Lady Moztaza

22 she/her 🇲🇽 Really trying to not be a bot, really trying to be a writer? Eng/Spa

[bikananjarrus]

oh so when john wick goes on a revenge killing spree to avenge his murdered dog, he’s an awesome action hero. but when kara zor el beats up and kills the child sex trafficker who poisoned her dog, she’s the worst most selfish awful mean person

[darktargslut]

Education

Dark!Ormund X Reader

Summary: Ormund educates his wife about her responsibilities after she embarrassed him in front of her family.

CW: Marital rape (including forced oral sex, coercion, and degradation), Emotional and psychological abuse (gaslighting, isolation, manipulation), Physical intimidation (use of a belt as a threat, restraining), Victim-blaming and internalized self-blame, Dismissal of trauma (the abuser frames the assault as "teaching" and "obedience")

Set after ''The Marriage Debt'', part of ''The Whore'' Series

(This was originally meant to be a standalone where the reader is Alicent's daughter, but I changed it at the last minute to be part of the Whore series. If some things don’t make sense, it’s because I didn’t catch them while editing.)

The interior of the wheelhouse was lushly appointed, Ormund had spared no expense. The benches were upholstered in Hightower grey, the fabric soft and new and smelling faintly of the lavender sachets tucked into the seams. The curtains were heavy velvet, on the seat across from you sat a wicker basket packed with bread still warm from the ovens, apples polished to a glossy shine, a wedge of pale cheese wrapped in waxed cloth, and a stoppered skin of watered wine. Someone had also left a stack of books, histories of the Reach, a bestiary of the animals found in the Honeywine valley, a slim volume of love poetry written in the flowery style of the last century.

You had not touched any of it, your fingers had brushed the spine of the poetry book once, tracing the gold-leaf title, but you had pulled your hand back almost immediately. The poems inside were about knights and their ladies, about stolen kisses in moonlit gardens, about the kind of love that made your heart ache with longing. You had read them as a girl in your chambers at Dragonstone, curled up in the window seat with Aegarax's distant cries echoing across the bay, and you had dreamed. You had dreamed of a husband who would look at you the way the knights in the poems looked at their ladies. A husband who would write you letters full of tenderness and admiration. A husband who would touch you gently, reverently, as though you were something precious rather than something to be used.

Ormund had been that husband. During your courtship, he had been exactly that husband. His letters had arrived at Dragonstone every fortnight, sealed with the grey wax of House Hightower, filled with elegant compliments and gentle inquiries about your health and your interests and your dragon. He had asked about Aegarax with what seemed like genuine curiosity, what did he eat, how fast could he fly, did you feel his emotions through the bond or was it something more mysterious than that? No one else had ever asked about Aegarax. No one else had ever seemed to care.

He had brought you gifts, too, books of poetry he had found in the Citadel's vaults, translated into the Common Tongue by some long-dead maester. A scarf of Lyseni silk in the exact shade of pink you had once mentioned was your favorite. A small silver brooch shaped like a dragon in flight, which you had pinned to your bodice that very morning and worn to breakfast with a flutter of happiness in your chest.

At the wedding feast, he had been attentive without being overbearing. He had brought you plates of your favorite foods before you even realized you were hungry. He had danced with you three times—three!—when most husbands danced with their brides once and then retreated to the company of other men. He had held your hand beneath the table and traced slow circles on your palm with his thumb, and you had felt special. Loved.

And then the bedchamber, you closed your eyes against the memory, but it came anyway. The weight of him. The pain. The way he had not stopped even when you cried. The way he had woken you from exhausted sleep to take you again, and again, and again, until the bells were ringing for dawn and your body was a landscape of soreness and shame. The things he had called you. The way he had made you call yourself things.

But this morning—this morning, you had woken to gentleness. His lips on your neck, soft and warm. His voice in your ear, hoarse with sleep, calling you sweet girl. His apology, so earnest and unexpected, his forehead pressed to yours, his hand on your heart. I lost myself. I would never hurt you on purpose. Can you forgive me?

And you had forgiven him. Of course you had forgiven him. Because that was what wives did, wasn't it? They forgave their husbands. And because his apology had felt real, had felt genuine, had felt like the Ormund you had fallen in love with during your courtship finally returning to you after a night of some strange, temporary madness. He had held you afterward, just held you, his arm wrapped around your waist, his lips pressed to your hair, and you had felt safe. Protected. Loved.

It will get better, he had promised. I will be so good to you.

You had believed him, that hope was still fragile and new in your chest, like the first green shoot pushing through snow in early spring. It trembled there, uncertain, vulnerable. You cupped it carefully, the way you might cup a candle flame in a strong wind. Perhaps the wedding night had been an aberration. Perhaps he truly had been overwhelmed by years of celibacy, as he claimed. Perhaps now that the first desperate hunger was sated, he would be the husband he had been during your courtship, tender, attentive, kind. Perhaps you could still have the marriage you had dreamed of.

These were the thoughts that occupied you as the wheelhouse lurched through the city gates and onto the Roseroad, the cobblestones giving way to packed dirt, the swaying settling into a smoother, steadier rhythm. You pressed your face to the small glass window and watched King's Landing recede behind you. The Red Keep rose above the city like a crimson fist clutching at the sky and above it all, cutting through the pale autumn sky like a blade of light, was Aegarax.

She soared in wide, lazy circles, her silver-white scales catching the sun and scattering it into fragments of diamond. Her wings beat slowly, languorously, as though she had all the time in the world and no particular destination in mind. Her long tail streamed behind her like a pennant, the spiked tip flicking from side to side in what you recognized as contentment. Every few minutes, she would tip her head back and scream, a high, keening sound that rolled across the fields and made the horses below shift nervously in their traces and the guards clutch at their reins.

The afternoon wore on, slow and heavy. The sun slid lower in the sky, painting the horizon in shades of amber and rose and deep, bruised purple. The shadows of the trees stretched long and thin across the road, and the air that seeped through the cracks in the wheelhouse grew cooler, carrying the first hint of evening dampness. Aegarax's circles had grown tighter and lower, her screams more frequent and more plaintive. She could feel your unease through the bond, she always could, had always been able to sense your moods as clearly as if they were her own. When you were happy, she flew high and fast, looping and diving with the exuberance of a creature who knew nothing of sorrow. When you were sad, she drew closer, her shadow passing over you like a benediction, her cries softening to something almost gentle. And when you were afraid—

Well. When you were afraid, Aegarax burned things. But you were not afraid now. You were only tired.

When the wheelhouse door opened and Ormund climbed inside, the hope in your chest flickered and guttered like a candle flame in a strong wind, he had to stoop to clear the doorframe, he took the seat across from you without waiting for an invitation, it was his wheelhouse, after all, his escort, his journey. The bench creaked under his weight. The door swung shut behind him with a soft, final click, and the latch fell into place. The sounds of the column outside—the jingle of harnesses, the murmur of voices, the steady clopping of hooves—faded to a muffled drone, as though you were hearing them from underwater.

You had not expected him. Men did not ride in wheelhouses. They rode on horseback, with their men, projecting strength and authority, enduring the same hardships as their soldiers. Only women and children and the infirm traveled by carriage. You had seen Daemon refuse a wheelhouse with a laugh and a crude joke about growing old. The wheelhouse was for you, the delicate princess, the fragile bride, too soft to ride a horse for days on end.

So why was he here?

"My lord," you said, and your voice came out steadier than you felt. You were proud of that. You had been practicing—in the sept, at the feast, this morning after he left—you had been practicing keeping your voice steady when everything inside you was shaking. "Is something wrong?"

Ormund did not answer immediately. He removed his gloves first, slowly, deliberately, tugging each finger free one by one until the leather came loose with a soft sucking sound. He tucked the gloves into his belt, then he leaned back against the cushioned bench, his shoulders pressing into the grey upholstery, his legs stretching out in front of him until his boots were almost touching the hem of your pink silk skirts.

His eyes found your face, and they were not kind. They were the eyes of the man from the wedding night, he looked at you the way a falconer looked at a hawk that had refused the lure. Disappointed.

"I did not appreciate the way you spoke this morning," he said.

The words landed like stones dropped into still water, and you felt the ripples spread outward through your chest, cold and unsettling, displacing the fragile hope that had been living there. You replayed the morning in your head, scrambling to understand. The breakfast table. The conversation about Aegarax. The way Aegon had laughed. The question you had asked—an innocent question, a reasonable question, a question any dragonrider would have asked in your position. Where will Aegarax stay? That was all. Four words. Four simple words that had slipped out before you could stop them, because Aegarax mattered to you, and you had been worried, and you had not thought—

You had not thought.

"I do not understand," you said, and your voice was not as steady now. The steadiness was slipping, cracking at the edges, threatening to crumble entirely. "I only asked about Aegarax. I did not mean—"

"In front of your family." His voice was calm. That was what made it frightening. If he had been shouting, if his face had been twisted with rage, if his hands had been clenched into fists—you would have known how to respond. You had seen angry men before. You had grown up surrounded by them, after all. You had seen Daemon's cold fury and Aegon's drunken rages and your mother's quiet, simmering wrath. But Ormund was not any of those things. Ormund was calm. "You made me look like a fool."

Your mouth opened, the words came out smaller than you intended, a whisper almost lost beneath the rumble of the wheels and the creaking of the axles. "I did not mean to make you look like anything. I was only asking. I did not think—"

"No," Ormund said, and the word cut through your sentence like a blade through silk. "You did not."

He uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The movement brought him closer to you, close enough that you could smell the dust of the road on his clothes, the clean salt smell of horse sweat still clinging to his skin, the faint spice of whatever he had eaten for lunch still on his breath. The wheelhouse swayed, and he swayed with it, perfectly balanced, his body absorbing the motion as naturally as if he had been born to it. He was so much larger than you. You had noticed that on your wedding night, of course, when he had been on top of you and inside you and all around you, but here in the confined space of the wheelhouse, with only a few feet of air between you, his size seemed almost monstrous.

"It does not matter what you meant to do," he said. His voice was low, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something very simple to someone very slow. That gentleness was worse than shouting would have been. It made you feel small and stupid and childish. It made you feel like a little girl who had misbehaved and was now being scolded by her tutor. "It matters what you did. And what you did was question my judgment in front of your mother, your family, and half the court. You made me look like a man who had not considered the most basic element of marrying a dragonrider. In front of your family, in front of Aegon who laughed and called me a fool." His lip curled slightly on your uncle’s name, a micro-expression of disdain that was gone almost before you registered it. "Who will certainly tell everyone he meets. Who will laugh about it for years. The Lord of Oldtown, so besotted with his pretty bride that he forgot about her dragon."

You had not thought of that. You had not thought of any of it—only of Aegarax, of the bond between you, of the impossibility of leaving her behind or stabling her like a common horse. The political implications, the social embarrassment, the way your simple, innocent question had made your husband appear foolish and unprepared in front of your entire family—none of that had crossed your mind. You had been thinking only of yourself. Of your dragon. Of your own fears and your own desires. You had not considered how your words would reflect on him.

"I am sorry," you said, and the words came out quiet and genuine, thick with the tears that were already beginning to prickle at the corners of your eyes. You blinked them back furiously. You did not want to cry. Crying made everything worse. Crying made him look at you with that expression—the one he was wearing now, the one that mixed disappointment and something that looked almost like satisfaction. "Truly, I am sorry. I did not realize—"

"No," Ormund said again, cutting you off with the same sharp finality. "You did not realize. That is the problem."

He tilted his head, studying you the way he had studied you in the sept, at the feast, in the wedding chamber when you had been naked and trembling and trying to cover yourself with your hands. Measuring your flaws the way a merchant might catalogue the defects in a length of silk.

"You do not think, do you?" he said. It was not a question. It was an observation, cool and clinical. "You feel. You react. You speak without considering how your words will land. You let your emotions rule you instead of your reason. It is a childish habit. A dangerous one, for the wife of a great lord. Words are weapons in the game of thrones, and you wield them with all the care of a toddler swinging a morningstar."

Your throat tightened until it was difficult to breathe. He was not wrong. That was what made it so terrible. He was not wrong, and you could not defend yourself, because you had always been this way—shy, yes, and quiet in the company of strangers, but when something mattered to you, when something touched the deep places of your heart, the words came out before you could stop them. Aegarax mattered. Aegarax was the other half of your soul, the beating heart outside your body, the only creature in the world who had never judged you or mocked you or found you wanting. And you had spoken without thinking about how it would make your husband look, because Aegarax was more important to you than politics, than appearances, than the careful dance of reputation and respect that governed life at court.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? Aegarax could not be more important than your husband. Your husband had to be more important than everything. That was what marriage meant. That was what duty meant.

"I will try to do better," you said. It was the only thing you could offer, the only promise you could make. Your hands were trembling in your lap, and you pressed them flat against your thighs to still them, the pink silk cool and slippery beneath your palms. "I will learn. I will think before I speak. I promise."

"Trying is not enough." He sat back, putting a few more inches of distance between you, though his eyes never left your face. His gaze was steady and unblinking, like the gaze of a snake watching a mouse. "You need to learn. You need to be taught. And I am going to teach you."

He was quiet for a moment. The wheelhouse hit a rut in the road, jostling both of you hard enough that you had to brace yourself against the bench. Outside, one of the guards cursed loudly and colorfully, something about the roads in the Reach going to shit since the last rains. Someone else laughed. Aegarax screamed overhead, her cry muffled by the wooden roof but still piercing, a long, questioning note that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. She knew. She always knew. She could feel your fear through the bond, a cold trickle seeping from your heart to hers, and she did not understand it. She only knew that something was wrong, and she was asking—demanding—to be told what it was.

You could not tell her. You could barely admit it to yourself, you opened your mouth to say something else—what, you did not know. Another apology. A promise to be better. A plea to be left alone. The words were queuing up behind your teeth, jostling for position, none of them adequate for the situation. You had been raised to be courteous and accommodating and sweet, and none of those things were helping you now. You did not know the words to make him stop looking at you like that. You did not know the words to make him kind again, the way he had been this morning.

But before you could speak, Ormund moved, he sat back fully against the cushioned bench and reached for his belt. The same belt he had just tucked his gloves into. Your eyes tracked the movement without your permission, drawn to his hands the way a bird is drawn to a serpent. His thick fingers found the buckle and began to work it loose with practiced ease, the leather sliding through the silver loop with a soft hissing sound that seemed impossibly loud in the confined space. You watched, frozen, as he pulled the belt free from the loops of his breeches, one loop at a time, the leather whispering against the dark wool.

"What are you doing?" you asked. Your voice came out strange—high and thin, not your own, the voice of a much younger girl. A frightened child's voice, coming out of a woman's mouth.

Ormund did not answer immediately. He finished pulling the belt free and held it in his hands for a moment, running the leather through his fingers as though testing its weight. Then he set it aside on the bench beside him, within easy reach. Not threateningly—not yet. Just... there. Coiled like a sleeping snake. A reminder of what he could do if he chose.

"We have a long road ahead of us," he said, and his voice was still calm, still conversational, as though they were discussing the weather or the quality of the harvest. "Days, perhaps longer, depending on the condition of the roads. We will be stopping at inns and holdfasts along the way. There will be lords and ladies to greet us, servants to wait on us, my own men to observe us. And I cannot have you embarrassing me in front of my people the way you embarrassed me in front of your family."

"I did not embarrass—"

"You did." He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The words were sharp enough on their own, cutting through your protest like a knife through silk. "And you will not do it again. So we are going to practice. Right now. You are going to show me that you understand what it means to be obedient."

You did not understand. You did not understand what he wanted, what he was asking for, what the belt had to do with any of it. Your mind raced through possibilities, each one more frightening than the last. Was he going to hit you? Beat you? Strike you with the belt the way unruly squires were struck when they failed their lessons? Your body tensed, bracing for the blow, and you realized with a distant sort of horror that you had no idea how to defend yourself. No one had ever taught you. No one had ever imagined that a Targaryen princess, the daughter of the heir to the Iron Throne, might need to know how to fight off an attacker.

But the blow did not come. The belt stayed coiled on the bench beside him, within reach but unused. Instead, he kept talking, his voice low and patient and terrifying in its gentleness.

"Show you how?" you asked, because you had to ask something, had to say something, had to break the terrible silence that kept threatening to swallow you whole. Your hands were trembling openly now, and you could not make them stop. "I do not—I do not know what you want me to do."

Ormund's expression did not change. But something flickered in his eyes—impatience, perhaps. Or disappointment. Or that strange, dark satisfaction you had seen on the wedding night, the satisfaction of a man who was getting exactly what he wanted.

"You do not know," he repeated.

"No," you admitted, and your voice was barely a whisper now, so quiet you were not sure he could hear it over the rumble of the wheels. "I do not. I have never... no one has ever told me... my mother did not..." You trailed off, your cheeks flooding with heat, the shame burning through you like wildfire. He wanted you to do something, to perform some wifely duty that everyone apparently knew about except you, and you could not even guess what it was.

Ormund sighed. It was a soft sound, almost gentle, the kind of sigh a parent might give when a child asked a particularly foolish question. But it made you flinch anyway, your shoulders hunching, your chin dropping toward your chest.

"My first wife," he said, "knew what to do. She had been taught. By her mother, by her aunts, by the septas who raised her. She came to my marriage bed knowing her duties—all of them. She was a proper lady. A proper wife. She never embarrassed me. She never questioned me. She gave me four children before the fever took her, and she never once complained."

He paused, letting the words hang in the air between you. The comparison was obvious, and it cut deeper than any blade. You were not his first wife. You were not a proper lady. You had not been taught. You had complained, silently, but he had seen it in your face, in your tears, in the way you had flinched from his touch.

"It seems your mother neglected certain parts of your education," he said.

The words stung. "I am sorry," you said again, because you had no other weapons. Sorry was the only shield you had, flimsy and inadequate, but you kept raising it anyway. "I am sorry that I was not taught. I will learn. I want to learn. I want to be a good wife to you."

"Sorry is not a method of instruction." Ormund leaned forward again, closing the distance between you. His hand came up, and you flinched—you could not help it, your body remembering the wedding night, remembering the way those hands had gripped your hips hard enough to bruise—but he only touched your chin, tilting your face up so you had to meet his eyes. His fingers were warm and rough "I am going to tell you what to do. And you are going to do it. And if you do it well, I will be pleased. If you do not..." His thumb brushed across your lower lip, a gesture that might have been tender if his eyes had not been so cold. "We will try again until you do."

Your heart was hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat, in your temples, in the tips of your trembling fingers. The hope that had been living in your chest withered and died, crumbling to ash. "What do you want me to do?" you asked, because asking was the only thing left. Asking and obeying and hoping that if you were good enough, if you were obedient enough, he would stop. He would be kind again. He would go back to being the man who had written you beautiful letters and brought you thoughtful gifts and kissed your forehead while you slept.

He released your chin and gestured to the floor directly in front of him. The space between the benches was narrow, barely enough room for a person to kneel, let alone do anything else. The wooden boards were dark with age and scarred from years of use, dust gathered in the corners and settled into the cracks between the planks. You could see a small knot in the wood just to the left of his left boot, a dark whorl that looked almost like an eye.

"Come here," he said, and his voice was soft and final. "On your knees."

You stared at the floor. The boards seemed to stare back at you, the whorl like a dark pupil in a wooden face. You imagined yourself kneeling there, your pink silk skirts pooling around you like a stain, your bare knees pressed against the rough, splintery wood. You imagined the humiliation of it, your husband sitting on his cushioned bench like a king on a throne, and you on the floor at his feet like a supplicant. Like a dog, or well, a bitch.

"Why?" you asked, and the question came out before you could stop it, the last defiant gasp of a part of you that had not yet learned to be silent. Ormund's jaw tightened. It was a small movement, barely perceptible, but you saw it. You saw the muscle in his cheek jump and then smooth out again. For a moment—just a moment, a heartbeat, less than a heartbeat—you saw a flash of something sharp and dangerous in his eyes. Something that looked like rage, held in check by the thinnest of leashes. Then it was gone, smoothed over by that pleasant, courteous mask, the face of the lord greeting guests at a feast.

"Because I am your husband," he said, and his voice was perfectly even, perfectly calm, perfectly terrifying. "And I am telling you to. That is all the reason you need. That is all the reason you will ever need."

If you refused him now, what would happen? Would he tell your mother? Would he send you back to King's Landing in disgrace, the alliance shattered, the peace broken, all because you would not kneel when your husband told you to? Would the lords who had already whispered about your parentage find new ammunition in your failure? Would your mother look at you with disappointment instead of pride?

You did not think you could bear that. You did not think you could bear any of it. And so you slid off the bench and onto your knees on the hard wooden floor of the wheelhouse, and the last ember of hope in your chest went cold.

Your knees hit the wood with a soft thud that you felt all the way up through your spine. The vibration of the wheels traveled up through your bones, rattling your teeth. The wood was harder than you had expected and colder, the dust that coated it gritty against your skin. You could feel a splinter pressing against your right knee through the thin silk of your dress, a sharp little point of discomfort that you did not dare move to avoid.

You knelt there, your hands clasped in your lap, your pink skirts pooling around you like spilled wine, and looked up at him. He was so far above you. So much larger than you. From this angle, he seemed to fill the entire wheelhouse, his shoulders blocking out the fading light from the window, his legs bracketing you on either side like the walls of a cage.

"Good," he said, and the word fell on you like a stone. "Now come closer. As close as you can."

You hesitated. The space was already so narrow. You were already so close, your skirts nearly touching his boots. But he wanted you closer still—close enough that there was no air between you, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that you could count the individual threads in the wool of his breeches.

You shuffled forward on your knees. The movement was awkward and clumsy, your dress bunching beneath you and catching on the rough wood, your hands flailing slightly before you caught yourself on the edge of the bench. You had never knelt like this before, had never had reason to. Highborn ladies did not kneel on floors. They sat on cushioned chairs and velvet benches, and when they knelt, it was in septs on padded kneelers, their hands folded in prayer before the altar of the Mother.

When you finally stopped, your knees were pressed against the worn leather of his boots, and his legs were on either side of you, and you could feel the heat of his body seeping through the fabric of his breeches and into your skin. The smell of him was overwhelming—leather and horse and sweat and that musky, masculine scent that had clung to the sheets of the marriage bed.

"Closer," he said again.

"There is no closer," you said, and your voice came out thin and breathless. "I am already—"

His hand came down on your shoulder and pulled you forward. You gasped as your chest pressed against his knees, your hands flying out instinctively to catch yourself on his thighs. The wool of his breeches was rough beneath your palms, still warm from the heat of his body, still smelling faintly of horse and dust. You could feel the hard muscle beneath the fabric, the solid, unyielding strength of him.

"There," he said, and there was satisfaction in his voice now. "That is closer."

He held you there for a moment, his hand still on your shoulder, his fingers pressing into the curve of your neck with just enough pressure to remind you that he could tighten his grip if he wanted to. You could feel each individual finger—the tips, the warmth of his palm, the cool metal of the signet ring on his smallest finger pressing against your collarbone. You stayed perfectly still, barely breathing, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird.

"I am going to teach you," he said, "how to apologize."

"I do not understand," you whispered, and you hated how small your voice sounded, how young, how helpless. "I do not know what else you want me to do."

His hand moved from your shoulder to your hair. His fingers tangled in the silver-gold locks, not pulling—not yet—just making sure you could not pull away. His thumb stroked the curve of your scalp, a gesture that might have been soothing if the context had been different. If everything had been different.

"Use your mouth," he said.

You blinked up at him, uncomprehending. "My mouth?"

"On me." He released your hair and reached down, his fingers finding the laces of his breeches. The same laces you had watched him do up this morning, when he had dressed in the grey light of dawn, his back to you, his movements brisk and efficient. He began to undo them now with the same practiced ease, the leather cords sliding through their eyelets with a soft whisper. "You will take me in your mouth. You will not bite. You will use your tongue. And you will not stop until I tell you to."

The world seemed to tilt sideways. You stared at his hands, at the laces coming undone, at the dark wool parting to reveal the linen of his smallclothes beneath. Your brain, which had been scrambling to keep up with the situation, simply... stopped. You had heard of this. Vaguely. In whispers and giggles from the more worldly of your mother's ladies. In crude jokes told by stable hands who did not realize a princess was within earshot. But you had never imagined—you had never thought—you had never believed that this was something wives actually did, something husbands actually demanded, something that could happen in a moving wheelhouse on the Roseroad with the afternoon sun slanting through the windows and your dragon screaming overhead.

"I cannot," you said, and the words came out strangled, desperate. "I do not know how. I have never—no one has ever taught me—I would not even know where to begin—"

"Then you will learn." His voice was patient. Terribly, horribly patient. The voice of a maester explaining something very simple to a very slow student. The voice of a man who had all the time in the world and no doubt whatsoever about the outcome. "Open your mouth."

You shook your head. The movement was small, involuntary, a spasm of refusal that you could not control even though you knew—you knew—that refusing him was dangerous. But your body was rebelling against your mind, your instincts screaming at you to flee even though there was nowhere to flee to.

"Please," you said, and your voice cracked on the word. "I do not want to do this. Please do not make me do this."

Ormund's hand caught your chin again, gripping it more firmly this time, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of your cheeks, and you could feel the bones of your jaw pressing against his palm. His eyes were cold and hard, and utterly without mercy.

"What you want," he said, and his voice was soft and cold and final, "is not the point of this marriage. What I want is the point. What I need is the point. Your comfort, your desires, your childish preferences—none of that matters. What matters is your duty. What matters is your obedience. What matters is that I need a wife who can perform her duties without crying about it."

"I am not crying," you said, but you were. You could feel the tears on your cheeks, hot and wet, sliding down toward your chin where his fingers still gripped you. You had not even noticed them start. They had just... appeared, leaking from your eyes like water from a cracked vessel, dripping onto the bodice of your ruined pink dress.

"Good," he said, and there was something almost like approval in his voice now. "Then you have no excuse."

He released your chin and sat back against the cushioned bench, his hands falling to his sides, his posture relaxed and expectant. His breeches were open now, and you could see—you could not help but see—the thick length of him, already half-hard, already rising to meet his belt buckle.

"Open your mouth," he said again. "And come here."

Your hands were shaking. Your whole body was shaking, trembling like a leaf in a storm, every nerve ending screaming at you to run, to fight, to do anything other than what he was asking. But there was nowhere to run. The door was latched, and even if you could reach it, even if you could throw it open and leap from the moving wheelhouse, where would you go? Your mother was hours behind you. Your dragon was in the sky and could not land on a narrow road surrounded by armed men. And Ormund was your husband, legally and truly, with all the rights that came with that title, rights that had been explained to you by septons and maesters and your own mother.

A wife's body belonged to her husband. That was the law of the land, the law of the Faith, the law that had governed marriages since before the Targaryens came to Westeros. If you refused him, he had the right to punish you. If you fought him, he had the right to restrain you. If you told anyone what happened in the privacy of your marriage, they would look at you with pity, perhaps, but they would not help you. They could not help you. There was no help to be given.

You opened your mouth, it was barely a parting of your lips at first, a small, hesitant gap, the kind of opening you might make to take a sip of too-hot tea. Your jaw trembled with the effort of holding it open. Your tongue felt thick and clumsy and useless. You could taste the salt of your own tears on your lips, could feel the wetness on your cheeks turning cool in the evening air that seeped through the cracks in the wheelhouse walls.

But Ormund saw the small surrender, and his hand came up to cup the back of your head again, his fingers tangling in your hair, his palm warm against your skull. He guided you forward, gently at first, almost tenderly, the way he had guided you through the steps of your first dance at the wedding feast. Down and down and down, until your face was inches from his lap, until you could smell him—the clean salt smell of sweat, the musk of arousal, the faint trace of the lavender soap he had used that morning.

"Wider," he said.

You opened your mouth wider, your jaw aching already, your throat constricting in anticipation. You felt like a baby bird, beak agape, waiting to be fed something you did not want.

He guided you down, the taste of him filled your mouth all at once, he was hot against your tongue, hot and smooth and impossibly large, larger than you remembered. Your mouth stretched around him, the corners of your lips burning with the strain, and your throat convulsed in protest as the head of him pressed against the back of your palate.

You gagged immediately. Your throat seized, your stomach heaved, and your hands flew up to push against his thighs, every instinct in your body screaming at you to pull away, to spit him out, to flee. But his hand was on the back of your head, firm and unyielding, not forcing you deeper but not letting you pull away either. He held you there, suspended, balanced on the edge of vomiting, while tears streamed down your face and saliva pooled in the corners of your stretched mouth.

"Breathe through your nose," he said, and his voice was calm, almost soothing, the voice of a riding instructor teaching a novice to stay in the saddle. "Slowly. In and out. Do not panic. Your body will adjust if you let it."

You tried. You truly tried. You forced yourself to breathe through your nose, slow and shaky, inhaling the scent of him—the musk, the salt, the faint trace of lavender soap—while your throat fluttered and spasmed around the intrusion. It was the hardest thing you had ever done, harder than mounting Aegarax for the first time, harder than watching your father waste away, harder than saying goodbye to your mother at the gates of King's Landing. Harder even than the wedding night, because on the wedding night you had only had to endure. 

"Good," Ormund murmured, and his voice had changed now. It was rougher, deeper, threaded with a pleasure that made your skin crawl. "Good girl. You are doing so well."

Good girl. The words landed somewhere deep in your chest, tangled up with the shame and the fear and the horrible, undeniable flicker of something that might have been relief. He was praising you. He was not angry anymore. If you could just do this well enough, if you could just make him happy, then maybe it would be over. Maybe he would let you go. Maybe he would be kind again, the way he had been this morning, holding you and apologizing and promising that it would get better.

You hated that the praise helped. You hated that your shoulders relaxed, even slightly, even as the taste of him filled your mouth and your throat burned and your jaw ached. You hated that some small, broken part of you was desperate for his approval, desperate enough to do this, desperate enough to try.

He guided you deeper, and this time he did not pull back, your throat convulsed around him—a helpless, rippling spasm that you could not control—and the sound you made was wet and strangled and utterly humiliating. Saliva flooded your mouth, your body trying desperately to reject the intrusion, but there was nowhere for it to go. It pooled under your tongue and leaked from the corners of your stretched lips and dripped in thick, ropy strands onto the ruined silk of your bodice. Your nose was pressed flat against the coarse dark hair at the base of him, and you could smell everything, the salt of his sweat, the musk of his arousal, the faint lingering trace of the lavender soap he had used that morning. The hair tickled your nostrils and made you want to sneeze, but you could not sneeze, could not breathe, could not do anything except kneel there with your throat full of him while tears streamed down your face and your stomach heaved against the invasion.

"Hold it," he said, and his voice was tight now, strained with pleasure. His hand was heavy on the back of your head, keeping you pinned in place, his fingers twisted so deeply into your silver-gold hair that you could feel the pull at your scalp with every tiny movement. "Hold it right there. Do not move. Let your throat get used to me."

You could not have moved if you tried. You were frozen, impaled, your jaw stretched so wide that the hinges ached with a deep, throbbing pain that radiated up into your temples. Your lips were stretched into a perfect circle around the thickness of him, the delicate skin at the corners of your mouth burning and threatening to split. You could feel every inch of him inside you—the ridge of the head pressed against the back of your throat, the thick vein on the underside pulsing against your tongue, the weight and the heat and the impossible, overwhelming fullness of him. Your throat kept trying to swallow, a reflexive spasm that only made it worse, only made him groan and tighten his grip on your hair.

"There we go," he murmured, and his thumb stroked the curve of your skull, a gesture that might have been tender if everything else were not so cruel. "There we go. You feel that? That is your body learning to accept me. You will get better at this. You will learn to take me deeper. You will learn to breathe around me. And one day, you will not gag at all. One day, you will be able to take every inch of me down your throat without making a sound."

The thought was horrifying. The thought that there would be a next time, and a next time, and a next time—that this was not a single, isolated degradation but the beginning of something that would happen again and again and again until your body learned to submit to it. You made a sound against him, a muffled whimper, and he laughed softly above you.

"I know," he said. "I know. It feels like too much right now. But your body will adapt. Bodies always do. My first wife gagged the same way on our wedding night, and within a moon she could swallow me whole without a single tear. You will learn the same way she did. You will learn to love it."

His first wife. He was talking about his first wife while his cock was buried in your throat. He was comparing you to a dead woman, a woman you would never meet, a woman whose place you had taken in his bed and his household and his life. And he was telling you that she had learned this too. That she had knelt where you were kneeling now, had gagged the way you were gagging now, had been trained the way you were being trained now. Had she hated it? Had she cried the way you were crying? Had she stared at the canopy of her marriage bed and wondered if this was what love was supposed to feel like?

You would never know. She was dead, and you were here, and Ormund's cock was in your throat, and none of your questions mattered because no one was going to answer them.

He let you stay there for what felt like an eternity, your throat working helplessly around him, your lungs burning for air, your vision starting to blur at the edges from lack of oxygen. You could feel your pulse hammering in your temples, in your throat, in the place where his flesh met your flesh. You could feel the saliva pooling under your tongue and spilling over your lower lip in thick, glistening strings. You could feel every tiny movement he made—the twitch of his hips, the flex of his thighs beneath your hands, the way his stomach tensed when you swallowed involuntarily.

And then, finally, mercifully, he pulled you back, you came off him with a wet, obscene sound—a pop, almost, followed by a thick strand of saliva that connected your lower lip to the head of him, stretching and thinning and finally breaking to drip onto your bodice. You gasped for air, great heaving gulps of it, your chest rising and falling so hard that the stained silk of your dress strained across your breasts. Your throat was on fire. Your jaw screamed with pain when you tried to close your mouth. Your eyes were so blurred with tears that you could barely see him, just a vague shape looming above you, his hand still tangled in your hair.

"Breathe," he said, and his voice was almost kind. "Catch your breath. You did well."

You knelt there, gasping, and you hated that the praise still mattered. You hated that some small, broken part of you was still desperate for his approval, still clinging to the scraps of kindness he threw you like a starving dog begging for table scraps. He had forced his cock down your throat until you nearly passed out, and now he was telling you that you did well, and you wanted to believe him. You wanted to believe that you had done well, that you had pleased him, that this was something to be proud of rather than something to be ashamed of.

"Please," you whispered, and your voice came out hoarse and broken, barely recognizable as your own. "Please, I cannot—I need—"

"Shh." His hand moved from your hair to your cheek, his thumb wiping away the tears and the saliva that coated your chin. The gesture was gentle. Almost loving. "You can. You already are. Now open your mouth again. We are not finished."

You stared up at him, uncomprehending. Your throat was raw and burning, your jaw aching, your lips swollen and tender. You had done what he asked. You had taken him in your mouth. You had gagged and choked and nearly passed out, and still it was not enough, still he wanted more, still he was looking down at you with those eyes that held no mercy at all.

"I said open." His voice hardened, just slightly, just enough to make you flinch. His fingers found your chin again, gripping it, squeezing until your lips parted involuntarily. "Open your mouth and stick out your tongue."

You obeyed. What else could you do? You opened your mouth, stretching your aching jaw wide, and extended your tongue the way you had seen the maesters do when they examined patients for fever. The position was obscene, degrading, kneeling at his feet with your mouth open and your tongue out like a dog begging for scraps, your face wet with tears and spit, your dress ruined, your hair a tangled mess around your shoulders.

"Good girl," he said, and the words landed in your chest like stones. "Now hold still."

He took himself in his hand— the same hand that had held yours during the wedding feast—and guided the head of his cock to your extended tongue. He did not push into your throat this time. Instead, he tapped the head against your tongue, once, twice, three times, a slow and deliberate rhythm that made your stomach clench with dread. The contact was light, almost teasing, but you could feel the heat of him, the weight of him, the promise of what was to come.

"You have a pretty tongue," he said, and his voice was conversational now, almost casual, as though he were commenting on the weather or the quality of the wine. "Pink and soft. I have imagined this, you know. During our courtship. I would sit across from you in your mother's solar, watching you talk, watching your tongue move behind your teeth, and I would imagine what it would feel like on my cock."

He pushed the head of himself onto your tongue and held it there, letting you taste him again, you could feel the slit at the tip, could feel the bead of moisture that had gathered there, could taste it when it spread across your tongue in a thin, salty slickness.

"Close your lips," he instructed. "Just around the head. Yes. Like that. Now suck."

You did not know how to suck. You had never sucked anything in your life, you had never put your mouth on anything the way he was asking you to. But you tried, because trying was all you could do. You closed your lips around the head of him and hollowed your cheeks the way you had seen people do with sticky sweets, and you sucked.

The sound he made was not a word. It was a groan, low and guttural, dragged up from somewhere deep in his chest. His hand tightened in your hair, and his hips twitched forward, pushing another inch of him into your mouth before he caught himself.

"Yes," he said, and his voice was rough now, rougher than you had ever heard it, even on the wedding night. "Yes, like that. Again. Suck harder."

You sucked harder. Your cheeks hollowed, your tongue pressing flat against the underside of him, and you felt him pulse against your palate. The taste of him grew stronger—saltier, muskier—and you realized with a distant sort of horror that more of that clear, slick fluid was leaking from the tip, coating your tongue, sliding down your throat.

"Gods," he breathed. "Your mouth is so sweet. So soft. So eager to please."

He began to move again, but differently this time. He did not push deep into your throat. Instead, he fucked your mouth with short, shallow thrusts, just the first few inches of him sliding between your lips while you sucked and licked and tried to remember how to breathe. His hand guided your head, setting a rhythm, and you followed it because following was easier than thinking. In and out. In and out. The wet sounds of your mouth working him filled the wheelhouse—obscene, sucking sounds, the kind of sounds you had never imagined a person could make, let alone a princess, let alone you.

"Use your hand," he said, and his breathing was ragged now. "What you cannot fit in your mouth, stroke with your hand. Yes. Wrap your fingers around me. Tighter. Like that."

Your hand came up hesitantly, your fingers wrapping around the base of him where your mouth could not reach. The skin here was different—softer, looser, sliding over the hardness beneath. You could feel the coarse hair at the base, could feel the heavy weight of his stones hanging below. You stroked him the way he had shown you, up and down, your fingers meeting your lips with each movement, and he groaned again, louder this time, loud enough that you worried the guards outside might hear.

"That's it," he said, and his voice was barely controlled now, trembling with something that sounded almost like desperation. "That's my good girl. That's my perfect, obedient wife. You were made for this. You were made to be on your knees for me. Made to take my cock in your pretty little mouth."

Made for this. The words echoed in your head, tangling with the shame and the fear and the horrible, undeniable fact that your body was doing this, was learning this, was adapting to this the way he said it would. Your jaw was still aching, your throat still burning, but you were not gagging anymore. Your hands were still shaking, but they were stroking him in rhythm, finding a pace that made his hips twitch and his breath catch.

You were learning. You were getting better and that was the worst part of all.

He thrust deeper without warning, pushing past your lips and over your tongue and into your throat in one smooth, sudden movement. You gagged violently, your throat seizing, your hands flying to his thighs to push him away. But he did not let you. His hand held your head in place, his fingers twisted in your hair, and he held himself buried in your throat while you choked and sputtered and tears streamed down your face.

"Swallow," he commanded, his voice strained. "Swallow around me. Do it."

You could not swallow. Your throat was too full, too stretched, too overwhelmed. But your body tried anyway—an involuntary spasm, a reflexive clenching of muscles that you could not control. The sensation made him cry out, a guttural sound that was almost a shout, and his hips jerked forward, driving himself even deeper.

"Yes," he groaned. "Yes. Just like that. Fuck. Your throat is so tight. So perfect."

He pulled back, letting you gasp for air, and then thrust in again. And again. And again. He was fucking your throat now, properly fucking it, his hips pumping in a steady rhythm while you knelt there and took it. Your hands were still on his thighs, not pushing anymore, just holding on. Your throat had stopped gagging—or maybe you had just stopped noticing. Your mind had gone somewhere else, somewhere far away, somewhere the taste of him and the sound of his grunts and the ache in your jaw could not reach.

You thought about Aegarax. You thought about the wind in your hair and the sun on your face and the way the world looked from a thousand feet up, all the people and their problems reduced to specks of dust. You thought about your mother, and whether she had known, and whether she would care if you told her. You thought about the pink silk scarf he had given you during your courtship, the one that matched your ruined dress, and how you had worn it to the feast that night and felt like the most cherished woman in the world.

You thought about anything except what was happening to your body.

"That's it," Ormund was saying, his voice coming from very far away. "Take it. Take all of it. You are so good at this. Such a fast learner. Such a perfect little wife."

His rhythm was faltering now, growing erratic. His breathing was harsh and ragged, his hips snapping forward with increasing urgency. His hand in your hair tightened until it was almost painful, holding you in place while he chased his pleasure.

"I am going to spend," he said, and the words cut through the fog in your mind. "I am going to spend in your mouth, and you are going to swallow every drop. Do you understand?"

You did not understand. You did not know what he meant by spend, did not know what he was going to put in your mouth. But you nodded anyway, because nodding was what he wanted, because obedience was the only way to make this stop.

"Do not spill a single drop," he said. "If you spill, we will start again. Do you understand?"

You nodded again, more frantically this time.

He thrust once, twice, three more times, and then he buried himself in your throat with a guttural roar.

The first pulse of hot fluid hitting the back of your throat made you gag. It was thick and salty and bitter, more bitter than his skin, more bitter than the clear fluid that had been leaking from the tip. It flooded your mouth, coating your tongue, filling your cheeks, spilling down your throat in thick, viscous spurts that you could not swallow fast enough. There was so much of it. So much more than you had expected. It kept coming, pulse after pulse, each one accompanied by a low groan from above you and a twitch of his cock against your tongue.

"Swallow," he commanded, his voice hoarse. "Swallow it all."

You swallowed. The taste was overwhelming—salt and bitterness and something indescribably alien, something that coated your throat and your tongue and the inside of your cheeks and would not go away. You swallowed again, and again, your throat working desperately to keep up with the flood. Some of it escaped anyway, leaking from the corner of your mouth and running down your chin in a thick white rivulet that dripped onto your already-ruined bodice.

He pulled back, just enough to let the last few spurts land on your tongue. You saw it then, for the first time, what he had put in your mouth. It was white, thick and pearlescent, pooling on your tongue like spoiled milk. You stared at it, uncomprehending, and then he was speaking again.

"Do not swallow yet," he said. "Open your mouth. Let me see."

You opened your mouth, stretching your aching jaw as wide as it would go. Your tongue was coated in white, your cheeks smeared with it, the taste of it filling your nose and your throat and your entire awareness. You knelt there, on the hard wooden floor of the wheelhouse, with your mouth open and your husband's seed pooling on your tongue, and you waited for him to tell you what to do next.

"Good girl," he said, and his voice was soft with satisfaction. "Look at you. So pretty with your mouth full of my seed. This is where you belong, you know. On your knees. Serving your husband. This is what you were made for."

He reached down and touched your chin, tilting your face up so he could see you better. His eyes were sated now, the hunger in them temporarily banked. He studied you the way a painter might study a finished canvas, with quiet satisfaction and more than a little pride.

"Now swallow," he said. "And show me your empty mouth."

You swallowed. The thick fluid slid down your throat, coating it, leaving a trail of salt and bitterness that you knew would linger for hours. You opened your mouth again, sticking out your tongue to show him that it was gone, that you had been good, that you had done what he asked.

"Very good," he said. He released your chin and sat back, reaching for the cloth he had set aside earlier. He cleaned himself with a few brisk, efficient movements, then tucked himself back into his breeches and began refastening the laces. "You did well. Better than I expected. You are a natural, I think. All you needed was proper instruction."

You stayed on your knees, because he had not told you that you could get up. Your jaw ached, your throat burned, your lips felt swollen and bruised. Your pink dress was ruined—stained with tears and spit and the thick white fluid you had just swallowed. Your knees were raw from the rough wooden floor, and your hands were still trembling, and you did not think they would ever stop trembling.

"Is that—" you started, and your voice came out hoarse, scraped raw, barely recognizable as your own. You cleared your throat and tried again, wincing at the pain. "Is that what you wanted? Are you pleased now?"

"It is what I needed," he said, and the distinction felt important, felt significant, felt like a door closing somewhere deep inside you. Not what he wanted—what he needed. As though this had been necessary. As though you had made it necessary. "You will get better with practice. You have a natural talent for it, I think. Once you learn to control your gag reflex."

Practice. The word made your stomach turn, made bile rise in your throat, made the taste of him seem suddenly more present, more overwhelming. You were going to have to do this again. Tomorrow, perhaps. Or the day after. Or every day for the rest of your life. This was a skill you were expected to cultivate, like embroidery or dancing or playing the high harp. This was what it meant to be a wife.

Ormund refastened his belt—the belt he had set aside on the bench, the belt that had loomed over the entire encounter like an unspoken threat—and smoothed his tunic, adjusted his cloak, ran a hand through his auburn hair to restore it to its proper arrangement. His movements were calm and unhurried, the movements of a man who had done nothing more strenuous than pour a cup of wine or sign a document or give an order to a servant.

"Now," he said, reaching into the basket of supplies and withdrawing a clean linen cloth. He held it out to you, his expression almost benevolent, the expression of a lord rewarding a servant who had performed their duties adequately. "Clean yourself up. Your face is a mess, and your dress needs to be straightened. We will be stopping for the night within the hour, and I expect you to present yourself at dinner as though nothing has happened. You will sit beside me. You will smile. You will speak only when spoken to. And you will not, under any circumstances, let anyone see that you have been crying."

You took the cloth. Your fingers were shaking so badly that you nearly dropped it, the linen trembling in your grip like a living thing. You pressed it to your face, wiping away the tears and the spit and the other fluids, scrubbing at your cheeks and your chin and the corners of your mouth until the skin felt raw and tender. The cloth came away stained and damp, and you stared at it for a long moment, at the evidence of your humiliation made visible on white linen.

"There is a hand mirror in the basket," Ormund added, rising from his seat, ducking his head to avoid the ceiling. "Fix your hair before we arrive. You look like a woman who has been rolling in the hay with a stable boy, and that is not the impression I want to make on the innkeeper."

He said it lightly, almost teasingly, as though the whole thing had been a game. As though you had been a willing participant. As though any of this was normal.

"You will not speak of this to anyone," he continued, and his voice shifted, the lightness giving way to something harder, something that brooked no argument. "Not to your mother, not to your ladies, not to your dragon, not to whatever servants I assign to you in Oldtown. This is between husband and wife. What happens in our private chambers—or our private wheelhouse—is no one else's business. Do you understand?"

"Yes," you said, and the word came out barely a whisper, scraped and raw and broken. "I understand."

"And tomorrow," he said, one hand on the door latch, pausing to look back at you over his shoulder, "when we resume our journey, you will ride in the wheelhouse and you will keep your mouth closed unless I ask you a question. You will not contradict me. You will not question me. You will not speak out of turn. You will be the obedient wife that I agreed to marry. The wife you promised me you would be."

"Yes," you said again, because what else was there to say?

Ormund leaned down—not far, because from your position on the floor he was already so far above you—and tilted your chin up with one finger. His thumb brushed across your lower lip, wiping away a smear of moisture that you had missed. The gesture was almost tender. Almost loving. Almost like the man who had held you this morning and apologized and promised to be better.

"You are beautiful when you cry," he said, and his voice was soft now, almost wondering. "Did you know that? Your eyes go very bright, and your cheeks flush, and your lips part just so. It is quite lovely. I look forward to seeing it again."

You did not answer. You did not know how. You only stared up at him, at the pleasant, courteous mask of his face, at the eyes that had looked at you with such tenderness during your courtship and such cold satisfaction just now.

He smiled and released you. "Good girl," he said.

[hudapalestine]

Don’t scroll please 🙏💔

Don’t ignore me, my friend😞

I am a mother who lost my first child in this devastating war. After two long years of waiting, I am finally pregnant again, and I am now in the final months of my pregnancy.

Every day is filled with fear and uncertainty. I desperately need medications, vitamins, and nutritional supplements to protect my health and give my unborn baby the best chance to survive. But because of the border closures and the severe shortage of medicine, the prices have become unbearably expensive.

Donate to Help Feed & House Moataz and Hoda!, organized by Adam M

My name is Motaz, and my wife is Huda. We got married only three months before the war. We d… Adam M needs your support for Help Feed & Hous

I need $30 every day just to afford the medicine and supplements that my baby and I urgently need.

Please, if you can, help me with whatever you are able to give. Your kindness could make the difference between hope and despair, and help me keep my baby safe. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

@fancysmudges @brokenbackmountain @just-browsing1222-deactivated20 @mothblossoms @aleciosun @fluoresensitive @khizuo @lesbiandardevil @transmutationisms @schoolhater @timogsilangan @appsa @buttercuparry @sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide @sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @kordeliiius @brutaliakhoa @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @theropoda @tamarrud @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2 @skatezophrenic @awetistic-things @camgirlpanopticon @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @nabulsi @sygol @junglejim4322 @heritageposts @chososhairbuns @palistani @dlxxv-vetted-donations @illuminated-runas @imjustheretotrytohelp

[darktargslut]

Ormund is sooo lucky to be played by James Norton 😭😭😭

That vomit scene gave me such an ick but.... Mr. Norton.... has charmed me...

((I think the only thing that would really make me give up is if those theories about his relationship with Daeron (and now also Gwayne) end up being canon in the show))

Yeah😭

[darktargslut]

imagine ormund holding a tourney for aethan’s nameday and cregan wins the entire thing and names princess the queen of love and beauty (ormund’s too old to compete HAHAHA)

That's so cruel😭 and accurate.

I feel like if Ormund found out Cregan was going to compete, he'd definitely try to enter the lists himself. The princess would immediately stop him, though, because she'd be worried about his health and the possibility of him getting injured. She'd remind him that he doesn't have anything to prove and that there's absolutely no reason for him to risk getting hurt just because Cregan decided to compete. Ormund would obviously be annoyed, but he'd eventually listen to her, so he ends up sitting out of the tourney.

Then Cregan wins, and Ormund absolutely crashes out the second they get back to their private chambers. 😭 He's convinced they did it deliberately. In his mind, the princess stopping him from competing and Cregan subsequently winning is way too convenient. He accuses them of conspiring to humiliate him, of wanting everyone to see an older man being surpassed by Cregan, and especially of making him look old and incapable in front of the entire court.

She's feels bad because that was never her intention. She's trying to explain that she stopped him because she was worried about him getting hurt, not because she wanted Cregan to win, but Ormund is already too angry and jealous to listen. Every reassurance just makes him more convinced that she's defending Cregan, and eventually the argument becomes less about the tourney and more about his pride, his jealousy, and the fact that he can't stand the idea of another man being able to impress her in front of him.

At the end he just ends up fucking the shit out of her

[folkfashion]

Barabaig bride's dress, Tanzania, by African Ceremonies

[saragaza00]

Hello my friend I am a mother of two little girls from Gaza, Sara (6 years old) and Ameera (5 years old) 💔Before the war, we lived a simple life with a home and dreams like any other family. Today, our home has been destroyed, and we are living in a damaged tent after long months of displacement, fear, hunger, and loss.

My daughters spend their days standing in long lines for water and bread instead of living their childhood 🥺 My husband was also injured while trying to bring food for us during the famine.

I created this fundraiser with a broken heart, only hoping to protect my daughters and give them a chance to live with dignity, safety, and hope again 🙏

Any donation, no matter how small, can help us survive. And if you cannot donate, sharing our story may help us reach someone who can, but please try to support us with a donation because my campaign is still new and my little girls desperately need your help 🌿

Help Sara and Ameera Survive

Hi, I am Max Langlois. I created this fundraiser for these two little girls. Please read their story below, share and donate if you can.

Please do not leave Sara and Ameera alone in this pain and suffering 💔

[goldcrescent]

alright man

[elviraghoul]

rip gwayne hightower, you would have loved raymun fossoway

[spiritualabhi01]

[darktargslut]

when princess gets with cregan, does she misses ormund or she starts understanding how toxic he was to her? how history books will describe them?

From Archmaester Gyldayn's Fire and Blood, Being a History of the Targaryen Kings

Ormund X Targ!Reader X Cregan

WC:2k

The marriage of the Princess to Lord Ormund Hightower was celebrated with all the pomp befitting the union of two great houses, though those with ears to hear noted that the bride smiled less than a maiden ought on her wedding day. Lord Ormund, for his part, comported himself with the dignity and restraint one would expect of a lord of his years and station, and it was widely remarked that he showed remarkable patience with a bride who had clearly been ill-prepared for the duties of wifehood by her mother's notoriously disordered household.

That the Lord of Oldtown was more than twice his bride's age occasioned little comment; such matches were common enough, and the princess was said to be of a meek and biddable disposition, Eustace notes with barely concealed satisfaction that Lord Ormund undertook the correction of these deficiencies with "patience and firmness befitting a father as much as a husband," and that within a moon of their wedding, the princess had shed the immodest Lyseni fashions of her maidenhood in favor of the woolens and silks proper to a Hightower lady. That she wept at the exchange is mentioned only in Mushroom's account, and Mushroom is not to be trusted in matters of women's tears.

What passed between them in the privacy of the Hightower is not recorded, though Eustace assures us that Lord Ormund was a man of "vigorous piety" who attended services at the Starry Sept each morning and kept a septon in his household for the spiritual edification of his young wife. Mushroom, predictably, takes the opposite view, devoting several lurid pages to the claim that the princess was so thoroughly subjected to her husband's "attentions" that she could scarcely walk on the mornings. The fool further alleges that Lord Ormund kept a collection of certain items—hair, ribbons, "tokens of affection"—which he would produce in the bedchamber to the princess's mingled shame and, Mushroom insinuates, secret pleasure. That Mushroom had never set foot in the Hightower seems not to have constrained his imagination in the slightest.

On the matter of the princess's behavior, the two sources are in rare agreement, though they differ in interpretation. Both record that she was seldom seen in public during the early year of her marriage, a circumstance Eustace attributes to her natural modesty and devotion to her household duties, while Mushroom—with a leer that is almost audible on the page—suggests she was kept close because Lord Ormund could not bear for other men to look upon what belonged to him. "He dressed her like a septa and locked her away like a jewel," Mushroom writes, "and she, poor simple creature, mistook his jealousy for love."

What is known is that the princess's famed dragon was seldom seen above Oldtown, and when it did appear, its cries were said to be so mournful that smallfolk made the sign of the Seven. Septon Eustace takes this as evidence that even the beast sensed the wickedness of its mistress, for dragons, as all men know, are creatures of sin and sorcery, bound to their riders by pacts that no godly man should contemplate. That Lord Ormund tolerated the creature's presence at all was counted as further proof of his extraordinary forbearance.

The servants' gossip, dutifully recorded by Mushroom with his customary indifference to decency, painted a picture of a household in which the lord was forever correcting his wife's deficiencies. She spoke too freely, it was said. She asked impertinent questions. She had been raised in the Targaryen fashion, which is to say without discipline, without modesty, and without any proper understanding of a wife's subordination to her husband. Lord Ormund, who had been blessed in his first marriage with a lady of impeccable breeding, was said to find his new bride's temperament trying in the extreme. Yet he never raised his hand to her in public, nor spoke a harsh word where others might hear—a restraint that Septon Eustace lauds as evidence of his sanctity, though Mushroom, with characteristic coarseness, suggests that whatever correction occurred happened behind closed doors and left no marks that could be seen when the lady was clothed.

That she bore him a child is indisputable, and Eustace takes care to note that she performed this duty without complaint, as befits a godly wife. Mushroom, ever eager to soil the cleanest linen, claims that Lord Ormund was so determined to see her with child that he kept her "occupied in the matter nightly" from the first week of their marriage, and that the princess, "young and tender as she was," learned to endure it and eventually to welcome it, for she knew no other existence.

When the war began in earnest, Lord Ormund—whether out of husbandly concern or a darker desire to keep his wife ignorant of her family's fortunes—took great pains to ensure that tidings from the east did not reach the princess's ears. Septon Eustace praises this as the act of a devoted husband protecting his delicate wife from matters too weighty for the female mind to bear, though even he admits that Lord Ormund's efforts went beyond ordinary solicitude. Letters from Dragonstone were said to have gone astray. Riders bearing news from King's Landing were turned away at the gates. The princess, by all accounts, knew nothing of her mother's mounting peril, of her brother Lucerys's death above Shipbreaker Bay, or of the gathering storm that would soon consume the realm.

Mushroom, inevitably, offers a third interpretation. The Lord of Oldtown, he claims, knew that if his wife learned of the war, she would fly at once to her mother's side on that wretched beast of hers, and he could not bear the thought of losing her—not to Rhaenyra, not to the blacks, not to anyone. "He kept her ignorant as a septa," the fool writes, "and just as cloistered, for he feared her dragon more than he feared the gods, and her mother's influence most of all." That Lord Ormund's motives were possessive rather than protective is a charge the greens have always denied, though it must be said that the princess's ignorance of such momentous events—occurring to her own blood, in her own name—required a degree of isolation that even the most devoted husband would find difficult to justify.

The revelation, when it came, was devastating, through a servant's careless remark, Mushroom claims, though Septon Eustace insists it was delivered gently by Lord Ormund himself, the princess, upon learning of her brother's fate, collapsed with a shriek that witnesses later described as inhuman. Septon Eustace, with his customary sympathy for the female condition, attributes her collapse to "the weakness of her sex, which cannot bear shocks that men must endure with fortitude." Mushroom attributes it to the fact that she had been deceived for weeks by the husband who had sworn to cherish her, and that her grief was as much for the lie as for the brother.

When Lord Ormund departed for the war, the princess remained at the Hightower for some months—long enough for Septon Eustace to praise her dutiful attention to the household in her husband's absence, and long enough for Mushroom to invent half a dozen scandals that supposedly occurred the moment the lord's back was turned. That she eventually flew to King's Landing with her child is not disputed. The meaning of that flight, however, has been contested by every chronicler who set pen to the Dance. Septon Eustace declares it an act of wifely desertion, a betrayal made all the more damning by the fact that she left Lord Ormund's children from his first marriage behind, "abandoning her stepchildren as carelessly as she abandoned her vows." Mushroom, by contrast, claims she fled because she had received word that her husband had fallen—a false report, as it transpired, but one she was eager to believe, for it freed her from a marriage she had come to loathe.

The fool further alleges that the princess miscarried a child upon learning of Prince Jacaerys's death, and that Lord Ormund was responsible not only for concealing the news but for the babe's loss itself, for "her womb had been so battered by his ceaseless demands that it could no longer hold what was planted there." This is Mushroom at his most indefensible, fashioning tragedy into titillation, yet the rumor took hold in certain circles and has proven difficult to dislodge from the popular imagination.

What followed in the North has been the subject of more ink than any other chapter of the princess's life. That she entered into an irregular union with Lord Cregan Stark while her lawful husband yet lived is a fact that even her most ardent defenders cannot deny. Septon Eustace pronounces it bigamy and whoredom, declaring that the princess had "inherited her mother's talent for spreading her legs wherever advantage might be gained." That she bore Stark a son within the year is cited as proof that the union was consummated with an enthusiasm unbecoming a woman who still had a husband living, whatever reports she claimed to have received.

Mushroom, predictably, provides details. The princess and Lord Stark, he writes, were inseparable from the moment of her arrival, the Northman being "everything the Hightower was not: young, hale, and possessed of an appetite that matched her own newly awakened desires." The fool devotes an improbable number of pages to the coupling itself—pages that remain popular in certain disreputable establishments to this day—claiming that the princess, after years of what he terms "Oldtown discipline," discovered in Winterfell that the marital act could be something other than duty and penance. That she took to it with a fervor that shocked even the Northmen, a people not known for prudishness, is presented by Mushroom as a redemption of sorts, though Septon Eustace sees only confirmation of her inherent depravity.

It was the young king, Aegon the Third, who prevented this catastrophe, though he was but a boy of ten and crushed by the griefs that would define his reign. His elder sister, the princess, had refused the throne in his favor—a decision Eustace calls humble and Mushroom calls foolish—and now she found herself in the impossible position of having two husbands, each of whom could claim her by law, and each of whom commanded armies that the crown could ill afford to oppose. That she loved one of these men and had borne him a son is indisputable; that she had also borne a son to the other, and had once loved him too, complicated matters beyond the solving of any maester's counsel.

What followed the war was a matter that threatened to plunge the ravaged realm into fresh conflict, for Lord Ormund Hightower, upon learning the full extent of his wife's second marriage, did not accept his cuckolding, he gathered his surviving forces—still some four thousand strong, hardened by the campaigns in the Reach—and began a march north with the stated intention of reclaiming his wife and child from the "savage seducer" who had stolen them. That Cregan Stark, for his part, began marshaling the northern levies in response is well documented, and for several tense months the realm stood on the brink of a private war that would have bled what little peace the Dance had left.

The compromise that was eventually brokered—by the princess herself, if Mushroom is to be believed, though Eustace insists it was the work of the King's Hand—was as unorthodox as it was pragmatic. The princess would remain the wife of Cregan Stark in the North, where the old gods held sway and the Faith's proclamations carried little weight. But she would also return to Oldtown for a portion of each year, bringing with her the son she had borne Lord Ormund, the child Aethan, so that the boy might know his father and his Hightower kin. That she would, during these visits, resume her duties as Lady of Oldtown—all of her duties, as Mushroom takes pains to specify—was an unspoken term of the arrangement, one that the princess accepted with what Eustace calls "penitent grace" and "She had been broken to the saddle young," Mushroom writes with characteristic crudeness, "and learned to ride whichever mount was beneath her."

Mushroom, who claims to have witnessed the first reunion of Lord Ormund and the Stark at a royal wedding some years later, describes the encounter with relish: "The Wolf and the Beacon stood at opposite ends of the hall, each with the princess between them like a bone between two hounds, and the looks they exchanged could have curdled milk. Yet she went to each in turn—to Ormund first, as courtesy demanded, for he was the elder husband and the one most grievously wronged—and spoke to him softly, and touched his face, and he unbent enough to press his lips to her lips. Then she crossed to Stark, who had watched the exchange with the patience of a man who knew she would come to him eventually, and he put his arm around her with a possessiveness that made the Hightower man reach for his sword. It was, all agreed, the most uncomfortable wedding feast since King Viserys had made his family dine together during the last year of his reign."

Lord Ormund, for his part, accepted the arrangement with the grim dignity of a man who had won the war but lost the peace. When she returned to Oldtown each spring with young Aethan, the servants noted that Lord Ormund seemed to shed ten years in a single day—and that on the mornings after her arrival, she was often seen walking with some difficulty, a detail that Mushroom, predictably, does not allow to pass without comment.

Thus the princess lived out her days, a wife to two men and mistress of two keeps, a dragonrider who spent half her year in the frozen North and half in the green Reach. That she bore children to both husbands is a matter of record; that Lord Ormund's fourth son, Aelias, was the child of his second marriage and the only one of her Hightower children to survive infancy, while her Stark sons grew tall and strong in the Northern fashion, occasioned much comment from Eustace, who saw in the disparity the judgment of the Seven. Yet Aethan, a spirited boy, devoted to his mother and to the half-brothers who visited Oldtown when the seasons permitted, he grew to manhood in the shadow of his parents' strange arrangement, spending summers in Oldtown and winters in the North. In time, he would earn his own place in the histories, though that is a tale for another chapter.

[darktargslut]

they had baela kissing alyn (whos actor is like 30-something) and framed it as "romantic" moment, so i fear is not implausible that they'll go in that direction with rhaena since they choose to erase ormund's kids for no reason 🙄

Yes!! It pisses me off so much. They're not even supposed to be together yet, and in canon, they're the same age!! They made him older for literally no reason at all. They don't do this to the white characters! All the Black little girls get adult love interests and are adultified, while the white characters (tbf, mostly the Team Green characters) are allowed to be seen as victims. The showrunners are biased, and it's ruining the show.

[darktargslut]

does aethan ever like praise other daddy cregan in ormund's presence? and if so, does ormund lose his shit in front of his him? cause i lowkey think ormund wouldnt want to risk hurting his son's image of him after everything that had happened in the version where princess stays married to both men (holy shit i hope u understood this😭)

I feel like he would at first, but then he'd learn very quickly not to because he'd see Ormund getting annoyed. Ormund wouldn't freak out in front of his son; instead, he'd give him long-ass lectures about how Cregan isn't his stepfather, but merely a savage etc. Aethan would learn pretty quickly not to talk about them if he wants to have a good time.

[darktargslut]

Guys, can you please stop asking me, "What would X do if the reader died?" 😭 I don't like those asks. I have multiple asks about them, and idc about men without women 😭 Like, they're all horrible people in my fics anyway. If the reader died, she'd haunt them and then they'd die a horrible death. That's literally it. I genuinely have zero inspiration for asks about what men would do without the woman they spent the entire fic tormenting. Like, sorry, I don't care about their feelings 😭

[mohammedgaza210-deactivated2025]

Urgent Appeal 🥊

Hello my friend 👋

My name is Mohammed, I live in Gaza City and I am 19 years old. I have lived through the full horrors of war — hunger, displacement, fear, relentless bombings, destruction, and so many other painful experiences 🥹😭.I never created a donation link before, and I haven’t received any kind of help throughout this devastating war 🥲💔.

I was so happy when the ceasefire was announced, and I dreamed of starting a small shop to earn a living. But sadly, the war returned — even more violent and destructive than before 😭.Our area has now been declared a dangerous combat zone, and we lost our home — the only shelter we had 💔.

Worst of all, my father was seriously injured: he tragically lost one of his hands and an eye, and he is now completely unable to work or support our family 🥲😭.

Prices have skyrocketed, and we have no source of income. I’m launching this donation campaign now with a broken heart but a little hope 🥲.

Please, for the sake of humanity and for the sake of my family, consider making a donation to help us survive 🙏💔.

I just created the donation link, hoping that someone out there might lend a helping hand.

Emergency Help for Mohammed

My name is Mohammed. I am 18 years old and live in Gaza City. I am still at the beginning of my life, dreaming of a better future. My father

Please don’t let me down 🙏❤️‍🩹

[darktargslut]

And what if I said reader got the ick from Ormund after he pulled a muscle after the rough sex incident and that contributed to her leaving because she was like “fuck I need someone that’s not this old” 😭🤭 Ormund needs to suffer, the men don’t suffer enough

The Ick (Pathetick)

Ormund Hightower X Reader

Part of the ''The Whore'' series

TW: possessive husband | extreme jealousy | accusations of infidelity/incest (false; jealousy over stepson) | emotional and verbal abuse | rough/punitive sex | degradation | humiliation | unhealthy relationship dynamics

The evening had started so well, that was the thought you kept returning to, later, as you lay in the dark with the blankets pulled up to your chin and the silence pressing in around you like a living thing. The evening had started so well, and now here you were, staring at the canopy overhead, your body still aching, your cheeks still tacky with dried tears, your mind turning over and over the thing that had just happened.

Supper in the great hall had been a lively affair. The long trestle tables had been crowded with household knights and visiting bannermen and the usual retinue of servants and attendants, and the noise of conversation and clattering plates had filled the vaulted space with a warm, convivial din. You had been seated at Ormund's right hand, as always, your chair positioned just slightly closer to his than was strictly necessary, a placement that made you feel cherished or like a possession on display depending on the situation.

The children had been in good spirits. Even Lyonel.

Lyonel, your stepson, who at seven and ten was caught in that awkward limbo between boyhood and manhood, his limbs too long for his body and his voice prone to cracking at the worst possible moments. He had been sullen when you first arrived in Oldtown, retreating into silence whenever you entered a room, answering your attempts at conversation with monosyllables and shrugs. You had understood. You were only two years older than him, a stranger who had married his father and taken his mother's place, and he did not know what to make of you. But lately, slowly, things had been thawing. Lately, he had been looking at you with something other than resentment. Lately, he had been smiling.

Tonight, he had been positively animated, he had leaned forward across the table during the second course, his dark curls falling into his eyes—the same dark curls as his father—and asked if you might teach him some High Valyrian.

"Father says you speak it fluently," he had said, his voice earnest. "And I thought it might be useful. For when I am lord someday. For diplomacy and such."

You had been genuinely, sincerely pleased. This was progress. This was the connection you had been hoping for, the bridge between you and these children who were now, legally and spiritually, your own.

"I would be honored," you had said, smiling. "It is not an easy language, but you seem clever enough to manage it. We can start with the basics tomorrow, if you like."

His face had lit up. "Truly? I would like that very much. Thank you, my lady."

"Call me Y/N," you had said, and you had reached across the corner of the table and touched his arm. Just a brief touch, your fingers brushing the sleeve of his tunic. A gesture of encouragement.

You had not noticed the way Ormund's knife had stilled on his plate. You had not noticed the way his jaw had tightened, the way his eyes had fixed on the spot where your fingers had brushed his son's sleeve, the way his knuckles had gone white around the handle of his cup.

You had been too happy. Too comfortable. Too secure in the belief that you had done nothing wrong, now you were paying for it.

The walk to your chambers had been silent. Ormund had not spoken a single word as you climbed the winding stairs of the Hightower, your footsteps echoing on the ancient stone. He had walked a pace behind you—usually he walked beside you, his hand on the small of your back, a gesture of guidance and possession—and the absence of that touch had felt like a warning.

You had tried to fill the silence with chatter, nervous and light. "Lyonel seems to be doing well. His studies are progressing, I think. He has a good mind for languages—he asked about Valyrian declensions, the fact that he asked me and not a measter—"

Ormund had said nothing. "He has been much warmer lately," you had continued, your voice growing thinner with each unanswered sentence. "I think he is finally starting to accept me. It has been difficult for him, I know, with his mother gone and a new wife in the household, but I really do think we are making progress—"

Ormund had said nothing. You had reached the door to your chambers. He had opened it and gestured for you to enter, and you had stepped inside, your heart beginning to beat faster, your palms suddenly damp. The room was warm but you felt cold. Cold in the way you always felt cold when he looked at you like that.

He closed the door behind him. The latch clicked into place with a sound that was very soft and very final, he walked to the sideboard and poured himself a cup of wine. He did not offer you any. He drank it in one long, slow swallow, his back to you, his shoulders rigid. Then he set the cup down with a deliberate, careful motion that was somehow more frightening than a slam would have been.

"Ormund?" Your voice came out small. Uncertain. "Is something wrong?"

He turned, the look on his face made your stomach drop. It the look of a man who was holding himself in check, who was savoring the anticipation of what was to come. "Take off your dress," he said.

"Ormund, what—"

"Take. It. Off."

You had obeyed. You always obeyed. Your fingers had moved to the laces of your gown with a trembling urgency, fumbling with the ties, and the silk had pooled around your feet in a whisper of fabric. You had stepped out of it, standing before him in your thin shift, your bare arms prickling with goosebumps. The fire was warm at your back, but the cold was inside you.

He crossed the room slowly, the footsteps of a man who had all the time in the world. When he reached you, he took your chin in his hand and tilted your face up to his. His grip was firm. Just shy of painful. "You were very friendly with Lyonel tonight," he said.

Your brow furrowed in genuine, uncomprehending confusion. "Lyonel? He asked about Valyrian. I told him I would teach him. He is finally warming to me—I thought you would be pleased—"

"You touched him." His thumb pressed into the soft flesh beneath your jaw. "You put your hand on his arm. You leaned close to him. You smiled at him as if he were your suitor, not your husband's son."

"Suitor?" The word came out as a startled, incredulous laugh—not because it was funny, but because it was so absurd, so utterly ridiculous, that your mind could not process it as anything else. "Ormund, he is ten and seven. He is a child. Your child. He has spots on his chin and his voice still cracks when he gets excited. I was being kind to him because he is my stepson and because I want our family to—"

"Our family." His voice was ice. "You are not his mother. You are my wife. And I will not have my wife making eyes at a boy barely out of the nursery."

"I was not making eyes—"

"You were." His grip tightened, and the words died in your throat. "I saw you. Everyone at that table saw you. Leaning toward him like a flower toward the sun, touching his arm, batting your lashes. Do you think I am blind? Do you think I am a fool?"

"I think you are being insane." The words slipped out before you could stop them, fueled by frustration and disbelief. "Lyonel is your son. I have never—I would never—the very idea is disgusting—"

"Disgusting." He released your chin and stepped back, his expression unreadable. "Yes. It is disgusting. And yet you did it anyway. You sat at my table, in front of my household, and you made a spectacle of yourself with a boy who is young enough to be your brother."

"He is two years younger than me. He is practically my peer—"

"Precisely."

The word hung in the air between you, heavy with implication. Your peer. Someone your own age. Someone young and unlined and full of the vitality that you should have been sharing with a husband who was not twenty years your senior.

"You are my wife," he said, and his voice had dropped lower now, rougher. "You belong to me. And I will not have you forgetting that. I will not have you behaving like a—"

He stopped himself before the word came out. But you heard it anyway, hanging in the silence like a foul smell.

Whore. He had been about to call you a whore. Again.

Something in your chest crumpled. Your eyes burned with the threat of tears, and you blinked rapidly, trying to hold them back. You did not want to cry. You did not want to give him the satisfaction, but then his hands were on you, pulling at your shift, dragging it over your head, and there was no more time for thinking. No more time for arguing. Only the cold command of his voice and the rough insistence of his touch and the overwhelming, suffocating weight of his body pressing you down onto the bed.

His hands were rough, his grip too tight, his pace punishing and fast. He positioned you the way he wanted you—on your stomach, your face pressed into the pillows, your hips raised—and he took what he wanted without preamble, without any of the whispered endearments that usually accompanied your coupling.

"You are mine," he said, his voice strained and harsh against the back of your neck. "Say it."

"I am yours," you gasped.

"Louder."

"I am yours."

"Good. And do you know why I have to do this?" He punctuated the question with a particularly hard thrust that drove the breath from your lungs. "Do you know why I have to remind you who you belong to?"

"Because I forget," you said, the words coming out in a sobbing gasp. "Because I forget who I belong to."

"Yes." Another thrust. "You forget. You smile at other men. You touch them. You lean close and let them look at you and you forget that you are mine. So I have to remind you. This is what happens when you forget."

"I did not forget," you whimpered, your fingers clutching at the sheets, your body rocking with each brutal thrust. "I was only being kind—"

"You were being careless." His hand fisted in your hair. "Thoughtless. Reckless. The same way you were careless with that dress, the same way you were careless with Aegon at the feast. You never think. You never consider how your actions reflect on me, on my house, on my name. So I have to think for you. I have to correct you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," you sobbed, though you did not understand, not really. You did not understand how a touch on the arm could be worthy of this—this cold, punishing, relentless taking that felt nothing like love and everything like retribution.

"Good. Now be quiet. I am not finished with you."

You were crying. You had been crying for a while now, you could feel the tears streaming down your cheeks, soaking into the pillow beneath your face, mixing with the sweat that slicked your skin. Your body was trembling, overwrought and overstimulated, caught somewhere between pain and a pleasure you did not want to feel. You hated that your body still responded to him. You hated that even now, even like this, he could coax a reaction from you that you could not control.

He was saying something else but you were not listening anymore. You had stopped listening. You had retreated somewhere deep inside yourself, somewhere safe, somewhere his words could not reach. 

"Fuck," he said, it was a groan. A pained, breathless, agonized groan. The kind of sound a man made when something had gone very, very wrong.

You turned your head, confused and lost, your vision still blurry with tears, your body still trembling, your mind still struggling to catch up with what had just happened. He had rolled off you and was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to you. His posture was wrong, hunched and contorted, his spine curved at an angle that looked almost grotesque. One hand was pressed hard against his lower back, his fingers splayed and rigid. His shoulders were up around his ears. Somehow still half-hard. His breathing was ragged and uneven, each exhale tinged with a barely suppressed sound of pain.

"Ormund?" Your voice came out as a croak, hoarse from crying and muffled by the pillow. "What—what happened?"

"Nothing." The word was bitten off, sharp and defensive. "I am fine."

He was clearly, patently, absurdly not fine. He tried to straighten, and another spasm of pain shot through him—you saw it happen, saw his whole body seize up, saw his teeth clench so hard the muscles in his jaw stood out like cords. He made that sound again. That awful, old-man sound. A grunt of pain that was half gasp and half groan.

"Did you—" You pushed yourself up on your elbows, your hair a tangled mess around your face, your skin sticky and damp. "Did you hurt yourself?"

"I pulled a muscle." The words came out through gritted teeth, each one a separate, painful effort. "In my back. It seized up. It is nothing."

You stared at him, and the tears were still wet on your cheeks, and your body was still aching from the force of his thrusts, and your mind was still reeling from the accusations he had hurled at you. And now—now he was sitting on the edge of the bed, half-naked and hunched and groaning, clutching his lower back like a decrepit grandfather who had tried to lift something too heavy.

Your husband, your powerful, commanding, dominant husband, hunched over like a gargoyle on a rooftop, his spine contorted, his face twisted in a grimace of pain and humiliation.

Because he had pulled a muscle. During sex. While he was trying to punish you. While he was trying to remind you who was in control. The absurdity of it hit you like a wave. A hysterical, disbelieving, almost giddy wave that rose up from somewhere deep in your chest and threatened to spill out of your mouth in a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. You bit your lip hard, forcing it down, forcing yourself to stay quiet.

"Can you—" Your voice came out strange. Thick. "Can you move? Should I fetch a maester?"

"No." The word was almost a snarl. "I do not need a maester. I do not need anyone. I just need—I just need a moment."

He tried to straighten again. The muscle seized again. He made that sound again—that grunting, gasping, humiliating sound—and hunched even further forward, his hand pressing so hard against his lower back that his knuckles went white.

You should have felt sympathy. You should have felt concern. A good wife would have rushed to his side, would have helped him lie down, would have sent for a warm compress and a maester and done everything in her power to ease his suffering.

But you were not feeling like a good wife right now, you were feeling like a woman who had just been accused of trying to seduce her stepson. A woman who had just been taken roughly and coldly as punishment for a crime she had not committed. A woman who had been crying into her pillow while her husband grunted and thrust and called her careless and thoughtless and forgetful.

And now he was the one who could not move.

You watched him, and something strange was happening inside you. Something you did not have a name for. A cold, distant detachment. You were looking at him and you were seeing things you had not noticed before.

The way his shoulders were not as broad as they once were. The way the skin on his back was beginning to sag, just slightly, around the edges of his shoulder blades. The way his hair—when had his hair gotten so grey? Not just at the temples anymore, but threaded through the dark, spreading like frost across a winter field. The way his body was not the body of a young man, not the body of the knights in the songs and stories, but the body of a man who had lived nearly four decades and was feeling every one of them. He was old.

You had always known, that your husband was older than you. Twenty years older, to be precise. It had been a fact, a number, something that other people commented on but that had never felt real to you. He was your husband. He was Ormund. He was the man you loved, the man you had chosen, the man who had courted you and won you and made you his.

But now, looking at him—hunched and groaning and utterly, pathetically vulnerable—it was suddenly, viscerally real.

He was old.

His body was failing him. His back had given out in the middle of a sexual act. He had been trying so hard to be dominant, to be powerful, to be the man who could punish his young wife for her supposed transgressions—and his own body had betrayed him in the most intimate, most humiliating way possible.

Your husband was clutching his back like a decrepit invalid because he had been too vigorous in his attempts to put you in your place, and he looked pathetic.

You pushed the feeling down, horrified at yourself. This was your husband. This was the man you loved. You should not be feeling this. You should not be looking at him like he was a stranger, like he was something pitiable and slightly repulsive. You should be sympathetic. You should be concerned. You should be a good wife.

But the feeling would not go away. It sat in your chest like a stone, heavy and cold and immovable. He tried to shift his position, and the muscle seized again, and he made that sound again—that grunting, gasping, old-man sound—and something inside you curled up and died.

"I am going to lie down," he said, his voice strained. "I just need to—I just need to find the right angle—"

He eased himself down onto the mattress in a series of awkward, ungraceful movements. First onto his side, then rolling slowly, carefully, onto his stomach, his hand never leaving his lower back. He ended up face-down on the mattress, his head turned to one side, his arms braced awkwardly beneath him. He looked like a turtle that had been flipped onto its back and was struggling to right itself. He looked like an invalid being arranged by a maester. He looked, frankly, pathetic.

And he knew it.

That was the worst part. That was the part that made the silence so thick and suffocating. He knew exactly how humiliating this was. You could see it in the rigid set of his shoulders—shoulders that were still, even now, too stubborn to fully relax. You could see it in the way he would not look at you, would not turn his head, would not meet your eyes. You could see it in the tips of his ears, which had gone a deep, mortified red.

He was embarrassed. He was utterly, completely, devastatingly embarrassed.

And he should be, a small, vicious part of you whispered. He should be embarrassed. He just spent the last quarter-hour accusing you of trying to seduce his teenage son. He just took you like a brute, made you cry, called you careless and thoughtless. And now he is the one who cannot move. Now he is the one who is pathetic and weak.

You did not say any of this. You did not say anything at all. You just lay there on your side of the bed and watched him struggle.

"Are you—" he started, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Are you all right?"

"I am fine," you said, your voice was flat. 

Silence.

"It was the angle," he said suddenly, his voice defensive and tight. "I was at a bad angle. My leg was twisted, and the muscle just—it just seized up. It could have happened to anyone. It has nothing to do with—with anything else."

"I am sure," you said.

"It is not because I am old." The word came out like a curse, sharp and bitter. "If that is what you are thinking. It is not. It was a bad angle. That is all."

You said nothing. He turned his head on the pillow, trying to look at you, but you were on his bad side and the movement pulled at the muscle. He winced and gave up, settling back into his awkward, face-down position.

"I am not old," he said again. Quieter this time. More to himself than to you.

You did not answer. You did not know what to say. You did not know how to tell him that it did not matter whether the pulled muscle was because of his age or because of a bad angle. What mattered was that he had been inside you—cold and cruel and punishing—and then he had made that sound. That awful, grunting, old-man sound. And now you could not unhear it.

You pulled the blankets up to your chin and turned onto your side, away from him. The fire had burned down to embers, and the room was growing cold. You could feel the chill seeping through the stone walls, through the thin sheets, through the thin barrier of your own skin.

"I hope your back feels better in the morning," you said. The words were polite. Proper. The words of a dutiful wife.

"Y/N—"

"Goodnight, Ormund."

You closed your eyes, and as you drifted toward sleep, you held onto that image. The image of him hunched over on the edge of the bed, clutching his back, groaning in pain. The image of him pathetic and weak and old.

[darktargslut]

With how insane our favourite religious zealot was imagining their first time, how did Ormund and reader's first time go? Also, how does his toxic gaslighting translate in bed?

I just know reader couldn't walk straight for a good while after 🙏

The Marriage Debt

Dark!Ormund X Targaryen!Reader

TW: explicit sexual content, dub-con, non-consensual sex, marital rape, sexual coercion, power imbalance, manipulation, loss of virginity, psychological distress, degradation, rough sex, alcohol consumption.

The wedding had been everything a princess could dream of, and yet you had felt like a stranger in your own body throughout all of it.

The High Septon had droned on for what felt like hours, his voice echoing through the vast, vaulted space, and you had barely heard a word of it. Your eyes had been fixed on Ormund, on your husband, on the man you had chosen, on the man who had courted you so tenderly and written you such beautiful letters. He had looked at you throughout the ceremony with such intensity, such focus, that you had felt like the only person in the world. His eyes had never left your face, and every time you met his gaze, something fluttered in your stomach. Anticipation. Nerves. Something that felt very much like love.

When the septon bound your hands together with a ribbon and declared you one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever, Ormund had smiled. It was a slow smile, a satisfied smile, the smile of a man who had gotten exactly what he wanted.

You should have noticed that. You should have understood what it meant.

The feast afterward had been a blur. The great hall had been transformed into a sea of candles and flowers and glittering silver, and the noise of a hundred conversations had washed over you like a wave. You had been seated beside your new husband on the dais, your hand in his, and course after course had been presented to you. You had barely eaten. Your stomach was too tight, too fluttery, too full of nerves.

But you had drunk. Oh, you had drunk.

The wine was sweet and it went down like honey, and every time your cup was empty, a servant was there to refill it. You had not meant to drink so much—you had never been much of a drinker, had never developed a taste for it—but the wine warmed your belly and softened the edges of your anxiety and made everything feel slightly distant, slightly dreamlike, like you were watching yourself from very far away.

Ormund had encouraged it. His hand had rested on your knee beneath the table, heavy and warm, his thumb tracing slow circles through the silk of your gown. Every time you glanced at him, he was already looking at you, and his eyes were so dark, so hungry, that you felt yourself blushing and had to look away.

"Drink," he had murmured in your ear, his breath warm against your skin. "It will help with the nerves."

And so you had drunk.

Now the feast was over. The guests had retired to their chambers or continued their revelry elsewhere. Your ladies had undressed you an hour ago their hands efficient and fast as they unlaced your wedding gown, unhooked your corset, removed your stockings and your slippers and your jewels. They had chattered as they worked, offering congratulations and advice and sly, knowing comments that made your cheeks burn.

They had dressed you in the shift. The bridal shift. It was beautiful, you could not deny that, pale ivory silk so fine it was almost transparent, the fabric clinging to every curve and hollow of your body like a second skin. The straps were thin as spider silk, the neckline dipping low enough to show the swell of your breasts. The hem barely reached your thighs. When you moved, the silk slid against your skin in a way that made you acutely aware of your own nakedness beneath it.

It was meant to entice. It was meant to be removed.

Your ladies had left you then, retreating with final words of encouragement and knowing smiles, and the door had clicked shut behind them with a sound that felt terribly final. You were alone. Alone in your husband's chambers, in your chambers now, yours and his together.

You had been standing by the window for what felt like a very long time. The wine cup was still in your hand—you had refused to give it up, had clung to it like a talisman—and you raised it to your lips again, letting the sweet liquid coat your tongue. The windows looked out over the city, over the Honeywine River glittering silver in the moonlight, over the distant shadow of the Citadel and the dark expanse of the Whispering Sound beyond. Somewhere out there, beyond the city walls, Aegarax was sleeping in a field. You wished, suddenly and fiercely, that you were with him. That you could climb onto his back and fly away, fly home to Dragonstone, fly anywhere but here.

But that was foolish. That was childish. You were a wife now. You had a duty to perform.

You heard the door open behind you. The soft click of the latch, the whisper of the hinges. Footsteps on the stone floor, heavy and deliberate. The door closed again.

"Are you well, my love?"

His voice was low and warm. The voice that had spoken so many sweet words to you during your courtship. The voice that had told you that you were beautiful, that you were precious, that you were the most desirable woman he had ever seen.

You did not turn around. You could not turn around. Your heart was beating too fast, your palms suddenly damp against the wine cup.

"Yes." Your voice came out smaller than you intended, almost childlike. "I am just... I am a bit nervous."

"There is nothing to be nervous about." His footsteps drew closer, slow and measured. You could feel him approaching, feel the heat of his body, the weight of his presence filling the room behind you. "It is only me. Only your husband."

"I know." You took a deep breath, trying to steady yourself. The wine had made everything soft and hazy, but it had not quieted the anxious flutter in your chest. "It is just that I have never... I mean, I do not really know what to..."

What to do. What to expect. What to say. What to feel. You did not know anything. Your mother had told you that it was your duty, that you must submit to your husband and let him guide you, that there might be some discomfort at first but that it would pass. She had spoken in euphemisms and poetic metaphors, her hands clasped around yours, her violet eyes searching your face as if looking for something she did not find.

"Shh." He was right behind you now. You could feel the heat radiating from his body, could smell him, leather and wine and something musky underneath, something that made your stomach tighten with an emotion you could not name. "There is nothing to be afraid of, my sweet girl. I am going to take care of you. I am going to make you feel things you have never felt before. Do you trust me?"

"Yes." The word came out automatically, the way it had a hundred times during your courtship. "Yes, I trust you."

"Good girl. Turn around."

You took one last sip of wine for courage. The cup was almost empty now, and you wished it were full again. You wished you had drunk more. You wished you had drunk enough to make the world disappear entirely, and then, because you could delay no longer, you turned around.

The wine cup slipped from your fingers.

He was completely, utterly naked.

He stood not three feet away from you, and he was so much. So much bigger than you, so much more solid. His shoulders were broad and heavily muscled, his chest covered in a thick mat of dark hair that trailed down his stomach in a narrowing line. His arms were thick with muscle, his hands large and strong. And lower—

Your eyes dropped before you could stop them, a horrified fascination drawing your gaze downward. The hair continued, thickening again at his groin, and jutting from it, unmistakable and impossible to ignore, was his—

You jerked your eyes back up to his face, your cheeks flooding with heat, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat. Your hands were shaking. Your whole body was shaking. You had never seen a man's naked body before. You had never seen that before, that thing, that part of him, and it was so much larger than you had imagined, so much more intimidating. It stood erect, curving upward toward his stomach, and you could not comprehend how it was supposed to fit inside you. It looked impossible. It looked like it would split you in half.

He was smiling. It was a slow smile, a knowing smile, the smile of a man who had seen your shock and found it deeply satisfying. He stood there in his nakedness with the absolute confidence of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and had no doubt that he would get it.

"You are shy," he said. It was not a question.

Your mouth opened, but no sound came out. You could not stop staring at his face now, clinging to eye contact like a lifeline, terrified that if your gaze dropped again you would see it again, that thing, that impossible thing.

"I—I have never—" The words came out in a stammer, broken and breathless. "I did not realize you were—that you had already—when did you—"

Your eyes flickered involuntarily to the pile of clothing on the floor behind him. His tunic, his breeches, his smallclothes, all discarded in a heap near the door. He must have undressed while you were standing at the window. He must have stripped himself bare while your back was turned, and you had not heard a thing. You had not heard anything except your own panicked heartbeat.

"I did not want to waste any more time." He stepped closer, and you instinctively stepped back. Your bare shoulders pressed against the cold stone of the window frame, and you realized with a jolt of panic that there was nowhere else to go. You were trapped between him and the wall. "I have been waiting for this night for a very long time. A year. More than a year. Every moment I spent with you during our courtship, I was thinking about this. About having you. About what it would feel like to finally be inside you."

The word inside made your stomach clench. You pressed yourself harder against the window, the stone cold through the thin silk of your shift. "Ormund, I—"

"Do you know how many nights I lay awake thinking about you?" He took another step, and now he was close enough to touch. Close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that if you reached out, your hand would press against his bare chest. "Do you know how many times I imagined this? Imagined you? Imagined all the things I was going to do to you once you were finally mine?"

Your breath caught in your throat. His words were meant to be romantic—they were the words of a man who desired his wife, who had been patient, who had waited—but there was something in his voice that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

"I thought about you too," you whispered, because it seemed like the right thing to say. "I thought about... about tonight. About being your wife."

"Did you?" His hand came up, and you flinched before you could stop yourself. He noticed but he did not comment on it. Instead, he reached past you and took the wine cup from the windowsill where it had come to rest. He set it aside, his movements slow and deliberate. "And what did you imagine?"

You shook your head, your cheeks burning. "I do not know. I do not... my mother told me some things, but I do not really understand. I do not know what to expect."

"Your mother." He said the word with an edge that you did not quite understand. "And what did your mother tell you?"

"She said..." You swallowed hard, trying to remember the exact words. "She said that it was my duty. That I must submit to my husband. That there might be some discomfort at first, but that it would pass. She said that it was how children were made. That it was the marriage debt."

"The marriage debt." He smiled again, and this time there was something almost predatory in it. "Is that what you think this is? A debt to be paid?"

"No, I—I do not know. I do not know what to think."

"Then let me tell you." He reached out and touched your face, his fingers tracing the line of your jaw. His hand was warm, almost hot, and you felt yourself trembling beneath his touch. "This is not a debt. This is a gift. The gift of your body to me, and my body to you. The gift of pleasure. The gift of children. The gift of becoming one flesh, the way the septon said. Do you understand?"

You nodded, even though you did not understand. You did not understand anything except that his hand was on your face and his body was so close and you were trapped against the cold stone window and you could not stop shaking.

"You are trembling," he said. His thumb stroked your cheek, gentle and slow. "Are you afraid of me?"

"No." The word came out too quickly. "No, I am not afraid. I am just... I am nervous. I told you. I have never done this before."

"I know you have not." His voice dropped lower, becoming almost a purr. "That is what makes this so precious. You are untouched. Pure. No man has ever seen you like this, has ever touched you, has ever been inside you. I am the first. I will be the only. Your body will know no one but me, for the rest of your life."

The words should have been romantic, but they did not feel like it.

"Lift your arms," he said.

You hesitated. Your arms felt heavy, weighted down by something you could not name. But he was waiting, his eyes fixed on your face, and you did not want to disappoint him. You did not want to be a bad wife on your very first night.

You lifted your arms. He grasped the hem of your shift and pulled it upward. The silk slid over your skin, cool and whispering, and then it was over your head and gone, discarded somewhere on the floor. You were naked. Completely, utterly naked, standing in front of your husband with nothing to hide behind.

The air in the room was warm from the fire, but you felt suddenly, terribly cold. You wrapped your arms around yourself instinctively, trying to cover your breasts, trying to hide, but he caught your wrists and gently pulled them away.

"No," he said. "Do not hide from me. You are my wife now. I want to see you."

He stepped back, just slightly, just enough to look at you. His eyes traveled over your body with an intensity that made your skin prickle. You had never felt so exposed, so vulnerable, so utterly seen. He looked at your breasts, at the curve of your waist, at the curls at the juncture of your thighs. He looked at you the way a collector looks at a new acquisition. The way a hungry man looks at a feast.

"Beautiful," he murmured. His voice was thick now, roughened by something that made your stomach clench. "More beautiful than I ever imagined. And I imagined you a great deal."

His hand reached out and touched you. Just the tips of his fingers, tracing the line of your collarbone, down your sternum, between your breasts. Your skin broke out in goosebumps, and you shivered, and you did not know if it was from cold or fear or something else entirely.

"Please," you whispered, and you did not know what you were asking for. Please stop? Please continue? Please be gentle?

"Please what?" His fingers continued their slow exploration, circling one breast, brushing over the nipple. You gasped at the sensation, it was strange and sharp and not entirely unpleasant, a tingling that seemed to travel from your breast down to somewhere much lower. "Please what, my sweet girl?"

"I do not know," you admitted, your voice barely audible. "I do not know what to ask for. I do not know what I want."

"Then let me show you." He cupped your breast fully now, his palm warm and rough against your sensitive skin. "Let me teach you. That is my role now, as your husband. To teach you what your body is capable of. To show you pleasures you have never dreamed of."

He leaned down and captured your mouth in a kiss. You had been kissed before. Chaste kisses, the kind of kisses a betrothed couple exchanged in chaperoned parlors. This was not that. His mouth was hot and demanding, his lips pressing against yours with a force that made your head spin. His tongue pushed past your lips, filling your mouth, and you made a small, startled sound against him. You did not know what to do with your tongue—no one had ever told you—so you just let him take what he wanted.

One hand tangled in your hair, tilting your head back, holding you in place. The other continued its exploration of your body, sliding down your stomach, over your hip, around to grasp your arse. He pulled you against him, and you felt it, that part of him, that impossible part, pressing hard and hot against your bare stomach. You whimpered into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound.

"You taste like wine," he murmured against your lips. "Sweet. So sweet."

He kissed you again, deeper this time, and his hand slid from your backside to your thigh, gripping it, lifting it. He pressed himself against you, and you felt him there, right there, so close to where you had never been touched.

"Ormund," you gasped, breaking the kiss. "Wait. Wait, please. I am not—I do not—"

"Shh." He pressed his forehead to yours, his breath coming in harsh pants. "I know. I know you are nervous. But I have waited so long. So very long. And you are so beautiful. Can you feel what you do to me? Can you feel how much I want you?"

You could feel it. Gods, you could feel it. It was pressed against you, insistent and impossible, and you did not understand how this was supposed to work. You did not understand how any of this was supposed to work.

"Come," he said, and it was not a request. "Come to the bed."

He did not wait for an answer. He bent and scooped you into his arms as if you weighed nothing at all, one arm beneath your knees and the other around your back. You clutched at his shoulders instinctively, your face pressed against his neck, your heart hammering so hard you were certain he must be able to feel it. His skin was hot and smelled of sweat.

The bed was soft beneath you when he laid you down. The sheets were cool against your heated skin, and you sank into the feather mattress, feeling very small and very exposed. He stood over you for a moment, looking down at you with those hungry eyes, and then he was on the bed with you, his body covering yours, his weight pressing you into the mattress.

He was so heavy. So much heavier than you had expected. You had never had a grown man lying on top of you before, and the sensation was overwhelming—the weight of him, the heat of him, the sheer size of him surrounding you on all sides. You felt trapped. Pinned. You could barely move.

"Relax," he murmured against your throat. His lips were trailing down your neck now, kissing and sucking, and you felt a strange, tingling warmth spreading from each place his mouth touched. "Relax, my love. I am going to make you feel so good. You just have to trust me."

You tried to relax. You tried to let go of the tension coiled in your muscles, tried to surrender to the sensations washing over you. His mouth found your breast, and you gasped as his tongue circled your nipple, as his teeth grazed the sensitive peak. The sensation was sharp and strange and not entirely unpleasant, it sent sparks of something through your body, sparks that seemed to travel downward, settling low in your belly.

"Ormund," you breathed, and you did not know if it was a protest or an encouragement.

"Good," he murmured against your skin. "Good girl. You feel that? That is pleasure. That is what your body is made for."

His hand slid down your stomach, over your hip, between your thighs. You tensed immediately, your legs trying to close, but he was already there, his body blocking you, his hand pressing insistently against your most private place.

"No," you whispered, your face burning with shame. "Please, not there—"

"Yes." His voice was firm. "Yes, there. You are my wife. Every part of you belongs to me now. Even this part. Especially this part."

His fingers began to move, stroking and exploring, and you turned your face into the pillow, unable to look at him. No one had ever touched you there before. You had barely even touched yourself there—it had always seemed forbidden, shameful, something good girls did not do. But his touch was insistent, and despite your embarrassment, despite your shame, your body was beginning to respond.

The heat was building. That strange, unfamiliar heat, coiling low in your belly like a spring being wound too tight. Your hips moved without your permission, pressing into his touch, seeking something you did not understand. He made a low sound of approval.

"That is it," he said. "That is my good girl. Your body knows what it wants, even if you do not."

His fingers found a particular spot, a place that made you gasp and arch off the bed, and he laughed softly. "There. That is what I was looking for. Does that feel good?"

You could not answer. Words had deserted you. There was only sensation, his fingers, his mouth, his weight pressing you into the mattress. The pleasure was building and building, and you did not know what was happening, did not know what to expect, only that it felt like you were climbing toward something vast and terrifying and unknown.

"Let go," he said, his voice low and hypnotic. "Let go, my sweet girl. Let me see you fall apart."

And you did. The pleasure crested, and your body arched off the bed, and a sound tore from your throat that you had never made before, a cry, almost a sob, your fingers clutching at the sheets, at his shoulders, at anything you could reach. The world went white and hot and overwhelming, and for a long, suspended moment, you forgot where you were. You forgot your name. You forgot everything except the feeling of his hands on your body and the pleasure crashing through you in waves.

When you came back to yourself, he was looking down at you with a smile of pure, male satisfaction. His fingers were still between your legs, gentle now, stroking you through the aftershocks.

"Good," he said. "Good. Now you are ready."

He shifted his weight, settling more firmly between your thighs, and you felt him pressing against the place his fingers had just been. Your eyes widened, and the haze of pleasure began to clear, replaced by a cold trickle of fear.

"Ormund, wait—"

"This will hurt," he said, and his voice was strained now, tight with something that sounded almost like pain. "But only for a moment. Try to relax. It will be easier if you relax."

You tried. You tried to relax, tried to do what he said, tried to be good. But when he pushed inside you, the pain was not just a moment. It was sharp and tearing and all consuming, and you cried out—a real cry this time, high and startled, your hands flying to his shoulders to push him away.

He did not stop. "Shh," he said, but his hips were already moving, pushing deeper , forcing his thick cock deeper into a body that was not ready for him . "Shh. It will pass. Just breathe. Just breathe."

You breathed. You wrapped your arms around his neck and held on and tried to breathe through the pain. Tears leaked from the corners of your eyes and slid down your temples into your hair. You felt yourself stretching around him, felt a burning ache that radiated through your entire lower body, and you did not know if this was normal. You did not know if it was supposed to hurt this much. Your mother had said there might be some discomfort. She had not said it would feel like being torn apart.

"Fuck, there," he groaned against your shoulder, voice thick with lust. "Gods, your cunt is so fucking tight. So perfect."

He began to move. Slow at first, then faster. The bed frame creaked beneath you, a rhythmic counterpoint to the sounds he was making, low, guttural grunts that vibrated against your neck. Wet, obscene sounds filled the room as his cock plunged in and out of your clenching hole, each thrust punching deeper than the last.

You lay pinned beneath him, body jolting with the force of his fucking, your body rocking with each thrust, and tried to find the pleasure he had shown you before. It was there, somewhere, buried beneath the pain and the discomfort and the overwhelming strangeness of it all, but you could not reach it.

"Taking my cock so well," he rasped, sweat-slicked skin sliding over yours. "You were made to be fucked like this. Made to take every inch. Made for me. Say my name."

"Ormund," you whispered, and it came out as a sob.

"Yes. Yes. Again."

"Ormund—"

He slammed in to the hilt and came with a guttural roar, cock pulsing thick ropes of cum deep inside your stretched pussy. Hot seed flooded your insides, overflowing around his shaft and leaking down your crack as his fingers bruised your hips. You felt every heavy spurt, the wet heat filling you until it had nowhere else to go but out, you realized with a distant sort of shock that you did not even know what it was. Your mother had not told you. No one had told you anything.

He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the mattress, and you lay there pinned beneath him, staring at the canopy above the bed, feeling the tears drying on your cheeks and the soreness already beginning to bloom between your legs.

"That," he said, his voice muffled against your neck, "was worth every moment of waiting. Every single moment."

You did not answer. You did not know what to say. You stroked his hair because it seemed like something a wife should do, and you waited for him to move, to roll off you, to let you breathe.

But he did not move. Not for a long time.

When he finally stirred, you felt a rush of relief. It was over. You had done your duty. You could rest now, but he lifted his head and looked down at you, and his eyes were still dark. Still hungry. Still unsatisfied.

"Again," he said.

You stared at him, uncomprehending. "What?"

"Again." He pulled his cock free, leaving your raw, cum slicked cunt gaping and dripping. The sudden emptiness made you wince. Thick white seed leaked from your stretched hole and slid down your thighs "We are not finished. This is our wedding night, my love. Did you think once would be enough? I have waited a year for this. I am going to have you in every way I have imagined. And I have imagined a great many ways."

"But I am—I am sore—"

"This is your duty." His voice hardened, and the tenderness from a moment ago evaporated like mist in the morning sun. "You are my wife. Your body belongs to me now. And I will have it when and how I choose. That is what you agreed to when you said your vows. That is what it means to be married."

You opened your mouth to argue, but no words came out. Because he was right, wasn't he? This was what you had agreed to. This was what marriage was. Your mother had told you that your body would no longer be your own. She had told you that you must submit to your husband in all things. This was just... this was just what wives did.

Wasn't it?

"On your hands and knees," he said. "Like a bitch. I want to take you from behind."

The word bitch made you flinch, but you obeyed. You did not know how to disobey. You rolled onto your stomach, wincing at the soreness between your legs, and pushed yourself onto all fours, ass raised, thighs parted, your dripping pussy fully exposed. The position felt filthy and degrading. The position felt obscene, degrading, your body exposed and vulnerable in a way that made your face burn with shame.

"Good girl." His hand stroked down your spine, and you shivered. "You learn quickly. That will serve you well in this marriage."

He positioned himself behind you, and you felt him pressing against you again—still hard, still impossibly large. How was he still hard? You did not understand. You did not understand anything about male bodies or male desires or what was normal and what was not.

"Look at that pretty cunt already leaking my cum."

This time, there was no gentleness at all. He entered you in one rough thrust, and you cried out, your arms nearly buckling beneath you. He gripped your hips hard and started pounding you—fast, merciless strokes that made your ass ripple and your tits swing beneath you. There was no pretense of making you feel good this time, no gentle words, no coaxing. This was for him. Only for him. You cried out as his cock speared your sore walls again, forcing more of his previous load out around his shaft.

"This is what you were made for. To be bent over and used. To milk my cock until I fill you again, your cunt is clenching. You like being fucked like this. You like being my breeding bitch on our wedding night."

Each savage thrust punched deep, the wet slap of his balls against your clit sending sparks through the ache. His hand reached under you, fingers finding your swollen clit. He rubbed it in tight circles while he fucked you harder, the mix of rough pounding and steady stimulation making your thighs shake.

He grunted, his hips slamming against your backside. " This is your purpose. To take my cock. To give me pleasure. To give me children. Nothing else matters."

You buried your face in the pillow, trying to muffle the sounds you were making. Your body was still responding despite everything, your hips pressing back to meet his thrusts without your permission, your body betraying you in the most intimate way possible.

"You feel that? Your body is hungry for me. Your body knows what it wants, even if your mind does not."

The pleasure built fast and sharp. Your body betrayed you again, hips rocking back to meet every thrust. The dual sensations, his cock battering your cervix and his fingers working your clit, pushed you over the edge. You came with a broken moan, walls pulsing and fluttering around him as fresh wetness gushed down his shaft.

Your body obeyed. Your body had always been a traitor. The pleasure built and crested and crashed over you, and you collapsed onto the mattress, your arms no longer able to hold you up. He followed moments later with hot cum pumped deep, mixing with the first round until it overflowed and ran down your legs in thick rivulets. He stayed buried inside you, grinding slow as the last spurts emptied into your twitching cunt.

When he pulled out, and you lay there face, down on the bed, trembling, trying to catch your breath. You thought it was over. You thought surely, surely it must be over now.

But it was not over.

He let you rest for perhaps ten minutes. Maybe less. You could not track time anymore, it had become meaningless, measured only in the spaces between his desires. He lay beside you, his hand stroking your back, your hair, your thigh, and he spoke to you in a low, soothing voice. He told you that you were beautiful. He told you that you were doing so well. He told you that he loved you, that he had always loved you, that he would love you until the end of time.

And then his hands were on you again, and he was pulling you on top of him. "I want to see you ride me," he said, positioning you so that you were straddling his hips. "I want to watch your face while you take your pleasure from me, I want to watch that tight little cunt swallows my cock." he ordered, voice thick with lust.

You looked down at him, at his expectant face, at his hands gripping your thighs, and you felt a wave of exhaustion so profound it made your bones ache. "I do not know how," you whispered. "I do not know what to do."

"I will show you." His hands guided your hips, lifting you, positioning you over him. "Lower yourself. Slowly. Yes, like that. Gods, yes."

He lined his thick cock with your entrance and pushed your hips down. The fat head breached you again, stretching your swollen walls wide. A wet squelch filled the room as you sank onto him, his previous loads already leaking out around the intrusion. The new angle forced him deeper than before, the blunt tip grinding straight against your cervix and you gasped at the sensation. He began to move beneath you, thrusting up into you, and his hands guided your hips into a rhythm that matched his own.

"Good," he said, his eyes fixed on your face. "Good. You are learning.''

Each time you dropped down, his cock punched up to meet you, the wet slap of your soaked pussy against his pelvis loud and obscene. Your breasts bounced with every impact, nipples stiff and aching.

"Look at me," he growled. "Eyes on mine while you fuck yourself on my cock."

You met his gaze, cheeks burning, as he drove up harder. His hands slid to your ass, fingers digging in, spreading you wider so he could watch his shaft disappear inside you. "Say it," he demanded. "Tell me who this cunt belongs to." face was flushed, his eyes dark and intense, and there was something in his expression that made your stomach twist.

"Y-you," you gasped, the word breaking as another thrust knocked the air from your lungs.

"Louder."

"You! My cunt is yours!"

He snarled in approval and slammed upward, the brutal pace making your thighs shake. One hand left your ass to find your swollen clit, rubbing it in fast, rough circles while he fucked you from below. Your orgasm hit hard. Your pussy spasmed around him, pulsing and milking his shaft as fresh slick gushed out, mixing with the cum already inside you. You collapsed forward onto his chest, body jerking, but he kept thrusting up into your twitching hole, chasing his own release.

With a guttural groan he buried himself to the hilt and pumped another thick load deep into your womb. Hot spurts flooded you, forcing even more of the previous loads to squirt out around his shaft and run down his balls in sticky rivulets. He stayed buried inside you, grinding slow as the last pulses emptied, keeping you impaled and full.

You thought it was over. You thought surely, surely it must be over now.

But it was not over.

He took you twice more that night. The fourth time was on your side, your leg hooked over his hip, his mouth on your throat, his hands gripping your body with a possessiveness that left bruises. The fifth time, he woke you from a deep sleep—you had finally drifted off, your body giving out from sheer exhaustion—and took you from behind again, roughly, quickly, with no gentleness at all.

By the end of it, the sky outside the window was beginning to lighten. The bells rang for dawn, and you heard them as if from very far away, as if you were underwater and the sounds of the world above were muffled and distorted.

You were lying on your back, staring at the canopy. Your body was a landscape of unfamiliar sensations—soreness and exhaustion and a strange, hollow ache that had nothing to do with the physical. Between your legs was wet and sticky and sore, and you could feel his seed leaking out of you, soaking into the sheets. There was blood too, you thought, though you had not looked. You did not want to look.

He was asleep beside you. Finally, mercifully, asleep. His arm was thrown across your waist, heavy and possessive even in unconsciousness, and his breath came in slow, even rhythms. You stared at the canopy. You stared at the ceiling. You stared at the fire burning low in the hearth, and you tried to make sense of what had happened.

This was marriage. This was what wives did. This was your duty.

Was this normal? You had no one you could ask. The only married woman you knew well was your mother, and your mother had spoken of the marriage bed in such vague, poetic terms that you had no way of comparing her experience to yours.

Perhaps it was always like this. Perhaps the first night was always overwhelming, always painful, always disorienting. Perhaps you would get used to it in time. Perhaps you would learn to find pleasure in it—he had shown you that pleasure was possible, had coaxed it from your body even when you did not want to give it. Perhaps that was the key. Perhaps you just needed to learn.

You turned your head on the pillow and looked at him. Your husband. Lord Ormund Hightower, the man who had courted you so tenderly, who had written you such beautiful letters, who had made you feel like the most cherished woman in the world. In sleep, his face was relaxed, almost boyish, the lines of age and command softened by the grey morning light. He looked like a different man than the one who had taken you five times over the course of the night. He looked like the man you had fallen in love with.

His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer even in sleep. You felt his breath against your hair, warm and steady. You felt the heat of his body, the solid weight of him, the overwhelming reality of his presence.

Mine, you thought. He is mine now. And I am his.

The thought should have brought you comfort. It should have made you feel safe, protected, cherished. Instead, it made you feel something you could not name. Something that sat heavy in your chest like a stone.

You closed your eyes and tried to sleep. Your body was exhausted, wrung out, desperate for rest. But your mind would not quiet. It kept circling back to the same questions, the same confusions, the same half-formed doubts that you did not know how to examine.

Was it supposed to be like this?

Was this what love was?

You had no answers. You had only the grey morning light and the distant sound of bells and the weight of your husband's arm across your waist.

And the knowledge, slowly dawning in the back of your mind, that your life would never be the same again.

—

You woke to the feeling of lips on your neck. Soft and persistent. A mouth pressed to the curve where your shoulder met your throat, trailing slow, open mouthed kisses along the sensitive skin. You stirred from the depths of exhausted sleep, your mind foggy, your body heavy with a weariness that seemed to have seeped into your very bones.

For a moment, you did not remember where you were. The bed was too large, too soft, the pillows too many. The light filtering through the heavy curtains was grey and pale, early morning, the hour when the world was still half-asleep. The air smelled of sweat and sex and burned down candles, and beneath it all, the faint, musky scent of a man.

Ormund.

Your husband. He was behind you, his chest pressed to your back, his arm wrapped around your waist. His body was warm—almost too warm—and you could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat against your spine. His lips continued their exploration, moving from your neck to the curve of your ear, nibbling gently at the lobe. His breath was hot against your skin, and you felt the soft scrape of his teeth, barely there, a ghost of a bite that made you shiver.

"Good morning," he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and something else. Something darker. "I was beginning to think you would sleep through the entire day."

His hand moved from your waist, sliding up your stomach to cup your breast. His palm was warm, slightly calloused, and he cupped you with a tenderness that seemed at odds with the roughness of the night before. His thumb found your nipple and brushed across it in a slow, deliberate circle. The sensation was electric, a jolt that went straight to your core, and you gasped—a small, involuntary sound that seemed to please him.

"You are so sensitive this morning," he said. "I like that. I like knowing that I am the first thing you feel when you wake."

His thumb continued its lazy circles, and you felt yourself responding despite everything. Your nipple hardened beneath his touch, pebbling against his palm. Your hips pressed back against him, between your thighs a pulse of heat bloomed, shameful and undeniable.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you closer, and you felt the evidence of his own arousal pressing against the curve of your backside. He was hard again, thick and insistent, and the knowledge sent a fresh wave of heat through you.

"That is it," he whispered against your ear, his voice low and rough. "Your body remembers last night. It remembers what I taught you. It wants more, does it not?"

You shook your head weakly, even as your body betrayed you. "I am tired," you managed. "I did not sleep."

"Neither did I." His hand slid lower, over your stomach, his fingers splaying across your belly before moving down to the thatch of hair between your legs. "I lay awake for hours, watching you. You looked so peaceful. So beautiful. I wanted to wake you, but I did not. I let you rest."

His fingers found your center, parting your folds with practiced ease. You were wet—embarrassingly, shamefully wet—and he groaned softly when he felt it.

"Oh, sweet girl," he breathed. "You are so ready for me. Even after everything. Even after I kept you up all night. Your body knows what it wants."

His fingers moved in slow, gentle circles, tracing the outline of your most sensitive places. The sensation was overwhelming—too much and not enough all at once. Your hips bucked against his hand, and you heard yourself whimper, a small, desperate sound that seemed to come from somewhere outside yourself.

"Ormund," you whispered. "Please. I am so tired."

"I know." He kissed your shoulder, your neck, the hinge of your jaw. "I know you are tired, sweet girl. I am not going to do anything you do not want. I only want to touch you. I only want to feel you. Is that all right?"

You should have said no. You should have told him to stop, to give you space, to let you breathe. But his fingers were moving in slow, gentle circles, and your body was betraying you, softening beneath his touch, your hips tilting to give him better access.

"That is not a no," he said. His voice was soft, almost playful. "That is a I do not know how to say yes because I am too shy. Am I right?"

You buried your face in the pillow, your cheeks burning. He laughed and kissed the back of your head.

"It is all right to want this," he said. "You are my wife. You are allowed to want your husband. There is no shame in it."

He rolled you onto your back gently, positioning himself above you. The weight of him was familiar now, the heat of his body pressing you into the mattress. But he did not push inside you. He only looked at you, his blue eyes soft, his curls tousled, his face relaxed in a way you had not seen before.

His hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb tracing the curve of your cheekbone. He studied your face as though memorizing it, as though you were something precious and rare. His gaze moved from your eyes to your lips to the hollow of your throat, and you felt seen in a way that made your breath catch.

"Before you say anything," he said quietly, "I need to apologize to you."

You blinked up at him, confused.

"Last night," he continued. "I know I was... I know I got carried away. I promised you I would be gentle, and I was, at first. But then..." He exhaled slowly, his thumb still stroking your cheek. "It has been a long time for me, sweet girl, years since my wife died, years since I have laid with anyone. I had forgotten how overwhelming it could be. How consuming. The feel of you beneath me, the sound of your voice, the way your body responded to mine—I lost myself in it. I was too rough with you at times. I know I was. And I am sorry for that."

He leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours, his breath warm on your lips. His eyes were closed, his expression vulnerable in a way that made your heart ache despite everything.

"I did not mean to hurt you," he said. "You must believe that. I would never hurt you on purpose. You are my wife. You are the woman I have dreamed of for years. The last thing in this world I want is to cause you pain."

He took your hand and pressed it to his chest, over his heart. You felt it beating beneath your palm, steady and strong. His skin was warm, the hair on his chest soft against your fingers. You could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, the way it quickened slightly as you touched him.

"Can you forgive me for last night? For being too rough when I should have been more careful?"

You swallowed. Your throat was tight, your eyes stinging with something that might have been tears. You had not expected this. You had expected him to be pleased with himself, to preen and boast and make you feel small for your weakness. Instead, he was asking for forgiveness. He was acknowledging his fault. He was promising to do better.

"Yes," you whispered. "I forgive you."

His face broke into a smile, relieved and almost boyish. He leaned down and kissed your forehead, your eyelids, the tip of your nose. Each kiss was soft, lingering, as though he was trying to pour all his gratitude into the gesture.

"Thank you," he said. "You are so generous. So kind. I do not deserve you."

He kissed you then gently, the way he had kissed you at the altar. His lips moved against yours with a tenderness that made your chest ache. His hand cradled your jaw, tilting your head to deepen the kiss, and you felt yourself melting into him despite everything. His tongue traced your lower lip, asking permission, and you parted your lips for him, a small surrender that made him groan softly against your mouth.

When he pulled back, his eyes were dark with desire, but he did not push further. He only looked at you, his thumb stroking your jaw.

"It will get better," he said. "I promise you. The first time is always the hardest. But as you grow accustomed to me, as your body learns to welcome me, it will become easier. It will become pleasurable. And one day, you will wake up and you will want me. You will ache for me. You will not be able to imagine a morning without my hands on you."

His hand slid down your body, tracing the curve of your waist, the flare of your hip. His touch was reverent, almost worshipful, as though he was learning the geography of you by heart. His fingers trailed over your stomach, and you shivered at the sensation.

"I love the way you feel," he murmured. "So soft. So warm. So perfectly made for me."

He kissed your collarbone, then lower, his lips brushing the swell of your breast. His mouth was warm, his breath hot on your skin, and you felt yourself arching into him despite your exhaustion.

"I am going to be so good to you," he said against your skin. "I am going to take care of you. I am going to give you everything you deserve. You will never want for anything, sweet girl. Not while I draw breath."

His hand found your breast again, cupping it gently, his thumb circling your nipple. He lowered his head and took it into his mouth, and you gasped at the sensation, his tongue warm and wet, his lips soft, his teeth grazing just enough to send a jolt of pleasure through you. Your fingers tangled in his auburn curls, holding him there, and he made a sound of approval against your skin.

He moved to your other breast, giving it the same attention, and you felt yourself spiraling, the pleasure building despite everything. The pain of last night was still there, a dull ache between your thighs, but it was overshadowed now by the heat of his mouth, the tenderness of his hands.

When he finally lifted his head, his lips were red, his eyes dark. He looked at you with an expression that made your heart stutter.

"Beautiful," he said. "So beautiful."

He kissed you again, deep and slow, his tongue sweeping into your mouth as though he could taste your pleasure. His hand slid between your legs, finding you wet and ready, and he groaned against your lips.

"I want to make you feel good," he whispered. "I want to make you forget everything but me. Can I do that, sweet girl? Can I touch you? Make you come apart for me?"

You should have said no. You should have told him you were tired, that you needed rest, that you could not bear any more. But his fingers were stroking you, circling that sensitive place that made your vision blur, and the word that came out of your mouth was not no.

"Yes," you breathed. "Please."

He smiled and lowered his head to kiss your neck as his fingers continued their work. He was gentle, so gentle, nothing like the rough urgency of the night before. He took his time, building the pleasure slowly, watching your face as you gasped and moaned beneath him.

"That is it," he murmured. "Let go for me, sweet girl. I want to see you fall apart."

And you did. The pleasure built and built until you could not hold it back, and then you were crying out, your body arching off the bed, your nails digging into his shoulders. He held you through it, his fingers still moving, drawing out every last shiver of pleasure.

When you finally came down, you were trembling, your breath coming in short, ragged gasps. He kissed your forehead, your cheeks, the corner of your mouth.

"So perfect," he whispered. "So beautiful. I could watch you come apart forever."

He rolled you onto your side, pulling you against his chest, his arm wrapped around your waist. His hard length pressed against your backside, but he did not push inside you. He only held you, his lips pressed to your hair.

"Sleep now," he murmured. "I will hold you. I will keep you safe."

[darktargslut]

Would you ever consider writing more AU headcanons or a short fic where Rhaenyra's daughter remains her heir and Ormund ditches the Green cause so he can benefit himself by getting with her?

Switchin' for you

Ormund Hightower X Targ!Reader

Part of 'The whore' series but can be read as a stand alone, AU team black wins ending

Summary: You manipulate the fuck out of Ormund, Ormund becomes team black but it's actually team ormund becomes king consort and his son becomes king

TW: Smut in the end, sub-Ormund, both of them have a breeding kink

The raven had arrived at dawn, you had been in the nursery when the letter came, sitting in the cushioned chair by the window with little Aethan in your arms. He was seven moons old, a small, perfect thing with silver-gold hair and eyes that had started out the newborn blue and were slowly, gradually shifting toward the violet of your family. His tiny fingers were wrapped around one of yours with that astonishing, fierce grip that babies had, and he was making those soft, contented sounds he always made when he was full and warm and safe in his mother's embrace. You had been humming to him, an old Valyrian lullaby your mother had sung to you when you were small, a melody that spoke of dragons soaring over the Fourteen Flames and lovers who burned together rather than be parted.

Melanie was nearby, folding his swaddling cloths with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had served as a wet nurse for nearly twenty years. She was a comfortable presence, calm and unhurried, her broad face creased with smile lines and her hands steady and sure as she worked and then the door had opened.

Ormund had walked in without knocking, he had a scroll in his hand, the parchment crumpled as if he had been gripping it too tightly, as if he had been holding it for hours, as if he had read it a dozen times and each reading had made him grip it harder still. The seal—green wax, you noticed—was broken, the edges jagged where he had torn it open in haste or anger or something worse.

"Melanie," you had said, and your voice had been remarkably steady considering the way your heart had suddenly begun to pound against your ribs like a caged bird, considering the way your blood had turned to ice water in your veins, considering the way every instinct you possessed was suddenly screaming danger, danger, danger. "Take Aethan to the wet nurse.I’ll come for him later."

Melanie had taken the baby from your arms without a word. Aethan had fussed at being separated from you, his tiny face crumpling with that particular expression of infant outrage that was somehow both heartbreaking and endearing, his rosebud mouth opening in a wail of protest, and you had pressed a kiss to his forehead and breathed in the scent of him—that sweet, powdery, impossibly perfect scent that all babies carried—before letting him go. The door had clicked shut behind them with a soft, final sound, and you had been alone with your husband, and the world had felt very large and very dangerous and very, very fragile.

"What is it?" you had asked, though some part of you already knew. Some part of you had been waiting for this moment since the day you married him. Some part of you had always known that the peace you had built here—the peace you had carved out of duty and compromise and the slow, grudging affection that had grown between you like ivy climbing a stone wall—was a fragile thing, a delicate thing, a soap bubble waiting to be pricked. "What has happened?"

He had handed you the scroll without speaking. You had unrolled it with fingers that were not quite steady, and the words had seemed to blur and swim before your eyes like fish beneath the surface of a pond, and for a long, suspended, breathless moment, the world had gone very quiet, the silence pressing against your eardrums like the silence at the bottom of the sea.

King Viserys is dead. Aegon II Targaryen has been crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms. The coronation took place in the Dragonpit before a crowd of thousands. Rhaenyra Targaryen remains on Dragonstone and has not yet issued a response. Lord Ormund Hightower is summoned to King's Landing to swear fealty to His Grace, King Aegon, Second of His Name.

You had read it three times. Four times. Five times. Each time hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something different, something less catastrophic, something that did not feel like the world cracking open beneath your feet. Each time feeling the floor tilt further and further, the walls closing in, the ceiling pressing down. Each time your eyes catching on the same damning phrases: King Viserys is dead. Aegon has been crowned. Rhaenyra has not yet issued a response.

Your grandfather was dead. The man who had sat the Iron Throne for nearly thirty years, who had held you on his knee when you were a child and told you stories of Old Valyria in his thin, wheezing voice, who had loved your mother despite everything—despite the whispers and the scandals and the endless, exhausting political machinations that had surrounded her like flies around honey—he was gone. You would never hear his voice again. You would never see his face again. You would never sit beside him while he showed you his model of Old Valyria, his gnarled fingers tracing the streets and towers of a city that had been dead for four hundred years. He was gone, and before his body was even cold, before the ravens had even been sent, they had crowned him. They had crowned Aegon.

"You knew," you had whispered, looking up at Ormund. Your voice was barely more than a breath, a ghost of a sound, but he heard you. He always heard you. "You knew this was coming."

"I suspected." His voice was guarded. Careful. The voice of a man picking his way through an arrowfield. "The king has been ill for a long time. The succession was always going to be... contested."

"Contested." The word tasted like ash in your mouth, like copper, like blood. "There is nothing to contest. My mother is the heir. Viserys named her heir twenty years ago, and every lord in the Seven Kingdoms swore an oath to her. Your father swore an oath to her. The lords of the Reach and the Riverlands and the North and the Vale and the Stormlands—they all swore. They knelt before her and swore by the old gods and the new that they would honor her claim, that they would defend her rights, that they would stand with her when the time came. This is not a contest. This is not a disagreement. This is treason."

That had been the beginning. The first spark in a powder keg that had been waiting to explode since the day you said your vows, since the moment you agreed to bind yourself to a house that had always been too close to the throne, too hungry for power. You had known, even then, that this day would come. You had known, even then, that the choice would have to be made. But knowing and facing were two different things, and now that the moment was here, now that the raven had arrived and the seal was broken and the words were staring up at you from the parchment, you found that all your preparation, all your careful planning, all your quiet contingency arrangements—they meant nothing. They were ashes in your mouth.

Now you were standing on opposite sides of the solar, the crumpled scroll lying on the floor between you like a line drawn in sand, like a boundary that could not be crossed, like the demarcation between two warring armies, and you had been screaming at each other for what felt like hours. Your voice was hoarse, your throat raw and scraped and burning, your hands shaking with a fury that had been building for months and finally had nowhere left to go but out.

"You swore to me!" The words tore from your throat, jagged and broken, sharp as dragonglass. "When you asked for my hand, you stood before my mother and you swore—swore on your honor, on your house, on everything you held sacred, on the Seven themselves—that House Hightower would stand with the rightful heir when the time came! You told her that you would honor his memory by keeping faith with the crown, that the word of House Hightower was iron and could not be broken! She gave you her blessing because she believed you! She trusted you! She welcomed you into her family, called you son, gave you her daughter's hand in marriage, and now—now you want to throw it all away for—for what? For Aegon? For that—that—"

"Do not." Ormund's voice was a thunderclap, his face dark with fury, his hands clenched at his sides so tightly that the knuckles had gone white as bone. "Do not speak of the king in my presence with such—"

"He is not my king!" The words came out as a shriek, raw and tearing, the sound of something vital being ripped apart. "He is a usurper and a pretender and a thief, and you know it! Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knows it! From the Wall to Dorne, from the Iron Islands to the Narrow Sea, every man, woman, and child who paid attention to the succession knows that my mother was named heir by King Viserys himself, before the entire court, before the lords of the realm, before the gods and the laws of men! Your father knelt before her and swore an oath! He knelt, Ormund! On his knees, in front of the Iron Throne, with half the realm watching! And now you stand here and tell me that his oath means nothing? That your word means nothing? That everything you said to me, everything you promised, every vow you made before the septon, before the gods, before our families—that it was all a lie?"

"You dare—"

"I dare because I am your wife! I dare because I am the mother of your son! I dare because I am a Targaryen princess, and my mother is the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms by every law of gods and men, and I will not stand here in silence while you contemplate committing treason against her! I will not be the meek, obedient wife who nods and smiles while her husband destroys everything she holds dear! I am not a broodmare to be bred and put aside! I am the blood of the dragon, and I will be heard!"

Ormund slammed his fist against the desk and you flinched, taking a step back. The inkpot rattled and tipped, spilling black ink across the scattered parchments in a dark wave, staining the wood, ruining letters and documents that had taken hours to compose, his face was flushed dark with rage, a deep, ugly red that crept up from his collar and suffused his features, his eyes blazing with a fury that matched your own. And for a moment—just a moment—he looked like the man who had torn your dress from your body and thrown it into the fire moons ago. The man who had cornered you against the wall and called your mother a whore. The man you had feared and hated and loved.

"Your mother," he said, his voice low and dangerous, the rumble of distant thunder, the growl of a cornered beast, "is not the queen. Aegon is the king. He was crowned by the High Septon himself, anointed in the light of the Seven, before the eyes of thousands. The realm has recognized him. The smallfolk cheered for him. The lords are declaring for him. Storm's End has declared. Casterly Rock has declared. Half the Reach is rallying to his banner as we speak—"

"The smallfolk cheered because they were told to cheer!" You threw the words at him like weapons, like stones, like dragonfire. "Because the Gold Cloaks were in the streets, because the guards were at the gates, because anyone who did not cheer would find themselves in a black cell before sunset with a noose around their neck and the Stranger's hand on their shoulder! You know how this was done, Ormund. You are not a fool, whatever else you may be. You know the Greens have been planning this for years, decades, since before I was born, since my mother was named heir. Your uncle Otto has been scheming to put his grandson on the throne since the day Aegon drew his first breath, and you—you—stood before my mother and smiled and swore you would be loyal, swore you would keep faith, swore you would honor your father's oath, while all along you were waiting for this moment!"

"I was not waiting for anything!" He took a step toward you, his boots heavy on the stone floor, and you did not step back. You would not step back. You had given ground before, in the early days of your marriage, and you had learned that giving ground only invited him to take more. "I did not know they were going to crown him! I did not know they were going to move so quickly! The raven came this morning, and I was as surprised as you were—"

"Surprised?" You laughed, and the sound was ugly and sharp and utterly without humor, a jagged, broken thing that scraped against the walls and fell to the floor between you. "You were surprised that Otto Hightower, the man who has spent twenty years trying to undermine my mother, the man who whispered poison in my grandfather's ear at every turn, the man who was dismissed as Hand for his scheming and then schemed his way back into power—you were surprised that he seized the first opportunity to put his own blood on the throne? You were surprised that Alicent, who dressed in green and called my mother a whore behind her back and raised her children to hate their own sister, crowned her son before my grandfather's body was cold, before the ravens were even sent, before the realm even knew he was dead? You expect me to believe that you, the Lord of the Hightower, the most powerful lord in the Reach, the head of a house that has its fingers in every pie from Oldtown to King's Landing—you expect me to believe that you had no idea this was coming?"

"You can believe what you like." His jaw was set, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes hard as flint. "The fact remains that Aegon is the crowned and anointed king. The lords of the realm are declaring for him. If I do not declare as well, Oldtown will be isolated. We will be surrounded by enemies on all sides. Every lord who declares for Aegon will look at Oldtown and see a prize to be claimed, a traitor's holding to be seized. My house—our house—will be destroyed."

"Your house will be destroyed if you declare for Aegon!" You stepped toward him now, closing the distance, your finger jabbing toward his chest as if you could poke a hole in his stubbornness. "Do you think my mother will forget? Do you think Daemon will forget? Do you think the Rogue Prince, the man who decapitated Vaemond Velaryon in front of the whole court for merely questioning my brother's legitimacy, will shrug his shoulders and say 'no hard feelings' when he learns that House Hightower has sided with the usurpers? They have dragons, Ormund. Syrax and Caraxes and Vermax and Arrax and Tyraxes and Moondancer and Meleys. My mother has more dragons than the Greens could dream of, more dragonriders, more fire and blood and death at her command than any force in the known world. And if you raise your banners against her, she will come for you. Daemon will come for you. They will descend on Oldtown like the Doom itself, and I will not be able to stop them, I will not stop them."

"Then we will fight—"

"Fight? With what?" You laughed again, and this time the sound was edged with something close to hysteria. "With swords and arrows against dragons? With walls and towers against creatures that can fly over them and rain fire from above? Your soldiers would be ash on the wind. Your city would be a graveyard. Your people would be charred bones and blackened memories. And for what? For what? For Aegon? For a drunken wastrel who cannot even keep his hands off the serving girls, who staggers from brothel to brothel leaving bastards in his wake, who has never done a single thing in his life to prove himself worthy of a lordship, let alone a throne? For a man who would burn this city himself if it meant keeping his stolen crown for one more day?"

"Aegon is my blood—"

"I am your blood!" You slammed your palm against your own chest, hard enough to bruise, your voice cracking on the words. "Aethan is your blood! Your son, he is my son, and he has Targaryen blood in his veins, dragonrider blood, the blood of Old Valyria, the blood of Aegon the Conqueror himself! And if you declare for Aegon, if you throw your lot in with the Greens, you will be signing his death warrant along with mine! You will be painting a target on his back that every Green in the realm will aim for! You will be giving them a reason to see him dead, and believe me, they will not need much of one!"

Ormund's face went still, the kind of still that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. "What did you say?"

"You heard me." Your voice was shaking now. "Do you think the Greens will let Aethan live? Do you think they will look at your son—your half-Targaryen son, your son with Rhaenyra's blood in his veins, your son who has a better claim to the throne through his mother than Aegon's own children do through his sister-wife—and see anything other than a threat? He has a claim to the throne, Ormund. Through my mother, through me, through the blood that runs in his veins, he has a claim. He is Rhaenyra's grandson. The grandson of the rightful queen. And the Greens have spent their entire lives tearing down anyone with a better claim than theirs."

"Aethan is an infant—"

"Infants grow up!" You were screaming again, your voice shredding, tears streaming down your face, hot and salt and utterly beyond your control. "Infants become boys, and boys become men, and men with claims to thrones are dangerous things to leave alive! What do you think they will do to him? What do you think Aemond will do to him? You know what Aemond is! You have seen the way he looks at people, the way he holds grudges like a banker holds gold, the way he never forgets a slight, never forgives an insult, never lets go of anything! He lost an eye and gained a dragon, and he has spent every day since becoming more dangerous, more cruel, more hungry for violence! He will look at our son and see a rival, see a threat, see someone who might one day challenge his brother's stolen crown, and he will not hesitate! He will not wait for Aethan to grow up and press his claim! He will kill him! He will come in the night with Vhagar's fire or with a blade in the dark, and he will kill our son, Ormund, our beautiful, perfect, innocent son, and you will not be able to stop it!"

"I would never let anyone harm Aethan—"

"You cannot protect him!" You grabbed the front of his tunic, your fingers twisting in the fine fabric, yanking him toward you, your face inches from his, close enough to see the individual lashes around his eyes, close enough to smell the wine on his breath and the sweat on his skin. "That is what you do not understand! That is what you have never understood, not once in all the time we have been married! You think because you are Lord Hightower, because you are their cousin, because you have been loyal and useful and accommodating, that they will respect you? That they will leave us alone? That they will let us live out our days in peace? They will not need you anymore! Do you understand that? The moment Aegon sits securely on that throne, the moment my mother and my brothers are dead and buried and their dragons are slain, the moment their victory is complete—they will not need you anymore! You will not be an ally—you will be a liability! A lord with a Targaryen wife and a Targaryen son who has a better claim to the throne than half the people in the Red Keep! A loose end! A threat! A problem to be solved!"

"Y/N, you are being hysterical—"

"I am being reasonable!" You released his tunic and stepped back, your chest heaving, your breath coming in ragged gasps, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your temples, in your throat, in the tips of your fingers. "I am seeing clearly for the first time in my life! I am looking at the world as it is, not as I wish it to be, not as you wish it to be! Think, Ormund! For once in your stubborn, prideful, infuriating life, think! Why do you think they sent Daeron here when he was barely more than a babe?” The words tumbled from your mouth faster than you could catch them, one lie chasing another before you had the chance to think them through. They tasted wrong, thick as ink on your tongue, each sentence more desperate than the last. You had never done this before and you hoped it did not show.

“Why do you think they fostered him in your household, let him grow up alongside your children, let him learn your ways and your customs and your people? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Out of family affection? Out of the kindness of sweet, pious Queen Alicent's gentle soul?"

"Daeron is my ward—"

"Daeron is a Green!" You spat the words like poison, like venom, like the contents of a snake's fangs. "Daeron has the blood of the same people who stole my mother's throne, who crowned Aegon before my grandfather's body was cold, and they sent him here—sent him to you—when he was barely old enough to walk. A third son, a spare's spare, a boy with no prospects and no inheritance and no future. Why? Why would they do that? Why would they send their precious prince to be raised so far from court, so far from his family, so far from everything he knew?"

Ormund's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek, but he did not answer.

"I will tell you why." Your voice dropped, low and cold and trembling with a certainty you did not entirely feel but knew you had to project. The performance of a lifetime. The role you had been born to play. "They sent him here to be groomed. They sent him here to learn your castle, your city, your people. They sent him here so that when the time came—when Aegon was king and the Hightowers had served their purpose and the realm was securely in Green hands—Daeron would be ready. He is a grown man now. A dragonrider. A prince of the blood, however far down the succession. He has been raised in your household, trained by your master at arms, taught by your maesters, loved by your servants. He knows every passage in the Hightower, every hidden door, and when the Greens decide they no longer need you—when they decide that Oldtown would be better served by a lord who is entirely their creature, a lord who owes everything to them and nothing to anyone else—what stops them from naming Daeron Lord of the Hightower and casting you aside like a worn-out tool, like a broken sword, like yesterday's dinner scraps?"

"Daeron would never—"

"Daeron is a dragonrider!" You were screaming again, your voice raw and desperate, your throat burning with the effort. "When his brother tells him that Oldtown is his birthright, when Otto tells him that this is what he was raised for, what he was trained for, what his entire life has been leading up to—what do you think he will do? Do you think he will choose you over his own blood? Do you think he will choose loyalty to his foster family over the command of his king, his brother, his own flesh and blood?"

Ormund was staring at you, his face a mask of fury and doubt and something that looked almost like fear. His hands were clenched at his sides, his knuckles white as polished bone, his jaw tight enough to crack stone, the tendons in his neck standing out like cords. But he was listening. You could see it in his eyes—the way the doubt was creeping in, the way your words were sinking their hooks into him, the way the seeds you were planting were beginning to take root in the fertile soil of his paranoia and his pride.

"You cannot trust them," you said, and your voice dropped again, softening, becoming almost gentle. Almost tender. The voice of a wife who only wanted what was best for her husband, her family, her future. "You cannot trust any of them. They have been using you, Ormund. Using your gold, your soldiers, your influence, your name. Using the prestige of the Hightower to lend legitimacy to their coup. And the moment they have what they want—the moment Aegon sits the throne unchallenged, the moment Rhaenyra and Daemon and all my brothers are dead and buried, the moment the war is won—they will discard you. You will be a threat to them. I will be a threat to them, the daughter of the queen they usurped, a constant reminder of their treason. Aethan will be a threat to them, a child with a claim, a dragon in waiting. And they will not suffer threats to live."

"You do not know that—"

"I know the Greens." You stepped closer to him again, you reached up, slowly, gently, and cupped his face in your hands. Your palms against his cheeks. Your fingers tracing the line of his jaw. The gesture of a lover, "I know them better than you ever could. I have lived among them. I grew up in the Red Keep, remember? I saw the way they looked at my mother, the way they whispered about her behind closed doors when they thought no one was listening. I saw the cruelty in Aemond's eyes even when he was just a boy, the weakness in Aegon's, the cold, calculating ambition in Otto's. I saw the way Alicent smiled at my mother while she sharpened the knife behind her back. They are not honorable people, Ormund. They are not loyal people. They do not keep faith. They do not honor oaths. They are users and schemers and oathbreakers and kinslayers, and they will destroy anyone who stands in their way—including you. Especially you, when you have outlived your usefulness."

He stared down at you, his dark eyes searching your face. The fury was still there, banked but not extinguished, a fire that could flare up again at any moment. But it was warring now with something else—something that looked almost like uncertainty, almost like fear, almost like the dawning realization that you might be right. His hands came up, hesitated, and then covered yours where they rested against his cheeks.

"And what would you have me do?" he asked, his voice rough, scraped raw by all the shouting. "Declare for your mother? Take up arms against my own blood? My cousin, my uncle, everyone I have ever known, everyone I grew up with, everyone who shares my name?"

"I would have you fight for your wife," you said, and you let your voice tremble, let tears well in your eyes, let him see the vulnerable woman beneath the warrior. "For your son. For the oaths your father swore before the Iron Throne, before the eyes of gods and men. For the honor you have always claimed to hold dear above all else." You paused, and then you played your final card—the card you had been holding in reserve, the card you had been saving for exactly this moment, the card that would tip the scales. "And I would have you think about what happens after."

"After?" His brow furrowed. "What do you mean, after?"

"After my mother wins." You said it as if it were a certainty, an inevitability, a thing as sure as the sunrise. "After she takes back her throne and crushes the usurpers and restores the rightful succession. Do you think she will forget who stood with her and who stood against her? Do you think she will not reward those who kept faith, and punish those who broke it?"

Ormund's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying," you said, and you let a slow, knowing smile curve your lips, the smile of a woman who held all the cards and knew exactly how to play them, "that I am her eldest child. Her firstborn. Her only daughter. The child who came from her body when she was little more than a girl herself, the child she nearly died bringing into this world, the child she loves above all others."

"What are you saying?" he repeated, but his voice was different now. Quieter. Hungrier.

"I am saying that if I ask her—if I remind her of everything I have sacrificed, everything I have endured, everything I have done to secure House Hightower's loyalty and bring you into the fold—she will name me her heir." You stepped closer still, until your bodies were touching, you could feel the heat of him through your clothes. Your voice dropped to a whisper, intimate and conspiratorial, a secret shared between lovers. "I will be queen after her. The first ruling queen of the Seven Kingdoms. A queen in my own right, not a consort, not a regent, not a placeholder. A true queen, with all the power and authority that entails."

The silence that followed was absolute. You could hear your own heartbeat, loud in your ears, a drumbeat of triumph. You could hear the distant toll of the bells, the crackle of the dying fire, the whisper of the wind outside the window, the soft, distant sound of gulls crying over the harbor.

"And you," you continued, your voice a silken whisper, your fingers tracing gentle patterns on his cheeks, "would be my king. King Consort of the Seven Kingdoms. The most powerful man in the realm. Every lord in Westeros would bow to you. Every decision I made would be made with your counsel. You would sit beside me on the Iron Throne, the first true Hightower ever to do so, and your name would be written in the history books alongside mine for all eternity."

You saw it then, the moment the hook caught. The moment ambition overrode loyalty. The moment the vision you were painting became more real to him than the letters on the parchment, more compelling than blood ties and family bonds and everything he had ever known.

"And our son," you breathed, leaning in until your lips were almost brushing his ear, "our son, Aethan—he would be king after us. A Hightower king on the Iron Throne. Your blood, your name, your legacy, ruling the Seven Kingdoms for generations to come. The Hightower dynasty. A new golden age. All because of the choice you make today."

"That is..." Ormund's voice was hoarse. "That is what you are offering me?"

"That is what I am offering you," you confirmed. "Not just honor.Not just the ear of a distant cousin being controlled by an uncle. But a dynasty. A future. A throne. All you have to do—all you have ever had to do—is keep the oath your father swore. Stand with my mother. Stand with me. Choose us."

Ormund stared at you for a long, long moment. His expression was unreadable, his dark eyes searching your face, and you could see the war raging behind them—ambition against loyalty, the promise of a throne against the pull of blood, the future you were offering against the past he had always known. You let him see nothing in your face but love and hope and desperate, earnest sincerity.

It was a lie, of course. Most of it, at least. You had no idea if your mother would name you her heir. You had no idea if she would even consider it, not when she had three living sons, not when Jacaerys was her clear and obvious successor, but Ormund did not need to know that.

"If I do this," he said slowly, "The Greens will name me traitor. Aemond will want my head. They will come for us with everything they have."

"Then let them come." You tightened your grip on his face, forcing him to meet your eyes, letting him see the fire that burned in their violet depths. "We will face them together. We have an army. We have gold. We have dragons of our own—Aegarax will fight for me, the greens depend on oldtown, if you do not follow them most of their allies will retreat. We cannot survive if you choose the wrong side. And we cannot claim our destiny—our throne—if you let fear hold you back."

He was silent for another long moment. Then, very slowly, like a great tree beginning to fall, like a wall beginning to crumble, he reached up and covered your hands with his own.

"You make a compelling argument," he said quietly. "But I need more than promises. I need guarantees."

Your heart leaped, a wild, exultant thing, but you kept your face steady. You kept your expression earnest and loving and just the slightest bit vulnerable. "Name them."

"I will send a raven to your mother. I will tell her that I am prepared to declare for her, to raise my banners and call my bannermen, to commit the full strength of Oldtown to her cause. But in return, I want her word—her sworn, written word, sealed with her own hand and witnessed by her council—that you will be named her heir. That our son will inherit after you. That House Hightower will be bound to the Iron Throne by blood and law, now and forever. No ambiguities. No caveats. No loopholes for her sons to exploit."

"And if she agrees?"

"Then I will declare for her." His grip on your hands tightened, almost painfully. "I will raise my banners, call my bannermen, and commit the full might of Oldtown to the rightful queen. Every sword, every ship, every copper penny in my treasury—all of it will be hers. But if she refuses—if she will not give us this guarantee, if she will not put it in writing, if she hedges or prevaricates or offers anything less than what I have asked—then I will have no choice but to declare for Aegon. Do you understand?"

You understood. You understood that this was the best you were going to get—better, in fact, than you had hoped. You understood that you had pushed him as far as he could be pushed, that he was giving you a chance, a real chance, and that the rest was up to your mother. You understood that you had won.

"I understand," you said, and you let relief flood your features, let tears of gratitude well in your eyes. "Send the raven. Ask her. And when she agrees—because she will agree, she loves me, she wants what is best for me and for Aethan, she would never deny her only daughter this one thing—you will stand with us."

"If she agrees," Ormund repeated, but there was something in his voice now that had not been there before. Something that sounded almost like hope. Almost like hunger. "Then I will stand with you."

You nodded, and he nodded, and something in the room shifted. The fury that had been crackling between you like lightning began to dissipate, replaced by something quieter, something more fragile, something that might, with careful tending, grow into something stronger. An agreement. A truce. A partnership.

"Send for the maester," Ormund said, releasing your hands and stepping back. He crossed to his desk and righted the fallen inkpot, pulling a fresh sheet of parchment toward him with hands that were still trembling slightly. "I will dictate the letter myself. I want every word to be exactly right."

You watched him settle into his chair, watched him dip his quill in the inkwell, watched him begin to write. Your heart was still pounding, your hands still trembling, your throat still raw from screaming. But beneath the exhaustion, beneath the fear, beneath the lingering adrenaline that sang in your blood like wildfire, there was something else. Something that felt almost like triumph.

You had convinced him. You had actually convinced him. You had taken a man who had been moments away from declaring for the Greens, a man bound by blood and history and ambition to the usurpers, and you had turned him. You had used every weapon in your arsenal—fear and love, threats and promises, logic and emotion and the cold, calculated manipulation that you had learned at your mother's knee and perfected in the crucible of your marriage—and you had won.

You were a Targaryen princess. You were the blood of the dragon. And you had just changed the course of the war before it had even begun.

Now all you had to do was hope that your mother would do the rest. And if she would not—if she could not—well. You would cross that bridge when you came to it. You had learned, in the years since your wedding night, that there was always another card to play. There was always another lever to pull. There was always another way to get what you wanted.

You looked at your husband, bent over his desk, writing the letter that would commit him to your mother's cause—and to yours. And you smiled.

It was not a kind smile. It was not a gentle smile. It was the smile of a dragon who had just discovered that she could breathe fire after all.

—

One Year Later

The throne room of the Red Keep was silent, you stood alone before the great doors, your hands clasped in front of you, your heart beating slow and steady in your chest. The murmuring of the crowd beyond was a distant hum, muffled by the thick oak, but you did not strain to hear it. You kept your eyes forward, your breathing even, your spine straight.

The doors swung open, the throne room stretched before you, vast and glittering, a river of candlelight and shadow. The Iron Throne rose at the far end, its jagged peaks of fused swords catching the light like a mountain of blades. Banners of black and red hung from the rafters, the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen rippling in the warm air.

And every eye in the room was fixed on you, your gown was black silk, heavy and rich, embroidered with threads of crimson and silver that caught the light like dragon scales. A cloak of deep red velvet hung from your shoulders, the train sweeping the floor behind you. Your hair was braided in the Valyrian style, pulled back from your face.

You kept your eyes fixed on the throne, and on the woman standing before it. Rhaenyra Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, waited for you at the foot of the Iron Throne. She wore black silk and a crown of gold and silver, and her silver-gold hair fell past her shoulders like a waterfall of moonlight. Her face was older than you remembered—marked by grief, by loss, by the terrible weight of the crown she had fought so hard to claim—but her eyes were bright.Bright with love.

You stopped before her and sank into a deep curtsy, your gown pooling around you like spilled ink.

"Your Grace."

"Rise," your mother said, her voice carrying through the silent hall. "Rise, my daughter."

You rose. Rhaenyra descended the last step of the throne and took your hands in hers. Her grip was warm and firm, and her eyes searched your face as if memorizing every detail.

"Lords and ladies of the realm," she said, and her voice rang out clear and strong, filling every corner of the vast chamber. "You have come here today to witness the continuation of my line. My daughter, my eldest child, my only daughter—she is the blood of Old Valyria, the fire of the dragon, and the truest heart I have ever known."

She paused, and her grip on your hands tightened.

"In accordance with the laws of the Seven Kingdoms and the traditions of House Targaryen, I do hereby name her as my rightful heir. She will be Princess of Dragonstone, as I was before her. Upon my death, she will ascend the Iron Throne as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Her children after her will inherit the crown, and her blood will rule this realm for generations to come."

She released your hands and turned to face the assembled lords.

"Let all those who would swear fealty to my daughter kneel."

The command echoed through the hall, and as one, the lords of the realm dropped to their knees. Lords and ladies, knights and courtiers, banners from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms dipping toward the floor. The Reach. The Riverlands. The Vale. The North. The Stormlands. The Westerlands. The Crownlands. All of them, kneeling before you in a single, unified gesture of fealty.

You saw Ormund among them, near the front of the crowd, his head bowed. You saw your brothers—Jace beside Baela, both of them kneeling with their hands over their hearts. You saw lords you had known since childhood and lords you had never met, all of them bending the knee to you.

To you.

"We swear our loyalty to you, Princess," the voices rang out, a chorus of hundreds speaking as one. "Our swords are yours. Our lives are yours. Our houses are yours. Now and forever."

The words echoed through the hall, bouncing off the stone walls and the dragon skulls and the jagged peaks of the Iron Throne. You stood there, your hands at your sides, your heart pounding, and let the weight of it wash over you.

This was your birthright. This was your destiny. This was everything you had fought for.

—

The celebration had continued long into the night, you could still hear the distant strains of music and laughter drifting up from the great hall below, the occasional burst of drunken cheering, the echo of footsteps in the corridors as servants hurried to and from, but you had retired early. You had wanted to be alone. Alone with him.

The servants had been dismissed hours ago. The fire in the hearth had burned down to a soft, amber glow, its embers pulsing like a heartbeat in the darkness, casting long shadows that danced across the marble floor and the silk-hung walls. The room was warm, fragrant with the scent of woodsmoke and the faint, lingering perfume of the oils your handmaidens had rubbed into your skin before the ceremony. And you stood by the window in nothing but a thin silk robe the color of blood, watching the moonlight dance across the dark waters below, feeling the cool glass beneath your fingertips.

You heard him before you felt him. The soft click of the door closing. The familiar rhythm of his footsteps on the marble floor—heavy, deliberate, the stride of a man who had spent his life in command. The subtle shift in the air as he drew near, bringing with him the scent of leather and wine and something deeper, something that was just him.

Then his hands were on your waist, warm and solid, his fingers spanning the curve of your hips through the thin silk, and his lips found the curve of your neck.

"You were magnificent today," he murmured against your skin, his voice low and rough, the words vibrating through you. His mouth traced a slow path from the hollow behind your ear to the slope of your shoulder, each kiss a deliberate, reverent press of lips and tongue. "Every lord in that hall was staring at you. Every single one. I watched them watch you. I watched them want you."

You let your head fall back against his shoulder with a soft, breathy sigh, your eyes fluttering closed as his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below your ear. A shiver ran down your spine, raising goosebumps along your arms despite the warmth of the room. "They were staring because my mother told them to."

"They were staring because you looked like a goddess descended from the heavens to claim her throne." His teeth closed on your earlobe—just a gentle pressure, just enough to make your breath catch—and then his tongue soothed the sting. "You looked like their queen. The queen they will kneel to. The queen they will fight for. The queen they will die for. And I—" His hands slid up your sides, his thumbs brushing the undersides of your breasts through the silk. "—I am the only one who gets to touch you. The only one who gets to see you like this. The only one who knows what you look like when you come undone."

You turned in his arms, your hands sliding up the front of his chest. He had changed after the ceremony—the heavy formal doublet replaced by a dark tunic of fine wool, unlaced at the throat, revealing the strong column of his neck and the faint dusting of silver-dark hair beneath. His hair was slightly disheveled from the evening's celebrations, falling across his brow in a way that made him look younger. Wilder. Almost like the man you had married all those years ago. The man who had frightened you and thrilled you in equal measure.

But you were not frightened anymore.

"And what about you?" you asked, your voice dropping to a low, silken murmur. Your fingers traced up his chest to the open collar of his tunic, toying with the laces, brushing against the warm skin beneath. "Will you kneel to me? Will you bend the knee to your future queen?"

His hands tightened on your waist, pulling you flush against him. You could feel the hard length of him pressing against your belly through the layers of fabric that still separated you. "I have knelt to you every day since the moment we met. Every hour. Every breath. I have been on my knees for you since the first time I saw you across that throne room, and I will be on my knees for you until the day I die."

"Have you?" You tilted your head, a slow, wicked smile curving your lips. Your fingers found the laces of his tunic and began to work them loose, one by one, deliberate and unhurried. "I do not remember that. Perhaps you should remind me."

"Perhaps I should."

He kissed you. His mouth claimed yours with a fierce, consuming intensity, his tongue sliding past your lips, stroking against yours, exploring the warm cavern of your mouth as if he were memorizing every inch of it. His teeth caught your lower lip and tugged—just hard enough to make you gasp, just hard enough to send a bolt of heat straight to your core.

You pulled back, breathless, your chest heaving, your lips already swollen from the force of his kiss. "I think," you said, your voice slightly unsteady despite your best efforts, "that tonight, I should be the one in command. After all—" You pushed the tunic from his shoulders, and the heavy fabric slid down his arms and fell to the floor in a dark pool at his feet. "—I am the heir to the Iron Throne. The future queen of the Seven Kingdoms. And you are my subject."

"Is that so?" His eyes were dark and burning, fixed on your face with an intensity that made your stomach tighten and your thighs press together. There was amusement there, flickering at the edges, but beneath it was something rawer.

"It is." You reached for the hem of his undershirt, your fingers brushing against the warm skin of his stomach, and pulled it up and over his head. He lifted his arms to help you, and then the shirt was gone, discarded somewhere on the floor, and he was bare from the waist up. The firelight played across his chest, the broad shoulders, the dusting of dark hair that trailed down his sternum and disappeared beneath the waistband of his breeches, the scars that mapped his decades of soldiering. Some of them you knew the stories of. Others you had traced with your fingers in the dark, wondering what battles had left their marks on him before you were even born.

He was not young. His body showed every one of his years, the slight softening around his middle, the lines etched deep around his eyes, the grey that had long since overtaken the dark of his hair. But he was yours. Every scar, every line, every silver hair. Yours to touch. Yours to kiss. Yours to command.

"And you—" You pressed a kiss to the center of his chest, right above his heart, feeling the steady thud of it against your lips. "—are my king consort. My husband. My subject." Your mouth trailed lower, pressing kisses down his sternum, your tongue flicking out to taste the salt of his skin. "Mine to command. Mine to touch." Your fingers found the laces of his breeches, working them loose with deliberate, unhurried movements. "Mine to please."

You pushed the breeches down over his hips, and he stepped out of them, kicking them aside. And then he was bare before you, completely bare, his arousal jutting proud and rigid from its nest of dark curls, already flushed and straining and leaking a glistening bead of moisture at the tip. Your mouth watered at the sight of him. You had seen him like this hundreds of times—thousands of times—and yet it never lost its power.

"And do you intend to please me?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, strained with the effort of holding himself still. A muscle in his jaw jumped as he watched you look at him.

You lifted your gaze to his, your eyes dark with promise. "I intend to worship you." You stepped back, your hands moving to the sash of your robe. The silk was cool beneath your fingers, the knot giving way easily. "You called me a goddess. But tonight—" The robe slipped from your shoulders and pooled at your feet in a whisper of crimson silk. "—tonight, you are my king. And I want you to feel like one."

You stood before him in the firelight, bare and unashamed. The warmth of the embers kissed your skin, and you saw the way his eyes traveled over your body—lingering on the full curves of your breasts, the dip of your waist, the flare of your hips, the silver-gold curls at the juncture of your thighs. His throat worked as he swallowed. His hands clenched at his sides.

"Gods," he breathed, his voice rough and reverent. "You are more beautiful than the day I married you. More beautiful than the first time I saw you. More beautiful than any woman has a right to be."

"Flatterer." You closed the distance between you in two slow steps, your bare feet silent on the marble floor, and took his face in your hands. His stubble was rough against your palms. "You have already had me. You do not need to woo me with pretty words."

"I will woo you with pretty words until the day I die." His hands came up to cover yours, pressing your palms more firmly against his cheeks. "I will write sonnets to your beauty. I will compose ballads about your grace. I will—"

You kissed him, your lips moved against his with deliberate tenderness, and your body pressed against him—bare skin against bare skin, the crisp hair of his chest scraping against your sensitive nipples, the heat of him seeping into you, the rigid length of his arousal pressing insistently against your belly. He groaned into your mouth, and the sound vibrated through you, settling low and heavy between your thighs.

"Come to bed," you whispered against his lips, pulling back just far enough to speak. "Let me take care of you. Let me show you what it means to be my king."

You led him to the great bed. It was enormous, draped in silks of crimson and black, piled high with furs and soft, yielding pillows. The bed of the heir to the Iron Throne. The bed where princes and princesses had been conceived for generations. The bed where, gods willing, you would conceive another child tonight—a brother or sister for Aethan, another dragon to add to your lineage.

You pushed him gently down onto the mattress, and he went willingly, his eyes never leaving your face. He lay back against the pillows, his body sprawled beneath you, and you climbed over him, straddling his hips, your knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his waist. His arousal jutted up between your bodies, hot and hard and glistening, and you felt a surge of liquid heat at the sight of it. At the thought of what was about to happen.

"My king," you murmured, rolling your hips just slightly, just enough to drag your slick folds along the length of him. He groaned, his head falling back, his hands flying to your hips. "My king consort. Do you know what that means?"

"Tell me," he said through gritted teeth, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of your hips.

"It means you are the most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms, second only to me." You leaned down, your hair falling around your faces like a curtain of silver silk, shutting out the rest of the world. "It means every lord in that hall bent the knee to me today, but you—" You kissed the corner of his mouth, feather-light. "—you are the only one I will ever call my king." Another kiss, to the edge of his jaw. "The only one whose name I will ever cry out in the dark." A kiss to his throat, just above his pulse point, where his heartbeat fluttered against your lips. "The only one who will ever be inside me. The only one who will ever fill me. The only one who will ever spill his seed in my womb and put another child in my belly."

His hips bucked beneath you, an involuntary, desperate motion, and you laughed—a low, throaty sound that made his eyes darken even further.

"Patience," you murmured, pressing a finger to his lips. "I am not finished."

"Y/N—"

"Shh." You traced his lower lip with your fingertip, feeling the warmth of his breath, the slight tremor in his chest. "You have given me orders for years. You have commanded me and corrected me and taught me. And I have loved every moment of it. But tonight—tonight, I give the orders. Tonight, I am in command. And your first order—" You reached down between your bodies and took him in your hand. He was hot and thick and throbbing, velvety soft over unyielding hardness, and the feel of him in your palm made your inner muscles clench with desperate, aching need. "—is to lie back and let me take what I want."

You positioned him at your entrance, the broad head of him pressing against your slick, aching folds. You were so wet already—had been wet since the moment he kissed your neck, since the moment he whispered those reverent words against your skin. You rubbed him against yourself, back and forth, coating him in your arousal, and he groaned and clutched at your thighs and called your name like a prayer.

Then you sank down onto him in one slow, deliberate motion, the feeling of him filling you—stretching you, completing you—drew a sharp, shuddering gasp from your lips. You felt every inch of him as he slid inside, the thick ridge of him, the way your body had to stretch to accommodate his size. He was so deep like this, deeper than in any other position, and you took a moment to simply breathe, to adjust, to savor the exquisite fullness of having him buried to the hilt inside you.

"Look at me," you commanded, your voice breathless but steady. Your palms pressed flat against his chest, feeling the rapid thunder of his heartbeat. "Look at your queen."

"My queen," he breathed, his voice ragged and broken. "My beautiful, fierce, impossible queen. You are—you feel—"

"I know." You began to move. Slow at first, a deep, rolling rhythm, rising up until he was almost out of you and then sinking back down, taking him to the hilt, grinding your hips against his. The firelight flickered across your bodies, casting dancing shadows on the walls, and you watched his face contort with pleasure, watched his hands grip your hips hard enough to leave bruises, watched his jaw go slack and his eyes glaze over.

"You are so deep like this," you murmured, your voice hitching as you found a rhythm that made sparks dance behind your eyes. "So deep inside me. Do you feel that? Do you feel how much I want you?"

"I feel—gods, YN, I feel—"

"Tell me." You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, changing the angle so that every thrust dragged against that sensitive spot deep inside you. "Tell me what you feel."

"I feel like I am drowning in you." The words came out in a broken rush, his voice strained and desperate. "Like you are the only thing in the world. Like there is nothing else—no throne, no kingdom, no war—nothing but you and your body and the way you take me. The way you always take me. The way you were made for me."

"I was made for you." Your rhythm quickened, your hips snapping against his now, the wet sounds of your coupling filling the room. "Every part of me. Every inch. Made for you. Belonging to you. Just as you belong to me."

"Yours," he gasped. "Yours, yours, always yours—"

You rose up and then slammed back down, taking him as deep as he could go, and he let out a sound that was almost a sob. His hips bucked up to meet you, driving himself even deeper, and you cried out—a high, breathless sound that echoed off the marble walls.

"That is it," you panted, your thighs burning with the effort, your body slick with sweat. "That is it. Take what you need. Take what is yours. You are my king, and this is your kingdom—" You took his hand and pressed it against your lower belly, right where you could feel him moving inside you. "—right here. Inside me. Always."

He surged upward, one arm wrapping around your waist, and suddenly you were on your back, your legs wrapped around his hips, and he was driving into you with a ferocity that made the bed frame groan and the headboard slam against the wall. The change in position was dizzying, electrifying, and you clung to his shoulders, your nails raking down his back, your voice rising in a string of incoherent gasps and moans.

"My queen," he growled against your ear, his hips never slowing, each thrust deep and hard and perfect. "My queen, my queen, my queen—"

"Don't stop," you begged, your legs tightening around him, your heels digging into the small of his back. "Please, please, don't stop, I am so close, I am right there—"

His hand snaked between your bodies, his thumb finding that sensitive pearl of flesh at the apex of your folds, and he pressed down in tight, insistent circles. The dual sensations—his cock driving into you, his thumb working your clit—sent you careening over the edge. Your body arched off the bed, your inner muscles clamping down around him in rhythmic, pulsing waves, and a scream tore from your throat—his name, over and over, like a prayer, like a benediction, like a vow.

He followed moments later. You felt him swell inside you, felt the hot pulse of his release flooding your womb, and he buried his face in the curve of your neck and groaned your name with a desperation that bordered on reverence. His hips kept moving, slower now, gentler, riding out the last waves of his pleasure until he was spent and trembling and collapsed on top of you.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke. You lay there, tangled together, your bodies slick with sweat, your breathing ragged and uneven. He was still inside you, soft now but still present, still connecting you. His weight pressed you into the mattress, and you welcomed it—the solid, grounding warmth of him, the proof that he was here, that he was yours, that you had survived everything and come out the other side.

Then his hand came up to stroke your hair, gentle and slow, his fingers combing through the sweat-damp strands.

"My queen," he murmured against your throat. "My wife. My love. My everything."

"My king." You pressed a kiss to his temple, tasting salt. "My husband. My heart. My home."

He shifted, easing out of you with a soft, slick sound, and you felt the warm trickle of his seed between your thighs. You would keep your legs elevated tonight, you decided. Give his seed the best chance to take root. Aethan needed a sibling. The realm needed more heirs. And you—you wanted another child. Another piece of him to carry with you always.