I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Nathan felt good walking away from the throne room.

Not the uncomplicated good of a problem resolved — the specific good of having finally seen the real shape of something and being able to work with it honestly. Amaterasu had been worrying herself into silence for weeks, maybe months, asking Kaguya to manage the information carefully, to keep Nathan moving toward his exit before he understood enough to want to stay.

He understood now.

And he was staying.

Tomorrow he would leave officially — visibly, with Haruka and Ryuuji, the Lord Commander of Tenebria concluding his diplomatic visit and returning home. Every noble who’d been watching since his arrival would see it. The story would be clean.

Tonight was something else.

He moved through the castle’s corridors. Just a man walking through a quiet castle in the deep hours after midnight.

He was tracking a specific magical signature.

He had noted it two nights ago in the garden without meaning to — the particular quality of Rena’s yokais, the way Midori’s presence registered at the edges of his perception. It was faint but distinct, the magical equivalent of a voice he’d already learned to pick out from a crowd.

He followed it to a door in the east residential wing.

He pushed it open.

“W…what?!”

Rena came up from sleep immediately — sitting upright, bed sheets gathered around her, hair loose, the composed exterior entirely absent. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks flushed immediately upon landing on Nathan standing in her doorway.

“Rena-sama!”

“Someone entered without permission—”

“We must kill him immediately—”

The yokais erupted from their various positions around the room simultaneously, Aka lighting the candles in a quick sweep that bathed everything in warm amber and confirmed what everyone’s instincts had already told them.

Nathan stood in the doorway looking at the room with the mild, unhurried interest.

The yokais registered who he was and went from attack-ready to deeply conflicted within the same second — bristling still.

“You!” Rena’s face achieved a shade of red that the candlelight was doing nothing to diminish. “What are you doing here?!”

“Looking for somewhere to sleep,” Nathan said.

“You were given a room for that specific purpose!” she snapped.

“I forgot where it is,” Nathan replied, without a trace of shame in any syllable.

“I will walk you to it personally! Get out of my room immediately—”

“You’ve been paying close enough attention to my movements these past few days,” Nathan said, “that you’d certainly know where my room is. Since you’ve been keeping such thorough track.”

Rena’s mouth opened.

Closed.

The color in her face deepened past anything the candlelight could reasonably be blamed for.

“I haven’t been — I don’t — that’s completely—” She stopped, reorganized with visible effort. “Leave. Now.”

Nathan looked at her on the bed — hair loose, sheet clutched, furious and flushed and genuinely lovely in the unguarded honesty of someone caught mid-sleep — and then at the considerable space beside her.

“Your bed is large,” he observed. “There’s more than enough room. You wouldn’t even notice I was there.”

“I said no!”

“You were considerably more open to the idea an hour ago,” Nathan said.

“I was confused!” The words came out at a volume that she immediately reined back, her eyes going to the door with fluster. “I was confused,” she repeated, quieter, with feeling. “And you were drunk.”

“Partially,” Nathan allowed.

“Get out,” she said, pulling the sheet higher.

Nathan sighed and turned toward the door.

“I will just accept their invitation then,” he said.

“W…what invitation?” Rena asked.

“Those four girls,” he said. “They extended an invitation earlier. They’re probably still awake. I’m sure at least one of them has a large bed and no objections to—”

“W…wait!”

The word came out before she could stop it.

Nathan turned back.

Rena sat on her bed with her fists clenched in the sheet and her jaw set and an expression that communicated clearly that she was furious at herself for what she was about to say and was going to say it anyway.

“Since you are clearly going to stand there begging,” she said slowly, “I will allow you some space.” She pointed at the far edge of the bed with a precision that suggested the boundary was not negotiable. “Over there. And you don’t touch me.”

“Very generous,” Nathan said.

He crossed the room, appeared at the bed’s edge in the same instant, and sat. Rena flinched back despite herself. He removed his coat, set his shoes aside, and lay down as if he owned the place.

“Rena-sama,” Aka said slowly, from the direction of the wall.

“Go sleep,” Rena said flatly. “All of you. Out.”

The yokais vanished — Kiiro with what sounded like a quiet prayer, Ao and Aka exchanging a look that communicated significant private commentary, Midori last, floating through the wall with the serene wisdom of a spiritual entity that had decided some situations were above its clearance level.

The room was quiet.

Rena lay on her side of the bed staring at the ceiling. Nathan was close enough that his presence was entirely impossible to not notice — the warmth of him, and the smell, which was doing something deeply inconvenient to her ability to be appropriately furious. Cedar and something underneath that was simply him, and she had no defenses against it at close range that she hadn’t already spent in the garden.

She stared at the ceiling.

Nathan stared at the ceiling.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Nathan said.

Rena turned her head toward him before she could stop herself.

She had expected him to leave — had known since he arrived that this was a visit with an endpoint, a Lord Commander who had come for a truce and an army and would return to his kingdom when the business concluded. She had known it.

She hadn’t expected tomorrow.

“Kaguya wants me to take Princess Haruka and her son to Tenebria,” Nathan said. His eyes were on the ceiling. “To keep them safe while Kastoria’s situation stabilizes. So I’m leaving in the morning.”

“To safety in a kingdom full of Demons,” Rena said. The mockery in her voice was automatic, reflexive — the armor going on before she’d consciously decided to put it on.

“I live there,” Nathan said. “I’m safe.”

“Because you’re a monster yourself,” Rena scoffed.

Nathan smiled at the ceiling.

The silence stretched for a moment.

Then the sheets rustled.

Nathan opened his eyes.

Rena had turned onto her side. She was closer than she had been. Her face was flushed and her expression tinged with particular mix of embarrassment and determination.

“Take me with you,” she said.

Her voice was quiet. Not soft exactly — Rena’s voice was never soft — but stripped of its usual sharp edges, carrying something underneath that she hadn’t bothered to conceal.

Nathan looked at her.

“I thought Tenebria wasn’t safe,” he said. Low, almost a laugh in it.

“You’re there,” she replied. Simply. Quietly.

Three words that contained everything she wasn’t going to dress up or expand on or qualify. Just the plain architecture of it, offered without performance.

Nathan studied her face in the candlelight — the honey-blonde hair loose around her, the brown eyes holding his without flinching, the flush on her cheeks that she had apparently decided to stop fighting tonight.

“You’d leave your classmates,” he said. “Leave Kastoria. Come to a kingdom you’ve never seen, full of people and things entirely unlike anything you know.” He paused. “For what?”

Rena was quiet for a moment.

“I have no friends here,” she said finally. “Not really. I have classmates and yokais and a role and a room in a castle.” She held his gaze. “I don’t belong here. I’ve never belonged anywhere particularly.”

Nathan looked at her quietly.

She was serious. He could see it in every line of her — the set of her jaw, the way her hands had stopped trembling and gone still, the particular quality in her eyes that showed up when Rena had already decided something and was past the point where argument reached her. She had thought about this. Not tonight, not just in the garden — she had been thinking about it since before she could admit to herself that she was thinking about it.

Arguing was pointless.

“Alright,” he said.

Rena’s expression shifted immediately toward relief — and then he added:

“But not tomorrow.”

Her face twisted. She pushed herself upright beside him, close enough that he could see the exact moment the relief became indignation.

“When then?” she demanded. “You’ll leave and I’ll be sitting here for two years waiting for you to come back! Give me a real answer!”

“I’ll come back for you soon,” Nathan said.

“Why not tomorrow?” Her voice came out sharp but underneath it was something more fragile.

Because I’m not actually leaving tomorrow.

He held the words back.

He was going to dissolve into Kastoria’s streets, change his face and name, and dismantle Takehiko’s foundation from underneath him quietly while Susanoo looked at an empty space where the Lord Commander of Tenebria used to be. The fewer people who knew that, the longer he stayed invisible.

He said nothing.

The silence was its own answer, and not the answer she wanted.

Rena’s fists closed. Her whole frame trembled — not anger exactly, something more complicated than anger. Her face was fully, completely red and her eyes were bright and she looked at Nathan for a long moment.

Then she moved.

She swung her leg over and straddled him — both knees on the bed on either side of him, upright, her hair falling loose around her face, looking down at him from a position that cost her an enormous amount of pride to take and that she had taken anyway.

Nathan looked up at her.

“If I become your woman,” she said, her voice shaking slightly at the edges despite every effort, “you won’t leave me here. You’ll take me to Tenebria.” She held his gaze. “Answer me.”

“What are you doing, Rena,” Nathan said. Low, almost amused.

“Answer me!” The words came out louder than she intended and she immediately lowered her voice, jaw set. “If I become your woman — will you take care of me? Will you protect me?” She faltered for only a fraction of a second. “Will you throw me away?”

Nathan looked at her from below — at this proud, harsh, extraordinary woman sitting above him in her sleep robe in the candlelight asking the only question that had ever mattered to her underneath all the rest of it.

“If you become my woman,” he said, his voice quiet and entirely serious, “I will not ever let you leave. Even if you beg for it. Even if you hate me for it.” He held her gaze without blinking. “Understand what you’re asking.”

Rena’s throat moved as she swallowed.

She understood.

He wasn’t offering something comfortable or negotiable. He was offering what he always offered — complete, irreversible, absolute. The kind of thing that didn’t have an exit once it was given. She had watched him from across distances for three years and she knew exactly what kind of man he was, had told herself a hundred times that it was exactly the wrong kind for her.

Her hands moved to the front of her nemaki, a bathrobe type sleepwear.

The robe was light — thin cotton, pale, barely more substantial than a suggestion of clothing. Her fingers found both edges and closed around them.

Nathan’s hand closed around her wrist.

Not hard. Simply present.

She looked down at him.

His golden eyes were serious — no teasing in them now, no smile at their corners, nothing left of the comfortable ease he’d worn since lying down. Just the truth of what he was, looking at her directly.

“If you do that,” he said, “I’m going to fuck you.”

The words landed between them like a weight.

Rena’s face flushed instantly, color rushing across her cheeks and down her neck until even the tips of her ears burned. Her heart hammered hard enough that she could feel the pulse of it in her throat.

For a moment her hands trembled against the robe.

Then she steadied herself.

Her fingers tightened in the cotton, and slowly—she pulled the two sides apart.

The robe fell open.

Nathan’s gaze didn’t move.

First came the pale line of her throat and the smooth slope of her shoulders, milky skin catching the dim light of the room. The delicate hollow of her collarbones appeared next, rising and falling with the deeper breaths she was trying—and failing—to keep controlled.

She lowered the fabric further.

Her bare breasts slipped into view.

Nathan saw them for the first time, and for a moment even he went still.

They were beautiful—full and soft, yet lifted with a natural firmness that made them stand proudly against her chest. The pale skin contrasted with the delicate pink of her nipples, which had already tightened into small peaks from the cool air and the intensity of his gaze.

The robe hung open in her hands now, framing her body.

Rena stood there flushed and exposed, chest rising softly as she breathed, while Nathan looked up at her with those bright, unwavering golden eyes—taking in every inch of what she had just revealed to him.