Chapter Text
You're about to be fucked by a prince, he thought. Dunk’s brain was not on his side today.
A prince who's known for killing omegas.
Yes, definitely not being very cooperative.
His palms felt clammy as he stood in the corridor, dirty blond hair turned dark by the shadows that clung to this dimly-lit corner of the Red Keep. His mouth was pressed paler still, and taut from nerves. Other than that his face was a study in emptiness. Ser Arlan had once said Dunk’s blank face was a reflection of how thick he was.
He’d always been thick; always been big. But here, waiting outside the prince’s chambers, he felt small and weak as a yearling lamb. He shifted once, feeling cold in the thin silk nightwear he’d been given to don not an hour ago by silent beta servants, and hooked his hands in the thin satin belt tied in a bow around his waist like he didn't know what to do with them. Because he didn’t. He didn’t even know what he was doing there at all, in fact. In the corridor, in the palace, in the city. He should be fighting, he thought. He should be anywhere but here.
There was a tight feeling in his stomach, almost like hunger but not quite, and he did not like it. He did not like it one bit.
Why can’t he just open the door already, goddammit? he thought. Does he even know that there’s someone waiting outside his bedroom door for him? Does he even care?
He shivered. Probably not, was the honest truth. Everyone who’d dealt with him since this whole ordeal had begun had been very clear with him just exactly how insignificant and lowly and unworthy he was, from the royal scout who’d spotted him clawing for his life in the fighting pits of Flea Bottom to the Goldcloaks who’d shown up the very next day to take him away, to the servants who’d preened and prepared him to be taken to the prince.
Dumb whore, they’d called him. Lowlife scum . Not much he could say against that one, not when the one calling him that was the firstborn son of the richest lord in the kingdom. Peasant filth . Again, when you were the only bastard commoner in a keep of nobility and their well-bred servant, not a lot you could put up against that. These people had lineages tracing back to old Valyria—Dunk didn’t even know his own last name.
His friends at the pit—grizzled old Arlan the trainer, pretty Tanselle who took the bets—had told him this would be a step up, out of the fighting pits, to a better life. But Dunk wasn’t too sure.
He’d been freed from the fighting pits, yes-–but straight into the hands of the royal family, to serve the needs of their vicious alpha heir.
At least in the fighting pits, he’d been a warrior of a kind, even if it was against three mostly blind adolescents crippled with leprosy and indentured into slavery by uncaring parents or those uncaring parents themselves, when they got into debt, or helpless, lowborn betas and omegas like himself, put into these circumstances through no fault of their own. Now, he was just a step up from a whore. A very small, practically non-existent step.
He swallowed.
He had faced monsters in the fighting pits, hadn't he? And hadn't even blinked; he'd watched his own middle finger be carved, slowly, into very small pieces and fed one by one to a rabid dog, to spare Tanselle the punishment when the pit master had accused her of shifting some coins into her own purse. And he'd smiled the whole time, like he was enjoying it, like it was a pleasant foot massage. But this.
This made him nervous.
He was scared of the prince; he knew it; of the power he held over Dunk’s head, and of his rumored cruelty. How omegas had left his chamber so broken they could barely walk. How the noble families of Westeros had stopped offering their children up as mates for him, because of his brutality. How, when he hit his ruts, the palace was forced to summon entire brothels worth of prostitutes, some of which, it was rumored, did not leave alive.
Breathe, Dunk, he told himself. The crown prince is mortal. He is not a god. He is not all-powerful.
But that was the wrong thing to tell himself, too. They said the Targaryens were closer to gods than men. That they had dragon blood in their veins. That it was what made them dangerous, burning in their veins like the alchemist’s Wildfire. Dunk had fought a disgraced alchemist, once. He’d broken like any other man.
Gods or not, the Targaryens would break like that too if Dunk hit them. Which he wouldn’t. There might be faster ways to die, but they didn’t come to mind just then. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall…
When the door to the bedchamber opened he was still again, composed, an icy pale figure in silk. A serving girl in pale robes nodded to him, not meeting his eyes. There was a bright red hand print on her cheek. One eye was swollen. That was when Dunk noticed the sheet of platinum hair flowing around her shoulders, the purple eyes red from weeping, the jewels heavy on her brow, her neck, her lobes. That's no serving girl. He wracked his mind and realized that must be Princess Daenora Targaryen, the wife and cousin of the prince. He made to bow clumsily, to murmur your grace, but she had already moved past him by the time he'd gathered his tongue up to do so. He looked over his shoulder, watching her practically flee down the corridor, holding her skirts up to let her move faster. If that was how Prince Aerion treated his lawful wife, gently born and his own blood to boot...
Dunk felt himself grow cold.
From within the bedchamber, a hoarse voice sounded like the creaking of the Stranger's footsteps on a dark, cold night. "I can hear you breathing, omega."
Dunk's breath stilled in his lungs. "I'm--Your Grace---" he didn't dare move, couldn't move, fear paralyzing him to a corpse-like torpor.
"Well," drawled the voice, and it sounded crueler now, if that was possible, low and mocking and hideously soft. "Don't just stand there, come in. Let me lay eyes on you."
Dunk forced himself to move towards the still-open door. One foot and then the other, forward, forward....
At last he passed the threshold. He was hardly cognizant of the door swinging shut behind him, of the gentle thud it made, muffled in the ornate chambers. He hardly saw the lavish tapestries hanging on every stone wall, lit by the countless flickering torches; hardly even felt the warmth of the roaring fire in the enormous hearth on one wall. He had only eyes--only senses---for the prince reclining, hands crossed behind his head, on the enormous, four-poster bed.
"That wasn't so hard, was it?" the prince drawled. “Look up. I would see you.”
Timidly Dunk raised his face. He knew the prince had seen him before--–that’s how he’d requested Dunk, after all, he’d spotted him at the fighting pits and taken a liking to him—but Dunk had never seen the prince.
He was beautiful. That was Dunk's first thought. So beautiful it wiped every other thought from his mind. Even the fear was gone, for a moment. He was the sort of alpha who made Dunk hate that he was an omega, who made him feel big and clumsy and ugly. He was so beautiful he hurt to look at. His eyes were a deeper purple than his wife's had been, closer to indigo than violet. His hair was paler, his skin whiter.
He looked younger than someone with all the horrors attached to his reputation had a right to be–not past his twenty-fifth birthday, full expressive mouth, curling brows, and eyes that appeared bloodshot even in the dim dancing light of the mounted torches.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
The prince allowed Dunk his reverie for a moment. His eyes drank in Dunk in turn, scouring every inch of him. A predatory light glinted in his eyes. "Take off your clothes, omega."
"W-what?"
"Your clothes." A hint of something icy flickered across his face. "I wish to see you, boy."
Clasp by clasp, Dunk began to unbutton his shirt.