We have returned!

I took a very tiny break from posting this one, because I got excited about a new story I've been writing Miasma, a Naraku fic. I love Naraku, and I've only ever found one fic for him that I really enjoy, so I thought now would be the time to start writing my own to add to the Naraku love, while I'm on an InuYasha high and in a big writing mood. If you're also a Naraku fan, go ahead and check it out. I'll be alternating my regular posting between ITJOTW and Miasma now, and Perfidious will happen when it wants to. Perfidious chapters are a little more labour intensive for me, so they're not as regular.

Now, off to the Wolf den we go!

In The Jaws Of The Wolf

Chapter Five

Ginta must have bigged me up something awful back at their den, because after that I became the unofficial seamstress for the wolf demon tribe. I got a steady influx of demons over the next few days, each with a fur pelt that needed fixing in some way, shape or form.

I was up to my elbows in wolf fur when Koga appeared again.

"You!" I tossed the leg warmer that I had been working on sewing back together into one piece right at his stupid face.

He ducked out of the way of it, sadly. Bastard. "Hey! What was that for?"

"What was that for?! Have you seen all of this? This is your fault!"

He blinked dumbly, looking down at the two piles I had set in front of me. The smaller pile, just a handful of pelts, were fixed pieces, and the larger pile, almost as big as I was, were ones I'd yet to get through. "That's a lot of fur. Where'd you get it all?"

"Where'd I- You're kidding! You sent Ginta my way, and before I could blink, I'm outfitting your whole damned tribe!"

Koga didn't even have the decency to look guilty. "You musta really impressed Ginta."

I wasn't going to get any guilt out of him. "Make yourself useful, would you? Sort them into piles. Whatever they are, it's easier to do them in batches." He'd caused this mess. If he wasn't going to be guilty about it, he could at least lend a helping hand. He owed me that much for this much extra unpaid work.

Next time, I was just going to tell them to shove off.

We chatted a little while we, namely I, worked. Koga ended up handing me new pieces to fix when I'd finished with my current piece.

We're talked about what it was like to live outside of the area. How different it was. Things were a little different in the South, where Koga was from. Warmer, for one. Koga admitted that he preferred the heat of the South, but he liked being the leader far too much more to actually be bothered by a little cooler weather.

Somehow the conversation turned around and I became the subject.

"You're married, right?" he'd asked abruptly, a breath after finishing an explanation on why the boar up here tasted better than the boar where he was from.

"Yeah. Why?" He'd never mentioned my husband before.

Koga shrugged. "I never smell him on you. I was just curious."

I snorted. "Yeah, well, you've got to have a successful marriage to be near each other." Ours was decidedly not, and it had only been getting more strained as of late. "What about you? Any lady Kogas?"

"What do you mean successful?" He had an intense look that told me he wasn't going to drop it.

"He thinks I'm cursed. It's been eight years and I haven't had a child."

His nose wrinkled. "Well that's stupid. You smell all right to me. If there's a problem there, it's on him."

"Huh." That... As crude as it was, that actually meant a lot. I'd always been the one at fault, the one people whispered about being cursed. No one had ever gone for Ando like that before. No one ever thought that it could be him not me that was cursed. "Not a lot I can do about it now, I suppose."

"I could eat him for you," Koga offered, tossing another torn leg warmer at me.

I laughed so hard I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

"What, think I won't do it?"

"No, no. Just... It'd hardly be difficult. Aren't you demons supposed to like a challenge?"

He shrugged one broad shoulder. "Sometimes you just gotta eat the asshole that upsets your friend."

Friend, huh? I liked that. "I guess sometimes you do."

Koga left that evening toting an armful of sewn furs to return to tribe members, promising that he'd catch me later.

I left with a basket full of more furs and a little smile on my face. That Koga...

"It's her," a whisper sounded behind me as I strode back through the village.

"The demon fucker?"

"I hear she's been with five."

"You only hard five? I heard she'd had a whole pack of wolves."

"Whore."

What the fuck was going on? Demon fucker? Wolves?

Someone had seen me with one of the Wolves, I realised with cold dread. Someone from the village had seen me out by the stream around one of the demons - probably Koga - and rumour had spread. Rumours only spiralled from there. When? Who? I didn't think I was so far out of anyones good graces that they's spread any sort of malicious rumour about me.

Still, I held my head high despite the whispers and continued on to my hut. They were just whispers. Rumours that weren't even true. There was nothing they could prove and nothing they could do.

I was greeted at my hut with a backhand to the face that wiped me out. From the floor, I spat up at Ando. "Try that again and see what happens!"

"You're as feral as the demons you've been fucking." I turned my face away from the gob of spit aimed my way. "Filthy whore! You are my wife. Mine! And I hear you've been sleeping around with demons? Humans not good enough for you now? Or are you just lying low with those who will take you, you damned cursed bitch?!"

"Whatever you hear is wrong!" I hoisted myself to my feet again, standing to-to-toe with my husband. "I've slept with no-one but you. No one! All these years I've been faithful to you. Why would I quit that now?"

I'd dealt with years of his shit without caving into basic urges and throwing away my life to sin. I was horrified to think that he could even consider that I'd been unfaithful. I would never. No matter how much I wanted to, and I had wanted to over the years.

"No? Then where did all these whispers come from? They didn't just appear out of nowhere!"

His shouting was making me bristle, and for a second, I wanted to scream back at him. That wasn't going to do me any favours, though. So, swallowing my pride and my anger, I sat on the edge of the raised platform of the hut. "For a while now, I've been meeting with a Wolf demon. It didn't start well, but we became friends. Just friends," I insisted when his face screwed up again. "We just sit and talk. That's it, Ando."

He didn't know whether to believe me or not, but soon he found a new thing to be angry about. "He's a demon, Den! He eats people. He could eat any of us. He could eat you."

"Yeah, he could," I agreed. He could, but... I didn't think that he would. Just a couple hours ago he had offered to eat Ando for me, because I was annoyed at him. He had a demon's twisted sense of humour and honour, but I was pretty sure I was safe. But that didn't mean everyone else in the village was. I hadn't cared about that earlier. In fact, I'd laughed about it.

What did that say about me?

Nothing good.

But then, when had I ever strived for genuine goodness?

"You have to stop seeing the demon."

"No, I don't." There wasn't anything he could say that would get me to stop seeing Koga. We were friends. Our friendship was one I would fight for. It was one of the only relationships I had that I would fight for.

"I'm your husband!"

"Again with that shit! Ando, you can't control me. You can't stop me from seeing Koga, or Ginta or any of the Wolves. If you think you can, you're delirious."

"Choose."

My brows furrowed. "What?"

"Choose," he repeated. "If you love them so much, choose. Them or us. The wolves, or the village."

"You can't do that." But he could, and he was standing by his decision to throw an ultimatum at me.

I was almost embarrassed by how quickly I came to my decision. I stepped closer to Ando, and rose to the tips of my toes to press a kiss to his lips. He relaxed under me, maybe happy that I had chosen right, and returned the kiss. His hands settled on my waist. Mine gripped the thick material of his kimono.

It was the sweetest kiss he'd given me in years.

What a shame it was a kiss goodbye.

I pushed gently, stepping back as he moved away.

I could see the moment he realised what was happening, the way his heart broke and hurt flooded his eyes. He looked devastated.

"I'm sorry, Ando."

I repacked my basket with the spilled furs, keeping my head down as I did so I didn't have to look at his hurt, picked up my bow and turned out of the hut.

He came to life then.

"Whore!" he screamed after me. His scream started up the villager's whispers all over again. The whispers became shouts, the shouts screams. The screams became threats. The threats became actions. By the time I'd gotten to the treeline, I was bruised and cut from rocks hitting me.

When I reached the edge of the forest, moving up into mountain territory now, I realised that I had no idea where Koga lived, or whether he would even take me in.

Not letting myself give in to that dire game of what-if, I continued forward.

That was something I could work out when I found Koga.

It'd be fine once I found Koga. It had to be.

So I strode forwards. Even as the self-doubt began to creep in, and the worry choked me.

I'd be fine.

I'd be-

I screamed.

Talons gouged at my shoulder, hoisting me up from the ground. The basket I was holding fell as my scream echoed off the mountain walls.

The bird demons - the ones that swept us up in the night - the ones that Koga's pack were fighting with. "Help! Help!"

No. No. This couldn't be how I died. It couldn't.

"Not today, you overgrown canary!"

A body collided with mine, a firm arm wrapped around my waist, blood splattered across my face.

The bird demon dropped from the sky, and I plummeted down with it, clinging to the man holding me. He landed a lot more gracefully than I thought possible, holding me to his chest as he did.

I still clung to him as I worked up the bravery to stand on my own two feet. Eventually I was steady, and pulled back so I could look up at him.

He was a wolf demon. His features were sharper than Ginta's, but not quite as fierce as Koga's. With the breeze flowing through his curly, tied-back hair, he looked wild. "You're Koga's human, right? Looking for him, by any chance?" Even his voice was attractive.

"You have really red hair."

And that's this chapter done

Okay, so, I have no idea what happened. I just started tying and all this happened. I didn't have anything really planned for this chapter, but I guess fate did. So, really, welcome to the Wolf Den in this chapter. A bit sooner than I thought it would happen, but you know what? That's okay. Just means we're moving on with the plot. We can work with that.

I'll be back again after posting the next chapter in Miasma. That'll be my schedule from now on. Here, Miasma, here, Miasma, so on so forth. Feel free to go check Miasma out if you're interested in a Naraku fic. Naraku's becoming a pretty big thing in the fic as of this chapter, and it's getting so fun.