A/N: Have now re-sequenced chapters and done some slight revisions. Thank you for your kind supportive words. You gave me the confidence to continue to write InuYasha Fics! But most importantly it gave me the muse to write this chapter as well as to go back and make this chapter and the previous chapter(s) better (I hope). Thank you!

Also, if you notice anything wrong with sequence of events, or something wrong in the timelines given in the story, or find something not making any sense and whatnot, please feel free to bring my attentions to it and I will go ahead and fix it. Thank you.

Revised: 1/8/2008

PART THREE

Kouga was disturbed from his sound sleep by another one of those dreams he'd been having lately.

At first it had been rather pleasant. He had felt gentle nips at his throat and belly. Felt soft, soft, hair falling in cascades over his naked flesh. He'd heard a voice, he recognized. Its tone usually one of anger but now a gentle rumble of contentment and love. The scent that filled his nose was that of his mate and Kouga had been happy.

And it was this thought that woke him up in a cold sweat.

What the hell was that?!

InuYasha?!

No way.

There was no way that he could have mated with InuYasha.

Kouga couldn't remember what it had been that had kept him away from his pack for a month but he knew it couldn't have been for the reason to be in the arms of InuYasha. Maybe if it had been Kagome's arms then that was another matter entirely.

He grinned as he imagined himself in her arms. He could see himself leaving his pack for a few weeks on as sort of honeymoon, if you will, with the luscious and tenacious miko, Kagome. However he could never believe that he would willingly choose InuYasha over Kagome.

Never!

Ahh, my Kagome. He thought happily but something grumbled at him and forced an image of InuYasha to replace Kagome in his mind and senses.

Kouga fell out of bed with shock and building horror. As a full fledged colorful moment played out in his mind. InuYasha was flushed and naked, his long hair the only thing covering him up remotely. InuYasha had looked over his shoulder and directly at Kouga with a playful smirk about his lips and eyes daring Kouga to do something, something, warm and hot and sticky.

Kouga wretched and shuddered.

His inner demon was being very stubborn today. It wasn't happy with him. It was stuck on, fixated on, InuYasha. It was trying to tell him he had to get back to InuYasha.

"Dammit!" he growled. "I want nothing to do with that Hanyou!"

The wolves listened to their leader's distress and each wolf ached for their leader and wondered what it was that had him so distressed and troubled and talking to himself like a madman.

Kouga once again envisioned in his mind a fuzzy event having happened to him.

The woman laughed. She threw a couple of insults at him. She was a strange demonic female. Again he remembered that she had blown some sort of dust or dirt into his face. Disoriented he couldn't quite make out what she was saying but he'd had the feeling it wasn't something very good. It was a substance that had him disoriented and struggling with his two natures, one rational and one instinctual.

After he'd breathed in the magic dust or whatever it had been, Kouga's mind hadn't been working in rational thought patterns. He remembered vaguely everything had been on the instinct level. Every move he'd made had been the move of his youkai. Conscious Kouga was gone from the equation and demon Kouga had been in total control for that month.

It was as disturbing a revelation as the thoughts that entered his mind on InuYasha at random with such intense emotions other than hate or rivalry. These emotions were not entirely instinctual. His mind went terribly blank after that. That was as much as Kouga could piece together at this time.

He felt his heart constrict as another image of InuYasha came to his mind. InuYasha never looked that peaceful. He never looked that beautiful. He never glowed with pregnancy.

Kouga thought he was going to throw up.

"Where the hell are these thoughts coming from?" he muttered to himself, blue eyes fired up glaring at the cavern wall. Kouga thought he must have a pretty twisted and perverted imagination for such imagery to come so easily to mind. "If I'm not careful I'll be an even worse perv than that stupid monk, InuYasha travels with, that Miroku guy." He muttered darkly.

Outside the rain fell like a mother weeping. Kouga's thoughts kept getting more broody as the weather continued to spiral down into gloom and soggyness. He thought he could almost hear the Inu's war cry. His heart ached and he couldn't understand why it did so.

InuYasha was non of his concern. InuYasha was his rival for Kagome's affections and nothing more.

There couldn't be anything more to their relationship. The Wolf Clans wouldn't tolerate such an aberration. They wouldn't allow their leader to take a weak Hanyou or any Hanyou no matter their strength for a mate.

Kouga felt tears come to his eyes. "Stupid mutt! Why the hell am I crying?!"

Mates can't live without one another and his demon was weeping for its mate. It was craving InuYasha with all of its dormant strength. It was driving Kouga crazy. Why this urgency? Why this grief?

InuYasha was nothing to them. Nothing! He railed and roared at his inner self. 'Shut up already! He's not our mate. He's not. Hell, he's not even a woman! Why the hell would I mate a male?'

The Howl raised eerily with the rising winds as thunder crashed and lightening crackled and whipped the earth. Kouga's hair stood on end.

'Yasha?' Gasped Kouga's youkai, whimpering, 'Pain? Birthing?'

'What?! What birthing?' Demanded Kouga of his youkai.

The Youkai growled at him. Mate. Our Mate. Yasha. Our pups.

The hell he is! The hell they are!

Kouga was not going to be dragged out into the rain for a Hanyou's cries or for a youkai's delusions. Kouga refused to go along with this insanity. If he became feral his brothers would put him down, the lot of them.

Of course they'd put him down anyway, because their stupid leader had gone and gotten himself mated to a damned Hanyou.

Kouga was torn in many directions in his heart and soul. If InuYasha had need of him he needed to be at his Mate's side, and yet, InuYasha was his rival not his mate. He is Not Our Mate! He kept arguing with himself. The Pack will kill us. He's a male. He can't have pups. He can't, we can't be, we …..

He felt pain in his temples, felt the blood rush in his veins. His Youkai broke loose.

"Mine. My mate. Mine." It panted and too Kouga's body out of the cave and into the dark and stormy night.

-T.T-InuKo-InuKo-T.T- InuKo-InuKo-T.T-

TBC