#roonsa

"Come back to me, little wife.”

His words were gasoline dripped on to fire; her fingers curling in, her nails cutting into the flesh of her palms. Sansa said nothing as he cradled her jaw and tipped her head up to look at him. His fingers left bruises behind on her skin, ones that he would soothe with his lips and his tongue if she asked him to.

If she never asked him to.

“Please,” she whispered, knowing that he would have little mercy for her. Her husband was made from sharp edges and knowing touches, as he drove her into heat. More than once, he’d stripped her down and swathed her in soft furs, before guiding her to rest on her hands and her knees. He would sink into her warm heat until her face was buried in furs and slick dripped down her thighs, allowing him to thrust further inside her.

“You’re a greedy, little girl, aren’t you?”

He never fucked her without making her scream, as he dragged his knuckles against her clit and stuffed his fingers inside. It was always too much as he thrust his bulging cock and his fingers inside her, making her feel as if she would break –

“Please R-Roose, please!”

He would coo at her screams, his knot inflating inside her.

He treated her gently then as if she were a kit that he could scruff and hold against his chest for hours with his knot firmly inside her. He would chase her tears away with his tongue and nuzzle her cheek against his, something that no one would ever see. If she closed her eyes and listened to him purr, she could pretend that he loved her.

Cherished her.

She wanted to laugh at the idea but buried her amusement deep inside her melancholy. It kept her safe and sound, for she could never be happy with her husband.

He would never love her; he couldn’t love her.

Roose was Death incarnate.

The Foundation was a haven once, where the full moon hung overhead, and villagers slept quietly in their beds. Everything changed when Death came, with a curse in his wake.

The villagers became infinitely more, as they shed their skin and became grotesque and hulking beasts.

They were creatures that followed Death and Death alone, for he was the only one that could make them heel. It took only a look –

A sharp word –

And they came to heel.

Sansa recognized the constant fear that swept through the village, as thick and rancid as the black pudding that her younger sister, Arya, once made on a dare. The pudding had bubbled and burst on her tongue, and neither she nor Arya could swallow it without pinching their noses closed.

After that, Arya had dumped the rest down the sink, and they ate handfuls of trail mix to chase away the taste. They’d kept it a secret from their mother, who never approved of such childishness.

Only, Arya wasn’t there, and Sansa could hide nothing from Roose.

No one could.

Every one of the villagers had their uses, and those that faltered were placed on display. The stocks were marked with stains of human excrement and the air was heavy with their fearful cries. The ones who were lucky were avoided, with none passing by them. The less lucky were pelted with sticks and stones and rebuke.

The least lucky weren’t sent to the stocks at all.

They were blinded and bound before being led to the underground cells where the forgotten roamed. They wanted everything and nothing, as they stumbled in the dark; their eyes gouged, and hands left bound.

Sansa heard their mournful wails when Roose held court when she perched on his knee, and he fingered her before his council. They were men and women without faces, they were beyond names. They said nothing as she gasped and writhed in his hold, the silence filled with the sound of his fingers delving in and out of her slick cunt. She would stain his furred jerkin with her cum, as she fell apart in his arms, and still –

Still, the council said not a word.

“Good girl.”

He smiled against her fire-kissed hair, as he sent her higher. The keening noises that slipped from her lips were more animal than human as if her bones snapped and twisted beneath the full moon too.

She could do nothing as his arm curled against her waist and he held her in place; her legs bared and cunt gushing. She was nothing to him, and everything to them if her womb could nurture Death’s seed.

For they saw Roose as a god incarnate, one they were bound to worship through fear, and hate.

Sansa couldn’t lie.

She wouldn’t.

Fear was thick and bitter on her tongue, the same as the cold syrup her mother made her take.

He would plunge his fingers in and out of her without care, while his thoughts and commands rarely faltered. When her slick soaked his knee, and she chanted “please – “into his ear. He always made her beg before he unbuckled his jerkin, and freed his throbbing cock –

She would do anything to welcome him inside her.

“Beg me, little one.”

And she would, by the gods, she would as he slipped his fingers inside her mouth and made her suckle them. She’d whisper a choked plea while licking his fingers, and drool dripped on to her chin. The mark on her neck burned when he teased her, the mark one of his making.

It was a mating gland, one that he’d claimed as his own.

(She could never burn his touch away.)

He told her later of brides that came before, who were mated by the village head yet shared among the council. They were the mother, the omega, incarnate; their very purpose entwined with the litters they bore. The families that made up the village were bound together by blood, making one line that nothing could separate.

“I find that I have no wish to share you,” Roose admitted, caressing her cheek with his hand. His fingers were calloused and rough in contrast to the softness of her skin. “Does that relieve you, Sansa?” his tone was teasing and cruel, and still her cheeks warmed.

Sansa couldn’t bring herself to ask why.

He was everything that she needed and everything that she despised. He wasn’t gentle or kind and had little sense of honor, cutting men down in their beds and dragging women from their homes.

If they turned rabid, as his creatures sometimes did, he would kill them.

His hands were stained red, and nothing would cleanse them.

“How could you stand beside him, Sansa?”

She heard her father’s voice carried through the winter wind, over, and over again.

“I can’t trust you.”

“No,” his laugh was as warm and as pretty as the sun. “No one can, Sansa. They would be a fool to.”

Her lips ached when he pried her mouth open and looked at her blunt teeth and clicked his tongue at the sight of her bleeding gums.

He covered her mouth with this own, slipping his tongue around her own. His hands came to cover her own, his fingers tangling around hers as he poured his venom inside her.

It wouldn’t hurt her, no –

It healed her.

The buzzing in her ears increased, and she tried to duck her head away. It never worked, no; she was used to his ‘treatments’ that kept her whole, and beside him. They found she couldn’t go more than a few days without his venom pooling through her veins, keeping her steady, and wholly bound to him.

Her mate.

'Mine,' her traitorous heart said, and it wasn't wrong. They were bound by a ribbon that could never be unwound, no matter how far apart the ends were pulled.

“You were born for me,” Roose murmured, sinking his teeth into her earlobe. She hesitated when he teased, his quiet humor as cutting as the howling rain that battered against their cabin door. “Will you live for me, too?”

He knew the thoughts that rolled through her mind, his laughter taunting and teasing and unbearably cruel as he took them away from her. She wanted what she would never have, as he held her thin wrist in his hand and held his thumb against her pulse. Her heart beat without pause; the blood rushing through her ears whispering that she would live, regardless of how much she wanted to die.

He would keep her healthy and whole, for as long as the full moon hung in the sky.

(The sun never came to look down on the Foundation since Death came...)

The only light Sansa knew came in the form of Jeyne, sweet and precocious Jeyne, who was Roose's daughter from his first marriage. The young child rarely left her side, and Sansa dreamed of escaping with her if only to spare Jeyne from what awaited her when she came of age.

She would never experience trips to the mall, with the taste of bubblegum on her tongue and clip-on earrings dangling from her ears. clinging to her ears. No, Jeyne would never know what it was like to be normal –

To be childish and free.

Oh Jeyne.

Sansa would see her swathed in white, with rosy, pink on her cheeks and a thin rope of gold wound about her neck. Her husband would own her and would expect a song from his newest pet.  

A son –

Sansa wanted to laugh, as much as she wanted to cry.

Groomed within the walls of the Foundation, a woman would never be safe until she delivered her husband with a red-faced and squalling son, that survived childhood. Only then would they be safe, and their place secured. If they miscarried, or, worse, gave birth to a stillborn child or a squalling and ugly little girl, they were damned.

(Or, if their husband’s seed never took at all...)

Sansa didn't like when her thoughts turned that way, slipping and sliding through foul and bitter tar. She wanted to press her hands against her ears and bite her tongue like a young kit if only to make to send her ugly thoughts away.

Then she could play with her mate, nipping and kissing at the curve of his jaw and the upturn of his lips. When he buried his fingers in her hair and tugged, she thrilled at the pain.

“Fuck the gods above– “

She wanted to laugh when he lost control, if only because of how rare it was. He moved with purpose; his muscles taut and his teeth sinking into mating gland when he filled her with his seed, before cupping her glistening folds with his palm after. He wouldn’t let his seed trickle from her cunt, no, he wanted to keep it buried safe inside her.

“You were made for me, Sansa,” Roose told her, the first time he’d wrapped her in furs before covering her small frame with his larger one. He sank inside her as if she were his home, and fucked her until her tears dried on her cheeks and her hands wound through his short, dark hair, “You were made for this.”

His touch kept her tethered there –

Hidden from the sun.

Her toes curled inside the thick, woolen socks she’d knitted, though the cold still seeped deep into her bones. Her mate was the only one who could keep her warm, his hands on his shoulders and his brow pressed against hers as potent as any fire.

Roose’s first wife was a child of summer, one who embodied fecundity and gluttony.

She had passed three seasons before, leaving crumbs of herself behind.

Sansa had taken her dresses apart, reusing the vast amount of material apart for clothing of her own. Roose said nothing of the dresses she made for his only daughter; a shy, timid girl who never failed to cling to Sansa’s skirts. She never spoke a word, but hummed in tandem when Sansa sang the songs of her childhood, though their meanings were lost upon her.

“I won’t leave you, Jeyne,” Sansa promised, the first time the motherless girl placed her chubby hands in her own and whispered her name. She was a shy child, a sweet child with a thin little face and lost eyes, and Sansa couldn’t bear to send her away. Instead, Sansa kept her near; feeding and bathing her in the springs that ran near the village, as if she were her child in truth. She made a fabric doll for her too, with rags stuffed inside, and two heart-shaped buttons for the eyes.

Though Jeyne begged to stay underfoot, Sansa had to leave her to another at night. Roose rarely welcomed his daughter’s presence and allowed none but himself and his mate to stay in their home.

No, Sansa thought. It wasn’t her home – it never could be.

She missed her home where her siblings were ever underfoot, laughing and dropping things while their mother yelled, and their father hid away. It was a mess of noise and chaos, and Sansa found her memories slipping through her fingers, no matter how hard she tried to grasp them.

It was Roose that she knew, and Roose that she remembered as if she had never known any other life before him.

Only that wasn’t true, no, no, no, and his home would never be hers.

It was saturated with the scent of him, from the furs that covered the pallet bed, to the larder that overflowed in the cellar below. Sansa would never admit how the notes of cardamon, leather, and ash made her toes curl or her chest ache.

His home was made from oak and stone, with a high ceiling, rounded doorways, and crudely made windows overlooking the village. Villagers tended to the wild garden that stretched around the hut, defined by masses of medicinal herbs, rooted vegetables, and leafy greens that kept without end. Summer passed with winter on its heels, and still, the gardens bloomed with life.

Everything and everyone knew to follow Death and his will.

Sansa too knew her place.

Her expected role.

Her heart fluttered and her cheeks tinged pink as she pressed her thighs together. She promised Roose that she would obey him – please him – in any way that he wished, but she couldn’t make her body follow suit.

“Provide me with an heir, and you will always have a place here, little one.”

Sansa prayed to the gods of her childhood every time they coupled, and Roose slid a pillow beneath her hips to keep his seed inside of her. It was the same silk pillow that countless brides before her used, to keep their mate’s precious offering inside them.

Without spilling a drop.

He took her relentlessly, forcing her to her peak over and over again, even when she begged for him not to. There was no escaping his knowing touch, and when she saw his cold smile, she knew that he read her thoughts.

She couldn’t get away from him.

She wouldn’t.

Not when he drowned her in his scent and bathed her with his tongue, drowning every part of her in his saliva. He would lick her cunt until she screamed, and he swallowed mouthfuls of her cream. She couldn't make him stop, nothing could make him stop until she was weak and wet and whimpering that she couldn't come again.

Then he would turn her over and trace her puckered hole, before delving his fingers and his tongue inside. There was no part of her that she could hide from him, and nausea rose in her throat as she felt him see her brothers and her sister that she missed without end.  

And the half-wild dog that she loved, who responded to her name and had eyes filled with love. She was gentle and sweet and embodied everything that Sansa wanted to remember.

“Lady,” she whispered, “Her name was Lady and I loved her more than I ever loved anyone or anything.”

There were countless other things that she wanted to remember, even as she knew there were things already lost to her. The world had changed overnight, and she too had to change with it. Her family was gone, and she would never have a pet like Lady again.

Nor would she sink her teeth into apples covered with sticky sweet caramel or re-read a battered copy of her favorite romance novel and imagine herself in the heroine’s place.

After Death came, none of the Foundation had experienced life outside its walls. They were kept in place by Roose and made to follow in his wake, without indulging in rape or murder or a thousand other things.

Moving screens and books among them.

“I hope you’ll be happy here, Mother,” Ramsay crooned, as he held her hand in his and brushed a kiss across her skinned knuckles. Knowing eyes met hers, and he smiled, as pretty and sweet as spun sugar melting on her tongue.

Ramsay was Roose’s eldest bastard, with dreams that exceeded far past what his father would ever imagine. Sansa wanted nothing to do with him, nor the few Foundation members that followed in his wake. They were reckless and cruel, shrieking with laughter as they set fields blaze, and watched as crops turned to ash.

Ramsay had Death in his veins and could circumvent Roose's influence to a certain extent. He had sharp teeth and dark eyes that wanted everything that he saw, and everyone that he encountered without care.

He wanted the world, and his companions emulated his example.

They treated betas and omegas the same, leaving countless bruised and broken.

Broken –

Sansa knew that Ramsay imagined her broken too.  

He watched and he waited, and he wanted, and she hated him when he came close to Jeyne. He drew his half-sister close, braiding trinkets into her hair and brushing chaste kisses across her temple. He made her laugh as much as he longed to make her cry; his dreams filled with tears slipping down her cheeks, as he tore her fabric doll apart –

As Sansa, his pretty stepmother Sansa watched.

(Ramsay liked to imagine Sansa as his mate, where she would cling to his side and play his games, with her laughter ringing in his ears and her small hand tucked in his...)

He was reckless and unpredictable whereas his father was calculating and precise. He was a wildfire that leaped where it wanted and crackled with manic laughter. He was a wildfire that left nothing in its wake, and Sansa hated him as she never could hate Roose.

How long would it be before Ramsay moved against his father?

The question left Sansa reeling, as Roose cuffed her cheek. There were questions she could never ask, and he would never answer –

Until he lay with his cheek against her breast, and his guard was left beneath the floorboards.

“Ramsay was a mistake.”

Sansa held her mate’s words close, and his promise to bind Ramsay closer still. Roose would fulfill his promise when she bore him a son, one that was made in his image down to the quirk of his brow and the sneer of his lips. Sansa knew that she couldn't gamble and take one of the other Foundation men as if she would ever allow one to mount her in the vast fields as if she were a breeding bitch for any to have -

(Wasn’t she?)

Sansa knew that she was prey to the gods above, and below – only she was loyal to the god in her bed, the one that would never let her go. It was his name that she whispered and his image that she saw when she knelt on all fours and prayed that his seed would take, and create life inside her.

Then, she would be safe, if not free.

Then, she would be whole, with a child in her arms and one at her hip, for she would never forsake Jeyne.

“I won’t let you go,” Roose said, watching her.

It was less a test, as it was the truth.

“I know,” she whispered, her lips trembling as relief underlined her words.

He was enmeshed in her, from the hickeys he left on her skin, to the seed that he filled her with. No one knew the bruises that she left on him in turn, as she whispered her sins into his ear while clutching him closer still.

“Keep me with you,” she’d asked –

She begged.

“With you, alpha.”

Roose knew that she dreamed of the world that never was. She dreamed of living in a snow-clad land where shadows never came, and sacred trees adored her peals of laughter. She had everything she wanted, and everything that she dreamed of there.

Her heart beat free.

"You'll never find that place, Sansa.”

His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him. It was a world away from where she, and their future children were, a world they would never roam free in.

Nothing but death roamed beyond the settlement walls.

He kissed her roughly, making her hands scrabble against his chest. Her protests never failed to amuse him, as they both knew she would never break his hold. She could fashion as many arrows as she’d liked, hiding knives away in her socks and stuffing a knitting needle beneath her pillow, but nothing would change the connection between them.

“I want to hate you,” Sansa whispered, her teeth catching on her bottom lip.

He was a creature from Hell, some claimed, a rabid, black dog that even the dragons that once roamed Westeros would have feared. He was colder and harsher than the winter winds ever were, yet he showed her more than the world would ever know.

His warmth, his laughter –

It was wrong.

It was perfectly right.

“If only you would,” Roose crooned, brushing his lips across her cheeks. “If only you could, little one.”

His claim marked her; the memory of his teeth sinking into her mating gland making her ache with need. She stuffed her fingers inside her, whining as she ground her hips against her open palm. Her fingers weren’t enough to soothe her, the flames leaping higher and higher inside her.

She was less than a human, as the ones above watched her burn alive.

Every member of the Foundation knew that she belonged to him, just as they knew when her small clothes were damp with slick and desire. No one would ever meet her eyes, nor respond to her desperate mewls.

One among the Foundation had tried and lost his life for it.

For her.

When the hunting party found her alone in the woods, she wasn’t his.

Not yet.

She was hers; a girl with no name and no face, one who would never have a place among them. Not if she was naked and filthy when she needed to be clean and bathed in his milky white cum.

She had never known another’s touch, not even her own.

Her childhood friend, Margaery, had given her a small vibrator that she’d kept tucked away in the bottom of her nightstand, without ever trying to use it.

Sansa laughed at the memory when no one could hear her. She didn’t recognize the girl she had once been, having left her in the forest that loomed outside the Foundation.

She was little more than a rabbit caught in a snare; Death’s followers having caught her without care.

They had her limbs bound and a gag forced into her mouth, before carrying her within the Foundation walls. She remembered the barren room they kept her in still, where she had nothing but the sun and fat, buzzing flies for company.

Food and drink came when the sun was at its peak when it was lowered down to her by a fraying rope with a woven basket on the end.

No one saw her, but she knew that he was there.

The man with eyes that saw through her, the one whose lips quirked in cruel amusement. He watched as the change came, the rush of heat through her abdomen the same as a fire lit beneath her skin. She pawed at the ground before she pawed at herself, twisting the remnants of her bra cup.

Her thoughts were scrambled, and her words rushed.

“I-I can’t – “

She wasn’t safe, she wasn’t cherished –

Her arms wrapped around her skinned knees as she curled into herself.

She felt more alone than she ever had and wailed a long, desperate sound. It was one that no alpha could resist, but the one above her did.

Why -?

“I don’t w-want to be alone,” Sansa whispered, “Not again.”

Making her cry, and press her belly against the stone ground, as if it could soothe the fire that crackled and roared inside her. Her heat was relentless, devouring her dignity in its wake.

She needed to be bred.

She had to.

She had nothing to nest with, and her cries had reached a fevered pitch when her heat came. Grinding her hips against her fist, she had sobbed as she came - again and again - without a knot inside her.

She needed an alpha to cover her with his scent and soothe her with everything he had; his fingers that were longer and thicker than her own, his teasing tongue, and an aching cock that he would thrust inside her weeping cunt.

She needed, gods, she needed -

She needed Death.

"P-Please -"

A mate, that would keep her safe and sated; tucked away in their nest until she was filled to the brim with pups.

"Please," she'd cried. "I'll be good- please - I can't -"

The man who peered down at her wasn't the same as before. He watched her with unfathomably dark and knowing eyes, and she had wept harder and harder until she collapsed on her hands and her knees and stuck her ass in the air. Her very scent was laced with her sweet pleas as if someone needed more encouragement to breed her.

"Alpha.”

The one that her body wanted came then, having never strayed far in the first place.

Sansa had called to him ever since she set foot within his forest.

“Omega.”

She was offered the greedy man's beating heart and sank her teeth into it as Roose held her close. Roose, she wanted to cry, the letters burned on to her tongue. What will you do to me? Will you hurt me?

Will you protect me if I’m good?

She clung closer, and closer to him instead.

"My omega will want for nothing," he murmured, his fingers splayed across her nape. His thumb massaged her unmarked mating gland, the sudden rush of endorphins making her knees buckle and her heart lurch. She was his, even if he would never be hers. "She will be safe and knotted every night, as long as she behaves. Can you be a good girl, Sansa?”

She hadn’t realized then, that she’d never told him her name.

Safe -

She had never felt safe before, her memories filled with the gruesome creatures that flew high above, untouched by the drifting ash and filthy screams they left in their wake. They drew no distinction between man and beast, their hunger without end.

Her family turned to hideous beasts made of ash.

There was nothing left of the ones that she loved, with snapping and snarling beasts left in their place. She’d run from the only home that she’d known, a small suburb with a name that she couldn’t remember, in a town she could no longer find on the map.

For Death had let his curse spread throughout the world, with none but the Foundation allowed to survive.

Sansa, his pretty and sweet Sansa had crashed through the forest knowing none of this. There were hounds at her heels and hounds waiting for her, for Death knew that she would come to his call.

She was always meant to be his, Roose thought, and whispered once, when he thought she was fall asleep.

He should have known better.

Nightmares of hounds kept her awake, as she remembered one's warm breath on the back of her neck and the searing fire that came as it sank its teeth into her shoulder. She no longer knew if it was a memory or a nightmare.

“Oh Mother, please keep me safe.”

She had wandered in the forest for weeks before Death’s hounds caught her, as she stumbled and fell. She’d scraped her hands and her knees and left chunks of her hair behind, as her braid caught on low-hanging branches. She took to trees when she could, haphazardly scaling their branches and cringing from the insects that scattered.

Her lips grew cracked, and her mouth dry from disuse, though she screamed when an errant branch cracked beneath her weight. She’d hurtled down to the ground, and was dazed as she watched the clouds above.

She had nothing left.

She closed her eyes lay there, amidst decaying leaves, until she heard the cries of an owl overhead and a centipede chittering in her ear. She was less than human then, a waif, and dirty thing that listened to the world that she had always ignored.

There was a place, they said, a place where the living and the dead would never go.

For the Foundation only cared for its own.

She was a stupid little girl then, one who thought she would be different.

(She remembered how the hounds howled and watched her with hunger; as if they could strip her flesh from her bones with their gaze alone.)

Only –

Only she no longer knew if what she remembered had ever happened.

"Come back to me, Sansa," Roose chided, drawing her away from her thoughts.

“Stay with me.”

Please.

Her small hand found his, their fingers entwining.

He brushed his lips across her throat, nipping and licking at her skin. His marks covered her frame, while the bruises she left on him were few.

The first time she raked her nails down his back while he fucked her into the thick pile of fire, he'd roared with his release and stuffed her weeping cunt full of his bulging knot. "Are you a wolf, sweet one?" he'd mused, his cold gaze meeting hers, "Or a naïve little bird?"

His answer came when she took pleasure for herself, waking him by straddling his waist and delving her hands into his dark hair. She wanted him to fuck her until she couldn’t think anymore, and he did.

Only-

She hadn't expected him to let her go after.

“Roose?”

Will you tell me the truth?

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, keeping the silly words in.

She pulled the covers around her, their bed feeling empty when he left it.

(What had she done?)

He went to the room she was never allowed to enter, one that she knew he kept the key to on the leather cord that hung from his wrist. She’d watched him with wide, doe-like eyes when he came back with a book in his hand and settled back on the bed.

How long had it been since she was able to pretend?

Books were an escape, one that she had always gravitated to. Her brow knit when she remembered the rows of white shelves in her bedroom, and how they were covered with countless pretty books where no one ever died, and love thrived.

They were a world away from her own, and she had lost herself with every turned page.

He'd patted his lap and she laid with her head on his thigh and his cock in her warm and wet mouth while he read aloud to her. She closed her eyes as she suckled, and listened to his low, soothing tones.