A/N: This story has been inspired by the Wild Wolf, written by Vimesenthusiast!

The Young Wolf

Prologue

Naruto Uzumaki could feel his life fading fast, yet despite that he couldn't keep himself from smiling.

He'd laugh if it didn't hurt so much to do that, but alas, he did it. Naruto couldn't really move, but did manage to glance to his side where he saw the form of his friend, lying face down in the dirt. The mighty Sasuke Uchiha, beaten, bloodied and unconscious; ready for the taking, and it was all thanks to Naruto.

Something that the blonde boy was very proud off, even if he wouldn't live to rub that into people's faces.

Oh yes, Naruto knew that he wasn't long for this world. Even now he could hardly breathe through the pain in his chest, and he could tell that one of his lungs had collapsed already and the other was slowly but steadily filling with his own blood.

He could hear a liquid bubbling in his lung with every shallow breath he took, and he was pretty sure that not even Kyuubi's chakra could fix that.

Naruto didn't continue with that thought. He didn't want to die, but that mattered little right now, and he knew that well enough. So instead of letting his thoughts become dark and dreary, he instead forced himself to think about the nice moments of his life.

His life, short as it was, was difficult, but also so beautiful. He wouldn't change anything about it. Every moment of weakness that he had was well worth it in the end. He started with nothing, and made friends, met his loved ones, and got to meet great people that he would never forget.

And he looked forward to meeting some of them in the great beyond. He couldn't wait to meet Haku and Zabuza again, there was so much he wanted to tell them.

More than that, he wondered if he would get to meet his parents when he passed on…

As his vision began to go blurry, Naruto knew that he would find out soon enough, and he was okay with that.

Shinobi didn't get to enjoy long lives, he knew that by heart, Kakashi-sensei had made sure that the entire Team knew about that brutal fact of reality.

And Naruto had seen people his own age die before, he understood that the world was a cruel and brutal place.

Did he wish that things were different? No, no he didn't. He knew that if things were different then Sasuke would have gone to Orochimaru, and that he wouldn't allow.

Not even if it meant that he would die.

'I guess...I guess I'll leave my dreams and promises with Sasuke…' Naruto thought with a smile as his breathing gave out with one last wet rasp and his vision began to darken. 'I believe that Sasuke will do good from now on…'

~XxX~

In a place that was so far beyond what mortals could discern, as to not feel the passing of time, or be bound by the concept of being, several eldritch entities waited and watched the world of their creation.

They waited for an opportunity to change the ever moving downward spiral they could perceive their beautiful world to be in.

Like any creator, or perhaps the word parent would be more fitting, these entities had hopes for their creations. For their children, for the world they were now bound too.

Only to be slighted time and time again.

Their children had turned from them. Their creations, possessed by sin, turned away from their teachings, and began to worship other concepts, and with that worship, they brought to life other entities, other Gods.

Beings that were not meant to be, and yet now they existed, and with the worship of humankind, they grew ever stronger. And as the strength of those entities grew, so too grew their awareness of the world.

And the other gods then acted against them. Letting their followers, the humans, burn down their forests, hunt down their priests, and outlaw the practice of worshiping them, the Old Gods, in most regions of the world.

Other gods rose from other places, eking out an existence for themselves, and as such, only the North now worshiped the Original gods of this world, and much of the Old God's power and influence had faded.

Taken away by what the Human's called the Faith of the Seven.

A corrupt faith, headed by a corrupt church, filled with corrupt priests that did the bidding of corrupt gods.

A tragedy, and an affront to the Old Gods, and yet, they had neither the influence nor the might to change or challenge the Faith of the Seven.

The old Gods were weak, weaker than even the Drowned One, or the Burning One.

They still retained many a follower, most of the North worshiped them still, and the man beyond the great wall was ardent in their worship of the Old Gods.

But they had an enemy growing in their own land.

Leeching away at the life of their people, and much of their might had to be used to suppress and halt the rise of the Great Other. A task that became ever harder as time passed. With each human life that was snuffed out by the deathly cold of the Great Other, his power grew.

The Gods lived through human prayers, they gained their powers through mortal life, the Great Other, gained his power from death.

Its one and only purpose was the destruction of all life, and with that would come the end of all Gods that could pose a threat to the Great Other.

And yet the other Gods, didn't care. The Seven, the Drowned One, and the Burning One, they were all happy to play their own games, Leaving the Old Ones to their struggle and profiting off of their weakness.

None of them believed in the threat the Great Other posed to all of creation. All of them were happily enriching themselves and their followers by using the strife the Great Other created in his wake.

And this could not be allowed. The Great Other did not believe in the balance, did not adhere to nature, or the cycle of life. All he cared about was War, and Death, and Cold. Ever consuming, ever expanding, ever moving until everything before it was cursed with un-life.

If the Great Other was not stopped then all of Mankind would fall.

The Old Ones knew that to be true, they had foreseen it. And man would play right into the Great Others hands. The Old Ones could not change human nature, they could not change human greed, and they had seen how far humans were willing to go for the pettiest of reasons.

And they could not act in the world of Mortals on their own accord.

No God could.

They could only act through Mortals that were devout to them. Sending those mortals their will through dreams and visions, and then they could do nothing but hope that the Mortal would act accordingly to their will.

But that was never certain. Many a time a mortal put away with divine visions, calling them nothing but a fancy dream, such was disheartening to any God.

But such means would no longer be enough to stop the Great Other, not when the other Gods of the World had their champions and vassals undo any and all changes that the Old Ones tried to make.

The Old Ones knew that they needed a solid presence in the world.

A Champion.

A Mortal, incorruptible, able and willing to act out their will, while free to adapt and make choices of their own.

A beacon of Hope, shining so bright that their mere presence could disperse the cold despair of the Great Other.

A child of Prophecy like the Burning One always hailed.

An Azor Ahai of their own making.

Yes, they needed such a Champion if the tide of death and despair is to be stopped. And as such the Old Ones did what they do best, they waited and watched, and listened for an opportunity to present itself.

And that opportunity came with the death of a Child of Prophecy from a different realm. The Old Ones were struck with both shock and disbelieve when they got a glimpse at the child's spirit.

Such unwavering conviction, such purity and such strength of character, it was an unbelievable sight to old entities like them. They had seen it all, for well over thousands of years they watched the Mortals of their realm, and never could they recall seeing one that shone as brightly as this child did.

There were bright Mortals that came before, intelligent Mortals, incorruptible Mortals, and Mortals with unwavering faith, but never one that was like him.

In Naruto Uzumaki, the Old Ones found a Champion greater than they would dare to have hoped for. They found strength there, massive strength and indomitable will, and a darkness that was there that sent them into shivers by just gazing at it.

That darkness would have turned them away quickly, for it seemed a greater darkness then even the Great Other possessed. The Old Ones knew that this boy had a darkness in him that was to be feared and best left alone, but there was good there as well.

So much good.

So much hope, such a will to live, and such a bright radiance of happiness that it eclipsed the darkness within him by no small margin.

They had to have him.

Come what may, they had to take this chance, even if there was darkness in the boy, having watched his life through the boy's eyes, the Old One's understood why that darkness was there as well.

They had trust that the boy would become the Champion the World needed, and they knew that they could gain his allegiance as well.

They knew what the boy wanted most, and the Old Ones were able to fulfill him that wish easily enough.

And thus it was that a babe was born to a mother of the Riverlands, in the land of the North where the old ones still held sway. A mother whose new husband was not the one she had been set to marry.

The old ones gently reached out and they took the soul of the babe, returning it to where souls dwelled in wait for their chance to live. The soul would return, the babe would be born in time, when the world was a better place, the Old Ones would make sure of that, for they knew that the babe that was meant to be born that day would only suffer a life of misery and pain, and war.

A war that the child was not ready for, whereas their champion had the steel to not only live through it, but thrive in the dark days to come.

That done, the Old Ones snatched Naruto Uzumaki's soul before it could pass into the afterlife that was waiting for his arrival, uncaring of the consequences of their actions, and then they forced his powerful soul into the body of the child waiting to be born.

They were fascinated as they watched how the body of the unborn babe accepted and then changed to accommodate the soul of their bright champion.

Yes, when they witnessed this, the Old Ones knew that they had done good. And now all they could do was watch and wait for an opportunity to contact their chosen champion.

~XxX~

Catelyn Stark watched the pure and white snow gently float down as she stared out the large window of the master bedroom of Winterfell.

It snowed often here in the North, and it was still summer at that. Something that she still found strange, even after she had spent quite some time here in this cold and harsh land that her husband called home.

And now it was her home as well.

A thought that she would still need to get used too. Just as she still had to grow accustomed to the cold that was now part of her daily life.

It was strange and Catelyn would be lying if she said that she was happy with how her life had turned out.

"Family. Duty. Honor." She muttered the words of her House, and reminded herself that duty was the reason she was here.

In a land that was no her home, while married to a man that was not meant to be her Husband. And faintly she wondered if she would see her husband, and the father of their child, again.

But no, she shook those dreary thoughts off, they had no place in her mind, especially not while she was still healing from giving birth to her little bundle of pride and joy.

She stared down at the baby she held cradled in her arms, and once more her entire being was overcome with a feeling of pride and happiness that she found hard to put into words.

Catelyn was a mother now, she had brought life into this world. Even if her husband wasn't the man she had long thought to marry, even if it was a marriage of duty and not love, right now, holding her babe against her bosom, she was content and happy, giddy even, and she had to try hard to stop her girlish side from coming to the surface.

The view could've been better though, and she felt her lips quirk at the thought, but then those lips turned down into a frown. She was not at home in Winterfell, and every day she was reminded of that.

Every time she met one of the locals, be it servant, guard or peasant, she could tell that she was not welcome here. They saw her as a newcomer, not quite an interloper but certainly new, unusual and not at all fitting in. And of course, her husband wasn't here to help her settle.

She had known that she wouldn't be able to spend any length of time with her husband, even before the marriage. They barely had a few days together, before Eddard Stark, her husband, had to ride off to join his boyhood friend Robert Baratheon on the front-lines of this accursed war.

And to say that those few days she was able to spend with her husband were awkward, would be the height of understatement. Their bedding even more so than anything else, and she still blushed in shame when thinking about how uncertain and fearful she had acted during their first night together.

But it was also the one and only night she was allowed to hold her Lord Husband in her arms, and a part of her hoped that she would be able to do so again. She wanted her babe to have a father, and she wanted to at least have a chance to make something proper out of this marriage she was forced into.

Eddard was a good man, she could tell, and he had treated her well and with the due respect a man is to give to his lady. She was hopeful that she could build something with a man like him, perhaps even something better than she could've had with Brandon Stark, Eddard's elder brother, and the man she would have had to marry had he not been killed so gruesomely at the hands of Aerys the Mad.

The Targaryens, descendants of the dragon riders of Valyria, had ruled for years, however with no dragons to their name any longer, the awe that man had felt for their house had faded and the World moved on.

Yet for all the madness of the King, for all the people he had put to death by fire, it was the stealing of a single woman that caused this entire rebellion to start. Catelyn often wondered how many knew that they were fighting and dying by the thousands because Rhaegar Targaryen, the Crown Prince, stole away Lyanna Stark, the betrothed of Robert Baratheon.

King Aerys was just an afterthought, an old, and insane man that would have died in a few short years either way.

Parts of Catelyn couldn't help but wonder what kind of madness had possessed Prince Rhaegar to act so foolishly. She knew that so many had high hopes for the gentle and soft spoken Prince, even Catelyn herself had wanted to see the Prince succeed his father.

Rhaegar was the only reason why none had acted sooner against King Aerys, and then the Prince went and condemned the entire Kingdom to war.

And for what? Because he wanted to take to bed a woman that was promised to another?

Catelyn shook her head, so many dead because of the Princes lusts.

She looked down at her babe and smiled while cooing, "you aren't going to turn out like that, right, my baby boy?"

Catelyn sighed before once more staring out the window. The start of the war was a little over ten months ago, and since then the tales she heard have told of a brutal and bloody war. Through it all, Eddard had been beside Robert at the front lines, leading the men of the North.

Catelyn wondered if her husband would come back a changed man. She had often heard tell that men who went to war would come home different. She hoped not. The man she had gotten to know over the short time they spent together suited her just fine.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the babe in her arms beginning to wriggle around, and then opening his eyes before her baby boy began to wail. Catelyn took a moment to look into the eyes of her son, eyes of a slightly deeper, darker blue than was normal for her family who were known for their 'Tully Blue Eyes'.

Her baby boys eyes were unique, and they suited him perfectly. Catelyn could see that her son took the best of both of his families, the black hair of house Stark, and the blue eyes of House Tully, he was just perfect to her.

Especially with those faint birth marks on his cheeks, that made her wonder if the Starks were truly part wolf as the legends always told. Because it would seem as if her cute son would have whiskers of his own in time.

The baby boy started to move his arms, flailing about as he cried his little lungs out and Catelyn shushed him gently, "there, there, baby boy, momma's here."

She kissed her boy's forehead and smiled as his cries softened into quiet whimpers and he once more looked at her with those large and endlessly blue eyes of his. "Is someone hungry? Hold on a moment my darling…"

With that she began to unbutton her blouse and reveal one of her swollen and milk filled teats, perfectly round and capped with light pink nipples already hard and ready to be suckled. She brought the head of her baby boy close to her teat and smiled when he instinctively latched on.

"That's right darling, that's right...just drink your fill."

~XxX~

Naruto woke up, and immediately knew that something was wrong here. His thoughts were scrambled in a way that he had never run into before. He couldn't, he couldn't think quite right, and he couldn't feel quite right either.

Everything was strange; he could understand his own thoughts, but yet he also couldn't. And the feeling of hunger was dominating his mind like he's never known before. He could vaguely remember some things, yet his mind seemed unable to grasp those memories, to focus on them. He couldn't focus on anything at all, his own thoughts were flighty and escaped him whenever he tried to focus on it.

He felt that his body seemed strange as well, nothing felt quite right and yet he was perfectly warm and comfortable.

It was all very strange.

Naruto opened his eyes, and even that was a task in itself, and then he found himself staring up at the face of a giant that he had never seen before. The face of the woman was beautiful, with dark red hair, light blue eyes, and facial features that he found to be very striking.

The woman was smiling at him in a way that made him relax entirely. That smile made him feel all warm and comfortable and secure, as if the smile itself was telling him that everything was alright.

It was a smile that he had seen before but one that was never directed at him.

Then the woman opened her mouth and started to talk with words that he couldn't understand. He tried to, but whatever she said might as well have been gibberish to his ears.

But then thinking and focusing was just so hard! He couldn't quite focus on his own thoughts, and he was oh so hungry, and his mind was everywhere at once and yet nowhere at all.

He felt the woman move him around for a second, then watched in awe and embarrassment when she opened her blouse to reveal a large breast. The part of his mind that was able to form some coherent thought felt embarrassed beyond believe that some strange woman would just bare her assets to him, and yet he felt his mouth water at the sight of that pink and protruding nipple that suddenly looked more tasty than even the largest bowl of Ramen.

The woman brought him closer to that tasty looking nipple and Naruto wasn't ashamed to admit that he didn't even try to put up a fight here. His mouth latched onto that nipple and then he suckled like he never had suckled before.

And then the taste of warm, fatty milk filled his mouth and all thoughts except for the feeling of utter bliss left his mind. The hunger he felt began to receded and in its stead came a deep drowsiness.

He could hear the woman laugh and giggle at him, and even that was something that felt incredibly good, especially when the woman began to run a gentle hand through his hair while he drank the milk from her teat.

Almost as soon as his belly felt full he was hit by a wave of exhaustion, and it was all he could do to once more stare up at that smiling face of the woman who allowed him to feed on her milk, before he felt his vision fade to black and he once more succumbed to sleeps tender embrace.

~XxX~

A/N: As I stated above, this story is inspired by the story Wild Wolf written by Vimesenthusiast, a story that I have been reading over the last few days, and one of the better AsoIaF crossovers that I know off.

Anyways, reading that story has woken the urge in me to write a story set in the world of George R.R. Martins AsoIaF, even more so since I've also read a few GoT/Naruto crossovers that I didn't quite like all that much.

One of the reasons why I didn't enjoy some of these stories, was because the Authors, which I'm not going to name here, decided to take Naruto and then they nerfed him, changed him, broke him even, and turned him into some OC that would fit the story they wanted to tell.

I can understand most of that, I'm guilty of some of those things myself, but what I cannot understand is why some take Naruto as their main character and then nerf him.

That is the reason why I took kid Naruto for this story. I have no plans to nerf this version of Naruto, as such I decided to take pre Shippuden Naruto, not because I needed Naruto to be weaker, but because it really makes no difference.

A genin from the Naruto Universe would be a killing machine in a universe like AsoIaF. A genin can run faster than a horse, throw knifes that have a velocity close to bullets, and are probably strong enough to juggle the Mountain that Rides with a single hand.

Shippuden Naruto would simply be overkill and far more difficult for me to write, because I would need to make up bullshit reasons why Naruto isn't willing to use any of his abilities. And its also because most of the things that adult Naruto can do would be useless in a story like this.

Anyways, sorry for the long Authors Note, but I just wanted to make those things clear. I hope that you enjoyed the prologue of this story, and the next chapter should be coming soon.

Leave me a review if you like, and I see you all next time!