Chapter Text
Aerion could no longer make sense of anything.
His ears rang with a persistent, high pitched whine. Pain blossomed everywhere. His groin, his sides, his head. Beneath his armor a cloying stickiness was congealing, and every breath he took felt more labored than the last.
His helm thudded against the earth as the giant above him smashed his shield against his face. Once, twice, countless times. Aerion shoved against the weight on top of him, but it was like trying to displace a mountain. When the brute finally wrenched the ruined helm from his head and roared, Aerion did not strike back. He braced for the fist to descend and start raining blows on him.
“I yield,” he rasped out. The word felt like chewing glass. The alpha froze. Aerion swallowed, tasting salt and copper. “I yield.”
The beast stared down at him, his eyes hard. For a heartbeat, Aerion saw his own death reflected in that gaze. Then, a calloused hand wrapped around his throat, pinning him to the dirt and forcing his head to the side.
He choked as his airway was crushed. He opened his mouth to swear, to plead, to scream, but the sound was drowned out by the feeling of teeth tearing into his neck.
“No,” he gasped, as realization washed over him. There was white hot pain as the bite went even deeper. “No!”
But it was too late. The bond was already knitting.
When the alpha finally backed away, his mouth was stained crimson, and he had claimed Aerion for his own.
Afterward, when the omega scrambled away from the beast, he fled to his Lord Father. He stumbled through the mud, red froth flecking from his lips, feeling as though his body were coming undone.
“He can’t claim me father,” he said desperately, his voice cracking like a boy’s. “It is not allowed. I am a Prince of the Blood!”
His statement was met with a wall of jeering and mocking laughter from the cunts who stood against him. When Maekar looked at him, he clenched his jaw so tightly that Aerion feared his teeth would shatter.
His father said nothing. He simply seized the omega roughly by the shoulder and dragged him toward a private corner, his scent souring into something rancid.
“It looks as though you were mauled by a wild beast,” Maekar said at last, his tone thick with disgust that burned worse than the bite. His violet eyes were nearly black as he glared at him. “I warned you not to make a mess of this boy, and look at what you’ve done.”
“I had him!” Aerion snarled, his face flushing a violent red. “I fucking beat him!”
Maekar laughed, a sound like gravel grinding in a mill. “I did not think it possible for my son to shame me further. Yet here you are, mated to some damned hedge knight.” He spat onto the ground. “What did I do to deserve this humiliation?”
“He can’t have me,” Aerion bit out, his fingers clawing at the air. “He can’t.”
In an instant, his father shoved him against the wall. “He already has you, you fool! You think some other alpha will want you with another’s claim on your neck?
Aerion opened his mouth to spit venom back, only to stumble as the world suddenly tilted.
“Father,” he choked out. “I feel…queer.”
“Easy boy,” Maekar murmured, his anger fleeing as he rushed to hold him up. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. Let’s get you to the maester.”
Aerion tried to nod, but his head lolled as his legs suddenly refused to hold him. He slumped against his fathers chest, his vision blurring.
“Hold steady lad,” Maekar barked, but Aerion disappointed him once more.
He smelled it as soon as he came to.
It gathered in the back of his throat. Something woodsy, earthy, and terrifyingly familiar.
The scent of the horrid beast who bit him.
The alpha sat near his bed. The giant was a ruin of swollen flesh and deep purple bruising. Someone had scrubbed the worst of the blood from him, but he still looked like a man who had walked out of the grave.
Let it greet him, Aerion thought viciously.
There was a flicker of satisfaction in seeing the damage that he had done, though it was somewhat dimmed by the wounds he had received in return.
There were countless things he wanted to say to the brute, each one more cutting than the last, but all that came out was a ragged. “Why?”
The alpha stared at him. “Because you cannot be trusted,” he said simply, his lips thin. “Everywhere you go, you leave wreckage in your wake.”
Aerion laughed, the motion splitting the scabs open on his mouth. His tongue traced the cuts, and he relished in the sting. “And what? You think you will bend me to your will?”
His tone was mocking, but the hedge knight did not falter. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I mean to.”
For days, Aerion managed a vow of silence. He looked at the wall, ate his bland meals, and endured the maester’s visits with a cold, dead stare. It was only when he scratched at the dressing on his thigh one evening that a pained grunt escaped him.
The alpha, who had not yet left his room, stiffened instantly. “I did not mean to cut you so deep.”
“If you weren’t such a fool, you would’ve cut deeper,” he spat.
The brute said nothing at that. He fiddled with a bandage on his own arm, and it was then that the omega peered at him closely.
“I stabbed you half a hundred times,” Aerion pointed out crossly. “How is it that I am in this bed, and not you?”
The alpha shrugged. “I had good steel.”
“Good steel,” Aerion mocked. “Is that all it takes then? A thicker plate and a duller wit?”
The alpha didn’t rise to the bait. He remained where he was, one forearm braced against his knee, the other bandaged and stained through. Aerion’s eyes sharpened.
“Best hope that’s not festering,” he said, his voice almost pleasant.
“I’ve had worse,” the alpha replied.
“I’m sure you have,” Aerion muttered. “Lowborn men like you often do.”
Aerion watched as the alpha’s gaze drifted towards his throat. The hot, ugly coil of shame tightened in his chest. “If you look at it again, I will take your eyes.”
The threat was hollow. Aerion could barely lift his arms, but the intent was clear. The alpha didn’t look away.
“It needs to be cleaned again,” the giant said. “You’ve reopened it with all your fussing.”
Aerion laughed. A short biting sound that turned into a cough halfway through. “And whose fault is that?”
Silence met him, and his irritation rose.
“You don’t get to sit there,” Aerion said, voice rising despite the strain it demanded of him, “and speak as though this were all some unfortunate mishap. You—“ he cut himself off, breath hitching, then forced it out anyway. “You bit me like a dog.”
“I’d say more like a wolf,” the alpha corrected quietly.
Aerion went still. Then he smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “A distinction without merit.”
Another stretch of quiet this time.
Then the alpha shifted, pushing himself to his feet with a faint tightening around his mouth that betrayed the effort it cost him. He crossed the small distance between them in a few long strides.
Aerion watched him come. He did not move back; he could not. But he lifted his chin, his eyes defiant.
“Don’t,” he warned.
The alpha stopped just at the edge of the bed. Close enough that Aerion could smell him again. That same woodsy, wild scent that clung to him, that had begun to stubbornly linger beneath Aerion’s own skin. His stomach churned.
“Hold still,” the alpha said.
“Or what?” Aerion snapped. “You’ll bite me again?”
For the first time, a flash of genuine irritation flickered across the man’s face. “Yes,” he said flatly.
Aerion froze. “Try it,” he dared.
The alpha reached out. His hand was not gentle when it took his jaw. But it was not cruel either. He tilted Aerion’s head back, guiding rather than forcing, exposing the bandaged wound.
Aerion’s fingers twitched against the sheets. He could have clawed or fought. He hated that he didn’t.
The alpha unwound the linens with careful, efficient movements. The cloth stuck to places, and when it pulled free Aerion inhaled sharply despite himself, his back arching a fraction off the mattress.
“Stay still,” the alpha repeated.
“I said don’t—” Aerion started, then cut himself off with a hiss as a cool liquid touched the torn skin. It burned.
He clenched his teeth, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of another sound. He stretched to the side, peering at a standing looking glass in the corner of the room, and saw the mark.
It was hideous. Red and raw, the skin around it black where the alpha’s teeth had sunk in without hesitation or restraint. It was not clean. It was never meant to be.
Still, the alpha’s jaw tightened
“I forgot my own strength, for a moment.”
“Spare me,” Aerion jeered, despite the weakness dragging at him. “Do not insult me with false regret.”
The man’s hands paused. Then, quietly. “It was necessary.”
He resumed his tending, and the bandage was replaced—tighter this time. Aerion turned his head back, inch by inch, until he could look at the alpha again.
“You think this binds me?” he asked.
“It does.”
Aerion’s smile returned, faint and terrible. “We shall see, hedge knight.”
The alpha held his gaze. “Yes,” he said. “We will.”