Chapter 2: The Breeding Proof
The rider from King’s Landing brought no peace, only a summons. The King’s Tourney was to be held in a moon’s turn, a spectacle of feasting and jousting. The letter, signed by Robert’s own hand, was a blunt command for the Lord of Casterly Rock and his new lady wife to attend. “All loyal lords shall gather to reaffirm their fealty,” Jaime read aloud to his father’s stone-faced council, the parchment crisp in his hand. It was a show of strength, a reminder. And for Rhaenys, it would be a cage on public display.
The journey east was a tense, silent affair. Rhaenys sat her horse like a stranger, wrapped in a cloak of Lannister crimson that seemed to swallow her whole. She spoke little, but her eyes missed nothing—the rolling hills, the swollen rivers, the way Jaime’s jaw tightened whenever a roadside inn evoked some memory he chose not to share. The lessons she’d asked for had begun in the yards of the Rock, brief, furious sessions with blunted daggers where he corrected her grip, his body a solid wall behind hers, his voice a low murmur in her ear. It was a new kind of intimacy, one of sweat and focus, and it left them both strangely breathless.
The royal hunting lodge was deeper in the kingswood than the capital, a place of dark timber and high ceilings, smelling of pine resin and wet stone. That first evening, a feast of boar and venison simmered with a tension thicker than the gravy. King Robert’s laughter boomed too loud. Queen Cersei’s smile was a thin, sharp line. Her eyes, the same shade of green as Jaime’s but without a trace of their warmth, kept finding Rhaenys from across the high table, lingering like a cold touch.
Rhaenys fled the hall as soon as courtesy allowed, the weight of those stares like stones in her pockets. She found the assigned bedchamber, a grand space draped with tapestries of hunts long past. She was standing before the cold hearth, arms wrapped around herself, when the door opened without a knock.
Cersei entered as if she owned the room, which, in a way, she did. Her gown was cloth-of-gold, her hair a cascade of perfect waves. She closed the door softly behind her.
“The little dragon,” Cersei said, her voice sweet as poisoned wine. “Finding your new nest to your liking?”
Rhaenys turned, forcing her spine straight. “Your Grace.”
“Oh, dispense with that. We’re family now, aren’t we?” Cersei glided closer, her perfume—a cloying blend of jasmine and something bitter—filling the space between them. “I must congratulate you. From a hidden scrap beneath a bed to the Lady of Casterly Rock. My brother has a soft heart for broken things.”
“I am not broken.”
“Aren’t you?” Cersei’s gaze swept over her, dismissive. “Every time you look in a mirror, you see the ghosts of your house. Every time my brother touches you, you feel the debt. It must be exhausting.” She paused, her eyes locking onto Rhaenys’s. A strange flicker passed through them, a momentary hesitation. Rhaenys held the stare, letting the queen see the violet defiance. Cersei’s smile tightened, almost a wince, before she continued. “Robert was in his cups earlier. He made a decree. He said if your womb isn’t swelling with a Lannister heir by year’s end, he’ll see the marriage annulled. He’ll find a useful match for Jaime. A fertile one.”
The air left Rhaenys’s lungs. This was the trap, spelled out in cruelly simple terms.
“He thinks your Targaryen blood is thin. Cursed, maybe.” Cersei leaned in, her whisper a serpent’s hiss. “All that duty-fucking in the Rock… has it borne any fruit yet? Or does my brother’s famous stamina fail when faced with such a… solemn task?”
Rhaenys’s hand itched for the dagger she now kept strapped to her thigh beneath her skirts. “Get out.”
The door slammed open.
Jaime stood there, his face a mask of cold fury. He’d clearly heard enough. His doublet was unlaced at the throat, his hair disheveled from the ride or the wine. His eyes went from Cersei’s triumphant sneer to Rhaenys’s pale, furious face.
“Cersei,” he said, the name a warning.
“Brother,” she purred. “We were just discussing your marital duties. The King’s… expectations.”
“Get out,” he repeated Rhaenys’s words, but his voice held the force of a lord.
Cersei’s smile didn’t falter. She gave a slight, mocking curtsey and moved to the door. But she didn’t leave. She paused in the threshold, a spectator settling in for a show.
Jaime ignored her. His focus was entirely on Rhaenys. The fury in him was a palpable heat. It wasn’t directed at her, but it surrounded her, pulled her in. He crossed the room in four long strides.
“She wants to watch?” he growled, his voice low enough that only Rhaenys could hear. “Let her watch.”
He didn’t kiss her. He grabbed her, his hands rough on her arms, and pushed her backward. Her legs hit the edge of the great fur-covered bed and she fell onto it, the breath knocked from her. He was on her before she could rise, his body a heavy, welcome weight. His knee shoved her thighs apart. The fabric of her gown ripped at the neckline under his hands.
“Jaime—” she gasped, but it was lost as his mouth crashed down on hers. This wasn’t the collision of their wedding night; this was a claiming, a punishment for the words Cersei had uttered. She tasted wine and anger. She bit back, her nails digging into the muscles of his back through his shirt. He tore his mouth away, breathing heavily.
“Let the whole fucking court watch me breed you,” he snarled, his hand fumbling with the laces of his breeches.
He didn’t bother with the rest of her clothes. He shoved her skirts up around her waist, exposing her. The cool air of the room hit her skin, followed by the searing heat of his palm as he gripped her hip. He was hard, his cock thick and heavy in his hand. He guided himself to her entrance, notched the head against her.
She was wet. The fear, the anger, the sheer audacity of him had pooled into a desperate heat between her legs. He felt it, and a rough, humorless sound escaped him.
He pushed in.
It was a brutal, full stroke, no gentleness, no hesitation. He filled her completely, a stretching, burning fullness that made her cry out. Her head fell back, her wild curls tangling in the furs. He didn’t pause. He set a relentless, driving rhythm, each thrust jolting her body up the bed. The bedposts rattled. His fingers twisted in her hair, pulling her head back so she had to look at him, so she had to see the wild conflict in his green eyes—possession, guilt, a feral need to prove something, to defy the watcher at the door.
“Is this what she wanted to see?” he grunted, his hips pistoning. “Is it?”
Rhaenys couldn’t form words. Pleasure, sharp and coiling, was building deep within her, fed by the raw dominance of his movements, by the dark thrill of Cersei’s eyes on them. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust. Her moans were wanton, open-mouthed, filling the room.
“Yes,” she finally hissed, her eyes locked on his. “Let her see.”
He fucked her harder, deeper. The slap of skin on skin, the creak of the bed, their ragged breaths were the only sounds. Jaime’s control was fraying. His thrusts became erratic, harder. He buried his face in her neck, his breath hot against her skin.
“Come for me,” he demanded, his voice a ragged whisper. “Now.”
It was the command that broke her. The coil snapped, and her climax ripped through her with a silent, shuddering intensity. Her inner muscles clenched around him, milking him, and with a hoarse shout, he followed. He drove into her one last, brutal time and held there, pulsing, spilling his seed deep inside her in hot, claiming jets.
He collapsed on her, his weight crushing, his breath coming in gasps. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the distant crackle of the hearth.
Slowly, he pulled out. She felt the slick, hot trickle of his release leaking from her, down her inner thigh. The reality of it, of his seed taking root, was a stark, physical truth.
He stood up, looking down at her. Her gown was ruined, her hair a riot, her body marked. His eyes flicked to the doorway.
Cersei was still there. Her face was pale, her perfect composure shattered into something ugly and raw. She looked not at Jaime, but at Rhaenys, and in her eyes was a hatred so pure it was almost awe.
Jaime saw it. A new, dark determination settled over his features. He reached down, his hands firm on Rhaenys’s hips.
“Turn over,” he said, his voice rough but quiet.
Her body protested, sore and spent, but something in his tone compelled her. She rolled onto her stomach, then pushed herself up onto her knees. The fur was rough against her skin. She felt exposed, presented.
She heard the wet sound of him stroking himself, hard again already. He positioned himself behind her, one hand on her hip, the other guiding his cock. He entered her in one smooth, deep push, this angle even more invasive, more claiming. She gasped, her fingers clutching the furs.
This was slower, more deliberate. Each thrust was a deep, rolling possession aimed at the very core of her. He leaned over her, his chest against her back, his mouth near her ear.
“This one will take,” he murmured, the words a dark promise. “I’ll plant it so deep in your cunt, nothing will tear it out.”
He fucked her like that, with a single-minded purpose that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with destiny. Rhaenys closed her eyes, losing herself in the rhythm, in the profound, animalistic act of it. Let Cersei watch. Let the whole world watch. This was her ground now. This was her fight.
When he finished again, with a low groan and a final, shuddering push, he stayed inside her for a long time. Finally, he pulled out and slumped beside her on the ravaged bed.
The doorway was empty. Cersei was gone.
In the silence, Rhaenys slowly rolled onto her side to face him. His eyes were open, staring at the canopy. The fury had drained, leaving something hollow and weary in its place.
“The lessons,” she said, her voice scratchy. “When we return to the Rock. I want to learn the sword. Not just the dagger.”
He turned his head to look at her. He saw no tears, no shame. Only that defiant violet fire, tempered now in a new forge. After a long moment, a ghost of his old, crooked smile touched his lips.
“As my lady commands.”
“As my lady commands.”
The words hung between them, a truce spoken in the dark. He did not move to hold her, and she did not seek his touch. They lay in the wreckage of the furs, listening to the settling stones of the lodge. The slick evidence of his determination cooled on her inner thighs. A draft found its way through the ancient timbers, and she shivered.
Jaime rose without a word. He moved to the washbasin, his back to her, the muscles there taut. He poured water, the sound obscenely loud. He wrung out a cloth and brought it to her. His expression was unreadable.
“Here,” he said, his voice rough.
She took it. The water was lukewarm. She cleaned herself beneath the blankets, the coarse linen dragging against tender flesh. He watched, his green eyes tracking the movement of her hands. There was no tenderness in his gaze, only a stark, assessing intensity. When she finished, he took the cloth back and dropped it into the basin with a wet slap.
“Robert’s decree changes nothing,” he stated, pulling a fresh tunic over his head. “And everything.”
“It makes me a broodmare with a deadline.”
“It makes you my wife,” he corrected, the word sounding strange on his tongue. “And the heir to Casterly Rock must come from this bed. From you.” He said it not as a lord, but as a man stating an immutable fact of nature. The guilt that usually shadowed his words was absent, burned away by a more primal fuel.
Days bled into one another within the lodge’s oppressive grandeur. The hunt continued without them. Jaime claimed a strained muscle required rest. They took meals in their chamber, a silent pantomime of domesticity. He watched her constantly. When she read by the window, his eyes were on the curve of her neck. When she walked the room, they followed the sway of her hips.
The lessons continued, but their nature shifted. One afternoon, he tossed a practice sword to her. It was lighter than a true longsword, but still substantial.
“Defend yourself,” he said, and came at her without warning.
It was not instruction. It was an assault. He drove her back across the rushes, his blows raining down with controlled fury. She parried, her arms shuddering with the impact, her breath coming in sharp gasps. He was a storm of golden hair and relentless motion. He disarmed her with a brutal twist of his wrist, sending the wooden blade clattering across the floor. Before she could react, he had her pinned against the cold stone wall, his body flush against hers, the hard line of his erection pressing into her belly through their clothes.
“You’re not trying to get me with child,” she panted, her heart hammering against her ribs. “You’re trying to fuck me into the masonry.”
A dark, hungry smile touched his lips. “Is there a difference?”
He took her right there, against the wall. He hiked her skirts up around her waist, tore her smallclothes aside, and thrust into her with a single, demanding stroke. Her head knocked back against the stone. He fucked her with a ruthless, driving rhythm, each plunge a testament to his singular purpose. The guilt was gone, replaced by a consuming need that felt like ownership.
“This cunt is mine,” he growled into her ear, his breath hot. “You understand? Mine to fill. Mine to breed.”
She could only cling to his shoulders, her nails digging into the leather of his jerkin. Each deep, possessive stroke stoked a fire in her that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with survival. She came with a choked cry, her inner muscles clenching around his invading length. He followed moments later, spilling into her with a guttural sound, his hips grinding against hers to push his seed as deep as it would go.
He held her there until their breathing slowed, still embedded within her. When he finally pulled out, he did not let her go. His hand slid between her legs, his fingers smearing his own release over her swollen flesh.
“Let it take root,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.
That night, she woke to find him already awake, propped on an elbow, watching her sleep. The candle had guttered, leaving only moonlight. His gaze was not that of a guardian, nor a guilt-ridden knight. It was the look of a man staring at a field he must sow.
“I can feel it,” he said, his voice quiet in the dark. “When I’m inside you. I can feel where my seed goes. It’s like… aiming a sword thrust. You learn the angle, the depth.” His hand settled on her bare stomach, his palm warm and heavy. “I know the right angle now.”
A strange thrill shot through her, cold and hot at once. This was not the poetry of songs. This was biology, raw and mechanics. It was horrifying. It was exhilarating.
“Is that all I am? A scabbard for your perfect thrust?”
He leaned closer. In the moonlight, his face was all sharp angles and shadow. “You are the ground. I am the storm. Something will grow from this, Rhaenys. I will fucking will it into being.”
He moved over her again. This time was different. It was slower, deliberate, terrifying in its focus. He positioned her hips with careful hands, tilting her pelvis. He entered her with a smooth, deep glide, and then he began to move with a slow, grinding rotation. Each movement was calculated, a farmer tilling soil. He watched her face, his own a mask of intense concentration.
“Here,” he whispered, driving up and in at a specific angle, holding deep. She felt a sharp, deep pleasure-pain that made her gasp. “Right here. This is where it happens.”
He fucked her like that for what felt like hours, a relentless, targeted campaign. There was no frenzy, only terrifying purpose. He was mapping her, claiming not just her body but her very potential for life. When his climax came, it was a quiet, shuddering event. He buried his face in her hair, his body rigid, pulsing inside her. He didn’t collapse. He held the position, his cock still wedged deep, as if afraid a single drop would escape.
Later, she slipped from the bed. Her body felt used, profoundly altered. She walked to the window, looking out at the moonlit forest. She heard the rustle of furs as he sat up.
“Where are you going?”
“To piss out your legacy, my lord,” she said, the defiance automatic.
He was across the room in an instant. His hand caught her wrist, not hard, but implacable. He turned her to face him. The moonlight caught the wildness in his eyes, a Lannister lion finally freed from a cage of its own making.
“No,” he said, simple and absolute. “You’ll lie back down. You’ll keep it inside you. You’ll let it swim.” He guided her back to the bed, his touch leaving no room for argument. “Every drop is a soldier. You will not waste my soldiers.”
She lay back, stunned by the sheer, untamed possession in his voice. The man who had saved her from blood and fire was gone. In his place was something older, hungrier. He lay beside her, his hand returning to her flat stomach, a general surveying a battlefield he was determined to conquer.
The guilt was ash. Only the need remained.
Only the need remained. It coated the inside of the lodge room like a second skin, souring the wine and making the firelight feel oppressive. Jaime moved through the following days with a hunter’s quiet focus. He watched her eat, his eyes tracking the fork from plate to mouth. He watched her sleep, his palm a constant, warm weight on her lower belly as if measuring for growth.
“You’re staring again,” she said one morning, not looking up from breaking her fast.
“I’m observing.” He poured ale, the sound loud in the silence. “Your color is different.”
“My color.” She put down a piece of bread, appetite gone.
“Here.” He reached across the table, his thumb brushing the delicate skin beneath her eye. “The shadows are gone. Your skin is… tighter. Brighter.”
It wasn’t a compliment. It was an assessment. A flush of heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment crawled up her neck. Her body had begun reporting strange, minor treason. Her breasts felt heavy, sensitive against the linen of her shift. A deep, dull ache had taken residence in the base of her spine. She had blamed the relentless fucking, the unforgiving wall, the careful, grinding angles he used each night.
Now, under his clinical gaze, she wondered.
He stood, the chair scraping stone. “Come.”
“Where?”
“To the bed. Now.”
“It’s midday.”
“And your cunt is mine at midday as much as at midnight.” He said it flatly, a fact of the universe. “I dreamed of it. The exact way you clenched last night. I need to feel it again.”
There was no request in his voice. The purposeful rhythm of their days had become a cycle: assessment, declaration, possession. She rose, her legs unsteady. This time, he didn’t rip her clothes. He undressed her slowly, his knuckles brushing her skin, his eyes cataloging every inch. When she was bare, he turned her to face the long, polished metal mirror leaning against the wall.
“Look,” he commanded, standing behind her. His hands settled on her hips. “See what I see.”
She saw a young woman, her black curls wild, her violet eyes wide. She saw the faint bloom of redness on her neck from his stubble. She saw his large, sword-calloused hands spanning her waist, his golden head beside hers. He looked like a man examining a prized mare.
“You’re fuller here,” he murmured, one hand sliding up to cup her breast. His thumb swept over the nipple, and it peaked instantly, a sharp bolt of sensation shooting straight to her core. She gasped. “Sensitive.” His other hand drifted down from her hip, through the coarse curls, and found her slit. He parted her with two fingers, exposing the slick, pink flesh to the cool air and the mirror’s gaze. “Swollen. Even now, you’re wet for me. Your body knows its purpose.”
The vulgarity, the clinical exposure, made her want to shrink and arch into his touch simultaneously. She was trapped between the mirror and his hard body. He rubbed his palm over the thatch of curls, then slid a single finger inside her, deep. She watched her own face in the mirror, saw her lips part.
“Is this where my seed is?” he asked, his voice low and rough. He curled his finger, pressing up into a spot that made her knees buckle. “Is it pooling here, in this hot, tight little cunt? Taking root?”
“Jaime…” It was a whimper.
“Tell me what you feel. Right now. In this moment.” He added a second finger, stretching her. The slide was easy, wet. He began a slow, insistent rhythm.
“I feel… full.”
“You are full. Of me.” He bit her shoulder, not hard, a possessive punctuation. His other hand kept working her breast, pinching the nipple now, sending jolts of rough pleasure through her. The dual sensations, the relentless mirror, stripped her bare in ways his violence never had. She was watching herself be unmade. A coil of heat, thick and urgent, began tightening low in her belly.
“I’m going to fuck you just like this,” he said, his breath hot against her ear. “So you can watch. So you can see what it looks like when I fill you. When I make an heir.”
He withdrew his fingers, shiny with her arousal. He unlaced his breeches, freeing his cock. It was already fully hard, thick and flushed. He spat into his palm, smoothed it over himself, and guided the broad head to her entrance. He met her eyes in the mirror, holding her gaze as he pushed forward.
The invasion was slow, breathtakingly complete. She watched his girth disappear into her body, saw the stretch, the way her flesh yielded to him. A choked moan escaped her. He seated himself fully, his hips flush against her buttocks, and stopped.
“Look at that,” he growled, mesmerized. “Look how you take me. Every fucking inch.”
Then he moved. Short, deep, punishing strokes that made her jolt against him. The mirror rattled. His grip on her hip was iron. She couldn’t look away from the obscene, fascinating sight: the joining of their bodies, the sweat-slicked tension in his neck, her own face slack with a pleasure that felt like surrender. The coil snapped. Her climax tore through her without warning, a silent, seizing wave that milked his cock inside her.
He groaned, a raw, animal sound. “That’s it. Squeeze it out of me. Take it.”
His control shattered. His thrusts became frantic, brutal, his rhythm devolving into a frantic drive for release. He fucked her with a raw, grunting urgency, his fingers digging bruises into her hips.
“This is it, Rhaenys. This is the one. I can feel it. I can fucking feel it!”
With a final, shuddering roar, he slammed into her and held. She felt the hot, pulsing rush deep within, a flood claiming territory. He collapsed against her back, his forehead on her shoulder, his breath heaving. They stayed like that, joined, staring at their wrecked reflections.
A week later, the royal summons to the capital could no longer be ignored. The journey was a misery. The mere smell of the salted meat their party carried made her stomach lurch. She spent the first morning hunched over the side of the wheelhouse, retching bile.
Jaime dismissed the guards with a curt wave. He handed her a waterskin and a cloth, his expression unreadable. When the spasms passed, he helped her back inside. The carriage rocked forward. He didn’t let go of her hand.
“It could be the travel,” she said, her voice thin. “Or bad meat.”
“It’s not.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know your body better than you do right now.” He stated it plainly. He brought her hand to his lips, not a kiss, but a press against her knuckles. A strange gesture, part triumph, part oath. “It’s done.”
King’s Landing stank of shit, smoke, and despair. The Red Keep loomed, a monstrous promise. Their chambers were finer than the lodge, draped in Lannister colors. She stood by the window, looking over the city where her family died. The nausea was a constant, rolling tide now.
Jaime entered, shutting the door softly. He carried a small clay cup. “The Grand Maester sent this. For the sickness.”
She took it, sniffed. Herpes and mint. She drank it, the bitterness coating her tongue. It settled nothing.
He came to stand behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders. “Cersei will know. The moment she sees you.”
“Let her know.”
He turned her to face him. His eyes searched hers, not for defiance, but for something else. “Do you feel it?”
She placed her own hand over her womb, where his so often rested. Beneath the nausea and the fatigue, there was a new, profound stillness. A quiet, irrevocable change. She didn’t need a maester’s confirmation. She knew the truth in the revolt of her senses, in the heavy tenderness of her breasts, in the deep, silent anchoring in her core.
“Yes,” she said.
A single, fierce light ignited in his green eyes. It wasn’t joy. It was victory. He pulled her to him, his embrace crushing, his face buried in her hair. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. The deed was accomplished. The ground had accepted the storm. What would grow from it was a problem for tomorrow.