Trap of Darkness

A/N: Hello and welcome back to Trap of Darkness. I'm the author and host for this story, but it's also a joint effort with LADY SILVERFOX charita rai. I appreciate all the feedback I've received, so thank you. I'm also grateful to those that are following this story and those that have read it. Thank you to LADY SILVERFOX for all your wonderful ideas and for keeping me interested ^.^. Much appreciated. Anyways, here's chapter 17. Please enjoy and don't forget to leave a review. Thanks!

For a little head's up:

'Japanese'

'English'

Thoughts

Seventeen

'What the hell's going on?' Inuyasha demanded as soon as Sesshōmaru closed the door to the private office.

Miroku silently sat down, the picture of calm, but the slight downturn of his mouth hinted at his worry. Inuyasha was fuming, his mouth set in an angry line, and he paced the room. Akemi stuck close to the wall, arms folded, and her blue eyes glaring at the wall across from her. Sesshōmaru took a seat in the leather chair behind the desk, golden eyes as calm as his façade. He commanded the air and the attention, but only Miroku was paying him any attention.

'Let's start with you, Akemi,' Sesshōmaru's voice broke the heavy silence. 'Where were you at the time of the explosion?'

'With you,' she growled, glaring right at him. 'But then you already knew that, as did your father.'

'Wait, what? Why did you need to see oyaji?' Inuyasha asked her.

'Your beloved father pissed Jasmine off, so I decided to give him a piece of my mind,' she explained to him. 'No one angers my pack and gets away with it. That's how I work.'

'It just seems like a coincidence that the moment you release your yōki the explosion went off,' Sesshōmaru pointed out. 'It's understandable why chichiue believes you're responsible for the damage.'

'And what reason do I have to blow up the room I'm living in? The room that my pack mates live in? We inu yōkai are territorial and possessive,' she growled. 'Do you really think me capable of doing something so against our nature?'

'I do not,' he answered, but even his honesty didn't faze her. She was far too angry to think clearly. 'However, you need to see reason for a moment. How do you plan to convince chichiue that you have no connection to blowing up the girls' dormitories?'

'If it was a yōkai, which you shouldn't rule out, then if yōki was involved in the making of whatever blew up the room you should be able to identify the signature. Someone of yours and your father's calibre shouldn't find that too difficult.'

'The only problem is that your yōki would be all over that room.'

She scoffed. 'You know our five scents without having to strain that brain of yours to identify us. Picking out a scent that does not belong to that room should be a simple task. As for the yōki, I'm the only yōkai in the room. Picking apart the yōkai should be even easier. Or are you going tell me that your strong sense of smell is too pathetic to detect simple things like this?'

He frowned at her. 'I understand your anger, Akemi, but there's no need to take it out on me. Or do you not recall that I stuck up for you?'

She glared at him. 'Since when did your pompous ass care to 'stick up for me' as you call it? Normally, you'd love to leave me hanging.'

'You really do love to drive me to the edge, don't you?' he said, his eyes briefly turning blue.

'You really love to belittle and look down on me, don't you?' she asked.

'Apologies for interrupting,' Miroku spoke up, garnering everyone's attention, especially two angry yōkai. He looked nervous with their attention trained on him. 'But Akemi-hime, do you have any enemies that we're unaware of?'

'Aside from the one who destroyed the House of the Sun, there's one enemy, but he's back in England. We should have no problems from him.'

'Did you make any other enemies in school?' Sesshōmaru asked, taking on the picture of calm once again.

'Other than your whore of a woman and her slutty friend?' she asked, and immediately smirked when he glared venomously at her. 'No. The ones who are spreading these rumours about the two of us are more the Taishō family's enemies than mine. But to insinuate that Fluffy and I are together, like a couple, is going over the line. When I catch them, they're dead.'

'Reframe from using such names when you're addressing or talking about me,' Sesshōmaru growled. 'It's no wonder these insignificant lowlifes assumed we're a couple.'

She looked at him sharply. 'Do you even know what these rumours are saying, Sesshōmaru?'

He looked back at her, eyes steady. 'No.'

'Huh?' Inuyasha said confused.

'I hadn't considered it to be important when I heard the gossip around school,' Miroku said thoughtfully.

'It's not just around school,' Akemi said throwing a newspaper on the desk that she magically retrieved from somewhere. 'It's been splattered all over the world. They've thrown in the whole of the Taishō family, even you, Miroku.'

'What?' the monk and hanyō exclaimed.

Sesshōmaru opened the newspaper and began reading, his eyes furrowing the more he read. The moment he placed it down Inuyasha snatched it up.

'Are these people nuts?!' the hanyō exclaimed angrily. 'There's no way oyaji and Jasmine are getting married! And there's certainly no way that they've had sex either! This is just a bunch of bullshit. And a baby?! What are these people thinking?'

'Read on,' Akemi instructed him, eyes now green. 'There's bits about you and Miroku too.'

'Me and Kagome are what?!' his voice yelled louder than ever.

Miroku snatched the paper from him and read the article. 'Me and Sango? Hmm,' he said thoughtfully. 'She is a beautiful woman, and she's a taijiya. Maybe it's a sign.' His smile was cheerful, but it was super creepy.

'Well you're certainly not bothered about it,' Inuyasha said grumpily.

'Wait a minute, this article is more about Inu no Taishō-sama, Jasmine, Sesshōmaru-sama and Akemi-hime!' he pointed out.

'What?' Inuyasha asked snatching the paper. 'It was revealed by a reliable source that the new students at Taishō High, Jasmine Sarish Samaira and Taiyō Akemi, are romantically involved with Japan's King, Tōga-ō, and the first prince, Sesshōmaru respectively. While there are no pictures available of the couples, we were told that Jasmine and the King had argued over wedding plans in the headmaster's office while the headmaster was away on sick. And seemingly, a pregnancy test was later found in Jasmine's room with a positive reading.'

Akemi snatched the paper from Inuyasha's hands before he realised what happened.

'Hey –' he began but cut off as he saw the look in her eyes.

'Jasmine, pregnant with chichiue's child?' Sesshōmaru asked, eyes turning blue surrounded by a sea of red.

'Calm down you discriminative moron,' Akemi ordered, a growl to her tone, blue seeping back into the clear green of eyes.

He growled at her.

She glared at him and growled back. 'None of this is true about Jasmine. She's not pregnant, she's not sleeping with Tōga-ō, and she's certainly not getting married to him. I don't know where these teme are getting their information from, but they're beyond dead when I catch them.'

'Oh? And our romantic relationship is real then?' Sesshōmaru asked amused.

She glowered at him. 'Not even in your dreams, Fluffy.'

'May I read the rest of the article, Akemi-hime?' Miroku asked.

She handed him the paper without a word.

'If this doesn't get the public's heart pumping in anticipation for the King's newest child, then I'm sure the relationship between Taiyō Akemi and Sesshōmaru would certainly 'uh' and 'aw' you. These long lost lovers were to be mated long ago, but due to unknown events they've only just managed to be reunited. It's well known that our beloved prince has rejected girls left, right and centre, and all because he's been waiting for his beloved Akemi to return to him. It's an inspiring love story just dying to be told, and it's one that'll bring you to tears. And with their reunion, will there be another baby in the Taishō household?'

Akemi's yōki chocked the air as her anger spilled over.

Sesshōmaru looked amused more than ever. 'So Akemi, what do you think? When will our baby be born?'

She turned on him so quickly she almost successfully socked him in the jaw if he hadn't caught her wrists in time.

'You conceited asshole!' she snarled, green eyes overtaken by twin pools of an angry blue.

'You love me really,' he said, completely out of character.

Her face heated and her eyes returning to normal. Her blush was so apparent that it shocked both Inuyasha and Miroku into stillness. Sesshōmaru, knowing that it was more to do with embarrassment than anything else, smirked down at her. She wanted to wipe that smug look off his face, but she was held tightly in his grasp. Struggling was futile, she knew that, but she wanted to hit him. So badly. What she hated above all was that Jasmine's words came back to haunt her.

Fond of Sesshōmaru?

She had never thought about it before, not as closely as this, but she could not deny those words. She had grown fond of him. Too fond. He was a challenge that refused to simply bow down to her, just as she did the same for him. He always tried to prove he was the better of the two, believing that females were naturally weaker than men. He both hated and liked how she was nothing like the rest of her gender. She was strong and fierce, always keeping him on his toes and challenging him. He didn't always like the challenge, but she was the only one that was actually a challenge.

But she couldn't believe how she had never realised it before.

Her fondness was actually love. She was in love with this arrogant yōkai.

Jasmine's going to really love it when I tell her, Akemi thought as she glared into Sesshōmaru's golden eyes.

'Seeing you both like this makes me wonder if there is indeed a relationship between the two of you,' Miroku's voice cut through their trance.

'That is beyond gross,' Inuyasha said in disgust. 'Sesshōmaru and Mi-chan? No! It's not happening. Besides, there's no way that Sesshōmaru deserves a girl like Mi-chan.'

'And you do?' Sesshōmaru asked him, quirking an eyebrow in his direction.

Inuyasha flushed. 'As if!' he snapped. 'She's like a sister to me. It'll be weird if we ever went out.'

'Stop sounding so possessive and jealous, Sesshōmaru,' Akemi said angrily, while her heart pounded quickly at his words. 'You don't own me and you never will.'

The left side of his mouth quirked up in a grin. 'You will,' he whispered huskily into her ear, causing her to go redder than ever.

'Let go of me!' she ordered and tried to pry herself loose.

'But it's still worrying,' Miroku suddenly said.

Both daiyōkai looked at him.

'If it's not any of Akemi-hime's enemies, then who?'

'Well, Kagome's enemy is Kikyō,' Inuyasha said raising his arms behind his head. 'Kikyō also hates Sango and Rin because they're Kagome's family. And then she hates Jasmine because of what she did in the classroom, and both Kagura and Kikyō hate Mi-chan.'

'For once, Inuyasha, you've used your head,' Sesshōmaru praised at the same time as insulted him.

The hanyō glared at him as the daiyōkai took a seat and forced Akemi to sit on his lap, causing the female to blush and struggle more against his hold. Sesshōmaru only released her wrists to wrap an arm around her middle, pinning her securely against him.

Miroku raised an eyebrow. 'Are you sure you're both not together?'

Inuyasha's mouth hung open.

'Close your mouth, Inuyasha, before you catch flies,' Akemi said to him and he snapped his mouth shut. 'Would you seriously let me go now?' she demanded of Sesshōmaru. 'And we're not together, Miroku.'

'Sure seems like it,' the monk said with a grin.

She glared at him. 'You better start carrying your sutras with you.'

He gulped and sweated nervously.

'So, Kagura and Kikyō?' Sesshōmaru's arm tightened its hold around her, forcing her back up against his chest. 'This Sesshōmaru will have them investigated and questioned. If they're the ones behind the attack, then they're going to need to be put in the rehabilitation prison for those incapable of being around other species.'

'For one that hates humans, you're surely adhering to the rules fairly well,' she mumbled.

'Some humans are useful,' he admitted begrudgingly.

'Instead of sending them that to prison, just kill them,' she said glaring at the wall.

Sesshōmaru smirked. 'Is someone jealous?'

'Over your dead body,' she snarled.

'You needn't worry,' he said placing his chin on her shoulder. 'This Sesshōmaru will not allow anyone to harm what belongs to me.'

'I do not belong to you,' she reminded him angrily.

'You are my Mate,' he said to her, and the reactions of the three of them was priceless.

'What?!' the three yelled.

Word meanings

Hime – princess

Teme – bastard(s)

Socked – a slang term for punch