The cold whipped and snarled around him, in a flurry of wind that howled like a thousand wolves wailing to the moon, a lament maybe, a shriek of fury.

The North protested his presence.

Theon shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself and huddling into his furs, barely enough to keep the biting wind back, gifted to him by Ned Stark to protect him from the harsh Northern weather on the ride from Pyke to Winterfell, too heavy and too big, dwarfing him in it's coarse pelts. It was the skin of some animal, a wolf maybe, and it made a grotesque image on a Greyjoy.

The ground crunched beneath his feet, big and heavy boots made for the frosty weather (also gifted to him by Ned Stark) protecting his feet from the heavy snow, which fell and flew all around him, and layered beneath his feet.

Each step he took sounded like gravel along a track, he almost revelled in the new sensation, in the pretty way the white snow layered atop everything, and perhaps in different circumstances he would have. It was the ice that made the crunch he discovered, when his boots slipped on the earth.

Snow didn't fall on Pyke, but here in Winterfell it engulfed everything, his cheeks flamed with it.

The snow didn't merely cover the path, it drowned it. His feet sank with every step, the ground was soft and unyielding, and stepping here, you could not see the true ground, or know how far your feet would sink before meeting soil.

Despite the cold, he burned.

The tips of his ears hurt, his hands left uncovered by any sort of wool or cloth, his feet froze in their boots, all a dull and numb burning sensation, unlike anything he's ever felt before.

Pyke was cold. The ocean was frost, but he'd never felt cold enough to burn.

Wind could cut and he knew this from experience, he could still taste the tang of the sea on his tongue, but he didn't know wind could burn. Or howl. Wind was strong on the Iron Islands, it had to be to push the waves up tall, but it didn't howl so much as shriek, but Theon supposed it was fitting that the wind howled on Winterfell.

Standing here in the court of Winterfell, surrounded by Stark children and Stark lords and ladies, Stark wind and Stark snow, he felt in the den of the wolves.