The first time I saw him I knew he was strong.
He had raven black hair that fell past his shoulders, combed back and tied in a loose knot. A black pelt and cloth robed him, keeping the cool frigid air from turning his blood to ice.
He smelled of south. Of cobble stone and steel. His obsidian eyes squinted against the bright white of the snow, his sharp features and prominent brow making his profile all the more lethal looking.
I followed him in secret for some time after that. I could travel through the snow as if I were light as a feather, despite my size. Thanks to this, I was quiet. More quiet than the white noise of snow falling.
After a week of stalking him, I became tired of this game. He had yet to notice me. Even with his keen eyes and senses, I was a ghost to him.
I didn't want to be a ghost to him. I wanted him to notice me.
I don't know what made him different from the others, the ones that I had killed without a second thought. He was…beautiful. In ways they weren't. There was something unidentifiable about him that I had to see for myself.
So one day when he had put away his horse and was carving steaks out of a deer he had just killed, I made myself known.
I didn't growl. I didn't bristle. I came out from between the trees, my red pelt in stark contrast to the white snow, and stared at him.
He noticed the movement immediately and looked up to see me. He startled badly, falling back and bringing his sword in front to defend himself.
I stayed still. Watching him back away in fear excited me, but only the more animal parts of me.
Eventually when he realized I wasn't going to attack, he slowly got up and backed away from the deer.
As if I wanted that.
This time I advanced, trotting forward to sniff at the blood on the ground and then at him. He backed away further, his eyes wide and a quirk to his brow. He didn't understand why I was interested in him and not the deer.
I twitched my ears and veered away when his sword took a swing, tail wagging as if it were a game.
Did he want me to chase him?
This time when I lunged, he bolted.
He was fast this time. The snow barely kept him down.
I would always be faster though. My massive paws were easy to traverse the snow with, and I trotted after him lazily.
He would reach his horse soon, and I disliked horses a great deal.
This time I went faster and I toppled him to the ground, my paws pushing him in the snow.
I grinned and barked. I won.
He struggled and flipped over, sword forgotten in the snow, and raised his arms to protect his face.
In response I laid across him, nearly dwarfing him entirely, and panted in satisfaction.
He paused, lowered his arms slightly, and stared me in the eye with the queerest expression I'd ever seen.
And then he raised a hand and gently caressed my head.
Yes, that was what I wanted. His fingers combed through my fur in the most delectable way and I let my tail thump against his leg.
I made a soft Aroo noise and licked his chin. He tasted good. More than good.
"I can't believe…" He muttered, looking at me as if I were magnificent. I was. He was good to notice.
I slowly got up and off of him at the sound of something far off. Wildings, making a fire.
I liked to call them the true northerners, and often when I turned human I would trade with them or fuck them or relax in their camp. They knew me as the hermit, the loner, the one who apparently fought and killed polar bears for their hide and sold it for nothing more than a chance to stay with them for a while.
I mentally shrugged. Sometimes I got lonely.
As I looked at the pretty man and watched him stand up, I realized I wouldn't have to do that anymore. I liked this human good enough. But I knew his black cloak meant the wildlings would hurt him. I didn't like that.
He patted me once more on the head. "Thanks for not killing me, beauty," He smiled, and I licked his hand.
I left him then. He turned and I was already gone.
The next time I met him I caught his scent on the side of a rocky mountain. He was backed into a corner as a pack of wolves tried to get at him.
I climbed up and growled. It sounded more like a roar. The wolves instantly cowered and fled, and I chased a few off, nipping at their heels.
Loyally, I came back to my chosen human. He was sweaty and bleeding but his eyes were warm.
"Thank you, beauty."
I jumped up and knocked him to the floor, covering his face with kisses. He laughed and wrestled with me and I thought I found home.
The next time I saw him he was huddled under an overpass, nearly blue and fading fast. His heavy cloak was frozen solid. He had fallen in the river and cracked the ice.
I was surprised he lived, but glad nonetheless.
His eyes barely opened when I curled around him, giving what warmth and comfort I could.
His shivering slowly stopped and color returned to his features. When next he woke at dawn, he smiled tiredly and rested his forehead against mine.
"You always come through for me," He said, in awe.
He shared his dinner with me and I lead him back to his home – the wall.
When his brothers saw a blood red direwolf standing beside him, all they could do was gawk and welcome him back inside.
"Benjen," They called him.
When they came to close, I scampered away, dodging Benjen's outstretched hand and running back into the safety of the trees. I wasn't meant to be close to that wall, I thought. The wildlings weren't. Why would I be?
It wasn't long until I crossed his path again. He had encountered the wildlings.
I just so happened to be camped with them. They came through, walking him in binds to a pole in the center of camp.
They took turns beating him.
I slipped away, turned, and came back. They were all dead or running in seconds as I stood before him, protecting him, bristling and snarling with a dagger in my shoulder.
Later after I gnawed his bindings free, he took the blade from me and sewed me up. Instead of snapping at him, like I should have, I knocked him over and laid on him like a dead thing. We slept like that that night.
The next day he met up with more of his black cloaked people. When one attempted to touch him, I snapped at him, chasing him a few yards before Benjen called me back.
"You've got a firecracker protecting you," A few of them sung. "Lucky. Benjen Stark's got a pet."
That night I peed in that one's traveling bags. No one had to know until morning.
When it actually was morning, he shrieked and I let out a barking laugh before running away into the woods again.
I could hear Benjen's laugh for miles.
I thought about revealing myself to him. I couldn't well fuck him in this state could I?
And I wanted to. Bad. I'd seen him fight, seen him bruised and beaten with blood in his mouth and fire in his eyes and I wanted him. I wanted him between my thighs, I wanted him to mount me, to claim me.
I was his. And he was mine.
He just didn't know it yet.
The day came when he saved me as well. This time it was his own people.
I had ventured too close to the wall. Wondered where he was, why he was taking so long, why I couldn't see him anymore. He used to be out here all the time. He hadn't been for months.
A young black cloak with a pride streak a mile wide thought he could kill me. He came out at the base of the mountain and I ran towards him, thinking it was Benjen.
It wasn't.
I got three arrows through my shoulders and flank before I realized it wasn't him.
I almost killed him. Almost. But Benjen wouldn't like me anymore if I did. So I unfastened my jaws from around the boys throat and fled.
I got one last arrow in me for that mercy.
Benjen found me a day later, cowering behind a fallen tree, licking my wounds and trying to get the arrows out.
The boy had come with him, and looked at what he'd done to me with pride.
I had never seen Benjen so furious. He beat the kid near to an inch of his life and told his brothers to take him back to the wall.
Afterwards he pulled each arrow out of my hide with care. It hurt, and I cried, but he was there, and that's all that mattered.
This time I shifted in front of him. I turned into the hot blooded, fire-haired ginger I knew I was and came closer to him, attacking his mouth with the ferocity of a drowning woman in need of air.
He startled near to death and shoved me back.
I fell hard in the snow, onto my wounds, and gasped loudly. The feeling of the cold on my bare skin mixed with the rawness of recent wounds made me tender.
He was so much bigger than me now. He stared at me in shock and looked me up and down, and I realized…maybe he doesn't want a freak?
I turned back into a wolf and bolted. Him calling for me to wait went in one ear and out the other.
The next time I saw him was the day he died. I had tried to keep away from him, had heard him calling for me sometimes whenever he ventured away from his group.
I loved him. I knew I did. Why would he call for me?
I felt disgusted with myself.
It was that same self pity that allowed him to die, that stopped me from being there in time.
I had smelled them before I heard the clangs of metal against metal. White walkers.
His group was killed in seconds and so was he.
When I found him he was gasping and holding at a wound in his stomach. He was pale. As pale as freshly fallen snow. They were leaving him to turn.
I bound to him in great leaps and whimpered loudly, nosing at his face as he gently reached up to put a blood slick hand against my fur.
"Beauty," He whispered, and then he was gone, his hand falling in the snow.
I had sat there, howling, crying, licking his face, begging him to return for a long time before the children of the forest came. I had never seen them before. They frightened me – and try as I might to defend his body from them, they came at us anyway.
They told me to bite him. Right at the junction of his neck and his shoulder. They said it would save him.
I would have never hurt him otherwise. I knew not what I was doing, but I did it regardless.
A week passed. They took him back to their cave and I followed obediently behind, but far enough away from them to not get batted away again.
Whatever they were, they didn't like me. Or at least I thought they didn't.
I waited, hunting and scavenging until the day came where I could see him again.
This time I knew the children of the forest had left. He was alone in the cave now, but he came to the entrance.
Something was different. He smelled more like me – like a…a direwolf.
I sniffed the air and cautiously approached.
When he smiled at me and crouched down, arms open, I dove at him as a wolf but wrapped my arms around his neck as a human.
I cried. I cried so hard I could barely breath as he wrapped me in his cloak and brought me inside the warmth of the cave.
"You saved me again, beauty," he whispered in my ear as I shivered against him. He was warm and strong, a solid wall of muscle against me.
I looked up into his obsidian eyes and this time he kissed me. It was soft, pleasant, and the taste of him sent heat swirling to my sacred spot.
It quickly turned heated after that, passionate and hungry like we were animals and it was spring.
He was mine. And I was his.
First he ate at the honey of my center, licking and sucking until I was quivering and screaming.
And then he laid claim to my body, penetrating into my slick heat, thrusting into me again and again until I was moaning out his name as he spilled into me, his seed filling me to the brim and then some.
Something unsaid and ancient formed between us. We were the last two of our kind. He was like me now – my bite had changed him and saved him.
Wolves mated for life.
I told him that as he lie with me by the fire that night, his warm body against mine, holding me to him with a newfound strength.
He tilted my face towards him, thumb brushing over my bottom lip. "I heard you crying. I heard you crying even before you brought me back, when I was in the place between death and life. You have protected me for longer than I know. I could never belong to anyone other than you."
We had sex like beasts and then like lovers, all at once and then slow, and I taught him how to run as a wolf.
He was pitch black, like the shadows of a fire, and together we ran.
We saved his family – his previous pack – along the way. His nephews, bran and Jon. A few black cloaks. I would follow him anywhere.
We fought back the whitewalkers together. They knew of us – wanted us turned in their favor.
Something about our blood now prevented that. It made them angry. Made them hunt us.
None more than the night we died to save Jon and his companions.
The boy was strong, just as Benjen had been. I admired his bravery even in the face of death.
Benjen and I pulled him from the river and gave him a horse.
Benjen looked to me then and asked me to run.
I kissed him square on the mouth and ran to intercept a whitewalker jumping at Jon.
We fought and kept a hundred of them at bay.
I was the first to go down, a sword through my jugular and windpipe. Benjen was the next – an ice spear through his heart.
He died instantly.
The hoard left, pulling the dead dragon from the water. I crawled slowly, blood draining from me quickly, until I was half on top of him.
His unseeing black eyes stared up at the blue sky, his handsome face not a mask of pain, but of peace.
"My love," I choked, laying my head on his chest. The ice spear sung still.
I snapped it off to silence it.
The world went fuzzy, and then black, and then nothing all at once.