Sandor withdrew from her, determination dragging strength back into his body. He allowed himself one too-brief moment to admire the wanton picture she made: hair streaming over the sheets, moon-pale skin glowing, thighs sticky with their juices, nipples and lips red-bitten.
Sansa sat up and nodded. She did not fight him, or demand why. Her trust in his judgment pleased him. He would take care of her, just as she would take care of him.
With a last, longing glance, he stood. Through the window, he could see that the sun had just set, and twilight was turning the world blue. Full dark would soon be upon them.
Sandor made quick work of cleaning himself at the washbasin before bringing a damp cloth to her. She sponged her entire body of sweat and sex, and then he combed her hair as he had longed to do from the moment he'd first seen her.
"Where will we go?" she asked as she relaxed back into him.
"Depends on what you want to do," he replied, carefully untangling a particularly nasty snarl. "If you want to join your family, we should go North, but they're expecting that. If you want to survive, we should go to Essos."
"What do you want to do?" Her face was intent, pensive, trusting. Sansa turned, meeting his eyes. He could not resist pressing a kiss to her lips.
"I want to keep you alive. Leave the choice to me, and I'll hide us at the ass-end of the Dothraki Sea until all this shite with all these fucking kings is settled."
She hummed in acknowledgment, looking pensive.
"But what use is there of keeping you safe if you're unhappy?" he continued. "And I think you would be unhappy, so far from your brother and mother, idle while they fight for your land and family."
"Is there no compromise?" Her face was sad as she tucked herself against him, her face against the crook where his neck met shoulder.
"Might be. Could be. But there's not enough time to think on all our options. For now, we have to get out of this sodding castle. Once we're free of this shithole, we can decide where to go."
Sansa leaned back and studied him for a long, silent moment. "You're the bravest man I've ever met," she said eventually. "And the kindest, and the strongest. No one else I know could go through their first Change and still be so calm."
He grimaced, shaking off her compliment as he had her other, when he'd saved her from the rioters. "It's not bravery or strength when you have no choice," he told her, but inside he thrilled to hear her say it. "As for the last, it seems you've not met many kind men if you think—"
"It doesn't matter what I think," she interrupted him, but sweetly, and took a step that put her right up against him. "The gods think are you a fine man. You've seen the proof of that for yourself. Pretend you're not, all you want. I know the truth."
Sandor stared down at her. Her pretty face was set, implacable. There would be no dissuading her, and suddenly he didn't want to, anymore. Maybe it was time that to think there were more to him than mere physical prowess. That he had some qualities beyond how efficiently he could intimidate and kill. Slowly, he brought his arm to embrace her slight shoulders and hold her to him.
"You've a job ahead of you, little bird, if you think to turn me into one of your buggering knights."
"Who wants a knight?" she scoffed, petting his chest, "when you can have a hound?"
Sandor stared at her, lanced to the quick by what she probably thought was off-the-cuff, jaunty, amusing; for him, it was a lightning-bolt of epiphany.
If he hadn't already wanted her…
Hadn't already loved her…
He had to protect her. And they were running out of time; Shae would be back, to see about her mistress' dinner, if no other reason.
"Now," he rasped. "We have to go. Now."
Sansa blinked. "We haven't— nothing is prepared or decided—"
"No time. We have perhaps an hour before they demand our presence again. I don't want to be here when they do. They'll demand to see proof of your maidenhead, and when they find it missing, they'll kill us both for treason."
Her eyes widened with comprehension. "Oh, gods protect us."
He gently untangled himself from her and stood. "You'll have to instruct me in how to shift on purpose," he grumbled, not liking to admit ignorance of something. "It just… happened, last time."
Sansa, just standing herself, faced him with an expression of such fondness on her face that he thought, just maybe, she might feel for him a fraction of the devotion that already pulsed through his veins for her.
"You did it for me," she murmured, and pressed a kiss to his jaw. "I'd have done it for you, too."
Before he could reply, she stepped back, still the tiniest bit shy of her nudity and her cheeks flaming.
"Look inside for your wolf," she said. "Or in your case, for your hound." She shot him an impish smile. "Once you find him, pull him in close, let him grow until he's bigger than you are. You might…" Here, she hesitated. "You're very bossy, so you might have trouble giving up control to him. But if you can't, you won't be able to shift."
He shot her a glare that told her what he thought of her 'bossy' comment, but she just laughed, somehow sparkling and happy in spite of the danger they were in.
Sandor shut his eyes and searched within himself for the hound he had become. He could feel the beast, its restless padding about in the depths of his soul, its fierceness one flame he did not fear, and once more was humbled that the gods found him deserving of such a magnificent thing.
He coaxed it closer with the unspoken offer of control, and that proved irresistible to the creature's wild heart. It leapt to the fore of his mind, and when Sandor opened his eyes again, it was to find he was staring down at two furry paws, the smell of their sex brutally strong in his nose.
He looked over at Sansa, pushing his snout between her legs, and felt his eyes roll back in his head. If he'd though the fresh, hot scent of her sex had been seductive to his human nose, to his canine sense of smell, she was enough to knock him to his knees.
Sansa yelped, "Cold nose!" and batted him away. "Revenge shall be mine," she scolded, going to the door. Sandor just let his tongue loll out, laughing as much as he could in that form.
Sansa unbolted and opened the door, just enough to get a canine head into the gap, and with a rolling shiver down her body, shifted into the wolf.
Such elegance, even on four legs, Sandor thought. He would enjoy spending the rest of his life admiring it in her.
It was almost laughably easy for them to leave the Red Keep, and the King's Landing. Their ears and noses alerted them to any dangers well in advance, and being lower to the ground helped them keep a profile so low that no one so much as glanced their way. Once they slunk through the Iron Gate while the guards were taking a piss, there was but a short clearing before they entered a wood that thickened as they pressed deeper.
They set an easy pace. His hound, a beast of unusual proportions, just like Sandor himself, had long legs and a powerful chest. He felt like he could run for days without tiring, but all the intriguing scents of the forest were more than a little distracting, so that slowed him down a bit.
The sky was barely hinting at dawn when he jogged to a stop in a little clearing and started pushing at the hound to release him. It was reluctant, but finally he overcame it. Abruptly he had skin again, instead of fur, and hands where paws had been. His senses shrank to where he almost felt crippled, blind and deaf and… and what did one call it, when one's sense of smell went from all-encompassing to barely noticeable? He felt its loss like an amputated limb.
Beside him, Sansa had shifted back to her human form as well and stood there, trembling with cold in the chill early-morning damp. He sat, leaning back against a tree trunk before pulling her into his lap.
"We'll stay shifted as much as we can," he told her, "and live rough, until we decide where we're going." He peered into the ever-lightening sky, a slender shoot of doubt taking root in his belly. She was an aristocrat, not used to deprivation and hardship. Not this kind of hardship, at least. "Will that be— can you do that? I can try to go back, get as many dragons as I can carry—"
"This is fine," she said, softening her interruption with a caress to his cheek. "Anything is better than staying there. And—"
She stopped, cocking her to head to the side, listening intently, before smiling.
"—we'll have an escort that will keep us safe."
Sandor listened, too, and heard a rustling off in the distance. He looked at Sansa, but she only smiled and stood before shifting back to her wolf form. He took it as a hint and did the same.
A twig snapped behind him; he spun and moved to place himself between the noise and Sansa. From the thickness of the underbrush gleamed eyes, many pairs of eyes. He could scarcely breathe as wolves started creeping from the forest, slinking between trees and around bushes until he and Sansa were surrounded. He marveled at how much bigger she was than they, and realized she was no mere wolf; she was a direwolf, and that seemed to make all the difference as the others crouched down, as if bowing at her feel.
Sansa sat back on her haunches, threw back her silvery head, and gave throat to a long, mournful howl. After she finished, there was silence. It was if the entire forest had ground to a halt; Sandor couldn't hear a thing no matter how his hound ears strained.
She howled again, but this time, she was joined in her song by the others. One by one, the wolves— dozens and dozens of them— all lifted their muzzles to join her. It made his blood itch, somehow, made him feel restless, like he were being needled to sing along as well, in this chorus of a song he'd never thought he'd deserve to know the words to.
But when the howl was over, and Sansa looked over at him, he realized that she had translated the lyrics for him, and he'd memorized them despite everything.
When the wolves howled a third time, he joined them, raising his voice to the sky and singing his heart out for all ears to hear.
I have a pack, he thought, and felt a completion and belonging he'd never even permitted himself to admit he'd yearned for. This is my pack. She is my pack.
Sansa sniffed the air, delicate nose quivering, then wheeled a quarter turn to the right and began loping away. He leapt after her, the pair of them the vanguard to the host of wolves that had joined them. He sniffed, too, and knew what she had scented.
Snow.
They were going North.