Author's Note:

"You are my favorite, favorite thing." –Dodge to Penny in Seeking a Friend For the End of the World.

One of my favorite, favorite lines ever. And always comes into my head whenever I write sweet scenes between meant-to-be, ride-or-die (I'll choose the first option, yes please) couples. Like this couple. And like this chapter. :)

Enjoy! Xx

Jorah

"We won't be gone long," Jorah promised, briefly wondering why his promises weren't working this time. Daenerys had been in an anxious mood all morning, her expression preoccupied and her whims somewhat capricious. Like now, when she insisted she come with him on a hunting trip in the forest.

"It's freezing out, Daenerys," he continued, sliding the blade of his knife along the edge of a whetstone one more time before slipping it into a leather scabbard affixed to his belt. He braced his hands against the edge of the wood table that took center stage in Bear Island's small armory and looked her straight in the eye. He said, "The paths are all snow-covered. We'll be trudging through most of it."

"Then I'll trudge," she answered crisply.

"It's not a pleasure walk," he replied, perhaps with a tone that bordered on patronizing. With too much practice, it was easy enough for him to slip back into the role of advisor, always older and wiser. He didn't mean it that way but he saw her bristle nonetheless.

"I know that," she snapped back, with a touch of the dragon's bite in her voice. Her violet eyes had turned hard and he realized there was no arguing with her.

Perhaps it was cabin fever or some general restlessness. Winter made them captives in their own home. This was the first day in several where the snows stayed in the sky and the wind didn't attempt to knock down the front gate with its deafening roar or blow through the windows with its frost claws outstretched and ready to tear at wood and stone. The back country of the Island was wilder, colder and frosted twice over but he could understand if she needed a change in landscape.

"Fine," he relented finally, still too unwilling to deny her anything.

He pushed himself off the table and took two steps towards a row of shields hanging from the eastern wall, the bear emblem of House Mormont painted in green and brown colors upon them. From a barrel sitting beneath the shields, he gathered up a bundle of fletched, iron-tipped arrows for Dafydd Longshaw, one of Lyanna's vanguard, who would be going with them. He pointed the bundle of arrows at Daenerys, forcefully stating, "But you have to tell me if it's too cold for you and we'll turn back."

"I won't be too cold," she said, with defiance.

Her stance was rigid. She'd been this way all morning—defiant, unsmiling, nearly angry…though he had no idea why, or even if he was the cause of it. If he'd done something that displeased her, he wished she'd just say it outright.

The evening before, she'd been in a teasing mood, stopping him just outside the dining hall before dinner to stretch up on the toes of her shoes and press a soft, lingering kiss against his cheek.

"What was that for?" he had wondered, bemused. She usually kept her displays of affection to shadowed corridors and the privacy of their bedchamber.

She merely shrugged with a coy smile and said, "Do I need a reason?" before slipping into the dining room and taking her place at dinner.

Then this morning, she'd seemed cold and distant, rising before him, not saying more than two words to him until she came into the armory and said she wanted to go with him and Dafydd into the woods. No, rather, that she was going. She left no room for argument.

He couldn't keep up with her changing moods lately.

"Well, go get dressed," Jorah bade her now, eyeing her silk dress and wool coat critically. "If you don't have at least three layers of furs on, I'm not taking you anywhere."

Her persistent frown finally came loose, though the smile that took its place was all mixture of anxiousness and relief, which were not emotions that a simple walk in the woods should elicit. She seemed out of sorts on all counts and he almost snatched back his words, with an idea that he'd hold them ransom until she explained herself.

But she'd already left the armory to dress and he decided explanations could wait.

Explanations came soon enough.

Daenerys kept up with the men admirably, breathing in the crisp winter air and taking the labored steps of walking through snow-covered forests in stride. She coughed once on the frigid taste in her lungs, which garnered her a few long looks from Jorah. He asked her three times if she wanted to turn back. Her response was a death stare that shut him up quickly.

Before they left the Keep, he told Dafydd that they would hunt up in the grove of evergreens on the western cliffs where he knew the stronger storm wind had blown the snows down into the valley near Ynes Lyme, one of Bear Island's handful of fishing villages. The walking would be easier and the paths mostly clear. Dafydd agreed, as the animals would likely be seeking out easier walking themselves, as well as whatever plant life they might scrounge up under the more shallow snow drifts.

They picked out signs of a deer near a narrow, frozen stream at the cut of a low ravine. Jorah pointed out to Daenerys where the ice had been carved at and shattered by hooves, searching and pawing for water beneath. They tracked the animal further inland, until they found a lonely stag on the hills above Ynes Lyme, in a thick grove of white-painted spruce.

The animal was lean and hungry, his antlers white as birch bark and glittering with frost.

Dafydd was Lyanna's best bowman. Since he was a young boy, he had a habit of touching the fletch of an arrow to his lips before fastening it to the bowstring. It was superstition or compulsion, but either way, it worked. On the moors outside of Winterfell, Dafydd brought down more than his fair share of dead men. He did the same here, drawing out the arrow from the quiver affixed to his back. The red fletch briefly brushed the man's chapped lips before taking its spot on the bow.

Dafydd aimed. Standing nearby, Daenerys, having shied away from Jorah's offered hand all morning, suddenly took his arm. As the arrow found its mark, she turned her face into her bear knight's shoulder, unwilling to watch the death blow.

Jorah's features creased further, his unsettled feelings of the whole morning suddenly heightened. Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, was not known for being squeamish. Not since she was still a young girl, naïve to all the bloodshed that she'd eventually play witness to.

But perhaps his words from long ago were as true now as all those years ago. He was reminded of them as he turned away from the falling animal, glancing down at Daenerys—You have a gentle heart, my princess.

The mark was true and pierced the stag's heart. The stag had no time to bleat out a howl of pain or even surprise. He was dead before he hit the snowy, frost-packed ground. He fell with a heavy thud, with wisps of snow thrown up in the air around where he dropped. Pale sunlight through shorn branches glinted off the frost-tipped antlers, blinking out across the twenty yards that separated hunter and prey, to where Dafydd was now lowering his bow.

"It's over," Jorah said softly. Daenerys peeked out from behind his shoulder. She had grasped his arm with both hands, gloved hands twisted in the heavy fabric at his sleeve. She loosened her grip but didn't quite let go. Looking down at her earnest face, Jorah suddenly realized that her features were much paler than normal, fatigued and peaked. With all those earlier hints of anger now absent, she seemed almost forlorn…and certainly ill.

He cursed himself for not seeing it sooner. If she was sick, she should have said something. And now he had allowed himself to be manipulated into bringing her out into this weather.

"Let me take you back," he begged. "Dafydd can finish here."

"No, he can't carry the stag back alone," she answered, letting go of his arm, defiant once again. This time the defiance was half-hearted and not entirely convincing. Still, she insisted, "I'm fine."

But she wasn't fine.

As soon as Jorah pulled the knife from his belt, kneeling in the blood-stained snow, and making that first cut, letting loose the guts of the stag, all gushing blood and organ meat, Daenerys gave a small groan. She raised her hand to her mouth and, without explanation, she suddenly dashed deeper into the woods.

"Daenerys!" Jorah called out immediately, quickly rising and handing the knife over to an equally bewildered Dafydd. Jorah shook his head in answer to the man's unasked question, not knowing the answer. Not knowing any answers at present. Deep, dark concern was stealing over his features.

Leaving Dafydd to finish with the stag, he ran after Daenerys. He caught up with her soon enough, as she had fallen to her knees by a tangled bush of barren shoots and purple twigs, shorn of all its foliage, retching and dry heaving into the frosted underbrush.

"Daenerys…," he repeated her name, softly this time, going down to one knee beside her and gathering up the strands of her long hair with care, holding it back from her face until she was finished.

"Here," he took out his flask and handed it to her, while stroking her back gently. She took a small drink, swishing the water in her mouth before spitting it out into the snow, ridding her mouth of the sour taste of vomit. She grimaced and looked like she might be sick again, closing her eyes briefly and reaching out to take his forearm and then the wrist of the hand that had offered her the flask.

He gave it willingly and felt the pressure of her tight grasp even beneath his leather wrist guards. His other hand wandered from her back, to stroke the rest of her hair behind her ears before coming to rest on her pale, chilled cheek. He gave her time to recover, asking only after she'd steadied herself and opened her eyes to meet his gaze once more, "Are you all right?"

She nodded slowly, but her eyes gave a much different answer. She tried words next with a quiet, "It's nothing," but she didn't convince herself, let alone him.

He got her to her feet, pulling her up off the cold, frozen ground. The fallen trunk of an ancient white oak tree lay nearby and he led her to it, forcing her to sit on its flat surface before taking his seat beside her.

"You should have told me you were ill," he chastened her fiercely, but quietly too, too worried to hold onto anger. Sickness in this part of the world, at this time of year, was too often a death sentence. His heart went stone cold at the thought of some unknown plague stealing through his beloved's body. His hand drifted up to her forehead, checking for the heat of fever.

But Daenerys was shaking her head and pulling his hand down already. She was still catching her breath but had turned calm, placid now where she had been anxious and restless all morning.

"No, Jorah. I'm not ill," she replied, something changing in her eyes. A sudden, unexpected tenderness filled the space between them, with her tone of voice and gesture of hand free of all pretense and dripping affection. She brought his hand down from her face and then guided it further, to where she brought it to rest, beneath the cloak and furs to her waistline, a telltale spot that could only mean one thing.

Her wide, beautiful eyes confessed the rest.

He didn't believe it. Of course, he didn't. He knew what happened to Rhaego and he'd been there with her when Mirri Maz Duur cursed her, standing within earshot. She would never bear a child. That was decided long ago.

"But how…?" he managed, stunned. His mind was barely registering the information.

"I don't know," she replied, with just as much amazement as him. She'd known for some time, that was obvious. But apparently the shock was still fresh. In a small voice, she added, "I wasn't sure at first. I was afraid to believe it, I think, but…"

She met his gaze with a shadow of a smile, gently biting her bottom lip before continuing, her words timid and almost apologetic, "I didn't know how to tell you."

"You didn't have to come all the way out here, love," he muttered, but the chiding was half-hearted, all his own feelings coming undone at the revelation that this woman—his dear, sweet Daenerys—was carrying his child. The simple term of endearment, not something he'd used before, spilled so naturally from his lips, with such truth behind it. And Daenerys's lips parted at it, her breath catching on the word.

She left his hand to linger where their child lay, taking both her hands and bringing them to either side of his bearded face.

"I love you, Jorah," she said with feeling, awash with love for him and needing to give him those three words, now, before any more time passed.

But he didn't need the words. He never needed the words. All he needed was her.

There was a part of him that couldn't completely banish the foreboding, cruel thoughts that tried for his attention—that she would never bear a living child, that the last time she bore a child, it almost killed her. Beneath her cloak, his large hand spread over her growing womb with a bear's protectiveness.

Not this time. He swore an immoveable oath, closing his eyes and praying to the gods of his forefathers to see them through this unharmed.

Daenerys could read his thoughts. Her own thoughts had been swayed by the same, accounting for some of the restlessness and anxiousness she'd felt over the past two weeks, as she struggled how to tell him. As she struggled to decide whether the witch still had power here, beyond the grave, at the very other side of the world.

No, she doesn't. He could hear Daenerys's thoughts, stronger than his own at present. The only thing that has power here is my love for you.

Gently, she pulled his forehead down to meet hers.

"We'll be all right," she whispered, her sweet voice a promise in itself. "All three of us."

"All three of us," he agreed, musing at the strange, wonderful, glorious notion. All three of us.