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Theon’s tone was joking.
But everyone present caught the layer underneath.
You two are both outsiders.
Both surplus Starks.
That was Theon’s way, joking voice, brutal payload.
Robb frowned and started to say something.
Eddard’s voice came first.
“Theon.”
Just the name.
Not one word more.
But the tone was enough to freeze Theon’s smile where it sat.
Theon closed his mouth and stepped back half a pace.
His expression slid from teasing to sheepish.
He glanced at Eddard, then at Jon, lips twitching like he was working up some way to walk it back, and then said nothing.
Eddard’s gaze dropped to the two pups in Jon’s hands.
His expression didn’t change.
But he stayed silent longer than usual.
Long enough that Robb looked over at him.
Five pups found first.
Then two more in the snow.
Seven.
How many Stark children were at Winterfell?
Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran, Rickon, five.
Jon made six.
And,
His gaze moved to Aven.
Aven made seven.
Eddard Stark did not believe in prophecies.
Did not believe in omens.
Did not believe in anything he hadn’t seen with his own eyes.
But standing here, looking at those seven pups, looking at the seven children in front of him, something shifted inside him.
Faint.
Fast.
Like a current running deep beneath still water, so brief he couldn’t be certain he’d felt it at all.
“Aven.
Jon.”
His voice had found its usual steadiness again, but underneath that steadiness was something soft.
Something that didn’t quite fit a Warden of the North.
“You each take one.”
Jon’s fingers closed tight.
He crouched and set the grey pup carefully on the ground.
It was too small, still couldn’t find its footing, four legs shaking as they tried to hold it up, like a table someone had just propped into place.
Jon gathered the white one against his chest and folded the hem of his cloak around it, leaving only a tiny, fuzzy head poking out.
The white pup made a thin sound against his palm.
Then it pressed its head into the gap between his fingers and went still.
Aven crouched and lifted the grey one.
It was even lighter than the white.
So light it barely felt alive, more like a crumpled scrap of grey paper.
Its eyes were still shut, but its nose found Aven’s palm and nuzzled against it.
Damp.
Cool.
Then it sneezed.
Aven looked down at it.
“I’ll give you a name.” He thought for a moment, voice dropped low enough that only he could hear.
“Ash.”
He stood and tucked Ash into the inner pocket of his coat, fur-lined, meant for maps and letters, now a direwolf den.
Ash burrowed in, found a position it liked, and went quiet.
Bran came over holding his Summer, craning his head back to look at the bulge on Aven’s chest.
“What’s yours called?”
“Ash.”
“Why Ash?”
“Because it’s ashy grey.”
Bran considered this.
Decided it was perfectly reasonable.
Nodded.
Robb walked over with his own pup cradled in his arms, the darkest coat, the biggest frame.
He’d named it Grey Wind.
He looked at the grey furball on Aven’s chest, then at the white one in Jon’s arms, and the corner of his mouth pulled up.
“Theon was right,” he said, laughter in his voice.
“You two really are the latecomers.”
Jon glanced at Robb.
There was nothing sharp in Robb’s smile, none of Theon’s barbs-wrapped-in-jokes.
Easy.
The kind that said we’re all brothers here without needing to say it.
The corner of Jon’s mouth moved.
And for the first time that day, he smiled.
A real one.
Eddard stood at the front, watching the children.
Then he turned and mounted his horse.
“Let’s go.” His voice carried from ahead, lighter than even he seemed to realize.
“We need to be back at Winterfell before dark.”
The column stirred back to life.
Hoofbeats, footsteps, the clank of steel, it all came together again, rising through the silence of the Wolfswood.
When Aven lifted Bran up onto the horse, Ash flipped over in Bran’s arms, four paws pointing at the sky, soft pink belly on full display.
Bran ended up with Summer in one arm and Ash in the other, the two pups pressed together against his chest, two tangled balls of grey and white.
“Don’t fall off,” Aven said, pulling Bran’s cloak around them both.
“I won’t.” Bran looked down at the pups in his arms, voice hushed, like he was afraid of waking them.
The party moved out.
Hooves on muddy snow, a steady rhythmic clop.
Aven led his horse and walked near the middle of the column.
His eyes rested on Eddard’s back.
His mind was somewhere else entirely.
Something’s wrong.
A picture.
Clear and still.
Snow.
A dead mother direwolf lying on it.
Six pups huddled under her cold belly.
But that mother was alive now.
And there were seven pups.
His fingers tightened around the reins.
Not on purpose, his hand did it before his mind caught up, like his body had clocked the wrongness first.
He looked down at his own knuckles.
White.
Sharp.
Like he was gripping a rope about to snap.
Aven pulled in a long breath.
The cold air of the Wolfswood flooded his lungs, sharp enough to ache.
It didn’t clear anything.
The plot had changed.
“Aven?”
Bran’s voice from above him, edged with worry.
“Your hand is freezing.”
Aven looked down.
Bran’s hand was resting on the back of his, small, warm, like a roll of bread fresh out of the oven.
He had no idea when Bran had reached out.
“It’s nothing.” His voice came out rougher than he meant it to.
“Just the wind.”
Bran didn’t push.
But he didn’t take his hand back either.
He left it there, his warmth seeping through slowly, steadily, a thin thread pulling Aven up from somewhere he hadn’t realized he’d sunk.
“Hey.”
A hand landed on his shoulder.
Aven came back to himself and found Robb on horseback, leaning down, face close, eyes bright with amusement.
“Where’d you go?
You look like your soul left without you.”
“Nowhere.” Aven let go of the reins and noticed his palm was soaked.
He wiped it on his trousers.
“Nowhere?” Robb’s horse fell into step beside him.
Robb tilted his head.
“I said ‘teach me archery when we get back’ three times.
You didn’t answer once.”
“What?”
“There it is!” Robb slapped his thigh and twisted around.
“Jon!
Theon!
You heard that?
He said what!
He wasn’t listening to a single word!”
Theon’s laugh came from the back of the column, sharp and carrying.
Jon rode at the rear, the white pup tucked against his chest, the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth.
“I said —” Robb drew it out, one word at a time, “When.
Get.
Back.
Teach.
Me.
Archery.”
Aven looked at him.
Robb’s eyes were very bright.
Grey-blue, the same color as the sky over Winterfell in winter.
“Robb.” Aven’s expression went serious.
“Yeah?”
“Archery is about talent.”
Robb blinked.
“And you,” Aven looked him over, slow, top to bottom.
The corner of his mouth crept up.
“You’re a foot soldier.
The charge-straight-into-the-fray kind.
Something precise like archery?
That’s not for you.”
Robb stared at him for one full second.
Then his face moved through its stages: anticipation to disbelief.
Disbelief to outrage.
Outrage to the grin of a man who has made a decision.
He didn’t say a word.
He reached over and slapped Aven’s horse across the rump.
CRACK!
The horse, a young chestnut stallion already bored with the slow march, launched like it had been stuck with a blade.
Front hooves left the ground.
A whinny tore out of it.
Then the whole animal snapped forward like a released spring.
“Robb — you animal!”
Aven’s voice detonated in the wind, the end of it dragged into a crooked streak by the speed.
One hand locked onto the reins.
The other shot out instinctively to wrap around Bran.
Bran’s shriek came back at him from his own arms, high and thin, like a kite ripped loose,
“Ahhhhhhh —”
But he didn’t let go.
Summer and Ash were crushed together in Bran’s grip, both pups erupting into frantic whimpers, paws clawing at his cloak, driving themselves as deep into his arms as they could get.
The horse tore down the Wolfswood path.
Hooves threw up mud and snow in equal measure, spattering everyone behind.
Robb hauled his own horse to a stop, watched Aven and Bran shrink into the distance, and finally lost the battle with himself.
“Hahahaha —”
His laughter rang through the trees, reckless, uninhibited, the particular joy of being fifteen and not sorry about a single thing.
Jon rode up and drew level with him, watching the small dark shape ahead, and stopped trying to keep his face straight.
“You went too far,” Jon said.
His eyes said otherwise.
“He earned it.” Robb dragged a hand across his face, wiping away tears.
“Said I could only be a foot soldier?
I’ll show him what a foot soldier looks like.”
Theon caught up from behind, expression caught somewhere between spite and envy.
He glanced at Robb.
Looked out at the speck ahead that was almost gone now.
His lips moved, like he had something to say, and then he just shook his head.
Wind poured into the ears, cold as a knife.
Bran’s laughter drifted back from the front, broken up by the wind, but still going.
Aven didn’t pull the horse up.
He steadied himself and let it run.
He needed the wind.
Needed it to break apart the knot in his head, needed the speed to leave the laughter and voices behind where they couldn’t reach him.
Bran yelled something in his arms that he couldn’t hear, so he just tightened his hold.
The Wolfswood streamed past.
Tree trunks swept by on either side like grey pillars.
The wind hit his face carrying pine needles and wet earth, and something else underneath, something farther away, something without a name.
The horse ran.
The wind cut.
Bran screamed.
And something in Aven’s chest cracked open and cleared.
Even if the plot had changed, he still knew exactly who these people were.
Eddard would not be dragged before the city and judged in King’s Landing.
Robb would not put his own father Rickard to the sword during the War of the Five Kings.
The Red Wedding would not happen.
➤ Next: Night Talk — Face to Face
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