A/N: Hi, all! Please ignore my pitiful excuse for a title. If anyone has any better ideas, I'd be really excited to hear them. I kinda formatted it after my LotR series since I couldn't think of anything else. This is my first Yu-Gi-Oh fic, just in case anyone wanted to know, so if it's not that good, blame it on inexperience. - Anyway, I think that's all I wanted to say. Any other information about the story will be listed below. If there's anything else you want to know, drop me a line and I'll be glad to do what I can. Thank you and enjoy the story!

Warnings: This story will contain yaoi, which means male/male relationships. If you don't like this, then don't read it. Simple as that.

Disclaimer: As much as I would love to say that this show is mine, it is not. I own nada! So please don't sue me, I'm getting a kitten today. She'll be sad if she has no one to come home to.

Rating: PG-13, just to be safe. If it ends up getting worse later on, I'll change it.

Pairings: I always liked it when other authors listed the pairings, so I think I'll start doing it, too. As stated in the summary, this will be focused on Seto and Jou. However, more pairings might pop up somewhere along the line. I'm not done writing this, so I'm not sure. Other pairings would be Yami/Yugi and Ryou/Bakura. Like I said, I'm not sure if I'll include them, we'll just have to play it by ear.

Dreams, Dread, and Puppies

Prologue

Seto Kaiba, teenage billionaire and CEO to Japan's number one leading corporation, found himself whimpering like a small child, trembling as his clothes clung to his body as it was drenched in a cold sweat. He took deep breaths as he tried to calm his racing heart, putting his head in his hands.

"This has got to stop," he muttered darkly to himself. Taking one last calming breath, he managed to stop shaking like a leaf and looked around the room. His gaze finally came to rest on the unused pillow beside him. Carefully, as if were made of glass, he picked it up and hugged it to his chest. Feeling slightly childish for needing the comfort, Kaiba buried his head in the soft fabric and breathed in the familiar but fading scent. The scent had the desired effect and calmed down his nerves further, allowing him to lie back down.

Kaiba sighed as he held the pillow tightly to him. It was the same dream every night since the pup left. It was the dream that left him every night with nothing other than a racing heart, a trembling and sweaty body, and a strong feeling of dread that his puppy was in danger. He was only able to get back to sleep after cuddling the pillow the pup had used when he had stayed over not long ago.

The CEO thought back to the previous week with a smile. That week had to have been the best week of his life. At that point the pup and him had been together a month, a fact that never ceased to amaze him. That week had been their week off from school, and since the pup's father was away, he offered for the pup to stay with him until he got back. His smile grew when an image of his puppy's face appeared behind his eyes the moment he had made the offer. His puppy had never looked so happy.

That week he spent whatever time he wasn't in the office with his puppy and little brother. He went in late so he could eat breakfast with them in the morning and left early to have fun before dinner. Sometimes the two would simply wait for him to come home, sometimes they'd be playing a game, and sometimes he'd come home to them asleep on the couch. When that would happen, he would come in as quietly as possible and watch the two lights of his life sleep.

As much as he might not like to admit it, his relationship with the pup sometimes scared him. He had never cared for anyone other than Mokuba his entire life, and never the way he cared for the puppy. He had never let himself get too close to anyone. But somehow the pup had managed to worm his way past his walls of ice and into his heart. Now that he knew what he had been missing and had found what he had wanted all along, he was deathly afraid of losing it. He finally had the companionship, the love that he always yearned for and the dream kept saying it was going to be taken away.

Kaiba snuggled into the pillow and closed his eyes, the fading scent of his puppy washing over him. He tried to forget about the dream and thought about seeing his puppy at school in the morning. He finally managed to drift off to sleep again but the feeling of dread never strayed far from his heart.