"I'm sorry Sakaki." Akisame said as he helped his brother towards his room, hopefully where his wife was cleaning or something and could take over taking care of the larger man since Akisame needed to go looking for Nara before she got herself into trouble.

Sakaki groaned and dripped blood on his nice clean shirt as he cracked open one eye and hissed. "Bastard. You should be sorry. My life flashed before my eyes."

Akisame made a humming sound but didn't say anything. Really he didn't know what to say to his brother. He knew that he had said that he would go easy on him, and technically he had. But that was still no excuse for hurting him like this.

For all he knew Sakaki might have internal bleeding or swelling in his skull. Things that were agonizing and debilitating. Things that could wreck and rend and destroy. Things that without the proper care, could kill even one of them despite their yokai blood and the fact that they healed abnormally fast.

"Just a few more steps then you can curl up on your bed and bitch all you like." Akisame said as he took another shakey step forward. Sakaki laughed weakly then winched.

God his head hurt.

"That would be awesome..." He said weakly as his vision started to fade a little bit. He had such horrible things to say about his brother for hurting him like this. Hell it would serve the bastard right if once he was feeling better- he went and found Nara and told her every embarrassing story he knew about Akisame from when they had been growing up.

They reached Sakaki's bedroom as the door opened and the wolf demon's wife Miu started to step outside of the room holding a basket of dirty laundry. She turned and looked at them for a moment, a startled look on her face then dropped the basket and looked from Akisame to her husband then back again before letting out an impressive amount of killing intent.

"What. Did. You. Do?" The busty blond growled in an angry tone as she stared hard at Akisame.

Akisame smiled at his sister-in-law and cheerfully said, "Sakaki and Apachai got a little carried away and Sakaki got hurt."

Sakaki looked down at him in horror, his mouth gaping open as Akisame shrugged his arm out from around his shoulders and set him down right there at his wife's feet as she turned her attention to him and gave him a sadistic smile. Giving Akisame his chance to escape. He turned and ran like hell back the way that he had come as he heard Miu scream.

"Sakaki Shio! You should be ashamed of yourself for doing this after I talked to you about having kids! How dare you show up before me bleeding! Why I should just stomp your sorry ass into the ground and leave you to bleed out!"

Akisame let out a low whistle under his breath as he ran and couldn't help but feel grateful that he hadn't taken up an interest in Miu when she had first been dumped on them. God knew she would have eaten him alive.

No, Akisame prefered girls that he sensed were really sweet, kind natured, and intellegent. Girls like Nara. Speaking of- He was going to end up tearing the house and the woods behind it apart just to find her.

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Nara didn't bother hiding in the house.

She ran straight for the woods despite the pesky Akisame sounding voice in the back of her mind growling, Don't. Do. It. Again. Don't go into the woods. She gnashed her teeth and made an irritated sound as she ran and mentally snapped, Shut up! She didn't want to hear any damn voices of reason even if it was about the woods and how dangerous Akisame had said they were. She was scared right now.

Besides she'd be careful and look for the damn bear traps so that she didn't end up getting stuck in one. Then if Akisame somehow managed to find and catch her like he had last time; he wouldn't be able to complain about her not being aware.

She stopped a ways back and found herself a nice sturdy stick and began trailing it across the ground in front of her like a blind person would and nearly jumped out of her skin when something popped up out of the leaf covered ground and snapped the tip of the stick in half.

She made a note to be on the look out for loose dirt, and a small pile of leaves scattered in a peculiar pattern on the ground and started to run again. She figured that she got a good two miles or so back before she left the little path that cut through the bushes, brambles and trees and turned left and started to run again.

But she didn't pay much attention to where she was going this time because she was too busy thinking about what would happen if she was caught again. She missed the fact that the ground was becoming more and more difficult to run across because it wasn't completely level like it had been back at the path. She tripped and went sprawling through several bushes and found herself sliding down a muddy enbankment.

She must have rolled into or hit at least half a dozen jagged rocks and rotted tree branches on the way down. Because she was so shaken when she finally stopped moving that she didn't even realise that she was bruised and bleeding and her right ankle was hurting her badly enough to make her cry.

(************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Akisame was panicking by the time he hit the woods looking for Nara. He had told her already that the woods were dangerous, yet she had run into them anyways.

He would have to give her a sterner talking too than he had last time so that she would finally understand that when he said something was dangerous; what he really meant was that he expected her to avoid whatever it was that he had warned her about in the first place.

He reached the point several miles from the house where he could plainly see one of Sasaki's bear traps laying in the middle of the path, it's jaws snapped together around the bottom of a stick.

His heart dropped and he looked around, hoping against hope and praying to god that she was somewhere in the open where he could see her. But she wasn't. It had been foolish of him to think that she would make hunting her down easy for him.

Especially when she was so displeased with him at the moment. He stood there for a moment trying to think of what to do- It had been two hours since she had disappeared and though the sun was still out, the woods were starting to get dark. This part of the woods was far denser than the areas closer to the house.

They also had dangerous wild animals running around.

What if Nara came across the wild dogs that lived in the roods? What if she had come across a poisionous snake and had gotten bitten? What if? What if? What if- There thousands of different things that could have happened to her. A lot of which weren't good.

He took a deep breath and cleared his mind. It looked like he had no choice but to give his yokai blood free reign if he wanted to find her before something happened to her. He felt his mind slip a little bit and inhaled as he let his senses go crazy.

Everything was so vivid. The colors swirled together. The scents of the woods filled his nose with the smell of earth, water, wet fur, grass and leaves. He caught the faintest whiff of primrose, orchid, honey and spices.

Nara's scent.

He inhaled again as he tipped his head back and licked his lips and fire roared to life through his veins. Ah, he had never smelled anything like his Nara. Nor had he ever hungered for a woman as he hungered for her.

He moved off of the path and walked a distance until he came to a bush that carried the slight scent of blood and a piece of the shirt that she had been wearing. He looked around for a second, trying to figure out where exactly he was and realised that he was at one of the thirty two feet natrual embankments that rested on either side of the river that ran through the woods.

He pushed his way through the bush and looked down and saw Nara laying at the bottom of the embankment, bruised, cut up and bloody, her clothes ripped and torn in various places and one of her ankles was swollen and bruised. He made a low growling sound and stepped off of the top of the embankment and let himself fall to where she was, where he landed in a croutching position just six or so feet from her.

He slowly got to his feet and walked over to her and very gently laid his finger tips against her throat to check for a pulse and sighed in relief when he felt the soft thudding of her heart under his finger tips.