Free Web NovelChapter 747: The Morning after Eating Ayame
The morning came in quietly, the way mornings do after nights that take everything out of you. The sky above the garden had shifted from black to a deep, bruised blue, and the first pale threads of dawn were just beginning to bleed through the gaps in the trees when the world finally started to breathe again.
They had been at it for hours.
What had begun with a single crossing of that invisible line between them had consumed the entire night whole. Ayame had given herself to it completely, more resilient than Nathan had honestly expected, meeting him with a fire that had surprised him in the best possible way. He had not planned for it to go on that long. Usually the first time with a woman was its own contained thing, measured and deliberate, but Ayame had drawn something out of him that he hadn’t particularly been looking for, and so he had given in to it. Fully. Without reservation.
By the time she finally surrendered to exhaustion, she had done so after more than he had ever seen a woman endure in a single night, her body trembling through one last wave of pleasure before consciousness simply let go of her entirely. She went limp in his arms with a soft, breathless sound, and he had held her for a moment after, looking down at her face in the dark. Even completely spent, there was a grace to her.
He had laid her gently on the grass, reaching into his space ring for a bedsheet and draping it over her with care. Then he had settled beside her, crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and let the night pass.
He did not sleep. He rarely did after something like this. Instead he fell into the meditation Genzo had taught him, following the rhythm of his own breath down into that quiet place beneath thought where everything settled and stilled. It calmed the lingering heat in his blood and let his body recover in its own way, deeper than sleep could manage. The technique had become something he valued more than he had expected when he first learned it. There was a particular kind of peace in it that he had not found anywhere else.
He also kept a low current of warmth magic running from his hand into the ground beside her, a quiet and constant thing, just enough to keep the cold morning air from reaching her skin. The grass was damp and the temperature had dropped considerably as the night wore on, but Ayame slept through all of it without so much as a shiver.
He was still sitting that way, eyes open now, watching the light change at the far edge of the garden, when he heard her stir.
It was a slow waking. She surfaced from sleep the way someone does after a night their body needed badly, gradual and reluctant, her breathing shifting before her eyes did. Then came a small sound, something between a sigh and a murmur, and she moved beneath the bedsheet. Her fingers found the fabric and she grasped it instinctively, pulling it closer around herself before her eyes opened properly.
She blinked at the pale sky above her for a moment. Then she turned her head.
Nathan was right beside her, sitting straight and still, looking out toward the tree line with an expression that was somewhere between calm and distant. He looked as though he had been there for hours, which he had.
Ayame watched him for a moment without speaking, and a smile found her lips before she even thought about it.
"Have you been awake all this time?" she asked, her voice still soft and rough at the edges from sleep.
Nathan turned to look at her. "Since you lost consciousness," he said.
She let out a small breath that was almost a laugh. "That was shameful."
"You did well for a first time," he replied, and there was the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
The warmth that moved through her at that was not entirely from his magic. She looked away for just a moment, a rare shyness touching her expression as the memories of the night came back to her in full. The sounds she had made. The things she had said. She was quite certain that more than a few of the shinobis who kept watch over these grounds had understood perfectly well what was happening, and that at least some of them would have recognized whose voice was carrying through the night air. The thought brought a faint color to her cheeks that she did not entirely mind.
"I have seen so many women," she said after a moment, her voice thoughtful, "give themselves to men. Watched the acts take place in front of me more times than I can count, and through all of it I never gave in. I only ever watched." She paused, tilting her head slightly. "I used to look at their faces, at the sounds they made, and wonder whether it could truly feel the way it seemed to. Whether it was real or simply performance." She looked at him. "Now I know the answer."
"I suppose I satisfied you thoroughly then," Nathan said.
"More than thoroughly."
"You are not the first," he added simply.
Ayame smiled at that, unhurried and unbothered. She shifted the bedsheet around herself and leaned closer to him on the grass. "I already suspected you have no shortage of women," she said. "I don’t care about that."
Nathan looked at her for a moment. "I need you to remain in the capital," he said, his tone shifting into something more direct.
"I will," she said without hesitation, nodding once. "My niece’s son still has years before he is ready to sit the throne properly. Until that day comes I will hold it in his place." She glanced at him. "But after that..."
"You will always be welcome at my side," Nathan said.
It was not a romantic declaration. He did not dress it in warmth or poetry. It was simply a statement of fact, the way he said most things, direct and without excess. But the weight behind it was real. The moment he had crossed that line with her the decision had already been made, quietly and without ceremony. She was his now in the way that mattered to him, and he would not walk away from that.
Ayame was quiet for a breath. Then her smile widened, slow and genuine, spreading across her face in a way that made her look younger somehow, lighter.
"I never thought," she said, a soft laugh in her voice, "that I would ever find a man in my life. Not truly." free𝑤ebnovel.com
She had lived long enough to stop expecting it. The throne, the duty, the careful distances she had kept between herself and everyone who might have been something more. A life full of people and entirely without that particular kind of company. Then Nathan had arrived, unlike anything she had prepared herself for, and had dismantled a certainty she had carried for years without even seeming to try.
He had put an end to a loneliness she had long since made peace with, and somehow that was the most surprising thing of all.
"You could have found someone," Nathan said. "It has been years."
Ayame shook her head slowly, her eyes drifting toward the tree line where the morning light was still finding its footing through the branches.
"After my sister died, I lost everything," she said. The words came out quietly, without drama, the way people speak about old wounds they have learned to carry rather than hide. "I felt empty for a long time. And then there was Yorimasa, always circling, always pushing. And Morosuke making every day harder than it needed to be, not just for me but for the women I was trying to protect." She paused. "And then you arrived and handled both of them."
"You didn’t leave me much of a choice," Nathan said, and there was just enough lightness in his voice to make it land the way he intended.
Ayame laughed softly. "I know." She leaned toward him, her shoulder finding his, and then let her head rest against him. "Thank you, Ryo. Wholeheartedly."
Nathan said nothing. He let her stay there, her weight warm against his shoulder, the morning quiet around them.
It couldn’t last long. There were things that needed doing, roads that needed walking, and the day was already beginning to make its demands known. Eventually Nathan shifted, and without a word between them they both understood that the stillness was over. He rose to his feet and Ayame followed, the bedsheet falling away as she stood. She exhaled, a slow and measured breath, and looked at him with something serious settling into her expression.
"Be careful," she said. "Norihiro is a very dangerous man."
Nathan nodded once. After Yorimasa and after Morosuke, he had stopped making the mistake of measuring these daimyos by how they appeared on the surface. Each one of them had proven to be more capable than the last, sitting on collections of dangerous artifacts and surrounded by people who knew how to use them. The pattern was consistent enough that he had stopped being surprised by it and started simply accounting for it.
Which was precisely why this one needed to end the same way the others had.
"That is why he needs to die," Nathan said.
"He does," Ayame agreed without flinching. Then her expression shifted slightly. "But not everyone around him. He has a daughter. She is a kind girl."
"Sakura," Nathan said.
Ayame turned to look at him, her eyes widening just a fraction. "You know her?"
"I met her on my way to Minato," he said.
"Ah." Ayame was quiet for a moment, processing that. "Yes. Norihiro’s only daughter. I met her once myself, when she came to Minato with him." A brief shadow crossed her face as she said it. Minato was not a place for someone like Sakura, a girl of her standing and her temperament. But then Nathan thought of Norihiro’s arrangement with Morosuke, the deliberate cultivation of lawlessness that had made that city what it was, and the picture became clearer. Norihiro had brought her there knowing exactly what it was. That said something about him.
"She doesn’t deserve to pay for what her father has done," Ayame continued. "But the people in the capital won’t see it that way. Anyone who carries Norihiro’s name will have a target on them once this is finished."
"What about the shinobis?" Nathan asked.
Ayame considered that for a moment. "I can’t say for certain. But I don’t believe they have any desire to harm her. Not as long as Sakura is willing to acknowledge what her father was and what he did." She looked at Nathan carefully. "That is the only bridge she has."
Nathan went quiet. He turned the thought over in his mind without rushing it. Sakura had crossed his path only briefly, but what he had seen of her in that time had left a clear enough impression. She was good. Genuinely so, in the way that had nothing to do with upbringing or obligation. Whatever her father was, it had not reached her.
"I will see," he said finally.
He reached into his space ring and produced one of his black kimonos, handing it to Ayame since her own clothes were in no condition to make a return appearance. She dressed without fuss, and together they walked back through the garden toward the village.
They drew attention the moment they appeared.
It was inevitable, really. Ayame wore no makeup, her hair hanging loose and unbound around her shoulders rather than pinned and dressed the way it always was in public. She looked softer, unhurried, completely unlike the composed and carefully presented figure everyone here was used to seeing. The black kimono she wore clearly belonged to someone else. Nathan walked beside her with his usual unbothered calm.
It did not take a particularly sharp mind to piece together what had happened, and most of the people they passed didn’t bother trying to hide that they had pieced it together. Smiles appeared as they walked by, quiet and knowing, a few exchanged glances between people who said nothing but understood everything.
Ayame gave no indication that she noticed any of it, though Nathan suspected she noticed all of it.
Once they reached the main path, Ayame peeled away toward her own quarters and Nathan continued on to where Hanzo was waiting. She was already there, geared and ready, standing with her arms loose at her sides in the easy way of someone who had been prepared for a while and was content to wait. She turned at the sound of his approach.
Her eyes moved past him for just a moment, catching the last glimpse of Ayame walking away, her hair still down, her skin carrying that particular flush that the morning had left on her. Hanzo observed this for a quiet beat, her expression unreadable in the way it usually was when she was reading something very clearly indeed.
Then she looked back at Nathan.
"Ready?" she asked.
Nathan nodded. "Let’s go."
