"But you are blinded, Jon, in your insistence that she could mother you as she had done the others. I haven't a doubt that she could have reared you as well as your siblings, that she would not have come to love and cherish you as I did. But to let her in on the true knowledge of your birth would be betraying the very promise I'd made your mother. Not a single person heard Lyanna's truth aside from me; she whispered it so closely, her lips brushed against my ear. I was the sole carrier of that secret - and though I trusted Catelyn with my life, with my children's lives and know she could never willingly betray me, I could not sever the pact I'd made with your mother. I could not risk the news from spreading, should someone have overheard us. Doing so would be asking me to dishonor my own blood." Ned exhales a heavy, weighted sigh. "I cannot change what has been done, nor can I rectify what wrongs I have made in my life. I am sorry, my boy, that you had to endure what you did and that I could not save you from it."