Chapter 10: Broken Down Dog

(There are thousands of different animals on earth. Most we know, but a lot are still a mystery. Animals that live in the deepest oceans… or unexplored jungles. We don't know much about them because they have no contact with humans and they live by a set of rules that we know nothing about. So imagine if one of these animals was brought into our world. What would happen? Would it adjust to us and live in peace? Or would it play by its own rules? The rules of a game we have no chance of winning?)

Inuyasha leapt forward and hit the man who shot the bullet (and missed) in the chest with his front paws so hard that he knocked him down onto his backside. For a moment, Kagome was sure that Inuyasha was going to tear him to shreds, but instead he just grabbed the gun with his teeth and leapt off just before a net was thrown from one of the other hunters and ended up trapping his buddy instead.

"GET ME OUT OF THIS THING!" the hunter screamed, trying to get the heavy net off him.

Good, maybe now he'll have some idea what it's like to be trapped. Kagome then turned to the others who were already turning tail and running. Kagome didn't need anyone to tell her what to do this time; she raced after them, running side by side with Shippo and Kohaku. Kagome was surprised that she could keep up with the pack despite all the running that she already did today. She felt as though someone had injected her with a gallon of Red Bull and she felt like she could run all day.

They darted through trees—and jumped over boulders as they ran as far as they could from the humans that were after their lives. Kagome looked back in time to see Inuyasha give one last howl of warning to the humans before he turned and darted off in the opposite direction to try and divert their attention away from his pack.

Her tongue rolling out of her mouth as she for air, her body aching all over from all the running that she did all day, and her feet now felt as though someone had rubbed them raw with sandpaper.

But she didn't stop. She kept going, knowing that if she couldn't stay with them, then she was as good as dead. Humans were now after her as well as her new friends. She may not have been a wolf for long, but she knew that being a lone wolf in this forest meant death. She just kept her eyes on the two young pups in front of her and prayed for the best.

And silently praying that Inuyasha was safe.

Once in awhile, they heard the sounds of yells or more shots of gunfire going off somewhere far behind them, and every time they did—Kagome was overcome with worry for Inuyasha. Was he hurt… or worse… dead?

She shuddered at the thought and tried to force it out of her head. She wanted her mother… to wake up and go back to yesterday when she was human and the only thing she had to worry about was her brother. Oh, her heart gave a pang for Sota and her parents… her family must be pitching a fit right about now.

*Not long later*

Kagome had enough. She didn't think that she could any farther… she had long since forgotten just how long they've been going in this direction—but it had to have been at least half an hour by now. The sun was starting to set. To be honest, she was surprised that she lasted this long—had she been in her human form, she would've passed out long before now.

As tired as she was however, she didn't want to be the wolf who asked them all to stop and rest… but she also knew there was no way that she could keep this up…

Thankfully, the wolf called Koga called out to them all and stopped dead in his tracks. 'Listen, we have to rest now.'

'Koga,' panted Sango as she stopped also and turned her head to look at him. Everyone else followed suit, and Kagome almost collapse with gratitude. But as for Shippo and Kohaku… they on the other hand all slumped down and started to wheeze for air. 'We're all tired, Koga,' Miroku gasped. 'But we can't stop here…'

'We have to!' he barked back before looking behind him. Kagome followed his gaze, and in the distance, she could make out the exhausted form of Ayame slowly walking towards them. With a howl of worry, Koga went running to meet her before leaning his head against her side.

She leaned into his touch and allowed him to help her walk up the steep hill that they were in the middle of climbing. 'What are we going to do?' Miroku rasped to Sango. 'We've been pushing everyone a lot farther than we should've done. If we could stay here for the next Cold then it'll be so much easier on Ayame…'

'But we can't stay here!' Sango barked at him. 'You know as well as I do that's when the hunters all come! We'll all be dead by the time the Cold leaves.'

'The Cold?' Kagome couldn't help but ask as she lay down on her side to try and give her stinging paws a rest. 'What? Are any of you sick or something?'

They both looked at her as if she was crazy. 'The big Cold,' Sango repeated slowly. 'You know… when everything freezes and the hunters come for us.'

Kagome then realized that they must've been talking about hunting season in winter. 'Oh,' she answered. 'Where I'm from, we call it winter.'

'Winter?' repeated Kohaku to her left. 'That's a funny name.'

'I've heard worse,' Shippo gasped as he shut his eyes and looked ready to fall asleep. Kagome looked at him and she would've smiled if she could. Shippo was just so damn ADORABLE! She just wanted to bury her face in that beautiful red fur… in fact, he looked more like a great big, red fox than a wolf.

'Yes, yes,' Miroku said as he came forward to survey Kagome though his bright, black eyes. Kagome glanced up to get a better look at him. Wow, he was the most beautiful shade of blue-grey and blue-greenish color—almost like the darkened moon.

'Where exactly did you come from?' Miroku asked her. 'I don't believe that I've ever seen you here before… and I don't remember seeing you from either one of the other two packs…'

'I'm…' Kagome began. What was she going to tell them? Hey, I was once a human whose family is after your lives? Yeah, she could see that would go over real well. She remembered what Inuyasha had said and told them, 'I come from a pack that's pretty… far away…'

'Oh, I get it!' Shippo said happily. 'You must be that wolf that we all heard singing a couple nights ago!' He leapt up and started to climb on top of her, as if wanting to play. 'You had the prettiest pack-song I ever heard.'

Pack-song? What on earth were they talking about? Did he mean her howling? Rather than ask him that, she said, 'Ah, yeah… that was me.'

'Ah, that explains it,' Miroku stated. 'We couldn't find you no matter how hard we looked. We didn't hear from you again since that night and were worried that the hunters might have gotten you.'

Sango came over and put her nose into her fur and breathed in her scent, while at the same time, letting Kagome breath in hers. She recognized it at once as the smell of lilies…

'So what pack are you from?' Sango asked her as she raised her head, apparently satisfied.

'Ah…' Kagome began before going back to the lie earlier. 'I don't have a pack… not anymore anyway.'

'That's too bad,' Shippo said as he began to play with her tail. 'It happens all the time. If the pack leader has a problem with them, they have to leave.'

Miroku bent down and also smelled her scent, while Kagome picked up the scent of ink and leaves off him… in fact, he smelled almost like old scrolls. 'You don't look or smell like you're from the wolf packs that live up in Bigfoot Ridge,' he said suddenly. 'Where do you hail from?'

'Far away,' Kagome told him. 'I was coming up here with my family—ah, my pack… and well… one thing led to another…'

'That's a little harsh,' said Koga's rough voice, and she turned in time to see him and Ayame make their way towards them. 'You must've done something bad for them to kick you out. What did you do?'

'I didn't do anything bad,' she growled at them, surprising herself just how easy it came to her at that moment. 'But my pack just didn't approve of… ah, how I turned out to be. Let's just say that they had different expectations for me and… I thought that it would be for the best if I just ran away.'

'You took off on your own?' Ayame asked as she lay down on the forest floor next to her, and turned to her side so she wouldn't hurt her swollen belly. 'That took some real guts.'

Kagome shrugged. 'What can you do?'

'You don't seem to upset about it,' Sango asked her concerned.

Kagome put her head down on her front paws and told them, 'I am upset. But… what else can I do? I want to go back to them, but if I do, I'm pretty sure that they'll kill me.'

'Wow,' Shippo whispered hoarsely as he climbed onto her back. Kagome felt the need to laugh at his playfulness. He was just so CUTE! 'That sounds as harsh as the wolf pack who lives up north. That pack leader threatens to kill anyone who he doesn't need any more. So if you don't run off when you have the chance, you're dead. There are a bunch of lone wolves up there because of him.'

'And yet,' Koga said, a little suspiciously. 'You don't look like one of them. And the only other pack that is even remotely in this area lives much farther east. But you don't look like you're from there either.'

Oh, crap. What was she supposed to say to that? But before she could think of a good reply, Sango said, 'I'm sure we can talk about this later, we have to keep going.'

'But Ayame,' Koga said, turning around to look at his mate who was still on the ground, struggling for breath.

'I'll be fine,' she told him as she struggled to her feet. 'The sooner we get to Bigfoot Ridge, the safer that we'll be and I can rest then.'

'Bigfoot Ridge?' Kagome asked them confused.

'It's what the humans call those cliffs,' Kohaku explained jerking with his head to the cliffs in the distance. It was funny—they had been running all this time, and yet they didn't look any closer to her. 'Humans never go there,' Kohaku went on. 'We'll be safe there until they leave the forest. For some reason it's only during the Cold, or winter as you call it, do they come around.'

That's because that's the only time of the year when hunters are allowed to hunt. Kagome was about to tell them this when Koga snapped.

'Yeah, good for them. But we're going to be facing near starvation while we're up there… again! Remember what happened last time? We almost ended up eating each other we were so hungry! Aside for the occasional goat or deer, there's hardly anything to hunt up there. That's not enough for us to live on until it gets warmer.'

'What other choice do we have?' Miroku asked him as he wagged his tail in an irritated way. 'We can't stay here! No matter how much food there is! With the hunters stalking us, we would be risking our lives every single day! There is no way that we can survive until they leave! Besides, I find it very unlikely we can hunt anything with them scaring every animal away!'

Koga just gave him a dirty look as he turned to help Ayame. Kagome shifted unhappily. It was her fault that they were suffering like this. Sure, she wasn't the one who was actually doing this of course, but she might as well have been. After all, she actually helped her father and brother go out and set traps! Now they were all going to be cold and hungry all winter because her kind was after them.

She wanted to crawl under a rock or something and die, but then she heard Koga and Ayame talking again.

'You couldn't have picked a worse time to have pups,' he told her.

She gave him an incredulous look and barked, 'Well, it's not like I had this planned out! It's your fault for not wanting to wait to start a family! I told you that we should've waited… but did you listen? NOOOO!'

'Aright, alright,' he said uncomfortably with a glance over at the others who were all laughing at him, Kagome loudest of all. Sure she didn't know them all that well yet… but they were acting no different than any other couple she knew.

They just had four legs and tails is all.

Animals really aren't so different from them after all.

Sango also got Kohaku and Shippo up onto their feet and they all started to walk again. But she did take some comfort in that idea that there was no need for them to run now, which Kagome was grateful for. Kagome felt as though she was walking on burned paws, they were stinging so badly—but she just gritted her teeth and dealt with it. Hoping that things would go better for her soon. She clumsily followed the rest of her pack… wait her pack? When did she start feeling like that?

This new wolf brain was doing something to her.

Nevertheless, she just followed the others up the hill and through a part of the forest that was filled with much thicker trees. After a few minutes, Miroku drew back to walk beside her and said, 'We don't have to worry about wasting so much energy here. Humans don't come through this part that often. Must be hard for them to move with all those heavy metal things.'

'Guns,' she corrected automatically.

'What?' Shippo asked her curiously.

'Oh, I ah… guns. I heard some of those hunters call them that,' she made up quickly.

'Guns?' Sango repeated. 'Stupid name.'

'Sister?' Kohaku suddenly whined, sounding like a little kid in the backseat on a long car trip. 'Just how far do we have to go until we reach Bigfoot Ridge?'

Sango gave him a tired look but said patiently, 'You know the way as well as I do. First, we have to cross the rest of these woods before we reach the river. We'll have to cross it before we reach the foot of the cliffs. Once we're there, we have to start the long trek up the side of the cliff. That's where we'll be safe. There are plenty of caves that we'll be able to hide in. It should be safe for all of us until the hunters leave.'

Kagome felt her insides freeze. She gave a half-glance back to Ayame, who seemed really disorientated on her feet and was leaning heavily into Koga's side. If they really had to cross miles and miles through a forest, cross a river, and climb a cliff with her about to give birth… this was going to be extremely hard on her and her pups.

She suspected that under normal circumstances, Ayame would have been able to do all that stuff easily. But if there was one thing she learned when her mother was pregnant with Sota, it's that everything seems harder for an expecting mother.

Koga must've been thinking along the same lines because he said, 'But that's going to take forever! Ayame can't handle all that!'

'Wanna bet?' she hissed at him through gritted teeth, making them all jump in surprise. 'I can handle it. Just make sure to find the biggest and comfiest cave you can. Because I'm going to be living in it until the weather gets better.'

'You got it,' Miroku laughed. 'We'll rest once we get to the river. And…'

But he never had a chance to finish his sentence. They suddenly heard the sound of padded paws running behind them. They all turned around and barred their teeth—their ears pulled back. Even Kagome, though she didn't understand when her wolf instincts took over. They all waited… expecting to see the figure of a human running towards them with a gun pointed at someone.

But then Kagome picked up its familiar scent.

'Inuyasha!' she called out as she relaxed. Good, he made it back to them alive. But there was something strange about Inuyasha's scent this time. Something was mixed in with his wonderful spicy, outdoorsy smell that she loved. There was an iron, metallic smell to it… the exact smell that covered Kitsue when he was shot…

She took a timid step forward and to her relief saw him running towards them, darting between the trees. But then to her horror, she realized that he was limping… and his beautiful silver fur was stained in a ruby-red liquid.

He had been shot.

(Hey, I'm finally done with this chapter! Sorry for taking so long as usual. But this is a hard story. But I was kinda wondering if anyone else liked those little previews that I do at the beginning of the chapter? I just wanted to ask if I should do them all for the rest of my chapters. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and sorry about the Cliffhanger… I love doing that to you all. ;-)