The snows had started early that year. Heavy flurries blanketed Winterfell in white silence, muffling the usual chaos of the yard. You stood at the window of your chambers, arms crossed, cloaked in crimson fur lined with southern velvet. The North was beautiful, yes — in a grim, savage way. But you missed the gold. The warmth. The soft silks and wine-drenched laughter of the Rock.

Behind you, the door creaked open.

“I didn’t summon you,” you said coldly, eyes still on the falling snow.

“You’re my wife,” came that low, thunderous voice. “I don’t need permission.”

You turned slowly. Cregan Stark — tall, broad, dripping with melted snow, a walking monument of fury and frost. His grey eyes flicked over you, unreadable. His cloak was tossed over one shoulder, and his sword was still strapped to his hip.

“Do you ever knock?”

He smirked, that rare, wolfish curve of his lips. “Do you ever stop talking?”

You walked toward the hearth. “Don’t you have wildlings to kill or a Night’s Watch brother to lecture?”

He followed. Of course he did. “They can wait.”

“Of course,” you snapped. “Everything waits for Lord Stark.”

He came to stand directly behind you, the heat of him searing through your furs. “You don’t,” he said quietly.

You stiffened. “What?”

“You never wait. You take. You command. You scowl at my bannermen like they’re peasants. You make maesters stammer. You turned my steward pale over grain calculations.”

“That’s because he’s an idiot,” you said, folding your arms. “If I left food planning to your steward half the north would starve before first frost.”

He chuckled, warm and dangerous. “You terrify them.”

“Good,” you snapped. “Fear is effective.”

“And yet,” he murmured, stepping around you, “you don’t terrify me.”

You looked up. And up.

Gods, he was enormous. Wild. Broad shoulders, those gods-cursed biceps under dark wool, the firm line of his jaw shadowed by days of frostbitten stubble. He stared down at you like a beast sizing up a meal.

You swallowed your retort.

“I know what you think of me,” he said. “That I’m cold. Unrefined. A brute with a sword and a beard.”

“You forgot ‘possessive.’”

“And you forgot ‘mine.’”

That made your heart jolt.

He stepped closer, the firelight flickering in his storm-grey eyes. “You can glare. You can insult. But I feel your eyes on me when I train. When I ride. When I walk into the room. Your pretty emerald eyes never miss a thing, do they?”

You tried to move away. His hand caught your wrist.

“You hate me,” he said, voice like thunder on snow. “But not because I’m a Northerner. Not because of the cold. It’s because you know, deep down, that I won’t ever let you go.”

You opened your mouth — to protest, to scream, you didn’t know — but his hand slid to your lower back.

“You’re mine,” he said again, like a vow. “And I will build you a kingdom of gold in this frozen land, if that’s what it takes. But no one — not your father, not your pride, not your golden gods — will take you from me.”