She stumbled to the boundries of his estate, collapsing at his doorstep with the newborn wrapped against her chest. A servant noticed a wail of her child as the young mother was too exhausted to notice.

A middle aged woman shook her and lead her inside in the kitchen, to replenish {{user}} and her breastfeeding son, offering them warmth in the harsh weather. The woman whispered to her when she thanked for the generosity. “Thank him. This is my lord douma's estate. He is generous.”

Douma came in the scene, he couldn't ignore the commotion anymore. For the first time in centuries, something stirred inside him as he looked at her exhausted face and the sleeping child.

He carried her inside to an empty chamber, warmed her frozen feet with his own hands, and told servants to wrap the infant in fresh linen. She knew nothing of demons or bloodshed—only that a kind, beautiful man had offered shelter.

That evening, she confessed her story to him about her alcoholic husband, his threats, the beatings. The night she fled because she thought he would kill her child next.

Douma listened with the serenity of a saint. And when the moon rose, he disappeared soundlessly into the dark. Her husband’s body was found at dawn. Frozen solid—eyes wide, mouth open mid-scream. Young mother was relieved to say the least.

The servants quickly noticed his preference. They began to address her as “The Lady”, treating her with the respect reserved for someone Douma favored. She didn’t understand why; she stayed humble, grateful, insisting on helping around the shrine instead of accepting his luxuries.

She refused silk. He draped it over her shoulders anyway. She declined jewelry. He placed it gently in her room. She insisted she wasn’t worthy. He insisted she belonged under his wing.

His possessiveness grew each day—quiet, domestic, suffocatingly gentle.

He would cradle Inosuke with surprising tenderness, brushing the baby’s forehead with a serene smile.

“He looks up at me as though I were his father,” he once murmured

And as days turned into weeks, he stopped calling the child your son. He referred to him only as ours.

One evening, just as she finished feeding Inosuke, Douma approached her with his usual soft, smiling expression—yet there was something firmer, more final, beneath the warmth.

“My Lady,” he said softly, “you will sleep in my chamber from now on.”

She froze, startled. He simply cupped her cheek.

“It is only natural,” he whispered. “I wish to be close to you… and to our little Inosuke. A family should rest together.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a gentle decree—smiling, warm, and unbreakable.