You smiled faintly. Oscar Wilde always sounded as though he were arguing with the world.

The front door opened. Even before the sound of heels echoed across the marble floor, you knew your mother had returned.

She never simply entered a room. She arrived.

Her perfume preceded her by several seconds—something floral and expensive that lingered like a carefully rehearsed first impression—and when she appeared in the doorway, she looked untouched by the outside world. Every strand of honey-blonde hair remained precisely where it belonged, her ivory blouse showed not a single crease beneath the tailored camel coat draped elegantly over her shoulders, her lipstick was subtle enough to appear effortless despite the twenty minutes it had undoubtedly taken to perfect, and her freshly manicured nails caught the afternoon light as she removed her gloves.

For a brief moment, neither of you spoke.

She stood framed by the doorway, polished down to the smallest detail, while you remained curled beneath the window in an oversized sweater several winters too old to be fashionable. Your hair had long since surrendered, escaping the pencil that barely held it together, and the afternoon sunlight painted you not with elegance but with an almost careless softness.

You had inherited your mother's features. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same graceful lines that made strangers glance twice and yet, the resemblance ended there.

She treated beauty as something to be maintained. You treated it as something that happened, or didn't, with little consequence either way.

Looking at the two of you felt less like looking at a mother and daughter than at two women who had learned entirely different definitions of what it meant to exist in the world.

Her eyes found you. Then the oversized sweater. The loose cotton trousers. The socks that didn't match. The pencil holding your hair in a carelessly assembled knot. She sighed.

"You truly have a remarkable talent for looking like you've survived a shipwreck."

You glanced down at yourself. "I thought I looked comfortable?"

"Comfortable," she repeated, as though tasting the word and finding it disappointing. "Comfort has become terribly fashionable lately."

She crossed the room without waiting for an answer, adjusting a vase by less than an inch before straightening a picture frame that had never been crooked to begin with. You watched her in silence.

She could never enter a room without changing something. A cushion. A curtain. A vase. If everything already appeared perfect, she simply searched harder until she found an imperfection no one else had noticed. You, on the other hand, had always believed a room should look lived in. She believed it should look admired.

"Presentation matters," she continued absentmindedly. "People notice these things."

"I've noticed."

"No, darling." She smiled patiently. "You don't." Silence settled between you for only a moment before she opened her handbag and began searching through its contents with meticulous precision. "I met Baelor for lunch."

The name meant little for you. Baelor, you remembered, was the name of your mother's new romantic conquest—as you liked to call him. Another replacement for your dad's position, a position no one would ever truly fill.

You hummed politely.

"He's looking forward to meeting you."

That finally drew your attention away from the book. "Oh?"

"This Saturday."

She withdrew a hardcover volume from her bag and placed it gently onto your lap.

The title gleamed in gold lettering.

Modern Etiquette for Formal Society.

You blinked. "...Seriously?"

"Entirely."

You turned the book over. "It teaches table etiquette, conversational decorum, introductions, proper posture, the correct use of silverware" She counted each topic on perfectly manicured fingers. "Everything you'll need."

"I know how to eat."

"You know how to consume food." She smiled again. "There is a difference."

You laughed quietly. She did not.

"There will only be Baelor and his sons," she said, her tone softening just enough to disguise, though never quite conceal, the calculation beneath it. "I'd appreciate not being embarrassed."

You looked at her for a long moment. The words lingered in the room. Not I'd like you to make a good impression. Not I hope you like him. Only that.

Don't embarrass me.

Sometimes you wondered whether your mother had ever realized how often she spoke about appearances without mentioning feelings even once.

"Are you introducing me to your boyfriend—" You lifted the heavy book slightly. "or applying for admission into a royal court?"

"If you knew the difference," she replied smoothly, "I wouldn't have needed to buy the book."

You looked down at the book resting across your lap without opening it again.

Your mother was already moving through the sitting room once more, adjusting the folds of a curtain that didn't need straightening, aligning a decorative bowl by barely half an inch, polishing a fingerprint from the polished surface of a side table with the edge of her sleeve.

She couldn't walk past disorder without correcting it, even when the disorder was imaginary.

You watched her in silence.

It occurred to you that she never seemed tired of perfecting surfaces. Every gesture she made was directed outward, toward the version of life other people would eventually witness.

She never asked what book you had been reading. She never noticed the tea had gone cold. She never wondered why you preferred quiet afternoons to crowded dinners.

Somewhere along the way, the distance between the two of you had stopped feeling like something either of you intended to cross.

She adjusted one final picture frame, smiled with quiet satisfaction at a room that had looked exactly the same five minutes earlier, and reached for her handbag.

"Saturday," she reminded you without turning around. "Please don't make me regret introducing you."

The front door closed softly behind her.

The house returned to its familiar silence.

You remained on the sofa for several moments, listening to the fading sound of her heels until it disappeared completely, before lowering your gaze once more to the forgotten page in your lap.

—

Saturday belonged entirely to your mother.

You realized it the moment she swept open your bedroom curtains without asking, flooding the room with pale morning light before laying a garment bag across the foot of your bed.

"We're leaving in twenty minutes."

You blinked sleepily from beneath the blankets. "For what?"

She looked at you as though the answer should have been obvious. "Preparation." She pronounced the word with the solemnity another person might have reserved for surgery. "You aren't meeting Baelor looking like..." Her gaze traveled over your oversized sleep shirt, your tangled hair and the novel lying face-down beside your pillow. "...yourself."

You couldn't help smiling.

"I thought that was exactly who he was supposed to meet."

Your mother's expression barely shifted. "Not the first time."

—

The salon smelled of jasmine, hairspray and freshly brewed espresso, while women drifted gracefully between mirrors discussing charity galas, upcoming holidays and social engagements beneath the soft strains of classical music that floated almost unnoticed through the room.

Your mother belonged there effortlessly. She greeted the receptionists by name, kissed one of the stylists on the cheek and accepted a cappuccino before anyone had even asked whether she wanted one.

You, meanwhile, settled awkwardly into an oversized leather chair with your backpack resting between your feet, feeling as though someone had accidentally invited a university student into a room designed exclusively for women who never appeared to have an untidy day in their lives.

Within minutes, strangers surrounded you. Your hair was brushed until every knot disappeared before long sections were lifted, examined beneath bright lights and discussed over your head as though you weren't sitting there at all.

"It has beautiful texture."

"It only needs shape."

"A little movement."

"No," your mother corrected gently. "Elegance."

You watched your reflection while another stylist carefully curled the ends of your hair, realizing with quiet discomfort that you barely recognized the girl in the mirror already.

The manicure came next.

The technician smiled warmly as she took your hands into hers. "You don't usually have your nails done."

"No."

"They're lovely."

"They're practical," your mother corrected before you could answer. "There's a difference."

The woman laughed politely.

You lowered your gaze while the file moved rhythmically across your nails, surprised by how something so insignificant could make even your own hands begin to feel unfamiliar.

—

Boutiques proved even more exhausting.

Dress after dress disappeared beneath your mother's unwavering scrutiny.

"Too casual."

"Too youthful."

"Too loud."

"Too plain."

Sales assistants hurried between racks while you obediently stepped in and out of changing rooms until the fabrics, colors and silhouettes blurred together into a single expensive haze.

Eventually one of them returned carrying a midnight-blue dress whose elegance came not from embellishment but from restraint. There was no glitter, no embroidery, nothing that openly demanded attention. It possessed the quiet confidence of something that never needed to ask to be admired.

Your mother smiled the instant you stepped out wearing it. "There you are."

You turned toward the mirror. It fit perfectly. For reasons you couldn't explain, that only made you feel worse.

—

By the time the afternoon ended, shopping bags occupied nearly every available space inside the car. Shoes, jewelry, a silk scarf and a small evening clutch lay carefully arranged across the back seat while your mother drove home wearing the quiet satisfaction of an artist admiring a masterpiece nearing completion.

"You'll make an excellent impression."

You rested your forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window. "I wasn't aware making an impression was my responsibility."

"It always is."

—

The house felt unnaturally quiet by the time evening settled over it.

The dress waited outside your wardrobe. The jewelry remained inside its velvet case. The shoes sat perfectly aligned beneath the bed, every detail prepared with the meticulous precision your mother considered indispensable.

One piece at a time, you dressed.

The fabric settled comfortably across your shoulders, the necklace rested lightly against your collarbone and the earrings caught the light with the smallest movement. Only when everything was finally in place did you step before the mirror.

You stopped.

The young woman reflected in the glass was undeniably beautiful. Her hair fell in soft waves instead of the untidy bun you wore almost every day, while makeup so subtle it was nearly invisible brightened her eyes, softened every feature and erased the quiet university student who spent afternoons reading novels beside forgotten cups of cold tea.

She looked graceful. Elegant. Refined. Exactly the sort of young woman your mother wanted the world to admire.

You continued staring. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. Searching for something unmistakably yours.

The thoughtful expression that always appeared when you reached an interesting paragraph. The quiet awkwardness you had never felt the need to hide. The girl who forgot to match her socks because she had become distracted by a book.

She wasn't there.

For one impossible moment, it felt as though someone had borrowed your face and learned to wear it better than you ever had.

A gentle knock broke the silence. "Darling?" your mother's voice called through the door. "Baelor will be expecting us."

You didn't answer immediately. Your eyes remained fixed on the stranger standing inside the mirror.

When you finally spoke, your voice sounded oddly distant. "I'm coming."

The woman reflected in the glass moved exactly when you did, and you weren't entirely convinced she was you.

—

The drive unfolded beneath a sky slowly surrendering to dusk, where the last traces of sunlight dissolved into long ribbons of amber reflected across rain-darkened streets. Beyond the windows, the city continued with its ordinary rhythm. People hurrying home, cafés beginning to fill, traffic lights blinking patiently at crowded intersections, but inside the car there existed only your mother's voice.

She spoke almost without interruption, moving effortlessly from one subject to another as though rehearsing a speech she had delivered countless times before.

Baelor's career, his impeccable reputation, the elegance of his home, the charity foundation he chaired, the respect his family commanded; every detail seemed carefully selected, polished until it gleamed, another stone laid upon the immaculate image she had spent months constructing around her new life.

Listening to her, one could almost forget that only a year earlier she had been speaking about your father with the very same certainty, with a love that you still kept like an arcane relic inside you, but he had vanished from the face of her psyche like the wind does with the sand.

You answered when necessary, though most of the time a nod seemed sufficient. Silence had always come more naturally to you than conversation, and your mother had long ago mistaken that quietness for agreement.

Every few minutes she glanced sideways, not to ask whether you were nervous or excited, but to inspect the work that had occupied her entire afternoon. She straightened an invisible fold near your shoulder, smoothed the fabric gathered over your knees and frowned when she noticed the faintest imperfection in your lipstick.

"You've smudged it."

Instinctively you rubbed your thumb against the corner of your mouth.

"No, darling." She sighed with patient resignation before retrieving a neatly folded handkerchief from her handbag. Leaning across the console, she corrected it herself with delicate, practiced movements, then leaned back to admire the result. "There. Perfect."

For a brief moment you wondered whether she had ever looked at your face that carefully after you had cried the night she and dad separated.

—

Baelor's residence stood beyond imposing wrought-iron gates framed by ancient oaks whose branches intertwined above the driveway like the vaulted ceiling of an old cathedral. It was undeniably grand, yet possessed none of the ostentation displayed by people who felt compelled to advertise their fortune. This was quieter wealth, older wealth, the kind that had ceased needing to impress because everyone already knew it existed. Warm light spilled from tall windows onto perfectly maintained gardens where marble statues rested among trimmed hedges, and somewhere beyond them the gentle murmur of a fountain drifted through the evening air.

Your mother drew a slow, almost imperceptible breath before stepping from the car. Had anyone else been watching, they would never have noticed. You did.

The front door opened before either of you reached it.

Baelor himself descended the steps to greet you.

He was taller than you had imagined, broad-shouldered without appearing imposing, dressed in a charcoal suit that fit him with effortless precision. Everything about him projected understated refinement, from the silver watch resting beneath his cuff to the warmth with which he smiled the instant he saw your mother. There was nothing performative about his manners; they seemed so deeply woven into him that courtesy had become instinct rather than performance.

"There you are."

His voice possessed the calm confidence of someone accustomed to making other people feel welcome. He kissed your mother's cheek first, greeting her with easy familiarity before turning toward you. The expression on his face softened almost imperceptibly.

"So this is the famous daughter."

The words themselves were harmless. Perfectly polite. Something about them unsettled you before you could explain why. Perhaps it was the quiet amusement in his voice, perhaps it was the strange certainty with which he said them, as though he had heard enough stories to feel he already knew you.

Your mother rested a light hand against the middle of your back. "My daughter."

You extended your hand automatically. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Targaryen." You answered in the way your mother had instructed you.

Instead of taking it immediately, he smiled with gentle care. "Baelor." He made you repeat it, only then did he accept the handshake.

His grip was light, respectful and brief, exactly as etiquette demanded. Nothing about the gesture crossed any boundary, and when he released your hand, his eyes lingered on your face for the smallest fraction of a second too long. It wasn't staring. It wasn't inappropriate. It felt more like quiet observation, as though he were committing your features to memory with a concentration too subtle for anyone else to notice.

The sensation vanished almost immediately.

You told yourself you had imagined it.

The dining room reflected the same restrained elegance as the rest of the house. A long walnut table occupied its center beneath an antique crystal chandelier whose warm light settled softly over polished silver, delicate porcelain and crystal glasses that caught every flicker of candlelight. Fresh white lilies rested in low arrangements along the table, beautiful enough to enrich the room without obstructing conversation, while the scent of rosemary and roasted herbs drifted from the adjoining kitchen.

Two young men were already waiting when you entered.

"The eldest," Baelor said, resting an affectionate hand upon the taller one's shoulder, "is Valarr."

Valarr greeted you with a slight inclination of his head before offering his hand. He appeared only a few years older than you, impeccably dressed and impossibly composed, with the effortless confidence of someone who had spent his entire life succeeding at everything expected of him. Peculiar features, you noticed. Attractive heterochromatic eyes, and a silver streak impossible to miss. Every movement seemed deliberate without becoming rigid, every word measured before it was spoken.

"It's a pleasure." His voice was low and calm.

Beside him stood another young man whose expression immediately suggested a far less disciplined temperament.

"And this menace," Baelor continued with an affectionate sigh, "is Matarys."

"I object to that introduction."

"You object to everything."

"I simply have standards."

Baelor laughed softly. "I'll let you discover those standards for yourself."

Matarys grinned before shaking your hand with easy enthusiasm. "I promise I'm considerably more entertaining than my brother."

"That isn't a particularly high achievement," Valarr replied without looking at him.

"Oh, don't encourage him," Baelor said, though the fondness in his voice betrayed how accustomed he had become to these exchanges.

The room relaxed almost instantly.

Dinner unfolded with surprising ease, carried along by the comfortable rhythm of a family that had long ago perfected the art of talking over one another without anyone feeling unheard. Matarys possessed the peculiar gift of transforming even the most ordinary events into elaborate adventures, embellishing every story until it became impossible to distinguish memory from invention. Baelor corrected him with long-suffering amusement whenever the exaggerations grew too ambitious, while Valarr quietly dismantled each embellished detail with the patience of someone who had performed this exact ritual since childhood.

"That professor didn't throw you out."

"He intended to."

"He asked you to lower your voice."

"Which, under the circumstances, amounted to the same thing."

Valarr sighed into his wine. "I was there."

"Traitor."

Laughter circled the table, even your mother relaxed enough to forget, for a few precious minutes, the careful perfection she carried everywhere.

Baelor never attempted to dominate the conversation. Instead, he listened far more than he spoke, thanking the staff by name whenever they entered the room, asking thoughtful questions without prying and allowing everyone else the space to answer at their own pace. He seemed genuinely interested in whatever people chose to say, a quality so uncommon that it almost felt rehearsed.

Eventually his attention settled upon you.

"Your mother told me you were an avid reader. Tell me, what are you reading these days?"

"The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Something brightened behind his eyes. "Wilde."

You nodded. "I've nearly finished it."

"And what do you think?"

You considered the question before answering. "I think everyone mistakes admiration for love."

Silence settled gently across the table. Not uncomfortable. Reflective.

Valarr looked toward you with unmistakable interest. "I would've said vanity."

"So would most people."

"And you disagree?"

"I think vanity is only the excuse."

For several seconds nobody spoke. Baelor continued watching you with quiet fascination before smiling almost to himself.

"You notice things."

You hesitated. "I like books."

"I'm not talking about books." His voice remained as warm as before, yet something about the remark settled strangely beneath your skin. "I'm talking about people."

Before you could answer, Matarys interrupted with another wildly exaggerated account of an ill-advised fencing tournament that immediately pulled everyone else's attention away.

Yours never fully returned to the conversation.

Throughout the remainder of dinner, you became increasingly aware of Baelor's gaze. He never stared openly, never allowed his attention to linger long enough for anyone else to notice, and never behaved with anything less than perfect propriety. Yet every time discussion shifted elsewhere and you happened to glance in his direction, you found him already looking at you—not at your dress, nor your carefully arranged appearance as your mother had done all evening, but at your expressions, your pauses, the small unconscious movements that escaped your control. It wasn't desire. It wasn't impropriety. If anything, it resembled quiet fascination.

For reasons you couldn't name, that disturbed you far more.

By the time dessert arrived, your mother looked happier than she had in months. She laughed easily, Baelor listened whenever she spoke, Matarys continued filling the room with effortless humor and Valarr had drifted into an animated discussion about politics with the calm precision of someone who genuinely enjoyed intellectual disagreement. It should have been a pleasant evening. It should have felt reassuring to watch such decent people surrounding your mother.

Instead, an uncomfortable certainty settled silently inside your chest.

Baelor was, by every reasonable measure, a good man. Thoughtful. Patient. Courteous. The kind of man any daughter should have hoped her mother would meet after a painful divorce.

That was precisely the problem.

Every kindness he offered only reminded you that he wasn't your father. He occupied a chair that had once belonged to someone else. He poured wine into your mother's glass with familiar ease. He made her laugh using stories that should have belonged to another life. No amount of gentleness could make him feel like family.

When the evening finally came to an end, Baelor accompanied both of you to the front entrance himself.

"It was truly a pleasure meeting you."

You offered the polite smile expected of you. "You as well."

He held your gaze for just a heartbeat longer than courtesy required before returning your smile. "I hope this won't be the last dinner we share."

The words were perfectly innocent. His expression was perfectly kind. As your mother climbed into the waiting car visibly content with how the evening had unfolded, you found yourself turning back one last time.

Baelor remained standing beneath the warm light spilling from the doorway. Still watching, still smiling, and, for reasons you couldn't explain, you couldn't shake the quiet certainty that throughout the entire evening, he had paid far more attention to you than anyone else at that table had realized.

—

The following Saturday arrived wrapped in one of those quiet afternoons that seemed suspended outside of time. The city moved lazily beneath a pale autumn sky, parks slowly filling with families, cyclists drifting along tree-lined paths and children chasing one another through blankets of fallen leaves while cafés spilled soft conversation onto the sidewalks. It was the sort of day that had once belonged entirely to the two of you.

Your father had always insisted that weekends were sacred, no meetings, no work, no excuse, and because of that you had grown up believing Saturdays existed for museums where he somehow knew the history behind every painting, for bookstores where he never left without buying you one more novel than he'd intended, for long walks that inevitably became improvised history lessons as he pointed toward old buildings and transformed ordinary streets into stories about forgotten kings, architects and revolutions.

When you were little, he had possessed this remarkable sense to make the world seem endlessly interesting, answering every impossible question you asked with absolute seriousness, and when he didn't know the answer, he would simply smile and promise to learn it before the following weekend.

Back then, it had been impossible to imagine a version of your life in which spending time with you wasn't the highlight of his week.

After the divorce, that certainty dissolved so quietly you almost failed to notice it. At first, the distance disguised itself as exhaustion.

He answered your messages a little later than usual, cancelled a lunch because of work, forgot to return a phone call and apologized with genuine sincerity the following day. You believed him because you wanted to. Adults became busy. Divorce complicated things. Life had simply become heavier than either of you had expected. But weeks slowly stretched into months, and every conversation seemed to require more effort than the last.

Eventually, arranging a simple lunch with your own father began to feel less like speaking to family and more like requesting an appointment with someone whose schedule you were grateful had managed to accommodate you at all.

It took three unanswered messages, two calls that rang until voicemail and nearly two weeks of waiting before your phone finally vibrated one evening. The message contained only four words.

Dad 💗

Saturday. Two o'clock. One hour.

There was no I've missed you. No How have you been? No apology for the silence that had settled between you. Not even your name. You stared at the screen for several minutes before replying with a simple I'll be there, telling yourself it didn't matter how brief the invitation was because what truly mattered was that he had answered at all.

The café overlooked the river, its terrace scattered with wrought-iron tables where elderly couples lingered over coffee, students revised notes beneath striped umbrellas and children leaned over the railing to watch boats drift lazily across the water. You arrived nearly fifteen minutes early, partly because you had always inherited your father's punctuality and partly because some childish part of you still hoped he might already be there waiting. You chose the table closest to the river because it had always been his favorite place to sit whenever the weather allowed it. The waiter asked whether you wished to order something, but you only requested a glass of water, promising you were waiting for someone.

At exactly two o'clock, you saw him crossing the street.

Your heart recognized him long before your mind did. The familiar stride, the dark wool coat you had seen every winter for as long as you could remember, the same broad shoulders that had once carried you through airports whenever you had fallen asleep on family holidays. For one impossible second, instinct urged you to stand and throw your arms around him just as you had done countless times growing up.

Then he glanced at his watch before looking toward you, and that impulse disappeared. "I'm sorry," he said as soon as he reached the table, pulling out his chair before sitting down. "Traffic."

"It's okay," you answered immediately, smiling more brightly than you actually felt.

He returned the smile politely. It was warm enough to avoid seeming cold, yet strangely formal, the sort of expression exchanged between acquaintances who respected one another rather than between a father and the daughter who used to climb onto his lap every Sunday morning demanding pancakes shaped like dinosaurs.

"You look well."

"So do you."

Silence followed.

Not the comforting silence you remembered from childhood, when the two of you could spend entire afternoons reading different books in the same room without either of you feeling obliged to speak. This silence felt unfamiliar. Empty. It searched desperately for a conversation that refused to begin.

The waiter returned. Your father ordered black coffee without looking at the menu, and you asked for the same simply because, for years, copying his order had become such an unconscious habit that you did it before realizing it. When you were younger he would always laugh, teasing you for refusing to develop tastes of your own. This time he didn't even seem to notice.

You carried the conversation the way one carries something unexpectedly fragile, careful not to let it slip through your hands. You asked about work, and he told you it had become demanding. You asked whether he had finally finished renovating the study he'd always talked about, and he admitted he hadn't found the time. You asked after your grandparents, whether they were healthy, whether he'd visited recently, whether the roses your grandmother insisted on planting every spring had survived another season. Each answer arrived complete enough to close the subject before another could naturally grow from it, leaving you constantly searching for something else to ask.

Finally, you reached for memory.

"Do you remember when we got lost trying to find that little bookstore near the cathedral?" you asked with a laugh that felt almost genuine. "You were absolutely convinced you knew the way."

He frowned faintly, searching through recollections that once had belonged to both of you.

"Vaguely."

"You insisted we were only one street away."

"I guess…"

"You definitely weren't," you smiled. "We walked in circles for almost three hours before we discovered the bookstore had moved months earlier."

He smiled back. A small, courteous smile. "I suppose." Nothing else followed.

The story, which had once made him laugh until tears gathered in his eyes whenever either of you mentioned it, simply ended there. You lowered your gaze toward your untouched coffee, realizing with quiet disbelief that the man who had once been capable of turning every shared memory into an hour-long conversation now responded to them as though they belonged to someone else's life.

You had imagined this meeting so many times over the previous months. In every version, eventually something softened. Eventually he admitted the divorce had broken him too. Eventually he apologized for disappearing, asked whether you were sleeping alright, whether your mother's new relationship had been difficult, whether you were lonely. Instead, his phone illuminated against the tabletop. He picked it up almost immediately, typed a brief response without explanation and placed it face down once more.

"I'm sorry," he said almost absentmindedly. "Work."

"It's alright." The answer escaped you so naturally that you barely noticed yourself saying it. Lately, it's alright had become another way of saying please don't leave yet.

By the time the waiter returned with the bill, you realized with growing horror that nearly the entire hour had been spent trying to persuade your own father to remain inside a conversation he seemed eager to escape. As the two of you walked slowly toward the parking lot beneath rows of yellowing trees whose leaves drifted lazily across the pavement, you deliberately shortened your steps, stretching the distance for as long as possible because some stubborn, frightened part of you still believed that if the afternoon lasted another few minutes, perhaps your father would finally become your father again.

"So..." you began carefully, clasping your hands together. "I was wondering... maybe next weekend we could go to the museum again? They're opening a new exhibition."

Genuine hesitation crossed his face. "I'll have to see."

"Oh."

"My schedule's complicated lately."

You nodded too quickly. "Right."

"I'll let you know."

You smiled anyway, even though both of you already knew he probably wouldn't.

When you finally reached his car, neither of you moved immediately. You stared at the pavement for a moment before forcing yourself to ask the question that had been living inside your chest for months.

"I've been texting you."

"I know."

"I thought maybe—" Your voice faltered. "—maybe you weren't seeing them."

"I saw them." The answer was gentle, almost unbearably so.

"Oh."

Another silence settled between you.

"I didn't want to bother you—"

"You weren't."

"You seemed busy."

"So were you."

You swallowed hard, your fingers tightening around the strap of your bag. "I just—" The words caught painfully in your throat. "I miss you."

He looked away toward the rows of parked cars, and for a fleeting instant something unreadable crossed his expression. Regret. Fatigue. Guilt. You couldn't tell.

"I've had a lot on my mind."

"I know," you whispered immediately. "I know."

Another pause.

"I just kept thinking—" You laughed quietly, ashamed of how desperately you suddenly sounded. "—that maybe if I called at a better time..."

He sighed. Not with irritation, simply with exhaustion. "You don't have to keep trying so hard." The sentence was spoken softly, kindly, which somehow made it infinitely crueler.

You stared at him, unable to reconcile the man before you with the father who had once answered every midnight phone call simply because you couldn't sleep. The man who had never missed a school recital, who used to arrive thirty minutes early to every performance just so he could wave from the front row before the curtains opened, who texted you photographs of pastries he'd discovered because they reminded him of the ones you loved as a child, who once apologized for an entire week after missing a single bedtime story because an unexpected meeting had run late.

Now you were apologizing for wanting him to answer your messages.

"I'm sorry," you murmured automatically. "I didn't realize—"

He smiled. "It's alright."

You felt something inside you collapse with astonishing quietness not because he was angry, not because he had shouted, but because the smile resting on his face no longer belonged to your father, it belonged to a courteous stranger trying not to hurt someone else's daughter.

He stepped forward, pressed a brief kiss against your forehead out of habit rather than affection, wished you goodbye and climbed into his car without looking back. You remained standing exactly where he had left you, watching until the vehicle disappeared into the flow of traffic, your phone still clutched tightly in your hand.

Only then did you understand that grief was not always born from death.

Sometimes it arrived much more slowly, hidden inside unanswered messages, postponed lunches and conversations that became smaller every month, until one ordinary Saturday afternoon you found yourself standing alone in a parking lot realizing that you had lost your father while he was still alive.

—

The weeks that followed settled into a pattern so painfully predictable that they eventually ceased to feel like individual days at all. You still texted your father every now and then, always with the quiet restraint of someone terrified of becoming an inconvenience. Sometimes you asked how he was doing. Other times you told him about something inconsequential—a novel you had just finished, an amusing lecture at university, or a café you'd stumbled across that reminded you of the one he used to take you to when you were little. You never wrote much. Somewhere along the way, you had learned to compress affection into as few words as possible, as though love itself could become too heavy to send. His replies arrived hours later, sometimes the following day, and sometimes they never arrived at all.

"Busy."

"Maybe another day."

"We'll see."

Two words. Three, if you were lucky.

You kept telling yourself it meant nothing—that the divorce had been difficult for him too, that he simply needed time to rebuild a life that had been broken just as thoroughly as yours. You repeated those explanations with the discipline of someone memorizing a lesson she already knew wasn't true, because the weeks became months, the months continued slipping by, and still he never called unless you reached out first. Eventually, your messages became shorter as well, not because you had less to say, but because hope had quietly begun to teach you the value of lowering your expectations.

Saturdays began to resemble one another so perfectly that they blurred together into a single memory. You would wake with the quiet, unreasonable hope that perhaps your phone would contain a message from him and, when the screen remained empty—as it almost always did—you found yourself sending one instead.

Would you like to have lunch?

I'm near your office today.

I could stop by if you're free.

You always added an escape at the end, carefully constructing an excuse for him before he had the chance to make one himself.

"f you're busy, that's completely fine.

Whenever you have time.

No pressure.

It was remarkable how love could find endless ways to excuse neglect.

One Saturday, nearly a month after the last time you had seen him, he agreed. Not enthusiastically. Not happily. Simply:

Thirty minutes.

Nothing else.

Thirty minutes.

As though spending time with his daughter could be scheduled no differently than a business meeting, but for you, who had lived in a desert waiting for his affection, that was an oasis.

You arrived ten minutes early. You always arrived early when it came to him. He was already seated beside the café window, paperwork spread neatly across the table while he spoke on the phone. He didn't even look up when you walked inside. Instead, he raised one hand absentmindedly, gesturing for you to sit while he continued discussing contracts, deadlines, and meetings that seemed infinitely more important than your presence. So you waited. Five minutes. Seven. Ten.

When he finally ended the call, he offered you a polite smile—the sort of smile he might have given a client.

"Sorry. Busy morning."

"It's okay."

You always said that.

Always.

He ordered another coffee and asked how university was going. He nodded while you answered, though every few seconds his eyes drifted back toward the phone vibrating endlessly beside his cup. Halfway through one of your stories he answered an email; moments later he declined another incoming call, not because he wanted to hear you speak, but because it interrupted the rest of his schedule. You continued talking anyway, not because you believed he was truly listening, but simply because, after so many months, you had begun accepting anything that vaguely resembled spending time together.

When he finished his coffee, he glanced at his watch.

"I have to go."

You had been there twenty-six minutes.

He hadn't even stayed for the thirty he had promised.

You hugged him before saying goodbye. He returned the embrace with a distracted pat against your back, so brief it almost felt accidental. As you watched him disappear into the crowd, you found yourself trying to remember the last time your father had hugged you first.

You couldn't.

Baelor noticed long before anyone said anything. It wasn't obvious. There were no arguments between you and your father, no raised voices, no visible hostility. It was, strangely enough, the complete absence of those things that made the distance between you so unmistakable. Whenever your father appeared, something inside you seemed to shrink—not physically, but in a quieter, subtler way, as though part of you immediately began searching for his approval. You spoke more carefully, measured every sentence before letting it leave your lips, and smiled with a cautiousness Baelor never saw when you spoke to anyone else. He noticed something else, too. You were always the one reaching across the distance. You called. You texted. You asked. You tried. Your father simply responded... when he responded at all. The imbalance became impossible to ignore once Baelor had seen it.

He never mentioned it. It wasn't his place, nor did he ever attempt to replace the man who already occupied that place in your heart. Baelor understood that there were loves no one could inherit, absences no amount of kindness could erase, and wounds that belonged exclusively to the people who carried them. Still, he began paying attention. He realized that every time you returned from seeing your father, there was a new book tucked beneath your arm—not because your father had given it to you, but because you bought one yourself, usually on the way home, as though you needed to leave those meetings carrying something because you always walked away feeling as though your hands had been emptied.

One rainy afternoon he found you sitting on the library floor, surrounded by uneven stacks of novels while an annotated edition of Jane Eyre rested open across your knees. You had been staring at the same page for so long that it was obvious you had stopped reading several minutes earlier. Baelor didn't disturb the silence. He simply walked to one of the bookshelves, let his fingertips wander thoughtfully across the rows of worn spines until they settled upon a dark green volume, then crossed the room and held it out to you.

"Have you ever read this one?"

You lowered your eyes.

The Remains of the Day.

You shook your head. "No."

"I think you'd like it."

He offered no explanation. He didn't tell you it was about opportunities left behind, emotions buried beneath duty, or the quiet devastation of realizing what should have been said only after it had become impossible to say it. He simply handed you the book.

You accepted it with a small smile. "Thank you."

"If you disagree with the ending..." A faint smile touched his lips. "—I'd like to hear why."

That was all. He didn't linger when he saw your attention return to the pages. Instead, he selected another novel for himself, settled into the armchair opposite yours, and began reading in comfortable silence. For the first time in months, someone sat beside you without asking anything of you—without demanding conversation, without expecting smiles, without trying to rescue you from your own quiet. He simply shared the silence with you, and somehow that gentle restraint said far more than any attempt at comfort ever could, that act contained more attention than your father would ever have given you.

—

Over the following weeks, the distance between you and Baelor dissolved so gradually that neither of you could have pointed to the precise moment when occasional conversation became routine. It began, as many unexpected things do, with books. He noticed that every time he found you somewhere in the house, there was another novel resting on your knees, another page folded over with absentminded care, another pencil tucked between the chapters. One afternoon, almost out of simple curiosity, he asked what you were reading, expecting the sort of polite answer that would end the exchange after a sentence or two.

Instead, you spoke for nearly half an hour.

You talked about history, about unreliable narrators, about the peculiar loneliness that seemed to haunt nineteenth-century literature, and about the strange comfort of characters who were never entirely understood. You listened before you disagreed, challenged ideas without hostility, and possessed the rare ability to make disagreement feel less like conflict than collaboration. It reminded Baelor of conversations he had once believed existed only within university halls, the kind that lingered in the mind long after they had ended.

From then on, speaking with you became remarkably effortless. It was never inappropriate, never unusually intimate, simply natural. Conversations that began with a recommendation soon wandered into philosophy, politics, poetry, architecture, or history, only to circle back to literature again. Sometimes they spoke for ten minutes. Sometimes an hour slipped away without either of you noticing. There was nothing unusual about it, at least not on the surface.

Your mother couldn't have been happier.

She had hoped the two of you would eventually find common ground, and watching the awkward courtesy of that first dinner slowly transform into genuine ease felt, to her, like confirmation that she had made the right decision. Whenever she found the two of you discussing history over breakfast or exchanging books after dinner, she smiled quietly to herself, pleased that the man she loved had taken such sincere interest in making you feel welcome within what he hoped would soon become a shared family.

She mistook familiarity for harmony.

She had no reason not to.

By the time the invitation to spend the weekend at the family's seaside villa arrived, your conversations had become an ordinary part of daily life. No one questioned them anymore. Baelor would ask what you were reading, you would ask whether he had ever finished the biography he had mentioned the week before, and the discussion would unfold naturally while everyone else carried on with their own routines. It looked exactly as one might expect from two people who simply happened to enjoy the same subjects.

The villa overlooked the sea, its wide terraces bathed in warm afternoon light while the constant rhythm of the waves softened every conversation into something almost dreamlike. Guests drifted naturally into smaller groups. Your mother remained beneath the pergola with a glass of wine in her hand, exchanging stories with friends, while Matarys disappeared toward the shoreline in search of shells, leaving you leaning comfortably against the stone balustrade with Valarr.

The conversation had begun, as so many of yours did, with a book.

Valarr insisted that a certain character's downfall had been inevitable from the very first chapter. You disagreed immediately, folding your arms with quiet certainty before explaining that it had never been ambition that doomed him, but vanity itself. He laughed, accusing you of always defending impossible arguments. You answered that he had a habit of confusing confidence with intelligence, prompting him to place an exaggerated hand over his chest and declare himself mortally offended. You smiled despite yourself, and a soft laugh escaped your lips, carried away almost instantly by the sea breeze.

Across the terrace, Baelor looked up.

At first, your mother assumed the sound of your laughter had merely drawn his attention. Then she realized he was no longer listening to the conversation unfolding around him. Someone sitting beside him continued speaking, another guest laughed, glasses clinked gently against the table, yet none of it seemed to reach him.

He was watching you.

Not with pride, not with amusement, not even with suspicion.

His attention had narrowed so completely that everything else appeared to dissolve beyond the edges of his awareness. He followed the conversation between you and Valarr with an almost unsettling concentration, as though every sentence you spoke deserved to be carefully examined before it disappeared, every smile unconsciously catalogued, every gesture committed to memory without him realizing he was doing it.

It was not affection, it was not desire. It was something your mother found far more difficult to understand.

It resembled the fixed concentration of a scholar confronted by a question he could not solve, or a collector standing before a painting he could not persuade himself to stop studying. There was something strangely absolute about it, something that excluded the rest of the world with quiet, almost frightening ease.

Then Valarr said something else.

You laughed again.

Only for a moment. Nothing more than a brief burst of genuine amusement.

Yet, in that same instant, something crossed Baelor's face so quickly that your mother almost convinced herself she had imagined it. His jaw tightened by the smallest degree. A faint crease appeared between his brows before vanishing just as quickly, like a ripple disturbing perfectly still water before the surface became smooth again.

The transformation lasted no longer than a heartbeat.

Someone beside him asked a question. He answered without hesitation. He smiled. He lifted his glass.

Within seconds he had resumed the effortless composure for which everyone admired him, carrying on the conversation as though his attention had never wandered elsewhere.

No one noticed, no one except your mother.

She could not have explained what disturbed her so profoundly. There had been no inappropriate gesture, no careless remark, nothing she could ever repeat aloud without sounding irrational. If anyone had asked what she had seen, she would have struggled to put it into words.

And yet, as she watched Baelor continue embodying the flawless gentleman everyone believed him to be, an unfamiliar unease settled quietly beneath her ribs.

She had not witnessed the expression of a man who had simply become distracted. She had witnessed someone whose attention had remained fixed on a single person for far longer than it ever should have.

For the first time since bringing the two of you together, she found herself asking a question she could neither answer nor dismiss.

Not what Baelor had been thinking, but why, for those few silent moments, he had seemed to forget that anyone else in the world existed.

She had never provoked that in him before.

—

The library had become their unspoken meeting place.

It was the quietest room in the house, sheltered beneath high ceilings and walls crowded with books collected over decades. Afternoon light filtered through the tall windows, settling over polished oak shelves and turning the floating dust into slow-moving flecks of gold. Somewhere beyond the glass, the garden shimmered beneath the summer heat, but inside, time seemed content to remain still.

You sat in one of the leather armchairs, a novel resting open across your knees.

Baelor entered carrying two cups of tea.

"I thought you might be here."

"I usually am."

"I've noticed."

There was nothing unusual in his tone. He placed one cup beside you before his eyes drifted toward the book in your lap.

"Lolita?"

You looked down at the familiar cover. "I've never actually read it."

"No?"

"I know what people say about it."

"They usually say the wrong thing." That caught your attention.

"You don't think it's a love story."

It wasn't a question. Baelor smiled faintly.

"No." He lowered himself into the chair opposite yours and folded one leg over the other.

"I think it's one of the greatest examples of an unreliable narrator ever written."

You tilted your head. "So the opening doesn't romanticize him?"

"It seduces the reader," he answered after a moment. "There's a difference."

He reached toward the coffee table, where an old annotated copy already lay waiting, and opened it with the familiarity of someone returning to a place he knew by heart. Without theatricality, he read the first lines aloud.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

The room fell quiet.

He closed the book again. "It's beautiful prose."

"It is."

"And that's precisely the danger."

You frowned.

"The language is so extraordinary that, for a moment, you forget who's speaking."

You traced a finger along the edge of your own copy. "So the beauty becomes... camouflage."

A small smile appeared on Baelor's face. "Exactly."

He seemed genuinely pleased—not because you agreed with him, but because you had arrived at the conclusion yourself. "The novel asks something uncomfortable of the reader," he continued. "Whether elegance can make evil sound convincing."

You considered that for several seconds. "I don't think it can."

"No?"

"It can delay your judgment." You looked toward the rain beginning to gather against the windows. "It can make you hesitate." A pause settled between you. "But eventually," you said quietly, "you have to remember who's telling the story."

Baelor's gaze rested on you for a brief moment before he nodded. "Yes.” His voice had become strangely thoughtful. "That's the part people forget."

Neither of you spoke again for a while.

The silence wasn't awkward. It was the kind born from a conversation that had ended naturally, leaving both people with something to think about.

Outside, the first drops of rain began striking the windows. Inside, the two copies of Lolita remained open on the table between you—not as a romance, nor as an object of admiration, but as a reminder that the most dangerous stories are often told by voices eloquent enough to make us forget, if only briefly, that they cannot be trusted.

You'd learn that soon.

Baelor remained quiet for a while after closing the book, his fingertips resting lightly against its worn cover as though reluctant to break the silence that Nabokov's opening had left behind. Outside, the rain continued tracing slow paths across the windows, blurring the gardens into muted shades of green and gray.

"May I ask you something?"

You looked up from your own copy.

"Of course."

He considered his words carefully before speaking, his eyes focused on you, and in them, the same strangely appreciative look that he had given you at the first dinner. "Have you ever experienced that suffocating desire for someone?" He leaned closer to you. "That heavy feeling coursing through your bones, stealing your breath? Disturbing your sleep? Corrupting your very being?" His face was now just inches from yours.

Yes, you were going to answer, yes. I've felt it for my father's affection, I've begged for it. I've gone to bed thinking about the barriers that stand in the way of our nonexistent connection. That he doesn't love me, that he suffocates me and revives me every time I see him.

But you stopped. Overlapping you were two kinds of desires inherent in human beings: the thirst for affection that you projected onto your father, and, beside you, the unequivocal primal desire that Baelor's eyes transmitted in you, towards you, for you. Your reaction was late when you felt the contact of his lips against yours, his aging skin against the firmness of yours.

The third sensation was a revulsion that boiled within you, preventing you from pushing him away from you with a strong thrust. Anyone who witnessed the act would interpret this as consent, but this could not be further from the truth.

This was wrong. There was no fancy word to disguise it, no right thermal. Recovering from the vulnerability, you pulled away from the seat and from him. "What—what the hell did you just do?" Your voice was trembling.

"I..." Baelor was looking at you the same way as always, with that hint of something inscrutable that you hadn't yet deciphered. "My deepest apologies. I noticed that glimmer in your eyes—"

"You assumed that I wanted it."

"—and I decided to take it."

Take it. As one does with one's own belongings when they fall to the ground. Take it. As when one believes legitimate possession over something or someone.

"I didn't want to—I didn't—" You looked anywhere but at his face. "You're my mother's boyfriend. I'm the same age as your oldest son, why would I want to?"

Instead of answering immediately, his eyes drifted to your lips, to the sweet nectar he had just tasted. He rose from his seat, and taking a few steps closer, he was standing in front of you. "I see you" He began. "You wish it because I see you. I'm the only human who pays attention to you. I know your blessings and sorrows, the way you shrink when you send a message from your father. You need me, you're hungry, and I can feed you."

He saw you. He had done it; he had seen the need for love, the misfortunes that occurred in your mother's company. He noticed the balm that books were for you, how absence was your life, and, consequently, his best way of access you.

He was right.

"You—" You pressed your lips together, trying to calm your inner turmoil. "You have no right to judge me or my life. You don't know me, you are not important to me."

While you defended what you believed to be reality, he breached the remaining thin wall to reach you. With genuine affection, he wrapped his arms around yours. An embrace. Something so simple, yet so devastating.

"Shhh," his calloused fingers caressed your scalp. "Let it go." Heavy tears streamed down your cheeks, trailing down to his immaculate shirt. The dampness of the fabric clung to your skin, and it was unpleasant, just like the lively erection that stood against your thigh.

But it was attention, right? You wanted it. It didn't matter from whom, just please, notice me.

His large palms slid down to your waist. "You're just a pathetic little girl who needs to be noticed, Y/N." His face buried itself in your hair. "You want it. You've been chasing him ever since your parents separated and Dad, as a customer who's paid off his debt, washed his hands of the bank. He didn't love you the way I do."

"You're no longer his responsibility. That's why he abandoned you, little one." He slowly leaned you down at the table where they had both been sitting. "A burden, your father sees you as a burden."

You knew it. You felt it. You were it.

Your father showed it with every postponed outing, by only fulfilling his financial obligations, in how he spoke of your meetings as mere slots in his schedule. You weren't his daughter, just a task on his endless monthly to-do list, if you were lucky.

When Baelor placed his lips against yours again, you realized. You wanted him, didn't you? You wanted someone to want you. Not like this, but it was still want. His mouth was gentle, expert and patient, just like the rest of him.

He wanted you to believe that you deserved to be touched by him. That way, this violation wouldn't feel like a crime or mere lust, but like liberation, and he was succeeding.

"I'll give you everything" was what you exactly wanted to hear. "You're not a burden, sweetheart. You're a blessing. The personification of an angel sent from heaven," he proclaimed as his palms cupped your breasts over your clothes, squeezing. "Say it. Say you deserve it."

What exactly did you deserve? His dirty hands on your body? Your mother's demands? Your father's abandonment? Misunderstanding? Isolation? Insecurity?

What, what was it that you so richly deserved?

You didn't say anything. You were frozen, crying on the table. His hands moved down to your thighs, his touch now demanding as he groped you, making his way to your crotch.

"Say it," he demanded. "Tell me. Tell me what you deserve."

This was the Steppenwolf Hesse referred to in his prose. Wild, maladjusted, hidden. He tore at your underwear with such intensity that panic surged through you at the reality. The ruined fabric was real, as was his uninvited touch on your skin.

You kicked him, and he stopped you. "Stay still," he warned. "You want it. You haven't pushed me away once, and you do it just when things escalate?" He squeezed your thigh roughly, digging his fingers into your flesh, making you whimper. "Tell me. Say you want it."

"No—"

"I would be careful with the words that come out of my mouth" One last sentence. "Now. You'll open your legs like the good girl you are, I'll take you, and no soul will ever know about this. Or do you want to lose your only source of affection?" His face was close to yours. "Do you prefer your mother getting to know what a whore she has for a daughter?"

His language was foul. There was no ethical or respectful gentleness accompanying his words. It was raw, real. The wolf—or dragon—beneath disguised as a sheep.

You didn't answer. That was answer enough. "Good."

You didn't realize when he had removed his pants, but you did when you felt his phallus tear at your walls. A painful sob escaped your throat, one that was silenced by your unpleasant lips. It was impossible not to notice the temporal difference in their bodies, the youth and the age.

His attacks were cruel. His hands, restless. They were digging somewhere to grab, and they were never satisfied.

—

"Baelor asked how your classes were going."

Your mother's voice carried the same effortless composure with which she spoke about the weather, dinner reservations, or charity galas. There was nothing particularly significant in the sentence itself, yet something about the way she chose to mention his name made it sound almost rehearsed, as though she had been waiting for the right moment to introduce it into the conversation.

You continued stirring your tea without looking up.

"That was thoughtful of him." There was a certain unease in your voice, almost anxious.

"He seemed genuinely interested."

The spoon circled lazily against the porcelain before you set it aside.

"He likes talking to you. He mentions your conversations surprisingly often" The sound of her heels echoed as she approached you. "Especially the conversations in the library."

Library.

"He says you have an extraordinary way of looking at literature." Her fake smile widened almost imperceptibly. "Apparently the two of you spent nearly an hour discussing Lolita the other afternoon. He seemed quite pleased, if you ask me."

You knew what he meant, and you weren't going to answer.

"Pleased, Y/N. My boyfriend looked pleased."

"Mom—"

"You—you slept with him. With your own mother's boyfriend." She bit her perfectly painted lip. "I know. He smelled like your perfume. That's why he pays you so much attention, the reason he looks at you the way he does: like he's eyeing prey."

"He raped me!" you exclaimed, your voice breaking, dark circles under your eyes visible. "He took me, he—" Herhand slapped you across the face, hard.

She felt betrayed. Her own daughter sleeping with her partner, accusing him of rape after moaning his name surrounded by books and walking out of the library as if nothing had happened, making her look like a fool.

"You little brat." She pointed a finger at you. "Baelor would never—he would never do that unless you provoked him. You've been sleeping with your mother's boyfriend, Y/N. Aren't you ashamed?!"

You didn't know this version of Mom. The out-of-control, irrational one, the one who believed him.

"And you dare accuse a man of his caliber of raping you? You?" He looked you up and down, judging you. "You, who won't dress up unless I tell you to? Who would rape a girl who doesn't even take the time to care about her appearance? You damn whore."

Baelor was right.

Humbert had captivated thousands of readers with nothing more than language. His greatest weapon had never been desire, but narration. He chose which details deserved to be remembered and which would quietly disappear between paragraphs, softened cruelty beneath exquisite prose, and wrapped obsession in poetry until even intelligent readers found themselves hesitating before condemning him. History had always belonged to whoever told it best, and the voice that controlled the story inevitably controlled the judgment that followed.

Baelor understood that better than anyone. He controlled the narrative.

even in the midst of war there are marriage proposals to be made so ormund shouldn't be surprised when there are offers for your hand, ones with an army to back him too. he doesn't tell you, mainly burns the letters and every time you bring up marriage to him, he tells you that these matters don't concern you. which confuses you because that was your main purpose growing up, to be a pious woman, quiet and obedient. to ready yourself for future marriage prospects because what honorable man would want a savage targaryen. and he wanted you to marry someone honorable, someone good enough to marry a hightower and now he doesn't even seem at all open to discussing it.

jealousy runs deep into ormund's veins, every letter and every mention of marriage upon your lips has him seething. he tries to keep it contained, to keep it a bay but the sex with you becomes rougher, pushing you into positions that have you trapped underneath him, no way to get out and his whole body weight on top of you. no matter how much you beg or cry that it's too much, he'll keep going until he's satisfied. part of him wants to ask you, what man could treat you like this? could ever begin to satisfy the needs of a targaryen like yourself? you need to be sedated and he's the only one truly capable to do it.

being separated from you isn't something ormund is used to, and knowing that you're not truly his, and there is always that possibility that you could be taken from him, it unnerves him. coming back from fighting, bruised and battered, he doesn't fully have the energy to fuck you how he wants. he likes it when you're all dosed up on the tea and you'll just use his body the way you need. he likes watching you, bouncing on him and breasts in his face. he loves teasing your nipples and your cunt with his fingers as you ride him. but most importantly, when you're exhausted too, he loves cockwarming you and clinging onto you in the bed. his mouth pressed to your pulse point, arm tucked around your waist and a leg over you, all while his cock is still deep inside of you, keeping his seed trapped there.

usually ormund is the first to wake up, already preparing for the day and being dressed by the maids. however, on days like this the exhaustion has got to him, and he's content sleeping with you tucked underneath him. only you do wake, the maids coming in with prepared foods and drinks and your tea. a tea that you find awful to taste, and before ormund is awake you pour it out the window. and when ormund stirs, and grumbles about the bed being cold, you crawl in beside him, letting him praise you for being a good girl and drinking your tea already.

the first time you deny him, ormund stares at you in disbelief. he can't fathom it, and when you tell him you feel fine, even after him desperately trying to convince you otherwise, ormund will force a smile on his face and nod his head.

your tricks only last so long and it's not till ormund is bringing the tea himself, just to be sure you're drinking it, does he realise what you're up to. you think you've caught him out, think that you've won his game and he'll marry you off and let you leave. but that's when the truth comes out, what sort of man would want you now? now that he has ruined you? now that he has bedded you? your virtue is gone and the whole camp knows that you've been sharing his bed. your reputation is destroyed. you could be carrying his child as you speak and no man would want to father some other man's bastard. wouldn't it be just easier to stay here, to worry for nothing or no one, to need nothing. he'd keep you warm and fed, all you'd have to do is bed him.

the actual horror when you realise the man that raised you, who you thought cared for you as his own, wants to keep you as his mistress, his pet. and yet all you can do is lie down on the bed, legs spread for him to take you again.

gwayne is separated from you because of his duties and the war, which he takes seriously. he doesn't enjoy it but he knows you'll be at home waiting for him like the dutiful wife he trained you to be. distance makes the heart grow fonder, well for him it does.

the first time he comes home to you, it's peaceful and sort of romantic. he'll push you down onto your shared bed and be placed between your thighs for what feels like hours, licking hungrily at your folds until your legs are trembling in his hold and you're gushing on his face. then he'll finally slide his cock into you, when you're crying from how overstimulated he made you and how sensitive you are.

but then night falls, he's been taken by duties of his household and when he returns to your chambers, he's less than happy. he doesn't frown, just stands over you in the bed with the coldest expression and tells you to bend over. he spanks your ass until it's red and your clawing at the sheets, crying out in confusion and then he shoves his cock deep inside of you with no prep at all. it's after, when you're shaking in the bed next to him, head buried into his chest, that he tells you what he heard from the others and you have to explain yourself.

every time he leaves you dread his return, every miss step, every encounter, every time you leave your chambers. he returns so calm and sweet, so attentive to you, only to switch on you later. you can never predict it and it makes you scared for his next departure.

You're going in, being told about the video/scene you're doing today before you get to meet your new co-star. All you knew about him before is that he is a new-ish actor on the scene, rising in popularity and fast.

And when you meet him?

Your smile drops. So does your heart. He just stares at you before smirking, talking about how he can't wait to start filming with you.

And he can't. The moment the camera starts rolling, you continuing to do this against your better judgement, he plays his role perfectly, the set-up scene acted out for the plot. Ironically, it's some enemies to lovers shit, the both of you meant to act toxic and degrade each other.

It feels like it's going on forever before he can finally touch you. And once he can?

"Fuuuucckk, that's it. God, I used to dream about ruining this little hole of yours." He sinks in, putting all his weight on you. "Always thought about dragging you to the bathroom or an unused class at school, forcing you to gag on this dick," he whispers into your ear, making you clench around him.

He's rough with it, fucking you stupid, loose, wet claps filling the air as the camera focuses on your fucked out expression, tears running down your flushed cheeks.

Nobody has ever seen you like this before.

The video only ends after forty straight minutes of brutal fucking. The camera catches your loose hole clenching, leaking his cum.

It shouldn't be a surprise when your agent suggests you work with him again. Especially when the video is one of your most popular.

You attend the same private academy he does. He tried not to care too much at first; you were just among the few others lucky enough to have the kind of intelligence eyed by his father's company. But that was the thing—you didn't. You were ordinary.

He wondered if his father made a mistake, choosing to sponsor some no-use nobody. Maybe you were a coal in the rough yet to be a diamond. But weeks into the first year of senior high and you showed no signs of blooming. Hell, you even placed at the bottom list in academic standing. You didn't fail; everyone else were just children of the wealthy who afforded private tutors. Maybe an appropriate scholar would have caught up just fine, but you weren't one.

yandere!bully who decides to approach you, frustrated with your mediocrity. Who is he kidding? He doesn't give two shits if his father made a mistake, he was fascinated with your mediocrity. Greatness no longer intrigues him, having been surrounded with it all his life.

Wow, is this a joke? You really aren't good at anything. Not at math, science, Latin, nada. You just do enough to get by.

He speaks to you about it, about that mediocrity. You interpret it as a threat. You can't lose this scholarship now, you just got it. You beg for his mercy that you may continue studying in this prestigious academy. The whole "I'll do anything!" "anything?" conversation ensues. Now he's got you in the palm of his hand.

yandere!bully who starts it small. Makes you his little errand puppy. To him you were like a little dog running around doing what he makes you do. It can't even be called bullying, everyone else interprets it as acts of gratitude for his father granted the scholarship to you.

But then it escalates. Soon he's making you do things that you hesitate to do. Sneaking into faculty to take a picture of the test answer sheet. Smuggling a bag of "stuff" in school (you aren't dumb, you know what these rich kids got their hands on). Forcing you to skip a day of school so you can be his little errand pup while he did golf, playing truant with his friends.

One time you're asked to kneel before him, right between his knees. You ask why. He tells you not to question him. He only wants to see you that way. He watches you for a moment, unfazed, before telling you to stand back up.

Enter his friends, and things turn for the worse. It's like they've been itching their whole lives to get their hands on a human being to torment. They've got their butlers and maids but they're paid workers; you aren't. Clearly, yandere!bully is dangling this scholarship thing above your head like a golden apple. It's enough to keep you in your place, make you go against your own survival instinct to retaliate against a threat. They can do things to you and not suffer the consequences, and they intend to take full advantage of it.

It starts small, too, this torment by his inner circle, but soon it evolves more than just carrying their shopping bags or retrieving the tennis ball whenever they go play.

Soon they laugh when one of them extends a foot to trip you. They steal the math homework you worked hard on even though they've already completed theirs courtesy of their private tutors. Pour water over your head, pinch your skin for fun with their filed, polished nails.

They heard him call you "errand puppy" once, so they had a collar custom-made with his name on it next to the phrase property of, its buckle 18k gold, leather lined on the edge with lab-grown diamonds. Then they made you drink milk like a mutt out of the cafeteria's metal tray.

The boys cornered you in the locker room once, made you pull down your bottoms. You were crying while they took pictures of your underwear, wet snotty face too. They shared it to the girls and it circulated within their friend group for a while. The next time that those specific guys encountered you, though, they seemed to hold back from picking on you. No one ever made a comment about that incident, not about the photos, the crying, the cheap underwear, and they grew quieter when yandere!bully entered the room.

With his friends it's always physically violent; never with him. You would argue, though, that he is the cruelest. Because he's got the power to make them stop and he chooses not to. He just watches. You gather that he likes watching you a lot.

yandere!bully plays soccer; he's a varsity player of your academy. Every after training you're tasked to carry his school and sports bag back to his luxury sedan which he drives to and from campus. Tonight he makes you stand in front of the goal net. His friends are lined up some meters before you, having gathered all the soccer balls the academy owns.

You're nervous. You know what's about to happen and you should run, but you don't, because you think the scholarship is worth all this.

"Don't let them score and I'll extend your scholarship to college," is all the warning you get.

You're hit everywhere. The arms, shoulders legs, torso—everything hurts. One ball after the other to your head, and you feel dizzy. Of course, you try defending yourself; you yell at them to stop, that it hurts, and all you get is: "don't you want that scholarship?"

What made you cease is the blow to your chest. It's a strong hit, delivering a pain so hot you think it shifted your ribs, and you cough and wheeze and they're still throwing balls at you until your form is thrashing on the grass like fish on land.

Your head feels so hot and prickly from the lack of air, you're sure it's bound to explode. Black spots your vision and you literally can't breathe but all you can think of is: did I get that scholarship?

You're hospitalized that night. Bandages on all limbs, tapes to hold the cuts produced from the skin being hit too hard. Nasal cannula around your face.

You wake up slowly. There's a mildly comforting heat on your bandaged hand that vanishes the moment you open your eyes. yandere!bully is seated by your bed, watching you as always.

His hand touches your face. He murmurs something, but it's muffled by the bandages wrapped around your head, ears included. Then his thumb tenderly brushes over your busted lip.

Finally, he leaves the room, and you're left to stare at the ceiling.

Upon discharge, you don't hear anything about dues from the hospital—a big relief for you. No warnings from the academy either for having missed a week of school. You speculate he's got something to do with it for the sake of reputation. No one is supposed to know that the son of the chairman of such a conglomerate beat its scholar to death's door.

School is different after the incident. You're no longer abused as much by his peers, although you still do their various errands. He still makes you do naughty stuff, like skipping classes when he feels like it. Only this time it seems only he's around to do errands for.

These errands are different now, too. It's not the typical labor-heavy tasks like before, fetching for his tennis ball or carrying his bags. You're more like an actual pet puppy at this point; he just brings you around wherever he goes. Almost like he has to keep an eye on you at all times.

yandere!bully who finds himself missing you during the summer. Everyone left for their own respective vacations, out of the country to Maldives or Monaco or Switzerland or whatever. You're back with your relatives in that quaint little downtown neighborhood of yours. He would know, having hired private investigators to stalk your ass. He is going with his family to the countryside estate.

Father, mother, eldest sister, older brother. He's the youngest. It's a quiet family. Sister grew up just to be like father, cold and austere. It seems he's on the way to becoming just like that, too. Only brother inherited mother's benevolence.

Father doesn't care about anyone and anything but mother. yandere!bully only ever talks to Father whenever it's necessary. Otherwise, both of them are content minding one's own business.

yandere!bully asks Father about you. As he suspected, Father makes no mistake. He says you were really meant for the scholarship.

"I had a feeling," Father says, "that you two would make very good friends."

yandere!bully who's touchier now, second and final year of senior high. Or he's become touchy, since he never was back then. He drags you by your wrist at short distances, a palm on your nape whenever he tells you to look at something. A hand on your lower back, sliding dangerously low every time before letting go. He also often fixes your collar, fingers always ending up brushing your neck.

He tells you to strip one time at some high-end clothing store. You stare at him, dumbfounded, before he gives some silly excuse that it's for a cousin with your same build.

He makes you try on different outfits. At first it's various tops and bottoms that complement your shape, colors that go well with your skin tone, all the like. You glance at yourself in the mirror and wonder if this is how you look born into that top 1%. You look nice.

Then he makes you strip back to your underwear, and lets you try on the white [dress/blazer]. There's a moment of silence before he tells you to come over to him, and he stands up, towering over you with his gifted height.

He looks down at you, seemingly lost in thought, like he's visualizing you in a certain light...

"Do you like it?" He asks.

You tell him that you think his cousin will. His expression is undisturbed, but he exhales almost like a huff. Quite suddenly he grabs you by the waist, thumb gliding circles.

"I asked if you like it."

You stutter out a pathetic 'yes.' Honestly you don't give a damn but you fear his negative reaction your comment. Although if you had to, you'd say it's a bit too fancy for your liking.

He only hums before letting you go. You proceed to wear the next attire.

You shiver to think about how he views this certain cousin of his, having you wear a bunch of skimpy outfits. Some that showed your stomach too much, others exposing your legs. One top you're pretty sure can rival a tape going around your chest area, covering only what needs to be covered. He stays aloof the whole time, jaded eyes planted on you.

After that, things start to get kind of disgusting.

The touchiness escalates tenfold, and he isn't as insecure about it as you are, showing off to his friends. It's like the roles have switched: now he's the physical one instead of them. You're still a slave to their torment, of course, but only he gets to touch you like this. His friends don't find anything odd about it, in fact they look as if they enjoy your discomfort. They egg him on.

yandere!bully who brings you with him to a speakeasy, exclusive only for students of this certain private members club. The top one percent of the top one percent, they would say. It's like a den of iniquities, these kids doing all sorts of nefarious stuff: drugs, dealings, gambling, and most dreadful of all: whores.

Man or woman, they aren't obvious. You only know because they're distinguishable from the rich clients of the club who dress minimalistic. You suppose a more professional term for these people are escorts. They're conversing animatedly with their young clients, some linking their arms with them, a few already making their way to private rooms.

yandere!bully sits on the loveseat across his peer who's got two escorts in his arms. You only stand behind him, listening in on their conversation. Something about stocks and real estate. Networking. If he knew this, what he thinks about that.

You drone their voices out. The smell of weed is getting to you, making you feel all woozy.

yandere!bully tells you to sit on his lap. Dumbed down by the smoke, you comply a little too easily, like the puppy you are. His peer whistles lowly, eyeing you with a predatory glint.

He doesn't do anything about it because he knows they all can only afford to look. The truth is you belong to him, and only he gets to touch you this way, his hand now shamelessly gliding down your rear while you stay pliant. As long as you're after that scholarship, you belong to him.

He shifts you on his lap, his mouth feeling dry as he feels you press against him. You're really just asking for it, aren't you?

yandere!bully: he finds you in the library, when everyone else is in the school gym for graduation practice. This serves as your only safe haven from him, from his friends, from this whole aquarium filled with predatory fish. Oftentimes it feels like you're the only herbivore out there. The library happens to be the oldest part of this castle-turned-campus, which means: no CCTVs.

You scream when he pins you against the table, cut off halfway when he slams a palm on your mouth. The other hand encases both your wrists in one secure grip as his leg forces your knees apart, and he starts grinding against you like a dog in heat.

His eyes are half-lidded as he's watching you with his mouth parted, a sick grin forming. He thinks it's hot when you cry, if he knew this before he would have done better to get you to cry more often.

"Dumb puppy," he sneers, "dumb little errand pup, you're no good for anything at all, aren't you? Only at following your master and fetching balls."

Your panic discourages you from registering all the painful words he's saying, the names he's calling you. You try your best to escape his coil that only seems to get tighter the more you move like a boa constrictor. Arousal seems to give him inhumane strength.

Having had enough, he lifts you up momentarily, before slamming your back against the table, hard.

"Stop fucking moving, you stupid mutt!"

That does indeed get you to stop fucking moving. You even stop trying to scream, and stop... breathing? He pauses his ministrations and looks down at you. You're staring back at him, eyes wide, lips trembling. Then you start convulsing for air.

He doesn't know what to do, and for the first time in his life of luxury and wealth he's genuinely terrified. He's always seen you suffering, but this time, this time you're suffering and he can't put a stop to it. He can't control it.

You're grasping the sleeves of his uniform, still spasming. He gets the hint and aids you in sitting back upright on the table. He already has half the mind to pull out his phone and call emergency, but you're already breathing fine, trying to catch your breath.

Your hand moves to deeply rub the center of your chest.

Shit.

Was this... was this the soccer injury? Haven't you already recovered from that? The doctors said you'd heal eventually. The cuts, the deep bruises. Did you turn out to have an unattended rib fracture? Is this... chronic?

It's been almost a year since that incident.

Have you always had this pain, and kept it to yourself?

He's never felt this level of trepidation consume him, shaking him to the core. His heart is in his stomach as he looks at you, really looks at you, and sees the damaged he's done. You're tired. You're scared. You're miserable.

You are readmitted to the the same high-end hospital not long after. This time you're scheduled for surgery. He covers all the expenses, makes sure to get the best of the best of surgeons out there. You don't really have a say in the matter, you're not dumb enough to refuse such an offer just for the sake of your dignity. What left of it is there, anyway?

Father visits him during that period, noting the considerable dent in his son's bank account for that big of a purchase. He meets Father shortly after freshening up, having vomited at the thought of your broken countenance.

yandere!bully tells him everything except the attempted assault. Father only sits and listens, unnervingly silent, like he understands. It's the first time he's ever opened up to his dad. To his surprise, Father does not disappoint.

Likewise, Father also tells him everything. How, in this family, there is the tendency for some members to manifest passionate emotions in various ways. They feel so little they end up feeling so much for very specific things... sometimes persons. And they tend to be violent with it.

You were meant to be the recipient of this violence. Your father owed his father a great deal of debt, and so you were basically sold off, your purpose for him hidden under the ruse of scholarship. Not that you knew.

It all makes sense now, Father's devotion to Mother, and her aversion from him. His sister's fierce attachment to this one specific guy who also just so happens to be a scholar of the company. His feelings for you which he can't seem to make amends with.

"Once you find that someone," Father says, "you sink your claws into them and never let go, even when they bleed."

You're back to school in two weeks. Like back then, you didn't receive any disciplinary actions for your absence. You try not to wonder how you manage to keep your place as a scholar in this prestigious academy despite all the missed assignments on top of your already mediocre grades.

yandere!bully avoids you like the plague, and so do his friends. It seems everything went back to how it once was, how it was supposed to be. Everyone here ostracizes you for your socio-economic standing but it doesn't bother you at all, not when you prefer this over the active bullying.

The next time he interacts with you, it's already graduation. You're wearing the appropriate formal attire under your graduation robes, which you can guess is the cheapest out of everything in this venue where the school-sponsored grad party is being held. There's an afterparty held at some penthouse bar after this, hosted by one of yandere!bully's friends, but you aren't invited.

You exit the venue to begin the 20-minute walk back to your dorm, but someone stops you.

His hand is on your wrist. You get unpleasant flashbacks, but you keep it to yourself. He asks how you're doing, you say you're just fine.

He then asks if you want to celebrate this milestone.

No, you don't. Not with him. But you're not about to lose your diploma when you just got it.

So now you are in his Porsche and he's driving you both to one of his many family estates. It's smaller than most, he describes.

According to him at least. The whole thing is the size of your entire neighborhood. It's a long driveway before he even gets to arrive at the actual building. He parks right in front of the manor.

Inside, you're invited to have dinner with him. It's only the two of you in this large dining hall, where you're seated adjacent to him at the end of the grand table. But the selection of food nearly reaches down to half the long table, as if he had the chef cook every food that could possibly be your favorite.

Still, you end up eating light. He offers you to choose the brand of wine but you refuse, saying that it hasn't been long enough since your operation. A pause, before he nods, instead picking the wine himself.

Instead of alcohol you're served apple juice. It's freshly squeezed, you could tell by the bitter aftertaste.

Glass in hand, he leads you out of the manor and to the rose garden, where you can see the stars so clearly due to the lack of light pollution thanks to the vastness of his estate. There's a small pavilion housing a large couch. He leads you toward it, makes you sit.

You feel yourself deflate instantly on the cushion, exhausted from having your guard up around him at all times. If he noticed he didn't comment a thing about it. He's on his third glass and you're currently nursing the first glass of apple juice you're nearly finished with, when he calls out your name.

"Congratulations."

You congratulate him, too, since he also graduated.

He downs the rest of his wine in one go, sets it on the side table. Then he steps closer to you, fueled with liquid courage, sinking into the space next to you.

You try to sit up and scoot over. You can't.

"I was afraid for a moment," he starts, "that you wouldn't accept my invitation."

Afraid? He put you through hell, and only now has the gall to hesitate on you? A pit begins to form on your stomach.

He turns to you, taking your glass out of your hand and setting it down the ground, before holding that same hand with his own warmer one. He inches closer. You can't move.

You ask, "Would you have forced me to come anyway?"

He smiles at that. "You wouldn't have said no."

He's now hovering over you on the couch, same standoffish eyes tracing your face, your eyes, nose, settling on your mouth. You see his Adam's apple bob up and down.

He has so much to say to you. You look so pretty right now, basked in the moonlight, not fighting him. He's sorry for all the rough treatment, for hurting you and making you cry. He swears it's just his feelings for you manifested in the wrong manner. But now he knows, after his father explained everything it all makes sense. He's just in love with you.

yandere!bully kisses your trembling lips, tenderly. You try to fight it off but it's no use; you realized too late that he's done something to your drink. You're sobbing when he parts from you, terror and anger evident in your eyes. When he begins to pull off your clothes, he speaks.

"I would never do anything to hurt you." Your stomach churns in resentment. "Never again."

He kisses the column of your neck down to your chest, your surgical scars, where his lips stay longer. When he feels you're sort of hyperventilating, he rises and cups your cheek.

"Breathe. Breathe," he says your name. "Okay? Relax. I've got you. I promise I'll take care of you. You just have to breathe."

He rubs your chest. His own aches just at the thought of your distress. It's his fault you ended up like this, so he intends to make up for it for the rest of your lives.

He makes love to you that night. As promised, he did take care of you. It doesn't hurt when he slides it in, having poured a generous amount of lube all you feel is the pressure instead of the sting of his very well-endowed member intruding you. He's got a way with his hands, too, stimulating all the right parts just enough to get you unfolding beneath him within an hour. He would have done it within minutes but he took his sweet time just to get you so wet and ready for him.

He's so damn gentle with you like he was your lover for the last two years and not your bully. Of course, to you this wasn't 'making love.' For the most part you were delirious both from the drink and his expert ministrations, and are only hit with the the graveness of your reality when he finally spills his essence into you. His body quivers, and right then he pulls you for a deep, tongue-heavy kiss. When he pulls away, he mutters something in his frenzy: "I love you."

yandere!bully doesn't bother you after that. When he wakes up on that couch in the pavilion you're already gone. You left in a rush. A butler drove you off back outside of the estate, having received no orders to make you stay.

You've graduated. Your credentials will surely spark competition among universities for you, being a graduate from one of the most prestigious academies in the world. Still, you ask yourself if it was all worth it.

You aren't the same after those two years. You feel as if you've lost all purpose in life after that night. Like something valuable was stolen from you, and could never be returned. You don't want to keep going.

But reality will always dictate what you do. You can't afford to be like this because you're poor. Mental health doesn't exist to the poor, your father would insist. You've got bills to pay, mouths to feed. And you may be mediocre, but you're not dumb enough to seek justice against someone as powerful as your bully. You don't even have the money for that.

So you went on despite grievances to the next stage of your life: college. Countless scholarships from different sponsors. The same conglomerate that covered your senior high scholarship is offering you another full ride—living arrangements and all—to the country's number one university.

You refuse the offer this time. A thousand scholarships from that conglomerate isn't enough to repair the damage that's been done. Besides, you never want to encounter anything associated with him ever again.

Instead you accept to be sponsored by a different company; a smaller one (at least in comparison), but they covered your tuition of four years in the same prestigious university. Sure, no living arrangements, but that's more than what most sponsors give.

You enter the CEO's office, having been invited so she can get to know you more. There are two individuals in the room. She, and...

Your heart drops to your stomach.

The CEO introduces him to you, although there is no need for that. He's standing there in a tux, hair slicked back, jaded eyes glinting with mirth at the sight of you. It seems he's grown taller in the few months you haven't seen each other.

Apparently his dad's conglomerate is the parent company. How could you be so stupid?

Madame CEO excuses herself to take an important call, leaving you alone with him. He doesn't hesitate to walk closer, smiling as fondly as his austere face can manage.

"I missed you." He speaks, voice full of yearning. He takes your hand in his. "How are you after our shared night? Why did you leave so suddenly? Don't do that again, love."

Ripping your hand away, you asked why he was here. If he knew and orchestrated to have you accept this scholarship.

"I don't break my promises. I'd hate to start with you." He explains.

You demanded what he meant by that. He doesn't hide the fact that he's enjoying your turmoil, but you can't even find it in yourself to get it together this time.

"No one scored that night." He shrugs. "They were all so focused on hitting you."

...what?

"I promised you your college scholarship, remember?"

yandere!bully who follows you all the way to college.

As much as you appreciated their worry, it was unnecessary, something even they had come to realize after seeing how Aerion was with you.

He was as loving to you as he was not to everyone else, and though you somehow tamed the rushes of anger that always coursed through him, he still had a rather minimal tolerance for the rest of the world. Including his brothers. Especially his brothers.

Especially Aegon.

The youngest of his brothers had become an issue neither of you had expected prior to him meeting you.

It had taken some time before Aerion decided to introduce you to his family, and seeing as you weren't one to push, the most his brothers knew of you for exactly four months after you officially got together was your name — after Aerion accidentally left his phone on the table, and a notification from you revealed your name to Daeron, who saw no appeal in protecting his brother's privacy.

And when Aerion texted you one night, asking if you'd be okay with meeting his family — so they'll finally get off my ass about this, he had said —, you saw no issue with it, and thus a dinner was planned.

The instant the two of you entered his dining room, your eyes had gone over each attending member of his family: his three brothers, his two sisters, his father, his uncle, and his two cousins. And the air was knocked out of your lungs.

They all had an unnatural kind of beauty to them. Most of them shared Aerion's silver hair and purple eyes, but even those that didn't appeared to come from another world.

Aerion had cursed under his breath, muttering about how if he had known half the family would be called, he'd have bailed on this whole thing. But you had maintained your composure, painted a smile on your face, and met his family with forcibly-steadied hands and a thumping heart in your chest.

In retrospect, there really had been no need for you to stress over this so much. As intimidating as the Targaryens were, they were all mostly nice and very charming to be around, and in the blink of an eye, you'd found your place among them.

But credit must be given where it was due. If it hadn't been for the youngest boy, Aegon, you would have taken a lot longer to get comfortable.

His seat had been directly to your left, and he had chatted your ear off all through dinner. All the names, relations and little fun facts you knew about the Targaryens came from him. He had even ended up pulling his iPad beneath the table to show pictures of the events he was telling you all about.

Aerion hadn't shied away from expressing his annoyance at the extravagance of the dinner, which nobody showed any surprise to. He mostly stuck to your side, chatting with you in the brief moments Aegon's attention was elsewhere.

Regardless, the dinner had gone well, and with this particular milestone out of the way, the two of you could finally relax and enjoy each other's company the way you so loved: privately and without shame.

However, Egg didn't seem to have gotten the memo.

"Oh, not this again —” Aerion hissed as he returned to the large living room of the Targaryen home — castle felt more accurate to you, but oh well — with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and two drinks in the other. He stopped in his tracks right at the doorway, when his eyes found the little figure sitting next to you, which had not been there when he left five minutes ago. "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Your eyes widening at his words, you opened your mouth to scold him for swearing in front of the nine year old, but said nine year old merely perked up at his brother's voice and turned his head around to look at Aerion from where he sat on the couch.

"Did you bring my chips? I left them in the fridge."

"No! Get out!"

Even you flinched at the volume and tone of his voice, so it was no surprise when Egg leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest, a sad pout twisting his young features. And in spite of how much you enjoyed being alone with Aerion, you felt a tug at your heartstrings from the sight of the expression on his face.

Wincing, you glanced at your boyfriend, a pleading look in your eyes. "Well..."

"No."

"Just this time."

"You said that last time."

"He's already here."

"He's always here!"

"Aerion."

"No. Not happening."

Silence fell upon the living room, your eyes meeting Aerion's purple ones with determination. Obviously, you understood where he came from, but you couldn't help it. Egg was such a sweet little boy, and he was always so nice and adorable that you couldn't help but cave to his every wish.

And five minutes later, the three of you sat in front of the TV, Egg in the middle happily munching on the popcorns from the bowl on his lap, often turning to you to share his thoughts about the movie.

"Why Egg?"

"It's short for Aegon," he nodded vigorously and looked away from you.

"Yeah, I figured that part out —”

Like any normal person with a functioning brain, you loved making out with your boyfriend. He was hot, and you were in love with him, so it wasn't like it was a chore for you. Nor was it for him, based on the blurry, heated memories that suddenly came to mind.

Maybe doing it out in public was less understandable, though. But after he had placed all the shopping bags you'd handed him over the afternoon in the backseat of his car, he had pulled you into short kiss, which then became a long one, and somewhere between that and now, it had turned into something else.

Neither of you noticed when Aerion's phone began vibrating in his pocket for a couple of minutes. And when he finally did realize, he had to pull his hands out from under your shirt to declined with an irritated huff.

Then he paused, glanced at his screen for a few seconds, huffed again and answered the phone.

"No fucking way," he ended up spouting after a few back and forth between him and whoever was on the other side of that call.

"He'll be fine there for a few hours." He argued again, "There's all the teachers, and toys, and all the shit kids play with."

Oh, it had to be about Egg.

“Dad —! Can’t you ask Daeron—?” He paused again, listening to his father, and without another word hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket once more.

Holding back a laugh at the sheer rage painted on his face, you leaned against the car and cocked an eyebrow. “So? What was all that about?”

“My father’s meeting ran late. He’s asking me to pick Aegon up from school.”

“Okay, then.” You nodded, your body shifting to reach for the handle of the passenger door, but Aerion grabbed your wrist before you could do so.

“It’s Aegon.” He insisted, as though it would somehow change something about the situation.

You frowned, slowly nodding. “Tiny nine year old boy, silver hair, purple eyes, looks a lot like you? Yeah, I know the one.”

Rolling his eyes at your tone, Aerion let out a breath filled with annoyance. “I don’t have time to drive you home before picking him up.”

“I know.”

“So he’ll be in the car… with us… for the whole journey back home.”

“I also know that.”

And then his patience ran out, and he groaned, narrowing his eyes at you. “I’m saying the little shit will be glued to your ass.”

Which… yeah. True.

You didn’t mind, because Egg was still as sweet as he was when you first met him. Aerion did mind, however, since he was the one left out whenever the two — three — of you hung out together.

“You’re not jealous, are you?”

“Of him?”

“Yes, Aerion, of your nine year old brother.” You giggled, crossing your arms over your chest. “Seriously, though, you don’t have to be so mean to him. We’re always together. What’s the issue with him sometimes crashing with us?”

To this, he had no answer. He just rolled his eyes to the sky in this irritating yet charming way he did and released your wrist. He opened your door without a word, closing it behind you before walking to his side of the car.

“If it hadn’t been for that bastard, I would’ve won the game.”

Choking on your water, you turned to Egg with wide eyes, “Aegon!”

“What? The bastard cheated! All facts.”

“Oh, do you think they have the lemon sweets? You know the ones.”

Aerion frowned, briefly glancing at you before looking back at the road. “I don’t know, I’ll check when we get there.”

“Ooh, can I come?” Egg peaked his head in between both of yours, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion grumbled before using his hand to press against Egg’s face and push him back in his seat. “Shut up.”

Relentless, Egg turned to you. “Please?”

“No.” Aerion answered in your place.

“I didn’t ask you!” Egg scoffed from the back, glaring at the back of his brother’s head.

“I’m driving, and if I have to drag your puny little ass home by the ear, I will. Now shut up.”

Perhaps the whole reason the Targaryen house sat surrounded by gates and greenery was so strangers wouldn’t witness Aerion dragging Egg by the arm across the driveway, the young boy having planted his feet in the ground and screaming bloody murder for the whole world to hear, the way you did right now from the passenger seat of Aerion’s car.

You hadn’t gone to Aerion’s house in quite some time, you realized. There was no need to ask Aerion why he suddenly insisted on sleeping over at your place, or going home to yours, or him crashing over in your bedroom whenever he was free.

Were you complaining about your Egg-free life? Not really. Or at least, not right now, when Aerion lied on top of you, stealing your words with his mouth, barely letting you come up for air.

Definitely not right now.

You could've stayed there, in this situation, until the world imploded on itself. Nothing could bring either of you out of this bubble you'd formed around yourselves; that was how good you currently had it.

But right as his touch left flaming paths on your flesh as his fingers mapped out every inch of your skin, your phone began vibrating.

Not once.

Not twice.

But repeatedly, until you couldn't discern one notification from the next.

"Damn it," you sighed, closing your eyes as the moment between the two of you slipped right through your fingers. Aerion didn't raise his head higher than an inch above yours, but the annoyance coming from him was almost palpable.

You reached your arm out towards your nightstand, where you could vaguely remember having dropped your phone on some time ago. The light that suddenly blinded you as you lifted it from where it sat face down made you wince, and you used your free hand to rub your eyes.

do you want to play with me?

i'd ask daeron but he's asleep on the rug

he's boring also

you're nto

not

are you sleeping?

you haven't been at the house in a long time

did you breka up with aerion?

break

"Why the fuck do you have his number?" Aerion breathed out, exasperated at the texts. "Since when does he even have a number? He's nine."

Shrugging, you began typing a reply on your phone. "He got my number from your phone. And he just likes telling me about his day. He complains a lot about the kids in his class. Doesn't like them much."

With widened eyes and a raised eyebrow, Aerion sat up on your bed, letting the coldness of the room rush to you now that he wasn't acting as your personal blanket.

"What? So this is a common thing?"

"It's not that bad. He FaceTimes me on his iPad mostly, then he'll talk about his day while I do my homework, that's all." You told him, lifting yourself up on your elbows.

"Does my dad know about this?"

Nodding, you shrugged again. "Yeah, Egg's iPad uses your dad's phone number. He doesn't mind, so long as Egg doesn't uses it too much. He even says it's safer that way, since he doesn't have to watch him to make sure he doesn't sneak out again."

“I... don't know how I feel about this whole thing.”

“Well it’s not just him. I play online scrabble with your dad sometimes. and Aemon sends me book recommendations every other day.”

Aerion paused, "What?”

"Why is he bald, by the way? Can I ask?"

"Daeron drunkenly shaved off half his head one night. Then it looked awful, so we had to shave off the other half. Look."

Unsurprisingly, the boy displayed in the 0.5x pictures didn't seem to car about the admittedly horrifying hairstyle he currently had. With Maekar looking exasperated in the background, Egg smiled and gave a thumbs up to the camera.

Aerion woke up to find your half of his bed empty. No sound came from the bathroom, and with the sheets being cold, he assumed you must've been out of bed for some time.

While part of him felt something akin to relief from how comfortable you were with his family and in his home — sometimes too much, he thought to himself as he remembered you admitting to playing online scrabble with his father —, it also came with the borderline hatred from how comfortable they were with you.

People usually don't have to share their girlfriends with their families, do they? Why does it feel more like they tolerate him just so they can spend time with you.

Especially the youngest, insolent rat whose face had brightened up when Aerion had asked if you could spend a week here while your building was being fumigated. He hadn't even cared when Aerion roared at him to stay the fuck away.

As expected, it had been hard to find some alone time with you, because wherever you were, your shadow was not far behind. You didn't mind, of course, because the little rat turned into the sweetest, most innocent boy that's ever lived whenever you were in the vicinity, which immediately made Aerion out to be the bad one of the story.

The tiny fucker was a manipulative little shit, and Aerion will find a way to prove it to you.

After a brief shower to wash the night away, Aerion made his way down to the kitchen, hoping you'd be there. Fortunately for him, the first thing his eyes latched onto upon entering the room was your figure.

You sat at the counter, back to him, eyes on your phone.

Approaching, he hummed and wrapped his arms around you, leaning down to bury his nose in your hair. "How long have you been up? I thought you'd be worn out after —”

Eyes going round, you jammed your elbow into his gut, immediately shushing him. Aerion groaned, one arm flying to press against his stomach, where he'd taken the brunt of your strength. "What the fuck?"

Without a word, you nodded towards the fridge, and he could only follow your gaze. The fridge was open, which he hadn't noticed, and —

"Ugh, why is he here?" The words came out in unison from the two boys as soon as Egg peeked his head from behind the fridge's door and met his gaze.

Pinching your lips to hold in a laugh, because surely Aerion would hate you if you pointed out just how similar the two were, you merely lowered your phone to watch whatever was about to unravel.

"I was here first!" Egg countered, closing the fridge with a pie in hand. "Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of."

"I will stab you—"

"You can't keep letting him stick to you. Be on my side for once. Otherwise he'll never leave you alone."

"He just likes me because I play video games with him and I buy him food. He's not a bad kid," you laughed, but made a mental note to try and be less indulgent to the young boy.

As good as your relationship with Aerion was, it was bound to come to an end. You had been broken up for a week when the knock at your door came.

A week of lying in bed with a gaping hole in your chest.

A week of scrolling aimlessly through the pictures of the two of you on your phone.

Mostly a week of mourning how good it had been, and how good it would've been if only the two of you didn't argue so often.

The idea of interacting with a Targaryen for the time was so far out of mind that you didn’t expect the sight that befell you upon opening the door. Though, maybe you should have.

“Egg? What are you —”

“You can’t break up.” He hurried out, as though if he didn’t say everything at once, he’d never be able to. “Please, you have to come back. The house is so boring without you, and Dad says I’m not to contact you because Aerion is my brother and I have to stick by him. But I don’t want to stick by him!”

“Honey, it’s one in the morning, how did you get here?”

“I took a cab.” He panted, swallowing his saliva.

Later on, he gulped down his second glass of water as he sat on your couch. Your eyes hadn’t strayed from him at all, except for the brief moment you had used to text his brother. Of course, you knew he enjoyed your company and he thought of you not as his brother’s girlfriend but as his sister. But to come knocking at your door in the middle of the night to beg you to stay with his brother…

Yeah, you hadn’t fathomed he’d ever consider doing that. And yet.

“I didn’t think you cared so much about Aerion and his feelings.” You let out, part of you wondering if you should ask Egg how Aerion has been this past week, though you decided against it. You weren’t about to pull a nine year old boy into your issues, no matter how hard he tried,

But Egg just frowned, confusion filling his features, “Aerion? What are you talking about?”

No, you were the one frowning. Thinking back to his rapid little speech when you opened the door to find him, you questioned him again. “What were you talking about?”

Egg raised both hands as he shrugged, the way he always used his entire body to react. “I don’t care about Aerion. I just don’t want you to leave the family. But don’t worry about it. Even if you don’t want Aerion back, I’ve got a plan. What do you think about Daeron?”

Somehow, you were even more confused than you thought could be possible.

But independent as he was, Egg didn’t need a reply from you to keep the conversation going. “Father said I have to take my brother’s side now that you’ve dropped him. But if you got with Daeron, then I wouldn’t have to choose Aerion, because you’d still be in the family. Get it?”

Again, no reply from you apart from the gaping expression you gave at his words.

“If the drinking bothers you that much, I’m sure I can set you up with Valarr.”

And thank God for the sudden, incessant knocking at the door. Aerion was here, evidently, and he seemed pretty pissed.

“You fucking rat!” Aerion roared when his eyes found his brother sitting on the couch. “How did you even get out of the house? How did you get here?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

Wrong thing to say, because Aerion’s eyes widened before he started making a beeline for the couch.

As the boy screeched and jumped behind the couch, you grabbed Aerion’s arm to pull him back, wincing at the situation. God, you should be sleeping right now. “No violence inside, please.”

“My dad’s livid!” Aerion added loudly, anger seeping through his voice. “His room was empty, and the window was wide open. He thought someone had taken him. Unfortunately not!”

Egg peeked his eyes from behind your couch, glaring at his brother. “Hey, I’m doing you a favor! I was trying to get her back for you!”

“What?” He turned to you, but you only shrugged. Though you did notice how Egg’s explanation wasn’t entirely truthful, you didn’t point it out to Aerion. He was mad enough at him already without the knowledge he was trying to set you up with other people.

Growling, Aerion reached out and grabbed Egg’s collar, dragging him towards the door while mumbling an apology to you under his breath. The only thing you could hear as you closed the door was the two boys arguing.

But truth be told, if the young boy hadn’t found his way to your place and forgotten his jacket, you likely wouldn’t have called Aerion again, which led to the two of you sitting down and talking about your relationship, and if you got back together some time later… well, Aerion didn’t like the reminder it was all thanks to Egg.

this idea was stuck in my head for so long I'm just glad I got this out lmao. I also had no idea how to end it so the ending is lowkey rushed sorry

please let me know if you enjoyed this, I rarely post the fics I write so I'd love some feedback!!! and also let me know if you can see that my knowledge of how romantic relationships work is limited lmao

The bedchamber was quiet, lit by the soft glow of sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows—bleeding green and gold across the stone floor. Your husband sat motionless in his high-backed chair, tunic discarded on the table, revealing his broad expanse of chest usually hidden beneath layers of formal attire. Only his trousers remained, loose at the hips. His arms rested loosely on the chair’s carved sides; he was like a man carved of stone.

Unusually compliant for a man who commands obedience like breathing. 

He watched you closely with those deep-set eyes, calm on the surface but simmering beneath like embers under ash. The silence between you wasn't empty; it hummed with something unspoken, something thick as summer air before a storm. Your body was warm and still on top of him, knees pressing into the cushioned seat and nightgown bunched up around your thighs. 

Ormund did not speak as you carefully worked. No commands issued from him now, no reproachful words about duty and your disgraceful blood. His breathing was deep and even…almost meditative. There was a strange intimacy to this—him bare-chested before you as if he were a sacrifice laid upon an altar only the two of you knew existed. 

You could hear his sharp tone in your head and feel his strong grip on your face as he chastised you for thinking such blasphemous things. You didn't have to imagine the feeling of your knees aching from being on them in the sept for hours on end, repenting and praying to a faith you didn’t believe in—it’s a feeling you’ve come to know well in the few years of being married to the lord of Oldtown. 

Your husband's chest rose slowly beneath your palms. You weren’t praying now. This wasn't penance or a ritual; there was no septon to witness it, no sept bells tolling for sins committed in secret. You were simply tending to him. 

He didn’t move away from your touch—no, he relished it. Having you so close to him, so pliant in his lap despite everything he’s done, despite everything his family has and continues to do to yours. And here you were, a sharp blade in your hand that you could easily kill him with—you were a smart girl; he was sure you would find a way to sneak off to your beast of a dragon and find your way back to your mother. 

But no, you continued to delicately glide the blade across his chest with reverence usually reserved for saints or dead men. He had molded you so perfectly into the perfect wife, into the perfect Lady of Oldtown. He made sure your life as a Targaryen princess was long forgotten; it was a title that only brought ruin. 

The blade glides—kissed by his warm skin. Ormund exhales through his nose, a sound that sounds too much like satisfaction. His pecs flex subtly beneath the precise drag of your movements—a man who allowed this, who let you believe you were doing this out of the kindness of your sweet soul. 

His hands remain where they are: one on the armrest, the other resting lightly against your thigh where it brushes your skin. Not gripping, not claiming yet—just there, as if it were a silent reminder that this closeness exists only because he permits it. 

The silence continued to stretch on until Ormund finally spoke—low, softer than usual, stripped of its commanding edge. “You’ve always had such gentle hands, wife.” 

Not praise, not quite, he rarely praised you, not unless he could use it to his advantage. No, it was more like an observation, something he noted with quiet intensity. He noticed everything about you; you were his after all. So beautiful, so fragile. 

His hand near your thigh moved closer, unbeknownst to you. His thumb moved then—not suddenly or rough like you were used to from him—but slowly tracing the side of your thigh through the thin fabric of your nightgown. His touch was so soft it must have been a mistake, but it lingered, too deliberate to be accidental. 

The contrast between his usual iron grip and this featherlight touch sent a shiver through you—something so tender was hard to believe came from a man like Ormund. Words didn't come to your tongue. 

He didn't speak again. Just watched you with those dark eyes while his fingers continued their quiet path upward along your thigh, not rushing or demanding anything yet. The blade in your hand stilled mid-motion as you tensed slightly under his unexpected caress. Was he…comforting you? Or was this another form of control—lulling you into false security with power disguised as affection? A test perhaps? To see if you’d pull away? If you’d flinch at such unexpected gentleness? 

You did not wish to know. 

His breathing stayed even but slower now, more controlled as though he were savoring every second of this rare closeness, savoring how he could feel your thighs tremble around him. His other hand lifted slowly to brush a stray lock of hair behind your ear with shocking delicacy before settling at the nape of your neck. 

The moment his fingers curled gently at the nape of your neck, you froze completely—like a lamb caught in the mouth of a wolf. His thumb pressed softly into that sensitive spot just beneath your hairline. His other hand remained on your thigh, warm and heavy but unmoving now. Ormund’s fingers at your nape were warm and heavy, not pressing down, but holding. 

There was no hunger in his eyes, no predatory gleam that usually appeared when he looked at you with desire or anger—he was hiding it so well. This was something else entirely, quiet contemplation edged with something almost affectionate? It unsettled you more than any reprimand ever could have. 

You didn't pull away; you didn’t want to. Then slowly, he leaned forward, and his lips met yours. 

The kiss was not like the others. Not possessive, not claiming, not harsh or demanding as they usually were. This one was soft, tentative almost. He didn’t deepen it immediately—just held there for a heartbeat or two as if testing whether you would reject him (you wouldn’t), whether you’d tense up (you did). He pressed again gently, coaxing your lips to part beneath his with slow pressure rather than force. 

One hand stayed cradling your nape while the other slid up higher on your thigh, still careful not to rush it; a gentle hand with you could make things easier. A part of you wondered if this was some kind of trick…if he’d suddenly grow tired of such gentleness and turn it into something rougher. His kindness never lasted, and it was never for nothing. 

You knew that, but you couldn’t help but melt into the patiently sweet and slow kiss. 

The sharp sting of the blade nicking his skin—barely a scratch, really—was instantaneous. His entire body went rigid; in an instant, his tenderness shattered like glass as his expression darkened. A low growl rumbled in his throat as he yanked your hair back by the grip at your nape, forcing you to break the kiss with a pained gasp as tears immediately filled your eyes as you realized what happened. 

Without warning, he wrenched the razor from your trembling grip and tossed it aside where it clattered against the stone, your body flinching harshly at the echoing noise. You didn't dare to look him in the eyes, but you couldn’t fathom seeing the small bead of blood forming on his chest. Guilt and fear clawing at your throat. 

“You dare to draw my blood?” He snarled through clenched teeth; the venomous anger in his voice cracked like thunder across the quiet chamber. You whimpered involuntarily at how quickly tenderness had turned to rage. You didn't move, despite your body urging you to, as he gripped both sides of your face harshly. 

Your voice cracked as you blurted out your apology, frantic and desperate, before he could even demand one. “I’m sorry—Please, I didn't mean to! I swear, My Lord!” Tears spilled freely down your cheeks now, hot with shame. You knew better than this—knew how fast his wrath could ignite over something so small. 

His grip tightened painfully on your face—his fingers digging into the delicate skin and bones of your cheeks. That simmering rage was barely restrained behind a mask of cold control in his eyes. Your hands flew up instinctively to clutch at his wrists, where he gripped your face like a vice; you weren’t trying to pry him off, but just holding on as if that could soften the storm raging in his eyes. 

The blood welling from the tiny cut stood stark against his pale skin—a single drop of crimson that looked more monstrous than any wound could. It glistened under the stained-glass light, so tiny but made Ormond seethe with outrage. He hated imperfections. You hated yourself for it instantly. This was your fault. 

Ormund’s fingers tighten for a fraction of a second longer, his knuckles white against your skin, before he let out a heavy, ragged exhale that signaled he was trying to calm himself. He did not pull away entirely, but the predatory fury in his gaze softened into something more complex—a dark, simmering disappointment that hurt more than his grip. 

“Control Yourself.” He commanded you. The words cut deeper than any slap. Not shouted, not screamed—but spoken in that lethally quiet tone he used when truly furious. The kind of voice that made even his most loyal men fearful. 

Control yourself. 

A direct order—one laced with disgust at your clumsiness, your carelessness, the sheer indignity of it all; drawing blood from him by accident while performing smoothing you’ve done countless times before. Tears still streamed silently down your face despite your biting down on your bottom lip to stop them. You didn't dare speak again—not after this latest failure in obedience. 

Your husband studied your tear-streaked face, the way your lips trembled beneath his displeasure. You have always been such a pretty crier. The silence stretched, long and suffocating, before he finally released you with another sharp exhale through his nose. 

The shift in the air was instantaneous, thick with tension. Ormund’s gaze dropped to your tear-stained lips, then dragged lower—down the curve of your body still seated on his lap. The anger in his expression didn't vanish entirely, but it morphed into something else. Something far more dangerous. 

He reached out and gripped the fabric of your nightgown near the hem with one large hand, giving it a single sharp tug upward, just enough to make you understand what he wanted without needing words. A whimper nearly escapes your lips at the feeling of heat pooling in your belly at the implication. 

“Lift your dress,” Ormund ordered lowly, voice lethal and gravelly from barely restrained hunger rather than rage now. There was a pause where you could hear nothing but both of your breathing before he added sternly, “You will make it up to me.” 

“Or would you rather bleed for me instead?” 

His threat was wrapped in velvet cruelty—a true Hightower ultimatum where refusing always ended badly for those beneath them. You knew what he wanted, what he wanted from you, and maybe there was a time you would have hated yourself for this—but you wanted it too. 

You lifted yourself on your knees. Your hands trembled slightly as you obeyed, gripping the hem of your nightgown and slowly pulling it up over your hips. The fabric bunched around your waist, exposing your smooth bare skin to the cool air, as Ormund watched your every movement with those heavy-lidded eyes filled with burning desire. 

Ormund didn't waste any time. His large hand was moving between them—those fingers that had just moments ago gripped you in fury were now working with an efficient tug at the laces of his trousers, pushing both his trousers and underclothes down just below his hips with a quick lift of his hips. 

His arousal was already evident—a thick length straining against restraint from earlier, tension between anger and desire warring inside of him until lust won. He exhaled sharply with gritted teeth at finally being free. His cock stood proudly, flushed at the tip and twitching in anticipation. The veins along his length pulsed in time with his heartbeat—strong and angry. Your breath hitched, and your mouth watered at the sight. Ormund gripped himself firmly at the base before looking. Back at you expectantly without saying anything else, he didn't need to. 

His hand remained wrapped firmly around himself, not stroking yet, just holding possessively while he waited for you. The message was clear: you would take what he allowed.

This wasn’t about affection or tenderness anymore; this was punishment disguised as pleasure—your obedience could be rewarded, or withheld entirely based on how well you took him. And Ormund expected nothing less than perfection from his wife right now. 

You swallowed hard; your pulse was hammering in your ears as you shifted on top of his lap. Ormund wouldn't dare to help you, no guiding hands or soft words to ease the way. You had to do this yourself, just like everything else with him: prove yourself worthy of forgiveness through sheer effort. Prove that you weren’t just a spoiled princess like he thought you were. 

You didn't hesitate to lower yourself onto him—he hated when you hesitated—his heat and hardness pressing against your inner thighs first before slowly pushing inside. A choked-out gasp escaped your lips at the stretch; he was always large and a demanding stretch. Your body tensed instinctively around the intrusion but gradually relaxed as more of him filled you up, your legs trembling after days without intimacy. The tension between anger and arousal made it feel even more intense than usual. 

Ormund’s jaw locked tight at the sensation, a low groan rumbling through his chest as your heat enveloped him completely. Both of his hands settle firmly on your hips, fingers digging into your soft flesh hard enough that it would bruise later. One of the many reminders of this moment you would feel for days. A whimper escaped your lips despite biting down hard on them to stay quiet. This wasn't the time for noises of weakness; you did not wish to displease him further. 

When you finally bottomed out against his hips, you had to stop your head from resting on his shoulder, tears filling your eyes from how full he made you feel. 

The moment you settled fully against him, Ormund’s nostrils flared, his breath slipping past his lips heavier now. He didn't kiss you, didn't caress your face or stroke your hair like a husband might do to comfort his wife during such an intimate act. No, he just stared into your teary eyes with that unreadable intensity, part fury still simmering from earlier, part primal satisfaction at having you exactly where he wanted—filled and claimed by him. 

“H-Husband!” You cried out in pleasure, slowly lifting yourself just until the tip remained inside, before sinking again. Not too fast because you knew he preferred controlled movements, but not too slow—laziness was unacceptable. The lewd sound of your wetness filled the room; you were too blinded by pleasure to feel humiliated. 

His fingers flexed against your hips at the sounds you were making before one large hand softly gripped the back of your neck, forcing you forward until your forehead rested against his, his core clenching from your movements that only seemed to get faster. His breath fanned hot over your face as he stared at you for another tense moment—loving how fucked out you looked on his cock already—before finally crushing his mouth into yours in a searing kiss. 

It was claiming, punishing. His teeth nipped at your bottom lip hard enough to sting and have you whine against his lips before his tongue slid past, demanding entry without asking for permission. You were his; he didn't need to ask. One of his hands moved from your hip as he wrapped his arm around your waist, while the other kept a firm hand on your nape. Keeping you close. 

The kiss was all teeth and tongue, dominant, hungry, and tasted like fury and lust tangled together. Ormund kissed you with the same intensity he used to command his men, his mouth moving against yours with ruthless dominance while his arms around your waist squeezed tighter to keep you pressed flush against him as you rode him. 

Every rock of your hips sent sparks of pleasure through both of your bodies; the heat between you was almost unbearable now, and when he finally broke the kiss to breathe, it wasn't far; just enough space for air before pulling you back into one. He pressed on the base of your spine firmly, pressing you down harder against him. You couldn’t stop the moans and whines from leaving your lips and pouring into his. 

The satisfaction in his chest was burning hot. 

You could feel every rigid muscle in his torso and chest, tensing beneath you where skin met his—his chest rising and falling fast under yours—as pleasure coiled tight inside of him. The sound of their skin slapping echoed through the bedchamber. Ormund was too caught up in the pleasure to care about anyone overhearing. 

The sound that escaped your husband's throat wasn't just a moan; it was deep and guttural, almost pained in its pleasure. Rare of a man who prided himself on complete control—especially with you—but was teetering on the edge now because of you. His fingers tangled roughly into your hair, which drove him mad, a reminder of your cursed blood. He tilted his head back slightly to watch you, the way your body moved above him with desperate devotion, the look of pure pleasure. 

“Show me, wife.” His voice came out rough with lust but still carried that commanding edge through his clenched teeth. His words weren’t gentle or romantic as he continued, “Show me how remorseful you are.” 

A test. A demand wrapped in sinful temptation. He wanted proof of your penance, not just through apologies and tears anymore, but through this. Flesh and fire. Through every desperate roll of your hips against his lap, begging for his forgiveness without words. Through the way sweat beaded at your temples, chasing both punishment and reward simultaneously inside this heated embrace between husband and wife. Owner and the owned…

Oh, gods, how you want to obey him perfectly. 

And so, without hesitation, driven by that desperate need to please him after drawing his blood. You wanted to be his good wife, so you obeyed with fervor. Your movements grew faster now, not just riding him but rolling your hips like a prayer. Each rise and fall of your hips had his hands gripping harder into your plush skin at the feeling of you squeezing around him as he pushed up into your wet heat from below. 

Breathless gasps and moans tumbled from both of your lips between stolen biting kisses. Your hands braced on his shoulders for leverage—the only part of him he would allow you to touch—nails digging lightly into his muscle. His hands slid down to grip the plump skin of your ass, guiding your rhythm exactly how he liked it. 

His jaw clenched as he felt your nails dig into his shoulders, pain mixed with pleasure. He tried to stay silent, not wanting to reward you with the sounds of his pleasure, but even he couldn’t stay silent forever—not when every drag of your tight heat around him threatened to unravel his restraint. The pretty noises you were trying to hold in didn’t help ease it. 

The bedchamber was filled with the sounds of your shared passion at the feverish pace your bodies were moving at together, skin slapping, ragged breathing, and the occasional moan or whimper that slipped through. Ormund was losing himself in you; each exhale was hot against your lips as he watched you with hooded eyes. The sight of you unraveling about him—the way your face was twisted in pleasure, the moans leaving your parted lips—sent a possessive thrill through him. 

Ormund’s fingers kneaded your ass possessively as he helped guide your movements to match exactly what he craved—the perfect punishing rhythm that made his hips jerk up instinctively to meet yours. Every time you came down hard on him, a low groan of pleasure rumbled deep from his chest. His upward thrusts were taking your breath away and had your thighs shaking; he was always precise when he fucked his wife into repentance. 

His voice was a growl, dark and thick with need. “Faster.” He commanded, his hands squeezing the plush flesh of your ass harder as he lifted you slightly, only to slam you back down on him faster. Ormund’s hips snapped up sharply beneath you, the sudden change in pace and him filling you deeper than before, moans and slurred words of pleasure leaving your lips. 

Ormund’s lips crashed against yours again, this time rougher and hungrier. His tongue claims your mouth with the same dominance he used to claim every other part of you. His teeth nipped at your bottom lip again before dragging down along your jawline and neck, leaving open-mouthed kisses and bites. Marking you all over your collarbone, each one stung sweetly, reminding you who you truly belonged to. 

His breathing had turned uneven now, sweat glistening along his forehead and the defined lines of his chest that were pressing against yours. He could feel himself building fast, the coil in his stomach winding tighter with every slick slide inside you. You took him so perfectly; he molded every part of you to submit to him. He could feel that you were close, feel how your thighs trembled as you tried to keep up with his thrusts, your body nearly going limp in his arms from exhaustion. 

“Look at me,” Ormund orders sharply as one of his hands abandoned its grip on your flesh to cup your neck roughly, forcing eye contact as he continued to fuck up into you. When your tear-filled eyes met his stormy gaze, a smirk spread across his face as he squeezed just enough to have your pace faltering. His voice was thick with desire and the twisted satisfaction of having you fall apart on top of him, “I want to see those pretty eyes when I make you fall apart.” 

Ormund’s grip on your neck tightened just enough to make you gasp, his thumb pressing into the frantic pulse beneath your hot skin, a silent threat that if you looked away, there would be consequences. He gave you a command, and you didn't dare disobey. His dark eyes burned into yours, unrelenting, as he watched the tears spill over your lashes and soak his skin. Your expression was a perfect mix of overwhelmed pleasure and submission. 

Each snap of his hips hitting that perfect spot inside you sent white-hot pleasure searing through your every nerve. Your lips parted around silent moans, but they soon turned into broken whimpers when the pleasure was too much to handle. He could feel the way you were clamping around him, how your grip on his shoulders got harder—more desperate, how your sweet moans got more pitchy. He could see how you controlled yourself until he gave you permission. Just like how he taught you. Good wife. 

He nodded once, and almost instantaneously, you succumbed to the pleasure. 

“Ormund!” A broken moan of pleasure tore from your lips as your peak crashed over you like a wave of pleasure so intense that your tears spilled freely down your cheeks once again as your body clenched around him, feeling dizzy from the overwhelming ecstasy coursing through your body. All you could think about was him, chanting his name in your head like a prayer. 

Ormund’s hips nearly stilled at the feeling of you squeezing him tighter than before; a guttural groan ripped from his chest at the sight of how perfectly ruined he had made his wife look. Your burning skin covered in sweat and marks from his mouth, trembling limbs clinging to him, tear-stained face twisted into pure bliss because of him. 

He watched intently as your peak overwhelmed every inch of you, your body begging you to stop and let the pleasure lull you into contentment. Your lashes fluttered, but you forced them to stay open at his command. Your body was trembling even worse now; overstimulated but still chasing that sweet feeling of gratification that only he could give you by blessing you with his seed. And gods did it please him—to have such control over you. 

He didn’t close his eyes; no, he kept them open just like he demanded of you, drinking in every twitch of your face as ecstasy wrecked through both of you. 

The moment Ormund came, his entire body tensed, every muscle locked in pure ecstasy. A low, desperate moan escaped him that had rarely been heard before—a man so composed and controlled unraveling completely because of you. His Sweet wife. His fingers flexed against your neck as his peak slammed into him, his seed spilling deep inside you with hot pulses that made your oversensitive walls flutter around him. 

For several heartbeats, neither of you moved. The world outside your bedchamber ceased to exist; there was no talk of wars brewing beyond Oldtown’s walls or political intrigue at court—just sweat-slicked skin pressed together and shared breaths slowing gradually. Ormund didn't close his eyes; he kept his intense gaze locked on you as he drank in every detail—your sweat-glistening skin, the way your lips parted as you caught your breath, how utterly spent you looked from riding him so devoutly. 

Then slowly, Ormund exhaled through his flared nostrils before pressing an unexpected kiss to your forehead—a rare gesture so soft it didn't feel like him. Not dominance or punishment this time, but something quieter: Satisfaction? Affection? It lingered only for a second before he shifted beneath you, enticing a small whimper from you. 

He had to stop himself from smiling at the babbling thank-yous leaving your lips.

His hand on your bottom moved up to smooth down your spine while the one on your neck lifted to brush your damp strands of hair away from your face. His calloused fingertips gently brushed your wet cheeks with tears and sweat before he gripped your soft cheeks with his thumb and index finger, your lips pressing together in a cute pout. 

If you weren’t so utterly fucked out, you might have seen the small glint of pride in your husband's eyes from how well you took him, how you submitted to him so beautifully once again. He would tell the cooks to make your favorite tonight. He didn't allow himself to linger in such feelings before he was commanding you once again, ”Go clean yourself, wife.” 

His tamed dragon. 

┊࿐ ❛❛ continue on to my…sweetling mlist & main masterlist ❜❜

Იᰍ holy yap session this was, I had 2 redbull’s and a dream. i hope you enjoy this one bunnies, it was fun but very different to write and i enjoyed it, ormund has really enchanted me wowza 😻 please tell me your thoughts , ideas, and opinions, they are very important and wanted !! comments, reblogs and feedback is very welcomed !! 🐇

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