep." Missandei held her gaze a heartbeat longer, unconvinced, then inclined her head and slipped her hand into Grey Worm's, and the two of them went off together into the torchlit dark. Daenerys watched the quiet way the Unsullied's fingers folded around her friend's, the small sure comfort of it, and felt the ache in her own chest sharpen almost past bearing. Then she pushed open her door — her heart aching so fiercely and so foolishly that she very nearly did not see the figure sprawled across her bed.
Jon Snow. Face down in her pillow, his tunic cast off upon the floor, his breeches slung low across his hips, his dark hair still damp from a bath and loose about his shoulders. Not off with Val. Here. In her bed — in the chambers where she had barred the door on the whole world three nights running.
Something cracked open in her chest, and this time it did not hurt.
She crossed the room in silence, shedding her cloak and her outer layers as she went until only her thin shift remained between her skin and the cold. The mattress dipped beneath her weight as she climbed onto it beside him, and her fingers trembled as they brushed the damp strands back from his face. He stirred at her touch, his arm lifting to drape heavy across her thigh, his nose coming to rest against her clothed hip.
"You're here," he mumbled, thick with sleep, his voice as warm as banked coals. "You're safe."
Her walls shivered. She swallowed hard against the ache climbing in her throat.
"I'm sorry," he went on, his eyes dragging open, dark and heavy-lidded with exhaustion. "Sorry I made you think I didn't want you. That I didn't love you." He rolled onto his side to look up at her, and she saw the bruised shadows beneath his eyes, the marks of three sleepless nights. "I don't care about my true parentage. Aemon Targaryen or Jon Snow — it changes nothing. I love you. You are the Queen of my Heart." His voice cracked around the weight of it. "I want to be with you. To marry you, if you'd have me. To raise our child with all the love the both of us were denied."
Her breath caught in her chest. She reached up without thinking and traced the dark, bruised hollows beneath his eyes, and saw all at once how cruelly the three days had worn him — the new sharpness of his cheeks, the grey cast beneath his stubble, the faint tremor of exhaustion in the arm that held her. "You look half-dead," she whispered.
He huffed a tired breath that was nearly a laugh. "I haven't slept," he admitted. "Haven't eaten much of anything, not since you walked out of my own chambers. I've been sitting over maps I couldn't see, telling myself you were right to send me away." His thumb moved slow across her hip. "Davos found me this evening, looking like something dragged up out of the crypts. I told him of the babe, and of us — that I'd had you and lost you, and by my own doing. I had to tell someone or go mad with the weight of it." His jaw tightened, and his eyes held hers. "But not the other thing. Not the truth of my blood. That secret is not mine alone to give, and I'll not breathe a word of it to any living soul — not even to Davos, who I would trust with my life — until I've asked whether you would allow it. It is yours to keep as much as it is mine."
Something rough and helpless and fond crept into his voice then. "And do you know what the stubborn old smuggler told me, while he was all but throwing me into the bath himself? That weeks past — before I'd the first notion of what he was about — he had gone quietly to Tyrion and to Varys and put to them the offer of a wedding. Yours and mine. That he has been doing everything in his power, all this while, to keep the two of us together." He shook his head slowly against the pillow. "He says he can see it plain as daylight, Dany. How it is between us. Even when the both of us are too proud and too frightened to say it aloud." A short, worn laugh escaped him. "Then he pressed a bowl of broth into my hands, named me a greater fool than any he ever smuggled past a harbourmaster, and swore that if I threw away the only thing in the world worth keeping he would have no more use for me. So here I am. Washed and half-starved and shaking still. But here — in the only bed I have ever wanted to be."
She could have wept at the tenderness of it. But something of her earlier hurt must have lingered still upon her face, for his brow drew together and his concern turned outward, from himself to her. "Did something happen?" He drew her down fully beside him, and she let herself be gathered in against his chest, hesitating on the very edge of the words.
"I heard Tormund," she whispered at last, hating how small and young her own voice sounded. "Talking of you and Val. Of how he had always thought you would take her as your own."
Jon's arm tightened around her waist and drew her flush against the warm, solid length of him.
"Once," he admitted, his voice low and stripped bare of any guard, "when I was still Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, I thought on her. She was beautiful, and she was near, and I was cold and half a boy still." Dany tried to draw back from him, but he held her firm, his fingers pressing into the small of her back. "But I have never loved anyone as I love you. Not Ygritte. Not Val. They were the wants of a green boy who knew nothing of himself. What I feel for you is the love of a man." His lips brushed the shell of her ear. "Let me show you."
He kissed her then — deep and desperate, his tongue sliding against hers, swallowing the small sound that escaped her throat. Then he began to move down her body, pulling her shift up and over her head, baring her swollen breasts to the cold air and his hot gaze.
"Gods, you're beautiful," he breathed, cupping one heavy breast in his calloused palm. Her nipples were dark and sensitive, aching for his touch. He leaned down and took one into his mouth, sucking gently at first, then harder, his tongue swirling around the stiff peak while his thumb rolled the other. Dany gasped, her fingers tangling in his dark curls, her back arching off the bed. Her breasts were so full and tender that every pull of his mouth sent lightning straight to her core.
Jon released her nipple with a wet pop and moved lower, pressing soft kisses to the slight curve of her belly where their child grew. His lips lingered there, reverent, before he continued downward, spreading her thighs wide with his broad hands.
"You once told me that no man has ever done this for you," he said, looking up at her from between her legs, his dark eyes burning. "You let me be the first. I want to be the only man you let worship you like this."
His mouth found her cunt and Daenerys cried out, her head falling back against the pillows. His tongue was hot and thorough, parting her slick folds and dragging upward to her swollen clit. He circled it slowly, deliberately, before sucking it gently between his lips. She was already dripping wet, her arousal coating his chin as he worked her over with single-minded devotion. His tongue dipped inside her, fucking her with slow, deep strokes, then returned to her clit, flicking and sucking until she was trembling beneath him.
"Jon — " she gasped, her hips rolling against his face, chasing the pleasure building inside her. His hands gripped her thighs, holding her open for his mouth, his tongue relentless.
Jon's tongue flicked over her swollen pussy lips with deliberate precision, tracing every sensitive fold of her pregnant cunt like he was mapping sacred ground. Daenerys whimpered, her thighs trembling on either side of his head as he worshipped her with the kind of devotion that made her eyes sting. His broad shoulders pushed her legs wider, opening her completely to his hungry mouth, and she felt obscenely exposed — her slick, aching cunt on display for him and him alone.
"Tell me," she gasped, her voice ragged with need and the lingering ghost of jealousy. "Tell me Val never — never had this."
Jon lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes, his chin glistening with her arousal, his dark gaze fierce. "No one has ever had me devoted like this. Hungry like this," he growled against her flesh. "No one ever will." His tongue dragged through her folds again, slow and thorough, before he sucked her swollen clit between his lips.
Daenerys cried out, her fingers tangling in his damp hair, tugging hard enough to make him groan against her sensitive flesh. The vibration shot through her core, her hips bucking up against his mouth. Her pregnancy had made her impossibly sensitive — every nerve ending alight, every touch amplified.
"Jon, please — " The words tumbled from her lips, desperate and needy. "I need — I need — "
He knew what she needed. He pushed her legs high and wide, hooking them over his shoulders, exposing her dripping cunt completely. Three fingers slid inside her with practiced ease — the same three fingers he'd learned she craved that first night on the boat, when the world had narrowed to just the two of them and the rocking of the waves. He curled them forward, finding that spot inside her that made her vision blur.
"Fuck — " Daenerys sobbed, her back arching off the bed as he stroked her pregnant cunt with learned skill. His fingers moved in rhythm with his tongue, fucking her deep and slow while his mouth worked her clit with relentless pressure. She could hear how wet she was — obscene, slick sounds filling the chamber, mixing with her moans and his hungry groans.
"Say my name," he demanded against her flesh, his voice rough. "Tell me who makes you feel this way."
"Jon — Jon Snow — " She was trembling now, her whole body coiled tight, chasing the release building inside her. Jealous words spilled from her lips in needy moans. "You're mine — only mine — tell me you're mine — "
"I'm yours," he growled, his fingers driving deeper, harder. "Only yours. My Queen. My love." His teeth grazed her clit and she shattered.
Her orgasm crashed through her like a storm, her cunt clenching around his fingers, her thighs shaking violently against his shoulders. But Jon didn't stop. He kept his mouth on her, his fingers moving, drawing out every wave of pleasure until it crested into another. Daenerys screamed his name, her hands fisting in his hair, her hips grinding against his face as the second orgasm rolled through her with even more intensity than the first.
"Jon — Jon — gods — "
Her release gushed from her, squirting over his fingers, his chin, his cheeks. He groaned like a man dying of thirst finally given water, lapping up everything she gave him, his tongue fucking into her spasming cunt with desperate hunger. Daenerys trembled and writhed, oversensitive and overwhelmed, tears streaming down her temples into her silver hair as the pleasure became almost unbearable.
"That's it," Jon murmured against her throbbing flesh, his voice thick with lust and reverence. "Give me everything. Let me worship you properly."
Her body obeyed before her mind could catch up, another wave of pleasure crashing through her, more of her slick release coating his face as she came apart completely beneath him.
Daenerys's hands found Jon's hair, her fingers tightening in the damp strands as she dragged him upward. He came willingly, his body sliding over hers, leaving a trail of her slick release across her belly and thighs. The moment his lips met hers, she tasted herself — musky, salty, undeniably her — and the intimacy of it made her moan into his mouth. Her tongue swept inside, claiming him, devouring him with a desperation born of jealousy and love and raw, aching need.
"Inside me," she breathed against his lips, her voice wrecked. "Now. I need you inside me."
Jon groaned, the sound rumbling through his chest and into hers. She felt his cock — hard, thick, heavy — press against her inner thigh, leaving a smear of precum on her skin. Her hand found him, wrapping around his shaft, and even after all this time, her fingers couldn't quite meet. He was big, thick and long in a way that had made her eyes water that first night, and now made her cunt clench with desperate anticipation.
"Please," she whispered, and the word was both command and plea.
She guided him to her entrance, the swollen head of his cock nudging against her dripping pussy lips. Jon pushed forward with agonizing slowness, stretching her open inch by thick inch. Daenerys's head fell back against the pillows, her mouth falling open as her body struggled to accept him even after everything. Her pregnancy made her tighter, more sensitive, every nerve ending screaming with pleasure-pain as he filled her completely.
"Gods — " Jon's voice was strained, his arms shaking as he held himself above her. "You're so tight — so wet — feels like you're trying to pull me in deeper."
"Because I am," she gasped, her legs wrapping around his hips, heels digging into his ass to pull him closer. "Because you're mine, Jon Snow. Every inch of you."
He bottomed out inside her, his cock buried to the hilt, and they both stilled for a moment — breathing, trembling, feeling. His forehead dropped to hers, his dark eyes boring into her violet ones with an intensity that made her chest ache.
Then he began to move.
His thrusts were slow at first — deep, deliberate rolls of his hips that dragged every thick inch of him against her sensitive walls. His hands found her breasts, full and heavy with pregnancy, and he cupped them reverently. His thumbs brushed over her nipples, already dark and sensitive, and Daenerys whimpered at the jolt of pleasure that shot straight to her core.
"These," Jon murmured, ducking his head to take one nipple into his mouth. "These are mine. This body is mine." His teeth grazed the pebbled flesh before he sucked hard, and Daenerys's back arched off the bed. "This cunt is mine."
"Yes — " The word came out as a sob. "Yes, yours — only yours — "
His hips snapped forward harder, faster, and she felt him throb inside her. His mouth moved to her other breast, tongue swirling around her nipple before sucking it deep. Her hands clutched at the sheets, knuckles white, her body trembling beneath him as sensation overwhelmed her.
"Tell me," she begged, her voice cracking. "Tell me you won't leave me. Tell me you won't choose someone else because I'm — because I'm too much — because I'm — "
Jon's head snapped up, his eyes fierce. He hooked his arms under her knees, spreading her wider, folding her nearly in half as he drove into her with deep, claiming thrusts. The new angle let him sink impossibly deeper, his cock hitting that spot inside her that made stars burst behind her eyes.
"I will never leave you," he growled, his mouth crashing down on hers in a brutal, claiming kiss. "I don't deserve you — I know I don't deserve you. You're a queen, you're fire and blood, and I'm just a bastard with nothing to offer but my sword and my heart." His voice broke on the words, his hips never stopping their relentless rhythm. "But I love you. I love you more than honor, more than duty, more than my own life. And I will spend every day trying to be worthy of you."
Daenerys's eyes stung with tears — whether from the overwhelming pleasure or the raw emotion in his voice, she couldn't tell. She cupped his face, her thumbs brushing away the dampness on his cheeks she hadn't realised was there.
"You are worthy," she whispered. "You're worthy of me."
Jon's response was to drive deeper, his cock plunging into her with a force that made her cry out. The thick head pressed against her cervix, stretching her swollen, pregnant womb in ways that walked the knife's edge between pleasure and pain. Daenerys's body bowed beneath him, her back arching off the bed as sensation crashed through her like waves against the cliffs of Dragonstone.
"Jon — " His name tore from her throat, raw and desperate.
He pulled back almost entirely, leaving just the swollen tip inside her clenching entrance, before slamming forward again. The sound of their bodies meeting — flesh against flesh, wet and obscene — filled the dimly lit chamber. Her slick coated his cock, dripping down his shaft and pooling beneath her, evidence of how thoroughly he'd already worshipped her.
"I'm going to make you remember this," Jon growled, his voice low and rough. "Every time you doubt me — every time you think I could want anyone else — you're going to remember how I feel inside you. How deep I go. How hard I cum for you."
His hands found her wrists, pinning them above her head in one strong grip. The position stretched her body taut beneath him, her heavy breasts thrust upward, her pregnant belly pressed between them. She was completely at his mercy — and gods, the thought made her cunt clench around him like a vice.
"Yes — " she gasped, her fingers curling into fists against the pillow. "Yes, take me — make me yours — "
Jon's free hand gripped her hip, angling her up to meet his relentless thrusts. Each snap of his hips drove the air from her lungs, his thick cock hitting that secret spot inside her that made white sparks dance across her vision. He was big — impossibly, devastatingly big — and her pregnant body struggled to take all of him even as it craved more.
"This tight little cunt was made for me," he groaned against her throat, his teeth grazing her pulse point. "You were made for me, Daenerys. My queen. My love. Mine."
The possessive words sparked something deep in her chest — a flame that had been flickering with uncertainty now roaring into an inferno. All her fears — Val, Ygritte, the shadow of his parentage between them — burned away in the heat of his claiming.
"Say it again," she demanded, her voice breaking on a moan. "Say you're mine."
"I'm yours." His hips pistoned faster, harder, the wet slap of their coupling echoing off the stone walls. "Only yours. Forever. I swear it on the Old Gods and the New — I swear it on my life — "
Daenerys felt the pressure building in her core, that devastating tension coiling tighter and tighter with each thrust. Her thighs trembled around his hips, her toes curling against the small of his back. The pleasure was too much — not enough — everything.
"Jon — I'm — Jon — "
"Let go," he commanded, his voice strained with his own barely-leashed control. "Cum for me, my queen. Let me feel you."
His hand released her hip to find her clit, his thumb pressing against the swollen bud in tight, merciless circles. The dual sensation — his thick cock pounding into her, his fingers working her sensitive flesh — shattered her.
Daenerys screamed his name as her orgasm crashed through her, her cunt clenching and spasming around his cock with desperate intensity. Her vision went white, her body shaking beneath him as wave after wave of pleasure drowned every thought, every fear, every doubt.
Jon buried himself to the hilt and followed her over the edge, his cock throbbing inside her as he spilled his seed deep. His release pulsed against her sensitive walls, hot and thick, claiming her from the inside. He groaned her name against her neck, his body shuddering with the force of his climax.
They lay tangled together in the aftermath, their breathing ragged, their bodies slick with sweat and each other. Jon's weight pressed her into the mattress, but Daenerys didn't want to move — didn't want to lose the feeling of him still inside her, still hers.
Slowly, he lifted his head. His dark eyes were wet, tears tracking down his temples into his damp hair. Daenerys reached up, her thumbs brushing the moisture away with infinite tenderness.
"I love you," she whispered, her own voice thick with emotion. "I love you so much it terrifies me."
Jon turned his head to press a kiss to her palm, his lips trembling. "I know. I know, my heart." His hand came up to cup her face, his thumb tracing the tear she hadn't realised had fallen down her cheek. "I love you too. Both of you."
He pulled back just enough to look down at her swollen belly, still joined with her, his cock softening inside her. His expression softened with wonder and fierce protectiveness.
"Our child," he murmured. "Our family."
Daenerys's heart clenched at the word. Family. Something she'd never truly had — something she'd feared she would never have.
"Stay with me," she breathed, not realising she'd spoken aloud until she saw Jon's expression shift.
He leaned down and kissed her — slow, deep, claiming — and when he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers.
"Always," he promised. "I will never leave you. I will never choose anyone else. You are my home, Daenerys. You and our child."
She pulled him down into another kiss, her fingers threading through his damp hair, her body still trembling with aftershocks. Outside, the wind howled across Winterfell's battlements, but here — in this bed, in his arms — she was warm. She was safe.
She was loved.