Summery: Cregan has always been a cold man until it comes to you
Disclaimer: I have not seen the second season of HOTD so sorry for any inaccuracies
The first time you meet Lord Cregan Stark, he does not smile.
The Great Hall of Winterfell feels colder than the snow outside its walls, torches flickering against stone as old as the North itself. He stands at the head of the hall tall, broad-shouldered, wrapped in dark furs grey eyes steady and unreadable as they settle on you.
He does not look away.You had expected a monster of ice and iron.Instead, you find something far more dangerous a man who feels deeply and hides it well.
“You will grow used to the cold,” he says at last, voice low and rough as wind over frozen earth.
It is not a question.
Later, when the feast has ended and the castle sleeps, you wander the battlements, breath curling white in the air. The North stretches endless and silent beyond the walls.
“You should not walk alone.”You startle at the sound of him behind you.Cregan does not move like other men. For someone so large, he is impossibly quiet.
“I am not afraid,” you answer, lifting your chin.His gaze sharpens slightly. “You should be.”The words are blunt, but there is no threat in them only truth.He steps closer. The cold wind presses your cloak against you, but when he reaches to steady it, his hand brushes your waist. The contact is brief.
It burns.His fingers are rough, calloused from sword and rein, yet the touch is careful. Controlled.“You do not belong to the South anymore,” he murmurs. “Winterfell is not gentle.”
“And are you?” you ask before you can stop yourself.For a moment, silence.Then his hand tightens just slightly at your waist.“I am not gentle,” he says quietly.
But he does not remove his hand.Snow drifts between you. His breath is warm against your cheek now, his towering frame shielding you from the wind. There is something restrained in him something coiled tight beneath discipline and duty.
“You look at me as if I am made of stone,” he says.“You look at me as if I am something you have already decided to keep.”That does it.
His jaw flexes. His thumb shifts against your side, slow, deliberate. His eyes darken not with softness, but with possession.
“You are under my protection,” he replies.The word carries weight. Protection. Claim. Promise.You test him.“You would protect me from anything? “Anything.”
The wind howls around the battlements. And in that frozen silence, something shifts between you not tender, not sweet.
Intense.
He leans down slow enough that you could step away if you wished.
You don’t.His mouth meets yours like the North itself: cold at first, firm, restrained.Then deeper.He does not rush. He does not devour. He takes.
His hand slides from your waist to your jaw, tilting your head as if he commands even the angle of your breath. The kiss is controlled, measured — but beneath it is heat, fierce and undeniable.
When he finally pulls back, your lips are swollen, your pulse racing.
His forehead rests briefly against yours.
“I am not a warm man,” he murmurs, voice rougher now. “I do not speak pretty words.”
His thumb traces your lower lip once almost thoughtfully.“But what is mine,” he says, eyes locking with yours, “I do not let go.”The North may be cold.But Cregan Stark burns beneath it.
You had visited him in his solar to bring him a cup of warm spiced wine to lift his spirits. Cregan had been tense for days, with trade negotiations and the walls demands, you had felt the weight sitting heavier than before on his shoulders.
It was your duty as his wife to ease his worries, wether with open arms or in this instance, open legs.
What started as a hand on his shoulder and a small kiss to his neck where his furs give way to exposed skin has turned into a battle between wife and wolf right there on his desk. Papers sprawled out, ink canister knocked over, and quill long forgotten on the floor.
Your skirts are bunched up to your waist at the mercy of your husbands eager hands. The sound of crumpling paper can be heard under your back where they lay on his desk, where his hands find purchase as he rams into you.
All thoughts are being thoroughly fucked right out of your head, the only ones staying behind are those keeping your legs wrapped around his waist and hand on his arm as they hold onto the edge of the desk above you.
The sound is lewd, where his balls hit your ass and the whimpers you're trying to suppress. A set of footsteps can be heard on the other side of the door just a few feet away. But Cregan does not falter, your back is pushed into the desk again and again. His hips pick up speed, the desk letting out a slight whine in distress.
He comes with a stutter in his thrusts, head burrowing into the crook of your neck where his lips meet your racing pulse. He stays inside of you while the two of you catch your breath. You turn your head to pepper kisses along his temple and into his hair while his hands slowly let go of the edge of the desk and trails down to your waist.
Quickies are usually not something you or your husband divulge in but the stress and midday hour led to such things here and there. He is quick to find a cloth and wipe your inner thighs before helping you down from the desk. You watch him as he adjust the length of your skirt, the sight makes your chest tight and you have to hold yourself back from taking him again.
"You undo me, women. Truly." You chuckle at his husky voice. Sounds like the rendezvous was much needed, your wifely duty accomplished.
"Oh hush, you enjoyed it. Do not deny it."
"I would never deny being between your legs." He is always so blunt. At first his compliments or mere statements surprised you. A life of court training you to speak in tongues, like a snake slithering amongst the weeds. You've grown to love it, love him.
"You can be between them again tonight, husband." Your fingers tread through his hair, fixing the few rogue strands of hair while he finishes arranging your skirts back in order and standing back up to his full height.
His chuckle is deep, resonating from deep in his chest below the leather and furs. You know he was petitions soon, thats why he took you quick and hard, no time to bring you to your own peak of pleasure.
"I will be sure to return the favor tonight, wife."
You stretch onto the tips of your toes and craddle his face within your hands. "Not a favor husband, a wish." You press a soft kiss against his lips, fleeing before he can deepen it and be late for petitions.
You make sure you are in order before you reach for the door to carry on with your day. There were fur pelts to be distributed amongst guards, hand maidens to led, and kitchens to visit before nightfall.
Cregan's promise of tonight leaves you buzzing, like a fire is beneath your skin that not even the cold winds of the north could blow out. It's a few hours while you are walking up the steps to the battlements that you feel the dull ache in your lower back. You're quick to blow it off, your moon blood must be soon.
The ache grows as the hour goes, and you find the pain to strike as you bend to kneel in the Gods wood and as you walk towards your chambers now. The handmaids have set up a warm bath swirling with oils and dried herbs, they have aways been able to know. Maybe the tell tale signs of a hand on your back and a slight hitch on the first step of the stairs gave way to your maids and you can't help but thank the old Gods for them.
You're thanking them as you lower yourself into the tub, a deep sigh escaping your mouth. The heat is perfect on your back and with the roaring fire in the hearth a few feet away you feel like you could fall asleep right there. You shake the thought away and grab the grab, slather it in soap and start by running it down your arms.
Theres the sound of heavy footsteps down the hall, you know its him. You could tell him by the sound of his breathing if need be. They stop in front of the door and you feel the urge to sink deeper into the water. He takes up the whole doorway while walking in and his stoic face breaks into a slight smirk at the sight of you up to your chin in steaming water.
He's slow to take off his cloak and boots but the ambient noise of it is soothing. "I called to have dinner served here in our chambers if that is alright with you, wife."
"That's perfect."
Cregan makes his way towards the tub and keels by your side, one of his hands dipping into the water to feel it. His fingers follow of the line of your arm up to your shoulder before following down your back. You tip forward and arch your back to give him space to continue his track but you flinch at the spike of pain in your lower back.
His hand freezes and his face twists into one of concern. "Are you alright?" You're quick to nod and move to kiss him but he leans back. Some of his hair falls into his eyes and you reach out a hand from the water to tuck it behind his ear. "I am alright, Cregan. I promise."
Your reassurances don't do much to ease the look on his face and his eyes continue to trail over your face. He drops down to both knees from his kneeling position and trails his hand down your back. His eyes follow his hand, no doubt looking for what ails you.
When he gets to the middle of your back his fingers prod at your skin, delicate but firm. It's almost like a massage of sorts and your eyes slowly drift shut. As soon as his fingers prod at the space of your lower back, some space above the swell of your ass you hiss. It makes you open up you eyes. Cregan still has that look on his face, steel eyes meeting yours and you know that look and fight to roll your eyes.
Before you can blink back at him he grabs your waist with both hands, not caring for how the sleeves at his elbows dip into the water. His hands twist you so your back faces him and tries to pull you up til you're up on your knees in the water.
The cold air of the room hits you and you gasp at both the movement and the chill. Your ass is all but in his face at this point and the thought of one of your maids walking in or a servant bringing dinner makes heat rush up your back and neck.
"You're bruised."
You try to turn your head over you shoulder, trying to get a look but you can't. His fingers are light as they trace a portion of skin where he had prodded before. His fingers disappear before you feel his lips. You feel them again and again over the expanse of where you're guessing this bruise is. "It doesn't hurt, at least not as much as you think." The bruise can't be that bad, you think. Just some slight soreness and you start to rack your brain from where you could've possibly got it from.
"Does not matter. It was from my own doing." His voice is quieter than his previous words. Confusion now overtakes your body and you turn your head enough to be able to look over your shoulder and at your husband who's eyes are glued to your lower back.
"The desk and your back. It was my own roughness that caused this."
You reach out to grab one of his wrists, tight enough for him to let you go enough to turn around. "You mean my doing then." His eyes turn up to meet yours and you're quick to cup his face. "It was my need that drove us onto that desk, husband. As much as you would like to think it is yours." You press a chaste kiss to his lips before pressing another onto each cheek. "I am fine."
The look in your eyes is enough for him to shut him up but he soon joins you in the tub. He helps you soap up your legs and back, taking extra time where he thought you would feel the most pain. You believed that was the end of it.
You woke up the next morning to a cold bed and a small tin of ointment left by the maester at Cregan's demand. He stopped by your solar, the kitchen, the Gods wood. Everywhere you were, he was too. You had to all but tell him you could climb the stairs on your own and pull out your own chair. Then there were the touches, too light to be anything really and even the kisses were cut short.
Cregan didn't see you as some helpless women but the second he draped his cloak over your shoulders in front of the old Gods, you were his to protect. Whether it was the winds, beasts, or man. Nothing would harm you or dare to touch you. When he saw that bruise something in his chest sank. He took pride in keeping you warm, happy and safe. To know his lust overshadowed your safety made him feel like a shit husband and an even worse warden of the north.
You didn't think there was anything to make up for it but then flowers started showing up. It wasn't that your husband didn't gift you flowers, he had, but you knew flowers weren't a big thing in the north. The weather only allowed for the bare necessities to grow so you knew the flowers on your bed side were intentional.
Then came your favorite sweets. A new painting of the both of you commissioned for his solar. A new saddle for your horse. New oils for the bath. You had lost count at that point.
It took a lot for you to muster up the courage to speak your mind. The gifts had to stop, the cautiousness had to stop. You missed your husband, your Cregan.
There was never really any issue again. But you still felt it. He would press a kiss to you hips or wrists after he held on too tight after he filled you up with his seed. He guarded the top of your headed from the bed frame when he fucked up into you. And lastly he always put a pillow under your hips when he dragged you to the edge of the bed, or his cloak when you finally managed to convince him to fuck you on his desk again. And you loved your husband even more for it.
Cregan loved you and his children like it was his last day on earth, and he would do everything in his power to keep you at his side.
part two here !
ft. cregan x third wife!reader
genre/warnings: pwp, a pinch of angst, age gap, ig cousin incest (youre a glover but its like distant enough at that point for it not to matter), mentions of cregans first two wives, cregan is a father², intercrural sex, no p in v, spanking, mentions of freaky shit but no freaky shit happens sorry, no use of y/n.
wc: 3.3k
not proofread.
There wasn’t much that could hurt men like Cregan Stark. The loss of his first wife, Arra, had pained him, but Rickon filled that void. Then there was Aly and their stillborn daughter, which had cut him especially deep and left an ache low in his chest.
A deep worry haunted him. Cursed seed. Two women, two wives, had died before their children could take a breath.
The thought of condemning you to the same fate felt like winter had been reborn within him. Watching you with Rickon, his beautiful wife and his heir, letting the boy chase you around the courtyard, holding your skirts up in an attempt to keep them from getting dirty—though it was in vain.
Cregan, of course, loved you deeply, perhaps more than he had ever expected to. You were younger, a cousin on his mother's side, a Glover. You were sweet, still full of life despite the tragic death of your mother and two of your brothers.
Madness, your father had told him, following a plea to take you in an effort to extinguish any madness your mother may have passed to you.
A hand finds his arm, stunning him for a moment. He realised he was so swept away in his thoughts that he hadn't seen you approach.
“My love,” you hum, curling into his side. “You are doing that thing.”
He scoffs, hand lying on top of yours. “No, I am not. What ‘thing’?”
“How can you deny it when you do not know what I speak of?” Your lips curl, followed by an arched brow.
He is quick to shush you with a grunt before kissing your temple. “Where did the boy go?”
“Rickon is with the maester, back to his lessons, I can only assume. I am surprised to see you out here so early in the day, husband.”
Cregan turns, reaching to brush your hair out of your face. “A little wolf told me someone was chasin’ my wife around.”
“Ah, your daughter, then?” Your smile makes his chest throb, his thumb lingering to pinch your cheek. He chuckles at your wince, leaning in to soothe it with a peck.
“Do you have much more work to do?” You ask softly, almost hesitantly, like speaking the words would spawn more for him to do.
“I am afraid so, pet. Probably won’t see you ‘til supper.” His words prompt a slight pout from you, a grin appearing on his face. “None of that. You know well that I’ll make it up to you.”
“I know.” Your words are quiet as the wind. “Doesn’t stop me from missing you.”
His next kiss is on the corner of your lips. “Supper, I swear it.” He hopes it’s enough reassurance, giving you a longer kiss to seal his promise.
“Supper.” You repeat, voice softer than snow. He squeezes your hand once before letting go and leaving you in the courtyard.
Cregan loved you. So much so that he could never bring himself to risk losing you.
Never once had he pushed anything more than his pinkish tip inside of you, just enough to technically count as consummation before pulling away, his jaw tense. He had buried himself between your thighs that night, drowning away his unpleasant thoughts with the taste of you on his tongue.
He was a keen lover—keeping you pleasured, trying to make up for what he was denying you. You had never given him anything more than a questioning look when such things happened, for you could not truly complain.
You had come to learn there was more to sex beyond childbearing, if you could even call it that.
Was it called sex if there was no penetration? You sometimes thought to yourself.
The way Cregan would fuck you with his fingers, curling upwards inside of you, enough to make you squeal. It was followed with a touch or a lick at your button, then his cock would rub deliciously through your slick lips. His hands on either side of your thighs, squeezing, legs thrown over one shoulder as he fucked the gap, heavy balls slapping at your bottom.
Sometimes he found his fingers buried in your behind, tongue occupying your front. It was the closest he allowed himself to real penetration, preparing a faux cunt for him to press his fat cock into.
The day you let him bottom out there, he believes he may cry.
For all the hardness of a northern man that Cregan had, he was beautiful like this. A pinch between his brows when he felt himself throb, watching your folds part as his cock slid over your clit, unbothered by the hair falling into his face, mesmerised by the sight beneath him.
Sometimes he would straddle your chest, rubbing himself over the flesh of your breasts like an animal, desperate to have every part of you. He would pinch, squeeze, caress—a cycle that drove you to the edge of insanity.
It was pure filth; not unwelcome, but you often found yourself wondering what your father would think if he knew his liege lord was debasing his daughter in such a way.
When summer approached the north, the days got long. Evenings were later, the sun setting long after the crows cawed.
These days are Cregan’s favourite. More time with you.
You were sitting in front of the hearth reading some book of old wives’ tales while he was at your feet, head resting against your thigh as he carved into a piece of wood mindlessly.
“My love,” Your voice is as gentle as the hand in his hair. He hums, turning his cheek to press a kiss into your gown-covered thigh. “You have whittled your oak into a mere lump.”
He looks down, swearing. “This was supposed to be for Sarra.” He exhales harshly, throwing it into the fire and brushing his lap of the wood chips.
You close your book, combing through his hair with your fingers and leaning down to kiss his hairline. His relaxation was immediate, a more peaceful exhale departing from his lips. “I am sure there are more cuts for you to choose from, love.”
He reaches up to take your hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing. “The sun is finally starting to set,” he murmurs, standing and pulling you up with him. “We should find ourselves abed soon.”
“Are you tired?” You ask gently after rising with him, reaching up to thumb his cheek.
His response is a gruff noise, air puffing out of his nose as he blinked at you, turning to kiss your palm. “Not tired. I want to lie with my wife. Is such a thing a crime?”
He was ever so sweet like this, pliant, his words always so gentle in the room the two of you shared, away from prying eyes.
“Stop that.” He grumbles, reaching up to press his thumb over your lips. “You are smirking.”
You find yourself laughing, even more so as Cregan tries to hide the way his lips curl, before pressing his to yours.
It’s gentle at first, his hands finding the sides of your neck, tilting your chin up to meet his mouth. His tongue is gentle, soothing over your bottom lip where his teeth nibble.
His fingers find the lace at the back of the thin chemise that covered you, loosening them enough for his fingers to graze your spine, goosebumps following his touch.
He hums against your lips, pulling away to pepper kisses down the delicate skin of your neck, teeth meeting your pulse in a quick brush.
“My beautiful wife,” Kiss. “Southron men would cower before such a woman,” Kiss. “Wouldn’t have a clue how to pleasure you,” Kiss. “My love. My wife. I ought to declare independence for the North so you might have the title you deserve. Queen.”
“Cregan.” His name is exhaled from your lips, a half-laugh at his dramatic words. “To be your wife is plenty.”
“You do not want to be a Queen?” He asks against your neck, and you can feel his lips curled up in amusement.
“I do not want you to wage a war in an effort to do so.” He can feel your laugh in your throat, vibrating against his skin.
He stands tall before you, fingers ghosting up your arms. “Let us rid you of this dress. It is in the way.” He had already unlaced the back, making it easy for him to slip it down over your arms, the thin material falling at your feet. “There you are,” He breathes; his right hand, calloused from Ice, finds the bare skin of your waist.
“Your hands are cold, husband.” You shudder, your hands finding the nape of his neck. Fingers tangle with the hairs you find there, curling them around your knuckles.
Cregan’s touch grazes along your spine, up and down, finding its home on your rump. “You’ll do well to let me warm them, then.” Lips against the shell of your ear, words almost purred.
Your back bows, bare breasts pressed against his leathered chest, nipples hardening as a slight breeze is cast through the room. There is a pinch to the back of your thigh that makes you gasp, lips parting, and before you can express your annoyance, your husband’s tongue finds its home against yours.
It's the type of kiss that you find only in dark corners of brothels, one that would leave any potential voyeur scandalised. Cregan’s kisses were all about swallowing you whole, left hand gripping your jaw to angle you just enough, just right for him to shove his tongue deep enough to lick at the roof of your mouth, swallowing your moans before they even escaped your throat. Drool would gather at the corner of your lips, where he would lick it up, spitting it right back onto your tongue.
“Mine,” Cregan whispers, “say it.”
You swallow. “Mmh- yours, I am yours.” Your voice is raw, your lips red from his biting and sucking.
Cregan hums, thumb rubbing over your bottom lip before tilting your head to the side like he was looking you over. He towered over you like this, over a head taller than you, making you feel powerless to how he manhandles you. “Awfully pretty like this,” he murmurs, stormy eyes unblinking. Cregan’s right hand slides over your arse, over your holes, his mouth twitching at the feeling of your slick. “This is all it takes for you? A kiss?” He whispers into your ear, and the hand at your jaw grips once more.
You open your mouth to deny, no, it's all you, but all that comes out is a sharp gasp as his hand comes down on your bottom with a sharp crack.
“Did I marry a whore?” Cregan’s voice is just as soft as it is when he’s complimenting you and talking sweetly to his children. He turns you to face him again, fingers tightening on your jaw.
Crack. His hand comes down on your unhit cheek, reddening it to match the other.
“I asked you a question, wife.” Cregan whispers, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead.
When he acts like this, it's as though you’re being pulled in two directions. His words are always so soft, so sweet, and his fingers are the opposite. Tight, gripping you in ways he knows will make your head thrum.
You keen under Cregan’s attention, eyelids flittering, words breathless. “No, no, you did not.”
“No?” His head tilts, eyes picking you apart. “Then explain this for me, love.”
Cregan’s fingers find your cunt again, plunging two inside with a thick squelch. Your head would’ve fallen forward if it weren’t for the grip he had on your jaw, keeping you facing him.
“S’you,” you whine, words slurred. “You made me like this, husband.” You hiccup, eyes rolling as his fingers curl upwards.
“I did, didn’t I?” His lips meet your neck, stubble prickling against your skin. “My beautiful wife.” The hand on your jaw finds its way to your nape, gathering your hair and tugging ever so gently. “So perfect,” Cregan finds himself whispering. “I made you like this.”
He lays you down, hands smoothing down from your face to your neck; a soft squeeze, palms spreading over the span of your sternum, fingers digging into the softness of your tummy.
Cregan has known you and your body for years now, working you with the accuracy only a husband could have. He kneads your flesh as a beloved baker would his dough, thumbs finding all the dips in your curves, teeth grazing your pulse–just enough to make your spine arch off of the bed. He moulds you to his will, thighs pressed against your chest with one broad forearm so that he can palm at your pussy without fighting against your inevitable squeezing.
You whine when his fingers dip back inside of you, trembling under his hold.
“Relax,” Cregan says quietly with a kiss to your shin, though no less commanding than his usual tone.
You inhale deeply, looking into his eyes with a wobbling bottom lip. Cregan hushes you, leaning down to kiss your forehead as his fingers dig deeper. “Shh, pet.” He murmurs against your skin. “Let me take care of you.” He kisses your forehead once more before sitting back up.
Cregan peels his leathers off, his bare chest free. You reach out, running your hands down from his shoulders to the belt of his trousers. There is a slight tent there, his cock thickening in his smallclothes. With a slight tilt of his chin, you unbind his belt, the wolf buckle cold to the touch, letting it slip from your grasp and fall to the floor. He takes care to remove his trousers and small clothes, then climbs back onto the bed in front of you.
There was something gratifying in having a man like Cregan Stark bare before you. He wasn’t someone who trusted easily; in fact, you weren’t even sure if half his vassals had ever seen his hands beneath the thick gloves he oft wore. So, when he rids himself of the clothing he keeps so pristinely neat, warmth bubbles up from your groin.
Cregan kisses you with a thumb across your jawbone, laying you back against the bed. He was a man who knew what he wanted and how he wanted it.
Your knees end up over his shoulder, snug against your chest, his teeth nipping at your bottom lip.
The heat of Cregan’s cock is intense against the back of your thighs. He straightens up, one hand rubbing the side of your knee and hugging them to his torso, spitting into the other and stroking himself.
His tongue flicks out to wet his bottom lip, followed by an exhale as he presses into the tight squeeze of your inner thighs.
A shudder ripples down your body, his thick length parting the folds of your cunt.
“My wife, do you feel how hard I am? You drive me insane.” His cockhead meets your clit as he thrusts forward, chin meeting his chest. “I- I could die a happy man here.” His words are heavy with huffs. “Between your cunt and thighs.”
You cannot form any words, let alone sentences. He could barely touch you, and you would thank him.
Cregan revelled in your state, your flushed cheeks, the muted squeals and moans, the hiccups when he thumbs a nipple.
His sweet girl.
He had made you like this, sensitive to every little touch to your bare skin.
You couldn’t think.
Your skin was on fire, blood boiling. “Cregan…” you whimper weakly. “Please?”
He always knew what you were asking for, leaning down to kiss you. He swallows your noises eagerly, giving you his own in a moment of weakness.
He was so heavy against you, hot and strong, holding you in place as he fucked between your thighs.
Cregan pulls back, stroking your face when you whimper. “Let me, pet.” Your thighs shake as he lets them fall from his shoulder.
He presses his length to the back of your thigh, using his free hand to rub over your pussy.
You can’t help the way your hips shudder and buck up against his hand. “Please, please, husband,” you sniffle. “I feel so…”
“So what?” Cregan exhales, rolling his own hips against your leg. “What is it you want, love?”
“Your fingers,” you choke out, reaching down to circle your fingers around his wrist. “Inside.”
If you had any sense left in you, you may have felt embarrassed; alas, there is none in either of you this moment. You sound downright pathetic, begging for your husband to touch you.
He heeds your request, dipping two inside as he had done earlier. He shouldn’t be surprised at how you crave it when it was the closest he allowed himself to get to sticking his cock inside of you.
No, that was out of the question.
So instead, a third joins, pressing upwards into your softness. They beckon a crude noise from you, your body contorting from your pleasure.
He’s rocking his hips to the rhythm of his fingers, breath catching every time your muscle tenses beneath the sensitive tip of his cock.
Everything around you felt like it was closing in on you, vision darkening at the edges, hearing muffling and your body numbing to everything except the feeling of his fingertips rubbing at the back of your cunt.
You’re not sure when he moved, teeth sharp against the underside of your tit. You can feel the press of his tip against your backside, fingers still curling inside you with a thumb at your clit while he sucked on a nipple.
“Cregan–” You hiccup, a hand finding the back of his head and entwining in his hair. It was overwhelming, almost too much, when your body throws itself over the edge.
For a moment, it’s like you had been swallowed by a storm, flashes of hot and cold coming over you, tossing you around. You feel your body clench impossibly tight, your teeth creaking and your toes curling inward.
Then, you're back, watching your husband arched over you as he cums onto your stomach.
He’s beautiful like this, chest heaving and stomach tensing, painted with a layer of sweat. The fireplace behind him gives him an ethereal glow, like something out of the romance books mothers give to their daughters. You watch as his head falls back, hand stroking himself once more, a drop of sweat rolling down from his chin to his chest.
“Gods.” Cregan whispers, lifting his head to look down at you; the weight of his softening length rests against your mound. He uses a thumb to rub a spattering of his cum into the softness of your stomach.
For just a moment, he looks solemn.
“My wife,” his voice is quiet, “you are so beautiful like this. All mine.”
You hum weakly, reaching up to cup his cheek. “You’re doing it again.”
With a roll of his eyes and a downward smile, Cregan is back to his usual self. “Go on, then. Explain what this ‘thing’ is.” He lies atop you, unbothered by the slickness of his seed. He brushes your hair away from your face and presses his lips to the bridge of your nose.
“It is like you go somewhere,” you give him a delicate smile, “you get a crease between your brows, here.” You reach up to stroke your thumb between his eyebrows. “Must be a Stark thing; both Rickon and Sarra do it when they’re thinking.”
A fond expression comes over him. “You have me all figured out, do you?” He murmurs, kissing your cheek.
He is gentle when he rolls the two of you so he is beneath you now, his hands settling on the small of your back.
“I won’t ask.” You whisper, kissing him lightly.
Cregan exhales through his nose. “What did I do to deserve you, hm?” He reaches up to caress your cheek, lips curling.
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Cregan Stark x fem!reader
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2.7k
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: mdni, smutty fluff, fluffy smut, it's more suggestive than actual smut, down bad Cregan, but let's be for real, that's the only kind of cregan I write, he's prolly a bit more talkative than canon, but I imagine him as such a sweet-talker in private,
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: After fourteen long days and nights at the Wall, Cregan Stark returns to Winterfell with frost in his bones and a desperate ache in his chest. He has faced wildlings and bitter cold, but nothing has tested him like the distance from his wife.
: ̗̀➛ [𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧] [𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] [𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱]
𝐚/𝐧: Here's another thought I had about a man who has less than five minutes of total screen time.
The gates of Winterfell have barely groaned shut behind him before Cregan is striding through the halls. His cloak, still dusted with the first snows of the Gift, drags across the flagstones in a wet, heavy trail, and his breath plumes in great, ragged clouds with each hurried step. He has ridden hard from the Wall—too hard, his men will murmur later, shaking their heads over ale—but they do not understand. They cannot.
They have not seen the way the firelight caught your hair the morning he left, turning it to spun copper and gold, a colour that has haunted his dreams every night since. They did not hear the soft, almost imperceptible catch in your voice when you bid him farewell, the way you held his gaze a beat too long, as if memorising the lines of his face, as if pressing his image into the very marrow of your bones. They do not know the particular ache of sleeping in a bed that does not hold your scent, of reaching for you in the dark and finding only cold, empty sheets. They do not know what waits for him beneath these ancient, lichen-flecked stones. They do not know that you wait.
He finds you in the solar, as he knew he would. You always wait here when the snows grow deep and the wind howls like a wounded beast against the walls, as if the castle itself is trying to keep you company in his absence. You are curled in the great chair that had been his mother's, a book open in your lap, the fire casting gold and shadow across your cheeks. The flames paint you in hues of amber and crimson, and for a long, suspended heartbeat, he simply stands in the doorway, drinking in the sight of you. He lets the moment settle over him like a benediction. You are a fixed point in his world of endless, grey winter—the single, blazing star by which he has steered himself home.
You look up at the heavy thud of the door, at the gust of frozen air that sweeps in with him. The startled awareness in your eyes—that brief, instinctive wariness of the wolf's den—softens instantly, melting into something so achingly familiar and dear. The smile that blooms on your face is the first true warmth he has felt in a fortnight; it reaches into his chest and unfurls a knot of tension he didn't realise he had been carrying, unravelling it thread by thread until he can breathe again.
The book tumbles forgotten to the floor, pages splaying open like a wounded bird, as you rise. He crosses the room in three long, ground-eating strides, boots slipping slightly on a rug worn smooth by generations of Stark feet. He catches you mid-motion, pulling you against his chest with a force that knocks the breath from your lungs and swallows your soft gasp. His hands are everywhere at once—finding your waist, spanning your back, gripping the curve of your hip with a desperate, possessive urgency. He maps the shape of you through memory and touch alone, relearning the dip of your spine, the soft give of your flesh, the solid reality of you finally back in his arms. His face buries into the crook of your neck, and he breathes you in—the scent of woodsmoke and lavender, the faint trace of the lemon cakes you always sneak from the kitchens, the simple, miraculous you—and for the first time in days, the howling in his blood quiets to a whisper.
He does not speak. He cannot. His voice is a frozen thing, locked somewhere deep in his chest, trapped behind the weeks of silence and the cold that has seeped into his very marrow. Words are too slow, too clumsy for what he feels—they would shatter against his teeth like brittle ice before they could ever reach you. Only his hands remember how to say what he needs. Only his mouth knows the language of return.
He buries his face in the curve of your neck, his nose nuzzling into the soft skin just below your ear, seeking out the place where your pulse beats warm and alive. He inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of you—woodsmoke and lavender and the faint, sweet warmth of the tea you must have been nursing, perhaps the very same cup that now sits cooling and forgotten on the table beside your chair.
A low, broken sound rumbles from his chest, a sound that is half-groan, half-sigh of relief, as his mouth finds your skin. The first kiss is almost reverent—a press of his lips to the delicate shell of your ear, a whisper of warmth against the chill that still clings to him. But reverence crumbles quickly beneath the weight of two weeks of absence. He kisses you with a desperation that borders on pain—sloppy, open-mouthed, hungry kisses that trail from your jaw to the hollow of your throat, mapping the territory he has dreamed of every night. He tastes the salt of your skin, feels the frantic flutter of your pulse beneath his lips, and it only fuels his hunger. You gasp, your fingers tightening in the damp wool of his cloak, and the sound goes straight to his gut like a blade.
He is starving. He has been starving since the moment he rode out the gates, surviving on meagre rations of duty and honour when all he truly wanted was this—your warmth, your softness, the impossible rightness of you in his arms. Now, with you pressed against him, he cannot get enough. His mouth travels lower, pressing hot, wet kisses down the column of your throat to the swell of your bosom where your bodice begins. He lingers there, his breath hot against the fabric, his teeth grazing the edge of your neckline in a way that makes you shudder. His fingers are already working at the laces, driven by a primal need to feel your skin against his, to prove to himself that you are real, that you are his, and that he is finally home.
His fingers fumble at the laces of your bodice. Once. Twice. The knots are cruel, intricate little things that your maids must have tied with malicious precision, and his hands—so steady on a sword, so sure on the reins, so capable of bringing down a stag at fifty paces—are clumsy with a want that makes him tremble. A frustrated growl rumbles low in his chest, a sound of pure, animal desperation. His knuckles brush against your sternum, and you feel the faint tremor in his fingers, the barely leashed desperation thrumming through him like a bowstring pulled taut, ready to snap.
"Damn these knots," he mutters against your skin, the words muffled and ragged, more breath than sound. He pulls back just far enough to look at you, and the sight of him steals what little breath you have left. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide until the grey is barely a ring around the black, and his lips are reddened, slightly swollen from the ferocity of his kisses. A lock of dark hair has fallen across his brow, and his chest heaves beneath the weight of his cloak. He looks undone—the great Lord of Winterfell, the Wolf of the North, reduced to a trembling, desperate man by the simple, devastating fact of you.
You grind against him, a soft, needy sound escaping your throat, and something in him snaps.
It is not a gradual thing—not a slow unravelling or a careful shedding of restraint. It is a break, clean and violent, like a sword shattering against a shield. A growl rumbles from deep in his chest, a sound that seems to come from somewhere ancient and primal, from the wolf that sleeps beneath his skin. He grabs the fabric at your sternum with both fists, his knuckles white, his breath a ragged snarl against your lips.
The threads give with a sharp, tearing screech that splits the quiet of the room, louder than it has any right to be. The sound seems to echo off the stone walls, a violent, ripping thing that feels almost obscene in the sacred hush of the solar. Pearls scatter across the floor like scattered teeth, bouncing and rolling into the shadows, disappearing beneath the furniture like tiny, fleeing ghosts. A few catch the firelight as they fall, winking gold and silver before they vanish into the darkness.
Your head snaps up, eyes wide—not with fear, but with the particular, incandescent outrage of a woman who has worn her favourite dress, her best dress, the one with the delicate silver embroidery she painstakingly chose for her husband's return. The dress you had smoothed with your own hands an hour ago, checking every stitch, every fold, wanting to be perfect for him.
"Cregan—" Your voice comes out strangled, caught somewhere between indignation and laughter, a sound that trembles on the edge of hysteria. "That was my good dress."
"I know." His voice is rough, scraped raw from hours in the frozen wind, almost pained. He catches your chin with his thumb, tilting your face to his, and you see his grey eyes—dark with hunger, pupils blown wide, the colour of a winter storm about to break. But beneath that, a flicker of genuine regret, boyish and abashed, so at odds with the towering man who just destroyed your bodice. He looks like a wolf caught with his muzzle in the henhouse, guilty but not quite repentant.
"I know, my love. I am sorry." His thumb traces the line of your jaw, reverent even in his desperation, a gentle counterpoint to the violence he has just done. The calloused pad of his thumb drags slowly across your skin, as if he is trying to soothe the very outrage he has caused. "I am a brute, a beast, an utter fool, and I will buy you ten more—twenty—a hundred dresses if that is what it takes. I will have the finest silks from the Free Cities brought to Winterfell on the next ship. I will have the seamstresses work day and night until you have more gowns than you know what to do with. I will—" He swallows hard, his throat bobbing, his gaze flickering down to the ruined fabric and the skin now exposed beneath it. His eyes darken further, the hunger reigniting, drowning out the regret. "But I cannot wait."
His forehead drops to rest against yours, his breath hot and uneven against your lips. His hands find your waist, gripping you like you are the only solid thing in a world that has turned to ice and shadow. "I have waited fourteen days. Fourteen nights. I have dreamed of you every night beneath those wretched furs, waking with your name on my tongue and a cold, empty space beside me. I have lain awake and counted the hours, the minutes, the very heartbeats until I could feel you again, until I could hold you and know that you are real and not some cruel dream my mind conjured to torment me." His voice cracks slightly on the last word, the vulnerability bleeding through the armour of his desperation. "And now—" He breaks off, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his control fraying at the edges like old rope, like a tether about to snap. "Now I am here, and you are in my arms, and I cannot—I cannot—"
He looks at you then, truly looks, and the sight of him steals the breath from your lungs. He is pleading, almost vulnerable despite the breadth of his shoulders and the dark beard that hides half his face. His chest heaves beneath his travel-stained tunic, and his lips are still wet from your skin, still slightly parted, and you can see the war raging behind his eyes—the wolf and the man, the Lord and the husband, the hunger and the regret and the desperate, aching love that binds them all together.
And gods help you, but the sight of him—this mighty, stoic Lord of the North, this man who commands armies and keeps the King's Peace, this wolf who has bent the knee to no one and nothing in his entire life, undone by his need for you, reduced to a trembling, apologetic mess by the simple fact of your presence—melts the protest on your tongue. The indignation drains from your shoulders, replaced by something far warmer, far more powerful. It pools low in your belly, a liquid heat that spreads through your veins like mulled wine on a winter's night, chasing away the last remnants of your outrage.
Because this is not the Lord of Winterfell before you. This is not the Warden of the North, the man who has stared down wildlings and kings alike without flinching. This is your husband—a man who has spent fourteen days and nights in the frozen wastes, who has ridden through snow and ice and howling wind, who has faced down death itself on the Wall, and the only thing that has broken him, the only thing that has brought him to his knees, is the thought of you.
How could you possibly stay angry at that?
You reach up and curl your fingers into the rough wool of his tunic, pulling him closer. The fabric is coarse beneath your fingertips, still cold from the long ride, still carrying the faint bite of the northern wind. You can feel the heat of his body radiating through it, can feel the frantic pounding of his heart beneath your palm, and it makes your own pulse quicken in response.
"Then show me what fourteen nights have done to you." you whisper against his lips, your voice a low, breathy command that surprises even you.
The sound he makes—a broken, hungry groan that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere primal and raw—is your only answer. It is not a sound of words or reason; it is a sound of pure, unfiltered need. And then his mouth crashes back to yours with a force that steals the breath from your lungs, that pushes you back against the chair and swallows the gasp that escapes your throat.
The ruined dress falls forgotten to the floor, pooling around your feet like a puddle of silver and wool, like a discarded skin that you no longer need. You step out of it without thinking, without caring, your hands already working at the fastenings of his tunic, your fingers fumbling with the same desperate urgency that had plagued him moments ago.
He breaks the kiss only to drag his lips down your throat, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin where your neck meets your shoulder, and you arch into him with a sharp, keening sound that you barely recognize as your own. His hands find your hips, gripping you with a possessive urgency that will leave bruises in the shape of his fingers—and you find that you do not care. You want the marks. You want to wear the evidence of his need on your skin, to carry it with you like a secret, like a brand.
Your breath catches in your throat. "Cregan—"
"Say it again." His hands cup your face, tilting your gaze to his, and there is something desperate in his eyes now, something almost pleading. "Say my name like that. Like I am just your husband. Like I am just a man who has missed you so badly he can barely breathe."
You reach up, your fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the dark stubble that has grown rough during his journey. "Cregan," you say, and you let your voice drop, let it become something low and intimate, something that belongs only to him. "My love. My wolf."
The sound that escapes him is almost a sob—a broken, ragged exhale that seems to carry the weight of every mile he has traveled, every night he has spent alone, every moment he has ached for you. He surges forward, capturing your mouth in a kiss that is not hungry but devastating—a kiss that speaks of loneliness and longing and the desperate, aching relief of being home.
cregan stark likes to watch his spoiled, pampered wife bathe
"You are in no need of more oils, wife," Cregan mutters, grey eyes watching bedrugingly as you pour yet another vial of scented concoctions into the milky bath water you are lounging in.
He swears it must be the tenth one you added. How a woman can even breathe with so many cloying, flowery smells stinking up the bath chambers is beyond his comprehension. Cleaning oneself needs to be a simple, efficient affair, not a godforsaken parade of every single lotion and oil you own.
"If you are so slighted by it, husband," you lilt, leaning back into the water with a soft, pleased sigh, closing your eyes as you let yourself relax fully, body submerged up to your shoulders. "You may leave and allow me a moment of peace without your brooding."
"I am not—"
"But you are," you interrupt, humming, lifting a hand to thread your fingers along the surface of the water as you speak. "Every time you join me, you do nothing but stand there and brood," the sound of your tongue clicking follows, as if expressing your distaste for this odd tradition your lord husband has instilled in the moons you have been wed. "It disturbs my repose."
Cregan scoffs, having half a mind to not roll his eyes at your audacity. He should be used to it by now, seeing as you have never shied away from making it abundantly clear how much you love being indulged and enjoying your reprise without a single interruption.
And yet, he was not going to allow you to discard him with a flick of your hand and a defiant tilt of your chin whenever you wished to be undisturbed. He was your husband, and if he wanted to be in attendance at whatever ridiculous southern pompous customs you had, he would.
That's why he had asked the servants to put an armchair in your bathing chambers, close by the tub, where he shall sit every time he has the luxury of disregarding or postponing his duties for a while, just so he can watch you bathe and pamper yourself. Cregan did not care if word filtered through the walls that The Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North spent part of his pastime sitting splayed out in a chair in his wife's bath chambers, feasting on one of the most exquisite viewings in the Seven Kingdoms. Let them talk and whisper. He did not need to explain himself to anyone, least of all to gossiping servants and sycophants alike.
His wolfish gaze was shameless as it traced the damp, dewy skin of your neck and shoulders, fingers drumming onto the wooden arm of the chair, faltering in rhythm just a tad whenever you shifted, the water lapping at your curves. He swore sometimes you were moving with the intent to drive him to madness, even if it was the most minute gesture.
"Disturbs your repose," he parroted, lips twitching with amusement at your feigned disdain for his presence. "My apologies for being such a pest to my own wife," Cregan continued, "I was not aware bathing oneself required such solitude."
Your expression shifted, a scowl marring your pretty features as your chin tipped upwards, as if his words had no place even reaching you. "It always requires solitude. You are just adamant to perturb it," you complained, sighing, as if the mere thought exasperated you, which made Cregan's mouth curl further, dripping with mounting enjoyment. "You stand there watching me like some kind of lecher," you accused, scowl deepening, a scoff leaving your plush mouth. "It is unbecoming of a husband to ogle his wife so shamelessly. You northerners have no decorum."
And oh, the way your lips curled every time you mentioned his culture, tone haughty and dipped with venom at the edges, as if spitting out the very word, made his blood sing.
"Just brutes with no finesse," you finished, chin raising just a bit higher, showing him you were above such things, above him, above his culture.
Gods, he wanted to haul you out of that bath and spank you until you cried those fat, pretty tears again, cheeks flushed and voice wet from babbling at him to stop. Cregan was not a man given to punishment easily, especially with the woman he was bound to by law and vow, but he came to understand that there were few ways he could make his wife see reason, and even then, only if you wanted to give in to his whims and relent.
"If you wanted a soft southerner lord with nough but a flaccid cock and no mind of his own, wife," he spoke, lips curling into that slow, wolfish grin, the one where his canines peeked through. A wolf showing his teeth without biting, but making it clear he could if provoked further. "You wouldn't have accepted my proposal so readily, riding for Winterfell not even a fortnight after our sigils were put on parchment."
You scoffed, rolling your eyes in that infuriating way Cregan loved and hated in equal measure, as if his words were nothing but white noise you were forced to listen to. "It was in my best interest to accept," you protested, inclining a little higher, leaning back against the tub, the water lapping at the tops of your damp breasts. A muscle in Cregan's jaw twitched as his eyes followed the movement. "Why would I be the lady of some lesser lord when I can be Lady of Winterfell?" The words were accompanied by a hum, evidently pleased with the title you possessed. "I am nothing but a woman of great ambitions, as you're well aware, husband."
Cregan huffed, more amused than anything, head tilting, not taking his eyes off the way he could make out the pebbled shape of your nipples just shy of peeking above the milky, fragrant water. He knew what you were doing. This little game of yours was as old as time.
You were losing ground, not pleased with the way he was biting back at your attempts to unnerve him, and had no other alternative but to call to his most primal, animal instincts that reside as deep as the marrow of his bones. He was a man, after all, and no stranger to the cravings of the flesh, more so when it came to his infuriatingly enticing wife, bare and glistening, lounging in the tub, indulging his eyes with glimpses and flashes of your body, willing to make him falter in his resolve.
"You never cease to remind me of the fact, wife," he said, feeling his chest puff up a tad at the way you huffed at his words, clearly displeased that he was not indulging your whims still. Not yet. Cregan was enjoying this more than he wanted to admit. "No woman in the Seven Kingdoms can rival you in that regard."
"What about other regards?"
Cregan's mouth twitched again, but he reigned in his expression for now. "Other regards?" He feigned confusion, tilting his head to the side, dragging his eyes from where they traced the shape of your damp breasts, up to your narrowed, inquisitive gaze. "I fear I do not follow. Must you be so kind as to specify, wife?"
Your brows furrowed, body shifting slightly into the tub, the water lapping at your skin, wetting it anew, drawing Cregan's eyes towards every patch for a few moments, rough fingers twitching onto his armchair, but he won't be baited this time. Raising one eyebrow, he waited, grey eyes now solely focused on yours, keeping you ensnared until you gathered the words to throw back at him.
"Am I rivaled in other regards by the women of the Seven Kingdoms?" You asked, chin held high, trying to absolve yourself of the vulnerable undertone woven into the question, gaze sharp, narrowed. But the way one of your hands lifted to grip the edge of the tub, curling around it, gave you away. You needed to ground yourself for this sort of fragility, and it made Cregan's heart soften just a tad every time, melting the frost of the North around it and giving way to the ceaseless warmth you brought with you from the South.
He huffed, letting his mouth form that tender, soft curl reserved only for you, grey eyes crinkling at the edges with barely concealed fondness. "No, wife," Cregan said, tone glazed with honeyed affection, letting his eyes feast on the way your chest heaved with a soft breath, as if his words had eased an unknown burden curled beneath your breastbone. "There is no woman in all the Seven Kingdoms who could dream of besting you."
And still, you scoffed, protest ready on your tongue, bristling in the milky water, never one to cease when you wanted certainty. "If your words are baseless, you may keep them, for I have no use for-"
"Not in my eyes," Cregan interrupted you, tone lowered but firm, halting your tongue before you could descend into yet another one of your haughty deflections.
It was ever pleasing, the way you faltered in the face of his sincerity. Blinking akin to a startled doe, your expression passing from one emotion to another, offense to confusion to reluctant preening. He could see it. Your chest heaving with soft breaths, plush mouth parting, pupils dilating wide enough to encompass the color of your eyes, leaving behind pools of black. And then, the flush. That warmth spreading from the tops of your breasts and climbing up, up, up your throat, splotching over your cheekbones and reaching the tips of your ears.
Mhm, he got you good this time. Cregan might have to ride the high of such an accomplishment for the fortnight to come, if he was lucky. The Gods were ever so merciful to grant him such a gift and let him savor it, too.
"The smell of the bathing oils must've affected you a great deal, husband, to say such theatrical musings," you mumbled, not meeting his eyes for a heartbeat, two, before looking into that northern gray you preached you found so insufferable. "It makes you sound like one of those flaccid men you mentioned earlier."
Cregan could only huff, amused, watching as you tried in vain to deflect and throw whatever attempt at diffusing the meaning of his words back at him. "Sound, maybe," he said, offering you a slow, wolfish curl of his mouth, baring just enough hint of teeth to allude to a threat, but not bestow it. "But I am anything but flaccid, wife. You, of all people, should be familiar with the hardness of—"
"Silence!" You shrieked, one hand dipping beneath the water's surface and swatting upwards, sending droplets of water towards him, attempting to will him into silence. "Have you no shame, you brute? To speak of such things in the company of your wife?"
But he was not perturbed; on the contrary, his lips pulled into a smirk, pleased and smug. Making you bristle truly was the thing he favored most, aside from the feel of your body and the sound of your voice. "Should I speak of such things in the company of someone else, then?"
"Don't you dare! Gods, you're giving me a headache," you fussed, swatting water at him again, eyes narrowed as you demanded. "Help me bathe, so you may amend for your wrongs."
And who was Cregan to refuse such a decree from his wife?
content tags are: canon divergence, angst, hurt/very little comfort, smut, reader uses she/her pronouns, no physical description of reader, dub con, major breeding kink, praise, pet names, pregnancy, discussions of death, discussions of religion, dark themes... thank you for reading <3
The crunch of leaves under your feet is the only sound that pierces through the chilly evening air. The sun hangs low in the sky, the color of a pale egg yolk. And the autumn breeze nips at your cheeks. You angle yourself slightly against the breeze, and into your husband's shoulder as you walk arm in arm with him.
"You're quiet, husband. More brooding than usual. Which I never thought to be possible." You observe, smiling up at Cregan.
"Hm?" He blinks, processing your words for a moment "Oh, just lots on my mind today. Not brooding, just thinking." He ruffles your hair. "Remember when you thought all Northernmen were stupid oafs -incapable of intelligent thought?"
"Who says I don't still think that?" You tease, squeezing his arm tighter, taking two hands two fully wrap around his bicep. After a moment you ask "Where are we going?"
"To the godswood. Thought we could pray together" He answers.
And sure enough, you are approaching the edge of the woods, and passing through the stone gate. The crimson leaves of the heart tree stick out among the black shadows of the surrounding pines. This place had always intimidated to you, it felt like the breath of hundreds of ghosts surrounded you here. It was too old, too primal. It brought your husband comfort to visit the old gods, but standing in front of the weirwood tree, you only felt watched - offered up to a higher being like a sacrifice. Those eyes saw right though you and into the marrow of your bones.
You hesitantly follow your husband to the tree, and peer into the small reflecting pond. "Why are we here, my love?"
Cregan groans softly as he sits on the massive root of the heart tree, bulging from the ground, and pats the space next to him. "Come sit."
You obey, and shiver. The woods are shaded, dropping the temperature of the autumn air significantly.
"I wanted to bring you here to show you that you don't have to be afraid. If you let it, it's a place that can bring you a lot of solace. As it has done for me."
The wind blows through the brilliant red leaves and you swear it sounds like the spirits are whispering to you. However, you cannot make out what they are saying. Your shoulders involuntarily shudder, even under your fur attire.
"When I am gone, you can come here and you won't feel alone." He takes your hand, and warms the cold stiffness that as settled in your fingers.
"Don't say that!" You blurt. "You'll always be here and - "
He interrupts you. "I have to visit the Wall for a routine visit. A few weeks. A moon at most."
"No." You shake your head in disbelief. Your husband was so attentive, rushing to your side the moment you needed him. It was incomprehensible that he could be leaving you. He would not separate from you willingly. He just wouldn't. "Nonono. Husband, there must be some mistake."
"You will stay here. And I will return before you know it." He holds your jaw, to bring your gaze up to him. He needs to look into your eyes, and make sure you are comprehending his words. "This is my duty, you must understand."
"No." You repeat, your voice breaking. Your lip trembles, eyes pricking with tears. "You cannot abandon me." A painful lump is forming in your throat, the onslaught of tears threatening to spill any second. "Don't leave me alone." The world feels like it's collapsing in on you, the weight impossibly crushing on your shoulders.
Cregan kisses you, your trembling lip caught in between his. He pulls you closer against him, enclosing your smaller body with his. The kiss turns salty as your tears flow freely now, and the lump in your throat burns. But he swallows your cries, bringing you flush against him, claiming the inside of your mouth, your saliva comingling. Your sounds are muffled by his kiss, it seems he is trying to swallow your despair and take it for himself.
He pulls away to inspect your face, a string of saliva connecting your mouths. His voice, typically stern with anyone else but you, almost cracks with sorrow. "I hate to see you cry, pup." Callused fingers swipe tears off your cheeks. "You're my brave girl. You're going to be brave when I'm gone, yeah?"
Even through the layers of your woolen dress and the fur cloak around your shoulders, the earth is feels like ice against your stomach. You cheek presses into the mossy ground, and the weight of your husband's body covers yours.
Your mind feels disconnected from your body, almost like you are observing yourself lying on the cold ground. Muscles pliant from your earlier peak, inside of your thighs wet. Your husband's fingers are damp from your arousal as he rucks up your dress, exposing your flesh to the biting air. The clink of his belt, and there it is again, the sound of the wind whispering all around you. Those primordial voices. What in gods' name are they trying to tell you?
The overwhelming urge to flee from this ancient place crosses your hazy mind. "Husband-" you start to say, shifting up on your elbows and knees.
"Hush" His heavy hand falls to the back of your neck, scruffing you as a parent wolf does its pups, and bringing you back down to the soft moss. The words are stolen right out of your mouth, the action resetting your brain into submission.
"Be still and jus' let me in, my love." His knee spreads your thighs, and the velvet hardness of his cock brushes your arse. When he enters, the stretch aided by the slickness of your peak, Cregan sighs a long, rattling exhale. "When come here I always thank the gods for blessing me with you. My perfect wife." He rambles, as he begins to thrust a steady rhythm. "You will have our child and you won't be alone. Even after I'm gone."
"No! Don't say that!" You sob. Every ridge of his cock stretches your walls.
"Gonna put a child in you, my love. I promise." He yanks your hips up and off the ground, so your arse is higher than your head. The new angle drives him deeper. Your belly feels the weight of the heavy length of his cock stroking in and out. "You'll have a piece of me, when I'm away. A babe. Lots of babes, yeah."
"No" The only word you can form right now, muffled into the moss. Your face feels wet again, and you realize you're crying.
"Right hah-here. Before the old gods."
You look up the weirwood tree, its solemn eyes bleeding sap, and wonder if it will ever bring you comfort, or just remain a pair of ten thousand year old eyes. The things that it has seen. Suffering, joy, pain, sin. Why would those gods grant you a spare thought? The canopy of blood red leaves spins in your vision.
"I swear it" He adds through gritted teeth.
Cregan's hips stutter, the final sloppy thrusts, then his come is painting your insides. Impossibly deep, up into your ribs, you feel him fill you. He pants for a moment onto your shoulder as he regains his breath. You cannot move from the ground, your limbs feel too heavy to lift; your whole body is spent.
He slips out of you, but swiftly replaces his fingers at your entrance, holding the spend inside. With one hand, he gently pulls you up to a seated position, and with the other, pushes his seed back into you. No drop wasted. You wince as his thick fingers breach your used walls, overly sensitive and pulsing. "You did so well, pup. So brave." He mumbles, kissing the apple of your wet cheek.
His fingers, covered in glistening spend, pull your top lip up to expose a row of sharp teeth. Reverently, he rubs the spend across your pink gums, into your molars. "There. No more tears, love."
You nod slowly, your limbs beginning to ache from their contact with the cold, damp ground. Picking dried leaves from your hair and skirts, you look up again at the tree's face carved into bone white bark. Its gnarled eyes weep before you, but now the expression seems to have shifted. Was it anguish, or perhaps rapture, contorting on the ancient face? You glance in the reflecting pool's black water, and back at the weirwood tree, and see yourself in each.
cregan who desperately wants you as his wife and won't take anyone else...
contains: sex (duh), fem!reader, one breeding mention, kinda pathetic/hopeless cregan?, and standard asoiaf marriage politics. ooc but like whateverrrrrrr.
at the age of twenty-and-three, lord cregan stark of winterfell, warden of the north, still hasn't found himself a lady wife. he pushes away any suitors or love interests, and blatantly ignores anyone that even tries to mention that m'lord should perhaps find himself a nice highborn lady, or settle for an ally's eldest daughter, if only to secure his legacy...
he's simply been too busy — too busy with you, that is.
maybe you simply aren't the marrying type, or you know you'll be rejected by his court, or maybe you're literally just fucking with him.
either way, cregan won't have anyone if he can't have you.
you make out in stables and dark corridors, noses bumping, your fingers tangled in his hair. whenever he manages to sneak you into his chambers, all he can say against your neck is "my lady, my wife," when he ruts into you with an almost animal fervor.
he jerks off in what little alone time he has (that also isn't spent on you) to the idea of bedding you on your shared wedding night, your love and union finally recognized by the gods; of sitting at the high table in the feast hall with you at his side, facing the rest of the court; of fucking his pups into his lady stark, and watching her swell with life belonging to the both of them and no one else.
he asks, and asks, and asks, usually during the heat of sex or right after — what's the worst thing that could happen, what does it matter so long as we're together, i need a wife, i need heirs, i need you — but all you ever do is shut him down, and eventually, he just gives up.
cregan learns to accept that all your relationship will ever be is casual, exceedingly passionate trysts and whispered declarations of love aside. it's hopeless, to think of marrying you, he knows.
but, if he's being honest, sometimes he still stares at you when he knows you aren't looking, and he imagines you in stark colors and wedding whites.
Thinking about how big Cregan Stark is compared to his little wife… in and out of the marital bed.
How he leans down to be able to hear you, tilting his ear toward you.
How he tucks your head right next to his ear so he can hear every hiccup and moan of pleasure while he’s deep inside of you. Arms caging you in, holding you in place.
How when he lends you his fur cloak it swallows you up, dragging along the stone floor or snow covered dirt. The sight makes his stoic face falter for just a second.
How the same fur cloak is laid over you naked shoulders as he sit you on his lap, thighs screaming in both pleasure and pain from the stretch of his thighs and fingers.
How he moves you to safety with a simple gesture. Sweeping you to the side of the halls with his paws on your hips, pulling your back to his chest. How he lifts you up into the crook of his arm under the back of your thighs. the sudden movement making you squeal. One hand on his shoulder and the other landing in his hair, while he traverses the muddy walk way. He makes sure to put you back down and fixes your dress when the ground is solid again.
How his hands move you to his will while you’re underneath him. A leg thrown over his shoulder, teeth biting at your inner thigh. Your hands pinned behind your back, his grip unrelenting as he uses it to push you back on his dick. His eyes mesmerized by the ripples in your skin as it meets him.
He can feel your eyes on him, his shoulders, hands, any part of him you can get a glimpse off while outside of your chambers in the view of others.
He likes the view of your hands in his. Like stone against silk.
He can see the look in your eyes when he looks over you, whether for warmth out in the snow or amongst the furs in bed. His hand dwarfing the side of your face, his thumb brushing against your bottom lip.
You didn't want to marry that man. He doesn't make you smile. He didn't create butterflies in your stomach. He didn't look at you with a shred of affection. He only saw you as another duty to endure.
You wanted to say no, but nobody would hear it. Nobody would help you.
The wedding day arrives, and you stand in front of the Septon with your groom. Your hands are clasped by a cloth. How befiting! You say your vows with a monotone voice. You try to picture the groom as the man you truly loved, but you can't do it.
He was sitting among the guests. Quiet with a blank expression.
You are reaching the end of your vows, but you could barely say the last words. Your voice was leaving you. You are breathing rapidly. Your groom squeezes your hand. Not to encourage you but to tell you to hurry along. He gripped your hand so hard that you flinched.
That was the last straw.
"I object!"
Shock gasps run through the Sept.
You let out a relieved gasp, and your knees buckled.
Because your knight is coming to rescue you.
You looked at him with tears in your eyes.
He marches to the alter. His eyes focused on you.
"Give me the word and I will do it."
Your face scrunches with the tears that are running down your face.
People were talking. People were looking at each other confused. Your groom is angrily shouting at him, but he doesn't pay mind. He just looks at you. he's waiting for you.
"Say it." He asks you one more time.
You found your voice. "Take me away from here!"
He acted quickly. He unsheathed his dagger and cut the cloth that was bidding your hands to your now former and bewildered groom. He made sure to knick him in the hand.
Once you were free, he grabbed your arm, and you both ran from the Sept.
Consequences will come from this action, but as long as you two are together, you will face them.
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Cregan Stark x fem!reader
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 6.5k
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: mdni, smut, Cregan has some grey hairs because I said so; I just think it would suit him. I don't even know how old he is, but anyways, slight bondage, breaking of antique furniture, very sad but necessary.
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: When your hints fall on deaf ears, you decide to take matters into your own hands. Tired of Cregan Stark's unshakeable control, you want to be the one to command in the bedchamber for once. You want to tease him, torment him, bring the stoic Warden of the North to his knees. And for a while, it works—until his restraint shatters, the bonds break, and you learn that you cannot cage a wolf.
: ̗̀➛ [𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧] [𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] [𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱]
𝐚/𝐧: I genuinely can no longer tell if I've overused certain words and phrases just because I've already spent so long editing and re-reading this.
Cregan Stark is command. It is not merely a role he inhabits, but the very marrow of his being—a truth as immutable as the Wall, as inexorable as the winter winds that claw at the window glass. He wears it as naturally as the grey of his wool and the weight of Ice at his hip. Even now, in the sacred, hushed privacy of your bedchamber, with the fire crackling low and the furs tangled about your sweat-slicked bodies, the chain of command is never in doubt.
You are perched atop him, your body moving in a rhythm you believe is your own. But his large, calloused hand is a brand upon your hip, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with a grip that is less a guide and more a rein. He steers. He sets the tempo, a slow, torturous beat that has you gasping and trembling, chasing a peak he refuses to let you reach. His other hand is tangled in the loose fall of your hair, not to pull you down for a kiss, but to hold your gaze captive, forcing you to see the wolfish glint in his grey eyes—a silent reminder that every wave of pleasure you ride is one he allows.
The illusion of control is a gift; the final word, the power to grant or withhold your shared release, rests with him alone. Always.
For weeks, a new hunger has been coiling in your gut, a restless, pagan thing that has little to do with passion and everything to do with power. It is a desire not just to be consumed by his fire, but to see it banked at your feet. You want to feel the weight of his command shift, to see the Warden of the North lay down his sword, just for a moment, and yield to you. You have tried to whisper this treacherous truth into the spaces between your shared breaths, to imply it with a lingering touch on his wrist—a touch that says stay, that says kneel. You have tried subtlety, lacing your words with honey and suggestion.
But subtlety, you are learning with a mix of exasperation and grim amusement, is a language the Lord of Winterfell does not speak. He understands hunger, yes, but he reads it as a call for more of his dominion, not a demand for his surrender. The quiet rebellion brewing in your heart will require a louder voice, a bolder hand. If you are to break the chains of his command, you will have to forge the key yourself.
You remember your failed attempts with a fresh wave of irritation that burns like a mouthful of Dornish pepper. Your coy suggestions—a whispered "You look tired, my lord, let me tend to you," your fingers tracing idle patterns on his chest as you urged him to lie back and rest—were met with nothing more than a grunt and a kiss pressed to your forehead, as if you were a child asking for a bedtime story. Patronizing. Sweet. Infuriating.
Your more direct attempts fared no better. The night you took his wrists and tried to guide his hands above his head, your knees framing his hips in what you thought was an unmistakable declaration of intent, he had simply chuckled—a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through his chest and into your very bones. He had let you move him for the span of a single, hopeful heartbeat before he reversed your positions with an effortless shift of his weight, pinning you beneath him like a wolf rolling a pup onto its back. His voice, a gravelly murmur against the sensitive curve of your neck, had undone you entirely. "My fierce little wolf," he had breathed, and the endearment—so tender, so utterly oblivious—had only deepened your resolve into something sharp and unyielding.
He is a man of direct action, not of delicate inference. The Lord of Winterfell does not read between the lines; he reads the lines themselves, and if they do not spell out a clear command, he dismisses them as noise. Your hints have fallen on deaf ears, your subtlety wasted like seed scattered on frozen ground.
Now, the knot of irritation that has been coiling tighter in your chest all week—each failed attempt adding another twist, another barb—hardens into something colder. Deliberate. Calculated. You watch him from across the great hall, where he stands before the hearth, the firelight casting deep, shifting shadows across the sharp planes of his face. He is speaking with his men, his voice that quiet, immovable authority that needs no volume to command attention. His hand rests on the pommel of his sword with the easy familiarity of a man who has worn steel since he could walk. He gestures toward a map spread across the trestle table, and every man in the room leans in, hanging on his next word.
You see the sheer, overwhelming power of him—the breadth of his shoulders beneath his heavy cloak, the set of his jaw, the way the firelight catches the silver threading through his dark hair—and a familiar, treacherous heat begins to pool low in your belly.
It is a response you cannot quell, no matter how annoyed you are, no matter how many times he has brushed aside your advances with that infuriating, affectionate condescension. Your body knows what it wants, even when your pride screams in protest.
But this time, you refuse to surrender to it. You will not be the one who melts into his arms the moment the last servant leaves the hall, who gasps his name and forgets her own ambitions in the warmth of his embrace.
A stubborn, prideful part of you—the part that has been nursing this quiet rebellion for weeks—wants to rattle that unshakeable composure. You want to be the one to make him wait, to make him ache. You want to see the Warden of the North want in a way that he cannot simply command into existence, cannot bend to his will with a word or a look.
As his men file out of the great hall, their boots echoing against the stone floor, their murmured goodnights fading into the corridor beyond, you do not rise from your seat. You remain still as carved stone, your hands resting folded in your lap, your spine straight against the high back of the chair. The fire pops and spits in the hearth, sending a shower of sparks spiralling up into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling.
Cregan turns from the door, his hand still resting on the iron handle, and his gaze finds you. There is a flicker of something in his grey eyes—not quite confusion, not quite concern, but a faint crease between his brows that speaks of a man who has encountered an unexpected obstacle on a path he thought he knew by heart. He is accustomed to you rising to meet him, to crossing the room to slip your hand into his, to leaning up to press your lips to the rough stubble of his jaw. He is accustomed to your warmth, your eagerness, your surrender.
You meet his questioning gaze across the length of the table, the scattered remnants of the evening meal still between you—a half-empty goblet of wine, a cold trencher of bread, the guttering stub of a candle. And for the first time, you do not look away. You do not soften. You do not offer him the easy smile that has always been your shield and your gift.
You let him see the fire in your eyes. The challenge. The promise.
The air between you shifts, thickens, becomes something charged and alive. His hand falls from the door handle, and he straightens to his full height, the firelight casting his shadow long and dark against the wall behind him. He is waiting—for what, he does not yet know. But he knows, in the deep, instinctual way of a wolf, that something has changed.
It is this silent war of wills that carries you to your bedchambers, your footsteps measured and deliberate, his heavy tread a half-pace behind you—close enough that you can feel the heat radiating from his body, far enough that he is not quite touching you. The heavy oak door thuds shut behind you with a finality that echoes through your very bones, the iron bolt sliding home with a scrape that sounds like a seal being set upon a treaty.
The air in the room is thick with the unspoken, crackling like the fire that roars in the hearth, casting leaping shadows across the stone walls as if they, too, are holding their breath. The furs on the great bed are rumpled from the morning, the pillows still bearing the indentation of your heads. A forgotten book lies open on the bedside table, its pages yellowed and curling. It is a room that knows the both of you intimately—knows your whispers and your laughter, your arguments and your reconciliations, the way you fit together in the dark.
You stand with your back to the door, your fingers still resting on the cold iron handle, and you watch him.
He has stopped a few paces into the room, his broad back to you as he stares into the flames. His shoulders are rigid with that familiar, unyielding tension—the tension of a man who carries the weight of a kingdom on his spine and has long forgotten how to set it down. His hands hang at his sides, but they are not relaxed; they are curled into loose fists, as if he is bracing himself for a blow he cannot see coming.
You can almost see the thoughts churning behind that stoic mask. The questions. The confusion. The faint, unfamiliar stir of uncertainty that he would never, ever admit to—not to his men, not to his advisors, not even, perhaps, to himself. He is a man who has spent his entire life reading the North, reading his enemies across a battlefield, reading the shifting weather and the turning of the seasons and the stubborn wills of his bannermen.
He has spent his life anticipating threats, planning strategies, commanding with a voice that has never once wavered.
But he has never had to read you like this.
You have always been an open book to him—your desires plain, your heart worn on your sleeve, your body a willing offering. You gave yourself so freely, so completely, that he never had to wonder. He never had to ask. He never had to wait.
And now, in this silence, he is lost.
You see it in the way his shoulders remain fixed, unmoving, as if he is afraid that turning around will break whatever spell has fallen over the room. You see it in the way his head cants slightly, listening, waiting for you to fill the silence with your voice, with your laughter, with the easy affection that has always been your language.
You take a steadying breath, feeling the weight of the moment settle upon your shoulders like a cloak—heavy, unfamiliar, but not unwelcome. The iron handle of the door is cold against your fingertips, grounding you, reminding you that this is real. That you are here. That there is no turning back.
You push off from the door, the soft scuff of your slippers against the worn stone floor the only sound beside the crackling fire. Your spine straightens, your chin lifts, and when your voice comes, it is finally clear. Unwavering. Forged from weeks of frustration and a hunger that has nothing to do with the warmth of his body and everything to do with the weight of his will.
"I want to be the one to take charge tonight."
The words leave you in a rush of defiant courage, but they land with the force of a hammer striking an anvil—a sound that rings through the quiet room and seems to echo off the very stones. You watch his spine stiffen, the powerful muscles of his back tensing beneath the heavy wool of his tunic. His head turns just slightly, offering you the sharp edge of his profile, the firelight carving deep shadows beneath his cheekbone, the strong line of his jaw.
You press on, emboldened by the fact that he has not yet dismissed you. He has not yet laughed, that low rumbling sound that makes your knees weak even when it infuriates you. He has not yet gathered you into his arms to end this game with a kiss that steals your breath and your resolve. He is listening. And that, more than anything, gives you the courage to continue.
"I want you to do as I say."
The silence that follows is deafening. It fills the room, presses against your ears, thickens the air until you can barely breathe. The fire pops and hisses, a single log collapsing in a shower of sparks, but the sound feels distant, muffled, as if the world itself is holding its breath.
Then he turns.
Fully. Slowly. The movement is deliberate, measured, the turning of a man who is weighing his next move with the same gravity he would give a battle strategy. When his face is finally revealed to you, the firelight catches his features with brutal clarity—the stark planes and hollows of his cheeks, the furrow carved deep between his brows, the set of his mouth that is neither a frown nor a smile but something suspended between the two.
His grey eyes, so often unreadable as winter stone, widen in surprise. It is subtle—a man like Cregan Stark does not gape or gasp—but you see it. A fissure in that immovable façade, a crack that lets the light through, and it sends a thrill straight through you, sharp and electric as lightning. A muscle twitches violently in his jaw, the only sign of the storm raging within him. You watch his hands clench at his sides, those large, capable hands that have commanded armies and held you so many times—hands that have gripped swords and reins and the very fate of the North—now still and uncertain, curled into fists that tremble with the effort of restraint.
You see the internal war play out across his stoic face. It is there in the slight flare of his nostrils, the way his chest rises and falls with a breath that is just a fraction too deep, too controlled. His instinct to resist, to reclaim the reins with a single word or a pointed look, wars violently with something deeper—his deep, abiding need to please you, to give you whatever you ask for, even if this request is foreign territory, even if it scrapes against every fibre of his being like a blade against stone.
You hold his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to yield even an inch. Your heart hammers against your ribs, a frantic, wild thing trapped in a cage of bone, but you do not let it show. You are the picture of stillness, of calm, of a woman who knows exactly what she wants and will not be denied.
The fire pops, a loud crack that breaks the spell like a stone shattering glass, and something in his shoulders shifts.
It is not a surrender—not yet. Cregan Stark does not surrender. But it is a softening. A letting go of that rigid, defensive posture he has worn since the moment he stepped through the door. His shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. The tension in his jaw eases, just barely. His hands unclench, fingers flexing as if he is releasing a grip on something he did not realize he was holding so tightly.
He is giving you ground. Inch by inch, breath by breath, he is stepping back from the edge of his own command.
Finally, with a slow, almost imperceptible nod, he concedes. It is a small movement, barely a dip of his chin, but it carries the weight of a kingdom's treaty. His voice, when it comes, is rough—scraped from somewhere deep in his chest, dragged over gravel and iron and years of unyielding duty.
"As my lady wishes."
The sound of it—the submission in that low, growling voice—is intoxicating. It pools in your belly, warm and heady, spreading through your limbs like mulled wine on a winter night. For a moment, you simply stand there, drinking it in, savouring the taste of victory on your tongue. You have done it. You have asked, and he has given.
He is watching you with those storm-grey eyes, and there is something new in them now. Something that looks almost like hunger—but not the usual, confident hunger of a man who knows he will be sated. That hunger is patient, assured, almost indulgent. This is different. This is the hunger of a man who does not know what comes next. The uncertainty of it, the vulnerability of being led into unfamiliar territory, has kindled a fire in him that you have never seen before.
You cross the room slowly, savouring the way his gaze tracks your every movement—the predatory focus of a wolf watching prey, except you are the hunter now, and he knows it. His chest rises and falls with breaths that are just slightly too fast for a man of his composure, and you see the faint, betraying pulse that flutters at the hollow of his throat.
You stop before him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body in waves, close enough to smell the familiar scent of him—woodsmoke and leather and something deeper, something that has always meant home.
You reach up, your fingers brushing the rough stubble along his jaw, and you feel him shiver. It is a barely perceptible tremor, a tremor he would never allow anyone else to see, and it sends a thrill of pure exhilaration through you. The Warden of the North, the man who has commanded armies and bent kingdoms to his will, is trembling at your touch.
"Good," you murmur, and the word is a caress, a promise, a benediction all at once. You let your hand drop, trailing your fingers slowly down his chest—feeling the solid wall of muscle beneath the heavy wool of his tunic, the steady thrum of his heart beneath your palm, the way his breath catches when your nails scrape lightly over the fabric. You let yourself imagine all the ways you will take him apart. All the ways you will unmake him, piece by piece, until there is nothing left but the man beneath the lord, the lover beneath the wolf.
But you know him too well.
You know that his hands will betray him. It is not a matter of if, but when. His instincts are too deeply ingrained, too honed by years of command and combat, to simply surrender. His fingers will twitch, will reach out to guide you, to touch you, to reclaim what he has so reluctantly given up. Already, you see his hands flex at his sides—the muscle memory of a lifetime of control fighting against the leash of his promise, the wolf straining against the chain.
So you turn from him, your skirts whispering against the stone floor, and you cross to the trunk at the foot of the bed. The heavy lid groans as you lift it, the sound of old wood and ancient hinges protesting the intrusion. Inside, nestled beneath a folded blanket, your fingers find the lengths of soft, sturdy leather you had prepared—hidden away for this very moment, a secret you have carried with you through the long days of your frustration.
The fabric is cool and smooth against your skin, supple and strong. You clutch it for a moment, letting the reality of what you are about to do wash over you. This is not a game. This is not a coy suggestion or a playful attempt. This is a choice, deliberate and irrevocable, and the weight of it settles in your chest like a stone dropped into still water.
You turn back to him, the leather coiled in your hand, and you see the understanding dawn in his eyes. His jaw tightens, but he does not speak. He does not protest.
You guide him to the bed, your hand flat against his chest, pushing him gently backward until the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress. He sits heavily, the old bed frame groaning under his weight, the furs shifting and rustling beneath him.
Then you climb onto the bed, your knees pressing into the furs beside his hips, the warmth of his body seeping through the thin fabric of your gown. Your fingers find the hem of his tunic, and you lift it slowly, deliberately, revealing the broad expanse of his chest—the scars that map his history, the dark hair that dusts his skin, the rise and fall of his ribs with each shallow breath. You pull the tunic over his head, letting it fall to the floor in a heap of grey wool, and then you take his wrists one by one.
His hands are so large, the bones thick and heavy, the skin calloused from years of sword and saddle. You can feel the corded strength in his forearms, the power that lies dormant beneath your touch. The leather is cool against his skin as you wrap it around one wrist, and you feel the tension in him—the barely restrained urge to pull away, to snatch back the control he has surrendered with such painstaking difficulty. You meet his eyes as you loop the leather around the wooden headboard, tying it with a firm, deliberate knot that will not yield to anything but your command.
He says nothing. His jaw clenches so hard you can see the muscle jump beneath his skin, and you see the war in his eyes—the wolf pacing the cage of his own will, testing the bars, searching for a weakness. The Wolf of the North, bound by a few strips of fabric. The thought is almost laughable, and yet the reality of it is anything but.
You take his other wrist, wrapping the leather around it with the same careful, deliberate slowness. The knot is secure, a mirror of the first, and you give it a final, testing tug. It holds. He is bound. He is yours.
He is here because he chooses to be. He is bound because he is allowing it. His control is not truly gone; he has simply loaned it to you for the night, a trust that humbles you even as it sets your blood ablaze.
You sit back on your heels, drinking in the sight of him. His arms are stretched above his head, the leather taut against the headboard, pulling the muscles of his shoulders and chest into sharp, beautiful relief. His hands are loosely fisted around the bindings—not straining, not fighting, but resting there, a deliberate stillness that speaks of a man who is choosing to wait. His chest rises and falls with deep, even breaths—breaths he is controlling, you realize, with the same iron discipline he brings to everything else. But his eyes—his eyes are a different story.
They are dark, stormy, fixed on you with an intensity that steals the breath from your lungs. There is hunger in them, a raw, consuming hunger that he is barely holding in check. And beneath that hunger, something else—something that looks almost like reverence, like awe, like a man who is seeing his wife for the first time and realizing she is not at all what he thought she was.
For a long, suspended moment, you simply look at him. The sight of him—so powerful, so utterly at your mercy—sends a thrill of pure exhilaration coursing through you. Cregan Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North, the man who has bent the world to his will with nothing more than a look and a quiet word—bound and waiting for you.
The wind howls against the stone walls, a mournful song that has been the soundtrack of Winterfell for eight thousand years. The world outside this room continues, indifferent to the seismic shift happening within it. But here, in this bedchamber, in the warmth of the fire and the soft glow of candlelight, there is only the two of you.
You begin slowly, deliberately, just as he always does with you. You want him to understand. You want him to feel what he has been doing to you all these months—the sweet, torturous agony of being teased, of being brought to the very edge and held there, suspended in a breathless void of wanting, of needing, of begging without words. You want him to know the desperate ache of having everything dangled before you and snatched away at the last moment.
You trail your fingers over the broad expanse of his chest, starting at the hollow of his throat and moving downward with agonizing slowness. You feel the rapid, thundering beat of his heart beneath your palm, a wild rhythm that matches your own, proof that his iron composure is not as unshakeable as he would like you to believe. His skin is hot, feverish beneath your touch, and you trace the lines of muscle, the old scars that tell his story—the slash across his ribs from a wildling spear, the puckered circle on his shoulder from an arrow that nearly took his life, the long, pale line across his stomach from a blade that came too close.
You lean in, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to the column of his throat. You feel his pulse jump beneath your lips, a wild, stuttering beat that betrays his calm exterior. You feel the desperate swallow that works through his throat, the way his Adam's apple bobs beneath your mouth. A thrill of pure, wicked satisfaction courses through you, hot and bright as lightning. You move higher, your lips brushing the shell of his ear, your breath hot against the sensitive skin. You hear the frustrated groan that rumbles deep in his chest—a sound torn from somewhere primal, somewhere beyond his control, and it is the most beautiful music you have ever heard.
"Patience, my lord," you whisper against his ear, and you feel the tremor that runs through his entire body. His hands, bound above his head, curl into fists, the muscles in his forearms corded with tension. You see his jaw clench, his teeth grinding together as he fights the urge to take control. You can see the battle raging behind his eyes—the iron will that has ruled the North warring against the desperate, animal need that is slowly consuming him. It is a war you are winning, inch by inch, breath by breath.
You want him to taste his own medicine. You want him to know the exquisite agony of wanting, of being so close to fulfilment that he can taste it on his tongue, feel it in his bones, only to have it snatched away at the last breath. You want him to understand, in the most intimate way possible, what it has been like to be the one who waits, who aches, who begs without words.
So you take your time.
You kiss a slow, deliberate path down his chest, your lips and tongue tracing the ridges of his abdomen, the dips and valleys of muscle that shift beneath his heated skin. You feel the muscles jump and quiver beneath your mouth, a tremor that runs through him like a current, and the power of it is intoxicating. He is shaking—Cregan Stark, the Wolf of the North, the man who has faced down armies and winter and the weight of a thousand years of duty, is trembling beneath your touch. And you are the one who has undone him.
His skin is salt and heat beneath your tongue, the faint taste of him familiar and intoxicating. You trace the line of hair that disappears beneath the waistband of his breeches, and you feel his hips buck involuntarily, a desperate, unthinking movement that makes you smile against his skin. You press a kiss to his hipbone, feeling the sharp jut of it beneath your lips, and you let your breath ghost over the sensitive skin just above where he aches for you most.
He groans—a low, guttural sound that vibrates through his chest and into your very bones—and you feel the desperate need radiating from him in waves.
Finally, you swing your leg over his hips, straddling his lap. The heat of him is a brand against your thighs, searing, insistent, a furnace that makes your own skin prickle with warmth. You can feel the rigid length of him pressed against the inside of your thigh, thick and heavy, and your own body responds with a rush of wet heat that makes you ache down to your very core. Your need is a living thing, coiling in your belly, demanding to be sated.
But you do not take him inside you. Not yet.
Instead, you hover, agonizingly close, the tip of him brushing against your slick folds in a cruel, teasing promise. You feel the way he twitches against you, the desperate, instinctive urge to push forward, to bury himself inside you, to claim what he has always been able to take. But he cannot. He is bound. He is yours. And you hold him there, suspended in that breathless void of wanting, letting him feel every second of the denial.
His eyes are locked on where your bodies nearly meet, and you watch the raw, desperate hunger that darkens his gaze. His pupils are blown wide, swallowing the grey until his eyes are almost black, and the intensity of his focus steals the breath from your lungs. This is not the calm, controlled Lord of Winterfell. This is not the man who commands armies with a quiet word and a steady gaze. This is a man on the edge of madness, a wolf driven to the brink by the scent of his prey, a creature of instinct and hunger and need.
And you are the one who has brought him there.
You begin to move, your hips rocking in a slow, torturous rhythm against him, your slickness coating the taut, hard planes of his stomach. The friction is exquisite, a tease that builds a desperate ache in your own core, but you do not relent. You are pleasuring yourself against him, using his body as a tool for your own satisfaction, and the sound he makes—a broken, desperate groan that seems to be torn from the very depths of his soul—sends a thrill of pure, dizzying power through you.
His breathing is ragged, his chest heaving with each shallow, desperate breath. You watch the way his hands strain against the leather bindings, the tendons in his wrists standing out like cords, the muscles in his arms trembling with the effort of holding himself back.
His hips buck instinctively, desperately, trying to find you, trying to guide you onto him, to take what he needs. The movement is sharp, frantic, a wolf lunging for a throat that is just out of reach. But the bindings hold him fast, and you see the flash of frustration—of pure, animalistic fury—that flickers across his face before he masters it. His jaw is clenched so tightly you can see the muscle twitching, his teeth grinding together with the effort of holding himself still.
And in that moment, you realize that this is not just about power. This is not just about revenge or control or proving a point.
This is about trust.
He has given you everything—his body, his control, his pride, his very soul—and he is lying there, bound and vulnerable, trusting you with all of it. The weight of that trust settles over you like a mantle, heavy and sacred, and you feel your resolve soften just slightly.
You are lost in the feeling of it—in the power of his need, in the exquisite agony of holding him so close to the edge that he trembles beneath you. You arch your back, your head falling back, your eyes fluttering closed as you chase your own pleasure against him, using his body as an instrument for your own satisfaction. The fire crackles in the hearth. The wind howls against the ancient stones. And in that moment, you are utterly, completely in control.
And then you hear the sound of splintering wood.
Your eyes snap open, your head whipping forward just in time to see it happen.
The pillar on the headboard—ancient and carved, a relic that has stood for generations, bearing witness to countless nights and countless Starks—has ripped clean off with a deafening crack that echoes through the chamber like a thunderclap. A shower of splinters and ancient dust rains down, catching the firelight like falling stars, and the restraints go slack, the leather trailing uselessly from the broken wood. The headboard groans, listing to one side, the old wood protesting the sudden violence.
And Cregan's arms drop heavily to his sides.
Before you can even draw a startled breath, his hands are on your hips. They are rough, demanding, his grip almost bruising as he digs his fingers into the soft flesh of your thighs. The touch is electric, a jolt of pure possession that makes you gasp. And then he slams you down onto his cock in one, brutal, breath-taking thrust, burying himself to the hilt inside you in a single, devastating motion.
A scream—or a gasp, you cannot tell which—tears from your throat. The feeling is overwhelming, blinding, as he fills you completely, so deeply that you feel him in your very core, in the hollow of your belly, in the depths of your soul. He is thick and hard and impossibly hot, and the sudden, shocking fullness of him sends stars bursting behind your eyes, a cascade of light and pleasure that leaves you breathless.
He pauses for a moment, his forehead resting against yours, his breath a ragged, panting heat against your lips. You can feel the tremor in his hands where they grip you, can feel the nearly unbearable tension in his body as he fights for control, even now—even with the taste of victory on his tongue, even with you sheathed around him like a glove. His entire frame is vibrating with the effort of holding back, the muscles in his arms and chest corded with tension.
"Forgive me," he rasps, the words broken and raw, barely more than a breath. But there is no apology in his eyes. There is only hunger. There is only need. The storm-grey of them is swallowed by black, his pupils blown wide with desire, and you see the truth of it—that he would break a thousand headboards, a thousand bonds, a thousand oaths to have you like this. He would tear down the walls of Winterfell itself if it meant finding his way back to you.
And then he moves.
He fucks you with a savage, driving urgency that steals the very breath from your lungs. His hips piston upward, slamming into you with brutal, relentless force, and you can do nothing but cling to him, your fingers digging into his shoulders, your nails raking down his back. He is everywhere—in your hands, in your mouth, in the deepest, most secret places of your body. The power of him, the raw, primal need that drove him to break his bonds, that drove him to take what he needed with such devastating force, sends a jolt of white-hot, dizzying pleasure straight through you.
This is not the measured, controlled Lord of Winterfell. This is not the man who weighs every word, who commands with a quiet voice and a steady gaze. This is something older, something more elemental—the wolf in its purest form, the beast that has always lurked beneath the surface of his iron discipline. And it has been unleashed, not by anger or frustration, but by you. By the sight of you above him, the feel of you surrounding him, the knowledge that you are his and he is yours and nothing—not leather, not wood, not the weight of a thousand years of duty—can keep him from you.
He drives into you with a rhythm that is both punishing and exhilarating, each thrust sending shockwaves of pleasure through your entire body. The sound of his grunts, low and guttural, mingles with your own desperate cries, filling the chamber with a symphony of raw, animalistic need. The firelight dances across his skin, illuminating the cords of muscle in his neck, the sheen of sweat that glistens on his chest, the wild, unguarded expression on his face.
His eyes never leave yours. Even as he takes you with a ferocity that borders on madness, he holds your gaze, forcing you to see him—all of him, the man and the wolf, the lord and the lover, the commander and the creature of desperate, consuming need.
He has broken the headboard in his desperation. He has broken his bonds. He has shattered every last vestige of his legendary control, the iron discipline that has ruled the North for decades, the unshakeable composure that has seen him through wars and winters and the weight of a thousand years of duty. And all of it—every splintered piece of wood, every strained tendon, every ragged breath—all of it is for you.
His hands slide from your hips to grip your ass, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with a possessive urgency that makes you gasp. He lifts you, angling you, driving himself even deeper with each desperate thrust, finding a rhythm that is less about control and more about need. The ancient bed groans beneath you, the old frame protesting the violence of his movements, threatening to give way just as the headboard did. Wood creaks and moans, the ropes beneath the mattress straining, but neither of you cares.
You are lost in him—in the overwhelming power of him, in the sheer, devastating force of his desire. His breath is a ragged, panting heat against your throat, his chest a solid wall against yours, his heart a wild, frantic rhythm that matches your own. The firelight dances across his skin, illuminating the cords of muscle in his neck, the sheen of sweat that glistens on his brow, the desperate, unguarded expression on his face. He is beautiful like this—broken open, stripped bare, utterly undone.
The command is his once more, and in this moment, you realize, you wouldn't have it any other way.
The illusion of control was beautiful. It was intoxicating. It was a gift he gave you, a trust that humbled you even as it set your blood ablaze. But this—this raw, primal, unvarnished truth of him—is everything you ever wanted. You wanted to see him want. You wanted to see him need. You wanted to see the Wolf lose his composure, to see the iron will crack, to know that beneath the lord, beneath the commander, there was a man who would break the world apart to reach you.
Summary: Being married to Cregan Stark was not what you wanted. You never wanted to be a second wife, to be simply a placeholder, a prop, but North is a place you've always wanted to be. On your arrival, you find that your husband is soft and tentative and he finds you the same way. It may not have been what you wanted, but it may have been exactly what you needed. (4.6k)
Pairing: Cregan Stark x Lannister!fem!reader
TW: 18+ MDNI, NSFW. There is a sex scene with oral f recieving, fingering and p-in-v. Angst. Some miscommunication. Cregan falls first and he falls harder. Idiots in love. Being parents. No description of the reader given but Jason Lannister is the dad. Probably some mistakes with the timeline, but overall, not much. I think this is it!
Credit: GIF by @gwaynes-hightower; story requested by Anon: here
The carriage is far too small, the scent of honeyed wine carried along the drunken words leaving your father’s lips, words that make no sense, that have never made any sense because Jason Lannister has never understood anything a day in his life save for the fact that his daughter is useful. That you are a commodity, set to be bought and sold to the highest bidder, the one who brings him the most glory. The most power.
The one who will finally make him better than his brother.
You were lucky, honestly, that he had even deigned to give you a choice between the lords, the two that were available for you—Borros Baratheon and Cregan Stark. Both married once, both had children borne to them by their first wives, both were simply doing duty, remarrying and taking a prop, a hollow replacement. Someone to hold a physical place in metaphysical memories.
You did not choose out of love, you chose out of necessity. You chose the one with the youngest child, the one who needed a mother.
That was all, no more, no less.
You were under no illusion that this marriage was anything but politics and duty. You were under no illusion that love would ever be in the equation, you knew it wouldn’t. You love but once and your future husband had loved once. It was not you.
Such was the lot of a Lord’s daughter, a bargaining chip, a tool. Nothing truly in the scheme of the world, simply something to further a drunken father’s ambitions.
“Must you continue to speak?!” you snap, lifting your head from where it’s been resting against the frosting over glass of the carriage window, your eyes narrowing on your father, his slovenly dress and appearance, the dribbles of honeyed wine caught in the strands of his beard.
“You have no right to speak to me like that,” he slurs, lifting a shaking hand to you, a gesture that is familiar from your youth, but holds no more power over you as you roll your eyes, slapping his hand away and down.
“I do not want to hear any more of your drunken rambles, Father,” you hiss, watching as he lifts that stupid lion goblet back to his lips, taking another sip of wine, another sip that he does not need. Has never needed.
“Watch yourself!” he cries, face screwing up in a drunken imitation, drunken mask of anger, cheeks flushing ruddy underneath his golden, greying beard. “I am your lord father and I control you.”
“Not for much longer,” you reply, your tone arch, acrid in a way that something can only be when everything is changing, shifting. When one is reminded of their place, when one is reminded of exactly how much they matter in the world. Your father falls silent, ruddy cheeks fading to pale, the kind of pale that happens when things shift for someone who has never had to deal with a world shifting beneath their feet.
You would almost say that he looks sad, his hand reaching forwards, shaking as it cups your cheek, thumb rubbing along your cheekbone, the way he always did when you were a child, running through his halls, laughing and giggling. A lion like your house ensured.
“I wish that some things could be different,” he whispers, his eyes strangely sober, that drunken glaze leaching away as he looks at you, eyes tracing every inch of your face, the one he’s watched in many stages. The one he’s known since it first drew breath.
The one he’ll never know again.
You push his hand off, his gnarled wizened hand, turning away from him to look out at the window at the sharp, desolate expanse of North. The beauty in the starkness, the vastness. The pureness.
“You’re getting exactly what you wanted, Father,” you whisper, your breath landing on the glass, a patch of steam, fog, spreading across the glass, cloudy tendrils reaching farther, spreading longer and longer, away and away, trying to conquer the window like people are attempting right now to once again conquer a throne of swords.
“Not exactly,” he mumbles and you glance back, hope catching in your throat, perhaps an admission that you mattered, that he cared for you, but all you find is him sloshing more wine into his cup, drinking, dribbles of it slipping from the corners of his mouth, catching in the wiry strands of his beard.
You can feel a swelling in your throat, a stinging in your eyes as you turn away from him, looking back out the window, at North. At the place you’ve always wanted to be, cursing the warmth of the sun where you grew up, the sharpness of it, the bite with the heat. The pretty lie.
Here it seems like truth. Here is the last stand against the evil, here is the beauty of just being. There are no pretty courts, no lies behind made up smiles and cruelty formed of silk dresses and colours, one wrong slip a declaration of war.
Here you wonder if among the landscape, you’ll finally feel free.
You wonder if you’ll be seen. Truly. But that’s not true, you know it because you are here to be married to a man who has had his love. You are nothing more than a prop, a replacement, something you never wanted. You wanted love, but instead you will bow before a ghost, come second to a memory rather than being the one who would be that first place memory for someone else.
You wanted to be the one held first, even in death, like the woman you are standing in for.
Rather, you will be nothing but an actor learning lines in a memory already lived.
Rickon is growing a startling amount even at just two years old. His hair is dark and hangs into his face in dark curls, eyes wide open, grey and unflinching. A true Northman. A true Stark.
But Cregan doesn’t want him to grow up too fast, he doesn’t want to watch his child age too fast, doesn’t want to lose him, his young wolf. His precious only child. The child borne of winter and ice and freedom. The one whose birth was a life for a life, a painful loss even if love the kind touted as ideal was not a part of the equation.
Cregan sent the maids away, instead preferring to ready his son himself because there are only so many hours in a day and aside from now, he will not see Rickon until it’s time to put him to bed, to check through the entire room for any lingering monsters and dangerous shadows and very real assassins. He wants all the time with Rickon that he can get because too soon, he will be stepping down from the title of Warden and passing it onto this small, tiny but sturdy two-year-old boy.
“A woman is coming today, Rickon,” Cregan says, his voice verging on gruff, an unfortunate reality for himself, something that comes from the hours spent breathing in the coldest air. “She will be staying here after today and we are to greet her.”
“Mama,” Rickon says, nodding, his small, chubby hands batting Cregan’s away from his shirt buttons, instead fiddling with one of them himself, giggling at it, finding joy in small moments, unaware of the hitch in his father’s breath, the stinging in his eyes and the fear currently a vice around his heart.
Rickon looks up, his hands stretching, grabbing, signalling up and Cregan complies, lifting the small boy up and onto his back as he prefers, the chubby, tiny arms tight around his neck, squeezing almost as tight as the fear and hope warring his heart.
He hopes beyond hope that you will be a mother to Rickon, but more than that, that this time he will find someone to love. Someone he can love. Someone who can love him back for a thousand lifetimes. For forever.
Someone who will see past his gruff exterior, the parts of himself long since frozen by the cold, the parts that he fears will never thaw, too hardened by the world in which he grew up. Someone who will look at him and see someone worth loving, not someone who gives a political advantage, but someone to love.
Someone willing to give him more children, not for duty, but for the want of a family. With him. And as he walks down the halls of Winterfell, Rickon babbling in his ear, all he thinks about is you and perhaps, that you will be the one.
The one to love him for this lifetime and all others.
The carriage has stopped, the cabin jerking with the motion, your hand landing on the door, steadying yourself even as what you steady yourself against moves. You can hear the slosh of your father’s wine, the drips as they spill over the golden lip of the cup, your father’s grunt and the rustle of your skirts, velvet over silk, that particular rustle.
“I think we’re here,” your father says, his voice gruff even as you refuse to turn from the window, to acknowledge him, instead attention captured by the man and the little boy outside your door. The man is tall, dark hair falling on his shoulders, body clothed in dark furs and the little boy is holding fast to his hand, cheeks pinked with cold, excitement shining in grey eyes.
You reach for the carriage door, the carved wood smooth as you push it open, cold air rushing at you, that momentary breathlessness from the wind and the cold and the sheer strangeness, foreignness of it.
“This is not proper protocol,” you hear your father hiss behind you, but you could not care about protocol, not when your future child is standing outside in the cold. And your father has never been one for so-called protocol a day in his life, preferring to do what he wants as drunk as can be.
“My lady,” the man calls out, his voice the kind of rough that only exposure to cold and the elements give. The kind of voice that comes from growing up in the harshest of conditions and surviving.
“My lord,” you return as you step from the cabin, your foot landing atop the snow, your slipper crunching against the hard-packed layer, the coldness seeping in slowly and then all at once as you step forwards, curtseying as your father lumbers from the carriage, stumbling, wine spilling across the white snow. Staining it with his protocol. “It is wonderful to finally put a face to the name of the man I will marry.”
“I feel the same, my lady,” Cregan says and his face is softening as he looks at you, the edges eroding the longer he looks at you, the look one that makes your heart leap in your chest even as you curse it. Curse it and its foolish notions, it’s hopefulness. He looks at you like one would look at a friend, someone you hope to get along with and nothing more.
If that.
“My lord,” you hear Cregan say, but your attention has fallen once again on the small child, the one who holds his father’s hand, free hand closed around a wooden carving of a wolf, small and perfect for his fist. You crouch down, one hand held out to him, the yellow hue of your skirt pooling around you on the ground as Rickon looks at you with excitement gleaming in young grey eyes.
He lets go of his father’s hand, his father who is busy speaking with yours, toddling towards you, hand outstretched for you.
You are unaware of the way Cregan’s attention is on you and only you, eyes watching the way you smile at Rickon, the way you take his hand in yours and bend in to speak with him, speaking to him as you would anyone else worthy of attention, even though you must be freezing so close to the ground.
You seem unaware of any of it.
“She chose you, you know,” Jason says and Cregan looks up and over, tearing his gaze from you, the effort needed almost not worth it until he sees the way your father looks at you. Like a man who has realized that he had what he needed and that that was worth more than what he thought he wanted. Like a father who has realized he’s lost his daughter.
“Chose me?” he asks and Jason looks over at him, a shadow falling across his face.
“Aye,” he answers, gaze flicking back to you, you who is rising Rickon on your hip as a mother would. “I narrowed the options down to you and Lord Borros and let her choose since she’s my eldest. She chose you. Chose your son, really. Said no child should ever be without a mother.”
“She chose…me,” Cregan whispers, the very fact strange and foreign yet all too true, he realizes as he looks over at you, at the way you hold Rickon, laughing, tweaking his nose, his giggles ringing through the stillness of the air.
“Aye,” Jason says and nothing more needs to be said for you turn to them then, face hardening as you look at them, changing from the mother to the lady.
“If you do not mind, my lords, the Lord Rickon and I, would like to go play,” you say, your chin held high, façade cracking just once as Rickon reaches for your chin, chubby hand gripping it tightly, your lips curving up a fraction. Just a fraction but enough to free Cregan’s heart from the chains of fear holding tight.
That is all he’s ever wanted, a wife, a mother of his child. Someone who sees something worth loving in him and he thinks, more so hopes, for just an instant that within you he can see that. That potential for a love.
The one he needs.
“Go, my dear,” Jason says, his shaky, drunken hand, waving you off for Cregan’s voice has frozen in his throat. You nod, curtseying and walking off, Rickon’s voice babbling all the while.
“…you play knight!” is the last thing Cregan hears before you and Rickon are swallowed by the large stone walls of Winterfell.
But even without you in his sight, he can feel it. Hope.
And it’s the best feeling he’s ever felt.
The grove is silent, the wedding not as important as the festivities which follow, rather only three people will bear witness to this. He, your father and you. Cregan has spent the past week falling hopelessly in love with you, dangerously so for you have spent the week with his son, the entire breadth of the courtship contained in the hours which the two of you play games of Rickon’s invention.
And every time, Cregan has fallen harder and harder, dangerous because he does not know what he would not do for you. His bride.
The woman walking towards him looking like the most beautiful woman in the world, the most precious in the light grey gown, the edge dusted with a decoration of gold, an homage to the lion den from which you come.
That’s the part that was strangest for Cregan. He expected you to be full of teeth, armed and cruel and slightly deadly, but rather there is a softness to you. A tenderness that he has never seen in anyone before.
You have spent the week becoming Rickon’s mother and now, you will become Cregan’s wife.
He watches as you walk, your father sober for once, eyes downcast, hand patting your arm as one does with nerves and slight fear. Like a father losing his daughter and unsure if he can let go. If he had been a good father, he would not have to, but Cregan has gleamed that he wasn’t from those hours spent playing with you and his son. He has gleamed that Jason gave his children’s affections away, preferring to lose himself inside the bottles of honeyed wine. The finest, of course.
“Hello,” Cregan whispers as you reach him, your father pressing your hand into his, stating his name as that which gave you away. You’re next, your voice ringing with sweetness and softness through the air, stating your name, your status as bride. “Cregan Stark, the groom,” he whispers and you offer him a small smile, a tender smile. Soft.
Everything about you is soft and it is exactly what he’s always wanted because that is the one thing he is not. He has never and will never be soft. You fit to all the pieces inside of him that have never been right.
“I take thee as my husband,” you whisper.
“I take thee as my wife,” he replies, the two of you kneeling down into the cold dirt, the frost covered ground, the skirt of your dress gathering frozen clumps of dirt, yet you do not seem to care, rather your fierce lioness gaze locked on him, a softness still there, gleaming through. He reaches and removes your maiden cloak, replacing it with the grey and white and wife cloak made by his sister Sara’s own hand.
He fastens it, rising first and pulling you up, lifting you into his arms, towards the festivities already underway in the Great Hall of Winterfell, laughter and music spilling from the open window.
“We are the Wardens now,” he whispers, your hand finding his, your thumb rubbing circles on it, his grip tightening convulsively, the need to feel you in all ways overwhelming him for a moment.
“I am naught but your lady,” you argue, but he shakes his head, feeling your gaze upon him.
“You are my equal. You are the Warden as I am.”
Cregan’s touch is featherlight upon your body, fingers skittering as he strips you of your gown, setting it aside, turning you to face him, one hand gripping your chin as lightly as possible, pressing a soft and tender kiss against your lips, one soft and sure and tender in a way that you imagined only came from love. Only came from wanting the other person, from needing them.
That is how he kisses you now, your bodies moving back towards the bed, the one devoid of furs and sheets, a fire roaring and heat generating from his body and yours, his one hand still on your chin, the other resting on your hip, digging in, his lips sliding along yours, tongue tracing the shape of yours.
He does not move like an inexperienced green boy, but rather a man who knows what he’s doing. He moves like someone sure of their actions as he removes your small clothes, begins to remove his own, guiding you back onto the bed, his hands warm and calloused on your bare skin.
There is no time to feel self-conscious, rather there is, but Cregan whispers “beautiful” as you lay back against the bed, stripping himself of his own clothes, his body climbing over yours, lips pressed to skin, a coil growing in your body as he kisses down the length of your body, to your cunt.
“Cregan,” you whisper, your skin fevered and flushed and body wanting. Wanting in ways it’s never wanted before, but as he presses his lips against your cunt, you can feel a bit of shame, a bit of revulsion rise inside of you.
Until his tongue presses against you and the feelings it elicits says damn it all to hell. You lose yourself in the way his tongue moves against you, lazy circles on the pearl of your clit, fingers sliding between your folds, dipping in and out, stretching you open, readying you, bringing you to the peak, a strange, sudden and deeply pleasure-filled feeling rolling through you, like a shattering.
You can feel a strangeness in your body, a heaviness, as he climbs back up your body, whispering that it will hurt, but hopefully only for a moment as he pushes inside, his cock stretching out your walls as he sinks inside of you, building a rhythm as he holds you, his hands tender and sure, lips steady as they kiss you. He whispers assurances and praises as he thrusts in and out of you, over and over again until he comes in thick hot ribbons, your walls pulsing with the after effects of another orgasm.
When it’s done, you expect him to roll over, for him to abandon you, but he does not. Rather he gathers blankets and furs, tucking them around the two of you, his arms heavy around your body as he pulls you against him, holding you close. He gives you affection and tenderness and you feel safe.
You feel safer in the circle of his arms than you have ever felt in your entire life and it is then that you realize you have fallen in love with the man who puts his son first.
The man to whom you come second to a memory.
The man who can never love you back.
And as you fall asleep in the circle of his arms, a single tear slips from your cheek, staining your pillow with an admission of sadness.
It has been months of being married, months of sharing a bed at his request, months of dinners and duties and raising Rickon. It has been months of torture, loving a man who sometimes looks at you and sometimes looks past you, like he’s seeing something there over your shoulder, like he’s seeing the woman who was before. The woman whom you have replaced.
The woman whom he loves and whom you shall never be.
You are tired of living like this, playing nice before the boy, acting like the dutiful wife when inside you are dying, withering and fading.
Because you love someone who may never love you back.
Cregan does not know what has changed. Only that something has. He has spent months learning you, loving you, falling asleep beside you, dining with you and raising his son—your son—with you. Together.
Yet now, it feels as though a wall has been erected, like there is a separation. You are together, yet alone.
He has let it go for weeks, but as he watches you now, excuse yourself, leaving the room as he enters it, he knows that he cannot let it go any longer.
He cannot let you wither like a flower in the wrong soil.
He loves you.
“Y/n,” you hear Cregan call, his voice deep and soft at the same time, his voice carrying through the slats in the heavy wooden door. “Would you please open the door? I have a gift for you.” You swallow hard, rising from your table, setting aside your quill, hands drifting to wipe your cheeks of any errant tears, the lump still sitting in your throat.
“Yes, my lord,” you say as you pull open the door, your breath hitching at the sight of Cregan’s dark hair dusted with snow, his hands behind his back, the muscles tensing and untensing. He smiles at you, the smile he has that sets your heart fluttering and crashing in equal measure. Did he smile at her that way?
“I have a gift. Well,” he pauses, his arms coming around to his front, a small direwolf pup held in one hand, wriggling and ruffing when it sees you, tail wagging. “See, you’re a wolf now and I thought you should have one as all Starks receive. I waited until a new litter came.” You can feel that lump growing larger, chest constricting and eyes stinging as you blink, looking away as you smile, a saddened smile.
“I do not want it,” you whisper, your fingers curling into the wood of the door, hard enough that pain lances from them, jolting up your arm.
“Why?” he asks and his voice sounds anguished, that sound even more painful to you, your bottom lip caught between your teeth for a moment.
“I know I am not a true wolf. I am,” you swallow hard against the tears, “a replacement and I have long since made my place with that and I understand, but I do not wish to be toyed with nor given gifts from sympathy.” Cregan’s face twists and the look on his face is dark and hurt and angry and it makes the hotness in your eyes and your face even worse.
“I LOVE YOU,” he yells, his voice loud and angry and hurt and dark just like the look on his face, the look which has eyes filling with tears, a single silver drop slipping from his eye, trailing a path down his cheek, the pup in his hands woofing loudly and hopping from his hands to the floor, running to you and jumping on you, muddy paws leaving prints on your gowns. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, blinking once and re-orienting himself here and now again. “I’m not good with fancy words. I simply love you as I’ve never loved anyone.”
“What of your first wife?” you whisper, your voice high-pitched and pained, constricted with your tears as Cregan crosses the floor to you, his hands resting on your upper arms, rubbing soothing patterns.
“I never loved her,” he whispers. “I knew her and it was not love and before it could ever become love, she was gone. But I know you and you are no replacement, you are everything. My everything.”
“I thought it was just politics,” you whisper and he lets out a small, broken laugh as he pulls you against him, tight. “I fell for you though,” you continue, “because of the way you are with Rickon and the way you take your time with him and the way you are everything I’ve ever wanted to love.”
“That’s good right?” he asks, pulling back slightly, but never letting go of you, his face concerned by the tears streaking down your face, searing your skin with the salt.
“Yes,” you cry, face pinching as tears continue to fall, to slip down. “I thought I’d never get love…yet here you are.”
“Here I am,” he whispers, his hands coming to your cheeks, brushing back the tears with his thumbs, attention soft and unwavering. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I thought you’d never love me even when I loved you,” you tell him and he leans forwards, pressing his forehead against yours, his eyes closing for a moment.
“But I do love you. I have never loved anyone as I love you.”
“And I love you. I fell for the softness within you,” you whisper, your one hand reaching out to trace the line of his cheek as his eyes open.
“Funny,” he whispers, “that’s what I fell for in you.” And then his lips are on yours, soft and precious and heated. Perfect.
The lifetime kind of love you’ve always wanted.
That he’s always wanted.
The perfect forever.
“How did you know you loved her?” Jace asks, looking down at you and Rickon, your heavily pregnant form slower than it used to be, but no less enthusiastic as you follow Rickon through the snow-covered grounds. Cregan can feel a smile grow on his face as you look over, waving, a soft and precious smile on your face. One full of love and light and everything he’s ever wanted, ever needed.
“When I saw the softness within her,” he answers and it’s true. It was the softness in you, in him, that made this love, this forever kind of love bloom.
Take root in a way that is stronger and longer than any Godswood grove.
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Cregan Stark x fem!reader
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 2.7k
𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬: mdni, smutty fluff, fluffy smut, it's more suggestive than actual smut, down bad Cregan, but let's be for real, that's the only kind of cregan I write, he's prolly a bit more talkative than canon, but I imagine him as such a sweet-talker in private,
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: After fourteen long days and nights at the Wall, Cregan Stark returns to Winterfell with frost in his bones and a desperate ache in his chest. He has faced wildlings and bitter cold, but nothing has tested him like the distance from his wife.
: ̗̀➛ [𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧] [𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭] [𝐢𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐱]
𝐚/𝐧: Here's another thought I had about a man who has less than five minutes of total screen time.
The gates of Winterfell have barely groaned shut behind him before Cregan is striding through the halls. His cloak, still dusted with the first snows of the Gift, drags across the flagstones in a wet, heavy trail, and his breath plumes in great, ragged clouds with each hurried step. He has ridden hard from the Wall—too hard, his men will murmur later, shaking their heads over ale—but they do not understand. They cannot.
They have not seen the way the firelight caught your hair the morning he left, turning it to spun copper and gold, a colour that has haunted his dreams every night since. They did not hear the soft, almost imperceptible catch in your voice when you bid him farewell, the way you held his gaze a beat too long, as if memorising the lines of his face, as if pressing his image into the very marrow of your bones. They do not know the particular ache of sleeping in a bed that does not hold your scent, of reaching for you in the dark and finding only cold, empty sheets. They do not know what waits for him beneath these ancient, lichen-flecked stones. They do not know that you wait.
He finds you in the solar, as he knew he would. You always wait here when the snows grow deep and the wind howls like a wounded beast against the walls, as if the castle itself is trying to keep you company in his absence. You are curled in the great chair that had been his mother's, a book open in your lap, the fire casting gold and shadow across your cheeks. The flames paint you in hues of amber and crimson, and for a long, suspended heartbeat, he simply stands in the doorway, drinking in the sight of you. He lets the moment settle over him like a benediction. You are a fixed point in his world of endless, grey winter—the single, blazing star by which he has steered himself home.
You look up at the heavy thud of the door, at the gust of frozen air that sweeps in with him. The startled awareness in your eyes—that brief, instinctive wariness of the wolf's den—softens instantly, melting into something so achingly familiar and dear. The smile that blooms on your face is the first true warmth he has felt in a fortnight; it reaches into his chest and unfurls a knot of tension he didn't realise he had been carrying, unravelling it thread by thread until he can breathe again.
The book tumbles forgotten to the floor, pages splaying open like a wounded bird, as you rise. He crosses the room in three long, ground-eating strides, boots slipping slightly on a rug worn smooth by generations of Stark feet. He catches you mid-motion, pulling you against his chest with a force that knocks the breath from your lungs and swallows your soft gasp. His hands are everywhere at once—finding your waist, spanning your back, gripping the curve of your hip with a desperate, possessive urgency. He maps the shape of you through memory and touch alone, relearning the dip of your spine, the soft give of your flesh, the solid reality of you finally back in his arms. His face buries into the crook of your neck, and he breathes you in—the scent of woodsmoke and lavender, the faint trace of the lemon cakes you always sneak from the kitchens, the simple, miraculous you—and for the first time in days, the howling in his blood quiets to a whisper.
He does not speak. He cannot. His voice is a frozen thing, locked somewhere deep in his chest, trapped behind the weeks of silence and the cold that has seeped into his very marrow. Words are too slow, too clumsy for what he feels—they would shatter against his teeth like brittle ice before they could ever reach you. Only his hands remember how to say what he needs. Only his mouth knows the language of return.
He buries his face in the curve of your neck, his nose nuzzling into the soft skin just below your ear, seeking out the place where your pulse beats warm and alive. He inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of you—woodsmoke and lavender and the faint, sweet warmth of the tea you must have been nursing, perhaps the very same cup that now sits cooling and forgotten on the table beside your chair.
A low, broken sound rumbles from his chest, a sound that is half-groan, half-sigh of relief, as his mouth finds your skin. The first kiss is almost reverent—a press of his lips to the delicate shell of your ear, a whisper of warmth against the chill that still clings to him. But reverence crumbles quickly beneath the weight of two weeks of absence. He kisses you with a desperation that borders on pain—sloppy, open-mouthed, hungry kisses that trail from your jaw to the hollow of your throat, mapping the territory he has dreamed of every night. He tastes the salt of your skin, feels the frantic flutter of your pulse beneath his lips, and it only fuels his hunger. You gasp, your fingers tightening in the damp wool of his cloak, and the sound goes straight to his gut like a blade.
He is starving. He has been starving since the moment he rode out the gates, surviving on meagre rations of duty and honour when all he truly wanted was this—your warmth, your softness, the impossible rightness of you in his arms. Now, with you pressed against him, he cannot get enough. His mouth travels lower, pressing hot, wet kisses down the column of your throat to the swell of your bosom where your bodice begins. He lingers there, his breath hot against the fabric, his teeth grazing the edge of your neckline in a way that makes you shudder. His fingers are already working at the laces, driven by a primal need to feel your skin against his, to prove to himself that you are real, that you are his, and that he is finally home.
His fingers fumble at the laces of your bodice. Once. Twice. The knots are cruel, intricate little things that your maids must have tied with malicious precision, and his hands—so steady on a sword, so sure on the reins, so capable of bringing down a stag at fifty paces—are clumsy with a want that makes him tremble. A frustrated growl rumbles low in his chest, a sound of pure, animal desperation. His knuckles brush against your sternum, and you feel the faint tremor in his fingers, the barely leashed desperation thrumming through him like a bowstring pulled taut, ready to snap.
"Damn these knots," he mutters against your skin, the words muffled and ragged, more breath than sound. He pulls back just far enough to look at you, and the sight of him steals what little breath you have left. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide until the grey is barely a ring around the black, and his lips are reddened, slightly swollen from the ferocity of his kisses. A lock of dark hair has fallen across his brow, and his chest heaves beneath the weight of his cloak. He looks undone—the great Lord of Winterfell, the Wolf of the North, reduced to a trembling, desperate man by the simple, devastating fact of you.
You grind against him, a soft, needy sound escaping your throat, and something in him snaps.
It is not a gradual thing—not a slow unravelling or a careful shedding of restraint. It is a break, clean and violent, like a sword shattering against a shield. A growl rumbles from deep in his chest, a sound that seems to come from somewhere ancient and primal, from the wolf that sleeps beneath his skin. He grabs the fabric at your sternum with both fists, his knuckles white, his breath a ragged snarl against your lips.
The threads give with a sharp, tearing screech that splits the quiet of the room, louder than it has any right to be. The sound seems to echo off the stone walls, a violent, ripping thing that feels almost obscene in the sacred hush of the solar. Pearls scatter across the floor like scattered teeth, bouncing and rolling into the shadows, disappearing beneath the furniture like tiny, fleeing ghosts. A few catch the firelight as they fall, winking gold and silver before they vanish into the darkness.
Your head snaps up, eyes wide—not with fear, but with the particular, incandescent outrage of a woman who has worn her favourite dress, her best dress, the one with the delicate silver embroidery she painstakingly chose for her husband's return. The dress you had smoothed with your own hands an hour ago, checking every stitch, every fold, wanting to be perfect for him.
"Cregan—" Your voice comes out strangled, caught somewhere between indignation and laughter, a sound that trembles on the edge of hysteria. "That was my good dress."
"I know." His voice is rough, scraped raw from hours in the frozen wind, almost pained. He catches your chin with his thumb, tilting your face to his, and you see his grey eyes—dark with hunger, pupils blown wide, the colour of a winter storm about to break. But beneath that, a flicker of genuine regret, boyish and abashed, so at odds with the towering man who just destroyed your bodice. He looks like a wolf caught with his muzzle in the henhouse, guilty but not quite repentant.
"I know, my love. I am sorry." His thumb traces the line of your jaw, reverent even in his desperation, a gentle counterpoint to the violence he has just done. The calloused pad of his thumb drags slowly across your skin, as if he is trying to soothe the very outrage he has caused. "I am a brute, a beast, an utter fool, and I will buy you ten more—twenty—a hundred dresses if that is what it takes. I will have the finest silks from the Free Cities brought to Winterfell on the next ship. I will have the seamstresses work day and night until you have more gowns than you know what to do with. I will—" He swallows hard, his throat bobbing, his gaze flickering down to the ruined fabric and the skin now exposed beneath it. His eyes darken further, the hunger reigniting, drowning out the regret. "But I cannot wait."
His forehead drops to rest against yours, his breath hot and uneven against your lips. His hands find your waist, gripping you like you are the only solid thing in a world that has turned to ice and shadow. "I have waited fourteen days. Fourteen nights. I have dreamed of you every night beneath those wretched furs, waking with your name on my tongue and a cold, empty space beside me. I have lain awake and counted the hours, the minutes, the very heartbeats until I could feel you again, until I could hold you and know that you are real and not some cruel dream my mind conjured to torment me." His voice cracks slightly on the last word, the vulnerability bleeding through the armour of his desperation. "And now—" He breaks off, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his control fraying at the edges like old rope, like a tether about to snap. "Now I am here, and you are in my arms, and I cannot—I cannot—"
He looks at you then, truly looks, and the sight of him steals the breath from your lungs. He is pleading, almost vulnerable despite the breadth of his shoulders and the dark beard that hides half his face. His chest heaves beneath his travel-stained tunic, and his lips are still wet from your skin, still slightly parted, and you can see the war raging behind his eyes—the wolf and the man, the Lord and the husband, the hunger and the regret and the desperate, aching love that binds them all together.
And gods help you, but the sight of him—this mighty, stoic Lord of the North, this man who commands armies and keeps the King's Peace, this wolf who has bent the knee to no one and nothing in his entire life, undone by his need for you, reduced to a trembling, apologetic mess by the simple fact of your presence—melts the protest on your tongue. The indignation drains from your shoulders, replaced by something far warmer, far more powerful. It pools low in your belly, a liquid heat that spreads through your veins like mulled wine on a winter's night, chasing away the last remnants of your outrage.
Because this is not the Lord of Winterfell before you. This is not the Warden of the North, the man who has stared down wildlings and kings alike without flinching. This is your husband—a man who has spent fourteen days and nights in the frozen wastes, who has ridden through snow and ice and howling wind, who has faced down death itself on the Wall, and the only thing that has broken him, the only thing that has brought him to his knees, is the thought of you.
How could you possibly stay angry at that?
You reach up and curl your fingers into the rough wool of his tunic, pulling him closer. The fabric is coarse beneath your fingertips, still cold from the long ride, still carrying the faint bite of the northern wind. You can feel the heat of his body radiating through it, can feel the frantic pounding of his heart beneath your palm, and it makes your own pulse quicken in response.
"Then show me what fourteen nights have done to you." you whisper against his lips, your voice a low, breathy command that surprises even you.
The sound he makes—a broken, hungry groan that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere primal and raw—is your only answer. It is not a sound of words or reason; it is a sound of pure, unfiltered need. And then his mouth crashes back to yours with a force that steals the breath from your lungs, that pushes you back against the chair and swallows the gasp that escapes your throat.
The ruined dress falls forgotten to the floor, pooling around your feet like a puddle of silver and wool, like a discarded skin that you no longer need. You step out of it without thinking, without caring, your hands already working at the fastenings of his tunic, your fingers fumbling with the same desperate urgency that had plagued him moments ago.
He breaks the kiss only to drag his lips down your throat, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin where your neck meets your shoulder, and you arch into him with a sharp, keening sound that you barely recognize as your own. His hands find your hips, gripping you with a possessive urgency that will leave bruises in the shape of his fingers—and you find that you do not care. You want the marks. You want to wear the evidence of his need on your skin, to carry it with you like a secret, like a brand.
Your breath catches in your throat. "Cregan—"
"Say it again." His hands cup your face, tilting your gaze to his, and there is something desperate in his eyes now, something almost pleading. "Say my name like that. Like I am just your husband. Like I am just a man who has missed you so badly he can barely breathe."
You reach up, your fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the dark stubble that has grown rough during his journey. "Cregan," you say, and you let your voice drop, let it become something low and intimate, something that belongs only to him. "My love. My wolf."
The sound that escapes him is almost a sob—a broken, ragged exhale that seems to carry the weight of every mile he has traveled, every night he has spent alone, every moment he has ached for you. He surges forward, capturing your mouth in a kiss that is not hungry but devastating—a kiss that speaks of loneliness and longing and the desperate, aching relief of being home.
cregan stark x fem!lady!reader
words: 12.1k
synopsis: "The stones of Winterfell have always been blissfully cold against your palms, and Cregan’s presence has always naturally attended you."
notes: hi!! this is my first cregan fic [so pls be gentle] but im excited to write for him more... still trying to work out his character but. ily @useralba and @dipperscavern ... febu frong anyways <3 i didnt edit this sorry but hope u all enjoy <3
warnings: canon-divergent au; dance does not/has not happened. north-centric AS IT SHOULD BE. characters aged 23+. slight jealousy, betrothals & poorly made up politics (actually made up so much lore sorry i do that when im nervous), brief mention of parental death, fluff, friends to lovers, smut (fingering, slight breeding kink), brief finger sucking what, light dirty talking.
masterlist
requests are open.
FOR AS LONG AS YOU’VE KNOWN, THE EVE OF WINTER HAS BEEN SAID TO COME IN A SHARP WHISTLE DOWN THE MOUTH OF THE PEAKS TO THE NORTH.
Sharp, precipitous - the wind that breaks bones and scatters breath; it howls through the northern curls of the Wolfswood, piercing its glacial breath through trembling needles of pine, hissing up and over the stone of the North Gate. Tales of chipped slabs of sharp, which fly from the Old Tower in a gale of old; stealing the breath from lungs old and new, whipping away parchment, stealing flight and life from those southern ravens white of feather as far as the Bloody Gate.
As a babe, your mother would sing of the sharp teeth of the Threnody; nursemaids and maester alike whispering of its wail against chamber doors even in the deepest of the castle. Your father, a less cagey spirit - still, he’d not stop the furrow of brow at the blow of hard iced snowdust that gathered within the stables on the outskirts of baileys.
And perhaps it is not yet time for the howling of the wind when the wolves still linger in the woods; when life may still yet subsist away from the spitting crackle of hearth within castle walls - but you do not feign ignorance.
Winter is coming.
It comes in wind; and, just as the Threnody of old, it is subtle and piercing, perniciously beautiful.
Lord Stark of Winterfell sits at the end of the hall, in a fur cloak that nearly swallows over the bulk of his wide frame; the lick of flames over his skin dance with the murmured din of the crowd as you watch, a cat-eyed weariness from your corner spot. It is not often this loud, though the Great hall has been much more full as of late - with the Southern company from the Reach, Winterfell has bursted at the seams just in the eve of Wintertide. A less than optimal time to host guests; but your Lord is a steadfast one, and knows an opportunity for trade when he sees one.
Your father speaks to him - you watch the men with vague interest until the elder catches your eye across the assembly; a gesture of his hand, beckoning you to their side. And the Lord Stark, face young, weathered - handsome as he is dour in the torchlight, nodding with a surprisingly warm gaze when your eyes meet.
You do not heed your father’s summon; you remain rooted instead, struck with a sudden fatigue as some odd taste of jealousy from the nest of your bosom peeks into your mind, whispering of the woman who sits only three tables away from you.
The Southern Rose. Her father, a man visiting to treat in way of increased wheat and salt trade with Winterfell; preservation starts soon, the harvest has found its end - leaves curl tight as a grip frozen in fist now, even near the Neck. She accompanied her father - words whispered from advisors of a potential betrothal - and as she is a girl just two years your junior, your father had instructed you to accompany her through her visit to Winterfell.
Truthfully, you’ve found her quite wonderful - a sweet girl, though fairly plain-minded: innocent smiles, soft polite nods. You spent the fortnight riding through the Wolfswood, needlepointing - tasks rather simple, though torturous only when you caught glimpses of Lord Cregan and his men in the yard, in the halls, or treating. A yearning festered in your breast during these past days - a desire to attend matters of the mind instead of, perhaps, such soft matters.
Though no fault of her own. A kind girl, you do swear by the gods - though each simpering look to the man who walks with Ice at his back twists a dagger deeper into your gut; A fine wife for a wanting Warden, the lords had advised - and you, with an ear pressed to the closed oaken door of Cregan’s hall like some bright-eyed maiden. An alliance with a house South would allow for a stake in the Southern lord’s trade route to Dorne; A smart match, perhaps, if Cregan searches for reach outside his North.
You’re not particularly convinced he does.
Though the hearths are large and heavy tonight, you yearn for that curling reach, that whisper of agony that cradles limbs into chests - and with a spare step towards the crack in the hall’s entrydoors, cool air pierces the tissue within your chest.
Outside is the swirling ink of the owl’s hour.
If you could see through the song of night, up and over the walls of stone which keep the first whispers of Threnody at bay - you might find the ridged roofs of Winter Town; and even beyond, those breathing hills that bring the Kingsroad up and back down. And cold, that creeping wolf, that slither of ragging which drags clouds to the ground and whispers promises of winter.
You press your lips together; Who would wish to look beyond such persevering beauty?
Cregan’s voice is low across the hall, though you can hear it through the din of the feast as he converses with his men; a swirl of affection, that comfortable specter in the corner of your thoughts. A glance back through the oak door to that sirened wail of glacial, ancient breath; the southern rose… and you, a pine in wildflowers.
The yard below the great hall swirls with untouched crystals; miniscule, they glimmer in the open air and twirl in a mesmerizing dance - the ale in your palms is much too warmed by the blood that pumps through you.
A young man beside you gestures rather agitatedly; and you, bristled with the realization that you allow the creeping draft to leak into the hall, step forward once, allowing the doors to once again shut. The hall is warm and your mind is fuzzy; you step away, hugging the outskirts of the wall and avoiding the heat of your cheeks.
Lord Stark rises in your peripheral when you begin the short promenade returning to your seat.
It is inevitable at any feast, his company - Cregan, a man only three namedays your senior and, even before becoming your Lord, a very close companion. Youths tied up in the training of noble roles, you and Cregan got on rather well - your father advised Lord Rickon, as a vassal house of the Starks; now, he serves Rickon’s son just the same.
Your brief respite near the exit of the hall is short-lived when his boots pave their way towards you, bisecting your path though you pretend to pay the man no mind, a grin growing on your lips - there is only a breath of his own amusement in the short cat-and-mouse game you begin on the way to the trestle table; the stones of Winterfell have always been blissfully cold against your palms, and Cregan’s presence has always naturally attended you.
Trots of hooves through the Wolfswood, trailing steps hurried through halls to keep up with long strides – a brief nod in passing when Maester Kennet would end the young Stark’s studies early. You’d learned to shoot a bow with him and his late brother in that very yard below; shared huffs of amusement when your arrow sailed wide.
And even now, well over your youth; it remains how it has always been, with your roots so very sunk into the hard earth of the North; the Kings of Stark over your family’s barony of land just half-day’s west of Winterfell. And when Lord Rickon drew his final breath - and some years later, too, when Bennard’s slow relinquishment darkened the skies - you never dared worry of how life might change.
You call him Lord Stark now - though in the quiet moments, he oft prefers Cregan; still the boy who convinced your father and his own to let you attend seasonal hunt, who sat with you in the rookery for hours of silence when your mother left the mortal realm; who did not protest when you insisted you did not wish to discuss it; who wiped tears from your weary skin so they’d not freeze; who waited patiently as you watched wind blow needles from the pines and ravens drop from clouded sky.
And you, still with some melancholy whisper from the air that blows crystals over the hills towards Last Hearth; a Threnody of your own, your chilled craving despite the warmth of your soul. Cregan calls you my lady now - though he was keen to do so just as oft in youth, despite the blushing of your cheeks and quick glances to the snow-licked ground.
He approaches you this evening with a storm of a stare and a hint of a smirk that, to any other, would look merely as his usual stoic countenance; though there is a bright in his eyes, a twitch upon his lip as he takes in the shifting of your boots upon the stone.
You busy yourself traveling to your seat without tripping upon your feet - but still he meets you, eyes hooked upon the curve of your jaw and sliding over the apple of your cheek when you arrive to your spot, concealing your smile with a nod.
A cacophony of laughter from the wolf’s council - you feel much more at home when the attention is off you and your Lord, hidden in the backlit corner.
The hall is warm; warm, when all you can see are dark locks, drawn brows, pink lips, stubbled jaw. Your heart clenches when his arm brushes your own, if only for a moment.
“Lord Stark.” Your voice swims; a wavering, perhaps from the mead that lingers on the back of your tongue, or at the stare that hooks itself upon your own. His eyes take you in - slowly, as if appreciative - an active repression of any fluttering at such a gaze, knowing him much too well to allow yourself a stirred feeling.
“My lady,” He greets back; he’s obscured you with his height from the brunt of the hearth’s breath - a small relief, as your chest grows hot under the slow roll of his tone and your eyes fall from the mountain of his comportment. His gaze finds the doors at the hall entrance before returning to you, alight with something less than mirthful but not completely chastising.
“Is the feast not satisfactory?” A drop of tease in a river of adherence; you hear it though, you feel it - and with the flow comes a tide of affection in your stomach. A small smile that smoothes your hot cheeks, “It is wonderful,” You mend, biting your lip, “I am rather keen to find momentary respite outside, though.”
He seems sated enough with your words, nodding just once. “You’ve always been one for the cold.” He absently observes as his eyes flick to the table briefly, “I suppose you’ve been kept inside the walls too much as of late, aye?”
A reminder of your recent charge - of the girl, eyes shining as clear as day, gazing upon the mountainous frame of Lord Stark from across the hall.
She much prefers the hearth to the raw air; and you’ve done nothing but acquiesce, placating the whims of the girl who might one day be your Lady Stark - an unpleasant thought, though one that could very well be a reality. Your throat tightens in a bough of unwarranted jealousy at the thought and, with a tight swallow, you nod to your Lord, gaze leaving his own.
Your fingers trace the silver prongs upon the table, left after you’d finished your meal half-eaten in search of the whispering sirens of flurry in the courtyard; you do not find it within yourself to speak, and perhaps that is why Cregan worries so for your disposition.
“You’re distant tonight,” he decides, eyes lingering for a moment longer on the flush of your cheeks - perhaps from the drink, perhaps from something else entirely - and though he is just inches away now, he makes no unnecessary movements - an approach calm, unwishing to ward off a skittish creature. A wolf upon a pup.
You, in your avoidance of his ownsolemn disposition, nearly miss the opportunity given for you to respond - and so you start with a breath and a lifted stare.
“Perhaps it is because I was not seated with all you lords at the grand banquet table,” you quip; a rather surprising use of attitude in front of such company. An inkling of rather instant regret - you ought to watch your tongue around the members of the Household.
Mercifully, Cregan only provides you with a stern glance and a lifted brow, that trickle of amusement only a breathed whisper across the cool gaze of piercing eyes.
He certainly is aware of your quiet yearning - perhaps in a degree more at least than your yearning for himself, which has never been spoken but has often been rather obvious - but instead to follow your father’s footsteps; an advisor to the Warden, a trusted voice, in the eve of wintertide.
You have, for all the exhausted topics Cregan and yourself have touched upon in your many years of companionship, not outwardly admitted such hypnagogic desires; implied, perhaps. But a dreamy wish, a foolish one for a noble girl like yourself.
His eyes swim between your own, perhaps waiting for more words that do not yet come. You should apologize for your tongue, though away from any other ears, it is oft that your Lord prefers you to speak candidly, uninhibited by much courtly restraint. It is indeed the most common times you’ve been successful in pulling a chuckle or laugh from the man.
Though this time, he makes the decision for you. “Too much ale?”
You lift a brow in challenge of the amused tone that barely leaks through, setting the mug down upon the banquet before you.
“Too much heat,” You excuse instead, hoping your fuzzy mind does not lead to slurred words as your jaw directs his gaze to the massive hearth that threatens to swallow him from behind - and then, with that quiet voice once again, “I apologize for my tongue, my Lord.”
A frown that looks heavenly on such a countenance- and a brief flush upon the strong ridge of nose; he shifts, vague but endearing from one large trunk of leg, corded with thick muscle, to another.
“You need never apologize for a gift. So long as you know well enough when to use it.” He murmurs - and after a stilled moment, you nod with tight lips, heart thumping quietly; unintentional as it may be, such words from him sends your desire for him into a gallop.
In an effort to conceal your affections, you laugh quietly against the heat of your cheeks. “You will come to regret such words, surely.” Your jest falls upon his ears and he hums low, finishing the ale in the mug held by large hands, eyes burning into yours even as he finishes the last gulp. “I doubt that, my lady.”
There is a draft that catches the edge of your skirts; it carries, beckoning you - the doors have opened, and Lord Cerwin steps outside with a swift nod to Lord Stark and yourself. Some break of the seal which held together your remaining composure; you let out a breath, eyes flickering back to the storm of interest that watches down upon your visage. “I regret I could not attend to you these past weeks.” He murmurs again- rather talkative this eve, it seems. You eye the goblet dwarfed in his large palms; perhaps the ale has done him in as it has you.
A flip of your stomach, heartbeat picking up at his words - attend you? He must see your expression; for he shifts as flames lick up the leather upon his back. “It has been nearly a moon since I placed a blade in your hand.” He mends, face solemn; a breath from your lips as you exhale shortly. Ah.
Many days - wind whipping at your cheeks, piercing through your heavy cloaks; Cregan’s few minutes found in spare days to show you parries and ripostes, castigating gently when you try a cheap sweep at his legs and barking in amusement when you fall upon your backside.
A small burst of cracking embers rise from the hearth just over his stalwart shoulder - you smile at the man before you, watching his own lips twitch at your small huff of amusement.
“There were more important matters,” Your voice light. “-Negotiations, alliances,” You clear your throat, “matters of the realm.”
His eyes, hawkish as he shifts once more; the shadow of his figure swallowing your own frame as your hand falls onto the table to stabilize yourself against his stare. “Aye,” He nods, gaze briefly flicking to the row of men at the front of the hall; your father finishes his ale, in discussion with Lady Gilliane and the Southern lord. “Tomorrow eve they set for the Kingsroad. And they will have my trade agreements.” His words come as some promise. You’d well noticed the thirty men and women preparing to leave Winterfell; they are guests at this feast indeed. You resist a snarking comment in rebuttal, instead heeding his politeness - and nod slowly.
Another guest leaves the feast and you follow the swish of her skirts and furs with your stare. Just out those ajar doors, tendrils of flakes fall from the skies. You long to feel them kiss the crown of your head, feel them settle upon the downy cloak that sits crooked upon your shoulders; a small draft that kicks again, and the chill begins to settle your flaming cheeks.
The Southern Rose sips upon a goblet of sweetwine across the way with her few ladies-in-waiting; she smiles brightly at you across the hall and you smile back, aware of the brooded stare upon your visage from beside you. “Only trade?” You finally wonder, unable to look at Cregan, finger tracing the wear of the wood below your palm.
After a small breath - Lord Stark must direct his glance towards the previous subject of your attention before turning back to you, a frown carved by the gods into the solemnity of his gaze.
Your heart jumps when he shifts, his arm brushing yours - fingers, large and calloused, adjusts the clasp upon your cloak, knuckles kissing the line of your jaw before dropping away.
Your cheeks are impossibly hot, though his are just as well. “Only trade,” he echoes, though there’s something within his tone - some secret assurance, one which sets your stomach in warmth. It is a simple silence which follows; his cloaked arm is warm against the fabric of your gown, though you do not mind it.
“I would not keep you any longer from your respite.” He finally decides, gesturing to the open oak doors, to the pull of chill; A dulcet resonance - you stare at the crawl of flames around his ribcage, flicking over the bulk of muscled mass swathed in furs. You nearly request he join you, though it is swallowed by the polite nod he sends to the girl who sits across the hall, watching with curious eyes.
“You have a good evening, my Lord.” You bid him, heart fluttering at the pearly soot of his gaze, at the warmth that leaves you as you take a step aside to gather yourself.
His eyes do indeed follow your movements, tracing the familiar bend of your spine from your peripheral.
“You as well, my lady.”
THE NIGHT BRINGS HOWLS OF WINTERTIDE.
And the morning reaps a chill that does not subsist from the core of your bones - even when you pace through the outer hall of the Great Keep, fingers tapping anxiously against the fabric of your skirts, cheeks sharpened by a flurry across the yard.
There is a great excitement that has stirred in your chest; some disbelief, tethered to the echo of men’s swords in the yard and of hushed whispers between bearded mouths in the halls - though as you recall Maester Kennet’s words written and delivered to your bedchambers late last evening after the feast, you cannot help but bite a smile back between your lips.
Schooling such girlish giddiness in the brunt of impending adversity, still your heart swells; a glance up the spiraled stones of the Keep’s exterior, you eye the grimed window of your Lord’s study with a huff of disbelief.
Maester Kennet informs you Lord Stark has accepted your request for private audience - just thirty minutes past your initial supplication - and so you begin to creep your way up the inner spirals of the structure, tracing the old stone with some newborn interest.
Your hands do not waver when they knock, though you’d hesitated just a breath when you’d made it to his study; Enter, you hear him call - ever practical in his deep tone; a flutter of affection blossoms, spring in the forest of your heart. You once again wipe your perspired palms along the length of your silvered cloak before heeding his beckon.
The long croak of the oaken door behind you drags against dilapidated stone; with a scratch, the hinge shuts and you slide into the warm chamber, blinded momentarily by wintering light.
Your lord looks up from his own desk and you trace your gaze along the outskirts of the study; a rather humble room, if the beauty of Winterfell’s castle could ever have such a thing - leatherbound histories, candles that once wept tallow, waxy tears now hardened into dots of bone upon his desk.
Lord Cregan indulges in his own sweeping glance over your figure wrapped in only lighter furs, your hands clasped and twisting before your dark dress.
“My lady,” he greets - a girlish tickle within your stomach spurs at the use of title, as though you’ve not bore it your whole life.
“My Lord, good morrow.” You greet, resisting a short rock upon your toes.
Cregan leans back in his chair, thighs spread as he wastes no words. “You awaited my acceptance from Maester Kennet,” He observes. At your nod, he continues, “You’ve no need to request an audience when you wish to speak with me. I’ve told you just as much before, have I not?”
Your smile, though faint, is genuine; you relieve yourself of the distance between you and Cregan, finding your seat with gentle grace just across him. You fix him with a glance, “And just as I’ve told you,” you echo, “-as long as you remain my lord, I shall remain mindful of your duties,” Your brow raises just so. “-Whether you wish it or not.” Your voice is rather coy, unable to contain the giddiness in your heart that arises, despite your maintained perplexion - the root of your visit to the Lord in the middle of the morning.
For half a moment, a flash of amusement upon Cregan’s lips at your familiar stubbornness; but then, he leans forward - large palms curling over the chair’s arms; you eye the worn wood enviously. “Of what do you wish to speak, then?”
You take a breath; a sweltering heat has begun to stir at the base of your neck - perhaps under the icy stare of the man before you, or the quick gallop of your heart within your chest; outside, the same whistling howl of winds that laces itself through the song of the hounds in the kennels below.
“I’m…” You shift after beginning, eyes flicking to the quill and ink well that lie abandoned beside him, letter halfway handscribed. A surprising bout of shyness you’ve been struck with under his attention, under the memory of the letter delivered to you last eve.
Your frown is one of far-off considerations, recalling the information that’d been served with your evening tea while you prepared for slumber last night, a syrupy sleepiness to your hands from the remnants of the feast’s mead; News, given by way of Maester Kennet’s handscript, informing you of your new station.
A twist of anticipation and determination; you level Lord Stark with eyes icier than his own.
“I suppose I’m rather surprised that you’ve appointed me to your council, my Lord.”
The truth is blunt - it feels relieving to rip it off your skin; and so you press on, watching the stern visage before you, wondering if you’ve ever noticed him looking at you without such tender absorption as you see now.
Your voice continues, strong. “-It’s uncommon for a woman to serve on the Warden’s council, unless she is the Lady of the House.” You fight to ignore the thunder of your heart at such a sentiment - you, Lady of the House - and add with a voice just as strong, “-and we both know I am no such thing.”
A call of raven outside; and a laugh bubbling off somewhere in the courtyard below, melting into a long howl of a hound in the kennels. Cregan watches you carefully, holding your gaze; moments pass under his stare, but you do not squirm - no, as always, you stare back.
“Would you not accept?” He wonders finally, tone rather unbiased - and for a brief moment, you believe his question is directed towards your latter sentence; a drop in your stomach, though you recover in a breath, swallowing thick.
You rush to deny it in your accidental hesitance. “-No, my Lord, I'm honored. It’s just rather…unexpected.”
The quiet looms, a cloud rolling over the morning sun; eclipsed in the backlit shadow of daylight by his frame, you begin to pick at the thread of your dress. A fine gown, hand-needled by your own hands just a fortnight ago.
And then, with a breath; his lips twitch ever so slightly - merely a brief uptick, but you know him. His stare, stark as the wintered sky as he nods curtly - you fight your own grin at the shift.
“You’ve a good mind for these matters,” his voice is even, face serious. “Some at my table will do well to learn from you.”
You let out a soft laugh, not particularly out of amusement but rather out of surprise at his words, heart stumbling. “I wasn’t aware you thought so highly of me.” You admit, though you both know this to be untrue.
His gaze doesn’t waver, and neither does his opinion. “I’ve always thought highly of you.”
The words lodge themselves true into your chest.
And yes, you’ve never been one to underestimate your own intellectual prowess, nor to shy away from an opportunity; though your mind still reels in befuddlement, and you press to hear more, to understand. “You have wiser men - those who served your father well before you.” You observe, tilting your head; a wintery sunbeam ices through the looser strands of your hair, and Cregan's grayed pools trace their colour in the sun.
“Aye,” He nods as his gaze returns to your own, “Your father is one of them.”
He is firm; an intimidation in his broad frame, the haloed bright of snowed refractions around his head. “Though it is not about who is wiser, nor who has served longer. It’s about knowing when to speak, and when to hold your peace. When to challenge me.” And Gods be good, his lips curve slightly; a whisper of a smile, some sweep of chilled wind over the face of a mountain.
Your heart stirs at his words, a rush of emotions that burst below your composed exterior. Memories of mulish disagreements, of sliding glares at his youthful visage and stubborn stomps of your foot. Your voice remains firm, though rather surprised. “Challenge you?” You echo with a small smirk.
“Aye,” he responds without hesitation. “Many lords surround themselves with voices that tend to echo their own thoughts. But you,” His gaze never leaves yours; pinned you remain, eyes unblinking against his, “-you will tell me what I must hear, even when it is hard. Will you not?”
Heat that blossoms over your cheeks as you nod at him - your throat is incredibly dry, “Yes, my lord.”
He hums, eyes in a brief flash over your sat figure before returning to you. “Good.”
And in the burgeoning moment, a pounding of your heart; you shift in your seat, flattered as a beam of wintered light graces the colour of your stare.
Your fingers still their nervous picking at your gown as you take a slow breath. “And if I do not always agree with you? If I say no, when you would rather hear yes?”
Cregan leans in just slightly. “I trust no other as I trust you. You'd not dare speak something you do not believe, simply because it pleased me.”
An absence of concern in your heart at his words, instead filling you with a fierce warmth that curls around the sweet ice coursing through your veins. “You have my word, Cregan. I will advise you as best I can when needed.”
His expression does not waver; though there is a flicker within his gaze. “I never doubted it.”
And then, a gust of breath from the heavens; a rattling gentle against thick pane of glass, though a chill still finds its tendrils in your bones when hard flakes of snow whirl against the exterior.
“The Southern company leaves this eve,” You observe, eyes glancing out the window, “It will do them well to set off before supper. Lest they become caught in the storm of Wintertide.” And then in your mind, an echo of lovely, sweet laughter; and a curl of unwanted envy at the woman behind the voice, a haunting within your own mind. You are plagued, it seems - thoughts of her kneeling before the weirwood, of his cloak round her shoulders.
“Aye,” Cregan's voice pulls you back, “We'll not hold meeting until they have left. House Cerwin’s host returns this eve, and I must attend to them.”
He rises, then - and you, with him, fingers clenched as you register his words informing you not with any air of casual discussion, but rather as a Lord does his vassal. You tamp a grin, nodding instead, following the warm guide of his hand hovered above your back towards the door.
“I will see you at my table on the morrow, my lady.” He promises when you turn back to him; with a rush of affection, you let yourself smile.
WIND WHISTLES BETWEEN NEEDLES OF PINE AND LEAVES OF OAK IN THE GODSWOOD.
A rather divine earth upon which you kneel, mind clear with the prayers you whisper to the heart before you.
It is growing cold, steadily these days - and though you have known the North your entire life, you rather forget how biting it can be when the afternoon snowfall comes.
You’ve seemed to have forgotten today, as well - your spine shivers just so, the cloak around your shoulders much too light for the tempest that has grown in the skies; flakes that kiss your braids and lick down your cheeks as you finish your intercession, eyes opening to meet the bleeding stare of the heart tree.
You choose to remain despite the frost that curls around your knees - and after a few moments of quiet, there are footsteps in the snow.
You know quite well the heavy drags of boots over the whitened crust of earth - a silence that echoes through the woods that you know can only be your Wolf.
He arrives, perhaps only moments before you register his presence; you had not known he had returned. With a thrill, you wonder if he came straight to you once crossing the gates back into Winterfell.
“My lord.” you greet, nodding as you feel his warmth behind you - and you can almost imagine the shake of his head at your knelt form.
“A northerner should know better than to come out in the cold without a proper cloak.”
A faint smile tugs at your lips, though you don’t yet turn from the tree before you. “The snow came after my prayers. I wasn’t unprepared.” You defend with a twitch of a smile - and then, just to your side, a leather glove extended for your grasp.
He pulls you to your feet with ease - and there you find Cregan, the low pool behind him echoing the breath of cloudy sky. His eyes are warm and knowing when you trace his irises with your own gaze.
Flakes continue, shed from the heavens; A white crown of winter falling upon his hair as he takes you in.
“I came to speak with you.” He says after the moment of quiet you allow; he drapes his thick outercloak upon your shoulders though you glance at him rather sheepishly at the gesture, second in nature in your long years of companionship.
It is remiss that your first few days appointed in the new station has seen a lack of advisory; alas, Cregan has finally returned after two days with Lord Cerwin and his host, and you will adjoin this evening for strategy.
“I thought as much,” your voice is soft; perhaps residual from your prayers whispered into the listening quiet of the Godswood. “Of what do you wish to speak, my lord?” There is indeed much to discuss now that the company has left Winterfell - winter comes soon enough, and the Wall indeed calls for your Lord’s visit.
His voice is only rougher as though the words take a coaxing to admit, “Before you were appointed, the lords at my table…” he begins, and your brow lifts as he stares ahead to the tree. “they spoke of a match.”
Your heart stills; you turn to face him fully, swallowing the dip in your stomach. “A match?” you repeat.
“Aye,” he confirms, “the Southern Lords proposed I take one of their daughters to wed,” He is rather impartial in tone. “Though my men… they advise I take a bride from the North.”
Perhaps it would be more of a surprise to you, had you not spent the better part of your freetime pressing ears to the council doors; indeed you are familiar with the pressure upon Cregan to take a wife.
“And…” you begin carefully, “Will you wed the Southern Rose?”
His jaw clenches; a flutter of flakes against skin though his gaze still holds you with an intensity to make your blood hum; “I denied betrothal to her,” he murmurs, breath puffing in a soft cloud of mist against thicker snowfall; he grows more quiet, then, and it stirs in your chest. “Though as for the proposal set before me by the men of my hall…” He pauses just briefly, and you blink snowflakes from your lashes. “It was not something I rejected.”
A sacred stillness; a raw breath from you as the implication of his words hit you - here, in the Godswood, before the heart tree.
The cloak he’s brought, wrapped around your shoulders, warming your chilled flesh; a kiss of sage and leather as you watch his visage - patient, waiting. Devoted.
A breath puffs from your lips in exhale.
“You speak of me,” you whisper; his eyes remain on yours, anchored to the press of your teeth into your bottom lip.
“Aye.” His response is firm, evergreen, rooted. “I speak of you.”
The trees of the Godswood whisper in that quiet way they can; breaths of creeping air that lived long before your ancestors were here. They watch you, how your fingers curl tighter into Cregan’s cloak - how your veins pump with the same blood that runs through his own. You had known this was a possibility - hints from your father’s mulling eyes as you and the Lord had returned from sparring lessons, cheeks winded and amusement laced into small glances and brushes of arms.
There is a long yearning affection that burns in your heart when you glance back up at his looming height, a small smile teasing your lips. Perhaps, as your fingers brush over heavy fur, you seek to cut through the thick silence which has found you tense with anticipation.
“Well,” you begin lightly, hoping to mask the tremor in your voice, “I suppose you would not be the worst choice for a husband, Lord Stark.”
Cregan’s brow lifts slightly at your words - and a flick of amusement swallowed by a softening; he does not brush off your words with the same playful jest you offer. A step towards you, a hand seeking your own, leather against worn leather. A hollow gust of wind across the gulley of pine to the side of you, and a red bloodleaf falls to your boots.
“I hope,” he says slowly, eyes anchored on his thumb across your knuckles. “to be the best I can be.” he continues, his voice unwavering as snow dusts his hair, his cloak.
You can only nod through a thick swallow, heart thundering. “You could never be anything less.” You ensure him. His lips part, pink against the light of afternoon; warmth spreads through your chest as his tongue wettens them just so under your watchful gaze.
“You’ve spent your life here,” he murmurs, “The North is in your blood as it is mine - Winterfell has always been yours.”
Cold, which nips at your skin and aches your bones - it is so distant now. Now, when his breath plumes between you gently. Now, as your hand squeezes his own, even faintly; Now, in a smile that you must bite back as your mind floats, his words rooting into your heart.
You grin, and it’s softer now. “You make it sound as though it’s already decided.”
Cregan’s broad form towers over you as he leans - though an effective protection from the wintered wind, you feel a shiver down your spine. “I would not presume to decide such things without your consent,” he ensures, “But the thought of another standing beside me… it has never felt right.”
And perhaps, then, he’s always known of your yearning - for how could you not know so familiar the face which looks you back in the mirror, whose heart bleeds your own blood; to know is to love, perhaps. You smile, your other hand falling onto his chest - beneath thick furs, beneath leather and tunic, a heart beats strong.
A palm, large and calloused as it graces over your cheek; you press involuntarily into his burgeoning warmth, a small smile upon your lips. “It is a good thing I suppose, that I could not imagine leaving Winterfell.” You admit - and then, fixing him with that same intent stare he brings to you: “I will marry you, Cregan.”
His breath, stuttering only momentarily as his eyes search your own - and then, a clear of his throat. “Then it will be settled,” his thumb lingers against your cheek, his touch warm against the cold that swirls - and it is more than what you'd wished for your whole life; after all, the Threnody would chase you right back to Cregan if you'd gone anywhere else.
“I will be yours, my lady.”
THE HOWL OF THE THRENODY IS A NEAR SONG ON THE DAY OF YOUR WEDDING.
The tub has been placed rather precariously aside the larger of windows awarded to your chambers; you sit in the smoldering heat of the bath, tendrils of oiled steam snaking up and curling into fog at the corners of your vision.
Outside, scarce birds chirp - a morning early enough, although in this sharp of wintercoming the creatures prefer to retreat to their nests as you stir in your own, sighing away a small dreamy breath.
It has been five and a half moons since your betrothal; your eyes flicker with a bout of excitement over to the wardrobe across the way, wherein hangs your gown and maidencloak awaiting your presence later this afternoon.
A smile unbounded, you press palms to your cheeks, attempting to cool them under the thought of what will come tonight. The handmaids have been asked away; a peculiar request from you, but you wish to enjoy a moment of serenity before you begin the day’s preparations - of which there are many - and you worry they will scarce find a moment to eat and enjoy themselves before they are tasked with your hair and your body.
It snows only in the way trees shake dust from their bones - a heavier pile of white which burdens lower limbs, and you watch the ground of powder stir when it is imbued by the weight.
Winter is near; words for so long, though now, it is true. And a fine day it is, the Gods have blessed you and Cregan - but indeed, the last of the alpine flowers have curled around a layer of frost, the lakes and ponds have crusted into flat planes thick of ice. Threnody, its whistling song in the dead of night, beckons - winter comes, and the North is prepared.
A hand falls submerged in the bathwater and you lift it once more with a stinged gasp; the skin over your middle knuckle is cracked and near raw. Maester Kennet administered a salve to it daily since your return with Cregan, Lord Cerwin, and your father - a weekslong trip to oversee the fortification of supply lines in the coming of winter’s harsh brunt.
Split skin, cracked by the iced wind; and a warm palm to hold you, lips brushed over the top of your temples in a murmur. Your cheeks burn hotter than the bathwater enveloping you; Cregan.
And true that when you lie in your lone bed each evening, plagued with an aching and catch-of-breaths that find you after the memories of chapped lips brushing your own, firmly tender touches that are more fleeting than they are anything else. When you are plagued with such thoughts, you truly think it had all been so much simpler before the betrothal.
Simpler; glances across halls - stolen moments while he’d chide to you in lessons, quiet words in the library or prideful smirks during a hunt in the Wolfswood. Anticipation is a torturous excitement, perhaps - his hands, you used to wonder - how would they feel against you?
And you know now - how they hold your cheeks, caress your shoulder, your back; you know, yet you must wait to let them truly hold you, to truly touch you how you so desire.
A sweet torture, restraint has become. Touches, kisses - far too brief, far too constrained. Your gaze falls upon the stain of red through the Godswood outside, your stomach turning with anticipation, with hunger.
And yet, the day advances.
A knock at your quarters starts you just slightly, clearing your throat as your head turns to the door. A stare at the oak, wondering if the doors to your marital chambers will look so similar as these.
The oils of mountain thyme and coltsfoot bead upon your skin when you sit upwards slightly, wondering aloud who awaits behind the door.
“-It is me, my lady.”
Not your handmaidens yet, it seems - Cregan’s voice jumps your heart into a gallop.
With a flush, you press your lips together, grasping the edge of the tub to rise from the tendrils of steam - the bleeding bundle of leaves which hemorrhage the treeline in the distance abandoned.
Perhaps only now, as you pad over thick furs upon stone to reach your robe, do you wish you’d allowed your handmaids to remain with you; if only to aid you with some slip that is less revealing than the thin satin you slip on. The stone beneath your feet is warm; you bite your lip gently.
“Come.” You call; only a breath before the oaken creaking reaches your ears - you’ve pushed your hair back, droplets of oiled bathwater cascading down your temple, over the edge of your chin, kissing the skin of your chest exposed with the loose robe you tie.
Perhaps you should better ensure your modesty - though by nightfall he will be yours, and you his. What difference does it make now, to let him see you?
Cregan’s frame is backlit by the corridor; a broad figure, ducked only slightly in such tall stature, shoulders brushing the stone sides of the frame - your eyes meet, though swiftly he averts his gaze, turning his head rather sharp as his chest shutters only slightly.
“My apologies.” His voice holds some tight restraint; you have no power to stop the warmth that spreads upon you at his tone, some hint of arousal at the drop in timbre. “I did not realize…” He trails off, lingering in the doorway - a glint of amber over his dark hair and you swallow a flustered giggle before it can escape your parted lips. “I will return when you are not occupied.” He decides.
You interrupt gently, shaking your head as your fingers press to your damp palms; an earnest hope he will not leave, now when he’s already here. “There’s no need to apologize,” you gesture to the table and chairs beside the hearth. “You may stay, Cregan. Please.”
His gaze does not return to you yet; palms, large and calloused with life and labor - you press your thighs together in a momentary weakness as your eyes trace over thick forearms that remove a thick fur cloak, dragging over veins which swim up skin kissed by afternoon light.
A quiet grunt when he sits himself in the chair, thighs spreading as his eyes finally meet your figure once more - gray as the clouded heavens, penetrating as you cross the room to follow him; how those eyes follow the trail of damp water droplets slipping beneath your robe’s loose collar - how they find the rivulets that slide down the bare of your thighs, dripping just slightly onto the stone beneath you. A heat in your cheeks, spreading low over your neck, chest - and lower more, as you find yourself before him, waiting for his eyes to flick up to your own.
Your chambers in Winterfell have always been much too large in your opinion, for just one woman - though they hold a most divine view of the Godswood; now, the room is impossibly small with the frame of him, silent, watching you slide into the chair across him.
“Does something trouble you, Cregan?” You wonder finally, searching the face drawn by a stern brow, how his jaw flexes at your question.
A half-shake of head; a beam of light once again has found his face, an ethereal sight of such a man softened by the wintered sun. He hums, “I came to…” He pauses momentarily, as though struggling to find his words; his eyes once more wavering as a bead of water slides down your damp leg. His eyes flick back to you, swallowing, “I came to ensure this marriage is not being forced upon you.”
A startle from you; though spoken with a lilt of care, such blunt words hit you rather suddenly, and your heart pangs. He does not see how you crave him, even after these last moons? How your cheeks grow hot under his attention, how your arm laces through his when he walks you to your chambers after meetings - how your lips seek his own in every darkened corridor you might scarcely find?
How you return your affections for him each time he murmurs them into your ear in solitude - how you have loved him since long before there was such a word?
“I’ve never been more certain of anything.” Your voice does not hesitate; neither does your heart. His eyes, so dark in the yards of Winterfell, so bright by light of your solitary quarters; though he does not respond for a brief moment, and in the silence you grow concerned.
“Cregan,” your voice is soft as you lean forward just so. “Do you want this?”
He blinks at that - daring to be surprised by the question - and for a moment, as his lips part, no sound comes out. The hesitation upon his breath strikes your heart; faint doubt lingers in your chest.
“I’ve thought about it long before the idea was brought to me.” He admits; a deep tone, eyes fixed upon yours as he murmurs. “Before it became a matter of duty,” his gaze is as steadfast as the words which fall from his pink lips, “I wanted you.”
The breath upon your lips hitch; a warmth that sprouts within your heart begins to spread, against the wide windows behind you, against the man who sits with knees nearly touching your own.
Tonight, you will meet him under the leaved arms of your ancestors; of those haunted, ancient spirits which call to you in the wind, who blow the Threnody through sharp ravines, who watch you with solemn edict. You will whisper words that have waited upon your tongue for years - he will drape his cloak upon you, and you will taste his faith when your lips find his own under the sight of the Old Gods.
Dark, his hair blows gently in the quiet of his breath - and perhaps struck by the sheer beauty of the North within him, that steadfast stare cooling the heat upon your skin - you rise from your chair.
His eyes, a hawk; they watch you, head tilting back as you rise to stand before him, your palm gracing his arm; a tinge of pink that creeps over his countenance, a low snowcloud over the breath of dawn upon his cheeks.
Under your palm are the thick muscles of his bicep; and a heat, one from his skin through the tunic, melting you just the same as his own breath catches. No hesitance from him at your boldness - instead a large, warm palm comes to cup the back of your thigh as you stand before him; and a thumb that traces over the goosepimples that grow at his touch.
A slide upwards and over his shoulder - your breath quiet, nearing labored as a rising growth of hunger stirs in you. Your eyes catch the armoire across the way, where you know your wedding gown awaits; the material gentle, lined with fur and coloured the refraction of cloud and snow - and wolves, silver and embossed with the darker patterns of your own house sigil.
The thought stokes your mounting desire for Cregan; your hand slides along the thick warmth of his neck, turning to cup his jaw. Rough stubble which catches on the soft of your palm when your thumb strokes his cheekbone; and eyes, those dark lashes, fluttering only slightly when he blinks up at you - silent, waiting.
You do not make your lord wait much longer.
“Cregan,” you whisper, eyes finding some wonderfully reflective taste of devotion laced through his own stormed gaze, and your breath falls with your confession. “I have long wanted you. I wish not to wait anymore.”
His chest moves with a breath - and in lieu of words, a calloused hand wraps around your spare hand, pulling it towards his own shoulder; guiding you.
With hot cheeks, you allow it - his breath is warm as it hits your cheek, though you gasp when his hands move once more with a gentle motion towards his lap.
You stumble slightly against his powered tug; knees, knocking together as you’re drawn upon his lap - and a small, breathy laugh from your lips. Some flutter of anticipation within you as his own hands come to steady you, taking in your flushed cheeks as he holds you firm atop him, steadying you with a hint of a smile ghosting his visage.
Gods - you’re close to him, now; closer than you have ever been. And his clothing, fine and smelling of sage, is warm against your robed figure - intoxicating.
“We need not wait much longer,” He murmurs now, “We’re to marry tonight.”
As if you’d not been aware - a smile grows on your face as you shake your head. “Yet it seems so very far away.” You sigh. His eyes do not waver; and in a passing moment, a bird calls outside.
Longing falls in puffs of breath from Cregan’s wanting lips; drank in and breathed back out by your own, you shift only slightly, feeling the stutter of his breath, how his chest brushes your own with each inhale.
You both simply stare - allowed, finally, to enjoy the arresting starkness of beauty laced through your veins and his own, that sturdy, hardy northern resolve that persists in the truest of souls.
Outside, there are preparations; household members prepare the hall - polishing the long trestle tables, setting goblets and trays. Cooks prepare a feast in the kitchens - garlands of evergreen and coltsfoot lifted to archways, Maester Kennet gathers texts and prepares the ceremony.
The skies are calm, low swirls of snow-caught breaths fluttering up and down when boots fall upon the ground. Outside, the sun bleeds its love unto the harder layer of snow fallen during the eve previous - and you will follow that path, that leads out to the Godswood tonight.
“You’ll have all of me soon enough,” He promises - and the tone; a deep stirring within you.
Your eyes fall to the man you’ve known for your better life; and still he watches you, hands firm and unyielding, gaze quite the same, melted only by the breaths that come from your lips and caress his own. Love, held in communal - that is what you feel when his hand slowly slides up the ridges of your spine, his chin tilting up to where yours begins to fall, as if called upon by the same spirits.
And slowly, shyly - as if you do not know Cregan as you know yourself, as if you do not know how he breathes, how he speaks, how he is - you lean forward.
His eyes flutter closed just as your own do, his fingers flexing against your waist.
The kiss that comes is nearly tentative; gentle as it is, it still shoots through you, a deep warmth and need when his mouth presses, a test against your own. Your fingers curl, of their own volition searching nape of neck, strands dark of hair.
His own hands, one sliding up your spine, thick arm circling you, pulling you into his orbit - and the other, resting where your hip meets the breath of thigh; a thumb, pressing just so into the divot, curling around the top of your backside, warm against the thin of your robe. Heat surrounds you when you pull away just a bit, your breaths mixing, eyes opening to flicker between each other.
And he pulls you back to him once more, a small hum in his throat when his lips slide to part against your own. Gods - you shiver, hands grasping the thick muscled frame of his shoulder and neck, shifting to press up into him, chasing that tingling chill of hunger.
Perhaps it is when you shift upon his lap once more, growing hot in your burgeoning desire - or perhaps when his tongue slides against your lip and you part them, coaxing him into you; he tenses, then, pulling back as muscles fall rigid under your hungry palms.
Your fingers trace the rapid beat of his heart beneath his skin. A teasing tug upon your lips, exhilarated at the blush that’s grown across his cheeks. “Have I made you nervous, Cregan?” your lips brush, tantalizing against his.
Cregan’s hand tightens slightly on your waist, the other reaching up to cup the side of your face; his palm dwarfs your visage, thumb brushing along your cheek before pressing against the soft flesh under your jaw, coaxing you to look up just so.
“No,” he says, though his voice has muffled itself as he brings his lips to the soft patch of skin against your throat, lips ghosting your own pounding heartbeat. Shivers of arousal through you; and a near growl as he hums, “though you have made me an impatient man.”
A thrill through you at his words - an admission rather echoed by your own sentiments, you nearly let out a small mewl at the aching desire gathering between your thighs.
And as his teeth scrape over the junction of your neck, you tug him gently back to look at you- a dark gaze, clouded by the anticipation of your coming union, of the coming night that will be spent within each other’s arms, finally. A sunbeam wintered and frosted across his chest and yours; they rise and fall together in your shared breaths of desire.
It’s hungry, eager when your lips once again find each other - noses sliding against each other, a sigh into your mouth. Cregan’s palms paw at your waist; and as you’re pulled tighter against his sturdy chest, the feel of his body hard beneath you sends a shiver of anticipation.
His hair is silken under your fingers; tugging gently as you deepen your embrace, Cregan lets out a short groan into your mouth. The sound vibrates through you - an ache of arousal that bleeds through each layer of skin, clothing, tissue that separates your soul from his own. His own grip grows rather impatient when your hips seek more of such a feeling; a raw, urgent indulgence, your mind reminds you there is still a wedding to be had - that you will need to prepare for it very soon.
The press of lips, a hot, open-mouthed trail down your jaw, your neck - and you gasp softly, your body arching into his palms. “Cregan,” your voice is a near whimper, some unspoken plea as you shift upon his lap once more.
A grunt, his lips pulling back from your flushed flesh - and a puff of air and a tightened grip to hold you against him as he murmurs.
“You test me, woman.”
It is a valiant effort on your part to resist a grin at the desperation laced through his breathy grunt - though you simply hum, smiling sharply. A thrill of need - breaths fall fast from your lips, spurred by the arousal that grows within his own dark stare. “Do I?” You wonder - and a stern look no more than teasing upon his visage, lips glossy with your previous kiss.
“Every day of my life.” He grunts, then - a low tremor of restraint that begins to break with a tempered softness he holds only for you. “You know what you do.” He murmurs upon your lips, large palms reaching the expanse of your back, tugging you into him.
With a flutter, you admit, “I do.” And how very close you are to giving in; to wait until this eve seems torture when you could simply ask him to take you right here, right now. A glance of heat between you and your soon to be husband - his breath falling upon your lips. “And do you know what you do, Cregan?” You wonder, a static of hunger spurring your hand to catch his wrist in your own grasp.
Eyes watch with hawkish interest when you guide his hand lower, lower - he drags his rough palm over the downy satin of your robe, swallowing thickly as you press his hand the the warm, damp skin of your upper thigh. His breath is hitched - perhaps given up on a response, or rendered unable to from the heat of your flesh upon his own.
A whisper of a curse, perhaps upon his lips - his eyes break from yours, the mountainous frame of his shoulders under your palm. It seems he has finished speaking with you - a tension has snapped, the final thread pulled; and though he teases you with a light kiss now, his fingers - they are not so patient.
A trail - one previously led by you as you’d tugged his palm to your thigh - is slow, achingly so as his fingers slip under the hem of your robe. Your breath hitches, now - and he, with a rumbled voice: “Tell me. Tell me what feels good.”
Shivers of arousal send your spine curling to seek his warmth; your hips buck just so, feeling the length of his own hunger press deliciously into you. “Cregan,” You can only murmur, and his head tilts just so. A tease - a gentle one at that, but still what you’d not expected; indeed it sends jolts of desire through your body when he hums, fingers digging just lightly into your thigh.
“Use your words, my lady,” His voice orders you, though there is some desperation in his wanting tone, “I’ll not move until you tell me what it is you desire.”
You've waited much too long for him to stop now, to duck and retreat merely from some pious embarrassment; and in your bout of shivered hunger, you groan. “Touch me, Cregan.” And, perhaps as a last-ditch hope he will indeed understand the extent of your desire, “I’ll do anything.”
A guttural sound escapes from Cregan's throat - the growl of a wolf, the howl of wind through a valley; and his lips brush over your jaw teasingly soft, as if savoring the power he’s found over you despite the strain of his own hunger. He says nothing, heeding rather quickly to your request.
Sharp gasps from you in succession when his thumb slowly presses over the pooled heat - a stolen breath or two before you let out a quiet moan, hips instinctively bucking into Cregan’s touch.
“Easy,” And his voice is no more than a whisper, some tender coaxing as his other hand steadies your hips, drawing you into the slow-burning torturous circles he draws with his finger. It is indeed a sensation you’ve tried to explore yourself on many restless nights in these very chambers - but his fingers sturdier, calloused, gentle - and his presence, warm and loving against the bright of day.
It is wholly too much and not enough at once, and when he shushes you gently against your lips, a shiver thrills down your spine.
Your hands grasp at his shoulders, needing something to hold onto as the pleasure slowly burns through you - his fingers explore you, your molten heat; and his lips press warm and insistent upon yours. A slip into the depths of him; some choice warranted only by breath of desire, by the knowledge that come this evening he will be your husband and you his wife.
His forehead falls against your own, breath uneven as you slowly buck your hips, letting his other hand guide you in a motion that sends pleasure curling around the tips of your fingers. “Wife.”
The word spurs you; with a jolt you whimper into him, voice breaking desperately as you keen into his large palm. Your lips find the thick column of his neck - a warm smell, saged and spiced; your teeth grazing along the beat of heart upon his throat, a grumble low in his chest.
“Husband,” You respond, though the word is strangled as one finger, dragging through your molten heat, prods at the entrance of you; with a gasp, you whimper, “please, please.”
He hums, shifting only slightly beneath you; a whimper from you as the heel of his hand presses deliciously onto your swollen bud, tensing your thighs as you swallow dryly.
“My sweet wife,” He repeats, brows drawn as his eyes rove over the exposed flesh revealed from your loose robe, “Tell me, how does this feel?”
Your eyes pitch back, hair tangling in his grip around your back as you shiver, his hand pressing into your cunt - “Good,” You respond pathetically, unable to formulate any semblance of reflection when you begin to see spots of pleasure in your vision; your fingers sliding to grasp at his neck, at his hair. “I’d- I’d like more,” Your face burns at the meekness of your own tone; only in the girlish fantasies, in dreams of Cregan climbing to share your bed under a heap of furs, have you allowed yourself to consider such things falling from his mouth.
A kiss to your throat, the nip of teeth gentle against your jaw. Perhaps, if you were any less enraptured with the thrill of his touch, you’d feel the small smirk that presses against your throat.
His breath is warm, though you nearly jolt as one finger presses slowly, languidly into you; you keen as he groans, feeling your tight warmth envelop him.
A very slow torment as he begins to move his fingers against you - you’ve grown rather speechless in pleasure. Eyes lidded, cheeks hot, lips parted as you watch him; and he nods smally, murmuring, “-Is this what you needed?”
A kiss to your lips, silencing any broken response that attempts to fall from your hungry mouth, fingers curling to fist his tunic as slowly, another finger joins his first.
His other hand, a strong grasp - he guides your hips in a slow roll that leaves you both breathless and gasping, your slow peak building after only a few moments.
Once again, his forehead falls against yours; the uneven stutter of his breath falls against your skin as he watches you intently, eyes gauging every sound you make, each furrow of your brow in pleasure as he takes you apart. “You mustn't-” You swallow, unused to your voice laced with such desperate pleasure, “-you mustn't dare stop,”
He dares to chuckle against your throat - a brief vibration as fingers press deeper into you, reaching the spot within that has your eyes rolling to the ceiling; you’re suddenly staring at him wide-eyed as his thumb finds your clit, and with a near whimper, you buck your hips.
And then he pulls back slightly, his eyes locking with yours - his thumb still lazily circles over you, pushing you closer to the precipice with every pulse of heat. His countenance is more gentle, though he watches your body keen into his touch with brows furrowed and a strong inhale.
“Tonight,” He murmurs, thumb stroking excruciating strokes over you, “I will take you as my wife, and you will take me as your husband.”
You’re nearing the very edge of bliss, muscles rigid, his voice low and thick as you buck against him. “We will finally have each other. Completely.” He promises, his stormed eyes never leaving yours. It mounts such pleasure; your eyes flicker to the armoire, wondering how he might use his strength later this evening to rid you of the gown’s intricacies; how his touch might burn you - how your touch might burn him.
How he might sound, as he finally pushes inside of you - taking you, as you’ve so yearned for him to; how you might one day be gifted by the Gods and swollen with his babe, round and glowing. How he might give you many children, and they will be rooted with the same fierce durability, same gentleness, the same love their parents have forged their whole lives.
Shivers down your spine as Cregan’s hand cants your jaw to face him once more, cradling your flushed cheek as his fingers take you apart so easily - so intimately, so knowing.
How could it ever be anybody else?
And that gentleness, so at odds with the raw need in his touch, so known by you - he, so known by you - each slow stroke of his fingers within you, dragging pleasure in waves. He says your name and it echoes in the pounding of your heart.
“Tonight, I will make certain that you feel all of me.”
You’re helpless at the pleasure he’s built - his thumb moves with a maddening precision as you clutch him, sage and pine and wildflowers and love; your lips part with a moan, the last threads of control loose.
“Do you wish for that?” he murmurs, thumb pressing down just slightly harder, sending a fresh wave of heat through you as you desperately try to stave off your crest if only in hopes he will never cease the words that fall from his honeyed lips. “Have you yearned for it, every night as I have?”
You are unable to respond as his words and ministrations bring you to your crest of pleasure, shuttering as your body bends into your peak. He grunts when your hand tugs at his tresses; though his hand does not cease as your cunt clenches around him, pleasure swirling and clouding your mind. “Yes,” you moan out finally, ecstasy pulsing through you as his lips trail over your jaw with jagged breaths.
His name, pressed from your lips into his heated skin as he guides you slowly through your wave. “Cregan,” You exhale breathlessly, lips pressing to his skin as you begin to fall from your peak, aftershocks tremoring through you.
His hand, leaving your hip to soothe up your spine - and an awakening of hunger when he presses you against the hard line of his own arousal; a shiver at the craving hunger it awakes within you.
Your legs have lost their tight rigidity; you are rather slumped within his grasp, the afterwave of your peak rendering you rather sensitive. His fingers slide out of you slowly, and you watch with parted lips as he brings his hand between your heaving chests.
A hunger rekindled when his fingers slide past his own lips, a grunt as he tastes you upon his tongue; and a whimper from yourself involuntary and helpless, unable to do anything more than pant in desire. He must see the hidden desire, as he grows merciful - with a slow motion he drags his thumb, to you - and slicked with yourself, over your bottom lip.
Your taste on your own tongue - earthy, mountain thyme and desire - sends a shiver of unknown desire through you - never in your darkest, impurest desires could you have imagined Cregan here, as he presses his thumb past your parted lips and upon the flat of your tongue. You stir against him and his breath hitches; a promise of the eve to come as he pulls his hand away from you.
It is upon his lap, with his arms around the bend of your spine, that you rest - within the heart of Winterfell’s castle come clangings, shouts of merriment as the beginning of the celebrations are set.
Your cheek upon his shoulder, his head against yours as you both relish the small bit of solitude you’ll have before you rejoin finally within your marital chambers this evening.
And, as it came, the day advances once more.
Your heartbeats have slowed, though his arousal is a present reminder pressed against the soft of your inner thigh; he presses his lips to your temple, emitting a reluctant sigh.
“I regret to leave you.”
You knew it would come; though you mind not, for in only a few hours, you will be with him once more.
“-but there are preparations yet to be made.” His fingers trace a gentle path along your neck - similar in devotion and exploration as the one you trail over his sturdy chest.
A playful thought crosses your mind as you consider him returning to his own chambers to prepare for your wedding: “Will you be shaving before the wedding, my Lord?”
Cregan's brow arches - perhaps at your use of his title or the question itself, as he inquires in response, “Would you prefer I do?”
You beam at him, cheeks heating in memory of the first time he’d asked you if you’d prefer he shave: No older than ten-and-four, when he’d returned from the Wall with his Lord father and you’d faked horror at the sight of the stubble gracing his young visage for the first time. He’d not listened to you then, though you were rather boisterous and impressionable as a young girl.
Much has changed.
“Yes,” You decide after a moment. He grins at you and it sends your heart into a race, his hand pulling your inner wrist up to his lips.
“Then it is done,” He decides, stubble tickling your soft skin as he presses a chaste kiss to your wrist. “I will call your handmaids back, if you wish.”
A gentle nod from you and he presses a kiss to your warm cheek, returning to his full height and setting your rather unstable legs onto the stone floor.
“I will see you this eve, my love.” he promises; your heart flutters at the term.
And after one last kiss to your knuckles, you watch him shut the oak doors of your chambers - the wind howls down the slopes outside, though Winterfell shines cold and unstirred. In the distance, the bleeding leaves of the heart tree shimmer, spreading a warmth through your chest as you slowly ease yourself back into the tub, waiting for the maidens to return and begin the preparations.
Birds chirp outside; there is already a new signet and silver wax prepared and sitting upon your desk - it boasts the sigil of the Direwolf. It is forever yours.
