Thanatos then had hours of time for conversations, social interactions, and people talking about how great Elina and her two men were together. He himself had to talk to many people who recognized him if he had to endure the constant stares of those who wondered why he was Thanatos Gravestone, the only direct successor of the Gravestone clan. His grandfather, mother, and father were all respected grim reapers in Memento.
After all these hours, he finally managed to get some time for him and Rena alone. He had nothing against talking to her sister and mother, but he still preferred talking about all the important things alone and not at a party in order to be heard by anybody who was present.
Nobody of them made it a secret that he was bonded to Aurora, Rena, Camilla, or Luna. But the public could still have bad opinions about this relationship. A problem he would one day have to face.
Luna and Aurora were the direct successors of their clan; Rena was the sister of Elina, who would be after Rena's father the next head of the clan; and Camilla may be a normal maid with no special background but still. Being bonded to three women who had the blood of powerful clans in them would still become a problem one day.
He had no solution for this right now but would make sure to work on that clan together with Aurora, Luna, Camilla, and Rena. This was something that was a matter for all five of them, and with this came responsibility.
"I have to say I know why you often tell me so much about your sister and mother. They resemble you in many ways."
Rena has heard this many times in her life, up until now. But nobody ever told her why; she knew that she resembled them in a few ways. However, I never told her why she was so similar to them. It was the first time in her life that she asked.
"In what ways do we resemble each other? If we leave out the external She found it in some way stupid to ask Thanatos this now; he talked with them for only a few hours, and now he should be able to tell her what no one else told her. Yet he still said his answer.
"If you want, I will tell you a few points."
"First of all, all of you had a smile you trained yourself on when you talked to someone. If you don't know the person well or don't want to talk to them, you show them this polite smile of yours. Your mother did the same; she only showed her true smile while listening to the conversations between you and your sister. Elina, too, showed this polite smile during her talk to the wedding party. Her true smile was revealed while talking to me: You, your mother, and her husbands."
"Second are your gazes that never let go of what caught their attention. I am sure that Luna once called them the eyes of a huntress looking at its prey while waiting for an opportunity to catch it when nobody else does. Should I say more, or is this enough?"
"No, no, this was more than enough, thank you."
Rena never expressed this answer; even though she thought that she had changed herself since she graduated from the academy, if Thanatos was able to see all these things in such a short time, taking her as the measure, she seemed to have changed not a little bit.
"I am surprised you seem to know me because I do it myself, and then people call me smart."
Rena looked at the ground in the backyard they were in. During this time, not many people would come to this place; the employees would be busy working on the wedding party, and the guests had no reason to come here. The smokers had an area designated for them in the front yard.
"Seems like now I am the one who has to teach you something, Rena; you are a scentist, a person who understands and studies what other people can't even pronounce right. But understanding yourself and expressing yourself is something that most people don't know. There are some of these lucky persons who understand who they are, but the rest of us get that told from others."
"And these people then make us people who we aren't or let us realize who we really are. I myself don't know who I am; I only have people who have told me who and how I am, and of all these people, you and the other three were the ones who showed me who I really am."
Thanatos was sure that all four of them knew him better than he knew himself, and his mother and father knew him 100 percent too. But he knew from the day he was born the person others made him.
As she listened to Thanatos, she understood what it really meant to learn something from a person. It wasn't the hours where she helped him with math; it was the minutes or seconds where you were taught something about life.
Lessons that left a lot of pain behind and good advice from a person were nothing other than what that person should have heard earlier and learned on a trip from hell.
"In my case, the day you talked to me on the banch, I remembered who I really am. The sharp-tongued Thanatos was not the perfect child he was told to be. Instead, he was a person who did what he wanted and held his emotions and desires back only when he had to do it."
Thanato's sad expression broke her heart; he was really the one he was back then in their academy days. He held nothing back that had to be held back and said what he thought and felt. But only to the people he wanted to.
She took him and embraced him. Thanatos did not see this coming at all. For him, Rena decided out of the blue to wrap her hands around him and give him a feeling he never wanted to end.
He hugged her back and silently said everything that had to be said—no words, only the words their bonds spoke.
"Do you feel better now?" Rena said this while still holding Thanatos in her embrace.
"Yes, but now you have to get away from me. The bond makes me feel dangerous desire right now, and this won't go away if I feel the sensation of your breasts pressing against my body anymore." Even if it was only a little bit, during her embrace, her breast got pressed against his chest, and the bond did what it could do best: make him feel the desire to do something he was not allowed to do yet. With the satisfaction he felt from Aurora yesterday, he still managed to keep himself calm. But this won't take long.
Rena did not move away; she did the opposite; she wrapped her arms now around Thanato's neck and came even closer towards him.
"Oh no, I will take revenge on you for being the only one who gets to enjoy my body. I will get as near to you as I can and make myself aroused by your muscular body. You said it yourself: I am a huntress that takes its prey when nobody else does."
In a matter of three seconds, Rena realized what a big mistake she had made there. Thanatos wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her towards him while bringing her down to the grass. He kissed her, reminding her of all the experiences he had with Camilla and Aurora and making Rena realize that she had been turned from the huntress to the hunter.
Yet it was still the best feeling she had felt in her 181 years of life. As Thanatos then pulled away, she was finally able to speak again: "You have always been a fast learner; it looks like you got to study a lot with Aurora and Camilla. Show me the fruits of your studies, but first I think we should take us to a room."
Thanatos stood up and followed the way Rena suggested he walk; he did what he loved doing with all four of them, carrying them as if they were princesses. Rena cuddled happily in his arms while telling him the way to her room, and on the way she saw something that she would like to make disappear from the history of this world.
Her sister walked by, seeing how Thanatos carried her like a princess in the direction of her room. Thanatos was too fixated on Rena to notice her. From there on, she only stuttered the words to give the directions, and at some point she only pointed at the directions.
As they arrived at the room, her huntress eyes came back, and she hopped out of his carry while pulling him to the bed.
Thanatos showed in the blink of an eye what he learned and kissed Rena while undressing her, making sure that her underwear stayed where it should be. Rena did the same, following the advice her mother gave her during the hours of secret conversation.
Thanatos kissed every part of her he wanted, and Rena did so too. They satisfied each other for one and a half hours, but they only stopped as they realized that soon was the dining, the event where everybody would be gathered. If only the two of them were absent, everybody who could count to two would be able to remember what happened and then imagine things that never happened. They made themselves ready to go down and then ate under the attentive eyes of Elina and her mother, who knew everything.
Elina seemed to have told her what she saw, and the fact that they were gone for more than an hour only meant that they did something that was only for the senses of a lover's experience.
They ate and partied until the sun rose again. The moment they could, Thanatos and Rena took their stuff and fled from the gazes, and soon there were questions from both of them using the excuse that they had to go to the academy.