Chapter Text
From the Records of Omega Lineage, House Targaryen, Kept by the Maesters of the Red Keep
In the one hundred and ninety-second year after Aegon's Conquest, a male omega was born to Prince Maekar Targaryen and his lady wife, Dyanna of House Dayne. The child, named Aerion, marked the first omega birth within the direct Targaryen line in three generations, the last being Prince Valerion, third son of King Aegon III, who perished in infancy.
The birth was attended by Grand Maester Hareth and recorded with particular care, given its dynastic significance. Male omegas of Valyrian descent had long been prized for their fertility and the strength of the bonds they formed with their alphas. That such a child should be born to House Targaryen after so long an absence was considered by many to be a sign of the gods' favor.
Given the rarity and political significance of this birth, negotiations for betrothal commenced within the year. Several houses put forth candidates but King Daeron II determined that so precious an omega should remain within the royal house. It was decided that Prince Aerion should be bonded to Prince Baelor Targaryen, the King's heir, whose first wife had perished some years prior.
The betrothal was announced in 193 AC. The bonding was formalized in 206 AC, when Prince Aerion reached his fourteenth year.
The match was considered advantageous on all accounts: it secured omega lineage within the royal house, strengthened the bond between the King's heir and his brother Prince Maekar's line, and ensured Prince Aerion's protection under the aegis of the future king. That the prince was known to be difficult in temperament was noted but not deemed significant. It was expected that the bond would gentle him.
Consummation was delayed, as was customary for omegas bonded young, until such time as the omega's first heat should manifest. Prince Baelor, by all accounts, was patient in this regard—a fact remarked upon by several observers, given the political pressure to produce heirs. "The prince would not be rushed," wrote Maester Vollen of Summerhall. "He said he had waited this long. He could wait until the boy was ready."
Prince Aerion's first heat occurred in 209 AC, at the tourney at Ashford Meadow, under circumstances both unusual and well-documented.
An incident had occurred involving Prince Aerion and a hedge knight styling himself Ser Duncan the Tall. The prince, having witnessed what he perceived as treasonous mockery of House Targaryen in a puppet performance, took action against the offending performer. The hedge knight intervened with violence against the prince's person. The matter escalated to a trial of seven—an ancient form of combat seldom invoked.
It was the evening before the trial, following Prince Aerion's successful invocation of this ancient rite, that his first heat manifested. Maester Yormwell noted in his records that the onset appeared to be triggered by "an excess of strong emotion, joy chief among them." The bond was consummated that night.
Prince Baelor, in a decision that shocked the assembled lords, chose to fight in the trial not for his omega's cause, but for the accused hedge knight. He was gravely wounded in the subsequent battle by a blow from his own brother's mace. He survived, though his recovery was long.
The child conceived that night—a male alpha, healthy and strong, bearing the coloring of his father—was delivered in the spring of 210 AC. He was named Balerion.
Maester Yormwell, who attended both the prince's injuries and the omega's pregnancy, noted in his private correspondence that he had never seen a bond so tested in its first true flowering, nor one that emerged so fierce from the crucible. "The consummation came wrapped in blood and conflict," he wrote to a colleague at the Citadel. "And yet the child thrives. One might say he was forged in fire, as all true dragons are."
No further commentary was recorded.
~*~*~
Baelor felt it before he heard anything.
The bond flared hot and sharp, a spike of pain and fury that made him set down his cup too hard. Wine sloshed over the rim, staining the pale wood of the table. Pain, real pain, threaded through with a humiliation so acute it tasted like blood on the back of his tongue.
Aerion.
He was moving before he’d consciously decided to, abandoning the tournament rolls he’d been reviewing, taking the stairs two at a time. Three years of bonding had taught him to read his omega’s moods through that bond between them—the cold burn when Aerion felt slighted, the bright vicious flare when he’d found someone’s weakness and was pressing it, the rare warmth when he let himself feel safe. This was none of those.
Someone had gotten through. Through that armor of sharp edges and cruelty, and they had hurt him.
Servants pressed themselves to the walls as Baelor passed. He barely registered them. The bond pulled at him like a hook in his chest, dragging him toward whatever disaster awaited.
Because it would be a disaster. With Aerion, it was always a disaster. That was simply the shape of loving him—a series of fires to be managed, wounds to be salved, enemies to be placated. Baelor had made his peace with this years ago. He had chosen Aerion knowing exactly what he was choosing: a boy too clever for his own good, too sharp, too quick to cut. A boy who had decided the only way to survive his designation was to make everyone afraid of him.
The tent grounds were chaos when he arrived.
Torchlight against painted canvas. A crowd pressing close, carrying that particular energy that gathered when violence had occurred—servants, soldiers, minor lords, all craning for a better view, their faces hungry with that appetite people developed for other people's catastrophes.
At the center of it, Maekar’s men were restraining a figure so large he blocked out the torches behind him.
Baelor’s stride faltered.
Ser Duncan the Tall.
He knew this man. Had met him only recently, had listened to him stumble through a speech about his dead master with such earnest clumsiness that Baelor had found himself unexpectedly moved. Ser Arlan of Pennytree. He was a true knight. The hedge knight had flushed like a boy when Baelor corrected him about the exact number of lances. There had been something in that moment—something true. Baelor had vouched for him without hesitation, had remembered Ser Arlan when every other had claimed ignorance, because he made it his business to remember the men who served the realm.
Now Ser Duncan’s face was full of rage. He wasn’t fighting the soldiers who held him. He was straining toward something past them, his blue eyes fixed on a point over Baelor’s shoulder.
Baelor turned.
Aerion.
The omega stood at the edge of the torchlight, and for a moment Baelor couldn’t breathe.
He was bleeding. A split lip and swollen cheekbone. The careful way he held his jaw meant damage Baelor couldn't see yet.
This was his omega. His unclaimed omega, still waiting, still trusting Baelor to protect him until the day he was ready to be claimed properly. Three years of bonding without consummation. Three years of sleeping beside this boy without touching him, because Aerion had been fourteen when they bonded and Baelor would not rush him. Three years of patience that the court whispered about, speculating whether the bond was defective somehow.
Something old and territorial uncoiled in Baelor’s chest. His hands curled into fists before he could stop them.
“What happened.” His voice came out flat. Dangerous. He didn’t recognize it.
“Your Grace.” One of Maekar’s captains stepped forward. “The hedge knight attacked Prince Aerion. There are witnesses—”
“He was hurting her!”
Ser Duncan’s voice cut through the report, raw with desperation. Baelor followed the man’s gaze to a girl huddled against the wall— a maester already kneeling beside her, her face wet with tears, one hand cradled to her chest. Even from here, Baelor could see the odd angle of her finger.
“Her finger,” Ser Duncan said. “He broke her finger. Snapped it. She was screaming, and he was just—” The man’s voice cracked. “He was smiling.”
Smiling.
The rage in Baelor’s chest flickered. Complicated itself.
He knew that smile. Had seen it when Aerion found a wound to press salt into, when he'd located exactly the right cruelty for exactly the right moment. The smile that made courtiers flinch and servants weep. The smile Baelor had spent three years trying to gentle without snuffing out entirely, because the fire in Aerion was what made him Aerion, and Baelor didn't want to smother it. Just bank it. Direct it somewhere it wouldn't burn innocent people.
He had failed, apparently. Again.
“Enough.” The courtyard fell silent.
He looked at Aerion, who met his gaze without flinching. The expression was perfect—cold, haughty, untouchable—as though the bruises on his face were badges of honor rather than evidence of defeat. Through the bond, Baelor felt what lived beneath: defensive and righteous and certain.
Gods help him.
“Leave us,” Baelor said. “Take Ser Duncan to a cell. Tend his wounds. The girl as well.”
“Your Grace, Prince Aerion has demanded—”
“I will hear what Prince Aerion demands from Prince Aerion himself.”
The captain hesitated.
“Now,” Baelor said.
It took time for everyone to clear out. Soldiers dragging Ser Duncan away—the hedge knight didn’t fight, but his eyes found Baelor’s one last time, steady and searching, before he disappeared through the archway. The maester guided the weeping girl toward the castle.
And then it was just the two of them. Their bond stretched taut, thrumming with everything neither of them was saying.
“Well?” Aerion’s voice was silk and venom. “That was quite the performance. Very princely. Very authoritative. I’m sure the smallfolk were tremendously impressed.”
“We’re going inside.”
“Are we?” Aerion raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall agreeing to that.”
“I’m not asking you to agree. I’m telling you what’s happening.”
“Ah. There he is.” Aerion’s eyes glittered in the torchlight. “The Hand of the King, issuing commands. For a moment, I thought I was speaking to my bondmate, but clearly I was mistaken.”
Baelor didn’t rise to it. He’d learned that much, at least. Aerion wanted a fight—wanted Baelor angry, reactive, pulled down into the mud where they could tear at each other properly. This tent yard was just his newly chosen battlefield.
Baelor refused to play.
“Inside,” he said. “Now.”
“Or what?” Aerion stepped closer, and even bruised, even bleeding, he was magnificent in his fury. “You’ll drag me? Throw me over your shoulder like a sack of grain? I’m sure the lords of the Reach would love to see that. The prince who can’t control his own omega—”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can continue this out here, in front of whatever servants are still watching from the windows, or you can come inside and say all the vicious things you’re composing to my face. Without an audience.”
Aerion’s eyes narrowed.
Through the bond, Baelor felt him calculating. Weighing options. Aerion never did anything without considering the angles—even in rage, even in pain, that brilliant mind was always working.
Aerion could refuse. Could stand here in the courtyard and force Baelor to either back down or escalate. Could turn this into exactly the spectacle he wanted.
But that wasn’t really what Aerion wanted. Not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to fight—really fight, with words sharp enough to draw blood—and he couldn’t do that properly with witnesses. Couldn’t let Baelor see the cracks if there was anyone else who might see them too.
“Fine.” The word came out clipped. Furious. “But don’t think for a moment that this means you’ve won anything.”
“I never do,” Baelor said.
Aerion turned and stalked toward the castle, his spine rigid, every line of his body radiating contempt. He didn’t look back to see if Baelor was following.
Baelor followed anyway.