It's been a hot second hasn't it?

For anyone that reads my Naraku fic, you'll know why I've taken the time out recently. It's been a difficult time for me, and I'm just trying to keep my head above the water and do what I can with the little free time I can be productive in. Please be patient with me as I try to get back into writing

I do have other stories out, and other stories that I'm trying to keep up with writing out again, if you're interested in reading my writing but can't wait for the next chapter of ITJOTW. I have a Naraku fic, which is my personal favourite story of them all, called Miasma. I have a Bankotsu fic, which I'm having a lot of fun writing, called Perfidious. And I have an InuYasha fic, which I hope you Koga fans can forgive, called Catch The Rain. Though, I suppose if it's any story you'll have to forgive, it'd be Naraku... Especially after the last couple chapters here. Either way, you guys have options for stories to read if my updates are a bit too slow for you.

Now, onwards we go.

In The Jaws Of The Wolf

Chapter Twenty One

The pack was one during mourning. We melded together into one entity. Skin touched, lips brushed, tongues bathed. We physically shared our pain, carrying the weight together that we couldn't alone.

Before coming to the den, I had always had to carry my pain alone. If I struggled, or had to mourn anything, it was alone. Ando certainly didn't care to hear of my struggles, and honestly, that went two ways. I never wanted to hear of his, either. That was just what I was used to. Struggles were shouldered alone and we dealt with them as best, and as silently, as we could.

It wasn't like that here. Not at all. If Someone was hurting, it was the whole pack's business.

If everyone was hurting, no one was alone.

I'd found this out after the war with the Birds of Paradise, when we had sent off our dead. I didn't know those dead Wolves well, but I still felt the pain of their loss in the den. I'd started out shouldering that pain alone, mourning their loss quietly. That was soon interrupted by Akari's good intentions, and I was dragged into the pack's mass-mourning. We'd curled with the others in the centre of the den, drank and shared stories and remembered good times as well as bad. We held each other as some cried, and just helped each other.

It was something I was not used to, but very much appreciated at the time.

I hadn't thought a second mourning period would be so soon.

I definitely hadn't thought I would be at the centre of the Wolf-pile, crying and sharing many of the stories, as the other Wolves held me close, wiped my tears, and shared their own.

My pain was their pain, and together we held it better than I could ever hope to alone.

"Joji was awful," Ginta grunted half-drunk, looking up from his perch in my lap. Around him, others agreed, giving their grunts and chimes.

I let out my own wet little chuckle. "Not always," I denied. "He was... rough."

Koga, who had sat behind me and wrapped his limbs around me, snorted against my neck. "Rough?"

It was clearly a prompt, to share what I thought, what I felt about one of our late family. I was happy to share. I needed to share. We all needed to feel close to our family again, even the ones most didn't like as much.

"You're one to talk." I elbowed him affectionately. "Yeah, he was rough, but he wasn't always terrible. We... We didn't get along all the time." That earned some barking laughter. That was, perhaps, a wild understatement. "But he wasn't... He wasn't terrible."

We'd never become friends. I never thought that was possible, and it hadn't hurt me too deeply that my brother-in-law was never going to be my best friend. It was just how Joji was. He was rough, and he didn't trust many, but he didn't hate everyone. We were just starting to come to a better understanding of each other. He was tolerating me, drinking with me, even incorporating my skills into his plans, no matter how frustrated I was that he did at the time.

"He had my back in any fight," someone behind me chimed.

"He always had my back."

That set off a line of stories, of times that Joji hadn't been so awful to everyone. It ended with laughter, and more drinks being passed around.

Drinking over someone's shoulder, it turns out, is quite difficult, and ended with Koga spilling some saké down his chin when he attempted it. His fix for that was to just wipe his chin against my shoulder, soaking up the saké on my kosode, and leaving me with a wet patch on my skin. I grunted in disgust, and tried to shrug his face away. He just held me tighter.

Demon strength won out.

"You're disgusting."

He just chuckled huskily into my ear.

Asshole.

"Akari never had a bad thing to say about Joji."

All at once, a dozen hands found my body, and everyone gave a little squeeze, to assure me that everyone was here for me.

I swallowed thickly, and tried to blink back the sudden prickling of tears, but didn't get far in that endeavor. The tears flowed before I could even really try to hold them back. I wanted to hide my face, but Hakkaku had a strong grip on one of my hands, and Nao had been demanding the other to be used for head scratches for the past hour.

So my tears flowed freely. They were nuzzled away gently on one side of my face by Koga.

"He had bad things to say," I replied in a soft, cracked voice. "Every sibling does. Joji annoyed him a lot. But he loved him so much."

Akari had so much love in him, and no amount of annoyance at his brother had ever dampened that love. He showed it clearly and openly., and aired his frustrations in private, when others opinions couldn't hurt Joji.

"He loved you, too," Hakkaku added.

Someone to my left gave an exaggerated groan. "And didn't we all know it?"

More Wolves joined in the groaning and complaints.

"Huh?" I knew he loved me. Akari was not shy about sharing that particular bit of information. But I didn't know that it had become such a point of contention amongst the pack.

"It was sickening," Yusuke, an older Wolf, grunted. "Dan did this."

"Dan did that," someone else chuckled.

"Dan, Dan, Dan!" some other chanted, snickering to themselves.

I could feel my cheeks flushing darker as more Wolves joined in the teasing over-exaggeration of Akari's opinion of me. I couldn't shut many of them up, but Ginta, who was swooning my name, still laid in my lap, got a sharp tug to his hair that shut him up quickly with a pout.

"Okay, okay! I get it. He loved me." I wasn't so sure he was that obnoxious about spreading it, though. Hearing about it sent a warm feeling through my chest. He'd loved me, and wasn't shy about it. I'd needed to be reminded of that, feeling as low as I did. As silly as this moment was, with the entire pack making fun of us, it felt perfect.

"He was obsessed with you," Hakkaku snickered.

"It didn't feel like that when he let you dunk me."

The spiky-haired Wolf balked, releasing the hand he had a tight grip on so he could square up against me. "You stained my hair pink!"

"And you deserved it!" I shot back, straightening up from leaning against Koga's chest so I could face off against him, too.

I couldn't tell you which one of us pounced first, but we ended up in a grappling match on the ground, with Ginta whimpering and trying to escape us, and the rest of the pack backing up to give us some room to squabble. Hooting and hollering was already beginning to pick up, with many Wolves picking sides. I heard Hakkaku's name far more than my own, but Ginta's gentle voice was definitely calling my name out in the din, and so was another familiar husky drawl.

Now, I was under no pretenses that I would win this fight. Hakkaku was a lot stronger than I was, and he wasn't going easy on me in this play fight, but I gave what I could, tugging at his hair, and biting at his neck as the two of us rolled around, growling and pinning each other as best as we could.

He won in the end, very quickly, and as he hovered above me, pinning me down and growling, we locked eyes.

Both of us broke down in laughter and Hakkaku collapsed on top of me, using my chest as a pillow as we returned to cuddling together. It didn't take long for the rest of the pack to move back in, curling around us.

I hurt, we all did, but I didn't have to face this alone.

The first few days of mourning were all spent very much the same, curled up with the pack day and night as we reminisced and mourned together.

At some point, I had ended up laid amongst Koga's bed of furs, curled up against his side, staring at the wall of the cave. It was late, now, and snores tore through the cave. With my ear against Koga's chest, I could hear quite clearly, or rather not at all, that he was awake. Koga had the worst snoring problem I had ever heard, but he was silent at the moment. He, too, was awake.

"His name is Naraku?" I whispered against his chest.

Over the past few days, Koga had divulged part of what had gone on when he had gone out after the pack to save them from whatever had happened in that castle. I hadn't been there for all of the small conversations about it, but I had pieced together enough.

Everyone had been dead by the time Koga got there, and it was a demon that had done that. A woman named Kagura, led by a man named Naraku.

Naraku had killed our family.

I could hear the click of his teeth as Koga took a second before replying with a clipped 'yeah.'

A stream of hot air left my nose slowly. We couldn't just let him do this. We couldn't. "We have to make him pay."

The hand against my back pressed firmly into the clothed skin, holding me closer. "He won't get away with it," he assured, tone harsh. "I'll take Naraku's life with my own hands."

That was what I wanted to hear. "We're going after him."

A snort escaped the Wolf I was laid on. "What's this we business?"

I pulled back, holding myself up with my palms against Koga's chest, glaring down at him. "Naraku took our family from more than just you, Koga. You're not going after him alone." I wasn't going to let him even think he could take this battle on by himself. "I will help slaughter the man that killed my mate, and you don't get a say in that."

His glare was sharp in the dim light of the cave, but his lips eventually curled upwards. "Heh. Get some sleep." His hand came up, ruffling my hair, and pushing me back down to lay on him. "Might be the last comfortable night's sleep you'll get in a while."

I wanted to snap at him, but I'd learn to read what Koga didn't say just as much as what he did say. He wasn't dismissing me, he was accepting that I was coming with him.

We were going to kill this Naraku and avenge our family.

I slept well that night - the best I'd had in days.

Review Corner

Thank you to everyone that reviewed while I was off. I really appreciate every review I get, and read them right away, even if I dont get to reply to them right away. I love hearing from my readers!

orangeporqupine - I'm glad you enjoyed the way I wrote it. I always worry that I use too much inner monologue when I write, but I'm glad it does come across as emotional more than just info-dumping. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as well!

MsWolfGirl - Thank you! I've definitely had a lot of fun writing this fic, so I'm glad it ranks up there as one of the best for you! It was a very difficult chapter to write for me, for sure. For a character that in the anime, is just a nameless side character that only has like two lines, Akari quickly grew on me, and losing him was hard. But now the story is really going to pick up pace, and I'm excited for that. I hope you are too!

Guest - Thank you! I'm happy you like the story. Dan is going through a lot of grief right now, and it's going to hurt for her for a long time, but she will definitely find the strength to work through her grief. Koga isn't my favourite InuYasha character. In fact, he doesn't even fit in my top five, but he's such an interesting and compelling character when you break him down, that I knew I had to write a fic for him when I got into writing InuYasha fanfics. I find that it's actually just really hard to find any good OC fics for any character that isn't Sesshomaru, and I want to change that. I like variety in fanfics and variety in subjects. While I don't claim to be the best writer out there, I do like to think I can write about a good variety of characters and Im having a lot of fun writing all the characters that I am. Particularly Koga. He's such a rough character, and very fun to write.

MoonlightFlower54 - I know it's like five months later, but here is me continuing this story. I hope this chapter lived up to what you were hoping for!

TheVulcanNara - Yeah, my heart went too. It was a difficult chapter to write, but hey, now we're heading towards the actual Koga romance part. It'll be a little ways off, but it's coming. Eventually. And aye, Nao is alive. I promised I wouldn't kill Nao off. We need that boy in our lives always.

Honestly, I went into this chapter not quite knowing how to get from point A to point B, and I just sort of winged it. I'm still not convinced I did a fantastic job, but I did what I could, and I had fun writing again, even if it was writing a heavy subject, so what more could I want?

I felt like we needed this. The mourning period was glossed over after the war, but I wanted to really show how close the Wolves are compared to Den's human upbringing in this chapter. And it was good catharsis, after so much loss and pain lately, from both her and me. Writing out healing from pain, even if it wasn't my pain exactly, was definitely very helpful for me. Den's pain isn't over, not by a long shot, but this was a good start to her healing.

I also really wanted to show off how I think physical touch is like amongst the Wolves. You can see in the anime, that Koga just isn't wary about touching Kagome. He's a very physically affectionate guy, and while some of that is just plain Koga personality, some of it, I'd like to believe, is just being a Wolf. Wolves spend a lot of time together, grooming and playing and rubbing against each other, and I kind of imagine that effortless physical contact between them is normal. It's not uncommon to see Wolves hugging each other, holding hands, dragging each other around. I think I've shown this fairly well up until now, with Dan's interactions with everyone, but I still felt it needed to be said, too. Physical touch like this is just normal for Wolves.

Thank you all again for having such patience with me in such a difficult time of my life. I will try not to wait so long between posts. It sucks to get this far into a story and to leave it hanging, just as much for me as it sucks for you. But hopefully I can pace myself and just try and get through what's going on and be able to get something semi-regular going again. I can't promise I'll be able to get back on a schedule, but I can try my damned hardest to update as often as I can