jjubilee-fluff

[noideae]

Callum Turner as Danny | Tramps (2016)

[bongjoonhoe]

Rose of Nevada (2025) dir. Mark Jenkin

[catbayunthestoryteller]

Orion's Belt

Aerion Targaryen x f!reader x Valarr Targaryen - modern AU

Summary: Aerion and Valarr are your best friends but they want to be more than that. Warnings: SMUT 18+ p in v, threesome, Aerion x Valarr, Aerion is a little shit, they're still cousins but it's not specified if they're first or second cousins, I didn't realize first cousin incest was legal in so many countries yikes so ig I can't write it as taboo. DNI if you don't like it.

It was a gray Tuesday in October. Valarr Targaryen was leaning against the low stone wall by the philosophy building, dark hair falling across his forehead, laughing at something his cousin said. Aerion Targaryen stood opposite him, silver-gold hair meticulously styled, gesturing with a lit cigarette between his fingers.

You looked away first. You always did. You kept your head down, your headphones in, your coffee order memorized so you wouldn’t have to stammer through it. You sat in the back of lecture halls and left before anyone could try to make small talk. It wasn’t that you disliked people. You just never quite knew what to do with them, and they never quite knew what to do with you. After a while, you stopped trying to bridge that gap. It was easier to be invisible.

So when Aerion Targaryen slid into the seat next to you in the library three weeks later, you assumed it was a mistake. You kept your eyes on your textbook, your highlighter frozen mid-stroke.

“You’re in my lectures,” he declared.

You blinked at him. He was even more striking up close, golden hair swept back from a cruelly symmetrical face, eyes the color of amethysts. Violet. Actually violet. You’d heard the rumors about the Targaryen family. old money, older bloodlines, but you’d assumed the eye color was an exaggeration. It wasn’t.

“I…yes,” you managed.

“You never talk to anyone.”

It wasn’t an accusation. He said it the way someone might note the weather. Still, your face heated. “I talk to people.”

“Do you?” He tilted his head, and the corner of his mouth curved. “Who?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. The truth was embarrassingly short. Your roommate, who was never around. Your friends, who were back home, not at your university. The barista who knew your order. Your mother, on Sundays.

Aerion watched you flounder with something that might have been amusement. Then he said, “Come to lunch with me.”

His request didn't sound like you had an option of refusal.

That was how it started.

Lunch became coffee, which became study sessions, which became just hanging out. Valarr joined the second time, sliding into the booth across from you with an apologetic smile that made his mismatched eyes crinkle at the corners. Where Aerion was all needling and provocative, Valarr was soft-spoken and careful. He asked you questions about your classes and remembered your answers. He noticed when you were cold and draped his jacket over your shoulders without making a production of it. He laughed at your jokes, even the ones that weren’t funny.

Aerion noticed things too, but differently. He noticed when you were uncomfortable and pushed anyway, not to be cruel but to see what you’d do. He noticed the way you shrank from attention and made a point of drawing it to you, loudly announcing your arrival when you walked into a room, slinging an arm around your shoulders and declaring you his favorite person. He noticed your silences and filled them with his own voice, rambling about nothing and everything until you forgot to be anxious.

They were strange. The whole family was strange. You learned that the first time they brought you to the Targaryen estate. Valarr’s father was there, a grim-faced man who barely acknowledged your existence. Aerion’s father swept through with cutting remarks about the staff. A small dog wearing a diamond collar yapped at your heels.

Most people, you imagined, would have been overwhelmed. Would have smiled too wide and laughed too loudly and tried too hard to prove they belonged. You just stood there, taking it in with fascination, and when Aerion’s father fixed you with a razor-sharp stare and asked what your family did, exactly, you answered honestly and without flinching.

Valarr had hidden a smile behind his hand. After that, you were invited back. You became a fixture at the estate, then at Valarr’s apartment downtown, then anywhere they happened to be.

“They don't know what to do with you,” Valarr told you one night, the two of you sitting on the balcony of his penthouse while Aerion raided the kitchen inside. The city glittered below you like a spilled jewelry box. “Most people want something from us. Connections. Money. Status.” He said it without bitterness, just a quiet statement of fact. “You don’t.”

“I mean, I do want to have those things, in general. Just not at the expanse of being a leech.” you mused.

Valarr looked at you for a long moment. Then he smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “Exactly.”

You didn’t understand what they saw in you. But they kept you close, you let them, and somewhere along the way they stopped being the Targaryen cousins and started being Aerion and Valarr, your best friends, one of the few only people who had ever looked at you and decided you were worth knowing.

Valarr bought you things you mentioned wanting and forgot you’d mentioned. Aerion bought you things you'd never have the audacity to ask. When you tried to refuse, Aerion threatened to return everything and buy something twice as expensive. You learned to accept.

They took you places you’d never have gone on your own. Gallery openings where Aerion got you drunk on champagne and Valarr held your hand so you wouldn’t get lost in the crowd. Weekend trips to the coast, the three of you crammed into Aerion’s obscenely expensive car, windows down and music blasting. Dinner at restaurants with waiting lists months long, where the staff knew them by name and never brought a check.

They listened to you. That was the strangest part. You told them things you’d never told anyone, and they didn’t flinch or pity you or try to fix it. They just listened, and then Aerion made an inappropriate joke to make you laugh, and Valarr squeezed your hand, and the loneliness receded a little. They were lonely too in their own way, you realized. They had each other, but they were polar opposites in so many aspects, you unintentionally ended up in between them in conversations more times than you could count.

It was a Saturday in early spring. You were at Valarr’s apartment, sprawled across his ridiculous sectional sofa with a movie playing. Aerion was on the floor, his head tipped back against the cushions, close enough that you could smell his cologne. Valarr was on your other side, his thigh pressed against yours.

The conversation had drifted, lazy and aimless, touching on relationships and attraction and the mess of it all. Aerion had just ended something with a girl whose name you’d never bothered to learn. Valarr was between relationships, which meant he was quiet in a way that made you want to wrap yourself around him. You, as always, had nothing to contribute.

“What about you?” Aerion asked, tilting his head to look up at you. “Ever been in love?”

You shook your head.

“Ever been kissed?”

Your silence was answer enough. Aerion’s eyebrows rose, his expression flickering from surprise to something hungrier. Valarr went very still beside you.

“Wait,” Aerion said, sitting up. “You’re telling us you’ve never...”

“It’s not a big deal,” you said, too quickly. Your face was burning. “I just never...”

“How is that possible?” Aerion looked genuinely bewildered, as if you’d just announced you’d never eaten a strawberry or seen the ocean. “You’re...”

“Don’t,” you warned. You hated when people tried to reassure you about this, as if your lack of experience was a problem to be solved.

Valarr cut in, his voice gentle. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Aerion agreed, recovering quickly. “I’m just surprised.” He paused, and you saw something calculating flicker behind his violet eyes. “So you’ve never…done anything? With anyone?”

You shook your head, wishing the couch would swallow you whole.

Aerion exchanged a look with Valarr. It was brief but you caught it. Months of friendship had taught you to read their silent communication, the way they could have whole conversations in a glance.

“We could teach you,” Aerion said, and his voice had dropped, gone lower and smoother. “If you wanted.”

Your heart stuttered. “What?”

“Not like that,” Valarr said quickly, shooting Aerion a look. “He means...we could help you. Explore. Figure out what you like.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was careful. “Only if you wanted to.”

“You’re our best friend,” Aerion added, for once with no mockery in his tone. “We’re not going to be assholes about it. Not going to message you at three in the morning for a quick fuck and pretend you don’t exist the next day. We’re not those guys.”

“We’d treat you well,” Valarr said softly. His eyes held yours, earnest and impossibly gentle. “Better than any boyfriend would.”

The implication hung in the air: not that you have one. It should have stung, but it didn’t. It was just true. You didn’t have a boyfriend. You’d never had a boyfriend. You’d never had anyone look at you the way they were looking at you now.

“You don’t have to decide now,” Valarr added, seeing your hesitation. “Just…think about it.”

You thought about it.

For two weeks, you thought about it. You thought about it during lectures, your pen still against your notebook. You thought about it at night, staring at your ceiling, your stomach flipping with something that wasn’t quite fear. You thought about it every time you saw them, which was often, because they didn’t treat you any differently. They didn’t push or pressure or bring it up again. They were just Aerion and Valarr, your best friends.

It was Valarr who tipped the scales, though you doubted he meant to. You were in his kitchen, helping him cook dinner, or rather, watching him cook while you chopped vegetables badly, when he reached past you for a spice and his arm brushed yours. The touch was nothing. Incidental. But you felt it like an electric shock. When you looked up, he was already looking at you.

“Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t move away.

“It’s okay,” you whispered.

He kissed you.

It was soft at first, tentative, like he was giving you every opportunity to pull away. His hand came up to cup your jaw, his thumb brushing your cheekbone, his lips were warm and careful against yours. You’d imagined first kisses before, clumsy things in the back of cars, quick pecks at school dances, but you’d never imagined this. This slow tenderness that made your knees weak and your heart pound.

You didn’t hear Aerion enter the kitchen, but you felt him. His presence was a sudden heat at your back, and then his hands were on your hips, his mouth at your ear.

“Finally,” he breathed.

Valarr pulled back just enough to look at you, his forehead resting against yours. “Is this okay?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice.

Aerion made a sound low in his throat and spun you around to face him. His kiss was nothing like Valarr’s. Where Valarr was gentle, Aerion was demanding, his mouth hot and insistent against yours, his tongue sweeping past your lips before you could think to part them. One hand tangled in your hair, tilting your head back, and the other slid down your spine, pressing you against him.

Behind you, Valarr’s hands found your waist again, his lips brushing the curve of your neck. You gasped, and Aerion swallowed the sound, his teeth grazing your lower lip. It was overwhelming, being caught between them like this, heat on every side of you, hands everywhere. You didn’t know where to focus, what to feel, how to process the sensation of Aerion’s tongue in your mouth while Valarr sucked a bruise into the junction of your shoulder.

Then Aerion’s hand slid lower, over your hip, your thigh, and then he was touching you through your jeans, the pressure of his palm making you buck against him. You whimpered, and he laughed against your mouth.

“Bedroom,” Valarr said.

They moved you through the apartment in a tangle of limbs and kisses, pausing every few steps so Aerion could press you against a wall or Valarr could pull your shirt over your head. By the time you reached the bedroom, you were trembling, bare except for your underwear, and Aerion was looking at you like he wanted to devour you.

“Lie down,” he said, and you did, your back hitting the cool sheets of Valarr’s enormous bed.

Valarr stretched out beside you, propped on one elbow, and traced a line from your collarbone to the waistband of your underwear. “You’re beautiful,” he stated it like a fact, like the sky being blue or the sun rising in the east. “We should have told you that sooner.”

Aerion was stripping off his shirt, revealing a torso that belonged on a billboard, all lean muscle and golden skin. “She knows.”

“I really don’t,” you managed, and they both laughed.

Aerion crawled onto the bed, positioning himself between your legs. His hands found the waistband of your underwear and paused, his eyes meeting yours. “Okay?”

You nodded, breathless.

He pulled them down slowly, far too slowly, and you had to resist the urge to cover yourself. Aerion’s gaze was heavy, reverent, and when he ran a finger through your slickness, you gasped and grabbed at the sheets.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re soaked.”

Valarr made a sound of appreciation, shifting closer. His hand found your breast, his thumb brushing over your nipple, and you arched into his touch. “So responsive,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I wondered if you would be.”

“I always wondered,” Aerion agreed, and then his finger was inside you, and you stopped being able to think.

He worked you open slowly, carefully, one finger becoming two, his thumb circling your clit with devastating precision. Valarr continued his lazy exploration of your breasts, his mouth replacing his hand, his tongue swirling around one nipple while his fingers teased the other. Every touch sent sparks racing down your spine, building and building until you were writhing between them, making sounds you’d never made before.

“Please,” you gasped, though you weren’t sure what you were asking for.

“Please what?” Aerion’s voice was rough, his control visibly fraying. “Tell us what you want.”

“You,” you managed. “Both of you. Anything. Everything.”

Aerion groaned and reached for his belt. Valarr helped you sit up enough to kiss you again, deep and slow, while Aerion shed the rest of his clothes. When you broke the kiss and looked down, your breath caught. He was beautiful. The sight of his cock, hard and straining, made your mouth go dry.

“You’re sure?” Valarr asked, his hand cradling your face, his eyes searching yours.

“I’m sure.”

Aerion positioned himself at your entrance, the head of his cock pressing against where you were wettest, hottest, most desperate. “This might hurt,” he said without teasing. “Tell me if it does. I’ll stop.”

“Don’t stop,” you said. “I want this.”

He pushed in slowly, inch by agonizing inch, and you felt yourself stretch around him. It was strange at first, the pressure almost too much, and you must have tensed because Valarr’s hand found yours and squeezed.

“Relax,” he murmured against your ear. “Breathe. You’re doing so well.”

His voice, steady and soothing, helped you unclench, and Aerion slid deeper. The discomfort faded, replaced by a fullness that was almost overwhelming. When Aerion began to move, slow and careful, you felt something inside you start to build again.

“Fuck,” Aerion gritted out. “You feel...” He didn’t finish the sentence, just dropped his head to your shoulder and thrust deeper.

Valarr’s mouth was on your neck, your collarbone, your breasts. His hand slipped between your bodies to find your clit, circling in time with Aerion’s thrusts. You cried out, your back arching. Aerion took it as encouragement to move faster.

That was when he found it. A spot deep inside you that made your vision blur and your breath stutter, that sent a shock of pleasure so intense it was almost pain. Aerion felt you clench around him and grinned.

“There it is,” he said, and angled his hips to hit it again and again.

You couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, could only hold onto Valarr’s hand and take what Aerion was giving you. He was relentless, pounding into that spot until you were whimpering, your inner walls gripping him so tightly he had to pause, breathing hard.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “Do that again.”

You couldn’t help it. Every time he hit that spot, your body clenched around him, and he seemed to take it as a personal challenge to stay there, to bully that spot until you were a writhing mess beneath him.

Valarr made a small, frustrated sound. He’d shifted to kneel beside you, and you saw that he’d freed his own cock from his trousers. He was stroking himself slowly, his darkened eyes fixed on you with an expression that bordered on painful. He looked so beautiful like that, his lips slightly parted, his brow furrowed with need.

“Valarr,” you breathed, reaching for him.

He moved closer, letting your hand wrap around him. He was hot and heavy in your palm, and when you stroked him the way he’d been stroking himself, he made a sound that was almost a whine. A pretty, desperate sound that made your heart clench.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, because Aerion was still buried inside you, still moving in slow, devastating thrusts, and you wanted to give Valarr more than just your hand.

“Don’t be sorry,” Valarr said, his voice strained. He leaned down to kiss you sweetly despite the tension in his body. “You’re perfect. This is perfect.”

But Aerion noticed. Aerion always noticed. He sighed, a put-upon sound, and slowed his thrusts.

“You’re pouting,” he told Valarr.

“I’m not.”

“You are.” Aerion pulled out of you, and you whimpered at the loss, at the sudden emptiness. “Come here.”

Aerion flipped you onto your hands and knees, positioning himself behind you. His hand smoothed over your ass appreciatively before he guided himself back inside you with one long, slow thrust. You gasped, your fingers curling into the sheets.

Then he reached for Valarr, pulling him around to kneel in front of you. Valarr’s cock was level with your mouth, flushed and leaking, and you understood what Aerion intended.

“There,” Aerion said, his voice thick with satisfaction. “Now we can both have her.”

Valarr’s hand cupped the back of your head, gentle, guiding. “You don’t have to...”

But you wanted to. You leaned forward and took the tip of him into your mouth, tasting salt and skin. Valarr made a sound that was almost a sob. You couldn’t take all of him, Aerion’s thrusts behind you made coordination difficult, but you lapped at the head, suckling gently, while your hand came up to stroke him and cup his balls the way you’d read about, the way you’d imagined in the privacy of your own bed.

“Oh,” Valarr breathed, his voice breaking. “Oh, that’s...please don’t stop.”

You didn’t. You couldn’t. He was so pretty like this, his composure shattered, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his eyes half-lidded and glazed with pleasure. Every little sound he made sent a thrill through you, made you want to give him more, made you want to be the reason he fell apart.

Behind you, Aerion was building his rhythm again, hitting that spot inside you with every thrust. You moaned around Valarr’s cock, and both of them groaned in response. The pleasure was building in you too, coiling tighter and tighter, and you knew you wouldn’t last much longer.

But Valarr was still whining, still trembling. Aerion made another one of his put-upon sighs.

“You’re impossible when you’re needy,” he said. You felt him pull out of you.

You made a sound of protest, but Aerion was already moving. He grabbed Valarr, positioning him on his hands and knees, and you watched, dazed and trembling, as Aerion used your slickness to ease his way into him. Valarr cried out, his back arching, his hands scrabbling at the sheets, and Aerion fucked into him with the same ruthless intensity he’d shown you.

“Better?” Aerion asked, his voice rough.

Valarr nodded frantically, his whines dissolving into moans. Aerion thrust into him a few more times, hard and fast, until Valarr’s sounds turned from desperate to satisfied. Then Aerion pulled out, pressed a kiss to Valarr’s shoulder blade, and delivered a sharp smack to his ass.

“Stop whining now,” he said, and returned to you.

He pushed back inside you, you were so close, so sensitive, that you nearly came right then. Aerion felt it, felt the way your walls fluttered around him, and he drove into you with renewed purpose.

“Come for me,” he commanded, his hand finding your clit. “Come on my cock. Let me feel it.”

You shattered. The orgasm ripped through you, hot and blinding, you cried out as your body convulsed around him. Aerion groaned, thrusting through your climax, and then he was coming too, spilling inside you with a shudder.

For a long moment, the only sound was breathing. Ragged, uneven breathing, and the thrum of your own heartbeat in your ears. Aerion pulled out slowly, you collapsed onto the bed, your limbs refusing to cooperate.

But Valarr was still there, still hard, still waiting. Aerion noticed, and his mouth curved into a smirk.

“Your turn,” he said to Valarr. Then, to you: “He’s been very patient.”

Valarr moved over you, his body covering yours. You opened your arms to welcome him. He kissed you and when he pushed inside you, you were still so wet, so sensitive, that it made you gasp.

“Is this okay?” he asked, always checking, always careful.

“Yes,” you breathed. “Yes, Valarr, please.”

He moved differently than Aerion. Where Aerion was demanding, Valarr was worshipful, each touch meant to draw out your pleasure. He murmured praise against your skin and you clung to him, your legs wrapped around his waist, your fingers in his hair.

You weren’t sure you could come again so soon, but Valarr was patient, he knew your body now. His hand slipped between you to touch your clit. You felt the pressure start to build once more. He watched your face, reading every flutter of your eyelids, every catch of your breath, and adjusted his rhythm to match what you needed.

“That’s it,” he whispered. “Let go. I’ve got you.”

You came again, softer this time, a wave rather than a crash. Valarr followed you over the edge with a broken moan.

Aerion had stretched out beside you, one hand idly stroking your hip. Valarr was half-draped over you, his head on your shoulder, his breath warm against your neck.

Aerion shifted, propping himself up on one elbow. His eyes were heavy-lidded with satisfaction.

“Come here,” he beckoned. “Kiss me.”

You leaned up to do as he asked, but he caught your chin with his fingers, redirecting you downward.

“Not there,” he said. “Here.”

He guided your mouth to his softened cock, still slick with your combined release. You understood. Your face felt hot. This was the cock that had taken your virginity. That had stretched you open and filled you and made you come undone. And he wanted you to kiss it. To show it gratitude.

You pressed your lips to him softly, chastely. He was warm and yielding against your mouth. You tasted yourself on his skin. Behind you, Valarr made a small, approving sound.

“Good girl,” Aerion murmured, his hand smoothing over your spine. “That’s my good girl.”

After they’d cleaned you up, they’d bundled you into one of Valarr’s oversized sweaters and settled you between them on the couch.

“Is this going to change things?” you asked, your voice sounded small in the quiet room.

Valarr and Aerion exchanged a look. Another one of those silent conversations, the kind you were still learning to read.

Then Valarr took your hand, lacing his fingers through yours. “Only if you want it to.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Aerion added. He was sprawled on your other side, his head in your lap, and he tilted his head back to look up at you. “You’re stuck with us.”

“But,” Valarr added, “if you want this to be a one-time thing, that’s okay too. We’ll still be your friends. Nothing will change.”

“I don’t want it to be a one-time thing,” you admitted.

Aerion’s grinned. “Good. Because I’ve got plans for you.”

“Aerion,” Valarr warned, but he was smiling too.

“What?” Aerion said, all false innocence. “I’m just saying. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

Your face heated, but you were smiling too. Valarr lifted your joined hands to press a kiss to your knuckles.

It didn’t take long to notice the patterns. Aerion and Valarr had been best friends since before you entered the picture, a unit. Aerion had a reputation. The fuckboy prince, leaving a trail of conquests in his wake. Valarr was quieter about his, but no less active; a string of girlfriends who lasted a respectable amount of time. But they seemed to be more devoted to each other.

Some nights, when you were spent and drowsy, curled on Valarr’s side of the massive bed in his apartment, the apartment that had become the apartment, the one all three of you spent most time in, you’d wake to the sound of low voices and slick, rhythmic movement. You’d blink your eyes open to the dim glow of the city through the windows and find them tangled together at the other side of the bed. Aerion’s hand fisted in Valarr’s dark hair, Valarr’s mismatched eyes, one blue, one brown, half-lidded and hazy. They never shooed you away. Aerion would catch your gaze, his mouth would curve, and he’d ask, “Want to watch, sweetheart?”

Sometimes you did. You’d prop yourself on the pillows, thighs pressed together. Other times you’d roll over and drift back to sleep.

The FaceTime calls started when Aerion was traveling for a week, some family obligation he’d bitched about endlessly. You’d been in Valarr’s bed, of course, because that’s where you slept now even when Aerion wasn’t there. Your phone had buzzed with an incoming video call. Aerion’s face filled the screen and he’d said: “Put me on the nightstand. I want to see.”

He’d watched you ride Valarr with an intensity that made your skin prickle, giving direction in that low, commanding drawl. Slower. Let him feel you. Good girl. After that, it became a thing. Whenever Aerion was away, he’d call. Sometimes you’d prop the phone so he could watch you and Valarr together. Sometimes Valarr would be the one on the phone, watching Aerion fuck you with that quiet, focused expression that made your stomach flip.

You learned quickly that Valarr was the softer of the two, or at least, he played softer. Aerion liked control. He liked pushing Valarr to the edge and keeping him there, liked the way Valarr’s voice cracked when he begged. The first time you’d witnessed it up close, you’d been perched on the edge of the bed while Aerion had Valarr bent over the armchair, driving into him with brutal precision. Valarr’s face was flushed, his mismatched eyes wet at the lashes, and every time Aerion’s hips snapped forward, a desperate little whine escaped his throat.

“Aerion,” you’d said, unable to help yourself, “let him come. Please.”

Aerion had paused mid-thrust, turning his head to fix you with an exasperated look. He’d heaved a sigh so fake it could’ve won awards. “Darling. We’ve talked about this.”

But Valarr had blinked at you with those impossible eyes, glassy and pleading, and made a sound so pitiful and pretty that your hand moved before your brain caught up. You reached for him, fingers wrapping around his neglected cock. Valarr’s whole body shuddered with relief.

“See?” you’d said, stroking him gently. “He needs it.”

Aerion had pulled out and physically removed your hand. His fingers circled your wrist and tugged you away. Valarr made a bereft noise that nearly broke your heart. “Stop falling for it,” Aerion said flatly. “He’s playing you. He does this every time.”

“He’s suffering!”

“He’s a brat who knows exactly what he’s doing.” Aerion’s violet eyes narrowed at you. “If you don’t stop interfering, your pretty arse is next. You’ll just be sore and sorry.”

You’d pouted but relented. Valarr had shot you a tiny, conspiratorial smile before Aerion resumed his pace. Brat indeed.

Valarr had once mentioned offhandedly that Aerion rarely let him return the favor. “He’ll bend me over any chance he gets, but try getting him to take it?” Valarr had laughed, low and a little wistful. “Nearly impossible. He’s a tyrant.”

The idea had planted itself in your mind. A few days later, you’d brought it up over breakfast, casual as you could manage. “What if I wore a strap?”

Valarr’s fork had paused halfway to his mouth. Aerion had looked up from his coffee.

“Absolutely not,” Aerion said.

“Not for you, necessarily,” you’d amended. “I just thought…you said you don’t let Valarr top you, so maybe…”

Aerion set his mug down with a decisive clink. “I much prefer your cunt. Or your mouth. A piece of silicone attached to your hips doesn’t change my preferences, love. I want you, not a facsimile.”

But Valarr was watching you with interest in heterochromic eyes. “I’d let you,” he said. “If you wanted to experiment. I’d teach you.” He reached across the table to brush his fingers over your knuckles. “I do prefer your tight wet cunt, but I’m not opposed to trying. We can go slow. I’ll show you how to move, how to read my body. It could be fun.”

Aerion had rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in his skull. “Have at it. Don’t come crying to me when she discovers a power trip and you’re the one whining into the mattress.”

You’d grinned at Valarr. He’d winked at you, eyes sparkling.

But Aerion had his own particular tastes. One of them you discovered entirely by accident, or as much of an accident as anything could be with Aerion. You’d fallen asleep sandwiched between them, you always did now, your body a warm line against Valarr’s side while Aerion sprawled on your other flank. Sometime in the deep, quiet hours before dawn, you surfaced from a dream to a strange sensation: a weight, a rhythm that your drowsy brain couldn’t immediately categorize. You made a small, petulant noise, trying to squirm away from whatever was disturbing your sleep, but a hand clamped gently on your hip and held you still.

“Shh.” Aerion’s voice, rough with sleep and want, right by your ear. “Go back to sleep, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”

You blinked blearily, the darkness of the room swimming into focus. Aerion was above you, then in you, moving with slow, lazy thrusts that dragged pleasure through your sleep-heavy body despite your confusion. Valarr was still asleep on your other side, his breathing deep and even, undisturbed.

“Aerion,” you mumbled, voice thick. “What’re you...”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He dipped his head to press a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “You looked too pretty. Just relax. Let me take care of it.”

You were too drowsy to argue, too pliant with sleep to do anything but let your eyes flutter shut again. He fucked you like that, slow and unhurried, almost meditative, until you were gasping softly into the pillow, still not fully awake, your orgasm washing over you like a warm tide. He finished with a low groan against your shoulder and pulled out carefully. By the time Valarr stirred a few minutes later, Aerion was already cleaning you up with a warm cloth, utterly unrepentant.

Valarr had blinked awake, taken in the scene and sighed. “Again? Aerion, we talked about this.”

“You talked. I listened. I simply disagreed.” Aerion tossed the cloth toward the hamper and climbed back into bed, insinuating himself against your back. “She doesn’t mind. Do you, darling?”

You’d just burrowed deeper into the pillows and made a vague affirmative noise, already slipping back toward sleep. Valarr had huffed a quiet laugh and pulled you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

“You’re spoiled,” he murmured, though you weren’t sure if he meant Aerion or you. Maybe both.

The morning after, Aerion had been in an unusually good mood, making coffee and humming under his breath while Valarr sat at the kitchen island watching him with a fond, exasperated expression. You’d shuffled out of the bedroom wrapped in Valarr’s shirt, still feeling the ghost of Aerion’s midnight attention between your thighs, and accepted the mug Aerion pressed into your hands with a kiss to your temple.

“Sleep well?” he’d asked, eyes glinting.

“You’re a menace.”

“A generous one.”

Valarr had snorted into his coffee.

Part 2: coming soon...

a/n: This was shameless smut but plot and backstories will develop. There will be angst and yearning and complex emotions. I've tried out a new approach idk. Comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist! <3

a/n: Voluntary donations are accepted on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3

[thefloatingpickle]

I Know You pt 5

Pairing: Benny Cross × FemOC Part One, Part Two, Part Three Part 4

Plot: Benny ran a decade ago. Unsure what was happening to him, and knowing he couldn't keep tainting her life with his mess. But in one night a decade of violently sought resolve crashes around him. A beast shifts just under his skin, and it wants her just as bad as he does.

Warnings: unhealthy relationship dynamics, lots of angst, werewolf transformation, pushed past boundaries, fingering, rough sex, marking, biting, P in V, knotting, "fated" mates WORDS: 14, 500

  Morning light broke through nicotine yellow curtains as the noontime sun rose high in the clear autumn sky. A beam of light found the one eye Benny didn't have hidden against Odette's warm shoulder. Fighting an Instinctual groan of protest he tightened the arm around her waist. 

  It was rare he was the first of the two awake. Unless he was shooting out of bed trying to make it on time to a job, and she was trying not to laugh at him while he fought on filthy jeans. 

  Both eyes pressing together in a clean tight line he inhaled her scent. Sweet, subtle floral notes, and something underneath he knew only he could smell that set his skin on fire. Immediately the parts of him that need her to wake up as desperate for him as he was for her reared their ugly heads. Down boy. She's not ready for wake up via cock yet. 

  A knowing, almost cynical feeling responded in the back of his mind. Not an intruder or someone pushing in unwanted. But his own voice, at it's most rough. She wants me.

 As if on command Odette's hips shifted back. The soft meat he loved watching on her bare bottom grazing up the top of his shaft and tickling his thick patch of blonde pubes. A not so subtle bulge growing there eager to press back. You're not in third grade anymore Cross. 

  Benny concentrated on her being so close, reminded himself of the weeks when he only held her like this once the pills she took to sleep off their situation kicked in. Watching her breath in slow easy inhales, knowing if she woke up, she'd crawl away from him so fast it could be offensive.

  Not now. Now she was soft and easy, tucked in along the shape of his front. Her curves slid against his angles in a near perfect one to one. In front she shifted again, her morning haze wanting what she felt pressed against her back .

  It was a time bomb waiting to explode however, so he tried to move away but they were so wrapped in blankets he felt her go stiff in his arms. "Oh, I... sorry Benny."

 With a steep curve to his spine, he put distance between their waists and gently encouraged her to lay on her back. His voice was like gravel as he cleared his throat. "No reason for "sorry", sweetheart." Doing his best to maintain the bubble that felt like it formed around them over night he returned her unsure smile.

  "Not the first time, or the last time." Nose wrinkled at the end and a poor wink from his sleep heavy eyes got her to laugh and he could have frozen them in that moment forever. Moving hair from her eyes with one finger, needy blue eyes lingered on her lips too long. And as soon as she frowned and looked away he felt their warm bubble burst. 

  "It seems late." Each exhausted syllable she yawned out was one he stashed away for a moment when he was considering running his bike off the road. A cold pill for reminding him a night in jail, away from her, wasn't worth the fight he wanted to start. "12:30 already."

 A cracked circular clock on the nearby dresser ticked closer to one. He watched as she looked around the room, her cinnamon hair framing her features in warm tinted light that made her freckles stand out against her pale skin. Without a second thought to stop him he kissed her just as she turned back to face him.

  Grinning over her lips when she let out a small shocked groan, but made no move to push him off. Instead fingers tugged on the short hair at the base of his neck. Benny grazed the tip of his fingers over her knee so she'd drop her legs open and let his hips slide over hers. 

 Something like comfort colored the sigh she let out when he kissed her neck over her racing pulse. "Hhhhhmmmmhhhh" he answered with something of his own, a growl but hidden inside a whimper. 

  His Odette liked it enough to wrap her legs tighter around his back. Hooking her heels under his rump and pulling his body closer. Nails scraped down the outside of her thigh till he lifted her rear from the mattress. Then he kept moving up her body and gripping her waist in his spread fingers. Any second he got this close was the best second he'd had that day. One moment replaced by the next as she moved under him, mending a decade of want.

  "Benny..." maybe she was trying to get his attention, or as he told himself, she was encouraging him. Asking for more with each stroke of her nails that were getting long, across his shoulders. Nothing about how she held him now made him want to slow.

 A whimper accompanying the scraping of his teeth over her breast earned a jump between his legs. The wet between her thighs just bumping his cock. Already he knew he was leaking on her legs and the bed below. 

 "Duchess." It was a plea, as much as it was a warning. Lips moving lower as he crawled down her body. Ready to start her day the way he always wanted to. 

  Just before he dipped low enough to glide his tongue over the nectar waiting between her silk folds, she sighed. Heavy and lacking any ease. He had officially lost his shot.

  Her quiet whimper and the word, "Maybe," was all he needed to hear. Forehead pressed to her hip he looked up at her with one eye. A shaking hand ripping the sheets where he held tight for dear life. He felt her shifting on her back to see his reaction, and turned his face upward with his best attempt at a smile. "Yeah, Duchess?"

  Odette was in a tug-o-war of emotion. The first was a long coming acceptance of the way her body craved his. Not just an excited and expected level of horned up after reuniting with her high-school sweetheart. But a raging fire that refused to quit until he was inside her, or at least on the way there. Her body wanted his like an oasis in the desert.

 Second was a need to know he understood just because she was ready to let him have her didn't mean everything was good. It didn't mean she wasn't still filled with dread and confusion to match her lust. Fear of what lurked inside them both ate her away like slow spreading acid, from the inside out. 

   As she looked at his beautiful, painfully willing blue eyes, anger ruined the joy that bloomed. Why didn't he come for her sooner. Pain swelled, years of thinking he may be dead or worse. Never again to grace her night or ruin her days. 

  Delicate fingers still tangled in his hair were shifted to the front. When they squeezed down on his hairline as she tried to hide her spiral, closing her eyes and fighting in a paniced gasp of air he reacted instantly. "Whoa. Hey, sweetheart." 

 Quickly he was sitting up next to her. They weren't done with the conversations from the night before. Benny knew that when he tucked  them into bed in those early morning hours. Still this seemed abrupt. Bringing a blanket with him to hide their nakedness Benny looked helpless.

  "What did I do baby?" Even as defeated as he looked she couldn't imagine it was anything close to equaling the waves she'd been ignoring for weeks. "You left."  And there it was, the first act of violence he ever committed against her. Abandonment.

  Brow raised and the corner of his lips twisting between one canine he nodded. Absorbing the direct hit. "I did." Face and voice calm his stare that was carefully cast at a far wall spoke of some sort of pain he couldn't verbalize. 

  "I thought you died." For the first time she sounded 16 again. So small and unsure of her own safety. He tried to steady and drapped an arm over her shoulder. "Thank you... no... I." His voice choked and she looked over but he was facing the other wall now.

  "It was supposed to be best for you. Never meant to be keeping you in pain as well Odette." That wasn't his last crime however, and after they started rolling their bullshit downhill the night before, she couldn't seem to stop herself now.

 "You married someone." Slender fingers picked at themselves, causing blood to pool in her nail beds. A grinding sound followed his bottom jaw as he clenched his teeth. "I did. Yes." Possibly saying the last thing he dreamt he'd hear from her, but it was a question she'd been swallowing for days. And the woman she and Gale found yelling at him before she'd run off didn't help.

  "What was she like." Not surprising her, Benny was at a loss. "Uhh... well." Removing his arm long enough to dig through the blankets for his pack, he pulled out two smokes and tossed it on the bedside table. Picking up his zippo. 

 Once the first was lit, he handed it her way. Puffing on the other between tight lips while she absorbed a couple deep inhales. Wrapping an arm back around her between her waist and the headboard. Long fingers wrapped slightly around the side of her hip. 

  Sitting quietly their building smoke cloud only added to the already tinted coloring on walls in the small white room. Gray haze settling over everything. "Cathy was, good. Kind." He pulled his smoke from his mouth, pinching it between his thumb and index finger. Ash falling on his lap as he rolled it.

 "Mean, as hell, sometimes too. I guess I liked not knowing which version I would get." He scratched at the back of his head and took another pull from his stick, clearly uncomfortable as hell. " She worked damn hard."

  Lifting up his bottom and moving nowhere, then looking around the room as if trying to find an escape hatch, he seemed embarrassed. " I guess I don't know really. I mean I knew everything. Woman never stopped talking. But... I never cared enough to really hear it. Was never good to her." 

  She watched him put out the finished cigarette and bumble around with his pack. " Ruined what she had going before we met. Just because she looked at me like I was worth something one night." Odette shrunk in on herself and Benny only bobbed his head in understanding. "I owed her more than I offered."

  A pained hiss came from her, and he looked down to see that she'd split the skin nearly halfway down one of her thumbs. Silently, he placed his hand over both of hers to stop her. " First few weeks were nice. Felt good having someone talk to me like I was worth a damn. But eventually, the only thing left between us was our sex life."

  Benny flinched. "I shouldn't have..." but she shook her head. Shrugging her shoulders up in loose a huff. "Sex is the most complicated, simple thing on the planet Benny. I can understand that." Instead of comforting him, the words seemed to take him someplace far away.

  Clearly a rage at the thought of her spending her nights tangled with Allen boiling up. " It doesn't necessarily mean the same thing each time or with each person, does it?" Humming in agreement, he laced his fingers between hers when she opened them. Both of her hands now, tracing patterns over his knuckles and around the back of his hand.

 " If everyone's being honest now, even the last handful of months we were together fucking her was like going to work. One more thing I had to do that day before I turned in."  The ignored, cigarette dangling from his hand dropped a small pile of ash on the floor next to the bed. 

 "A good lady, Cath was a good lady. But she never belonged in all of this. Never belonged with me, and I couldn't even be fair enough to her to explain why." Odette faired much calmer than he expected, while he confessed to mistreating the woman before her.

  "Did you cheat?" Sure, the question stung, but it was understandable. With a grunt he nodded. "It was all... nothing. Something to fill lonely time. And no matter how poorly I hid it, it never changed her mind."

  It was hard not to show how much it hurt him that his Duchess was growing less and less comfortable in his arms. Letting her go would take away the small amount of will, he had to get out all of the bad things still to say.  Even if they had already covered his worst crimes the night before. 

  " It was a nasty thing to do. Don't think i'm not aware of it. Part of me thought, if I played pretend long enough, one thing or another would have to bend. Something would have to start filling up the ache. But it all only made me worse." Sensing his disgrace, she fought her disgust and rested her temple against his shoulder. He could have bowed to the altar of her temperance, there and then. 

  " Knowing I was the only one to blame for how difficult every day was made it the worst. That it wasn't her fault.I hated her more often than not, that she had no way of knowing, or understanding it wasn't something she could change or do differently. But simply who,"

  Suddenly Odette's hand slammed over his mouth

 "Don't." Not moving her trembling hand from his mouth she closed her eyes. Shaking her head so hard, her red tendrils spread out around her shoulders. "Sorry Benny, but I have enough guilt of my own. Enough of my own things to live with and people that I failed. I can't take that woman's pain as well."

  Smiling against her hand he sounded smug. "Allen you mean?" She started to disconnect from him, but he gave a rough reply. Taking her by the waist with both arms. "Uh-huh, if we can go over every last one of my sins. We can talk about yours too." 

 Whipping around, she narrowed her amber brown eyes.  "I didn't hate Allen, Benny.  Use a mean piece of shit. But after you, Aaron, and Michael" His eyes grew the size of half his face. "Aaron fucking Talbot?" But she gave him no real response, except another uncommitted lift of her shoulders. "You. Left."

    Aware that there would be serious repercussions if this conversation went too far south, he pressed the tip of his tongue against the bottom of his pointed tooth until it hurt. "You loved Allen?" She nodded once more. "At first."

  Letting herself relax against him again. She wrapped both of her arms around his larger one when he brushed it across her waist to pull her in. " For the first few months. Three years ago I moved in and he changed. Suddenly he was angry at me for nothing but everything at the same time. Something as simple as whispering in my sleep too loud would send him over the edge.

 Sitting up more directly with his inhale, Benny muttered under his breath. " Couldn't imagine what you might have been saying." At that Odette broke contact like he burned her. Springing from the bed and taking the top blanket with her in her leap. 

  "Fuck you Benny." She was pacing the empty floor at the end of the bed. Just in front of the old wooden chair. " Sure, yeah. Is that what you need to hear?" Crawling over the bed slowly, wanting to speak, but knowing he'd pushed past a stress line, he reached for her. But she slapped his arms away.

 "Do you feel better about it knowing he spent three years shit kicking me because I was fucking you in my dreams? Or is that what you hope happened so you can justify the scars you keep touching so tenderly at night?" Now moving as quickly as her, he came off the bed, but she side stepped him. "Of course not, Duc" 

  "Well, it wasn't." Her lips quivered, and she pointed one finger at the ground, jabbing downward every few words. " Just like most things in my life after you decided to go, it wasn't about you at all. "

  Moving around him, she continued her pacing, treating him like a median in the center of her path. " I didn't spend all my time making my bad choices your fault." The sudden bluntness stung, but part of him was grateful to finally be getting it over with. 

  " Sure, you got a night every few weeks. Where I would imagine life if you'd never left. What would be happening between us... but what I have done without you was never in spite of or for your benefit."

  Finally stopping a couple feet in front of him neither spoke. At last something snapped, and she started to tremble. Too many years of holding it all in coming out in what was surely an anxiety attack. 

  Odette wanted to cry, but she felt unable to let the water fall and soak their naked bodies. Gradually he pulled her in close. Closing his arms around her. Running one hand down the center of her back, the other digging his fingers in the hair on the back of her head until he found her roots. Rushing callous fingertips over her scalp while she breathed deep.

  "Good, Duchess." A comforting sting grew where her fingers scraped against his back. " Not that he hurt you. I tell you now and I hope you take it seriously, i will kill him one day for ever hurting you." She whimpered, and he kissed her temple before continuing.

  "But I am so glad that you weren't wasting all of your hours on me. You're wrong to think that i've wanted you in pain all this time."  It was physically impossible for her to press her body any closer against his. " My hope the whole ride to you was that I would find you, surrounded by kids and friends. With so much community everywhere that it was impossible to take you with me."

  Odette tilted her face up, tucking her nose in the corner of his jaw as he spoke gently. " But when I pulled up across the street, you looked at me like I was there to save you. Before you even realized it was me. There was no more leaving you then."

  Leaning is head back just enough so she would look up at him with puffy brown eyes, the anger between them seemed to start melting away like nothing. " I wanted you to be okay too, Benny." 

 "Even though something in me was terrified you were dead. You had a hard life here. After your first few months of being gone I didn't even blame you for leaving." Her next words were so quiet he had to lean in to hear her finish them. " I just figured you weren't happy enough here to stay.

 Those last words felt like a bullet directly in his heart. He stumbled through the words to try and make it better. " I've never been as happy as I was when we were good O." 

  Intensity boarded on painful he crashed his lips against hers. Unwilling to stay in the same awful state of mind any longer; she closed her arms around his neck. Lifting her feet from the floor to help when he braced his arms under her bottom and lifted. Both ankles locked tight behind his waist. 

 They kissed until they were starved for an inhale. Both of her hands came either side of his neck. His bent fingers gripping her thighs so tight she knew there would be bruises for at least a little while where he dug in. Unable to do more than surrender to their need for oxygen, he broke the kiss.

  " Never. I never would have let you go if I hadn't thought it was the only thing to do Odette."  He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, but it didn't feel affectionate as much as it felt like he needed to feel her pulse to get his feelings out. 

  "Even when I thought the worst thing I could do for you was stay, I wanted to marry you. I'm never going to be good at having these conversations, and I hate that I know sooner than not you're gonna have good reason to be angry with me again. That there are still things you haven't said yet that you deserve to scream at me."

  Tightening her arms around his shoulders she kissed his temple and felt him wilt a little. " Just try to remember when it seems impossible to feel the same way you do now, I never filled the hole leaving you caused. And I'll do whatever it takes, even if it takes me too long to realize what you need."

  Not wanting to pay too much attention to how sad she looked peeping down at him, he grimaced. Never failing to surprise him, she broke the tension with a few easy words. "I'll keep it in mind." 

  Benny laughed and felt hot tears building in his eyes. "If i'm not the luckiest fucking man alive..." this time she leaned down and slit her lips over his. Giving them a moment to simply enjoy one another's taste before she pulled away with her features steadily growing more serious. 

 " This isn't the very important conversation you said we had to have last night, is it?" Against his own will he set her back down on the ground. "No. It wasn't." Straightening the blanket around her he bent to pick up his jeans. As if an interruption, directly from the universe itself, a voice screamed from below. "All hands meeting. NOW!" 

As it turned out, the meeting was just a bit of agitated housekeeping. Brucey was more than past his limit. He announced a harsh reminder to now long term guests,  and members of the gang, that Gail was not a maid, and certainly not their chef.

  "You want to eat? Head just down 47 for a while and you're sure to find a grocery. Bring back something, and contribute to a fucking meal." His kitchen was not a restaurant.

 When Benny, who was sitting with both arms around Odette's waist, looked Johnny's way during a regular round of surveillance, he found his leader already looking in their direction. 

  The intensity of the other man's glare would be sure to make the woman he was guarding like precious goods uncomfortable. Rolling his eyes, the blonde ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. Allowing clear displeasure to color every feature of his face with raised eyebrows.

  But Johnny only raised his own brow back, giving a gentle nod at Odette. "Have you talked about it yet?" He really wished everyone would stay the fuck out of his goddamn business for once.

   Either she could sense the shift in his mood or felt it in his posture but the redhead reacted almost immediately.  "What's wrong Benny?" Lingering fear in her voice killed him. He let something awful happen and worse could have followed.  

  Now, it seemed even his lap didn't feel safe enough for her. "Just Johnny being a nosey cunt, sweetheart." He kissed the visible skin where her neck and shoulders met gently. "I got you." Her hand ran down his forearm, squeezing his wrist where it rested on her waist. "Yeah."

  While not the comforted agreement he hoped for, it was better than her acting like she wasn't nervous at all however. Unfortunately his boss was right. He'd waited far too long to make her sit and listen to him about the coming change, and their wolves in general. 

  Soon Odette would be able to take care of herself in a way that few others could ever imagine. But since she refused to find peace with the permanent mental roommate now sharing space in the back of her mind, none of the benefits of a symbiotic relationship were hers yet.

  If only so she wouldn't spend the next weeks too afraid of what was coming to do much more than linger at his side unsteady, it was time. Not that part of him didn't have to admit to feeling a small thrill when she'd set herself down on his lap in the living room, instead of him having to offer the space and be refused.

  His girl had always been brave, and willing to stand up to her father or any other person that dared try her patience. Thinking back to her sense of self assurement, he only wanted to see her like that again. More than what he wanted she deserved to feel that way.

 "Hows about we grab something little from the kitchen. Get something in our bellies, then take a walk, have that chat?" His velvety voice against the back of her ear made goosebumps travel up her spine. Looking back over her shoulder where he'd rested his chin on her upper arm and was almost pouting up at her with puppy's eyes, she nodded.

  " We don't have anything to contribute." Allowing the room to melt away around them. She lifted one hand and straightened the mess of hair in front of his eyes back into the rest of the hair, pushed off to the side and over one ear. 

 Benny lifted one arm casually. " Those rules don't apply to us, baby." Both hands rested on one of his shoulders, she took a gander around the room. In the day life, it looked far more in disrepair than during the evening before.

  But the men were clustered in almost the exact same groups. Half paying attention to the speech still being loaded over them by the house's owner, and half gossiping about what was to come. When they noticed her looking their way each man would look down at his boots.

 Part of her wanted to ask if they were afraid of Benny. Or perhaps it was only that she was still too unfamiliar with the social ladder between these men. " I could eat."

  When she looked back down at him, he was studying her carefully and she was keenly aware that he was storing away her every reaction. " Sounds good."

  Both of them standing, they made their way to the kitchen that was mostly deserted. Several of the older women who had been there for the scene, the night before, stood from a small table and walked out the back door. Odette felt frozen in place by lingering guilt.

  Still, he walked forward and opened the fridge. Confidently taking out butcher paper wrapped bacon, a head of lettuce and a single tomato. " How about a b l t for breakfast?" She remembered making them for him in the kitchen at her parents' house. Bacon being one of the first things she could make confidently by herself.

  "I can't remember the last time I had one." She took two mugs from the rack of clean drying dishes and poured the last of the black coffee in a sitting pot into each cup. Leaving room in hers for milk, but filling his to the brink.

  She turned to hop up on the counter and he helped her without really looking over from his task of digging out a cutting board. " Thank you." He nodded to the cup of coffee and then kissed her temple.

 For a peaceful while she watched him frying bacon and chopping vegetables. Aware that she had not been giving him enough credit in the time living above the garage. Sure, steak and potatoes every night was boring. But it was far more than she expected him to be able to cook. 

  Watching him in his oil stained, white tank and familiar, hole ridden jeans. It was like allowing herself to see him in a domestic way for the first time. 

  Benny's lean waist, leaned forward slightly towards the oven as he flipped the bacon with tongs. Moving slightly over to the cutting board to roughly hack at the tomato and lettuce, until it would fit on the bread. Pinching the cheap white slices between two fingers to drop them in the toaster.

  Each motion was fluid and in its own way mesmerizing. The plains of his face completely relaxed for the first time in hours. When he'd finished assembling the food and handed her a plate she couldn't help but blush slightly. " Thank you." He waved at her and then turned as Johnny came in the back door. " Eat that I'll be back." He jogged towards the older man. 

  Suddenly ravenous and aware of how long it had been since she ate a real meal, she devoured the sandwich in a few large bites. Popping off the counter to clean her dish and the other things dirtied by their meal.

  There was a distinct feeling like eyes on her back, and she turned both directions to see the woman from the night before standing in the doorway, eyeing her with a conflicted look. Inside an instinct to stand up for herself rose quickly. But worried about upsetting the natural order of things, she only concentrated on her work.

 " Alright, Duchess?" Benny walked back in the room slowly. Holding a handful of clothing. " I'm alright just cleaning up." He looked at the dishes in the rack. And then at the now emptied hallway door where the woman had been watching.

  "It'll all settle some I promise." He handed her the clothes and she disappeared into the upstairs bedroom for a little while. Coming down changed into a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that felt much better suited to the outdoors. Courtesy of the more or less, lost and found collection of goods women had left after parties.

  She made her way out to a small mudroom, they'd walked through the night before. Tugging, at the slightly too tight gray t-shirt that finished her outfit along with the previous night's boots. Benny had thrown his leathers over his tank top. Holding up her coat, helping her slip it over either arm.

 Outside the air was almost unseasonably cold. A cool gray fog hanging over everything, giving it a stereotypically haunting autumn feel. It was the middle of the fall season, but Odette thought most likely she couldn't stop the cold from clinging to her bones more out of dread than from the temperature. 

  Without saying exactly what he wanted to speak about on the way, his hand gripped hers tightly. And his gaze avoiding hers directly, let her know it would be her least favorite topic on the docket. Wolves.

  "I didn't think you'd want to have this conversation upstairs." He didn't hold her back when she walked ahead, lifting a small stone with her boot and watching it tumble over muddy ground, flinging chunks of earth. 

 Was it too direct to tell him she didn't particularly care to speak about any more life changing information that morning? Obviously she knew the time was coming, but still. Deep down, it felt like knowing meant having to make peace with it.

  "Kind of hard to talk to the back of your head, duchess." Releasing the skin, she sucked on the inside of her cheek between her clenched teeth. She turned with more sass in her tone than originally intended. " And here I thought you preferred being behind me."

 Trying to ride it out she flipped her hair over her shoulder, but stumbled on the same rock she'd just kicked. In three long strides forward he caught her by the elbow before she could make contact with the ground. 

  Meeting his glare, she felt a burning in her gut from the rumble that came before he tugged her upward. Steadying her on her feet, then hooking a finger in one of the loops on her snug jeans to keep her in place. "No." Licking his lips while he watched hers.He leaned back and drug his eyes down the length of her front. 

  Moving in slowly, he used the same drawl as when he was already moving inside her. He ran the tip of his nose along the crown of her ear. " You prefer me behind you."

  Within a nibble at the bottom of her lobe, he grabbed her rump and squeezed brushing her center against his. " I always enjoy myself best when you're sitting right on my lap." The sound of her heart pounding in her flooded out any background noise. 

  She let a curious hand make its way under his tank. Brushing that soft hair covering his abdomen. " Right where I can kiss you. While you're making a mess of yourself on me."

Odette sucked in a breath. Feeling his teeth graze over the skin where her jaw and neck met. 

  All of him shuddered and he gripped her tighter in both hands before letting go and taking a step back. Catching one of her hands with his, he turned and headed in the direction of the field where the men changed just the previous evening. 

  Neither spoke until they cleared the small barrier of trees, the field and the wood beyond from the farmhouse. Wrapping her unused hand around the opposite elbow she let out a heavy sigh. Thick air spilling from her nostrils, turning into white clouds in front of her face.

  Placing a long kiss against her knuckles, Benny, let her hand go and then stepped away. It was the most serious she had ever heard him sound, and the first time she could remember him seeming like an absolute authority.

  " I know when I start speaking part of you is going to feel like what i'm worried about is the best case scenario for you O..." he could have bore a hole through her with how directly he kept his attention locked on her form. " But I need you to take the time and hear what I'm trying to say."

  Dropping it from his shoulders, he placed his coat over a nearby branch. Never turning away from her, he pinched the front of his tank and yanked it up over his head. 

  "I turn in just a few days." Sweat started to pool along the base of her spine at the thought. " This is the first time, and it's not a life or death thing... but you won't shift when I do."

  It was true that his words gave her unexpected comfort, and valid, that he'd feared her not wanting to hear the rest. "But." Spitting the word in a harsh tone, he pulled her attention from his clothes on the tree back to where he leaned, unlacing his boots. 

  " It will happen whether you make peace with it or not." Both of his boots, socks balled and tucked neatly inside were then chucked a few feet away. It was obvious that he was desperate to convince her fighting it off was not the best course forward. 

   Almost holding the tone of a convinced family member sure their loved one would understand a clean diet was not a cure for cancer. " At first, the dysregulation between you and what you are now is going to make it feel like you are winning."

  Popping the button open on his pants, both of them had to look away when she inhaled at the sight of his bare hips under. Realizing perhaps he was doing too good a job keeping her interested in the buildup.

  " By winning Benny, you refer to me not shedding the skin I've had all my life in favor of having an animal shaped monstrosity, peel itself free from my inside?" Sitting roughly on a nearby stump, she crossed one boot over the other with a thump.

  With his back to her, he turned over his shoulder to roll his eyes where she could see how he exaggerated the expression. Uncharacteristically folding his pants before haphazardly plopping them on the ground next to his boots.

  " Skin you've had your whole life?" It grated on her, the way he spoke when he thought she was being dramatic. He wiggled his fingers in the air walking toward her and she took his hand to stand, annoyed.  But when he took the tip of one finger and spun the loose fabric of her t-shirt at the bottom, so he could use it to pull her forward, she allowed it. 

  "You mean the skin I spent two weeks peeling off your shoulders after I drove us to devil's lake?" Lifting her top at the bottom to run fingers from his other hand over a patch of skin on her right hip that was just a few shades pinker than the skin around it. 

  Standing out against the creamy color of its surroundings and driving him mad each time he saw it. "Or grew back after whatever happened here?" 

   More than once she remembered him tracing the outline of the strange shaped blotch with his fingertip. "I fell against the fire pit at my graduation party." He looked surprised she'd been drunk at her high-school grad party so she corrected him.

  "When I finished secretarial school in Madison. So I could take over the paperwork at Allen's father's company." Benny's grin went from the corner of his mouth to the other. " Why I just bet you look lovely with a pencil, all tied up in your hair."

  Training her vision on a dead tree in the distance. She's thought back to that time with no real pleasant emotion. " The job, hell I think even the party really, we're just ways to embarrass me in front of his people."

  Skin impossibly warm compared to the outside chill, nothing in her resisted when he wrapped his arms around her. Cutting between her and the tree to pull her in. 

 Every moment, the idea of someone catching them here, with him stark naked and her shivering near tears, made her laugh softly against his shoulder. He hunched  his body and wrapped himself closer for a moment. Inhaling the smell from her neck. Then he stepped back, a shift in stance meaning, it was time to be serious again.

  " I'm sorry I don't know all your pain yet. But I was trying to say that this skin isn't irreplaceable." Light auburn hair fell around her shoulders while she anxiously picked, knits of fabric off the bottom of her coat. Choosing to pay attention to picking pieces of dirt and bark on her pants. One by one.

  "I get it. Everything heals." She didn't notice him taking uneasy steps backward. Hands curling to fists at either side. Clearing his throat, he spoke again when she looked up. " If you push the change off until it forces itself through, it will hurt the Duchess."

  Not looking her in the eye, suddenly she realized he was processing the memory of his own first change. But still, what she witnessed from those men one night before didn't seem easy. " And if I don't push?" 

 Nearly choking out the question, she ignored the urge to go back to her fidgeting. Watching his toes flex and clench at the mud below them. 

  "It, it's gonna hurt." Benny angled his neck lower doing his best not to sound as frightened as she felt. " But, more like when you burn yourself. Not like when every bone in your body breaks and heals itself again right away."

  Odette shivered. " But will they break?" In a whisper, almost impossible to hear he replied. " Yes. Yes, Odette. They will all break."

   The growing sting of hot tears refused to be ignored. "O..." Benny took a half step forward, but when she leaned away naturally, he changed his mind. Not trusting himself to follow through with his plan if he got her in his arms again. "I didn't do it to cause you pain."

  Scraping his fingers through messy blonde bedhead, he puffed out a shy breath. "It's easy to forget, I suppose. How scary it all looks, what it sounds like when you've never been through it before." 

  After she tried to fight a whimper, covering her face in both hands to hide her tears he tried to press on. "Sooner than later it'll be amazing Odette." Uncovering her face to reveal a stunned expression she sounded out of free trust. "How?"

  "You'll be more balanced." He stood tall and moved closer again. "We'll be free. Just you and me, Duchess. Anywhere." Still dropping stray tears from her chin she lifted both arms bent at the elbow.

  Fingers splayed as she moved her hands in confusion then slapped them back over her thighs. "Why?" She bent slightly forward to squeeze her knee caps. Taking a sharp inhale. "Why couldn't I fuck you where ever we wanted with out," Odette stopped herself, but he knew where she was going.

  "Because as soon as it happened to me, it became your bag too." The way she couldn't even imagine a good life between them now made his stomach sick. "No matter how long I tried to think of a way to let you go I couldn't."

  And there in the woods he admitted what he felt the most guilty for. No matter what he'd done before or what would come after. "I needed you. And there was no way to have you here. Happy, and most importantly safe if you didn't know everything."

  Once she forced the mouthful of bile down her throat she gestured to his nudity. "It is completely ridiculous to be having this conversation with you while you're... like that Benny." 

  Knowing that time had come, and it was now or never; he stood straight again. Taking several deep breaths as he shook his head sullenly. " No sweetheart." He stretched his arms out wide, popping his neck. 

  Odette started to stand very slowly, narrowing her eyes in his direction. " What are you doing?" There's nothing he could say that would make this easier on her. " I needed to be able to do this without you disappearing into the wind, Duchess." 

  She scrambled slightly away from him against the base of a larger tree to her left. "Benny please." But he only stepped in the same direction. Not giving up. " Trust me." Then it happened. 

  Her golden biker, peeling away strip by strip into a pile of nothing. Sinew covered limbs stretching from the arms and legs she knew like her own. Wet fur growing to over seven feet of monstrosity, replacing him where he stood.

  The sound of it up close was so much more visceral. Not quite as aggressive as her nightmarish memory from the night before. Yet still, she could hear the snap, like twigs from inside his transforming limbs. And a winding like wet rope over wood, where his new skin wrapped over raw muscle.

  "Oh... my... god." Silently more tears were streaming down, soaking the front of her borrowed tee. Quivering, a terrified woman placed both hands palmed down on the rough bark of the tree behind her. 

  Coming to her feet to slide around the side of the old oak. Pretending in a childish way that if she could not see him, the horror she felt wasn't real.

  Upon rounding the other side of the hard trunk, however, she found herself face to face with him. With it. Hunched over where he'd crawled silently and astoundingly fast. Acting as a block in her path.

  "Please." Pinched tight, her eyelids refused to open. And she did what she could to help them stay closed tight. But the sensation of a long, soft digit brushed across the edge of her jaw refused to let her ignore him.

  Warm damp air rushed over her collarbone. She felt the soft, somewhat leathery tip of his nose bump against her shoulder. "No..." face turned to the side uncomfortablely, she pushed her body harder into the tree behind. 

  But frighteningly dexterous paws only grabbed each of her hips, while his snout continued to move over her figure. The massive shoulders and chest in front of her rising and falling with each deep breath in of her scent. 

   A single slightly rounded ear tip brushed against the bottom of her chin as it twitched in reaction to something he found worth deeper investigation near her chest. Immediately both of her hands shot up instinctually. Doing her best to put distance between her and the beast. 

  Only to stroke through thick wiry fur as they moved up. Running along his chest accidentally. Her own chest and stomach, pulling as far in as they could naturally maintain. 

  The unwanted sensation drew a panicked whine. High pitched, and unlike anything she'd heard from herself. Cautiously raising her hands to hide her pouted lips behind trembling fingers again. What she knew to be the man she loved, no matter how awful she found him at the moment, let out a whimper to match. 

  She could see him, drooping his human eyes at her from the back of her mind. The familiar sound of an unhappy sigh, tumbling from him. " You can't ask me to just be okay with this in an instant."

  She tried to move her hands away, but he was so close it was impossible to relax. " It's far from my fault that you left me with weeks to ruminate on how much I don't want this." 

  Fuzzy, yet oddly human like pecks rose and fell in the line of her downcast eyes. In silence she listened to him breathing. Head still turned down and hidden behind one hand to ignore his nearness. Still, when the tips of his claws shifted inward just slightly against her skin, she could feel herself begin to shed more salty water.

 We are safe. A broken sob was her outward reply. He is OURS. Odette shook her head. But as if aware of her conversation within, this Benny pressed the top of his head flat against her upper abdomen. Just under her chest. Ears folded back so that they now tickled the bottom of her breasts. 

   He never stopped taking deep breaths in and letting them out slowly. Until, without realizing it had happened, she was breathing along with him. " I suppose you have some practice. Adjusting people to this particular situation."

  Turning to look up at the bright orange canopy above Odette leaned her head on the trunk behind. Reasoning with herself out loud. "You just took his ring. I think monsters count as for better or worse Odette, my girl." 

  Obnoxiously Benny seemed to be nodding along. Her inner guest gave off the energy of a toddler who, at last, convinced someone to give up their free time in favor of a game of lincoln logs or dollhouse. We are his.

  The harsh emphasis on her last word wasn't comfort inducing the way Odette believed it to have been intended. In front of her, he slid the palm of his large paw down from her thigh to her knee. Circling those strange fingers around her leg before brushing back up with a gentle squeeze.

  His attempt at comfort, only reminding her in the moment that he was so incredibly large. Not insanely lumbering but certainly grown in size by at least a foot. And his fingers could span the whole middle of her upper leg when stretched straight, from where his palm rested on her knee. 

  " You smell like Bruno got into a pan of motor oil, then rolled in cheap cologne." She was only slightly joking as she made the unfair comparison between him and her family's childhood greyhound. 

  If what they were could laugh, then he was. Arms and chest, shaking softly in time with a hiss of air from his lips. He ran the tip of his nose up her neck delicately. Breathing against her skin for a few beats of silence before bunting the tip of her chin with it.

  "I don't think I can look Benny." It hurt him as much as it hurt her, though in a different way. This time he bumped the flat of his snout insistently under her jaw. But she shook her head wordlessly. 

  Pausing for just a moment when she stiffened under their touch, the pads of his fingers carefully held her face so that his claws didn't come near her soft skin. Easing her gaze downward.

  One side of his muzzle, lifting to rest along the line of her jaw. Short gusts of breath breezing under her ear. Moving slowly, he brought both of his arms around her hips and circled them closed. In mind, she imagined he would have been able to wrap them around her almost another full turn had his own body not been in the way. 

  Once she was close, he set his chin on her shoulder. Neither of them moving, sneaking a peek from just one eye, she could see the detail of his surprisingly dark fur. Still it wasn't black like it appeared in the moonlight. 

  Benny's ear was a warm shade of dark brown. Flecks of deeper charcoal peppered about here and there. Not a coat like she'd seen on any wolf or dog. 

  "Why aren't you blonde?" Her words were slightly muffled by the thick coat on his neck when she turned her face to speak to him. 

  Another wheezing sound came from him, and she realized that he was laughing at her. " It's a reasonable question. Benjamin." He seemed to respond well to her calling him by his name in this form. Even his least favorite.

  Odette felt his shadow move over her as he rose to his full height. He looked down at her still keeping her chin in the same palm, so she would now look up at him. 

  Following a pregnant pause, her eyes cracked open, and there it was. There he was. Maybe taller than she guessed in the field last night. Truly covered head to toe in the freckled spattering of clustered charcoal over his warm brown coloring. 

  The texture appeared closer to that of an irish wolf hound. More wiry, than she remembered any wild canine to be. Something in it still looked inviting. Or maybe it was something in her encouraging her to touch.

 Not ready to look up at his face. She brushed her hand up his torso with some hesitation. Starting at his belly, each eerily human-like muscle she moved over flexed under her touch. "You're..." struggling with her words she looked up. Waiting for her were his always mesmerizing blue eyes.

  Now ringed in black, thick red veins moving through the whites. Surrounded by dark skin and long lashes. All of it almost caused her to look away. Except the longer she let herself look, she could see him there.

  Just as much hope, anxiety, and affection poured from his stare as when they'd been wrapped in each other's arms that morning. "Benny." 

  She continued to trail her hand up his body until reaching his collar, she could go no further. Immediately he hunched low again. Squatting to bring them back near eye level.

  "And you were all ready, too damn tall." Even rushing with fear, she attempted to tease him. Trying to add any kind of levity to her nervous tone.

  Chitting out another sort of reply he clicked his teeth at her once. Then, made a point of rolling his eyes sothat she could see him. Moving her with how very much he looked like the man who'd given her the same face minutes ago. "It is you, I mean you really know who you are in there. Who I am."

  Touching his face at last, she brushed down his muzzle. Moving both thumbs over his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. Working them between her index, finger and thumb with a soft pinch.

  The fur, covering every inch of Benny's skin, stood on end. "I thought," Odette paused, not wanting to ruin this moment for him. For the moment she even considered waiting to finish. But he pressed his forehead to hers somewhat awkwardly. 

   "It worried me that I would disappear. That she would..." Benny groaned loud enough to cut her off and she shook her head in confusion. "What?" But he only made a show of moving his index finger between her heart and her temple. 

  "My head and my heart?" He gave an enthusiastic nod. But she only stared down at her body and then looked back up at him like he was an alien. " You know, making sense of your bullshit is just as hard when you're like this as it is when you've been drinking."

  It surprised her how quickly she felt at ease being nasty with him. And the sound not at all unfamiliar, just deeper came from him in protest. The finger on her temple, tapping once more. Both of them were clearly growing irritated.

  "For fucks sake, okay. My mind? You mean, she's all in my mind?" He moved his shoulders and his face not committing to a yes. But also not telling her she was wrong. "No, maybe? What on god's green earth are you supposed to be saying? I'm making her up?" 

  This time he definitively shook his head. Looking up at the sky and then around the surrounding field. As if something among the rocks and dead trees would help. Grunting out frustration.

  "Oh?" She was almost laughing. "You're upset with me?" Emphasizing the first word she moved without thinking. Lifting one hand to flick the tip of his nose as if a misbehaving house pet. Somewhat surprised at herself. 

  Benny looked equally shocked. But then seemed relieved, she'd been relaxed enough to goad him. Showing no negative reaction to her first sign of defiance. " I still think this conversation would be easier if you were also able to speak, Benny."

  Lifting her till her bottom sat on a low branch near the trunk of the tree, he allowed himself to stand back to full height. "I'm not in the mood to play code breaker right now." She sounded as exhausted as she felt after the last few days.

  Instead of saying something, he pinched her chin between the center knuckle of two fingers. Holding her in place while his other hand stroked her hair between its tips. Letting a few strands naturally roll off of them when he lifted it, and then delicately tracing her collar bone with the same knuckles.

  The sensation of softly coated furry fingers against your skin was revolting and sweet in the same moment. Now locking his blue eyes directly on her brown. He set his open palm flat on top of her heartbeat. Opening her mouth to protest his huff of defeat made her stop.

  Rather, she tried to talk herself into leaning in. Meeting his stare head on. When she didn't look at his short muzzle or large teeth, and just watched his irises, it was easier to remember who the animal in front of her was. 

  Just Benny, her protective, wild, madman Benny. She realized her breathing was following his pattern in time and just as her shoulders relaxed she heard it.

  You'll hear me, just listen. The sound of a voice that was clearly not hers from the back of her mind, made her jolt to the point where she almost fell backwards off the branch. But one of his large arms shot around and caught her mid slide. She froze, both of her hands resting on one of his shoulders. "Did I just HEAR you?"

  From his chest a low rumbling almost like a purr sounded for a moment then he turned his face to the side and rested his large head on her lap. There you are. It sounded nearly correct, the same way her own menace sounded like herself if she'd been coughing up smoke for hours. 

  "Hi, Benny." Odette could feel her hands shaking, but she tried to set one over his cheek, brushing up to his ear. He lay there so still she might believe him to be a puppet like the ones on children's TV.  

  Only for a brief moment, there was something stronger than fear inside her. She let the hand on his ear move down the back of his head. Scratching at the top of his neck where he always liked when he was sleeping, in response he tightened his arms around her hips.

  Then she started to feel wrong, too hot, too tight in her skin. Ours. Now, change, run. Mate. All of Odette was vibrating from inside. Instantly she panicked. "No. Shit, please god." 

  Calmer than she appreciated, Benny stood again. Holding her still so that there was nothing she could do except meet his eyes. No. Confusion was almost as strong as the pain she felt while fighting herself. Her nails begin to lift and pop from her fingertips. 

   No. That time the word felt more like a direct command. And as quickly as it all bubbled up under her skin it dissipated. With the exception of the untimely, and credibly unwelcomed ache embarrassingly blooming between her thighs. 

   Benny lifted her without pulling her close. Putting her carefully on both feet before taking a large step back. Odette watched him settle back looking somewhere between an awkwardly large house dog, with its back legs stretched straight forward, and a toddler learning to sit but unsure how limbs worked.

  "You stopped it." Not quite disgust but something damn close simmered up to replace the fear of changing. "Could you..." accusation mixed with her words as she glared at him. But his beast sat vigorously shaking its head on top of its thick neck.

  It was obvious by the way he concentrated on her that he was attempting the same kind of mental communication she'd felt earlier. Only now she heard nothing. Whatever connection had been found by their short peace, snapped.

  "I actually cannot do this." Throwing both hands in the air and ignoring his surprised expression she turned and headed deeper into the unknown woods. 

   Sweat began to pool along the spine of her old tee. It was too hot and too cold at the same time. But still, she shucked the denim jacket down her arms and threw it often to the distance. 

   Clambering through fallen leaves and over dead branches. Making no note of the random debris around her only focused on her racing thoughts, nearly falling over a short stump in her haze. Until strong, human arms were holding her tight by the waist. 

  Not expecting them she screamed. Kicking her legs out in front of her ready to throw her elbows back until a known hand clapped over her mouth. "Shhhh, I wasn't trying to scare you, Duchess." Benny's plush lips brushed her temple.

  Without thinking she spun in his arms. Wrapping her own around his lean, middle and pressing her tear stained cheek flat against his heartbeat. "I'm sorry baby." Affectionately, he stroked one hand down the hair on the back of her head cupping it delicately. 

 "You did so good." Snickering from her made him almost defensive in her own name. " No. Really, you saw what we are for the first time last night. At our worst. And still I got so close." Now he kissed her cheek, nearly hitting the corner of her mouth. 

  "You touched me." Then, he brought one of her still trembling hands to his mouth and laid several kisses against her palm. "You've been so brave through all of this. And I haven't told you that enough, maybe at all. Just like always." 

  Settling against him, she let her fingers spread out and make their way up his back until she cupped his shoulder from behind. Feeling over the ridges and muscles that she could draw from memory. "I know, I know it's you. Even if it looks like a Hyena bred a dire wolf. But I keep replaying what happened. You, violent like that. It was like nothing I've ever seen Benny."

   Holding them steady for the both of them, he only absorbed her words. Keeping his arms tight around her so she knew he was listening. "I don't want to be like that Benny." "Mmmhmmm." He tangled his fingers and the hair bunched at the back of her head.

 "I don't want to rip men apart, even if they are monsters." Saying nothing he nodded against her temple. "What if... I get violent." Neither of them spoke for a moment so she could let much needed sobs spill free over his rough skin. 

  Once she started to settle, he did his best to be gentle with his words. " You won't have to be. I'm here for that, always. If it does come to blows again, when it does, I'll rip the whole world to shreds before you have to do more than keep yourself safe." Odette pushed away.

  Walking ahead at a brisk pace, leaving him standing stunned and naked with his arms open. "Baby, what... wait." Sure to keep a couple of feet between them he trailed her. Watching their feet move the crisp greying leaves of fall from their path as they went.

  "I thought you were done lying." Her voice sounded thin and worn out. " You can't promise me that in this world you've built, keeping myself safe won't mean ripping someone's throat out with my teeth." 

  Part of him was desperate to hide the way the image flashing across his mind excited him. But the movement of his filling cock jumping in response in clear view gave him away. Prompting her to start off in the opposite direction with even more intensity. 

  "For the rest of my life, I'm going to be in danger." An aggravated Benny took her by the arm, turning her harshly at the elbow. "Stop." Gripping her jaw between his thumb and fingers he snarled. " Once this shit show is over, things WILL settle, Duchess." 

  In an attempt to turn on the charm, he moved his other hand up her hip slowly inching her closer. " Most of these women have never seen a day of upheaval in their lives, despite long happy marriages to other Vandals." 

  Abruptly one of her balled fists slammed against his peck haphazardly. " So my best case scenario now is lying in bed at night wondering if you're home late because you're simply breaking the law. Or if you're out being a lazy drunk a-hole again, or even better you're doing werewolf bullshit."

  Even while she huffed and swore at him, he grinned. From his perspective, fighting about, it was still addressing it. Even if it took an argument to get it out, she was finally telling him what was eating at her like she usually did if he listened. The necessity of a near death experience, or something scaring her to the point of no return, in order to get to the conversation was something he hoped wasn't permanent.

  Still holding the hand he'd been kissing the palm of, he spoke low and slow, drawing out the word. "No." Leaned down close he could just taste the hunger she was ignoring on her breath.  Pushing flat against her spine to close the distance between their bodies. "As soon as you start letting me fuck you into the mattress every night the way we both want."

  Slick lips brushed over hers with each word. "Johnny may have to take the front door off the place to get me in a meeting. Let alone wasting my free time at the damn clubhouse."

  Odette nearly finished sealing her mouth over his. Still far too aware of her unmet needs from that morning. And the raging urge added to her own from the guest lingering in the back of her mind. Yet the way he looked so impossibly smug made her furious. 

  Making a split second decision, she slapped him instead. There was a blink of time where he was clearly enraged, then, his smile only grew larger. He yanked her back against him. "Oh yeah?" 

 His brow rose in a manner far too playful for her temperament. She connected against the opposite side of his face with the back of the same hand. "You don't get everything you want all the time Benny." 

  His top lip curled up, but he swallowed every ounce of agitation at the second slap. Flaring both nostrils when he retorted in a gruff tone. "Alright, anything else?" Before he finished his last word, her other hand connected harder than either of her previous hits. A throbbing sting spread across the base of her palm.

  "I am not okay with all of this."  Fighting the urge to roll his eyes. He only popped a breath out between his cheeks when she landed another rather pathetic punch against his chest. "I know." 

  Seething, she took another attempt at a slap. But he caught her by the wrist. Raising his voice and coming in close all at once. "Enough!" When she crumbled into herself slightly and flinched, all of him bent. 

 Still with an edge pushed too far in his tone he spoke to her like he'd done so many times in the last twelve hours. Dropping his drawl so low she couldn't help but want to melt into its velvet. 

  "I know making peace doesn't mean I'm forgiven. That we still have a fair number of things to work past with your changing." He released her hand and rubbed both hands on her upper arms. "I know I still have a long fucking way to go before you trust me when I say there will be joy for us in this life."

  Benny tried for affection but she turned away and his lips turned up slightly at the side with sadness in his eyes. "I'm still gonna be bad at this for a while. And you'll have every damned right to be angry with me another hundred times. And I'll still likely fuck all that up one more time as well."

  When he kissed her at last he wrapped his arms over hers, pinning them between their bodies. Not slowing his persistent pecs against her, as her weight shifted forward. Giving in and letting herself rest against him completely. Her mouth cracking open, then no longer able to stop his tongue sliding in. And he swallowed any protest she may have until they were red in the face. 

  Fisting her auburn strands through his fingers on the back of her head. In a whisper he finished against her cheek. "I don't expect you to finish forgiving me any time soon, Odette." He kissed her again quickly.

  "But at least let me start really apologizing, and letting those apologies mean something between us." 

  She still wanted to slap him some more. And more than that, there was a shame creeping in. How she'd already come to blows with Benny when it took months of Allen taking swings for her to try one back. 

 Unable to speak, she leaned in slowly. Listening to his sigh of relief as her lower lip quivered and she formed her body to his. "Why does it have to be so hard Benny?" 

  Tears of his own lined the edges of his eyes. Nose down in her hair he weakly lifted both shoulders. "I donno." Fingertips pressed firmly to her skin he held on like she was a lifeline. "Sorry you got stuck with me Odette. I wish I was a good enough man to want more for you."

  Placing a hand against his abdomen she backed away half a step. Immediately correcting his misunderstanding, and wiping her face dry. ""No. Oh, Benny."

  Quickly on her tip toes she kissed him. Gently leaning up and closing her lips over his for a long, calm moment. "Now that we're here I've realized."

  It was daunting to find the right words. "As soon as I knew the beautiful man looking at me from my curb was you, it was never going to end any way but you and me together."

  He lifted her in his arms till her feet dangled above the ground. Hiding his face in the dip of her neck as his eyes began to sting. She soothed him softly. "It's not fair to either of us that everything is like this baby." 

  Odette didn't remember calling him by anything but Benny in their brief moments of sweetness since he found her. And his whimper against her shoulder was another reminder he'd been in his own private hell right alongside her these long weeks. 

  She stroked his hair. "We both deserve an easy life with bills, and... babies." His grip grew almost strenuously tight. " Normal arguments about you coming in too late, too loud. Or me, not knowing how to fix a clogged toilet. I'm not the only one who was given a rough hand."

  Moving in a repetitive sequence over the side of his head, the top of his ear,  and side of his face she lavished kisses everywhere she could reach. Displaying every previously withheld moment of affection, she'd kept to herself out of spite in these last days. Almost immediately feeling lighter as she gave into the want.

 Lowering them toward the earth below he started to dip at the middle. Both of them now spreading unspoken feelings over shoulders, necks, cheeks and then finally lips. Bodies becoming entangled on the ground.

  These kisses weren't ruined by haste or tainted by old pain and new fear. They were given freely, requesting only more love in return for that which they were willfully giving.

  Benny pulled away and rested his forehead against her sternum. His breathing was more of a pant, and his body trembled slightly as he held her close. Concern started in her. "Hey?" Odette sat up in his lap. Straddling his hips with her thighs, his long legs bent at the knee behind her. "What happened?"

  When he looked up, she was immediately met with flashes from their first night in the apartment together. Benny's eyes are too blue in the mirror, her blood dripping from his lower lip. Fangs. 

  Now his eyes were almost glacial blue. Mesmerizing as they scanned her expression for any sign of despair. His features were mostly unchanged, except his mouth.

  Slowly she lifted one hand. Using her index fingertip for a tug at the center of his bottom lip. A gasp at what she saw, followed by pinching the lip with her thumb and pulling lower. 

  The already long canine teeth she was accustomed to leaving red and purple marks on her skin, were longer. Set between just slightly smaller lower fangs were a seemingly new row of bottom teeth. Peeked with small rounded tips. 

 Upon releasing his mouth, the red head leaned back against his knees to take him in fully. He wasn't truly much more muscular. In her memory, there had been a colossal shadowed beast in place of him in the mirror. But his arms were thicker, and there was more definition throughout his chest.

  "Why hasn't this happened again? Like that night?" Odette found herself surprisingly unembarrassed. Rather than being put off by the changes in him, she enjoyed how his new features emphasized his already rugged exterior. 

  Watching her back with relief. He realized it wasn't morbid unease that made her so curious. Instead, this partial change, it seemed, appealed to her. "Didn't want to scare you." A mix between his teeth and some internal changes made his voice closer to what she'd heard in her mind earlier. 

  Somewhat playfully, she turned his face from side to side. Brushing the back of her knuckle over his cheek and jawline, to feel how his beard had thickened and grown more coarse. The tips of his ears turned red and she cocked her head to see a blush spreading over him. "You should have started with this I think."

  In one excited swoop, he brought them forward. Landing Odette on her back underneath him. Legs instinctually closed around his back while he pinned either of her hands to the side of her head against the mud. 

 "Well, one more sign I will never be the brains of this operation." He found her mouth with his. The heat boiling between them before, immediately back to its earlier temperature. Quickly her tea was ripped over her head and tossed away without care.

 With a firm grip on one of her thighs, short tipped claws just starting to scrape the skin Benny wanted to pause. "I might hurt you." His wide tongue made a path down her neck over her chest finding a pert nipple and sucking it into his mouth.

  Pinching it between his teeth carefully and rolling it. Relishing in the way she lifted herself in response to him. He moved his other hand up her thigh taking in her hiss.

  Following a sharp inhale, she nearly had to stop from laughing when she considered the many ways his statement applied to their situation. "It's okay Benny." Slowly running one hand as far down his back as she could reach, she curled her fingertips until she could feel skin under the tips of her nails and drug back up.  "I still want you anyway."

   Moaning as he released her nipple with a pop, he gripped her breast in one hand squeezing it roughly as he bit the pale flesh at the top. "Good." Then, he looked up to her long enough for him to place a thumb in her mouth. Smirking, when she sucked down on it despite the dirt and grime. "There's my girl." 

  Sure to give both sides equal attention he sucked several marks over her skin. Moving his hand down between their bodies. Two fingers pressed at the seam of her jeans over her center. When her head fell back and her pink tongue circled the tip of his finger, he was at his brink.

  "These are coming off." Even in his haze, there was a question behind the statement. He could wait. She'd be thrown over his shoulder, walked through the woods and up the stairs in that damn house as fast as he could manage. But if she didn't want to have what he was determined to make their loudest round yet out in the middle of the forest, he could wait. 

  With her bottom lip between her teeth she considered her options. But for once her and her guest were of the same mind. Now. "Yes, please." 

  Heavens above the sweet sound of her asking for it was nearly his end. Eyes rolled to the back of his head he nodded. Thick cream staining the leg of her pants where he leaked against them. "Say it again."

  Rising to his knees Benny popped the button on her pants with one hand. Taking the loops of her jeans in either fingers and tugging them at the hip. Bringing them down inch by inch till he could see her mound coming out the top. 

   When she got his attention while watching his new features take in her own body, he grinned. Odette felt her core clench, in that moment he'd never looked more himself. Some wolf, some man, but all hers. 

  "Come here." Her hands slid over sweaty muscles as he lowered himself between her legs. "Please." Gliding his fingers up her inner thighs Benny groaned in appreciation when he found her slit already soaked and eager for him. "Fucking hell, Duchess." 

  Kissing her deeply, he slid his tongue between her teeth as he pushed a single finger between her folds. "Yes." She gripped his biceps, moaning into his mouth. He rutted his hip over her thigh in time with his wrist. Grinding his erection over her leg while his finger moved deeper. Taking it out, and circling this thumb around her clit as he pushed forward again. 

  Odette sucked at his bottom lip as he pulled back to watch her face. Immediately, she tried to curl herself into his shoulder.  "Ah-uhh. Look at me." Perfect brown eyes were amber flecked in the sunlight above as he pumped his finger faster.

  Her pupils had nearly erased her irises and he couldn't remember a time she'd ever looked so completely given over to him. Cheeks a beautiful pinky flush, her rosey lips parted just enough that he could see her tongue tensed in her mouth when she moaned as he added another finger.

  But Odette couldn't handle how directly he was watching her. And as climax slowly simmered up inside her body curled tight under his, legs moving up his back. Arms tugging his chest closer while her walls sucked his fingers deep she felt a tear roll down her cheek. "Beautiful."

  Freeing his fingers and allowing her a moment to settle he took himself by the shaft. "Spread'em sweetheart." Each of her legs dropped wide to the ground below her heels dug into the dirt to leave her open to him. 

  "Just like that." Benny was living a dream now, Odette willing and wanting without reservations. Whining as he rubbed his slick tip around her throbbing clit, the same pale rose color of her lips. "Yes?" 

  Head bobbing enthusiastically against the earth below she tugged on his hips. "Mmmmmm." Her core flexed. Spurred on by the feeling of his deep voice vibrating his chest over her. 

  In lazy strokes, he moved through her outer folds. Teasing them both and adding to her already flowing juices with his own dripping spend. She lifted her hips from the earth, attempting to angle herself so that he would slip inside. 

  "Alright Odette." In one set of several swift movements, he lifted her ass in a hand. While pushing past her entry with his cock, his other hand sliding up her waist to pin her against the mud. Easing through her silken channel until he was hilted at his base. Pelvic bone resting against hers. 

  "Shit." She had red hair plastered to her sweat, soaked forehead and face, feeling it brush over her nose as she kissed his neck and shoulders. "Yeah... shit." Benny sounded almost overwhelmed. But he moved his hips with precision.

  Pulling a chorus of full chested moans from her. Her hands wrapped around his waist to grip his lower back. Encouraging his hips to move faster. Damn near impossible to unsheath himself completely with how quickly her body held him like a vice.

  "There you go, Duchess." Benny bit down on the side of her neck, feeling her pulse against his tongue. "Just like you needed it, huh?" As he moved inside her, she could feel her nails start to split at the bed. "Benny?"

  Halted by her fear he pulled back, seeing the amber having now taken over her irises. He took one of her hands from his arm. Then licked at the tips of her fingers, helping her delicate claws to finally break free. "It's okay now, Odette." Like he had the last time he sucked the blood from the tips of her fingers, yet this time he did so sensually. Nipping at the skin until she settled under him. "I have you." 

   She held her hand up flat against his peck, seeing the nearly translucent white tops. Testing them against his skin to make sure that she wasn't in danger of tearing him apart on accident. "I'll be alright." He kissed her, slowly pushing his still seated cock back against her cervix. It was easy to give herself over to him now, to try and accept that they were something different. 

  Holding her in place at the center of her back, he lifted his hips to roll them. Ending with her astride his hips once more, holding his shoulders to adjust to him at this angle. Both arms circled his neck. Odette shifted her hips until she found a comfortable motion. Clit grinding over his pubes adding extra sensation. 

   With a hand on either hip he added speed to her movements. Both of them slipped past caring what they looked or sounded like out in the open. She let her head drop back, a curtain of hair brushing over her shoulders so he could just touch it with his fingertips if he stretched them from his grip.

  She rode him with determination, claiming him at last as hers. Watching her with amazement he was caught off guard by the feeling of her pussy squeezing tighter than ever expected. Odette took a moment to realize it wasn't simply her own building orgasm that was making her feel stretched around him. 

  "Oh..." the fingers that she had gently tugged at hair on the back of his head suddenly gripped roughly, pulling the root from the scalp in some places. "Shhhh. I know... I..." he was having a hard time finding a way to explain.

  However, their bodies still seemed to know what they needed. Her hips sliding forward as he pushed up, and they both noticed the bulb forming at her entry. "What are you doing?" As uncomfortable as she was, he was astounded.

  "Shhh...it's okay. It's... fuck it's canine anatomy, Duchess." He was surprisingly bashful. Then bit her shoulder and subconsciously awareness soaked in. "Oh my god..." without needing to confirm he just nodded, mouth open against her neck, fighting to breathe. Odette was going to panic, but he pulsed inside her and her senses lit up. "Fuck..."

  Whining out a moan, he only nodded more. His fingers closed around her hips. Arching up till her chest was penned against his. Hips rocked up, locking him inside while thrusting as little as he still could. Taken aback by the beautifully burning stretch inside she clenched her walls to test his knot.

  "Jesus, Duchess." Tilting his head up he kissed her. Out of patience for experimentation, he guided her with his hands over his cock. Odette's over sensitive nub flinching from being worked past normal pleasure. 

  "It's so big Benny." Her cheek was pressed flat to his shoulder. "And you're taking it so well." His words were growled out, harsh against her ear. Over time they worked her till her whole body was a wave moving over him. 

  Benny suckled one of her breasts, holding her ass in both hands and starting to thrust his hips in short snaps, taking advantage of her body's adjustment. They moved together on the soft earth until he felt her thighs shake. "Give it to me, Odette."

  As peak came and she felt all of her go and quiver over him, he started to spurt. Short juts of thicker semen than normal filling her, seeping from the seam between his cock and her folds. Benny rolled them again. Moving on top of them to drive her through her climax and finish his own in long, lazy thrusts. 

  Odette kissed his chin and jaw until he turned his face and she could let out the last of her pleasure with his tongue. Then they laid there, catching their breath and letting fingers now returned to their normal state brush over sensitive skin.

  "I love you." Her words were raspy whispered from a hoarse throat. Benny sat up on his elbows, peering down with a gentle smile. "I love you too." 

Then he made his way down her body, licking blood from scrapes, or sweat from her curves. Ready to clean his spilled seed off her. And walk his mate, clean and pretty back through the doors of the farm house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello there! Thank you everyone who is still following along with this story. I know it's my slowest moving but I care so much about it I cannot let myself work on it unless I'm at least 75% myself so I don't fuck it up. Next chapter we get back into the heavy plot and things will kick off!

@abswifey, @butlerrizz , @f3ytal, @jjubilee-fluff , @wiseyouthinfluencer, @feralgodmothers , @caterina07121, @shallowsthoughts, @psycheetamore, @unicoo, @honestlyshywhispers-blog, @crashaun, @peggyao3

[movingmusically]

Austin Butler photographed for YSL Beauty

[pinenutpbj]

Callum Turner as the new leading man of Johnny Walker Blue Label

[bobbole]

Anthony Machuca, Wake up Steve, our bowls are empty

[magneticghouls]

quick little callum

[valarrtheyoungprince]

A Reason to Return

Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x Reader ​Synopsis: Valarr has never confessed because he assumed there would be time. He believed their closeness was permanent and that no marriage arrangement could be made without him hearing of it first.

Part 1

By sunrise, the fields beyond the King’s Gate had become a kingdom of silk.

Pavilions crowded the green in long, brilliant rows, their peaks crowned with carved beasts and snapping standards. Golden lions strained against crimson cloth. Silver trout swam upon rippling blue. Direwolves, roses, suns, stags, falcons, krakens, and towers rose above the gathering multitude as though every proud creature in Westeros had descended upon King’s Landing to witness men batter one another beneath the summer sun.

Merchants had arrived before dawn. Their cries mingled with the piping of flutes, the ringing of smiths’ hammers, and the restless clatter of horses being led toward the lists. Boys ran between the tents selling meat pies and bright ribbons. Women carried baskets of flowers. Squires hurried past with polished shields, fresh lances, and armfuls of mail.

The air smelled of grass, horses, charcoal, hot bread, and expectation.

You stood at the entrance to the royal viewing gallery while your father exchanged courtesies with three lords whose names you had already forgotten.

They all wished to be seen speaking with him.

They all wished to look at you.

You had dressed carefully for the opening day, though you had pretended otherwise when your maids fussed over you that morning. Your gown bore the colors of your house, the sleeves embroidered with silver thread, the fabric fine enough to announce your rank without appearing ostentatious beside the royal family.

It was armor of another kind.

Your father had taught you that before you were old enough to understand why noblewomen required armor at all.

“Smile,” he murmured without turning his head.

“I am smiling.”

“You look as though you are considering which of these men would be most satisfying to poison.”

“Then I am smiling as Mother used to.”

His mouth twitched.

The expression vanished when Lord Edwyn Hightower approached.

He was courteous enough to bow deeply. He was handsome enough that half the court called him so, broad-shouldered and fair-haired, with the pale green eyes of his mother’s family. His doublet was white velvet, worked with a tower of gold thread over his heart.

He brought you a gift.

Again.

“My lady.” He presented a small carved box. “A trifle from Oldtown.”

Three days ago, he had brought you pearls.

The day before that, a book of songs copied by septons in the Starry Sept.

At the welcoming feast, he had spoken at great length about the chambers his future wife would occupy in the Hightower and how she might wish to decorate them.

He had not asked whether you wished to live there.

He spoke as though the matter had already been decided by wiser people and only awaited the tedious formality of your agreement.

“My lord is too generous,” you said.

“Not nearly generous enough.”

His gaze moved over your face with the calm satisfaction of a man inspecting a prize he expected soon to own.

Your father accepted the box on your behalf.

“The first riders are gathering,” he said, perhaps sensing the tightness in your shoulders. “We should take our places.”

Lord Edwyn offered you his arm.

Before you could decide whether refusing him before half the court would cause more trouble than enduring him, a roar rose from the lower field.

You turned.

The knights of House Targaryen had emerged from their pavilion.

Black-and-red armor shone beneath the new sun. Dragon wings curved from helms. Rubies glimmered at sword belts and sword pommels. Squires in scaled leather carried shields painted with the three-headed dragon.

Valarr stood among them. Even from a distance, you knew the shape of him.

You would have known him if every knight in Westeros had been dressed in the same black plate. You knew the breadth of his shoulders and the stillness he wore before a contest. You knew how his right hand flexed when the old break in his wrist troubled him. You knew the slight tilt of his head when he listened to advice he had no intention of following.

He stood beside his father, Prince Baelor, listening as the king’s master-at-arms traced something in the dirt with the tip of a lance.

Valarr appeared composed. And others would have called him calm.

You saw the way his jaw had gone rigid.

He was anxious.

He had always become quiet before entering the lists. As a boy, he had filled the hours before training with boasts and laughter. As a man, he had learned to place all his fear beneath a prince’s polished courtesy.

You had once asked whether he was frightened of being hurt.

“No,” he had said.

“Then what frightens you?”

He had looked at you for a long moment before answering.

“Failing where everyone can see.”

Below, one of the knights said something that made Prince Baelor laugh.

Valarr did not.

Then he looked toward the gallery.

He found you at once.

The change in his face was so swift and complete that it struck you like sunlight breaking through a cloud.

His stern mouth softened. His eyes warmed. The tension in his shoulders eased as though a hand had reached inside his armor and loosened some hidden knot.

He said something to his father. Prince Baelor glanced toward you. Then Valarr walked away from the conversation.

The master-at-arms called after him. One of the squires hurried to keep pace. Valarr ignored them both.

Lord Edwyn still held out his arm.

Valarr’s gaze dropped to it.

The warmth left his expression.

He climbed the steps to the gallery with the sure stride of a man approaching a battlefield he meant to claim. His armor made each footfall heavy, yet nothing about him appeared encumbered. His hair, shinning beneath the sun, had been pushed back and away from his face. A half-cloak of black silk hung from one shoulder, fastened by a ruby dragon.

He bowed first to your father.

“My lord.”

“Prince Valarr.”

“My apologies for stealing your daughter before the heralds begin.”

Your father raised one brow. “You presume she is yours to steal.”

Something sharpened in Valarr’s eyes. “Only for a moment.”

Lord Edwyn’s smile remained pleasant.

“His Highness must be eager for reassurance before the lists.”

Valarr looked at him.

“I had not realized reassurance was among the gifts Lord Hightower brought to court.”

The words were perfectly courteous. The tone was not.

Your father cleared his throat.

You stepped forward before either man could transform the morning into a quarrel between a dragon and a tower.

“You ought to be preparing, my prince.”

“I am prepared.”

“You are missing one gauntlet.”

Valarr glanced down at his bare left hand as though surprised to discover it.

“My squire has it.”

Twenty paces away, the unfortunate boy stood holding the gauntlet and looking uncertain whether he was permitted to interrupt.

You folded your hands before you.

“What do you need, my prince?”

Valarr’s expression changed again.

Not enough for anyone who did not know him to understand. Only the slightest narrowing of his eyes, a moment of uncharacteristic hesitation.

He looked almost young.

“When we were children,” he said, “you gave me your favor before my first contest.”

You stared at him.

“I gave you a strip torn from the hem of my gown because you would not stop begging.”

“You told me it would make me invincible.”

“You were nine.”

“I won.”

“You struck Matarys in the mouth with a wooden sword.”

“He yielded.”

“Because he was crying.”

“He still yielded.”

A faint smile touched his lips. Then it faded.

“Will you give me another?”

The sounds of the tourney seemed to recede.

You became aware of the noblewomen seated nearby, of the queens and princesses not yet arrived, of Lord Edwyn standing close enough to hear every word.

Valarr had ridden in tourneys for years.

He had accepted favors from royal cousins when duty required it. Once, in Lannisport, a dozen maidens had thrown ribbons beneath his horse’s hooves. He had tied none of them to his arm.

He had never asked you. Not since childhood.

“Why?” you asked softly.

His eyes held yours.

“Because I want yours.”

“You have admirers enough to cover your armor in silk.”

“I did not ask them.”

A dangerous hope lifted its head inside you. You forced it down.

“Does a prince of House Targaryen truly require luck from me?”

Valarr stepped closer.

The black steel of his breastplate nearly touched your gown. He lowered his voice until the words belonged only to you, though the court watched with avid attention.

“Not luck.”

His gaze moved over your face as though committing it to memory. “A reason to return.”

Your breath caught.

For a moment, you could not move.

Then you reached into the small purse fastened at your waist.

You had brought the ribbon without admitting, even to yourself, why you had done so.

It was narrow, embroidered by your own hand in the colors of your house. You had spent three evenings working tiny silver leaves into the cloth, telling your maid it was meant to edge a handkerchief.

Valarr watched you unfold it. The composed prince disappeared. Something vulnerable entered his face.

“You made it,” he said.

“A poor thing compared with what other ladies might offer.”

“I would know your stitches anywhere.”

“My prince, you mock my skill.”

“I treasure its consistency.”

You gave him a reproachful look, and his smile widened.

When you held out the ribbon, he did not take it. Instead, he extended his bare left arm.

“Will you?”

You ought to have handed it to his squire. You knew that.

Instead, you stepped closer and tied the favor around the black plate protecting his forearm. Your fingers brushed the leather straps beneath. The armor was warm from the sun.

Valarr stood utterly still.

You tied the knot twice.

When you finished, his gloved hand closed gently around your wrist.

“Here?” you whispered.

He had made no attempt to conceal the ribbon beneath his vambrace. It lay bright and visible against the black steel.

“Here.”

“Everyone will see.”

“That is the purpose.”

Your heart gave one painful beat. He released you slowly. The herald’s horn sounded across the field.

Valarr bowed to your father, then to you. He offered Lord Edwyn nothing beyond a brief inclination of his head.

As he turned away, your father said, “Prince Valarr.”

Valarr stopped.

“If you carry my daughter’s colors into the lists, do not disgrace them.”

Valarr looked back at you.

“I never could.”

//

By the time you entered the royal gallery, everyone had noticed.

Whispers moved through the tiered seats faster than wind through summer wheat.

Valarr had taken your favor.

Valarr had asked for it.

Valarr wore it openly.

The queen’s ladies looked at your arm as though expecting to find some visible mark where he had touched you. Princesses leaned close to one another. Young maidens who had spent the previous evening discussing which knight deserved their favor now watched you with narrowed eyes.

Your aunt sat beside you and arranged her skirts.

Below, Valarr mounted his black destrier.

His squire fastened the missing gauntlet. Prince Baelor spoke to him with one hand on the horse’s bridle. Valarr listened, but when he settled his helm beneath his arm, his gaze rose toward the gallery.

He found you.

His thumb brushed over the favor tied around his wrist.

Your aunt made a quiet sound.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

You turned to her. She smiled without kindness.

“You are both intolerable.”

Before you could demand an explanation, trumpets sounded. The first jousts began.

Valarr’s opening opponent was a knight of House Mallister, a broad man on a grey courser. They took their places at opposite ends of the field while servants lowered the barrier between them.

Valarr put on his helm.

For a heartbeat, the dragon prince vanished behind black steel. Then he lifted his lance.

The crowd roared. The horses sprang forward.

You had watched Valarr ride in the lists many times. You knew the cadence of his charge, the lowering of his shoulder, the final shift of the lance before impact.

The first pass struck with the force of a thunderclap.

Valarr’s lance crashed into the painted eagle at the center of the Mallister knight’s shield, splintering the wood from rim to rim. The impact tore a roar from the stands. The Mallister rocked violently in his saddle but managed to remain seated, his horse stumbling several paces before he pulled it back beneath him.

Valarr took the answering blow near the edge of his own shield.

His body jerked with it.

For one terrible instant, you saw his left shoulder twist too far and remembered the old injury there—the one that stiffened during winter rains, though he denied it whenever you noticed him favoring the arm.

Your fingers tightened around the carved rail before you.

Valarr remained mounted.

He rode to the far end of the lists as though the strike had meant nothing, black-and-red armor gleaming beneath the summer sun, his posture proud and controlled. Anyone else might have believed he felt no pain.

You knew better.

You saw the subtle roll of his shoulder. The brief flex of his fingers around the reins. The careful breath he took before turning his horse.

They wheeled for the next pass.

Before Valarr returned to his place, he lifted his head toward the royal gallery.

He did not look to his father waiting beside the lists.

He did not seek the king’s approval or acknowledge the nobles shouting his name.

He looked for you.

The knowledge landed inside you with almost as much force as the lance had struck his shield.

Valarr found you quickly.

He always did.

In crowded halls, across torchlit courtyards, among hundreds of bright gowns and noble faces, his gaze had always found yours with such ease that you had long ago begun pretending it meant nothing.

You could no longer remember when you had first learned to do that.

Perhaps you had been sixteen, when he returned from Dragonstone and walked past two princesses to ask why you had changed the ribbon in your hair.

Perhaps you had been younger still, watching him search the training yard after his first victory until he saw you perched on the wall.

It had always felt like being chosen.

Only for a moment.

Only until the court reminded you that being found was not the same as being claimed.

Your eyes met across the field.

Valarr’s hand shifted on his lance.

Then, slowly, his thumb brushed across the favor tied openly around his wrist.

Your favor.

The narrow strip of cloth seemed impossibly delicate against black steel.

He turned his horse toward the barrier.

The herald lowered his arm.

Valarr charged.

The second collision filled the air with the crack of breaking wood. Both lances shattered, fragments spinning beneath the horses’ hooves. Valarr bent low against the impact, holding his seat through strength and instinct.

The Mallister knight recovered more slowly.

As they received fresh lances, Valarr looked toward you again.

This time the glance was briefer, stolen beneath the lowering edge of his visor.

Still, you understood it.

He was checking that you remained there. As if you might leave before he returned. As if your watching mattered more than the thousands gathered around you.

The third pass ended the contest.

Valarr’s lance struck squarely against the Mallister’s shield. The other knight was lifted from his saddle and thrown into the dirt with a violence that sent dust blooming around him.

The stands erupted.

The sound came like a wave breaking over stone—shouts, applause, the pounding of feet against timber. Men lifted their cups. Women waved ribbons from the gallery. Somewhere behind you, a maiden screamed Valarr’s name with enough enthusiasm to embarrass her entire house.

Valarr did not immediately raise his lance.

He brought his horse around the fallen knight first, circling until he saw the Mallister move. Only when the man pushed himself onto one elbow did Valarr incline his head to him in acknowledgment.

It was such a small thing. Most of the court would not remember it.

You would.

You remembered every small mercy Valarr tried to conceal beneath pride.

Only then did he lift the remains of his lance toward the royal box.

He saluted the king.

He saluted his father.

The expected courtesies.

Then Valarr turned in the saddle. The broken lance moved away from the royal dais. Slowly, unmistakably, he pointed it toward you.

The cheering changed. You heard it happen.

What had been admiration for a victorious prince sharpened into something more curious and intimate. Whispers broke beneath the applause. Heads turned from the lists toward the gallery, following the line of the shattered lance until every interested gaze found you.

Valarr’s hand rose to the ribbon around his wrist.

His fingers closed over it.

Not a fleeting brush this time.

He held it against the black plate as though reminding himself it remained there.

As though reminding you that he had carried it through every blow.

Your breath caught painfully beneath your ribs.

You wanted to look away. You could not.

The cheering seemed to strike your body from every direction, vibrating through the wooden gallery and into your bones. Heat climbed your neck. Your heartbeat became so loud that for one foolish moment, you wondered whether those seated beside you might hear it.

Valarr was making a spectacle of you.

No.

Not of you.

For you.

There was a difference, though you scarcely dared name it.

Lord Edwyn sat two places beyond your father. You felt him lean closer before he spoke, catching the faint scent of the expensive oil he wore in his hair.

“A bold display from Prince Valarr.” His voice remained pleasant.

Everything about Edwyn was pleasant when others were listening. You kept your gaze fixed on the field. Valarr still held the lance in your direction.

“He rode well,” you said. It was the safest answer you could manage.

Edwyn gave a quiet laugh. “He performs well.”

The distinction was deliberate.

The words slipped neatly between your ribs, seeking the most vulnerable place.

You turned your head.

Lord Edwyn watched Valarr with an indulgent smile, as though observing a talented mummer amusing an easily impressed crowd.

When he met your gaze, the smile deepened.

“Princes understand spectacle better than other men,” he said. “They are raised to know precisely where to look and what gesture will earn the loudest cheer.”

Your stomach tightened.

He wanted you to doubt it.

Worse, some fearful part of you was already eager to help him.

You had spent years teaching yourself not to mistake Valarr’s affection for intention. A hand at the small of your back was friendship. His remembering your favorite flowers was habit. The way he always found you in crowded rooms was merely familiarity.

And this?

A ribbon displayed before half the realm?

A broken lance turned toward you?

Perhaps Edwyn was right. Perhaps it was only another charming gesture from a prince who had never been forced to understand what such gestures cost the women receiving them.

You looked back toward the lists before Edwyn could see how deeply the suggestion had struck.

Below, Valarr finally lowered the lance.

His squire came to take it from him. Another man reached for the reins, but Valarr remained mounted long enough to pull off his helm.

Dark hair fell untidily across his forehead, damp with sweat. His face was flushed from effort. There was dust along one cheek and a tightness around his mouth that told you the strike to his shoulder had hurt more than he would ever admit before the crowd.

The moment the helm was gone, he searched the gallery.

Not the king. Not Prince Baelor.

Not the noblewomen who leaned over the railing with favors dangling hopefully from their hands.

You.

Always you.

His gaze moved across the seats with growing impatience until it found your face.

Something in him eased.

The hard line of his mouth softened. The fierce concentration in his eyes gave way to a warmth so private that it seemed impossible the entire court could be witnessing it.

Then he smiled.

It was not the brilliant, princely smile he offered the stands—the practiced curve of his mouth meant for cheering crowds, visiting lords, and songs that would be sung of him tomorrow.

This smile was smaller. Uneven at one corner.

Almost boyish.

It carried no triumph. Only relief.

There you are.

You felt the words as clearly as if he had spoken them beside your ear.

You knew that smile.

You had seen it after childhood punishments, when he escaped the septa and found you waiting on the servants’ stairs. You had seen it when he returned from his first long journey and discovered you in the welcoming hall. You had seen it through fevers, bruises, arguments, and years in which the two of you had become so thoroughly woven into one another’s lives that you had stopped noticing where friendship ended and longing began.

It was yours.

At least, it had always felt like yours.

The thought came so naturally that it terrified you. Because smiles were not vows. A prince could find you in every crowd and still marry another woman.

He could carry your favor through a tourney and later place his cloak around the shoulders of whichever bride best served his house.

He could love you in a hundred small, silent ways and never choose you in the one way that mattered.

You hated yourself for hoping.

Hated Edwyn for making you doubt.

Most of all, you hated Valarr for looking at you as though there had never been anyone else, when he had never once given you the courage to believe it.

//

He came to your pavilion before his second match.

By then, the lower grounds were thick with visitors. Servants carried trays of wine and cold meats between the tents. Musicians played near the merchants’ row. Knights who had finished their first contests drank with friends while squires hammered dents from armor.

Your family’s pavilion stood near the royal enclosure, large enough to hold a table, cushioned chairs, and a curtained private chamber at the rear.

Your father had gone to speak with one of the king’s councilors.

Your aunt had gone in search of lemon cakes.

You stood alone for the first time that day, staring at the carved box Lord Edwyn had given you.

Inside lay a golden chain set with pale green stones.

A wife’s gift.

Not formally.

Not yet.

But clear enough.

You closed the lid as footsteps approached.

Valarr entered without announcement. His squire followed with an armful of armor straps and a look of resignation.

“You are meant to wait outside royal tents unless invited,” you said.

Valarr pulled off one gauntlet with his teeth. “This is not a royal tent.”

“It belongs to my father.”

“He likes me.”

“He tolerates you because your grandfather is king.”

“He tolerated me before that.”

“You once put a frog in his bed.”

“I was seven.”

“You were fourteen.” Valarr removed his helm and passed it to his squire.

His hair clung damply to his forehead. A faint flush lay across his cheekbones. Without the helm, he appeared less like the perfect knight painted in songs and more like the boy who used to climb the Red Keep’s walls to reach your chamber window.

His gaze fell upon the carved box. “What is that?”

“A gift.”

“From whom?”

“You know from whom.”

His mouth flattened.

The squire cleared his throat. “Your Highness, the fastening beneath your pauldron has come loose.”

“Then fasten it.”

“I cannot reach it while you are wearing the gorget.”

Valarr looked at him.

The boy looked back with the patient misery of someone accustomed to royal unreasonable demands.

“I must fetch a narrower strap from the armorer,” the squire explained. “If Your Highness will wait—”

“I will assist him,” you said.

Both turned toward you.

Valarr’s squire looked relieved enough to kiss your hem.

“I shall return at once, my lady.” He fled.

Valarr watched him go.

“You frightened him, my prince.”

“He lacks resolve.”

“He has served you for four years.”

“And still flees at the first opportunity.”

“Perhaps he values peace.”

“Then he chose the wrong prince.”

You moved behind Valarr.

The left pauldron had shifted, leaving the leather fastening twisted beneath the edge of his gorget. You worked your fingers beneath the plate.

“You are too warm,” you said.

“I have been wearing black steel beneath the sun.”

You pulled the strap tighter than necessary.

Valarr hissed.

“Do not be difficult.”

“I am standing obediently while you attempt to strangle me with my own armor.”

“You were thrown from a horse at twelve because you refused to tighten a saddle strap.”

“The horse disliked me.”

“The horse was wiser than most.”

He laughed softly. The sound vibrated through the metal beneath your hand.

You had almost worked the stubborn fastening into place when Valarr said quietly, “Your hands are trembling.”

Your fingers went still against the leather.

For one humiliating heartbeat, you could feel every slight quiver he had noticed—the betraying unsteadiness in your fingertips, the tension wound through your wrist, the way you had been holding your breath whenever the edge of the armor pressed too close to the injury beneath.

“They are not,” you said.

Valarr gave a soft sound that was not quite a laugh.

“They are.”

“It is an awkward fastening.”

“You have fastened it before.”

“When we were children.”

The answer came too quickly.

You lowered your head and resumed working, though the strap was already nearly secure. Better to busy your hands than let him see your face.

There had been a hundred such moments when you were young.

You fastening the buckles on his practice armor because his squire had been late. You wrapping linen around his scraped palms after he fell in the yard. You kneeling beside him in the grass while he insisted that a swollen ankle was nothing and that he could still outrun Matarys if given the opportunity.

Back then, your concern had been permitted to show.

You had been children. No one had watched the way you touched him or counted how often he sought you after every hurt. No one had measured tenderness against marriage prospects or whispered that a girl’s affection might make her foolish.

Now every kindness had consequences.

Valarr’s voice softened.

“You worried then.”

You pulled the strap tighter.

“I did not.”

He exhaled as the armor drew firmly against his shoulder.

“That was needlessly cruel.”

“You complained it was loose.”

“I did not ask you to punish me with it.”

“You have survived worse.”

“Usually with less enthusiasm from the person tending me.”

Despite yourself, the corner of your mouth threatened to lift.

You pushed it down.

Valarr had always known how to draw a smile from you when you least wished to give him one. It was one of the many small powers he possessed over you without seeming to understand that he possessed it at all.

You flattened the leather beneath the plate, careful not to brush the tender place near his collarbone.

“I was never worried,” you said again.

The lie sounded thinner this time.

Valarr became very still.

“You have worried for me since we were children.”

The teasing had gone from his voice.

You swallowed.

“You have given me ample reason.”

“I know.”

His voice had changed. There was something in the way he said it that made your fingers falter.

The teasing warmth remained, but something deeper moved beneath it. Something too tender to examine safely.

You drew your hand away, intending to step back before he could see how deeply those two words had affected you.

Valarr turned.

The movement was sudden enough that you nearly collided with him.

One moment, you were standing behind his shoulder with the armor between you; the next, you were caught in the narrow space before him, close enough that the black steel of his breastplate brushed the front of your gown.

Your breath caught.

His body blocked the light from the pavilion entrance. Heat radiated from him through layers of linen, leather, and sun-warmed plate. The faint scent of steel, horse, and the soap he had used that morning surrounded you—familiar enough that it stirred memories you had spent years trying not to treasure too openly.

Your hand remained against his shoulder.

You had forgotten to remove it.

The other had become trapped between you, your fingers still curled around the loosened end of the leather strap.

Neither of you moved.

Valarr was close enough for you to see every detail that distance usually softened.

The tiny pale scar beneath his lower lip, left from the day Matarys had thrown a wooden cup at him during a quarrel over a hunting dog.

The faint shadow of sleeplessness beneath his eyes.

A small bead of sweat at his temple, caught in a strand of silver-gold hair.

You knew every mark on him.

You knew which scars came from the training yard and which from recklessness. You knew the line across his ribs that a boar’s tusk had made when he was sixteen. You knew the slight crook in the smallest finger of his left hand where it had healed poorly after he refused to let the maester set it twice.

You knew him so completely that sometimes it felt like another form of grief.

To know a person in every private detail and still have no claim upon him.

Valarr’s gaze moved over your face. He looked down at your mouth.

Your heart stopped.

The curtain behind you opened.

Lord Edwyn entered.

“My lady, your father said I might—”

Valarr stepped back.

The absence of him felt abrupt and cold.

Lord Edwyn’s gaze moved from your hand on Valarr’s armor to the prince’s face.

“I see His Highness is receiving very personal assistance.”

You lowered your hand. “Prince Valarr’s armor required fastening.”

“There are squires for such work.”

Valarr picked up his gauntlet. “And yet she did it better.”

Lord Edwyn’s smile thinned. A tense silence stretched between them.

Then Valarr took your hand. Before you could react, he turned it palm-down and bowed over your knuckles.

“I shall endeavor not to disgrace your colors.”

His lips did not touch your skin. His breath did. When he straightened, his eyes were still on you.

“Watch me.”

He left without acknowledging Lord Edwyn.

You stood frozen.

Lord Edwyn waited until the pavilion curtain fell behind him.

“You indulge the prince greatly.”

You looked at him. “He is my friend.”

“A married woman cannot maintain childhood friendships as she did when she was a girl.”

“I am not married.”

“No. But your father and I have spoken at length.”

“Then perhaps you ought to marry my father.” His brows rose.

You heard your own sharpness too late.

Lord Edwyn recovered quickly. “I admire spirit in a woman.”

“I am relieved.”

“Within reason.”

The warning lay beneath the courtesy.

You drew yourself upright. “Then I pray you find a reasonable woman, my lord.”

His expression hardened.

Before he could answer, the herald announced the next riders.

You swept past him.

//

Valarr won his second tilt.

Then his third.

He rode with precision rather than flourish, breaking lance after lance against shields painted with boars, wolves, and burning trees. He took one blow against his chest that drove him back in the saddle, but he regained his balance before the crowd could gasp.

Each time he passed your section of the gallery, he touched the favor.

By midday, the ribbon had darkened with sweat and dust.

A lady of House Redwyne intercepted him near the edge of the field after his fourth victory. She was famed for her beauty, with auburn hair and a gown the color of summer wine.

Before half the court, Lady Redwyne stepped into Valarr’s path and offered him a chain of golden roses.

It was a beautiful thing.

Each flower had been shaped from delicate links of gold, its petals set with tiny garnets that caught the afternoon light and burned like drops of dark red wine. It must have cost more than the yearly income of some landed knights. Draped between the lady’s pale hands, it glittered against her wine-colored gown as though it had been fashioned for no purpose except to rest upon a prince’s black armor.

Around her, conversation faded.

The heralds fell silent.

Even the musicians faltered, the final notes of a lively song trailing uncertainly into the summer air.

There were moments at court when everyone understood, without being told, that they were witnessing something intended to become a story.

This was one of them.

Lady Redwyne was beautiful, wealthy, and unmarried. Her house commanded ships and vineyards and influence enough to interest any royal family. More than one court gossip had already suggested that she would make a fitting bride for a Targaryen prince.

She smiled up at Valarr with the confidence of a woman who had seldom offered anything and been refused.

You could not hear what she said.

The crowd stood too thickly between you, and her voice was meant for Valarr alone. Yet you saw the graceful inclination of her head. The way she lifted the chain just high enough to make her intention unmistakable. The faint color rising prettily into her cheeks as the court watched.

A favor.

Not merely a ribbon tossed beneath his horse or a flower pressed playfully into his hand.

Something costly. Deliberate.

Something worthy of a prince.

Your fingers curled against the fabric of your skirts.

The ribbon tied around Valarr’s wrist suddenly seemed painfully small.

You had made it yourself by candlelight, bending over uneven stitches while pretending to your maid that it was meant for nothing important. The cloth was narrow. The embroidery imperfect. One of the silver leaves leaned crookedly because you had pricked your finger and lost patience with it.

Against the Redwyne lady’s chain of golden roses, it looked like what it was.

A foolish little thing made by a woman who had loved him too quietly for too long.

For one humiliating instant, you wished you had given him something finer.

Something that would not appear childish beside gold and garnets.

Something that might explain to the court why he had chosen to wear it.

Valarr listened while Lady Redwyne spoke.

His expression remained courteous. Attentive. The perfect prince receiving admiration without embarrassing the woman brave enough to offer it.

Then he smiled.

Your heart sank before you could stop it.

You knew that smile. It was the gracious one he used at court—the warm, controlled curve of his mouth that made visiting ladies believe they had briefly captured his full attention. You had watched women carry the memory of it for entire evenings.

Valarr inclined his head.

Then he shook it.

The movement was gentle.

Unmistakable.

Lady Redwyne blinked.

A ripple of surprise moved through those standing nearest them.

She laughed lightly, as though he had misunderstood her—or as though his refusal were merely a playful hesitation she could charm him into abandoning. She raised the chain once more, letting the golden roses spill between her hands.

Perhaps she believed no man would refuse twice.

Perhaps no man ever had.

Valarr’s smile faded.

Not into coldness.

Into certainty.

He lifted his left arm.

The sunlight struck the black steel of his vambrace.

And there, tied plainly around it, lay your ribbon.

It had already gathered dust from the lists. One edge had begun to crease beneath his gauntlet. The silver embroidery was modest beside the golden roses, the cloth so fragile that it looked as though one hard blow might tear it away entirely.

Valarr displayed it as though it were a king’s ransom.

He did not hide it beneath his armor.

He did not glance apologetically toward the court.

He raised his arm until no one could mistake what he meant.

I already bear a favor.

Not the richest.

Not the most elaborate.

The one he had asked for.

Yours.

Lady Redwyne followed his gaze to the ribbon.

Her smile faltered.

Only slightly. She was too well-bred to allow humiliation to show plainly before so many watching eyes.

But you saw it.

You saw the moment she understood that Valarr was not refusing the beauty of her gift because he was shy, or courteous, or unwilling to burden himself with another token.

He was refusing because accepting it would mean replacing yours.

And he would not.

Your breath lodged beneath your ribs.

Valarr spoke to her then, his voice too low for you to hear.

Whatever he said was kind. You knew it from the gentling of his expression and the respectful bow he offered afterward.

He would not shame her.

That, too, was part of who he was.

He could have laughed. He could have turned the refusal into another triumph and allowed the crowd to enjoy the embarrassment of a proud woman brought low.

Instead, he gave her dignity while denying her completely.

Lady Redwyne lowered the golden chain.

Valarr bowed once more.

Then he gathered his reins and rode away.

For several heartbeats, the court remained suspended in silence.

And then every gaze in the gallery turned toward you.

Your aunt leaned close. “What did he say?”

“How would I know?”

“You are the keeper of all knowledge regarding Prince Valarr.”

“I cannot read lips across a tourney field.”

“I suspect he said he already bears the only favor he wants.”

Your pulse fluttered.

“You enjoy tormenting me.”

“Not nearly as much as the two of you enjoy tormenting yourselves.”

You refused to look at her.

Below, Valarr dismounted. He glanced toward you. Even from that distance, his amusement was obvious.

You ought to have been annoyed.

Instead, you smiled.

His face brightened in answer.

Lord Edwyn saw.

For the remainder of the afternoon, he scarcely spoke to you.

Valarr noticed that too.

//

That evening, the Great Hall shone with a thousand candles.

The tourney’s first feast was intended to honor visiting lords and victorious knights. Musicians played from the gallery. Servants carried boar glazed in honey, lamprey pies, roasted swans, and bowls of summer fruit between the crowded tables.

Valarr sat below the dais with his parents and brother.

You sat with your family several tables away.

Ordinarily, he would have found a reason to come to you before the first course ended.

He might have claimed your father wished to discuss horses. He might have asked whether your aunt had brought the cyvasse set she always carried when traveling. Once, at a feast in Storm’s End, he had crossed the hall to ask whether you remembered the name of a dog he had owned at six.

Tonight, he remained in his place.

Lord Edwyn sat beside you.

That, you suspected, was the reason.

He had arranged it with your father.

You understood the politics of the gesture. House Hightower possessed wealth, influence, ships, and blood ties across the Reach. Your own house would benefit from the alliance. Your father had not commanded you to accept Edwyn’s courtship, but he had begun speaking of duty more often.

“You would like Oldtown,” Edwyn said while servants poured wine.

“I have visited twice.”

“As a guest. It would be different as its future lady.”

Your fingers tightened around your cup.

“You speak with great confidence.”

“Our fathers find the match favorable.”

“Our fathers are not the ones being wed.”

“No. They are merely responsible for ensuring we do not allow childish sentiment to overcome good sense.”

His gaze moved toward Valarr.

You followed it despite yourself.

Valarr was watching.

The instant your eyes met, he looked away.

Prince Matarys leaned toward him and said something. Valarr answered without expression.

Edwyn smiled. “Princes are accustomed to being adored.”

“Prince Valarr has never asked for my adoration.”

“Has he not?”

“No.”

“Then perhaps he merely enjoys receiving it without obligation.”

The words struck more deeply than you wished.

You knew Edwyn meant them to.

“He is my oldest friend.”

“And one day he will marry a princess.”

Your stomach tightened.

Edwyn continued in a quiet, reasonable voice.

“A Targaryen prince does not choose a wife because she tied a ribbon around his wrist. He chooses for blood, armies, and the wishes of his king. Whatever affection exists between you, he has never spoken for your hand.”

You looked across the hall.

Valarr’s attention had returned to you. He saw the hurt you had failed to hide.

His chair scraped against the floor.

Prince Baelor caught his arm before he could rise. Valarr looked at his father.

Baelor said something low.

For several heartbeats, they regarded one another. Then Valarr sat back down.

The movement should not have hurt. It did.

Edwyn watched the exchange. “As I said.”

You turned to him. “You presume much from silence.”

“In courts, silence is often the clearest answer.”

You placed your cup on the table. “My lord, I am tired.”

“The dancing has not begun.”

“I did not say I was tired from dancing.”

You rose.

Your father looked at you but did not stop you.

As you left the hall, you felt Valarr’s gaze follow you all the way to the doors.

He did not come after you.

//

The next morning brought archery.

Valarr did not compete. Princes and knights gathered along the edges of the field to watch the bowmen test their skill against painted targets, swinging rings, and bundles of reeds thrown into the air.

You sat beneath your family’s pavilion, grateful for the shade.

You had slept poorly.

Dreams of black armor, green eyes, and golden towers had followed one another through the night.

Valarr arrived late.

He wore a black doublet rather than armor, the favor tied around his wrist.

He had washed it. The dust was gone, though one edge had begun to fray.

He stopped beside your chair. “Good morning.”

You kept your gaze on the targets. “Your Highness.”

When you were alone, you almost never used his title.

“You left the feast.”

“I was tired.”

“No, you were upset.”

“You were watching closely for a man who remained across the hall.”

His jaw tightened. “I would have come to you.”

“But?”

“My father asked me not to create a scene.”

“And sitting beside me would have created one?”

“Sitting beside Hightower would have.”

Despite yourself, you looked at him. Valarr’s expression was calm, but his eyes were not.

“He did nothing to you.”

“He spoke to you as though you belonged to him.”

“You could not hear us.”

“I saw your face.” You looked away.

“What did he say?”

“It does not matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“Everything matters to you when it concerns me, except what ought to matter.”

Valarr frowned.

Before he could question you, Edwyn approached with two cups of chilled wine.

He gave one to you.

Valarr stared at it.

“Prince Valarr,” Edwyn said. “I feared you would spend the morning recovering from yesterday’s exertions.”

“I have endured worse.”

“You ride again tomorrow?”

“The melee begins after midday.”

“A dangerous contest.”

“So I am told.”

Edwyn sat on the bench beside you without being invited.

Valarr remained standing.

The arrangement placed him above both of you, silent and pale-haired, with the dragon of his house stitched across his chest.

Edwyn turned to you.

“My mother has written. She asks whether you prefer chambers overlooking the Honeywine or the harbor.”

Valarr’s face went blank. You felt the warning in that blankness.

“I have not agreed to live in either,” you said.

“She is eager to welcome you.”

“She is premature.”

“Perhaps. But preparations for a great marriage require time.”

Valarr spoke. “What marriage?”

Edwyn looked up. “The one our families are discussing.”

“Discussing is not agreeing.”

“No,” Edwyn said. “But nor is it meaningless.”

Valarr’s gaze moved to you.

“Have you agreed?”

The question was too sharp. Too public.

Several nearby nobles had fallen silent.

You set down your cup. “No.”

Relief flashed across his face so openly that even Edwyn saw it. Then Valarr seemed to realize how much he had revealed.

His shoulders stiffened.

Edwyn smiled. “I am confident time will bring agreement.”

Valarr looked at him.

“I would not be.”

The archers loosed.

A dozen arrows struck painted shields.

The crowd applauded, but beneath the pavilion, no one moved.

Edwyn’s voice cooled.

“Your Highness speaks boldly regarding a matter between our houses.”

“And you speak boldly regarding a woman who has given you no answer.”

“Her father welcomes my suit.”

“And a lady is not her father.”

The words startled you.

Valarr had been raised in the same world you had. He understood contracts, alliances, and the obedience demanded from noble children. He had never mocked those obligations, though he had occasionally cursed them.

Edwyn rose.

“Perhaps the prince should concern himself with his own future bride.”

Valarr’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you should concern yourself with keeping your teeth.”

“Valarr,” you said.

His gaze snapped to you. You saw the anger there. And beneath it, fear.

You lowered your voice. “My prince, walk with me.”

He obeyed.

You led him away from the pavilion, past the archery stands and into a narrow lane between tents where the noise of the crowd softened.

The moment you were alone, you rounded on him.

“What are you doing?”

“Preventing him from speaking of you as though you were furniture being moved into his chambers.”

“You threatened him.”

“I advised him.”

“You advised him regarding his teeth.”

“A man should value them.”

“Valarr, you cannot behave this way.”

Valarr’s expression cooled. He looked away, jaw hard.

A cheer rose from the archery field. You watched his fingers curl into fists.

“You have been strange since yesterday.”

“I have been riding in a tourney.”

“You have ridden in twenty tourneys.”

“Not with Hightower sitting beside you.”

The answer emerged before he could stop it.

Silence fell.

Valarr stared toward the distant banners.

You studied the line of his profile.

“You are jealous.”

His mouth tightened.

You expected denial.

Instead, he looked at you. “And if I am?”

The words passed between you like a flame leaping from one candle to another.

Your anger faltered.

Valarr stepped closer. His voice lowered.

“If I am jealous of the gifts he brings you, of the way he looks at you, of every time he speaks as though your future has already been placed in his hands—what then?”

Hope returned, fierce and dangerous.

You hated it. You hated him for awakening it.

“What right have you to be?”

Pain flickered across his face. You pressed on before courage abandoned you.

“You have had years, Valarr.” His name came out unsteady.

“Years of finding me in every hall. Years of sitting beside me at feasts and walking with me through gardens and behaving as though no other man should stand too close. Yet you have never offered me anything beyond friendship.”

“That is not true.”

“Is it not?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you have offered.”

He opened his mouth. Nothing came.

You laughed once, though there was no humor in it.

“That is what I thought.”

His expression changed.

“You know what you are to me.”

“No. I know what I hope I am to you.”

His eyes searched your face.

“You cannot resent another man for seeking what you have never asked to have,” you said.

The words wounded him. You saw them do it.

Valarr took a step back as though struck. “I did not know you wished me to ask.”

Humiliation burned through you.

“Do not be cruel.”

“I am not.”

“You believe I have spent half my life waiting for you to notice me?”

“No.” His voice roughened. “I believed you knew.”

“Knew what?”

Again, he had no answer he could bring himself to speak. The space between you seemed to widen.

Trumpets announced the final archery round.

You folded your arms over yourself. “You should return.”

“I do not want to leave this unfinished.”

“Then finish it.”

He stared at you.

For one suspended heartbeat, you thought he would.

His lips parted.

Footsteps sounded at the end of the lane.

Prince Matarys appeared, accompanied by Valarr’s squire.

“There you are,” Matarys said. “Father is looking for you. The melee pairings have been altered.”

Valarr did not look away from you.

“Valarr,” Matarys repeated.

At last, Valarr stepped back.

He bowed with painful formality.

“My lady.”

Then he left.

You remained between the tents long after he disappeared.

//

The second day of jousting began badly.

Valarr’s first opponent struck him squarely in the chest.

He remained mounted, but the blow splintered his lance and drove him hard against the rear of his saddle.

You rose halfway from your seat.

Valarr wheeled his horse. He did not look toward you.

On the second pass, he struck too high. The lance glanced off his opponent’s helm.

A murmur moved through the crowd.

Valarr rarely made mistakes.

Prince Baelor stood near the barrier, shouting something you could not hear.

Valarr turned his horse.

This time, he looked at the gallery.

At you.

His expression behind the open visor was unreadable.

You wished you knew what he needed.

A smile?

A warning?

Forgiveness?

You placed one hand over your heart.

A gesture from childhood.

When he had first begun training with blunted lances, you had watched from the yard wall. Each time he grew frustrated, you pressed your hand to your chest and breathed slowly until he matched you.

Valarr saw.

His shoulders lowered.

He closed his visor.

The third pass shattered his lance against his opponent’s shield.

The other knight fell.

The crowd erupted.

Valarr did not celebrate.

He rode to the end of the field, dismounted, and went directly to his father.

They spoke briefly.

Then his next opponent entered the lists.

Ser Arlan Fell was older, heavier, and known for striking hard enough to injure horses. He rode beneath the crowned stag of Storm’s End, his armor dark blue and gold.

The first pass broke neither lance.

The second struck Valarr’s shield near the center.

He swayed.

The third came too quickly.

Ser Arlan’s lance struck beneath the rim of Valarr’s shield.

Valarr was thrown.

He hit the earth with a sound you heard even through the roar of the crowd.

The world stopped.

His horse ran on without him.

Valarr lay in the dust.

Once, when you were fourteen, he had fallen from a tower stair and broken his wrist. You had reached him before the maester. He had been pale with pain but laughing because your face frightened him more than the fall.

Now he did not move.

You were on your feet.

Your father caught your arm.

“Wait.”

“He is not rising.”

“The healers are coming.”

Below, Prince Baelor ran onto the field.

Valarr’s squire reached him first and dropped to his knees.

The crowd had gone silent.

Someone lifted Valarr’s visor.

His face was white.

Your restraint broke.

“Valarr!”

Your voice carried farther than you thought possible.

His eyes opened.

He turned his head toward the gallery.

Toward you.

For a heartbeat, he lay still.

Then he planted one hand in the dirt.

Prince Baelor tried to stop him, but Valarr pushed himself to his knees. He swayed. His father gripped his shoulder.

Valarr looked up at you.

You had forgotten the court.

Forgotten your father’s hand on your arm.

Forgotten Lord Edwyn watching from three seats away.

“Do not,” you whispered, though he could not have heard.

Valarr rose.

The crowd exploded into cheers.

He lifted one hand.

The favor around his wrist was streaked with dirt.

Only after he had shown you he could stand did he allow the healers to lead him from the field.

Your knees weakened.

You sat because you could no longer trust them.

Lord Edwyn leaned toward you.

“You reveal too much.”

You turned on him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The court sees where your loyalties lie.”

“My friend might have been killed.”

“A woman rumored to be considering marriage should take care which man’s name she cries before the realm.”

Your fear sharpened into fury.

“I have accepted no marriage.”

“Not yet.”

“Nor will I, if you speak to me again as though concern is a flaw requiring correction.”

His eyes hardened.

“You mistake indulgence for freedom.”

Your father heard.

He rose slowly from his chair.

Lord Edwyn seemed to realize his error.

“My lord, I meant only—”

“You will leave my daughter’s presence,” your father said.

The Hightower heir’s face went rigid.

People were watching.

He bowed.

“As you wish.”

After he left, your father sat again.

His gaze remained on the field.

“You have not refused him.”

“I did not know refusal was still required.”

“Until today, I believed he might improve upon closer acquaintance.”

“And now?”

“Now I believe you were correct when you advised him to marry me.”

Despite everything, a startled laugh escaped you.

Your father looked at you.

Then his expression softened.

“Go to the prince.”

You stared at him.

“The court—”

“Has already heard you call his name before ten thousand people. Let them watch you walk.”

//

Valarr was in the royal pavilion, arguing with the maester.

“I am not concussed.”

You pushed through the curtain.

Valarr turned. Relief crossed his face.

The maester looked between you.

“Perhaps my lady can persuade His Highness to remain seated.”

“I have never persuaded him to do anything sensible.”

“That is not true,” Valarr said.

“Name one occasion.”

“You stopped me from throwing Matarys into the well.”

“He was six.”

“He had burned my boots.”

“They were ugly.”

“They were dragonhide.”

“They were still ugly.”

The maester sighed. “I shall fetch more bandages.”

He left you alone.

Valarr sat on a low stool with his armor partly removed. His hair was damp. A bruise had begun to form along his cheekbone. One sleeve of his linen undershirt was torn, exposing a scraped shoulder.

You crossed the space between you.

“You fool.”

“I am well.”

“You did not move.”

“I was winded.”

“You did not move.”

His teasing expression faded.

“I heard you.”

Your throat tightened.

“Everyone heard me.”

“I would have risen sooner had I known you intended to shout.”

“You were unconscious.”

“Briefly.”

“You could have broken your neck.”

“But I did not.”

“You cannot answer every fear with the fact that the worst did not happen.”

Valarr studied you.

Your hands had begun to tremble again. He reached for one. You pulled it away. The hurt in his face made you regret it at once.

“You frightened me,” you said.

“I know.”

“You looked at me before you stood.”

“I needed to see you.”

“Why?”

He seemed surprised by the question.

You closed your eyes. Everything between you had become too raw. Every kindness felt like a confession he refused to finish.

When you opened them, Valarr was looking at your face with unbearable tenderness.

“I withdrew from the contest,” he said.

You stared at him. “What?”

“The healers advised it.”

“And you listened?”

“You were frightened.”

The simple admission struck harder than any grand declaration might have.

Valarr loved riding.

He loved winning.

He had spent weeks preparing for the tourney.

“You withdrew because of me?”

“I withdrew because continuing after being senseless would be foolish.”

“You have never allowed foolishness to stop you.”

“No.”

His thumb brushed the edge of your ribbon.

“Only you.”

You looked away before hope could undo you.

“The final rounds are tomorrow.”

“I remain qualified. I may ride if the maester approves.”

“You just said—”

“I withdrew from the remainder of today.”

“Valarr.”

“I will be careful.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“I can promise to remember that someone waits for me to stand.”

Silence filled the pavilion.

You reached for the cloth beside the washbasin.

“Sit still.”

He obeyed.

You dipped the cloth in cool water and pressed it carefully to the cut on his cheek.

Valarr watched you.

“You are angry.”

“I am terrified.” Your hand paused.

He lifted his own hand, slowly enough that you might pull away. His fingers closed around your wrist.

“I am okay.”

The words hung between you. The curtain opened before either of you could answer them.

Prince Baelor entered. Valarr still held your wrist. You stood between his knees, tending his face.

Baelor’s gaze moved from his son to you.

“I see the maester found a more effective threat.”

Valarr released you.

“She is not threatening me.”

“Not yet,” you said.

Prince Baelor’s mouth twitched.

He turned serious as he looked at Valarr.

“The melee begins tomorrow after the final jousts. You will not enter unless the maester clears you.”

“I know.”

“And if you are struck from the horse again, you are finished.”

“I know.”

Baelor’s gaze shifted to the ribbon around Valarr’s wrist.

Something thoughtful entered his expression.

“Your mother wishes to see you.”

Valarr stood reluctantly.

As he passed you, his fingers brushed yours.

A stolen touch.

A familiar touch.

One that suddenly felt like a promise neither of you understood.

//

[swifty-fox]

ava adore - a clegan stalag fic 3.2k

you thought I wasn't gonna do something with those pics didn't you

mind the tags!

“Thought you were dead, Buck.” 

Gale is dead. Effectively decommissioned; the title before his name exists only as a courtesy, same as the stars still allowed on his shoulders. Useful to keep the prisoners in mind, keep them settled. He’s been relegated somewhere between attentive nursemaid and political pawn. Keeping the men docile will keep them safe; good behavior will mean Gale isn’t made an example of. At least John looks the part of a corpse.  

“Well, I’m not.”

John reaches out to touch Gale again. Gale slaps his hand away, somehow ending up gripping one wrist tight, feeling the tense of John’s muscles as he pushes right back into it automatically.His dirty fingers take hold of Gale’s undefended collar, tugging it tight around the ache of bruises. 

“John,” Gale warns, sharp and quiet. 

He laughs, short and richly bitter. Gale shoves him back against the opposite wall.

thank you to @elleviral for editing!

[borgialucrezia]

[seafoamveil]

srsly, why is he pookie?

[w1ckedgal]

This is so funny, both Lestat and Dee are SO taken aback by this ☠️☠️

Like BITCH. Wtf do you mean.

Baby Jenks you're my idol.

[b0ttleb10nd]

[erikb2]

𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐥 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫.

not my art, my commission.

fake movie poster or sth like that.

[refinedstorage]

𝙉𝙀𝙐𝙍𝙊𝙈𝘼𝙉𝘾𝙀𝙍 (2027)

[callum-turners-ears]

callum turner as case in the new trailer for apple tv’s ‘neuromancer’ by william gibson. 22 jan 2027

trailer link