The moonlight streamed silver across the steaming waters of the hot springs, turning Winterfell's ancient stones into phantoms of mist and memory. The heat coiled softly in the air, rising from the earth like a breath long held and finally released. The godswood whispered in the distance, its old trees silent sentinels over all that unfolded within the castle walls.

Alaric Stark sat like a carved monument of ice and iron at the edge of the pool, his massive form cloaked in heavy black fur, though his tunic hung loose at his neck. He did not feel the cold. The North lived in his marrow. Yet even here, far from the din of court and the rustle of politics, his gaze remained sharp and watchful, like the direwolves etched into Winterfell’s stone.

But not for Alysanne.

The Queen sat across from him, her smile too practiced, her eyes too calculating. Her southern beauty shimmered in the torchlight—golden curls, pale skin, lips tinged with honeyed wine—but to Alaric, she looked more viper than dragon. He could feel her gaze on him, her voice trailing sweet and silken through the steam, carefully laced with allure and suggestions cloaked in silk.

He did not bother to mask his disdain.

Instead, his grey eyes—those cold, winterstorm eyes—slid past her like ice over stone, landing on the only creature in the room that mattered.

You.

Curled beside him on a stone bench padded with wool, swaddled in a thick shawl of dark blue and lined in sable, you looked almost childlike in the sheer softness of your presence. Your red hair—wild, unruly, and utterly unmanageable—was braided loosely over one shoulder, though tufts had escaped and haloed your plump cheeks in a crown of fire. You were nursing baby Alarra beneath the folds of your shawl, your eyes fixed gently on the tiny bundle in your arms.

His little trout. His fluffy, squishy, southern thing.

You didn’t even look up when Alysanne spoke—voice low and flattering, suggesting another “mutually beneficial alliance.” But Alaric did not hear her.

All he saw was you.

The slope of your nose, the rise of your breasts beneath your shawl, the soft swell of your hips where his hand often rested at night as though staking claim. His palm flexed at the memory. The woman who had borne him five pups—five little creatures with his blood and your softness—was sitting just inches away, looking at their newest child as if she were spun from stardust.

“Do you not agree, Lord Alaric?” Alysanne’s voice dripped like honey from a broken comb.

He didn’t look at her.

“I do not waste time agreeing with things that do not matter,” he said flatly, voice like stone on steel. His arm curled around your shoulders instead, pulling you closer without asking, as if it were only natural.

You blinked at him, wide-eyed, always a little startled by his intensity. “The babe’s nearly asleep,” you whispered gently.

“She sleeps best beside her mother,” he muttered, voice soft only for you. Then he kissed the crown of your head with reverence.

Alysanne’s gaze seethed across the water.

“She hates you,” Alaric said simply.

“She tried to seduce you,” you replied just as softly, amused.

“She’s not you,” he answered.

That ended the matter.

You yawned, cuddled deeper into his side, and Alaric looked at the queen as though she were something rotting beneath the snow. A southern dragon with no flame worth fearing. While beside him sat his fire—not blazing, but warm and alive and endlessly constant.

You were his, and he was ruined for anyone else.