A/N: Thank you all for your encouragement and your patience! :D

Meereen

A son of Rhaegar lives. He lairs with lions and fights alongside wolves. Find him at the Wall.

When Daenerys Targaryen first hears those words spoken, all she feels is relief. Later she will wonder who sent the message and why, if it's true, if it's a trick, what her nephew might want from her if he really exists, but in the moment she thinks, That means he's the true heir! The true king! I don't have to fight for the Iron Throne. Let him help our people.

Dany is tired. The two cities she freed on her way to Meereen have fallen back into slavery and chaos, she is plagued by enemies within and without, and worst of all she has lost control of her dragons. She was forced to chain Rhaegal and Viserion to protect her subjects and she hasn't seen Drogon since the charred bones of a toddler were brought to her. She thought being blood of the dragon was enough, but it is clear to her now that there is some magic, some ancient technique to controlling and riding dragons that has been lost to time. She refuses to believe her ancestors simply didn't care what destruction their winged brothers wrought.

She's tempted to run. To leave all those who clamor for her attention, her love, her leadership, her death behind and go find her nephew and just do what he tells her to, but she knows her pride will never allow it. She became khaleesi, became a conqueror, and she will be a ruler too. She just has to stay alive long enough to learn.

Alas, it is not to be.

She is walking the streets of her city, letting the people see her, trying to understand what she needs to do to get her kingdom back in some semblance of control, when a child approaches her with a wooden ball.

Even now, after everything, she is too naive. Or perhaps it is arrogance, a mistaken belief that after everything else she's lived through, no one else would dare try to kill her. Whatever the reason, she accepts the toy from the child, thinking it a gift from a young subject to their queen, a smile on her face. She has just enough time to think that ruling isn't all bad before the manticore hidden within the hollow ball drops into her hand and stings her.

Fire cannot kill a dragon, but the manticore's venom makes her veins burn.

She screams.

The pain is so immense that she loses all sense of what's going on around her. The world tilts sideways, and something slams into her elbow, cracking the bone and sending a splash of her blood into the street. She writhes and claws at her attacker, unable to comprehend that the removal of her arm might be enough to save her from the poison. She keeps screaming, kicking the man whose face she no longer recognizes.

Her scream is answered by a roar.

A shadow falls over them, blotting out the sun, and a gout of dragon flame sears the air. Even through her pain, Dany recognizes Drogon. She's happy that she'll die with family, at least.

Drogon tears apart anyone unlucky enough to be near Dany when she was attacked. It's the work of seconds, his claws and teeth flashing, his black and red scales shining with spilled blood. Then he settles on his haunches and nudges Dany's prone form with his enormous snout.

Her screams have faded into whimpers now, her vision rapidly dimming, her strength waning as blood pumps from her partially severed arm. The flesh of her limp hand is already putrefying, thanks to the venom of the manticore.

Drogon nudges her again. Dany's eyes snap open and lock with Drogon's reptilian orbs. But it isn't just their gaze that is connected. In that moment, her last moment, Daenerys understands what past Targaryens knew. It is not enough to command a dragon. A dragon is not a slave. It may not be tamed. But bonding with a dragon?

That is very possible.

Dany's mind, or spirit, whatever it is that makes her Daenerys Targaryen, pours out of her through her eyes, leaping from her dying body into Drogon's like lightning out of a clear blue sky. She fills Drogon up, her mind flooding his, rolling over and through him until there is no telling where she ends and he begins. He fights. Of course he does. Drogon does not like submitting, not even to her. But here, on this plane, she is the bigger creature. She is years older, her mind more sophisticated, and her Targaryen blood keeps her from being lost in the dragon's powerful instincts.

The human body of Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of Meereen, lets out a long rattling breath, and the consciousness of the last of the Mad King's children and her dragon merge to form one being.

She - for dragons can change their gender in order to breed and she wants to be female - roars and flames in a combination of triumph and lamentation.

Then she falls on the corpses that lay in the street, gorging herself on the fresh meat. She will need to be strong, if she is going to free her brother-sons and go find her nephew-cousin.

-l-

Flying across the Narrow Sea is more difficult than she thought it would be. The air is cooler over the ocean, making it harder for her wings to get lift, which means she has to flap more. They have to stop every so often to rest and fish, and catching enough to fill three dragon stomachs takes a long time. Rhaegal and Viserion keep testing her place as queen of their clan, and she has to force them back into line without killing them or hurting them so badly they can't fly. If she wasn't hunting for her nephew-cousin, the human who will give them purpose, she would have turned back half a dozen times.

But she perseveres, and when she spots a body of land in the distance, she forces Rhaegal and Viserion to join her in swimming the rest of the way so that they won't be spotted. They are surprisingly good swimmers for beings of fire and air. Their wings are adequate fins, and the fire in their bellies keeps them warm and makes them naturally buoyant. Catching fish is a lot easier too. If she'd known, she would've had them swim the whole way instead of flying.

Once the coast is close enough that she won't lose sight of it, she puts it to her left and starts swimming. The message she got when she was still human said her nephew-cousin was at the Wall, and the Wall is supposed to be in the North. She hopes it's easy to find. It's not like she's ever been to the Seven Kingdoms.