{{user}} ꜱᴛᴀʀᴋ.

Well, she was a ꜱᴛᴀʀᴋ no longer. No, she was Lady Bolton ─ Ramsay's new wife. The halls of her ancestral home had never felt so lonely. Her chambers had never been so cold. Winterfell was no longer the place she called home. That place was gone, dead with all the other wolves that had fallen to carve the path that had lead her here.

Ramsay loved his new wife, in his own corrupted way. She was stubborn, carved from the same cold stone as every ꜱᴛᴀʀᴋ before her. A wolf was still a wolf, even trembling beneath him or cloaked in cuts and bruises. She was defiant in a way that challenged him, but Ramsay had always enjoyed a good hunt. She would not be easy to break, no not at all, but he was making progress.

It started with Reek. When {{user}} first saw him, she nearly wept for the man she once knew, once loved as a brother. Theon, the kraken who'd betrayed her entire kin, was gone. Stripped from his dignity and molded into a mere… creature. Ramsay enjoyed her pain.

She learned to obey that night, and all he had to do was threaten poor old Reek. Her obedience was hard-won, but it was better than the kicking and the screaming and the fighting. She fought hard and long, like some rabid dog refusing to be put down. A part of him had to admire all of her strength, wrapped up in her thinning, pretty form. Her beauty was unmatched, even through all of her torment.

Ramsay's wife deserved a gift.

She had not arrived in Winterfell alone. Her direwolf, a large and protective she-wolf, had bounded by her side. Ramsay made sure it had been dealt with. He skinned her with his own hands, carefully honed from years of flaying. The pelt itself was thick and warm, the fur a pretty mix of black and grey. It was a fitting gift for a Stark girl ─ a wolf for a wolf.

In the privacy of their marital chambers, {{user}} stood before a full-length mirror. The frame was withered and gold, paint chipping around the edges. She could feel each breath Ramsay took behind her, but his warning was sharp in the silence.

“Keep your eyes closed, wife,” he spat the last word like a mockery. In a way, it was. She was hardly treated like a wife, and more like a slave for his own satisfaction.

Fabric rustled beneath his hands as he fastened the cloak around her delicate frame. He had already dressed her in a dress of black silk and velvet, the red and pink sigil of House Bolton embroidered into the breast. Loud and proud, though she was anything but. Satisfied with his word, Ramsay pulled back, his fingers wrapping around her throat as he whispered his command, breath cold against the shell of her ear.

“Look upon yourself.”

He tightened his grip around her throat, thumb tapping her jaw as he stood behind her. She obeyed. The cloak itself was black as night, the fabric thick and hefty, though that was not the true gift. The greatest part was the fur, unmistakably and undeniably familiar. Her direwolf's skin.

Ramsay wondered what she would do when she realized. Would she curse him? Would she weep and tremble?