Chapter Three – Lotus (far from the one he loves)


It wasn't a month after we moved into the Palace of the West that Takeshi left on one of his many campaigns to defend the borders. Takeshi's dream of avenging his family was only slightly put on hold – his duty to defend our kingdom limited him to our borders, but many of the skirmishes he was involved in were with the dragons.

Through these encounters he learned that the dragon demon who killed his parents was in fact Ryukotsusei, Emperor of the Imperial House of the Sun.

I felt pain for my mate – Ryukotsusei was a legendary fighter, but he hadn't fought in his army for many hundreds of years. Unless Takeshi outright declared war on the Dragon Clans, he would not be able to reach Ryukotsusei and engage him in battle.

When this news reached our palace – it was one of the times between patrols that Takeshi would return home – my mate was broken. He knew it would be impossible to have his revenge now, and that night he released his pain between our love and within my body. My cries of pleasure echoed in our chambers, spurring Takeshi onward and encouraging him to let go of his anger. He desperately clutched my naked form to his, succumbing to the blissful respite of our union.

A few weeks later I realized I was pregnant.

My mate was happy, but his joy was bittersweet. A child at this time would only put the final nail in his quest for vengeance, something I could see Takeshi wasn't ready or willing to give up on. Even after many centuries, the deaths of his parents could not be forgiven. Hoping he would see the joy a pup could bring, I told him that this was his chance to honour his mother and father by building a family of his own - one that would forever hold an important place in my Father's kingdom.

Knowing this was small consolation to my mate, who - against an inu's natural instincts to remain close to a breeding female - continued to go on patrol every month. I tried not to worry about him; tried not to worry about what he might do in his desperation to seek revenge, but could not prevent the helplessnessI felt every day he was away.

The Western Palace was bleak without my mate to fill it with his bright smiles and teasing - what had once been a warm home became an empty shell that I merely inhabited. The only comfort I received was the lotus blossoms that began arriving every day after he left. They told me that no matter what else was happening, he loved his family, and ached as much as I the longer we were apart.

As our pups grew within my womb I felt a constantly growing pain in my abdomen. The healers met with me many times, but could never find anything wrong or out of the ordinary. They insisted that my pups were merely very strong, and I was no doubt feeling their power. But as my pregnancy progressed the feeling of pain would not wane. When Takeshi heard of my struggle he returned immediately to lend me his strength.

True to their heritage, our pups were born in inu form after nine weeks of pregnancy. With their whelping we realized why I was feeling so much pain – the pups were being killed. Only one of our six pups was born alive, and the healer's told us that this pup had inherited my family's poison ability.

This news required immediate action. Like our pup, I too was born with a poison ability that resulted in the death of my litter mates. A messenger was immediately dispatched to my father's floating palace.

In the time between my mother and father's arrival and the birth of our son, Takeshi gave him the name Sesshoumaru – killing perfection. He would be the heir to the Western stronghold, and he had already proven he would be a great warrior... or so my mate believed.

Like all children born into the Imperial House, upon the arrival of my parents Sesshoumaru was tattooed with the sign of our heritage upon his brow. He whimpered like the pup he was as my father's poison traced the moon into his flesh. Once the skin healed over the marking, it would appear as a beautiful, thin prussian crescent moon.

My mother and father stayed with us in our home for the first year of my pup's life. My father wished to carefully monitor his growth, and be sure that his poison ability would not act on its own.

Sesshoumaru went through many tests in the first weeks of his life, most of them to see if his poison could be released against his will. I was given the task to do this, as Sesshoumaru would be more likely to control his poison against his mother. I held his paw in my hand – even at one week, it filled my palm completely! – and gently applied pressure to the under pads, trying to tease his poison to leak out of his claws. When nothing happened, I breathed a sigh of relief, and held my pup closer. Even though it was only the first of many tests, Sesshoumaru had proven he could control his poison.

The next tests my father conducted himself, asking me to watch carefully, so that one day I might perform the same tests for any grandpups I might have in the future.

Sesshoumaru grew quickly in his first year of life. When he was born, I was able to hold him in my arms when in my mortal form, but he quickly continued to grow until he was the size of my mortal body. Of course, I was very rarely in anything but my bestial form while Sesshoumaru was still feeding, so we were limited to the private quarters of Takeshi and I, which had been specially built to accommodate an inu's true form.

During Sesshoumaru's puphood my mate continued to go out to the borders, though less and less frequently. By the time Sesshoumaru was fifty years old and capable of holding a mortal form, Takeshi had all but stopped going on patrols, only leaving when he was called to investigate or settle extreme disputes.

After Sesshoumaru was born Takeshi and I had three more litters of pups, each containing five pups. Not all of our pups survived through their puphood, but by the time Sesshoumaru had attained his mortal form he had eleven younger siblings.

My pups and I were never happier than when Takeshi was home, and I could tell my mate felt the same. He was slowly losing interest in taking his revenge against Ryukotsusei, and I believe that was mostly due to Sesshoumaru. Of all our pups, he was the only one to inherit my family's poison ability, and Takeshi seemed very interested in cultivating and perfecting all of its potentials with our son.

I couldn't begrudge my mate and pup their time together, but I also couldn't help feeling that Takeshi was redirecting his desire for revenge into training our son to becoming a harbinger of death.