The cold wind still howled.
Eddard did not join the children’s roughhousing.
He stepped forward, moving toward the direwolf.
The direwolf did not leave.
When the standoff ended, it didn’t flee.
It retreated a few steps, but held its position, still guarding what was behind it.
As Eddard drew closer, a low growl rolled from the direwolf’s throat.
Its lips peeled back, baring yellowed fangs.
Its hind legs bent slightly, coiled to lunge.
Eddard stopped.
He didn’t advance.
He didn’t retreat.
He bent slightly at the waist until his gaze was level with the direwolf’s.
His hands drifted away from his sides, hanging loose, palms turned outward.
No aggression.
Nothing threatening.
“I won’t harm you.” His voice was low and soft, the way you’d speak to a spooked horse.
“Let me see.”
The direwolf stared at him for a long time.
Then, slowly, it drew back its fangs.
The growl softened into a low whine, not a warning anymore, something more like uncertainty.
It was judging.
Using those amber eyes to decide whether this human in a grey cloak was worth trusting.
Eddard didn’t move.
His posture never changed.
The direwolf finally stepped aside.
It moved two paces sideways, and behind it, on a small patch of flattened dead grass and fallen leaves, several grey-furred shapes lay curled together.
Wolf cubs.
Five of them, huddled tight, eyes not yet fully open, their fur short and soft as a watercolor that hadn’t dried.
They were shivering, not from cold, but from fear.
When the stag had charged through moments ago, their mother had put herself between them and it.
They had felt the danger.
They didn’t understand it.
They only knew to be afraid.
Eddard crouched down.
Slow.
Careful.
Like approaching something that would shatter if he moved too fast.
He extended his hand and let his fingertips graze the spine of the outermost cub. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Warm and fuzzy.
A heartbeat pulsed through thin skin and small ribs all the way to his fingertips, quick and strong.
“The sigil of House Stark is the direwolf.” Eddard’s voice carried a lightness he didn’t often let through, like firelight flickering in a winter hearth.
“So the old gods have sent us real ones.”
He turned around with all five cubs cradled against his black leather armor, grey fur bright against the dark.
The cubs made soft sounds, small as birdsong.
“The North hasn’t seen direwolves in a very long time.” His gaze moved across each child’s face.
“This is a gift from the old gods.
Robb, Bran, you and your sisters and your brother will each have one.”
Bran let go of Aven’s hand and ran.
He stopped in front of Eddard, rising onto his tiptoes, craning to see into his father’s arms.
His grey eyes shone like two lit stars.
“Can I pick first?” The urgency in his voice was barely contained.
Not contained at all, really.
“You may.” Eddard crouched so Bran could reach.
Bran stretched out his hand, cautious as if the cub were more fragile than glass, and gently lifted the one nestled in the middle.
Its fur was darker than the others, nearly black everywhere except its four paws, which were white, as if it had walked through fresh snow.
“Her name is Summer,” Bran said.
He offered no explanation.
Jon stood beside Aven and said nothing.
He watched the cubs in Eddard’s arms.
His gaze drifted to Robb, then to Bran.
Five cubs.
Five young Starks of Winterfell.
Not him, because he was Snow.
Because he was a bastard.
His expression didn’t change.
There was even a faint curve at the corner of his mouth, something that looked almost like a smile.
But his eyes, that same grey as Eddard’s, dimmed for just a moment.
One moment.
He buried it fast, like tossing a lit match into a snowbank.
A hiss.
Then nothing.
Aven saw it.
He looked at the cubs in Eddard’s arms.
Five.
He counted again.
Five.
But in the original story, there had been six.
Jon had one too, found separately, apart from the others. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Aven crouched down, pretending to check his boot.
His eyes swept the spot where the direwolf had been standing, across the flattened patch of dead grass and fallen leaves.
Something white was moving in the snow.
Small.
Nearly invisible against the white.
If it hadn’t shifted, he would have missed it entirely.
Aven straightened, walked to Jon’s side, leaned in, and said one quiet sentence.
Jon went rigid for an instant.
He glanced at Aven.
Aven wasn’t looking at him.
He’d already turned away to talk with Bran, easy and unhurried, like nothing had happened at all.
Jon walked forward, crouched, and pushed aside a clump of dead grass bent flat under the snow.
A pure white cub lay curled there.
Trembling.
Eyes sealed shut, mouth barely open, making sounds so small they were almost silence.
It was tinier than any of the others, its fur still patchy and sparse, like a scrap of cotton someone had left behind in the snow.
Jon’s fingers were shaking when he picked it up.
He stood.
His other hand reached into the nearby pile of fallen leaves and brushed them aside.
Another one.
Grey, close in color to Robb’s, but smaller, curled next to the white cub, buried under the leaves.
It wasn’t making any sound.
It wasn’t moving.
But its chest rose and fell.
Still alive.
Jon stood there with one cub in each hand, his expression caught somewhere between wonder and not knowing what to do with himself.
He looked at the white one in his left hand, then the grey one in his right.
His lips parted, but nothing came out.
“Aha!”
Theon’s voice cut through from behind, sharp and bright, carrying that particular excitement of his, the kind where you could never quite tell if there was a barb underneath it.
“Two latecomers!”
He sauntered over, hands on his hips, tilting his head at the cubs in Jon’s hands.
Then he glanced at Aven, mouth pulling into a grin that sat somewhere between teasing and dead serious.
“Aven, Jon.
They suit you two.
You’re direwolf cubs yourselves.”
And in the corner where no one was watching, the mother direwolf turned and walked slowly back into the trees, until the forest swallowed her whole.
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