Mother Wolf

It had to be past midnight and Ned had long since retired to his own chambers. Even as hours had passed he had found himself unable to find peace enough to fall asleep. He had already gone to see Catelyn earlier in the day, but still he had decided to go see her again. That was better than tossing and turning in his own bed until dawn came. The least he could do was sit at her side while she remained in her strange state of unconsciousness.

One evening, not long after darkness had descended upon Winterfell, a woman had appeared within the castle without ever having passed through the gates. She had looked highly ordinary in her simple woollen dress, though when she had refused to tell anyone how she had managed to enter Winterfell she had been detained by guards. Ned had been told that within seconds she had torn herself free and escaped. Catelyn, unaware of the whole ordeal, had come upon the woman by accident as she had entered her sept. She had been attacked and the woman had bit into her hand. Then the woman had disappeared out of the sept and there had been no further sightings of her.

Not even an hour after that Catelyn had started feeling ill and had taken to bed. She had fallen asleep with a fever and had since not woken up. The fever had passed, leaving her cold in its wake, though she remained unconscious.

None of the attempts at waking her had brought so much as a small response from her. After the last attempt Luwin had gently began the conversation about how it was possible she would never wake up. Ned had only heard half of it as the rest had been drowned out by a humming noise. He did not want to know. He could not stand to know. And Catelyn’s heart had dutifully kept beating in her chest.

Ned opened the door to her bedchamber, expecting to see her just as he had seen her before. On her back with her arms at her sides, pale and unmoving in her bed. Her hair brushed out over her pillow because Sansa refused to let her mother’s hair get matted. Though she was not there. The bed was empty.

Catelyn was instead in the middle of the room and with her was another person. A man. A man whose neck she had her arms wound around and who in turn had his arms loosely around her waist. They were so closely entangled it was hard to say where Catelyn ended and the man began and something within Ned snapped in half.

He moved forward without thinking, mind clouded with rage over what he had in front of him. How dared anyone put their hands on Catelyn? How dared that man take her from her sick bed to use her so?

His hands found the man’s tunic and without considering any further he tore him away from Catelyn. Only to then immediately step backwards when the man gave a strange, gurgling sound and promptly collapsed to the floor.

There was something entrancing about the way blood glistened in the light of fire. Deep red catching the warm light, glimmering like rubies. It took a moment before Ned grasped it was blood he was looking at. It was such a bizarre sight he could not immediately comprehend it.

It covered the front of her otherwise pristinely white nightgown and there was a pool of it at her feet, growing larger by the second as the man that had fallen to the floor bled out. It was on her face. Around her mouth.

The blood was coming from a large wound in his neck. A gaping hole, as if an animal had torn into him and taken a mouthful of flesh with it. He was surely already dead. He did not seem to breathe.

Ned did breathe. He had to force himself to do it as it felt as if a giant hand had taken hold of his chest and was squeezing the air from his lungs. A cold terror had seized him. Frozen him to where he stood.

Catelyn spat out that missing part of the man’s neck and the flesh hit the stone floor with a wet splatter. When she grimaced she revealed teeth stained red and more blood ran down her chin.

“I would have let go willingly” she said hoarsely. “There was no need to tear him right out of my mouth.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind Ned knew there had been a need. He had come upon his wife wrapped in the arms of a man he could not name. Before thinking another thought he had torn that man away from her. Though the man had collapsed between them and Ned had been made aware of the blood.

He could not speak. He could not tell her what he had believed himself to have stumbled upon. His mouth was so dry. When he had forcibly parted her from her prey her teeth had been so deep in him that part of the man had remained with her. She had been eating him.

”No” Catelyn told him. ”No, I was not eating him. I do not eat. I need only the blood.”

Not a word had passed between his lips and yet she had corrected his thought. Catelyn could see into his mind.

Against his will Ned felt his body convulse with shivers. There was no reason to the gruesome scene before his eyes. His wife, the mother of his children, had killed a man to drink his blood.

Catelyn turned her head down and looked at the dead body at her feet. She raised a hand to rub her face, smearing more blood over her pale skin.

“Mother have mercy” she mumbled. “If the gods will still hear me.”

When he had been but a boy Nan had told Ned stories of creatures who sought human blood. They appeared human. Could walk among humans and not be discovered. Though they were evil. They had no care for any life, they wanted only the blood to keep themselves alive. Merciless things not guided by any gods, but driven by their own hunger for death. It had frightened him as a child, though as soon as he had been old enough to realise Nan’s stories were not true he had stopped believing in those creatures.

Again Catelyn looked up at him, visibly distraught. For a moment she appeared utterly helpless. As if she was not at all the cause of what had taken place.

“I… I do not know how to explain to you. I barely understand it myself.”

There was agony in her words.

”You killed this man” Ned finally managed to say and his voice could barely carry him through those words.

She had killed a man to drink his blood. His wife had killed a man to drink his blood. If that even was his wife. He knew Catelyn. That was not Catelyn.

“I am!” she exclaimed, taking a step towards him.

Ned instinctively took a step backwards. He stumbled on his own feet, but managed to keep upright. Never taking his eyes off her. He did not know what she could do.

To his great relief Catelyn did not follow him. She stayed where she was, raising her hands and showing her palms.

“I am Catelyn” she said, softer that time. “I became this when I fell ill.”

“You came down with a fever” Ned protested feebly.

“Ten nights ago I awoke in the darkest hour of the night and I was this” Catelyn said, gesturing to herself. “I opened my eyes and felt a hunger unlike anything I have ever felt before. I desired only blood, it was as if I simply knew nothing else would sate me.”

Though no one had died. There had been no deaths within Winterfell’s walls in the weeks it had been since Catelyn had been attacked.

“I have been feeding on animals. Dogs, mostly.”

Farlen had been so troubled by that one of his hounds was biting the others to death. He had not been able to figure out which hound it was as they all seemed to get along nicely in his presence, but then he would come to the kennels in the morning and find another one dead.

”You were asleep.”

He had sat at her side each and every day, praying for that she would wake up. Long hours had been spent staring at her lifeless body. She had looked as if diseased, though her heart had been beating.

Catelyn smiled, though the smile never reached her eyes. In truth it looked more like a pained grimace than a smile.

“During the days. During the dark hours I can roam freely.”

“I have sat with you after sundown. I did so last night.”

She had been in her bed.

“I was awake then. I did not know how to tell you all I have had to tell you now so I kept my eyes closed. Perhaps I should have revealed myself because your presence meant I could not feed and this evening I woke up starving.”

The realisation was nauseating. In sitting by his wife’s bedside he had created in her a hunger so fierce she had killed a man to drink his blood.

The room was slowly spinning around him. His wife’s bedchamber. What had been his wife’s bedchamber. Catelyn had always had a vicious streak to her, though it was not possible for her to have done such a thing.

“I meant to find an animal” she said in a low voice. “I did not set out to kill anyone this night.”

“Yet this man is dead.”

He would have been convinced it was one of his many bad dreams had it not been for the feeling of horror that was eating at his heart. That could not be anything but real.

“I just happened upon him. His heartbeat was so loud I could not hear anything else and I could feel the heat of the blood moving within him. I… I lost my mind. I could not control myself.”

That man’s death had been the prize to sate her hunger.

There was no relief to be found in her own devastation at her actions. How long before she hungered once more? How long before she again lost control? A predator on the hunt within the walls of Winterfell, stalking through the castle under the cover of darkness.

Ned raised his hands to his face, pressed them against his eyes until he could see nothing but stars. What was he to do? What was there to do? Was Catelyn forever befouled by that woman’s curse? Would she always be a monster?

Had it not been for that he was unable to speak he would have cried out when Catelyn took hold of his wrists with hands that were cold as ice and forcibly lowered them, leaving him little choice but to look into her feverish eyes. Blue eyes that burned. They were brighter than they had ever been, the blue so intense it was dizzying to meet her gaze. It did nothing to ease his lightheadedness.

“What will you do with me, Ned?”

His heart was beating so hard it felt as if though it was trying to escape his ribcage and Ned could barely breathe. He would choke on nothing but air.

Catelyn held him with a strength unlike anything he had felt before, his skin would bruise once she let him go. If she ever let him go.

”You should be afraid” she continued when he said nothing. ”Anyone with any sense would be afraid. The dead man was afraid.”

Had he ever seen her so frantic?

”What do you fear most? That you will end up dead on the floor or that you will end up like me?”

He could not think. He could not think. Every resemblance of a thought tangled up in another and became nothing. He was trembling and had broken out in sweats despite that he felt colder than he had ever been.

Slowly Catelyn leaned closer and against himself Ned bent his head down to listen to what she had to say. He was no longer in control of his own movements.

”I worry I will hurt you” she said softly. ”I worry I will hurt the children.”

Her breath was hot against the side of his face as she whispered, though the smell of blood clung to her. Cold death.

”You are hurting me now” Ned said and his voice did not sound like his own.

He winced and closed his eyes as she pressed a kiss to the side of his face. Ever so gently, but he felt the coldness of her lips and the stickiness of the blood covering her mouth.

”Forgive me.”

Then she let go of his wrists and instead laid her arms around his waist, tucking her head in under his chin as she had a thousand times before. Again she was gentle and careful in her movements. It felt almost as it had before, the gesture was so familiar. Had Ned not still been shivering it would have been possible to close his eyes and pretend it was as it was supposed to be.

”I did not want this” Catelyn mumbled. ”I do not want this.”

Ned was unable to raise his arms to return her embrace, though that did not seem to matter to her. She stubbornly held him. She was frightened, too.

”I do not… I do not know what to do” he confessed.

His gaze was drawn to the dead man on the floor. His eyes were open and even in death his panic remained. Ned half expected him to open his mouth and shriek.

”What is there to do?” Catelyn sighed. ”Nothing can save me.”

People would hunt her with torches and pitchforks if it become known what had become of Lady Stark. It was that or she would be confined to secretly stalking in the night forever while everyone believed her to be cursed with eternal slumber. Because even if she could control her hunt for blood she would never again be what she had been.

”And when I kill again? When the hunger becomes overwhelming and I cannot stop myself?”

What was happening did not grow any less unnerving because she kept prying into his mind.

”Forgive me” she said again.

The room was silent with the exception of the fire crackling in the hearth and Ned’s ragged breathing. Catelyn did not make a sound and remained perfectly still. As if it was a statue that held Ned close to itself rather than a human. Though was she a human? Or was she something else?

”There are many stories of bloodsuckers” Catelyn said. ”Yours say the bloodsuckers are dead things that pretend to be alive.”

”Your heart beats.”

He had felt it. Several times he had let his hand rest on her chest just so that he could feel the thrumming of her heart against his fingers. It had remained steady.


”Though I am cold and forced to feed on the life of others.”

His wife was dead. His Catelyn was dead.

”Indeed I fear I am” she whispered.

She turned her head up to look at him once more.

“Something must be done” she told him.

”What would you have me do?”

He had not ever believed he would have to think about that. It had not occurred to him a night would come when he would happen upon his wife drinking a man’s blood.

Catelyn reached up and ghosted her bloodied fingers over his cheek, her touch so light he could barely feel it. It was a cold whisper against his skin.

”Ten nights of loneliness has allowed me a lot of time to think” she said. ”And I do not believe you can let me live.”

No. Because she was a danger to all that lived within Winterfell’s walls. He had a duty to protect them.

He looked at her with blood smeared across her face, knowing the dead body just by them was there because she had killed a man, and knew he would not be able to kill his wife. She was not as she had been, she had been changed into something monstrous, though he could not kill her. Her hands on him frightened him and yet he would not be able to do it.

”My hair free, covering my face as I kneel and you hold the sword above my neck” she mused.

Those words from her lips cut deeper into his heart than any knife could ever dream of doing.

Ned shook his head.

”I cannot. I will not.”

”You would not kill me, I am already dead. All I ask is that you end my misery.”

”You ask for too much” he choked out.

”If not I would have to leave Winterfell and I could not stand to do so. I cannot walk away from my children.”

She would rather die than leave them. What would Ned have done had it been him?

”Leave” he told her. ”Leave before anyone else discovers you.”

For a brief moment he wondered what it would mean if she left. Though there had to be more like her. The woman had been like her. She would not be the only one moving through the country.

She tilted her head slightly and Ned saw the moment her face fell.

”What would I do?” she asked. ”I do not care for a life where all I hold dear has been taken from me.”

“I will not kill the mother of my children.”

The mother of his children and his lady love. She had been at his side ever since he returned to Winterfell after the rebellion.

Catelyn’s eyebrows furrowed.

“No one would have to know” she insisted.

Perhaps that hurt most of all. That she believed his refusal was due to his fear over what others would think.

Catelyn stepped away from him, her face still deeply troubled. Slowly she went over to the dead man and as she looked down at him she spoke to Ned once more.

”For the first time I wish you cared less for me, my lord” she sighed. ”Could you not have barged into the room to this see this and… merely killed me?”

”No” was all Ned could say.

He could not have because he did care for her. He cared for her so deeply he did not know what to do with all of his affection.

”Damn you, Eddard Stark” Catelyn muttered.

Then she knelt by the body on the floor and mournfully touched the pool of blood, looking at her bloodstained hands.

She did not look so monstrous then. Not as she had when she had taken hold of his wrists. He could not see the intensity of her eyes or feel the coldness of her skin. She was a woman in a nightgown covered in blood that sat hunched over on the floor.

”Where would I go?”

”Wherever you wanted to go.”

Catelyn had never been a fool, she had always had a good head on her shoulders and Ned had often trusted in her judgement. She would not be lost. She would only be lost to them. The children would never know what had become of their mother.

She gave a strangled noise and again Ned shivered.

”There is nowhere I want to go. Nowhere. Yet I cannot remain here and you stubbornly refuse to help me.”

”I refuse to—”

”I am suffering! Ten nights of this have been more than anyone should have to endure!”

The fire had returned to her eyes, though they were also shining with tears. He could not hep but notice even her tears were tinted red.

For the first time since all he knew had unravelled before his eyes Ned approached his wife. He slowly crossed the distance between them and knelt next to her, laying an arm around her and pulling her to him.

She did not hesitate before yielding to his embrace, Ned felt her almost melt against him and soon her body was shaking with sobs. Ned kissed her hair and her face as she wept. There was no comfort in the gesture, though he did it all the same. It was all he knew how to do.

When she turned her face up he kissed her bloodied mouth. Her kiss was tinged with the distinct taste of metal, though underneath that was Catelyn.

”Stay another few nights” Ned mumbled when they parted. ”We will figure something out.”

He could not stand the thought of never seeing her again, though that was better than her dying. How would he live with her dead?

”Will we?” Catelyn questioned, her voice thick with tears.

”We must.”

He did not see a way as they sat there on the floor, surrounded by more human blood than Ned had seen in a long time. It was still so hard to think, his heart remained beating furiously in his chest. They needed just a little more time.

”You’re a fool for this” Catelyn sighed. ”Blinded by affection.”

Ned did not wait for an answer after he had knocked, merely came inside.

“Good evening, my love” he said with a smile.

He was in a particularly good mood that night. Catelyn had noticed that when they took their supper, and it seemed that good mood remained with him. She wished she could have shared his high spirits.

“Good evening.”

Catelyn turned in the tub, put her arms up on the edge of it and let her chin rest on top of them. The air was cold on her skin compared to the warm water and a shiver went through her body, though she forced herself to remain that way.

“Have you no one attending to you?”

“No, I wished to be alone.”

At times she much preferred to see to it herself rather than have someone else’s presence in the room. Even as she could ask them to work in silence it was not enough. No, the fire crackling in the hearth had been the only companion she needed.

“Should I leave?” Ned asked. “I would not want to intrude if you desire solitude.”

“I very much desire your presence” Catelyn assured him. “Please do stay, my lord.”

Often it was different in regards to Ned. At times she wanted no one to so much as look her way but found that she did not mind having Ned by her. He knew when to merely share a room in silence.

Ned came over to the tub and bent down to take one of her hands. Gently he brought it to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

”What weighs on you?” he asked, his voice as soft as his kiss.

She had to sigh. There was no answer to that question, there was nothing that should have weighed on her. Some days were more difficult than others but that day had not been among them. She had even been allowed a walk in the sun.

”Nothing, in truth” she admitted. ”There is merely something in my chest.”

She had woken up to it. A feeling close to dread coiling within in her like a snake.

Ned gave her a long look before again kissing her hand.

“It will pass” he then said.

Catelyn was aware of that he was no stranger to sudden melancholy. How many times had she not held him through the night so that he could sleep?

”I shall hope so.”

What more was there to say?

When she fell silence he knelt next to her, but he did not let go of her hand. No, he took it in the both of his and held on to her.

It was grounding. His warm hands, rough with callousing from years of handling swords. One of his thumbs gently moving over her skin in a soothing rhythm. Not once did he look away, his gentle gentle gaze remained on her face

It did not entirely eradicate the feeling within her, but it somewhat lessened it. Made it less sharp around the edges.

”Is it not uncomfortable to sit like that?” Catelyn asked.

Ned tilted his head to the side a little.

”Not very.”

”Though a little?”

A wry smile appeared on his lips.

”Aye. A little.”

Catelyn reached up with her free hand and cupped the side of his face, hoping he did not mind his face getting a little wet.

”Would you like to join me?”

”If you will have me.”

”You know I will have you, Ned.”

He turned his head to the side and kissed her palm before standing up. From how he walked she could see it had been more difficult on his knees to sit like that than he had wished to admit. He was growing older.

As he undressed Catelyn sat back and closed her eyes. She was tired the way she would usually only be after a day that had been difficulty upon difficulty with no end. Tired to her bones.

”Gods, must you keep your bathwater so hot?” was the first thing Ned said when he had settled into the tub with her.

”I find this much more comfortable than your ice baths” Catelyn responded as she leaned back against his chest.

His arms around her were even better than him holding her hand.

”It cannot possibly be good for you.”

”You are free to discuss the matter with Maester Luwin, my lord.”

Then he merely grumbled something into her hair and so that was resolved. Often their small evening disagreements ended in a similar fashion.

What question came from hims when he reemerged surprised her.

“What say you we go for a ride on the morrow?”

“Only you and me?”

When had that last happened?

”Only you and me” he confirmed.

With how pleasant the weather had been the past days it sounded very appealing. Riding out from Winterfell with Ned merely because it was enjoyable.

Catelyn leaned away from him slightly so that she could turn and look at him.

”I say I would like that very much” she smiled. “We could take our midday meal out on the moors, return only in time for supper.”

“That we could do.”

When they kissed they lingered like that and for the first time Catelyn forgot the dread. There was a calm between them that was impossible not to yield to.