"There are two reasons we don't trust people.

First – we don't know them.

Second – we know them."

-Unknown

Chapter Twenty-Three – Last Living Son

She was running through the forest by the Northern camp.

Except she was not herself.

It was as though she had become a wolf, a creature on all fours, cantering through the forest on padded feet, claws digging into the earth to propel herself further. Caryssa had never felt anything like this, the power and the freedom and the pure adrenaline coursing through her veins. It must be what flying feels like, she mused, as she was going so fast that it felt like her paws were barely touching the ground.

The scent of another animal and the far-off sound of a strong, beating heart could only mean one thing.

She was on the hunt.

The desire to rip into the warm flesh of her prey rippled through her, the bloodlust the only thing on her mind. She did not battle like her brother, but the want was there. The need to kill to defend her family was deep in her bones, in the deepest recesses of her soul, and perhaps this was what the dream was telling her.

Because it could only be but a dream.

The smell of her quarry almost burned her nose and sent a flurry of excitement through her, and then she saw it.

A beautiful, delectable-looking doe right there in her sights.

She could have snuck up on it, but there was no fun in that. The chase was all there was. So, she burst forward into the small clearing the doe was grazing in and startled the poor creature into fleeing. She toyed with it, running at half the speed she knew she could, letting the deer believe it might possibly escape, that it was fast enough to outrun her.

It wasn't.

Her jaws clamped down on the doe's hind leg, sending the animal into the damp dirt by a small lake. With two front paws pinning the terrified deer to the ground, she snarled at it, almost grinning in her victory, before her teeth ripped through the soft flesh of its neck. It bled to death, twitching and thrashing even as it happened.

It had put up a fight, and instead of making her feel guilt for taking its life, she felt exhilarated. Adrenaline pumped around her body even as she tore chunks of raw meat from the dead animal who had been oh so alive just moments before.

After eating her fill, she left the rest to the birds and moved to the lake to drink and clean her muzzle.

It was most definitely Rhaenyra's reflection that stared back at her, her snowy white muzzle drenched with blood the color of Dornish wine and…

That's when Caryssa woke up, her heart beating just as fast as it had in her peculiar dream. It had felt so real, like she was really in Rhaenyra's body.

She had never felt so powerful in her life, so strong and so…unafraid. It had been exhilarating. As strange and almost disturbing a dream as it had been, it was also the most free she had felt since leaving Winterfell all those months ago, and she wanted to feel that way again.

Only she knew that it was impossible.

Freedom didn't belong to people in her position. She was the eldest woman of her house, already married, even if it was to the uncle of their enemy, and she was now considered to be royal. A princess of winter. She was even less free to make her own decisions than she had been even before marrying Jaime.

She hated it, if she was being honest.

Robb had her escorted everywhere, even though she had Rhaenyra and her bow, by at least two guards, and that was without the men that sometimes accompanied the both of them and her mother. She felt stifled, despite spending most of her days out doors, and her whole body ached to be let of the leash her brother had unconsciously put her on.

Though, when Dacey entered her tent, after she had washed and dressed, she knew that it wasn't merely a social visit and she was the princess' escort for the day.

The worst part was that they thought they were being subtle about it. All of Robb's lords had 'spent the day' with her, following her almost everywhere without saying that they had been asked to escort her around the camp and the surrounding areas as though she wouldn't work it out herself.

"Your highness, your mother and brother wish to see you in your mother's tent, if you may."

"I've told you, Dacey, I'm no princess. Caryssa is fine, Ryssa if you prefer," Caryssa replied, as she rose to her feet and smoothed out the black skirt she was wearing, placing the book she had been reading on the small table she called her own. "None of this titles nonsense. We're friends, remember?"

"Ryssa, we should hurry. Your brother had that constipated look on his face that means that he's troubled."

Caryssa burst out laughing, picturing the exact look that the woman from Bear Island was talking about, but the she-wolf had never heard anyone describe it that way. She probably wouldn't be able to see that particular look on Robb's face without giggling now.

"Then let us go! We cannot allow our King to bear such a look upon his fair face!"

The two women cackled together as they left the princess' tent, drawing the eye of everyone who witnessed it. It was a strange thing indeed to see the Ice Princess laughing like a regular woman. In fact, it made her seem younger than the years that chaos and strife had piled on top of her, making her look more like the nineteen year old woman that she was.

Still, it was an odd thing indeed to see.

The ice thawing around the princess' apparent cold heart.

Dacey left Caryssa outside her mother's tent, apparently heading to train with Smalljon Umber but unless 'training' had an entirely different meaning that the she-wolf didn't know about, there was little chance of actual training to be done. Especially with the wicked grin that Dacey gave her as she walked away.

Chuckling as she entered the tent, Caryssa was unsurprised to find her mother angrily pacing and her brother looking both agitated and exhausted. Both in their natural states, or so their natural states had become during this godforsaken war.

"What, other than the obvious, has you both so tense?" Caryssa questioned, moving further into the canvas room and sitting herself down on the chair opposite her brother. He looked troubled, Dacey was right, but it wasn't actually funny now that she was witnessing it with her own eyes. Her little brother wasn't meant for such hardships, but he bore them like a true and good ruler. "What is wrong?"

"I'm sending Theon to Pyke. He's going to convince his father to let us use his fleet."

Caryssa couldn't believe her own ears.

Robb was going to send Theon back to Pyke.

She knew that her brother loved the fool like another brother, but surely he had to have some misgivings about the task he had set him. Sending home their hostage, because that is what Theon was even if no one acknowledged it, the only living male heir to the would-be King of the Iron Isles would be a grave miscalculation. It would be giving Balon Greyjoy exactly what he wanted. His heir.

"Tell me again who exactly came up with this spectacularly terrible idea," Caryssa requested, even though everyone knew that it was a sarcastic rhetoric remark. She knew which of the two had come up with the plan, and that is also why she was so set against it. "You cannot send him back. The Ironborn would eat him alive and spit him back out and only the Gods know what his traitor father would make him do to win back his crown."

Robb rolled his eyes at his sister and she knew that he was completely disregarding her concerns due to her and Theon's long standing antagonistic relationship. Everyone and their mother knew that the She-Wolf of Winterfell hated the Kraken of Winterfell. It was no secret that she had no trust for him whatsoever, but they thought that it was unfounded. Theon had never done anything particularly untrustworthy, so why didn't she trust him, they all wondered.

She didn't even mistrust Theon completely. She mistrusted his family. The Greyjoys were notoriously bad men; traitors, pillagers, murderers…there wasn't a good man amongst them. That is why she didn't trust Theon, because she constantly worried about the man he could become and what that would do to her brother.

Sending him back to his father would only tempt fate.

This war between the North and the South presented Balon with a rare and golden opportunity that she and her mother both agreed that the old Kraken would not allow to pass him by. Robb was distracted in the South, along with her and her mother, which left Winterfell to be held by Bran. A child was not equipped to deal with an attack if the Ironborn were really as unscrupulous as her mother and father had always painted them to be.

"You don't want Balon Greyjoy for an ally." Her mother warned, but Robb was quick to defend his decision.

"I need his ships. They say he has 200."

"They say there are a million rats living in the sewers of King's Landing. Shall we rally them to fight for us?" Caryssa snapped, losing her patience with her brother. He may be king, but that didn't mean he should stop listening to the women in his life when they were giving him sound advice. Balon Greyjoy was a traitor, and he always would be.

"I understand you both don't trust Lord Greyjoy-" Robb started calmly, but Catelyn, who was angrily rattling with this and that around her tent, snapped her head up towards her son, her eyes burning with the fierceness of the wolves that she had adopted into herself.

"We do not trust Lord Greyjoy because he is not trustworthy," Their mother stated, sitting across from her son and beside her daughter, who seemed to for once be on her side. Catelyn was actually grateful for her support. Caryssa usually fought against her on Robb's, or Jon's or any other of the children's, side, but now they were a mother and daughter united. It was a good feeling. "Your father had to go to war to end his rebellion."

"Yes. And now I'm the one rebelling against the throne. Before me, it was Father. You married one rebel and mothered another." Robb answered, and Ryssa shook her head, annoyed that her brother was being so…blasé about their situation and the wars their father had fought before him.

Ned Stark hadn't fought for freedom from a tyrant or Northern independence or even to put Robert on the throne. He had fought to save his sister and to protect what was left of his family. He didn't want fame or glory, he just wanted to live to see his family safe and to go home at the end of it all.

She remembered waiting for him, both times, wondering if he would return at all, and finding different places to hide to cry so that her mother wouldn't see. The Stark mother had tried so hard to remain strong for her children, and her eldest daughter didn't want to add to her mother's turmoil by crying and asking about her father constantly like the boys did.

Caryssa had just wanted her father home and alive, and that's how she imagined her littlest brothers felt. If they prayed to the Old Gods to bring them home the same way she had when she was a girl.

"She didn't just mother rebels."

"A fact you seem to have forgotten." Catelyn added with a hiss, rising to her feet and turning her back on her son once more.

"If I trade the Kingslayer for two girls, my bannermen will string me up by my feet."

"Then let's go get them ourselves. We sneak into the Keep, and we take them. I know my way around. I can get us in and out without raising an alarm and then we can just crush them without having to worry about what they would do to Sansa," Caryssa basically pleaded with her brother. She couldn't bear the thoughts of what might be happening to her precious sisters at the hands of that wicked boy and his men. Even worse, his wretched mother. "We can't sit by and do nothing to save them, Robb! What are we fighting for if not for them?"

"It's more complicated than that!" Robb yelled, finally getting to the end of his tether. While he knew that his mother and his sister both meant well, and only wanted to have the girls back with them, he couldn't handle them both attacking him at once. "You know it is."

All three of them looked away from each other, unhappy that they were fighting amongst themselves, and when Catelyn sat back beside Caryssa, the younger woman took her mother's hand and held it between both of hers. Whether it was to comfort her mother or to gather strength for herself, the older woman didn't know, but she was glad for it nonetheless.

Sighing, the mother of six turned her blue eyes back to her son and finally spoke the words that she knew had been a long time coming.

"It's time for me to go home," Catelyn breathed, her chest feeling lighter for saying it. "I haven't seen Bran or Rickon in months."

"You can't go to Winterfell."

Caryssa and Catelyn both stared at the Northern King, the Young Wolf, in confusion. What on the Gods green earth did he mean that she couldn't return home?

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'll send Rodrik to watch over the boys because tomorrow you both ride south to the Stormlands." Robb revealed, and Caryssa stood up, glaring down at her brother as she loomed over him.

"Excuse me?"

"Why in the name of all the gods…" Catelyn continued, rising with her daughter and placing a gentle hand on her shoulder to calm her.

She only hoped it would work. Ned and Robb were the only ones who could quell one of Caryssa's rages. Often, the mother had wondered where her daughter had gotten her rages from and her husband would explain that it was the wolf blood. The Starks often had a touch of it running through their veins, making them bolder and fiercer and quicker to anger than most. His sister, Lyanna, had it. So had Brandon. It had made them unpredictable and often they had lacked sense. Thankfully, her daughter had gotten her father's sensibilities as well, balancing her warring natures out within her.

"Because I need you to negotiate with Renly Baratheon, mother, and you to negotiate with Stannis, Ryssa. If we are to win this war, we will need men and ships. Renly has rallied an army of 100,000. You know him. You know his family-" Robb explained, but his mother cut him off, before he could embellish on his sister's side of things.

"I haven't seen Renly Baratheon since he was a boy. You have a hundred other lords-"

"Which of these lords do I trust more than you? More than my sister?" Robb pressed, climbing to his feet and moving to stand directly in front of the two bristling women. They were more than happy to aid him in the war effort when it meant that they would be by his side, but he needed them to do this for him. "If Renly sides with us, we'll outnumber them two to one."

"So what need will we have for Stannis?" Caryssa questioned, blue eyes flitting to gaze into blue eyes as her words brought her brother's attention to her instead of their mother. "We won't have need of his men."

"His ships. Like you said, he has a whole fleet and he has the best claim to the throne. If we can get him and Renly to agree to peace, we can use them to take King's Landing and who better to persuade a strong-willed war general than my tenacious elder sister," Caryssa smiled at her brother's ingenuity, pleased that he was blossoming in his role as King and Commander. He was seeing the bigger picture. If they all worked together against the Lannister than the lions wouldn't stand a chance. "When they feel the jaws beginning to shut, they'll sue for peace. We'll get the girls back. Then we'll all go home, for good."

When Caryssa turned her eyes towards the ground, Robb grabbed her hand in his, gently squeezing it. He knew what she was thinking. Being married to the Kingslayer meant that Winterfell was no longer her home and she wouldn't ever see it again, even if they managed to get the Lannisters to sue for peace.

"All of us."

Choosing to believe him, Caryssa exchanged a look with her mother and they both sighed in unison, before nodding.

"We will ride at first light." Catelyn informed him, her posture signaling defeat.

Robb's eyes flickered between them both, before he pressed quick, but firm kisses to both of their foreheads and then held them close to him by the backs of their heads.

"We will all be together again soon, I promise."

"You've done so well," Their mother declared reverently, her voice strong, only cracking when she continued. "Your father would be proud."

He would, but he would have wished that his son riding to war had been unnecessary. While her father had Robb trained in war tactics and battle strategies, she knew that Ned had never intended for his son to lead armies into war. Against small groups of wildlings, maybe, but not the King of all Westeros.

Robb nodded, releasing them both from his grasp before turning to leave.

"Give Lord Renly and Lord Stannis my regards."

"King Renly and King Stannis," Her mother corrected Robb, turning away from him to sit back at her table. "There's a king in every corner now."

Caryssa sat beside her mother and sighed.

The next few weeks would be extremely difficult and she was sure that she would need every ounce of her remaining sanity to get through them, but no matter how difficult the two Baratheon kings tried to make it for them, she would not falter in her pursuit for peace between them.

The she-wolf would not let her brother down.

Even if it killed her.

A/N:

Okay, so another mini-chapter, but on time, so no biggie. I will try to make the next one longer, I swear!

So, no Jaime this chapter, apart from a couple mentions, but before Caryssa leaves to negotiate terms with Stannis (an earlier introduction than I had originally planned but actually fell in love with the idea so decided to run with it), she will say goodbye to Jaime and he'll bring up their last conversation.

Caryssa and Catelyn teamed up in this chapter, surprisingly against Robb, though it was really more against the Greyjoys. Someone left a review once saying that my knowledge of future events was bleeding into Caryssa, making her overly suspicious of Theon when really, at this point, she really needn't be. So I tried to explain it in this chapter. Caryssa doesn't like Theon, because he is demeaning towards women, he never seemed to take anything seriously and because of who his father is.

When her father went to fight against Balon Greyjoy, Caryssa developed a strong dislike against the man because he was taking her father from her because of his rebellion. That coupled with her mother's obvious hatred and distrust of the man bled into her relationship with Theon. She doesn't trust him because she's afraid he'll turn out like his father and that he'll hurt Robb. She's very protective of her brother, I've tried to get that across, and she can be quite narrow-minded about it. Right now, she knows that Theon hasn't really done much but be a philandering wretch, but sending him back to his father sets her on edge, because she's scared of what his father will manipulate him into doing. And that makes her distrust Theon even more.

So next time we'll have; Caryssa and Jaime moment (might be a slight hint of fluff hidden amongst the angst), more Caryssa and Catelyn, questions being raised about her abnormal dream (I wasn't going to just let it slide, even though I didn't mention it again in this chapter) and Stannis! I don't know about you but I loved Stannis (pre-Season 5, of course, they really fucked him up in Season 5. I didn't believe for a second that he would really sacrifice his daughter and his heir, but apparently D&D believed otherwise – those fuckers) and I'm really looking forward to writing him in. Also praying to God that I can write him in character, because I don't want to ruin him (like D&D did in S5).

Anyway, a big thank you to all 8 of my reviewers of the last chapter, even if I wish there were more of you guys reviewing. I get lots of favourites and followers, but not a lot of reviews and it really is starting to knock my confidence a bit, but hey ho, I'll live because my regulars are awesome people who always review, such as DarylDixon'sLover and NicoleR85 and MADStar529. You guys rock!

Anyway full reviewers list, AKA the list of people I'm eternally grateful for;

DarylDixon'sLover, NicoleR85, MADStar529, Lady Syndra, PrincessOfTheRealm, Irishmadhatter3, Bella-swan11, and last, but not least, guest.

Thank you guys for reviewing and keeping my spirits up, urging me to write and keep to my update days!

Anyway the next update day is OCTOBER 26th so mark it down on your calendars, guys, it's going to be a good one!

Until next time,

Sophie.