Once we started, we didn't stop, like that first crash together during the second New Moon festival had been a step we both took off the edge of a sheer cliffside, and there was no climbing back up or even stopping, just a dizzying free fall straight down. Tonight is the fifth New Moon festival, so I know he won't take me. For some reason we have sex every night - and some mornings - except on these New Moon festivals, as if he's taking a break from every sort of battle, both at the moon castle and in our tent. Or in the river. Or up against a tree. Or in the fallen leaves beyond the maple ridge.

I am insatiable, and he is still angry.

There were times, months ago, when he would be gentle, and careful, and it was so heartbreaking to have this mimicry of love that I could have accused him of doing it on purpose, save that despite everything I'm convinced he doesn't know how I feel, and because I know that he isn't cruel. Despite everything, not cruel. He has hurt me, hurts me still, but it's just the way he is; direct and brutally honest and fierce. I don't blame a wolf for having fangs. I blame myself for allowing myself to fall in love with someone I betray with every breath I take, whom I have promised to kill someday.

The soft kisses and slow caresses hurt me more than anything, especially because I knew he was still angry, offended and hating me because he still murmured the same pattern of sounds that were falling from his mouth over and over that first time. I recognized them, and though I didn't know what they meant, still don't, I remembered when I first heard them, and held onto them in my mind to never let myself forget that he does not love me no matter how carefully he holds me.

The gentleness hurt me most of all, and so I fought him. He pressed a soft kiss to my lips, and I bit him. He flinched back and growled something at me, then brushed the hair out of my eyes and tried again at my neck. I dug my claws into his skin and bit his ear, and when he flinched again and pulled back to glare at me, I attacked his mouth with teeth and tongue, raking my fingernails against his scalp and writhing against him. Like this. Like before. Stop with the soft touches; I am the only liar here.

He stopped, and we soon fell into a pattern, a rhythm, adding this new beat to our new life in Yama. The heat of battle, and then the flames of desire. Thirty-two days of sweat and sex, and then one quiet night where we only drank, and inexplicably still bedded down together. I tried to fight him on this as well, as I had with the gentleness; it seemed pointless and dangerous to sleep together without the sex, but he simply smashed me into the bed and grumbled at me to shut up. I knew that phrase well. I struggled and complained for a bit, but then he grabbed me by the hair and held his face close to mine while pinning my hands down. He just hovered, breath warm on my lips, ever so faintly nuzzling, threatening to kiss me the way I hated. I subsided, and he let me go. I turned my back on him, and he spooned up behind me on the narrow bed. I flinched and curled into myself, and he held me tight and murmured those things to me again.

It is the 149th day since we landed in Yama. I am beginning to truly despair and hope. Surely Syaoran-kun and the others would have found us by now, if they were ever going to. Surely Fei-Wang Reed would have appeared through a slit in space and time by now, if he still needed me for his plans. Now that Kurogane is cut off from the clones, surely I need not kill him.

I have memorized the little phrases Kurogane murmurs to me as we grapple together, as he wraps himself around me to sleep, as he watches me with those unnerving black eyes as I smile or scowl or snark at him. I am slowly learning the language that he speaks, and someday I will find out what he is saying to me. Whether he is calling me names, berating me for a coward and a weakling and a liar, or simply telling me over and over that he hates me in a half dozen different ways.