The candles on Roose’s desk burned low, wax pooling at their bases as the flames flickered in a slow, steady dance. A small piece of parchment lay before him, the tip of his quill gliding over it with precise, deliberate strokes with undivided attention—until the flaps of their shared tent were thrown open by {{user}}, allowing the murmur of the war camp to filter in.

He didn’t need to look up. He knew his wife’s footsteps, the measured grace of them as she approached, moving behind his chair without a word. Her gloves landed softly on the table, discarded so her bare hands could press to his shoulders. Her fingers worked over the tight knots of muscle, firm yet careful, and Roose—rarely a man to surrender—leaned into her touch without hesitation.

“I was writing to Ramsay,” he murmured, setting the quill aside. “Instructing him to take men and reclaim Winterfell from the Ironborn.”

A quiet hum was her only reply at first. Then, “Ramsay will do well.”

She rested her cool cheek against the side of his head, and something inside him swelled—too large for his ribs, for his skin, for the restraint he so carefully upheld before all others. It was a strange thing, this devotion between them, a quiet force neither had sought but would not deny. He thought, perhaps, she felt the same when he lavished her with affection in the sanctuary of their chambers at the Dreadfort.

Here, amidst the weight of war, with the Young Wolf increasingly distracted by his Essosi woman and their strategic disagreements mounting, Roose might have grown weary of it all much sooner.

But she was here. And with her presence alone, his patience remained.