Shippou woke in the dark only minutes after the dark miko had taken Kagome. His first instinct was to surge up and follow their scent, track them down, and rescue his mother. When he tried, the groan that echoed from his maw echoed around the otherwise quiet forest.

His whole body ached. He managed to lift his massive head long enough to spy the burns littering his legs and paws and flank. Kagome's burns. He'd forgotten how much her powers hurt. Panting, he lay there for a long time gathering his energy to him.

If there was one thing Shippou was certain of, it was that if he laid here waiting for help, he'd probably die of the burns and his mother would never forgive herself.

And so, drawing in a deep breath, he shifted from his youkai form and expelled his yōki out for miles in a plea for help as his body crumpled to the leaf strewn forest floor.

He could only hope it was far enough to reach the house and their Alpha as consciousness faded and he dropped off into the black.

o.O.o

Kagome expected three things when she woke: to be chained or bound in some way, to be stuck in some dank, dark cell, and for her head to be pounding with searing pain from the blow that had knocked her unconscious.

None of the three proved to be true.

When her eyes fluttered open, it was to a blurry, dimly lit room. Her head did not ache and there were no bindings that she could see. In fact, she seemed to be laid out on a fairly comfortable futon in a lovely, if traditionally designed, bedroom.

Shoji screens lined two sides of the room—one she assumed led outside because of the quiet scream of cicadas echoing, and the other most likely to some kind of inner corridor. The third wall held a tapestry of a shrine filled with miko is dark robes. Dark miko, she thought. Having only met a few in her time, it was strange to suddenly see so many of them together.

Turning her attention inward, she checked herself for any aches or pains but found nothing but an idle grogginess she recognized. They'd drugged her. Even as the thought process, her stomach roiled.

Kagome rolled to the edge of the futon and emptied her stomach into a handily placed rubbish bin.

"An unfortunate side effect of the sedative," a calm voice said as the screen leading to the interior slid open silently. "There are some crackers on the side table there, to help settle your stomach.

The unfamiliar voice set her on edge in way nothing had since she'd last fought Naraku. Kagome wiped her mouth and ate the crackers if only so she could face this person without fear of worrying about her stomach.

"My name is Sute, and yours is Kagome. It's an honor to meet you." She leaned against the door frame, her arms crossed over her chest.

Finished with the crackers, Kagome stood and studied the other woman. She was shorter than Kagome, her hair capped in a neat, inverted bob. She wore the same odd miko robes the other miko wore, though her colors were a midnight violent purple instead of red. "I'd say it's an honor too, but you kidnapped me and tried to kill my son."

Turning her attention to the room again she strode towards the sliding shoji screen that led outside. "You can't hold me here forever," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the thus far silent woman. "My friends will find me or I'll escape."

Sute shrugged. "You can try, and so can they. My fortress is impenetrable, Kagome. No one leaves unless I allow it." But she gestured to the screen. "But by all means, do your best."

Kagome hesitated in front of the screen. It was too easy. If you kidnapped someone, you didn't just let them go. Sighing, she turned and eyed Sute. "I don't trust you and you should know I'll escape the first chance you give me."

"I'd think you a fool if you trusted me already, when you don't even know why I brought you here." Smiling, Sute stepped out of the doorway and held her arm out, motioning for Kagome to walk beside her.

A derisive snort and Kagome rolled her eyes. She didn't care one way or the other if this woman thought she was a fool. All that mattered was finding out where she was and the best way to escape—and if Sute was going to all but show her the entire place, then all the better for her to make a good plan.

Sighing, she followed Sute out of the room. "And I suppose I'm just supposed to take everything you say at face value and believe in you?"

Sute laughed and linked her hands behind her back as they walked. "No, Kagome. We value free thought and opinion here in the Order. You're welcome to believe whatever you like of what you hear here."

"You'll forgive me if I don't believe a word you say then."

"Of course." Sute glanced up at Kagome, amusement clear in the impish smile. "You were only brought here to speak, Kagome. Nothing more, nothing less."

Kagome didn't believe her for a minute. Sute looked harmless enough, but she'd learned a long time ago not to judge people by their appearances. Instead, she reached out with her reiki to get a feel for the other woman's aura—only to find she couldn't. "What have you done to my reiki?" she demanded, grabbing hold of Sute's arm to spin her around to face her.

"I wondered how long it would take you to notice." Unconcerned with the miko's grip, she shrugged. "We have sealed your abilities temporarily. Only those I deem acceptable may have access to their spiritual powers in my compound."

Unsure which emotion was stronger, rage or panic, Kagome delved into the well of her power and attempted to summon even the smallest wisp of it—unsuccessfully. It was only as her grip tightened around Sute's wrist that she noticed her own—and the marks inked into her skin on each one. She could still feel her reiki, but she couldn't access it, not with these marks on her skin. "And you say I'm not a prisoner," she sneered. "These may as well be as good as chains and you know it."

Sute smiled slightly and patted the top of Kagome's hand, appearing matronly, almost motherly, for just an instant before the impish humor returned to her eyes. "A necessary precaution. When you attempted to free yourself from the sacred marks burned into the trees and ground to trap you and the kitsune, you somehow managed to burn a few of my scouts out of existence—my human scouts."

A younger, less jaded Kagome might have been saddened at the death of someone by her hands. It was too bad she had stopped being that girl a long time ago. "I was protecting myself and my son. They should have left us alone."

At the admission that the kitsune was her son, Sute blinked. They hadn't been given that information—but then, the last time anyone had even seen the Shikon Miko was almost 500 years ago. "Regardless, what's done is done. The marks will be removed when we release you."

Beginning to think that she should have just taken her chance in the room she'd woken up in, Kagome sighed. Anger wasn't going to get her anywhere, and despite her recent training with you Yukiko, she doubted she'd get very far trying to fight her way out without her miko powers. "Tell me about the Order and why you've brought me here," she said finally.

Sute led the way again, smiling at the small success. "The Order of Diviners was created in your honor, Kagome, about 15 years or so after you vanished from Edo…"

o.O.o

An hour later, released to explore the compound as she pleased, Kagome felt cold down to the bone. If there had been a part of her that had been amused at the idea of something being created in her name, it had been short lived. A kind of icy horror filled her now at the thought of what her name had been used to promote, to do.

The eradication of all youkai.

The destruction of youkai settlements.

The sheer pride in Sute's voice when she'd presented a monument of Kagome in armor, the names of hundreds of thousands of youkai killed inscribed on the wall behind her.

And Sute had asked her to join them. To help lead them.

Shivering, Kagome wrapped her arms around herself and stared blankly at the garden she'd come across.

This place…this cult…it was a bastardization of everything she believed in.

Sick to her stomach, she turned blindly down a corridor of the sprawling complex. She had to get the hell out of here and back to Shippou and the others and figure out what the hell was going on.

Turning another corner, Kagome found herself in a large room with a massive statue half hidden in shadow in the back of the room. Candles lined the walls on both sides, their lights reflected and dancing in the bright gleam of the freshly waxed wooden floors. Square pillows lay in perfect lines on either side of the room, all perfectly gridded out before some sort of alter.

"Worship hall," she murmured, and almost backed out of the room, disgusted, when she saw an open door leading to some kind of outdoor area between the legs of the towering animal statue.

Kagome hesitated for only a moment before she strode up the aisle. The further into the room she went, the clearer the statue became. It was some kind of canine youkai, she thought. Odd thing to have in a worship room but then she wouldn't put it past Sute and her follows to pray at the feet of some poor youkai they'd slaughtered.

She was about to step under the statue's head and keep going towards the open door when a flash of light on the floor caught her attention. Pausing, she took a step back and crouched down to read what turned out to be a small plaque embedded in the floor.

Prince of Wolves, Kouga of the Yōrō Clan. Defeated and sealed by Lady Sute in 1847 after he devoured a quarter of the Order of the Diviners.

Enshrined in the Hall of Shadows in 1853.

Numbness spread inside of Kagome's heart. Kouga was here, trapped like some kind of…some kind of dead animal to be displayed for the pleasure of the hunter.

Ice turned to rage in the space of a heartbeat. She surged to her feet and backed up—and didn't blink when she ran into the alter. She spun and screamed, gripped it by the edges and sent it tumbling end over end before turning back to Kouga.

He stood at least a story tall in his wolf form, his maw bared in a snarl that displayed deadly fangs. His bristled fur stood perfectly on point, frozen in time, turned to stone. There were no ofuda's she could see, no chains or ropes anchoring him to the ground. What was the binding element?

She backed up more, stepping around the sprawled alter, to get a better look at him and it was then she saw the arrow shaft almost hidden between the deadly snare of his fangs as he growled at whatever he'd been facing at the time.

Kagome didn't stop to think and she didn't realize she was crying. She rushed to his right foreleg and began to crawl up the coarse stone of his fur. The stone made her grip easier as she shimmied up his side and then on top of him. It wasn't until she was between his shoulder blades that anyone entered the prayer hall.

"Lady Kagome, what are you doing?!"

She looked up long enough to note the dark miko was unfamiliar and continued her climb. "I'm going to undo what you did to him. You're all monsters!"

The miko laugh, supremely unconcerned with the threat or the insults, and set her hands on her hips. "And how do you plan to do that without your powers? Lady Sute made it clear to all of us that you were powerless while you remain here."

Sitting between his ears now as she scooted down to make her way to his snout, Kagome rolled her eyes. "Do you honestly think I care?" she shouted as she slid down between his eyes. "Do you honestly think I'd let a thing like not having my reiki stop me from trying to help someone I care about? You people and your cult don't know me at all!"

Her words echoed around the chamber, drawing more dark miko and priests and slayers as people wandered in to see what the commotion was. She noted vaguely that they were all unarmed, that they all looked at her with pity as if she was crazy.

Let them think she was crazy, she thought. Let them underestimate her.

Even as she heard someone give the order to get her down from here, she was straddling his snout and leaning over the side to get a better gauge on the position of the arrow. It would take them time to climb up after her, or to find ladders to reach her position on his nose. "I don't know if you can hear me, Kouga, but I really, really hope you don't bite off my arm if this works. I'm trusting you, so I hope you can trust me."

Gritting her teeth, she stretched down and reached her hand and then her whole arm into his open maw. The stone of his teeth scraped against her skin but she ignored it as she felt around for the arrow shaft.

When her fingers closed around it she felt her magic thrum to life in her hands. "That's right," she murmured, and closed her eyes. "They can try to seal my powers but they're nothing compared to me." Her wrists burned as she called on her reiki, her head pounded and rang like a bell.

The power was there, just out of reach and she could feel herself failing, feel it falling back to sleep. "No!" she snarled and gripped the arrow tighter, wedging her arm between his teeth to hold her in place as she felt hands lock around her ankles and start to pull. "I won't fail now. He kept his promise, he waited 500 years for me and I'm not going to fail him now!"

Panting, she closed her eyes and forced her mind to follow the path down into the well of her reiki. She was the very personification of the jewel, her soul and heart bathed in its purity. She had not sacrificed the rest of her life, the long, ageless lives of her friends, only to be subdued by the cult who had bastardized everything she stood for.

No.

No.

And she gripped the seals she could see in her soul and she ripped them to shreds. She was not so easily conquered.

And reiki exploded out around her, a wash of pink light that could be seen for miles and miles and miles, further than the human eye could gauge. The ink tatted into her wrists flaked away into nothing and she was free.

Climbing her way out of her power, out of her center, she focused on the hands clinging to her ankles, to her calves, and with one wave of her free hand, they turned to dust as their power rose to fight hers. She tightened her grip on the arrow in Kouga's mouth and watched them all scurrying below, running for weapons and pulling out sutras.

She smiled as her eyes glowed pink, as the power marks returned to her brow and cheeks. "I am the Shikon Miko and you will not stand in my way."

And she yanked the arrow free of Kouga's mouth. It turned to dust in her hand even as his teeth turned from stone and dug into her arm.

The energy it had taken to break the seal on her own powers and on him began to flag. Even as stone turned to fur against her stomach and between her legs, as she tightened her grip on his snout as he roared to life, she could feel her consciousness fading. "Get us out of here, Kouga," she whispered.

To be woken so abruptly after more than a century of forced sleep was beyond disorienting. It did not matter that his rational mind knew the girl to be his miko, that he knew at the base of himself that she had saved them both. The wolf beneath her roared and he would have shaken her form his snout if the taste of her blood had not flooded his mouth and brought the tiniest bit of sanity with it.

He remembered through the fog a great battle, of being the last to remain as he held the line so the others could retreat. And then, as now, an array of dark miko and priests and slayers stood before him—but this time they scrambled, and they held no weapons.

Snarling, trembling, he swiped at them with his clawed paws and sent most of them sprawling. An insistent tug on his snout reminded him of the female latched there. He would have clawed her off if not for the fact her blue eyes stirred a distant, distant memory.

He spared the monsters a glance as several roared into the room with weapons blazing, then he launched himself up and through the roof. The scent of fresh, cool air brought more memories back and he shuddered at his first breath of freedom in more than a century.

"There's a..barrier."

Her words were so soft he almost didn't hear them. It didn't matter. He couldn't do anything about a barrier, so she would have to, or they'd go back into that hall to be sealed again.

He'd die before that happened.

Kagome understood, even in her semi-conscious state. Rousing herself, she rolled onto her stomach and straddled his nose again. Her muscles trembled, and her left arm—the one that had been inside his mouth—was losing blood by the second. But only freedom mattered.

Taking a deep breath, she summoned more reiki to her hands and formed the bow she'd watched Kikyou make countless times. When they were within feet of the barrier, she loosed the arrow and watched as the dark purple barrier flickered and then faded from view. And then she fell, energy spent as she collapsed off his snout and tumbled to the ground below.

Kouga caught her in his mouth, held her carefully on his tongue so he would crush her with his teeth. And he fled.

o.O.o

Word count – 3183

a/n – annnnd enter Kouga, finally. It feels a little abrupt to me, but oh well. Hope you all enjoy reading it. ^_^