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When Arya shared the news of her betrothal to the king with her aunt, Lyanna Stark was prepared. Ned had ridden to her holdfast before the royal party had even departed to warn her, so it was he who endured the brunt of her response.
“Have you lost your senses?” Lyanna had demanded, rising angrily from her desk, the account book forgotten. “After everything that happened- after what the king’s father did to m- you would send him our Arya? Are you stupid? This is Catelyn’s doing isn’t it?”
Her brother stared back at her with tired, solemn eyes. “Arya wished to tell you herself, but I knew it was best you learned of this from me.”
“You are glad of this!” Lyanna accused.
“Aye, I am,” Ned said. “I am glad my willful girl has finally found a man she likes well enough to marry.” Shockingly, for a brief moment, he even threatened to smile. “Arya told Cat she loved him. But she has never known love in that way before. She likes him a good deal and will come to love him for true when they wed, most like.”
“Most like?” Lyanna repeated skeptically.
Surely Arya had enough sense to know the difference between a fleeting passion and something more solid. She was a good judge of people and could sift through the true and the false. But if that were true, that would mean...
“This Aegon is a good man,” Ned continued. “A good king as well. I have watched him these past weeks. I have seen how he treats both lords and commons. His mother even held a women’s court. They know their duty. There is naught of his father or grandsire in him. You have nothing to fear for Arya.”
Lyanna desperately wished her brother's words could soothe the fear swelling within her, but she already felt herself beginning to shake and had to cross her arms tight lest it show. She had heard of nothing but good of this King Aegon, especially from her own son. Jon had every reason to be grateful to his -- she hated to even think of him this way -- half brother. Because of the king, Jon was a Stark, not a Snow. All that was Lyanna’s, little though it was, would pass to him without the possibility of being contested. Even so, whenever she thought of the king, all that came to mind were eerily calm indigo eyes that still haunted her two decades later.
“What have your bannermen said?” Lyanna asked abruptly, shaking her head to jostle away the memories. “Have you told them yet?”
Northmen mistrusted and misliked southerners.They had grown to love Catelyn and Daenerys, but only after years had passed, children had been birthed, and they had grown to know them. She still heard lords grumbling over Sansa’s marriage to Tyrion Lannister, sending a daughter of Winterfell to not only a southerner, but a dwarf. What would they say to another Northern girl being sent south for a southron marriage? She saw the truth of it on Ned’s face as his solemn features hardened.
“The announcement was made at the feast last night,” he said. “Most were well pleased.”
“The Greatjon was not,” Lyanna said. It wasn’t a question. “Not Rickard either, I would bet.”
“Jon Umber cursed aloud,” Ned said, voice cold. “Karstark stormed angry from the hall.”
Both had wanted Arya or Sansa for one of their sons and spoke against Catelyn’s efforts for southron matches for the girls.
He shook his head. “Thrice-damned fools, the both of them. Arya shouted at the Greatjon, but the king made light of it, thank the gods. Cat means to bring them around with offers of positions in Arya’s household in King’s Landing for their sons and daughters.”
Lyanna rolled her eyes. “As if that would appease them.”
“It may. A place in a royal household would give their younger sons and daughters a higher place in the world than they would find in their own keeps and holdfasts.”
“Their younger sons ought to join the Watch,” she insisted stubbornly. “Ben says the recruits have proven meager and unpromising for years.”
“There is truth in that,” Ned conceded. “Just the same, I would have as many trustworthy Northmen around Arya in the south as I can. She needs men and women she can trust about her.”
She could only nod at that. He had the truth of it. At least on that point.
That night, after Ned had departed, Lyanna found occasion to laugh at the whole matter when she was in her cups with Cayn, Ginny, and a couple other household guards.
“Robert Baratheon will rage when he learns of this,” she told them. “First he wanted me as his wife and then he wanted one of my nieces for his son. But he was thwarted at every turn. Even my nephew belongs to a Targaryen. They mean to subdue us with marriages and honors.”
“I had it from Jon that there were talks of Lord Baratheon’s daughter marrying the king,” Ginny said.
Lyanna made a rude noise and took another drink. “Robert would have none of that. It was his Tyrell wife who wished for it. He will regret refusing now.”
And she was laughing again, and crying, but mostly laughing.
When Jon returned home a few days later to tell Lyanna of the betrothal, it was with nervous urgency. He was glad of the news too. Lyanna could see it just behind the concern he had for her reaction. Grateful for Ned’s forewarning, she was able to hide her misgivings from her boy. He was fond of his brother and his cousin. No doubt their marriage would have been a complete joy for him had it not been for his scarred mother.
“I wished for you to learn of this from me,” he said.
Lyanna could only smile and reach up to cup his face in her hands. “You are so like your uncle. I swear, there’s more of him in you than there is of me.”
And no Rhaegar at all , she thought firmly. Mayhaps the king was the same, taking after the mother and grandmother who raised him rather than the father who got himself killed before the babe could form sentences.
With the news left to settle on her for several days, Lyanna allowed herself to grow accustomed to it. Jon’s fear of her response pushed her to exert more of an effort to hide her true feelings when Arya arrived. Not for all of Westeros would she make her niece fearful of sharing anything with her. So it was that when Arya rode up to the holdfast with a few guards at her back, Lyanna came out to greet her with a ready smile.
Usually, her niece would have shared her news in a flurry of words before she had even climbed down from her mare. Not this time. No, for this, Arya came to her cheerful, but uncertain. At first, she made no mention of the betrothal and neither did Lyanna. They spoke of all those who came to see the king from all corners of the North and where he traveled to now. Arya shared her admiration for the lovely Dornish princess who held a woman’s court in the Winter Town and in White Harbor before that. Lyanna simply smiled and gave brief responses to all of it, biting back the old resentment she still felt against the princess for threatening to take Jon away should she attempt to marry. That was long past mattering now.
It wasn’t until they had gone hunting that the topic was broached.
“I am to marry Aegon,” Arya blurted without preamble as they crept through the brush.
Lyanna did her best to keep her features smooth and unresponsive under her niece’s searching gaze.
“Jon told you!”
“Quiet or you’ll empty the whole wood,” Lyanna said.
“I told him I would tell you,” Arya whispered, shooting the back of Jon’s head a glare.
He was too far away to hear them or he simply chose not to react to their conversation.
“Jon is well pleased by the betrothal,” Lyanna said. “Almost as well pleased as you.”
Her niece looked away from her.
“He is good natured,” Arya said. “Aegon, I mean. His mother and grandmother sit on his councils and hold womens courts on their progresses. I will too when we marry.”
You will bear the third head of the dragon, that unnervingly calm voice repeated in Lyanna’s mind, as though that would make everything he did right.
“That is-” A far better offer than I was made … “-wise of him,” she said. “There’s much you might counsel those southerners on.”
Arya smiled at her, relief and joy etched into her long, lean features. Lyanna could only smile in return.
“Now shut up, sweetling. We can’t have you warning the game of our coming.”
Strangely enough, they found very little game. Only old tracks, a few bloody fox pelts, and a brace of rabbits easily subdued. Just when Lyanna resolved to turn their small party for home, Jon spoke softly beside her.
“Can you hear that?” he whispered, a breath away from her.
Lyanna listened. She heard the wind brushing against the leaves, the cracking of twigs and rustling of bushes made by the rest of their party, and… and…. soft, whining noises sounding from a few yards away.
Quietly, bows and crossbows loaded and at the ready, they crept forward and forward until the largest wolf she had ever seen came into view. A direwolf, she thought. But direwolves were extinct south of the Wall. The creature stood taller than a pony, snarling at them with teeth bared and a low growl rumbling from her throat.
Hushing the fear that clutched at her heart, Lyanna took aim.
“Pups!” Arya cried. “A mother and her pups.”
Lyanna allowed herself to take in the whole scene.
The direwolf stood over a small pack of grey and white pups, whimpering and nuzzling at their mother’s legs. She must have been nursing them when their hunting party came and stood to defend her children.
Drawing in a deep breath, Lyanna heard the muttering from the rest of the group of bad omens and monsters. Cayn stepped forward for a better shot.
“No,” Lyanna said, resting a hand on his arm.
“But, my lady, a whole pack of direwolves loose in the North,” he insisted, “the danger…”
He was right. But still, she couldn’t bring herself to harm them. Other hunters would do away with them someday soon. But not her or hers.
“I thought you would have grown used to direwolves by now,” she said. “You have served us for years. Calon, toss them the rabbits. We retreat slowly.”
Her men obeyed. Arrows still notched, their group backed away until they heard no more of the direwolf and her pups.
As they made their way back to the holdfast, Jon and Arya chattered about how the direwolf could have possibly crossed the Wall.
“Mayhaps they came through the tunnel Gorne and Gendel made,” Arya said.
“Or they have always been in the North and we never found them before,” Jon suggested.
“Makes no matter,” Cayn insisted. “A monstrous large wolf like that with pups to come after her and so near the holdfast, can’t lead to anything good. No, it can’t.”
Jon and Arya were quick to argue with him, and Ginny and Calon joined in too. They all went round and round. Even during dinner, the subject kept returning to the wolves and what their appearance might mean.
It was no wonder that a wolf stalked through Lyanna’s dream that night. But instead of encountering a wolf, she was the wolf, racing through the trees, sending lesser beasts to flight. No one could capture and subdue her. She would bite their throats out first and taste their life’s blood pouring out of them.
Lyanna woke upon the morrow with Ginny's freckled face above her, not so gentle hands shaking her.
“My lady, the wolf, you must come,” the young woman said.
Tugging on a pair of breeches, a tunic, and leather riding boots, Lyanna questioned the guard about what was amiss.
“That monstrous wolf from yesterday.” Ginny tugged at her carrot colored braid. “She’s outside the walls. Jon won’t have any of us feathering her.”
“Good lad,” Lyanna said absently, shrugging into a leather jerkin.
Once fully dressed, she hurried out to see that it was true, joining her son, niece, and household guard. The wolf lay just within the treeline, the pups nursing.
“Unnatural for a wild beast to come so close to a holdfast like this,” Rye said looking down at the sight, open concern on her face.
Lyanna nodded. This was not natural. The gods were in play here. The other two Starks watching from the wall saw the same.
“We were meant to have these wolves,” Jon said.
“The old gods guided them to us,” Arya agreed. “We ought to go to them.”
With that she raced down to the gate, paying no heed to the protests of the guards. Sharing a grin with Jon, Lyanna followed after.
“I suppose this means we will need a kennel master,” she mused some time later, holding her hand out for the mother wolf to sniff. “And a kennel.”
“Might I have this one?” Arya asked, nuzzling her face into the fur of the pup squirming in her arms.
Lyanna smiled. “Of course, she was intended for you.”
The old gods sent them these direwolves. She knew it without doubt as she watched Arya cuddling the pup close, already in love. Like all the pups, the little wolf would grow in size and strength. A constant piece of the North to guard her niece in the south.