He'd been able to smell George already at the steps of the castle, swinging off his horse. The too-much way George always smelled, so ripe and rich and needy it was something half the kingdom talked about; the first thing Alex thought of when George's father offered Alex his hand. He'd only even spoken with George a handful of times then, but George had been around the palace enough, and he smelled like no one else. 

Like a whore, he and George had both heard one of Alex's councelors say the night after the wedding, drunk on good wine and thinking he was whispering. 

Now, it's. It's true, Alex thinks shamefully, finally loosening the last knot at his side and letting his chest plate clatter loudly to the floor, Patrick huffing behind him and moving to work on his chainmail. The whole room, the whole castle, is swamped with scent like a brothel sprays against their pillows, and everyone knows it's from Alex's mate. Knows it's this bad because he was left alone for days of his heat, Alex half the county away. 

"I know you're not thinking right now," Patrick tells him, lifting the heavy chainmail over his head, "but you need to listen to me. George is–he's not as you left him." 

He's not as he was just a few moments ago, whimpering and sobbing so loudly Alex could hear it as he ran up the hall. His body's still twisted on the bed, tangled in the thin pale sheet, cocooned in piles of Alex's furs, but he's quieted now, with Alex in the room. Like his body knows, Alex thinks, thrumming, that Alex has what it needs. 

Patrick unlocks the last piece of Alex's armor and Alex lunges away, fumbling toward the bed and stripping his under layers off at the same time. 

"My lord," Patrick says, edge of panic in his voice, and then, just as Alex leans one hand into the mattress, pulling the sheet back from George's chest as George turns, sleepy, toward him, "Alex."

Alex blinks down at the soft, pale shape of George's body, his brain so full of nothing but just, George, it takes a long, clicking moment for him to figure out what–what he sees. 

The sheet clenched in Alex's hand has been draped over George's stomach, but now, nothing covering him, Alex sees a new, gentle curve to him there, the skin a tight, mottled red. 

George's arm sweeps out across the bed, his fingers brushing Alex's thigh, and then settling there, fingertips flexing into Alex. 

"George," Alex breathes. He leans all his weight on one hand and reaches forward to flatten his other, shaking, against the bottom curve of George's belly. He strokes up, over the bump of George's navel, and George sighs, turns into his touch. 

"Alex," Patrick says again from behind him. "My lord, it's not–"

Alex nods. Of course it's not his. He's never been through a heat with George. George hasn't even had a heat since their wedding, until now.

He turns to Patrick, pulling his hand off George and pressing it to his own thigh, holding the warmth of it against his skin. 

"Who else knows," he asks, intent. 

Patrick shakes his head, serious. "Me and Aleix."

He hears George shift behind him, and then his hand comes to the inside of Alex's knee, trails up and turns, his palm cupping sweaty at Alex's balls. 

Alex has been hard since before he stepped in the room. His dick hangs heavy between him and Patrick, and Patrick hadn't seemed bothered, years of dressing and undressing Alex, pulling him out of brothels when he was younger, but his eyes track George's hand now, and then flick away, and he flushes.

"Good," Alex tells him. "No one else will. Promise me." Patrick must have been hiding George for most of the two months Alex has been gone, for him to be showing this much. They can keep up the lie a little longer, and by the time the baby is born, no one will think anything about dates and months.  

Patrick looks back at him, his face flickering with surprise, and then it settles, calmer than he's looked since Alex first rode up. He smiles, soft. "Of course."

George wraps his legs around Alex as soon as Alex climbs into bed with him, pulling Alex into his body, until Alex's hip bones are dug into the flat insides of George's thighs, and Alex's cock is rubbing against the underside of George's belly. 

"I'm so late, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" Alex can hear himself saying, over and over and over like that makes up for not being here to help ease George into his heat as soon as they started scenting it. To not watch his stomach grow, to map it every morning with his hands. 

George is drenched in sweat, the sheet he had half-tangled around himself translucent with it, and sticky-stiff where it was twined between his legs, soaking up slick and come. 

His hands scramble at Alex, fingers searching, and when Alex takes one in his and presses his lips to George's palm, he comes away with his lips salty and damp. 

George's fingers dig hard into the back of Alex's shoulder, tugging at the muscle that's been aching for weeks on the battlefield, and Alex leans in, helpless. 

George's belly bumps up against his own, and Alex groans, and then George is surging up, meeting Alex's mouth with his, and Alex thinks, for the first time since riding through the gate, up the path he knows by the pattern of his horses hooves on it, through hallways he's spent his life in, I'm home.

Alex brings both of his hands to George's stomach, spanning them there, feeling the weight inside George shift gently under his touch. 

The base of his dick is heavy and warm, like he's halfway to knotting already. He tells George, mindless, that he'll never leave the palace again, that George's body is the most amazing thing on earth, that he's unbelievable, growing their baby for him.