A/N: I still cannot fathom the popularity of this story. As I sit here I have only posted it an hour or so ago, chapter 7: Bargaining, and already it has a solid two reviews in on it. Crazy, crazy. I'm excited as I write this one because in the past I've always focused on IY and Kagome and what their children would look and be like. In this one I have two options: Rin or Ginrei's children. I can see the way their features might mesh. I've always liked the thought of a dark-haired child with the gold/honey/amber eyes of the Inutaisho line. Rin would provide that but Ginrei's pups would look like Sesshomaru through and through. That is, of course, why I picked those features for her.

In the last chapter I tried to show a trait of Sesshomaru's I would hope to be good. He has great self restraint and honor. He needs to sleep with Ginrei to conceive his heir, but he won't do it if she isn't entirely willing. Essentially he refuses to "take her against her will." Although Ginrei said she consented and was undressing for him in her mind she was anything but ready and he could see that. It may be a business arrangement, but in his heart, Sesshy has noble sentiments.

I've been considering babies and baby names for Sesshomaru's heir. I have been thinking Seihaisu. It roughly means, according to the online Japanese/English/English/Japanese translator I found online seiha—conquest, and aisu—ice. Ice in my mind to represent both mood and features, because Sesshomaru and Ginrei are both very pale. Conquest obviously because well, yeah. Sesshomaru's heir. I like Seihaisu also because it has the "ei" combination like Ginrei's name. If you hate it tell me, I'll try to work up a different one. Sesshomaru's name has some sort of meaning like "endless killing circle" or something like that, doesn't it? I don't speak Japanese so I do my best with the translator to make names. There is also Hanone—fang which I plan to use on a daughter somewhere.

Disc: Nope don't own them


Last Chapter: Ginrei discovered through Tsukiyume that Sesshomaru was partially responsible for the death of her family. Sesshomaru has brought Tsuki to keep Ginrei company. He plans to educate Tsuki and Ginrei there together, for the time being with Jaken who he also brought with him. To make peace with Ginrei, Sesshomaru made a bargain with her. After his heir is born she is freed from him. She will gain the Isei province to herself to do with as she pleases. Ginrei tried to come up with the courage to "seduce" Sesshomaru so that she could start this process, but Sesshomaru deemed her not ready and refused. Their marriage remains unconsummated.


Memories at Jouka

The snowstorm intensified through the night and into the next day. When Sesshomaru rose at dawn he felt the chill in the room he had chosen to sleep in acutely. It prickled his skin. He allowed himself a scowl of distaste. After searching for his robe, he called for the maids and ordered them to burn the braziers around the palace and check all of the shutters.

Sesshomaru summoned Daken to him next. The old, grizzled youkai joined him, shivering, on the balcony overlooking the lake. Fatigue and age lined his face heavily this morning, but to his credit he didn't complain. He took a spot near Sesshomaru with a thick sigh and stared out over the frozen lake. The ice was gray and cracked, a dangerous stuff that would drag anyone who dared walk on it into a freezing, watery grave.

"Lovely view, my lord." Daken started, laughing. "What is it you wish from me on this fine morning?" there was a tiny pause and then he spoke again, smirking, "How was your night, Lord Sesshomaru?"

Sesshomaru threw him a very cold glare. The night before he had been called away by the maids, told his wife wanted to "speak" with him. Sesshomaru had left Tsukiyume, Daken, and Jaken alone while he traveled upstairs and "visited" with his wife. He hadn't returned to continue their conversation. Now Daken had the audacity to ask about it.

"You will not ask me such a question ever again. Do you understand me, Daken?"

"Certainly, my lord. I take it things went badly?" he smirked and then began to cackle a little, unable to help himself. In some ways Sesshomaru was like a son or a grandson, which gave him more rights and confidence when it came to dealing with the stoic lord of the Western Lands. But now he realized this was not a laughing matter. He closed his mouth and blew out a breath, trying to release tension. "I apologize, my lord. I crossed the line. I am sorry. I offer my life as penance."

Sesshomaru's lip quivered, almost giving way to a full-fledged sneer. "I will not require that sacrifice from you just yet." He straightened up a little, getting down to business. "I have a task for you."

"Yes, lord?"

"I need you to return to the Western Lands for me. Find Lady Rin and take her to one of my other battlements for a time." Sesshomaru stared out at the cold, frozen lake, unmoved by the snow drifts, the flow of the snow as the wind pushed it about over the cracked ice.

"Please excuse my asking, Lord Sesshomaru, but why? Isn't Lady Rin safest inside your castle?" Daken frowned, openly confused. The lines deepened in his face with the expression, aging him. He was unhappy with the thought of traveling through the mountains, but it was preferable to sitting about in the palace on the lake with the tensions pervading every inch of it.

"That is none of your affair, Daken. Take her to Jouka in the southern province. See that she is well cared for and assure her I will visit soon, within the week."

"Yes my lord." Daken bowed, "When must I leave?"

Sesshomaru moved his gaze—just his eyes, not the rest of his body—toward Daken. The amber irises burned powerfully against the muted white and gray-blue world of the dawn snow around them. "Now."

Daken sighed but he bowed again and excused himself, hurrying away.


After two days the snow subsided somewhat. Sesshomaru remained inside the secret palace, relaxing mostly, but on occasion directing construction on the palace and meeting with some of his advisors—new ones, men and youkai in charge of the Isei. He judged each as he met them and made them swear allegiance. Some he executed at once, distrusting them or knowing them to be traitorous by rumor.

The Isei was coming under his sway easily. Nishiyori had been a ruler of similar principles to Sesshomaru, much as he hated to admit it. The underlings came willingly to him, unresistingly. Many of them, especially those along the border with the Western Lands, were even eager to do so. They agreed with Sesshomaru's steady rule, his lack of involvement in wars.

What they didn't know, of course, was that Sesshomaru was very warlike. That was, of course, how he had acquired the Isei in the first place. War, power, and alliance.

He instructed Tsukiyume to inform the change of plans to her brother. He did not bother searching her letters now, it didn't matter anymore. With Rin out of his castle, even if Shimofuri planned to harm Sesshomaru by writing directly to Rin it would not reach her. Sesshomaru had eliminated threats as far as that was concerned. And sending Daken to move Rin away from the reach of sabotage might change things as far as the miscarriages were concerned.

Yet Ginrei still bothered him. It was below his honor to force himself on her, and it would not help in conception either. He had to hope that with time Ginrei would allow desire to overtake her and fear and anger would diminish. Time apart from the massacre of her family, away from the trauma of being the only survivor.

Worse than that concern, however, was the deception he played with Rin. Keeping a secret such as this from her was difficult. Sesshomaru tended to believe it was more trouble than it was worth. Logically, any way he cut it, the truth should be revealed to Rin, but he could not imagine how to do it. Rin would not handle the truth well and he dreaded revealing it to her. If he told her while she was carrying another baby it was likely to induce another miscarriage.

As much as he wished he could hide his marriage from Rin, he knew it was impossible. In time Ginrei would conceive a child. If the child was a girl it could stay within the secret palace indefinitely. If it was a boy Sesshomaru would want to take the child under his wing as soon as it could be weaned from Ginrei's breast. The child would be impossible to hide from Rin, and there was no doubt in Sesshomaru's mind that it would clearly be related to him and look that way. He could not lie to her and say that the child was an adopted cousin or some such thing.

There was only one good thing about all of these problems: they could be put off. Ginrei was not pregnant yet and Sesshomaru wasn't truly in a hurry to change that because it would inevitably force him to face Rin with his heir.

In spite of this, Sesshomaru made an effort to sit with Ginrei alone every night, attempting to force her to get accustomed to his presence. Most often they did little more than sit on the balcony, shivering in the wintry wind, but occasionally they would speak together. Tutoring, no matter how bad her teacher—Jaken—was, did manage to stimulate Ginrei's mind. She was more at ease, haunted less by the loss of her family, the massacre that had brought her to Sesshomaru. There were times when she did still have nightmares. A nap during the day might end when she woke, screaming and crying. When he heard these outbursts, Sesshomaru pitied the inuyoukai girl and regretted the way that things had been done. Sesshomaru would have been a prime candidate amongst the clan for marriage. They would have leapt at a chance to give him one of their daughters, but that would mean Sesshomaru was allied to one of them through marriage. He hadn't wanted that, so he had cheated, destroying a whole clan to claim one bitch.

He paid this price now by having to work to make her comfortable around him. There would always be some inner grudge that she held against him, and rightly so, but Sesshomaru would work hard to gain her respect, to perhaps make her into an ally. If he did hand the Isei province over to her it would make her powerful, and if she had other children with him, another son or a daughter, it would be wise for him to keep her on good terms and under his control. The bargain he had struck with her called for the first son. It said nothing of daughters or of other sons, and this partially intimidated Sesshomaru. Ginrei needed to be an ally; he needed to trust that someday she would not try to turn against him with the power he had rewarded her with. Or with his own offspring.

It was all a dangerous game, and all of it gave him a headache. He preferred war to secrets and ill-gotten heirs any day.


"Tell me about her." Ginrei asked, watching Tsukiyume with all of her being.

"Well…" Tsukiyume settled into a crouched stance, raising her arms in a defensive position. "What do you want to know, my lady?"

"How does a woman rule over men? How did she do it?" Ginrei had yet to bother mirroring Tsukiyume's stance. She was a very poor student physically. She also, since she'd stopped seeing Tsukiyume as the close kin of her family's murderers, had trouble closing her mouth to learn.

"Stand as I am." Tsukiyume ordered, curtly. She imagined Rin within her mind, the small, frail human female throwing orders out when Tsukiyume had been a new, frightened student, uneducated in almost everything. She tried to project the same fierceness that Rin had. Rin was a sensei, a master in her own right, and Tsukiyume modeled herself after her mortal teacher. It brought a wave of nostalgia for those lessons, for her long bouts with Lady Rin. "Hold up your hands and prepare to ward off my blows."

Ginrei took in Tsukiyume's stance and mimicked it weakly. "Did she teach you this? Did your mother—"

"My mother was not a scholar." Tsukiyume interrupted her, trying to control her irritation. "Mother neglected most of my education. It was my—others that taught me how to read and write."

Ginrei's fighting stance, already a weak imitation, faltered. She frowned, analyzing Tsukiyume's words. "Shimofuri taught you, not your mother?" her voice had grown colder, more distant.

"Yes." Tsukiyume answered her, pursing her lips. "I'm not supposed to be telling you my family history, Lady Ginrei. I'm supposed to be teaching you how to defend yourself, how to fight."

They were in an open room of the secret palace. It was not necessarily meant for fighting lessons, but it was a sensei's room. The screens were blank and boring so that a student's mind could not wander, but would instead be forced to absorb the information being thrown at it. On one side the screens had been slid open, letting a cold breeze flow in over the two young women. The narrow strip of the outside world it revealed was a white one, bright and cold. The lake was frozen and covered over with a blanket of thick snow. The trees were piled high with it as well.

Tsukiyume and Ginrei, her student, wore thick robes to combat the cold, but their feet were bare. Their hair was pinned back tightly. They fought without swords or poles today, it was a beginner's lesson—self defense. There was nothing for Ginrei but her own hands, arms, feet, legs, and her claws. She would take the lesson differently than Tsukiyume had received it a few months ago because Ginrei was a full blooded youkai. She was less defenseless, supposedly, than Tsukiyume was as a hanyou. But while Tsukiyume was hanyou, her sparring partner had often been Rin, and despite the fact that they seemed unequally matched Rin had often won against Tsukiyume, and they had always drawn a sweat in the exercise.

Ginrei seemed uninterested in learning this lesson. In their other studies Ginrei was far advanced over Tsuki. She could read more characters, write more of them as well, and with better proficiency. She had been taught multiple styles of kanji and script. She was also an accomplished artist, having been trained and having practiced from a young age within the Nishiyori clan. She had competed against other women of similar birth and talent. Also far different from Tsukiyume, Ginrei had been taught how to dance and she excelled. As a youth the inuyoukai girl had been well known as an artist and a dancer. Had she not been assumed dead by the rest of the inuyoukai clan there would have been many clans willing to adopt her as a sensei to their own daughters.

Compared with Tsukiyume, Ginrei was cultured and educated; she was indeed a perfect, courtly wife. Even alongside Rin, Ginrei was the better specimen when culture and education were thrown into consideration. But as far as defending herself, Ginrei knew nothing, and it seemed she had little interest in it.

"Wives do not fight." Ginrei murmured, scowling. "Why does Sesshomaru wish this to be apart of my lessons? Is he evaluating my physical strength?"

Tsukiyume sighed, dropping her fighting position. "Lord Sesshomaru asks this of all…" she stopped, uncertain what to say. Her first instinct had been to say "captives." She doubted that would go over very well. In truth she didn't know why Sesshomaru wanted his wife to know how to defend herself. Unless he felt there was a threat, a looming war or human uprising, it seemed pointless to teach Ginrei how to fight. Ginrei was right, she was a wife, she would always be protected. And considering the circumstances, it would make more sense for Sesshomaru to leave Ginrei defenseless and untrained. Who would want to risk having a wife that might slaughter you in the bedroom?

"He taught you this?" Ginrei asked then, cocking her head slightly to one side. She too had dropped her battle ready position, poor as it was.

Warily, Tsukiyume shook her head. "No." she lowered her eyes, remembering Rin again, wondering what she was doing, if Sessomaru had told her in a letter or in person. He'd left when the snow had at last abated and the temperature rose a little. He'd been gone for nearly two days, leaving Tsukiyume under Jaken's watch and teachings. Other tutors would arrive, she was told, newly hired. He had not forbidden Tsukiyume from writing to Rin specifically, although it seemed such an action was likely against his wishes. Tsukiyume had started many letters to Rin, but none felt right. It was too distant, too cold. She could not imagine hurting her friend so brutally. No letter had been sent out as a result, and Tsukiyume had not tried to write another recently.

"It was not Shimofuri that taught you to fight. It was not Sesshomaru. It was not your mother…" Ginrei was thinking, her face was twisted up in a little knot of frustration. "I didn't believe it was commonplace for a woman to be taught to fight. How is it that you were taught how to fight, but not the higher arts, as I was? You are a daughter of nobility."

Was it wise to tell Ginrei anything about Rin? She decided to try and avoid it. Tsukiyume crouched again, taking up the fighting stance. "You are not part of our family, Lady Ginrei. I would ask that you refer to my brother as Lord Shimofuri."

Ginrei's face soured. She stood still, her body stiffed, but when she spoke her voice was even, though a little thin, "Yes, Lady Tsukiyume."

This drew pause from the hanyou girl. A smile pulled on her face, in spite of herself. "I'm sorry—no one's ever called me that before."

"You were introduced to me that way." Ginrei pointed out.

"I know but…" she let the smile come, small and timid, "…in casual conversation I'm not used to a title…"

"But you are the daughter of the ruler of the Middle Lands." Ginrei maintained the fighting stance like a statue, stoically. Only the movement of her blinking and her lips revealed that she was living.

"Yes, I am, but…" Tsukiyume paused again, half-choking on her words. "My mother is no longer the ruler of the Middle Lands."

"Your brother is. You are still royalty." Ginrei's face was unemotional, statuesque. She was wearing the Noh expression, a dancer's mask. She was treating the fighting stance as if it were the beginning position of a dance from Noh theatre. (A/N: As I write this I believe I am making a mistake. Noh theatre for whatever reason, is strictly male performed I think. But since these are not humans we'll pretend that it works and that the men are so busy at war that it's the woman's hobby. Kabuki came along several centuries after the point at which Inuyasha is placed, I think. I believe Kabuki was the first theatre to allow women to play their own roles. Sometimes. I might also have this mixed up. It might be Kabuki that forbade women and Noh that allowed them, I can't recall.)

Tsukiyume shook her head, still perplexed, "True, but I'm…"

"A woman?" Ginrei asked. Her silvered eyes flicked to meet Tsukiyume's startled gaze. "But your mother was Lady Taikokajin. Why should your gender matter when she held power as she did, for as long as she did?"

Tsukiyume frowned. "Stop it. Drop your stance. That's not what I was going to say."

Ginrei relaxed and faced her with a more angry expression now, challenging her. "What were you going to say, Lady Tsukiyume?"

"Stop calling me that!" Tsukiyume snarled. Her white dog ears flattened atop her straight black hair. "I was going to say I'm hanyou."

This seemed to affect Ginrei genuinely. She blinked, her anger faded, leaving uncertainty, and perhaps even a spot of pity. "I…I was never told anything about hanyou. It is a mixed creature…?" she shook her head, helplessly. "Are you one part inuyoukai and another part…" she squinted her eyes, examining Tsukiyume carefully, "Wolf youkai? But that's not right, I can't smell wolf on you…" she frowned, lost.

Like fighting, this was another issue that Ginrei had never been educated on.

Tsukiyume sighed, letting her shoulders sag, letting the tension leave her body. "No. My mother was Lady Taikokajin, but my father was human—a monk named Kokoro." She lowered her gaze and focused on the floor, remembering a time months ago, when her father's spirit had interceded and saved her life, though he had never lived to see her birth…

"I didn't know…" she frowned, "I've heard the term before, but no one explained it to me." A small twinge of color spread over Ginrei's cheeks. "I wasn't aware it was even possible."

"It is." Tsukiyume responded uncaringly. "But now you see why even my mother couldn't hand over her kingdom to me. Even to my brother I'm useless. No one from the clan will marry a hanyou."

A bitter smile planted itself on Ginrei's young, tender face. "Then we have something in common. I'm useless now as well. Without my family, I'm as good as dead. There is no honor left for me anymore. Once my husband is finished with me…" she gestured with her hands to the room, the cold breeze, the chokingly bright snow outside.

"You think Lord Sesshomaru will toss you aside after…?" Tsukiyume had not learned the exact reason behind Sesshomaru's deception and secret marriage to this inuyoukai girl, but she was about to find out why Ginrei thought she was here, a fellow captive to the great and powerful Lord of the Western Lands.

"After I give him a son. He promised to set me free after that, with the Isei province as my own but…" Ginrei crossed her arms, seeming to fold into herself, helplessly. "How am I supposed to rule a province? How can I trust him when I know he helped kill my family?"

Tsukiyume cringed as she smelled fresh tears escaping from Ginrei's eyes. "He's your husband." She replied, blindly.

Ginrei's tears were overwhelming, the questions, the strangeness of her mood, her extreme education in some areas and complete ignorance in others. Tsukiyume wanted to take up the fighting stance, to bury these concerns, some of which she herself mirrored about Sesshomaru, in the sweat and exertion of a battle. When she'd first come under Sesshomaru's care Tsukiyume would have placed complete trust in the inuyoukai ruler. Yet, since learning of his recent deception and true motivation for helping Shimofuri in the war in the Middle Lands, she had serious doubts.

Sesshomaru's hanyou brother, the legendary Inuyasha, was one worthy of trust. He was predictable though lawless and outcast from nobility. Sesshomaru was the complete opposite, regal and endlessly complex. While Inuyasha did what he did out of a need to protect himself or his closest kin, Sesshomaru served only himself through twisted, exploitive ways. Ensuring Shimofuri's cooperation by holding his hanyou sister hostage. By securing a wife by slaughtering her family in a war that he negotiated and supported. He did what he felt he needed to do to survive, and if possible, to thrive.

He was a creature of conquest, of rule. Could he really ever be trusted to come through on right and wrong? Could Tsukiyume believe Sesshomaru when he told her that in a year he would allow her to go home? Could Ginrei believe him when he promised her the Isei, a future of riches, respect, and power?

There was one thing she already knew: Rin trusted Sesshomaru when she shouldn't have. But how could she have ever known to suspect otherwise?


Sesshomaru spent eight days with Rin where Daken had hidden her in a battlement in the southern province of the Western Lands. It was called Jouka, less of a castle and more of a palace. The first summer after Naraku had at last been killed; Sesshomaru had housed Rin in that palace and begun training her vigorously. He wanted her to be unlike any other human. She would at least appear as powerful as any demon.

He had specialized armor forged and re-forged for the girl, changing it each time she outgrew one set and into another. The best teachers and trainers were hired for her. Rin was taught intensively to read, write, and fight. While Sesshomaru traveled and waged wars or settled them, Rin's letters reached him by courier on the front lines. He watched from a distance as the orphaned child he'd resurrected and given a second chance grew in intellect and grace.

There were many years that he spent apart from her. Periodically he forced Jaken to leave his side and return to Jouka where Rin was housed and trained. He loaded the toad with gifts for the girl. Whenever the toad returned he was full of stories about Rin, how she'd grown up and was becoming a beautiful woman, how her speech and movements were refined and elegant. She asked for him all the time, Jaken reported, and longed for the rare instances when Sesshomaru answered her letters with one of his own.

Often Sesshomaru wished he could see her again, but he restrained himself. In his mind she was a tiny child still, a daughter to be sheltered from the wrath of the world. He knew, somewhere, that this was not true—Rin's own letters had matured greatly. It was the writing of a young woman, not a child. And she didn't write to him as if he were a father or a brother.

When Jaken reported that Rin had reached marriageable age, Sesshomaru found himself shocked. Her teachers and trainers insisted that Rin should be given away to marriage within the Western Lands, to seal an alliance with one of the samurai lords ruling within Sesshomaru's territory. Although not born into nobility, she had been trained and adopted into it. She was a beautiful girl, the time was ripe. It was the best way for her to serve him now.

Sesshomaru couldn't deny their counsel. Cutting his travels short, Sesshomaru had Rin ferried to his largest castle within the Western Lands, and he returned as well—and saw the orphan girl again for the first time.

Rin overwhelmed him. She was the same child she'd been when he'd saved her, but at the same time she was someone entirely new. She was a woman, proud, noble, and exceptionally beautiful. Even more alarming, she remembered him so well from her childhood that she was able to read his emotions from the moment they saw one another again. As she had while a child, she followed him incessantly around the court, she took every opportunity to speak with him.

As the samurai bachelors presented themselves a month later, Sesshomaru found that none of them met his standards. He bristled at the sight of each one; his claws itched to tear them apart for every stray glance that fell on the young Rin. The samurai offered their loyalty, offered their lands, their support, their funds, their troops. None of it reached Sesshomaru's ears. Emotion, for the first time in his life as the ruler of the Western Lands, ran wild within him. Turning away the generous proposals of each samurai wasn't a good move for the Western Lands, but Sesshomaru couldn't see past his growing possessiveness.

It was the curse of the inuyoukai. The guard dog. Rin had become his within his mind and though it was part of the plan to give her up, he found more and more that he didn't want to and never had.

She was spellbinding. In the springtime, while Sesshomaru reviewed her suitors, he knew that Rin was practicing riding a horse through the gardens in the armor he'd had newly forged for her. Often long before the samurai lords were finished making their proposals, Sesshomaru dismissed them, almost rudely, and left the stuffy meeting rooms to watch her from the balconies. Her horse was a light gray roan, her armor painted the deepest black. She let her long, straight black hair flow as she rode, wild in the wind. She painted her face to appear fierce—white with red stripes on her cheeks, mimicking Sesshomaru's own demonic marks. When she stumbled and fell from the horse in one instance, Sesshomaru could not restrain himself from rushing—leaping from his high, hidden vantage point on the balcony—to save her.

And as the springtime wore on into summer—with the idea of marriage to some human warrior looming inside her mind—Rin at last spoke her mind. It began timidly. She wrote brief poems and had Jaken or one of her teachers pass them to Sesshomaru during the day. The poems were of nature, haikus, things that Sesshomaru had never cared much for, but admired nonetheless. And then she began with short letters again, speaking to him with ink what she dared not say aloud.

I hate humans, Lord Sesshomaru. It was humans that killed my mother, my father, my brothers. In my heart I am not human, I am inuyoukai. I wish to remain with Lord Sesshomaru my entire life.

It took little to convince Sesshomaru to cease the search for a suitable husband. There never would be one. Rin belonged at his side, in his castle, with him.

Eight days beside her in Jouka allowed Sesshomaru to immerse himself in those memories, of the desire that had taken over him without his even realizing, of the bond that had grown and transformed between them. For a time he could forget the Isei and a very different palace there, a very different woman that was attached to his fate.

With the past alive around him, Sesshomaru gave almost no thought to sharing his secret betrayal with her. But his memories of brighter times weren't the only excuse he had now: Rin's scent had changed, yet again.

She was pregnant.

A few short years ago this would've excited Sesshomaru. He would've cut off his travel plans, stalled his meetings, and given into the instinct to dote on his pregnant mate. He'd acted that way before several times, but always the couple's excitement turned to grief as Rin miscarried. Rin counted five lost babies in four years. Sesshomaru counted much more than that: ten, perhaps even fifteen.

Now Sesshomaru was excited again, but at once he was also troubled. It was too soon for Rin to know for certain, but the moment she suspected it she would become stiff, as if afraid she might break herself. She spent most of her time in bed; she limited her activities, anything she could in a desperate attempt to keep the precious new life that had sprung up inside her. This included secluding herself from Sesshomaru's company.

With the move to Jouka Sesshomaru had reason to hope that this time the child would not be lost, Rin's efforts wouldn't prove themselves in vain. If Rin's losses were because of sabotage in the other castle than it stood to reason that the move to Jouka would leave Rin healthy and safely pregnant. There wouldn't be grief; there would be excitement and celebration.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to believe this or share it with Rin. He always counseled her not to hope and not to worry. If she worried it would only sicken her and the child within her, and if she hoped it would only make the pain at the miscarriage more horrible. Now he offered himself the same counsel and elected a cheater's way out of the situation, for the time being.

Another journey to the Isei province on "business." Another dispute over land in the province because of war. He would settle them and return to Rin in the Jouka in a week or so. In the meantime Daken would look after her, and should anything come up, Daken would deliver the news.

He was certain that Daken would be sent after him in only a few days, as Rin realized that she was pregnant. He would return to her swiftly then and try to wait things out—though he had come to hate these moments. To Sesshomaru they were deathwatches, and he was the vulture, awaiting the end. He despised the waiting, it was a waste. Another loss drowned in blood, another reminder that Sesshomaru the great leader of the Western Lands, was childless and unable to sire viable offspring.

Another small, but deep and scarring blow to his pride.

The idea of success, rather than failure, seemed dismal, bleak, and outright impossible.


and I'm out of here. :-)