A/N: Please don't kill me! I like working on different things at the same time, and this just came to me one day. This is a very AU story, so again, don't kill me. It takes place in medieval times, with Kakashi as a shape shifter and Sakura as his master and they absolutely HATE each other! Yeah! I know this first chapter is a bit confusing, but it's supposed to put you right in the action without much explanation—later chapters will delve into the past a bit more. Feel proud of me: I'm the first to center a medieval story around Kakasaku, I checked! I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do, however, own this story.

Shifting Life
His Mouth Waters Over Her Throat

"No! No way! There is absolutely no way you will get me to go into another city. Sakura!" The great silver wolf trailed behind, hopping about like a mad thing, swinging his head from side to side and snarling occasionally, his crisp white fangs augmenting the silvers and whites of his own shaggy fur and offsetting his bicolored eyes. He hopped about thirty yards away from a young woman with pink hair, directing his verbal attack towards her as she walked nonchalantly toward the great stone walls of Ishi City with a traveler's pack slung over her right shoulder.

"Come on, Kakashi," she called over her shoulder, gazing into his upset bicolored eyes with intensely calm and (to the wolf) aggravating green ones.

"No!" He stopped hopping, braced himself against some unseen force with his stilt-like legs held stiff and rigid, and snarled ferociously at her.

She continued walking. "Suit yourself!" she called, and the wolf's snarl died away to be replaced by a sudden fierce yelp of pain. He jumped and twisted in the air, snapping at the force he had braced himself against, then loped after her, tail tucked under his legs.

"That hurt, Sakura," he whimpered, then his voice regained fervor as he snarled, "Why in Kami's name do we have to go into another wretched city?"

"If it bothers you so much, Kakashi," Sakura replied coolly, "then stay outside the city limits."

"You know I can't do that," he said, lowering his head. She stopped, rounded on him suddenly, and kicked her booted foot straight into his ribs. The blow set him snarling again as he backed away slightly, hackles raised, black and red eyes both gleaming in the noon light.

"Then choose a form, hide your necklace, and get on, already!" she snapped. "Otherwise make yourself useful and change into a horse or a pack mule!"

"You want me reduced to a sniveling pack ass?" Kakashi snapped. "I think not." With that his form began to change, growing lither and leaner as his paws flattened and gave way to hands and booted feet, his jaws to a slender face obscured by a dark blue mask. The necklace that hung about his neck, a small arrow-like pendant on a leather thong, was carved so that it resembled both arrowhead and wolf's head, and he stowed it underneath the shelter of his fur-lined cloak. The necklace that marked him as a shape shifter, hidden from those who would take one look at him and pull a sword through his heart. It was why he tried to avoid cities at all costs.

He glared at her with his eyes narrowed as he followed along, rubbing his bruised ribs and wishing all the while that he could somehow break free of his bondage to her and dig his fangs into that supple little throat of hers—had he been as a wolf his jaws would have dripped with slaver; as a human his mouth merely watered at the thought.

"You know I loathe your ancestors for binding my family to yours," he said lowly as he drew shoulder to shoulder with her. He stood at least a head taller than she, if not a little more, with shaggy silver hair in stark contrast to her silky rose pink that fell in straight lines to her shoulders, sometimes wavy if she spent the night with it braided.

"You've told me, yes," Sakura said. "It doesn't change the fact that you are bound to me, through and through, and have been bound since my grandmother performed the rite."

Kakashi's expression darkened still further. "I was but fourteen," he growled. "But a juvenile and they bound me to a babe."

"You'd best keep talk of that quiet, protector of mine," Sakura said sweetly. "The city draws near, and you wouldn't want the guards to hear you ranting and raving like only a shape shifter could, would you?" She smiled at him, a threatening twitch sparking in her face.

Kakashi stared at her with shock and not a little bit of fear in his eyes. Had he been as a wolf he would have cowered at her feet belly up, pissing all over himself at the implications of her words. "You wouldn't tell them," he whispered hoarsely, "of what I am?"

"Oh, of course not," Sakura said, staring straight on again. "I would lose the protector given to me at birth, and I wouldn't be given another one. It would be a shame to waste you."

Kakashi bristled, fear forgotten. Spoken from the mouth of a butcher, like he was some slice of meat only fit for feeding the dogs. But she had complete control over him. If he stepped out of line once while in the city, if he strayed too far away and yelped at the invisible chain strangling his heart like a patch of thorns, if he changed once, even if only for a flicker of time, he could rest dead and assured that twenty some-odd arrows and five sword points would be through him in an instant.

Shape shifters were not well liked in the Land of Fire. Worse still, they had been driven to near extinction by the king's knights, and if there were any truly left alive besides those bound to Sakura's family, Kakashi didn't know of them. All he knew was that his was a hated breed, used only for disguised protection by those that saw him as a toy to be used at will, a weapon, a pet.

Sakura was one such human, forcing him to risk his neck each time he stepped within the city bounds, each time the itch that told him it was time to change forms struck up within the vision of an outsider. Each time, when he ignored that itch and the sharp pain of demand swept through his body for a new form, he walked the edge of life and death.

He hated it, and he hated Sakura for it.

"Stop glaring at me," she said as a horse-drawn cart passed them and the driver waved. The city walls loomed high overhead as they made their way down the dirt track toward the gates. "You're such a sourpuss."

"What do you need in the city?" Kakashi asked with clenched teeth, waving as casually as he could to one of the gate guards.

"Oh, just some supplies." Sakura shrugged her shoulders. "I thought we could spend the night."

What? he screamed inside his mind. Does she want me killed? I can't hold this form for that long!

"Oh, don't give me that look. It'll be at a nice little tavern and you can drink yourself silly."

"And then accidentally change and cause everyone to scream and shout and come after me with swords drawn?" Kakashi snorted, eyeing a table that was, in fact, selling weapons. The violent little monster in his head longed to reach for one and kill the woman next to him, but he knew that would kill him too. Her grandmother, the old hag who hardly looked more than thirty that had cursed him to eternal servitude, made sure of that, warning him against trying anything stupid and branding his arm with a tattoo that reminded him every day of who he was forced to follow. He could never get over the fact that where once he had been free to hunt and challenge other shape shifters to duels and fights, now he could no longer even hunt unless Sakura was willing to help. The only way he could release his energy now was from traveling, and it was just another thing he hated.

"Okay, then we can have absolutely mind-blowing sex if alcohol doesn't suit your fancy," she offered instead, and the violent little monster in Kakashi's head vomited all over the place.

He snorted again and said, "I'd rather give myself up to the king than touch you in any way."

"Am I really all that bad?" she asked sweetly, that threatening trill in her voice making Kakashi want to cower at her feet again. She had a way of beating him when he got too close or said something she thought was stupid, blessed with her grandmother's monstrous strength, and him cursed with his wolfish instincts to not put himself deliberately in harm's way. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

"Hmm, I thought so."

His mouth watered again, and he mentally slapped himself away from thoughts of tearing her limb from limb. Don't kill yourself, Kakashi, he warned, bottling a low growl within his chest before it could escape and alert others to his very un-humanlike presence. Don't let her kill you like this. You've still got your damned pride, haven't you?

Yes, he had pride, but it amounted to nothing compared to Sakura's whim, and it and his dignity often died harsh deaths whenever he crossed the lines she set for him.

The day passed with relative ease, however. Sakura picked up the supplies that she needed and helped Kakashi steer clear of the king's knights which were patrolling the streets, and that was all he really cared about, anyway.

"I'll need to set up a stand at a junction once we leave the city," Sakura said as they made their way through the city center. "We're running out of money."

"Right now we need to find a private place where we can bed," Kakashi said uneasily. "I'm getting a bit itchy." The itch had sprung on him as they left the winery down the ways a little bit (Sakura was a sucker for a good flask of wine, just like her grandmother), and hadn't left for quite a while. Slowly the itch had left his chest and spread, tingling, up and down his spine, longing to reshape it into something new and unfamiliar to the human body. A snake, perhaps, or a deer.

His movements slowly became jerky after Sakura nodded and began speeding along with him toward a low-rising tavern just out of market. Dull aches began to ripple up his limbs, and he knew that the outrageous pain of resistance would soon follow and force him to change, and if that happened here in the open, he would be dead before his forelegs hit the ground.

"A room for two, please," Sakura was saying earnestly to the tavern owner, and he slipped her a wooden chip that marked the room as hers. She led Kakashi upstairs to the room and flung open the door for him, where he hit the floor as a bobcat, scrabbling against the planking beneath his feet.

He allowed himself to change again, back to a human, and put his head in his hands, sighing with relief. "I hate it when you keep me out for so long," he commented, his shape trembling again as he allowed his wolf form to take control. "Do you know how often you put me on the line when you do that?"

He went through several more cycles of changing before finally setting down as a cougar with his tail wrapped keenly over his paws.

"Train yourself to keep your forms longer," Sakura said simply, flopping down on the bed. "I keep you out for so long because you keep me in for so long. It's punishment, you know. You're not the only one who hates being bound to another."

Kakashi glared at her. "No shape shifter can hold a form for more than six hours without crippling himself into a chimera. Those winged abominations that we see in this world: griffins, dragons, bat-hounds and panthers, they were all shape shifters at one point. It's a fact that men don't know. That's why they're allowed to live free." He added a scathing note to his last sentence, curling his lip angrily.

"The king only hates shape shifters because he sees them all as Shades," Sakura said, staring back at him coldly. "The knights see you as a Shade, a black-blooded wraith of the shadows."

"But shape shifters have red blood, just like humans! We didn't choose to be the cousins of those black-blooded man-eaters!" Kakashi protested, and bit his paw roughly to prove his point. Blood, the color of a dark rose, leaked into his silvery fur.

"Don't do that," Sakura snapped. "People will see your hand tomorrow if it bleeds and wonder. Besides, the knights are too stupid to acknowledge any of that. They'll see your necklace or they'll see you shift forms, and they'll be after you with Shadebane."

Kakashi shuddered. He'd been bitten once by a snake that carried Shadebane in its fangs (that's where the knights got their own poisons from), and while Sakura sucked it out before it became lethal, Kakashi had been feverish for the next week, shifting sporadically and uncontrollably. They'd been confined to a small traveler's cottage because of it.

"Be grateful," Sakura ordered suddenly from the bed. Kakashi glanced at her.

"Why should I?" he growled.

"My family saved yours from the fires the old kings called for, and we save you from Shadebane today."

"At the cost of our freedom!" Kakashi snapped. "I would rather die a free beast than be kept alive an enslaved one! The rite is worse than death itself!"

"Is it? I would assume Shadebane to be far more painful than the rite," Sakura said quietly.

"What would you know? You were but a child," Kakashi replied scathingly. "You should be grateful to me, I who became your forced nursemaid until you were old enough to help me hunt. And Shadebane isn't poisonous to man."

"I suppose not. Try to get some sleep, Kakashi. We'll be out of here tomorrow." She turned her back to the shape shifter, used to his anger, and slowly fell asleep.