-starts sobbing uncontrollably- I can't believe that the end is finally here! I'll miss this story so much.. and yet I can move on now.. it's so bittersweet. After this I'm going to start a new story, for some specifics go down to the bottom. :

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha ... still... and yet, I still have hope I might someday.

Chapter Nine: Inuyasha's Choice

Kikyou glanced over at Inuyasha nervously. Although, she really had no reason to. Inuyasha loved her. Not that bitch, and even if he did love her reincarnation more than her, she had a plan anyways. Kikyou guided Inuyasha into the room where Kagome was. Kagome looked pretty good for someone that had just spent nearly a week with Naraku and Kikyou. Her skin had grown almost as pale as Kikyou's was, her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was let down and in a huge mess, and the white parts of her school uniform had turned to a light gray. Kagome slowly moved her head in order to look at Inuyasha, and winced while doing so, as though someone had hurt her neck. When she saw Inuyasha staring back down at her, she quickly turned her head around, but immediately regretted it.

"Hello, Kagome," Inuyasha said, stiffly. He wanted so bad to just take her and run out of this hell, but he had to keep up this act a little longer. Maybe he could have a chance at defeating Naraku!

"Inuyasha. Good to see you," Kagome sarcastically said. She had given up all hope long ago that he would choose her over Kikyou.

Kikyou tapped her foot impatiently. "Come on, Inuyasha! Tell her why you're here!" Kikyou said. The eagerness in her shrill voice made it perfectly clear that she thought, no she knew, that Inuyasha would choose her.

"Okay," he took a deep breath, getting ready to tell Kikyou what he had been waiting to tell her since he got there. "Kagome, come on. We're getting out of here. Sorry, Kikyou, I am not going to kill Kagome, and I will not allow you or anyone else to hurt her again." Kagome jumped up, even though it pained her to do so, and ran over to Inuyasha. Before she could get there, though, Naraku jumped in front of her and made sure she couldn't even see the hanyou.

"Sorry, Inuyasha," Kikyou said, clearly not in the least bit sorry. "I had a small feeling you would choose Kagome instead of me, so Naraku and I had a backup plan. If you happened to choose Kagome over me, then we'll kill her and you at once. Capturing Kagome and luring you here to kill you turned out to be very.. successful. You fell for it. Now we can kill both you and Kagome quite easily. You're both powerless. Kagome without her bow and arrows and you, Inuyasha, are too weak to kill me or Naraku. Don't you remember that time he attacked you and your group? He was just testing you to see how strong you were, not to kill you, yet! How convenient it is that you came here!"

"Kikyou..why? I thought that you still loved me," Inuyasha whispered, shocked at how evil Kikyou had become just from being with Naraku for a few weeks!

"Hah! I stopped liking you the second I thought you betrayed me!" Kikyou screeched.

"Why would you also go through so much trouble to capture me anyways?" Kagome piped up, genuinely curious as to why she had to suffer so much.

"We thought it would be easier since we thought Inuyasha still liked Kikyou," Naraku explained. "It's clear now, though, that we should have just killed you all while you were sleeping. Enough chat now. I would like to get this over with. I have more pressing matters that I need to take care of."

With those as the starting words, Inuyasha pulled out his tetsusaiga and started running toward Naraku, but Naraku quickly jumped out of the way. Perfect. Inuyasha merely used that as a distraction to get Naraku away from Kagome. He grabbed Kagome and she jumped onto his back. This way they wouldn't be separated while they were fighting, though it would be a little dangerous and a tad of an inconvenience to Inuyasha.

Naraku mentally kicked himself for forgetting about Kagome, and Kikyou would have slapped him if they weren't in the middle of a fight. Kikyou aimed one of her purification arrows at Inuyasha and Kagome. If she was lucky, she could kill them both with one arrow. Unfortunately, that was not the case as Inuyasha decided on a whim that he needed to protect Kagome. His eyes turned from a bright golden to a fiery red. Kagome knew what was coming as he tensed up, but chose not to run away. She was going to stay with him until the end, even if the end happened to be right then and there.

Inuyasha screamed as his demon blood took over. He took one look at Kikyou, and ran over to her. Kikyou wasn't scared, she thought that even though he chose Kagome, he still had feelings for her. She was dead wrong. Inuyasha could barely tell right from left, but knew that Kikyou was the one that had taken Kagome. Inuyasha quickly sliced Kikyou in half with his tetsusaiga. Shock was the last thing that was seen on Kikyou's face.

The tetsusaiga was pulsing and turning blood red. Inuyasha turned around to face Naraku. When Naraku saw what Inuyasha did to Kikyou, he immediately put up his strongest barrier. Inuyasha wasn't going to defeat him just because he was a little stronger. Inuyasha unleashed his barrier-breaking attack. Inuyasha's attack flew through the air. It was going straight towards Naraku, who didn't even attempt to dodge it. Naraku started laughing like a crazy person, and just as the attack hit his barrier, a blinding white light appeared. Naraku had vanished into thin air.

"Inuyasha!!" Kagome screamed as she jumped off of his back. "We did it! We finally did it! We killed Naraku!"

The hanyou's human blood started to take over again as the red in his eyes faded away completely. "No," he mumbled. "We didn't. Not yet. This is just a vanishing act. At least he's gone for now. So is Kikyou, but she's gone for good. I can't believe I did that"

"It's okay. She wasn't the Kikyou you knew fifty years ago. That was only her body," Kagome was doing her best at comforting Inuyasha.

"Yeah. Anyways, are you okay? Did Naraku or Kikyou do anything to you?"

"They did not hurt me physically. All they really did was tell me repeatedly that you were coming to kill me."

"I'm..," Inuyasha hesitated before adding on the last part, "I'm sorry I scared you, Kagome. I was almost going to, but then I realized what an idiot I would be if I did. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did that."

"Was that the favor that Kikyou asked you to do before?" Kagome asked.

"...Yes. But Kagome, before you say anything, I chose you in the end. Not Kikyou. I loved her fifty years ago, but that was fifty years ago. I love you now, and not just because you're the reincarnation of Kikyou. I love you.. for you," Inuyasha whispered.

"Inuyasha...," Kagome said. "Inuyasha.. I love you too. I have for a long time."

"I'm so sorry," Inuyasha said. "This will never happen again."

"Yeah because Kikyou isn't here," Kagome retorted, clearly still upset about what happened, and trying to hide the fact that she was genuinely.. happy that Inuyasha finally said that he loved her.

"Even if Kikyou was here, I would choose you. I chose you in the end, didn't I?" Inuyasha could clearly see through Kagome's "tough act".

"It took you long enough to figure it out, though," Kagome retorted. Kagome sat down on the soft, dark green grass and Inuyasha followed suit.

"I still did..," he said quickly, edging closer to her.

"W-What are you doing?" Kagome stammered, wondering why the hell Inuyasha was staring at her like that.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, knowing perfectly well what she was talking about.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" the girl yelled, almost scared of him now.

"You'll see..," he whispered. With that, Inuyasha leaned in and gently touched his lips to hers. Kagome was clearly surprised by this, and immediately pulled away, though she instantly regretted it. Right after she realized what she did, Kagome pulled Inuyasha into her and gave him a more passionate kiss.

After they were done, Inuyasha grabbed Kagome bridal style and carried her in toward the field where he knew the rest of the group was. Kagome fell asleep in his arms about halfway through the journey, extremely happy she could finally get some sleep after her time with Naraku and Kikyou, where she would NOT allow herself to fall asleep for any reason.

When they got back to the others, the new couple was happily greeted by Miroku and Sango. Shippou and Kirara had already fallen asleep. Sango had somehow managed to slip past the overprotective Shippou and was able to greet Inuyasha. Miroku ran over to him to see if Kagome was okay, and a relieved smile immediately appeared on his previously concerned face. When Sango saw Kagome, she started screaming with joy, which woke the sleeping girl up.

"SANGO!" Kagome screamed, instantly happy when she saw her best friend.

"KAGOME! I thought I would never see you again!" the equally thrilled Sango screamed.

While the two girls were hugging and catching up, Miroku and Inuyasha were also talking about the past weeks events.

"So...," Miroku started. "How's Kikyou? You two didn't do anything that I would think of, did you?"

"NO!" Inuyasha screamed. "You are SUCH a perv! All we did was talk.. then I killed her..," Inuyasha said as casually as he could.

"You killed her?!" Miroku was stunned. "That was the last thing I would have thought of.."

"Well I did it. I was in my demon form.. I didn't really know what I was doing.. but I am kind of glad that I did it," Inuyasha said.

Miroku was still getting over the shock of Inuyasha killing Kikyou and didn't have time to respond before Kagome and Sango came over.

"Wow Inuyasha," Sango said, in awe that he killed Kikyou. "Of all people, Kikyou would have been the last person I thought you would kill!"

Inuyasha glared at Kagome for telling Sango about it. He didn't want many people to know, and if he did want them to know he wanted to tell them so the story would be told right! "Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. "Well I didn't really know what I was doing." Inuyasha looked around, trying to find Kagome. "Hey..where'd Kagome go?" he asked.

"I think she went into the forest...she said something about Naraku being dirty?" Miroku said.

"Well I should probably go find her before Naraku does.. again," Inuyasha said before bounding after Kagome.

Inuyasha frantically looked everywhere. He wasn't going to lose her again, especially after he just found her. Finally, after two minutes of looking, he caught her scent on the wind coming from the west, by the hot springs. 'Crap..' he thought, clearly not wanted to find Kagome in the hot springs, but going on anyway. He wanted to be sure that she was safe.

Inuyasha caught Kagome just before she got to the hot spring. "Hey, wench!" he yelled. "Why didn't you tell me where you were going before you left?"

Kagome glanced up before continuing her walk to the hot spring. "Sorrry," she said sarcastically. "I had no idea I had to check in with you before I went to bathe."

"..Well you do," Inuyasha said. "Naraku could have captured you again!"

"You're too overprotective," Kagome mumbled. "As you can see, I'm fine. Also, without Kikyou, you would be able to sense him, wouldn't you?"

"Well..yeah..," he said.

"Okay, now can I go bathe? I haven't bathed in over a week. Naraku is so..gross," Kagome said as a look of pure disgust crossed over her face.

"Yeah, yeah, but first, are you still mad at me? I told you I was sorry..," Inuyasha said, the fact that he didn't know if Kagome was mad or not had been bugging him ever since she got back.

"I'm not mad! We already went through this. I forgave you. I'm just..confused..about what happened after you found me," Kagome said.

"Well...," Inuyasha began, "I found you, I rescued you, we proclaimed our love for each other, and then I carried you back. What's confusing about that?"

"You are so arrogant!" she exclaimed. "The confusing part is.. does this mean that we're .. mates now?" Kagome whispered.

"Well I love you and you love me...do you want to be?" Inuyasha asked.

"Okay," Kagome smiled. She felt like she had just been asked on a date.

Inuyasha smiled at Kagome. He had wanted this for a long time, and she said yes! Inuyasha waited for Kagome to take a bath. When she was done, he carried her bridal style back to the camp. They were both happy for now, and at that moment, neither of them cared that Naraku wasn't dead yet or that the Shikon jewel wasn't whole. They were just happy that they had each other.

Finally, Kikyou's Wrath is over!

Wow. This chapter took much longer than expected. Sorry for the bad ending.. I was really rushing to finish this at the end. Well, this is the longest chapter I have written.. I had a lot of stuff to cover in this chapter! Naraku isn't dead, but Kikyou is (As you can see, I'm happy about that!). Okay, for the preview of the Secret of Kanna, Kanna explains why she follows Naraku and how she feels about it. I know it doesn't sound very good.. but I think that it might turn out to be a nice piece of writing. :) Thanks so much for my loyal readers and reviewers, and I hope to see some of the same people reviewing my next story! Thank you for reading! -clicks the "complete" button that indicates the story is over-

Love,

Moon of Ice