It was cold inside the cave.
She hadn't noticed it before, but then she had been clutching little Shippou to her chest as they had both sat in the back of wolves' den. With him now gone, she found it hard to ignore the chill of the damp rock surrounding her. She pulled her knees toward her and wrapped her arms around her legs in an attempt to hold her body's heat in.
It wasn't working.
The skin of her arms and legs were noticeably dimpled, and she began twitching as she huddled on the pelts. The wolves eyes her hungrily, and she started to wonder how well they followed their leader's orders. He had left some time before on the premise of finding food. She didn't know when he planned to return, and the pack grew more agitated as time passed. For her sake, she hoped he had them well trained.
Soon she was rubbing her legs with her hands, enjoying the temporary relief the friction gave her. It was good to concentrate on the action, on the heat it generated, because it helped her forget the worry that kept eating away at her. When would Inuyasha find her? Would she be safe here? When would Kouga be back? These were all things she couldn't do anything about at the moment, and so were best forgotten, at least for now. Things continued in this vein for a long while.
Then the cave exploded with excitement, happy yips and wagging tails everywhere. Finally, Kouga had come back.
He dumped a dead boar in front of her proudly, offering her first pick. She supposed she should have felt special, but the whole "it's dead and not cooked and hairy thing" put a damper on such thoughts. She was about to tell him this, but lost her words when she saw the way he was watching her.
Bright blue eyes, so unlike the dark eyes most people had, burned into hers. They were beautiful and alien, but then it seemed that demons in this era had all sorts of exotic traits. A dark eyebrow arched high as he appraised her, the hint of a fang poking out at his lip.
"Kagome, you said your name was?"
She couldn't find the words to reply, merely staring dumbly as she observed the way his chest muscles shifted beneath his armor plate as he leaned forward, putting his chin to his hand.
"Now that I take a good look at you, you've got a cute face."
That was not what she had expected to hear, and for a brief moment her chest flared with heat. She looked away from his face, but soon decided it might have been better not to: his taut thighs tensed as he shifted, and the short pelt he was wearing was anything but modest, especially when he knelt like that. Girls her age shouldn't be seeing those kinds of things, at least in her era. She couldn't stop looking though.
"Okay then, you be my woman."
Suddenly, she wasn't so cold anymore.