InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Suppression ❯ Chapter 14 ( Chapter 14 )

Chapter 14

 

Sesshoumaru soon found the wolf by following the scent of blood. She was sitting under a tree digging at a wound in her upper thigh, whining softly.

 

Damn humans and their stupid guns. They had like fifty chickens, you'd think they wouldn't care about one scrawny one, she thought as she continued to carefully dig for the bullet. And I still didn't get anything to eat. She jerked her head up when she felt that familiar strong demon aura. The inu lord from yesterday was standing not ten feet from her staring at her. Rin was with him as well as some small green thing that was scowling at her.

 

Sesshoumaru came forward and crouched down by the wolf and took a look at the wound. He could see that the ookami had been trying to dig out the bullet that was lodged in the flesh.

 

Shorai tried to sit still and not cry out as the demon lord inserted his claw into the hole and popped the bullet out. She felt a wave of dizziness wash over her and she gritted her teeth determined not to pass out. “Thank you, Lord Sesshoumaru,” she replied when the world stopped spinning. He was still sitting close to her, staring into her eyes. She fidgeted and blushed when he didn't say anything.

 

“Are you all better now, Sho-chan?” Rin asked, breaking the moment. Sesshoumaru stood and walked over to the small stream just off the path to wash the ookami's blood off his hand.

 

“Yes, I'm fine,” Shorai answered kindly.

 

Thanks to her youki, the hole in her leg was beginning to close over and heal. Grimacing slightly, the wolf stood and limped over to the stream to clean her leg. Damn, that still stings, she grumped to herself. She glanced over at the taiyoukai as he finished washing and began to walk away, the two small beings right behind him. He doesn't say much, does he? She thought wondering why such a strong demon would have a child and an imp tagging along with him. Must be the strong, silent type, she sighed.

 

He stopped and, without looking back, gave a soft woof of invitation before proceeding on. The sound had been so quiet at first that Shorai wasn't sure if she had even heard it. She rose to her feet and followed anyways; she had nowhere else to go and she might as well go nowhere with them.

 

And just like that, Sesshoumaru had another travelling companion.

 

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Where the hell is he? He said he was only going to be a week, Inuyasha grumbled to himself. His brother was two days late already. The other members of his group had been giving the irritated hanyou a wide berth as they had been on the receiving end of his anger a couple of times already today and weren't inclined to want a repeat. Well, everyone except Kagome.

 

“What's the matter with you today, Inuyasha?” she asked. The concern in her voice was overshadowed by annoyance. The half-demon had made Shippou cry earlier by grabbing his crayons earlier, saying his coloring was too loud. How anybody could color too loud was beyond Kagome and she had had to weasel the crayons back from the hanyou. After sitting him firmly, she then consoled an upset kitsune, promising to bring him new ones because one of them had been broken. Miroku and Sango had wisely gone for a walk at the first hint of conflict.

 

Inuyasha folded his arms across his chest and scowled. He hadn't meant to break the stupid crayon. After a few moments he unfolded his arms and sighed. I'm doing it again, taking my bad mood out on them, he thought guiltily. “Let's go,” he said to the surprised teen girl as he headed off to the shops in the market.

 

“Where are we going?” Kagome asked curiously.

 

Inuyasha didn't answer. Grabbing her hand, he pulled the miko behind him as he cut through the crowd to one of the shops selling different colored inks and brushes. Kagome smiled when she saw what he was buying.

 

“That will make Shippou happy,” she grinned. “This is really nice of you, Inuyasha.”

 

“Feh,” Inuyasha huffed out. “I'm just tired of him whining about that dumb crayon. I'm just getting this stuff to shut him up.” Kagome's smile widened.

 

The two teens spent the rest of the morning together, browsing though the different shops in the village, talking and laughing. At lunch, they lounged on Kaede's porch, eating the rice balls they had bought earlier and sharing them with Shippou. The young kitsune was happily painting away, getting more ink in his clothing than on the paper. Inuyasha's mood was greatly improved over how it had been earlier in the day.

 

“Let's go for a swim,” Shippou piped up, glad that his hanyou friend seemed to be in a good mood for a change.

 

It had gotten fairly warm; Inuyasha struggled to lift the hair that was clinging to the back of his neck. The two older members of the threesome grew tired of fanning themselves and soon they were all down at the village swimming hole enjoying the cool water and each others company. Inuyasha was having such a good time, that for the first time in over a week, he wasn't thinking of his brother at all.

 

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It was late into the next evening when Sesshoumaru and his group made it to the campsite near his brother's village. He wanted to go see his sibling, but he knew everyone would be asleep and he wasn't keen to go into the village itself.

 

He looked over as Shorai came walking in behind Jaken. Rin was sitting on her shoulders; her cheek resting on the top of the ookami's head, fast asleep. It didn't look very comfortable in the taiyoukai's eyes, but neither girl had complained about it, so he guessed it couldn't be that bad.

 

Rin seemed to have latched herself onto the wolf. This surprised him. His little girl was usually terrified of wolves, demon or animal. He wondered what this wolf demon had done to gain such trust from the child.

 

“Give her to me,” he said quietly so he wouldn't wake the little human.

 

Shorai leaned back so he could take the child off her shoulders and then straightened, twisting her head from side to side to get the kinks out of her neck. She noticed that green imp was still glaring at her as if he'd like to skin her alive. She stuck her tongue out at the creature as the demon lord went to put Rin in her blanket and tried to hold in her grin, her lips twitching slightly as his eyes narrowed even further in irritation.

 

She stretched and headed over to the pile of half burnt wood that was lying in a hollow of earth. Picking up a couple of stones that looked like they'd make a good spark when struck together, she squatted down and scratched the flints against one another. She soon had the fire going and sat beside it, looking at the quiet inu demon as he reclined against the trunk of a tree, the toad not far away. She had been curious about the white haired demon since joining his little band. He hadn't spoken much, but she didn't really mind. The males of her former pack were always too boisterous and loud, so the peace and quiet of this fellow was a relief.

 

Shorai was about to go over and speak to him, when he suddenly just appeared at her side and sat down beside her. Jeeze he's a quiet one, better than me even. “So…what are you a lord of?” she asked curiously.

 

“The Western Lands,” he replied and then asked a question of his own. “Why are you not with your pack?”

 

“The whole Western Lands?” she asked in shock, too surprised to answer his question. That was a huge territory. This guy was more powerful than she had first thought if he controlled that much terrain.

 

She had never taken much notice of politics and which lords were in control. She was from the South; she knew who ran that area and that was good enough for her. She decided that maybe it would be a good idea if she started to take more of an interest.

 

“Yes. Now answer my question,” he stated.

 

Shorai drew her knees up her chest and wrapped her arms around them as she gazed into the fire. “I told you, I don't have a pack.” The flames popped and hissed in the dead space that followed.

 

“If you wish to continue with us you will tell me the truth,” Sesshoumaru told her firmly.

 

“I left them,” she replied. He was about to ask her why, but she started to speak again. “My sister died. She was born small, a runt, and would have been abandoned, but I took care of her. She was always frail though and eventually she just got weaker and weaker. Things like that happen, right? Survival of the fittest and all that,” the ookami intoned sadly. “Your Rin reminds me of her.”

 

“Our parents and the others in our pack just left us alone. They didn't outright ostracize us, but they didn't help us either, which was fine, but after she died the elders were going to send me to the wolf pack in the Northern Mountains to become mated to the leader there. My sister was barely in the ground and they wanted to sell me off just to make some kind of land deal.” I suppose they thought it a good way to get rid of the black sheep of the pack as well, she thought a bit angrily.

 

“That is not uncommon,” Sesshoumaru replied. He had seen many houses combined in such a way, “hardly a reason to leave.”

 

“Yes it was,” Shorai proclaimed. “If I'm to be mated to someone I want it to be someone I love and someone that loves me, not because of some stupid land or political ploy. I don't want to be just someone's concubine. I want more than that,” she finished, reminding Sesshoumaru of the very words his brother had spoken.

 

Her take on how the world should work is one of the many things that got her in trouble with the elders. They were fairly old fashioned on their view of things and the young ookami was always pushing them to change their old ways, something they didn't feel they had to do. After all, things had been working fine just the way they were.

 

She looked over at the taiyoukai. “Do you think that's wrong, that it's selfish of me to think that way? Would you want to have someone tell you who you could or could not be with, make you do things you don't want to do?”

 

This Sesshoumaru understood all too well. “No, no one should be forced to do things against their will.”

 

Shorai smiled at the inu demon. “That's what I think as well.”

 

The two continued to talk, enjoying each others company and getting to know one another until the sun began to rise. For the first time in over a week Sesshoumaru didn't have his sibling on his mind.