A/N: Loosely based on the Korean manhwa Bride of the Water God, this is the story of Sakura Kinomoto, an ordinary girl who chose to be a sacrifice, and Syaoran Li, the God that she was offered to be a sacrifice to. But is Sakura really just an ordinary girl after all? This is a story about love, sacrifice, betrayal, hate, revenge, and magic.

The Bride of the Wolf God
Chapter 1: The Sacrifice

They say that every 10 years, the Wolf God requires that the mortal world send him a bride, or as the villagers call it, a sacrifice. His requests are always the same-that his sacrifices be young unmarried girls, but of marriageable age. The Wolf God, as the stories say, was a powerful deity with very strong magical powers. Day after day, month after month, year after year, the people prayed to him and made offerings to him via a shrine they had erected in his likeness...or rather, what they believe to be a likeness of him. In the shrine of the Wolf God was a humongous statue of a fearsome wolf that reached from floor to ceiling, its lips pulled back to reveal rows of sharp teeth, its eyes wide and wild.

"I'm sorry..."

A young girl with honey brown hair and green eyes, barely over the age of 19, looked sadly at her parents. Her smile, which usually invoked the power of a thousand suns, was sad today. She, Sakura, was to be a sacrifice to the Wolf God.

And today was her wedding day. Dressed in the finest wedding kimono and jewelry that the village had to offer, she stood alone before the altar as the village priest carried out the wedding rites, her family and Yukito, her older brother's best friend, were the only ones present.

Two years before, on her seventeenth birthday, Sakura had met up with the village matchmaker, as all girls who turned seventeen had done. There, the village matchmaker had given her a red string and tied it around her wrist.

"This is the red string of fate," the matchmaker had explained. "The two people connected by the red string will become destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. The string may stretch, twist, or tangle, but it will never break. When you meet up with your destined lover, your heart will know, and so will the heavens."

"So, she's the bride of the Wolf God?"

"Poor thing, she's so young."

"There's nothing we can do, if we don't offer up a sacrifice, the Wolf God will be really angry and disaster and famine will befall upon our village. We are also in a terrible drought and the wells are nearly all dried up."

These were the whispers of the villagers the day Sakura had first offered to become the bride of the Wolf God. Though she was afraid, her kind heart could not let her people suffer. Her parents had been devastated when she first told them of her plan, but eventually they accepted that it must be her fate. However, her older brother had been a different story. Touya was adamantly against her becoming a sacrifice "to a god we don't even know actually exists", he had shouted. In the end, he knew that he couldn't change Sakura's mind no matter what, and told her to just be safe and that if anything happened to her, even though he was just a mortal, he would find a way to move the heavens to find the Wolf God and make him pay for hurting his precious little sister.

"I'm so glad it's not my daughter."

"Please don't hate us, we didn't want this to happen either, but Sakura, I'm glad you offered to be the sacrifice."

"We can all live safely because of you."

"Well, it may be a superstition, but better to be safe than sorry, right?"

"As long as it's not me, I don't care."

Though those words hurt and stung her, that the villagers could care so little for another human being's life, she could not blame the villagers. After all, they were only human, and fear was a normal human emotion.

After the wedding ceremony, she was sent out on a boat out to sea with only one lantern to light her way. Though she was still wearing her wedding kimono, she had also been given a traveling cloak to wear as well. Glancing over her shoulder, Sakura could see her mother, father, brother, and Yukito standing at the end of the dock, watching as the boat took her further and further away from them. Soon, she could no longer see them, and she turned around to face forward once again, just in time to see the calm waters suddenly churn and roll dangerously.

Terror spread through her body as whirlpools suddenly formed and tornadoes made of water suddenly rose to the sky. Gripping the boat tightly despite knowing that it was futile, that it wouldn't be able to withstand the powerful forces of the sea, Sakura screamed loudly as another tornado erupted around her, trapping her and the boat she was on inside.

She could feel the sun's rays touching her cheeks and something hard yet soft beneath her body. Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open, and Sakura sat up and rubbed her eyes. She glanced curiously around. To her shock, she was lying in the middle of a pond! Confusion filled her as she tried to make sense of why she was in the middle of a pond, when she had just been out in the middle of a terrible storm at sea earlier. Where was she, and how did she end up here? Hearing footsteps, she rose to her feet and turned to face the approaching stranger. He was a tall elderly man with grey hair and a short mustache and wore spectacles.

"Welcome, to Clow Country. My name is Wei. I am in charge of the palace."

"Wei?" Sakura repeated in a small and confused voice, but then realization hit her. "Wait...did you just say Clow Country?!" She recalled stories she had heard when she was younger that Clow Country was where the Wolf God resided.

"Please follow me," Wei continued. "I will guide you...to the Wolf God."

A/N: First chapter done! Please review and tell me what you think about this keep all reviews related to this story.

Anyway, I just started reading Bride of the Water God yesterday and it's really tugging at my heartstrings OTL. I'm now on Chapter 133 and I just want Soah and Habaek/Mui to have their happy ending, dammit.