Back again! I'm trying to space out my InuYasha enthusiasm and try to keep my posting of Perfidious and ITJOTW pretty even, but I'm honestly falling in love with Dan more than Reo. Dan's more hotheaded and fun to write. Maybe when I'm in a less energetic mood, I'll want to write Reo's story a little more. Or when I get to rereading the Band of Seven arc of the manga.

We'll see which one comes first

In The Jaws Of The Wolf

Chapter Three

Though my intentions were pure when I decided to keep myself safe, they didn't account for Ando's sheer ability to piss me off. It took just three short weeks for Ando to antagonise me enough that the threat of the wolves during the night didn't matter as much as just getting away from my infuriating bastard husband. I could hear them out tonight as I stalked through the bushes to get to the stream - which had always been my favourite place to sit and cool down when I was feeling particularly frustrated. I liked to imagine that my anger and worries flowed away down the river as I watched the water.

Still, despite my need to get outside even with the looming danger, I held tight to my bow, ready to use it if I had to. I hoped, beyond all else, that I could just have some peace.

True to my despicable luck, the stream wasn't clear when I got there.

That wolf demon was there. The one with the hauntingly beautiful eyes that I had somehow managed to bluff into not killing me. He was sat at the bank of the stream with his back to me, leaning against my favourite large rock, feet dipped into the cool water. Just as I had planned to be. His head lolled back a little when I approached; a clear sign that he knew I was there.

Grunting quietly, I stalked a little further down the stream so I could sit and dunk my feet into the water as well.

The silence was nice, and neither of us moved for a long while.

I could feel my anger melt away with the stream of water running around my ankles, and soon enough I felt... content. Content to just sit and feel the water and the breeze.

"They told me what you did."

I looked up to the wolf. He was still leaning against the rock, with his eyes closed, enjoying the night as much as I was. "I don't read minds."

He cracked an eye open lazily and rolled it towards me. "When you were hunting. Not a lot of humans would leave behind something for them."

Oh. Well, that wasn't so much me being generous as me trying to use human methods to barter with them because I thought they were smarter than the average wolf. It turns out I had been right. Those wolves had been smart, and we'd managed to come to a very loose, tentative understanding in that moment in the woods, weeks ago. I honestly hadn't thought for a second that it would get back to this demon.

"You're alright by me, human."

It felt like that compliment had more weight than I could comprehend. There was something about the way he said it. "Den. If I'm all right by you, I'm not just a human." If he thought I was alright, then he was going to make an effort to remember the damned human's name.

He snorted. "Not shy, are you?" Not in the slightest. "I'm Koga."

Koga. It sounded so... normal. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't a normal name. I half expected the demons to have their own sort of wild language with their own wild names.

We sat comfortably together after that for a while. Long enough that a couple wolves came to join us, and had naps. None of the wolves so much as sniffed at me as they joined us. They were content to just lay between Koga and I and snooze.

Looking back, I would have never really thought that that interaction would change so much for me.

But, when I went hunting, the wolves didn't bother our party much after I'd tossed them some of the offal we had. More often than not, they started following our party, knowing they would get something from us. Strangely, sometimes I felt like they were even herding deer to our party. Those days, there was always one particular wolf that I could recognise in the pack. He was a beautiful wolf, large with slightly darker fur than the rest. He was always the one I threw the liver to when I dressed whatever animal we'd managed to snag.

When that occurrence became more regular, the howls and snuffling we heard so often during the night stopped scaring me. My hands didn't shake, and I didn't immediately reach for Ando for comfort. I felt like if it came to the wolves sniffing around in the village, I wouldn't be targetted for a late-night snack.

It was like being alright by Koga's standards meant I was a friend of the pack. That was something I wouldn't turn my nose up at.

The wolves had always been fairly scary. With just one or two around, they weren't so bad, but in large numbers, or led by a demon, they were terrifying. Yet, in the past few weeks we had been working together in a weird shift of the balance, and it was starting to change my opinion on them.

My desperation to keep safe by staying with the other women during the day when I wanted to go to the stream, or having to endure Ando when we were in argumentative moods, slipped away. I frequented the stream whenever I liked, day or night, not fearing wolf attacks.

Of course, there were other things that went bump in the night so my newfound bravery didn't stop me from bringing my bow and kaiken out with me. My kaiken was a beautiful little weapon that rarely left my side. It was one of the last things I had of my father, who had carved the beautiful bamboo design into the wood himself.

Without fear of the wolves, though, my hand rarely twitched to the blade, or the bow.

I felt almost safe.

I hummed quietly to myself as I embroidered to the gentle sound of the stream beside me. It was a quiet evening at home, so I had taken up a few pieces of torn clothing and my kimono and headed down to the stream to work. I'd made quick work of the torn clothing, and had moved onto embroidery. I was close to finishing the fish I had been working on over the past couple of months, and I would be glad to see them done.

A rustling sounded in the bushes behind me, and I looked up reflexively.

It was that dark wolf that I often saw when hunting.

"Hello," I greeted him, turning my attention back down to my work. Of all the wolves I had encountered during those hunts, he had always seemed the most interested in me. I didn't think he would hurt me now that I was alone, even if there was no promise of food.

I wasn't expecting him to get so close, though, even with his apparent interest in me. His nose pressed into my bare forearm, then he dropped to the ground beside me, curling up with his muzzle on my thigh. Of course, I froze. I wasn't scared, but I'd still never been so close to a wolf before. I'd never had one touch me, let alone lie on me like this one was doing.

He was truly a thing of beauty.

His deep brown fur was smattered with brighter shades of red that I couldn't really see from a distance. This close I could admire the shifting colours of his fur without trouble.

His first wasn't as soft as it looked, I found out, when my fingers sank into the thick patch around his neck. It was a little coarse and greasy, but still soft enough for me to enjoy stroking him. He gave a pleased grumble, and my fingers delved further into his fur. Stroking a wolf felt similar to stroking a dog, yet completely different at the same time. There was an element of danger and excitement to petting a wolf that you just didn't get with a dog; even the hunting dogs we had in the villager, that tended to be a little more aggressive than the farm dogs I had met in my time.

Koga started to show up during my quiet afternoons and evenings by the stream. Sometimes he was accompanied by a couple wolves, sometimes he was alone.

Most of our time was spent in silence, just enjoying the evening.

Occasionally we talked, but conversation didn't tend to last long.

Tonight was a night of conversation. As soon as Koga appeared from between the trees and jumped across the stream, he was speaking. "Yo," he greeted, settling down beside me.

"Evening." My eyes flickered up to him before returning to the hakama I was fixing. I'd been here long enough to already have a small pile of folded clothes fixed and ready to be returned to villagers.

"You spend a hell of a lot of time fixing clothes."

Wasn't that the truth. "Well, that's my job."

He seemed surprised by that. "Not hunting? I'd have to see it to believe it, but the wolves say you're pretty good."

Ooh, that rubbed me the wrong way. "You'd have to see it to believe it, huh?" I bit back. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you're a woman," he dismissed with a shrug, as if that was a reason not to be a good hunter.

"Fuck you!" There was laughter in my tone. Demons had shitty views on women pulling their weight, too, apparently. "Thirty seconds ago you thought hunting was my job."

"I didn't think you were any good at it."

"Your wolves do. They're basically following me as soon as I hit the trees now." The rest of the villagers were getting really antsy about that. They didn't like that the wolves were getting so close and following us around. A couple men had tried to get me to stop feeding the wolves with the offal we left behind. I shot them down right away. I wasn't going to waste meat that we weren't going to use just because they didn't like the wolves.

That seemed to really shock him. "They do? Little bastards don't say anything."

I couldn't help but laugh. Cheated by his own wolves. That was gold. "Want me to tell them to shove it when they come skulking around?"

He considered it for a long minute, hand stroking his chin. "Nah. I probably wouldn't hear the end of it. You can let them know that I think they're gonna get fat, though. Mooching off a human! Too lazy to hunt for themselves."

"Well, they only started mooching after you said I was alright."

"I told them not to eat you, not to follow you around so you'd feed them." His haunting blue eyes rolled. "Wolves!" he tutted.

Apparently they took a lot of liberties. I couldn't decide whether that was more funny or cute. He clearly had a lot of love for them. Even annoyed at them, he had a fondness in his voice. I couldn't imagine having that sort of love for someone. I was friendly enough with people, but I didn't love like that. I couldn't imagine being annoyed at someone but still loving them. Ando and I had never shared any love. We had married because it was expected of us. Nothing had bloomed between us in the years we had been together. I'd sooner not see him again, and it would mean nothing to me.

I couldn't think of one living person that I would actually miss if I were to never see them again.

That was just fucking sad.

"Ouch!" Distracted, I had stabbed myself with the needle. Deep, too. "Fuck!" I shook my hand, trying to shake away the sting.

"If you shake it any more, your hand will fall off. Come here." He stilled my hand with a firm grip around my wrist and hoisted it upwards towards his face. His tongue ran over the little wound a couple of times, licking away the flowing blood and coating the pad in saliva.

When he released my hand, I looked down at it, brows furrowed. What was that about?

"What, humans don't do that?"

"No, we don't do that. Why do you?"

He shrugged. "Heals better when it's licked."

That sounded pretty bogus to me. "You sure you didn't just want a taste of me, huh?" It was no secret that the wolves ate humans, and though I had been deemed okay, I was sure some taste was better than not taste. Was blood a good substitute for meat in a demon's diet?

"Yeah you wish!"

"Demon's are weird."

"And you humans aren't?"

Information Corner!

Kaiken - The Kaiken is a form of tanto. It was often carried by women as a form of self-defence. It was used for a samurai's wife to commit ritual suicide, but more often it was carried around by women for general self-defence. The kaiken was often given as a wedding present, from father to daughter.

Wolf - There are two options for what type of wolves Koga's pack could be. The Hokkaido wolf or the Honshu wolf. Both are extinct now, but ran rampant through Japan back in the Warring States. Both were declared extinct in the 1900s, though there are still rumoured sightings of Hokkaido wolves in the wilds of Japan. Both are strong potential options, as both did occupy the area that I'm guessing Koga's pack is from, in the mountains near Sendai. I'm choosing the Hokkaido wolf for Koga's pack, a type of grey wolf, because they were a good ten to twenty centimetres larger than the Honshu wolf, and we want nice large scary wolves, right?