As Kagome’s breathing grew even and deep, Sesshoumaru closed his eyes and listened to the storm winds rage. Less snow was falling now to dampen the din of it. Yet it was as nothing compared to the tempest within him.

From this storm there was no shelter. No point in railing against it, either. His only recourse was to withstand it. To grow numb to it by degrees until it should pass. How many times had he charged himself to this effect? It was far easier, not to feel. And yet he had let himself be riled, to roar against this implacable tumult which heard him not and cared not for what he wished at any rate. Which swallowed up curses and pleas alike, indiscriminate.

Drumming his clawtips against the sundered stone, Sesshoumaru berated himself once again for his lack of restraint. Though he’d rebuked her for trifling with him, he held himself to sterner account. It was rather pointless to rebuke her. She was not in a reasonable state, had not been for some time. He didn’t resent her for it. He pitied her instead. It was he who should have known better. He did know better. But his agitation had gotten the better of him.

There was no excuse for it, regardless of how his instincts compelled him.

He was not some low beast, to force himself upon her. But he had pushed her too hard, he knew, trying to break past the veneer of her resistance to the want beneath it. He’d succeeded only in distressing her. He felt abashed for it. Frustrated with himself, for attempting to press his advantage too far. 

She was tired, vulnerable. On base impulse he’d sought to exploit this. But she was not so vulnerable as that, apparently.

As ever, she confounded him.

Sesshoumaru flicked his bangs from his eyes, glared through the rift in the stone to the churning snow beyond. Folly, all of it. As though a hasty fuck would have alleviated his turmoil. More likely than not, it would only have made things worse. 

Perhaps she had foreseen this. Perhaps in this she had proven wiser than he.

If fucking her had been enough to sate him, he’d have been shed of her long ago. There was a time when he’d thought it might cure him of her. To assuage the tension of attraction which he’d put forth and she’d sustained, unknowingly or not. With his lust quenched, he thought he might cool toward her. That once he’d conquered her, he might lose interest.

But on all counts he had been wrong.

There was no subduing this woman. Perhaps because of this, in spite of this, there was no escape for him.

Oh, he could abscond with her, sequester her. And in the bargain kill the very spirit in her that he yearned to possess. Either that, or she would live to resent him.

No, there was nothing for it. Nothing except to endure it, and brace himself for what would come to pass.

He had been doing a fair job of it, he thought. Until today. He had never been conscious before of time. Now he felt the drag of every hour upon him. A mounting irritation he fought to suppress. In cornering her, the reins of his better nature had slipped. She hadn’t gone so far as to accuse him of such, but he felt something of a beast anyway. The chafe of having her alone to himself without having her had been too strong an itch not to scratch.

Against him she was resting easy now. He took what solace he could in that. He felt her human heartbeat, fluttering beneath her breastbone like a bird in a cage. In her belly, there was another—an unhurried rhythm more akin to his own.

More folly, this. Vain nonsense. This was his son she was carrying. There was no shirking the truth of this, whatever she said or he declined to say.

There was much he did not say about it. For the most part, because there was no describing it in terms she would understand. Subtleties of scent and signature, primal impressions. Some observations he withheld so as not to concern her. With half-demons it was impossible to predict how they would manifest. With her being a priestess, even more so. In this peculiar mixing of blood, who could say what would be born of it? 

Sesshoumaru could not. Yet he was not overmuch concerned. More curious than anything. What he sensed at times was a conundrum to him. But then, it was a conundrum to him that he’d begotten a child in the first place. He’d never thought that he would. He valued his solitude, his freedom. He’d never thought to do many things, until she had stormed into his life, bold and effervescent and wholly unlike any other soul he’d chanced upon before.

She was a strange creature, by any measure. She’d claimed that she was only a product of her era, but Sesshoumaru had his doubts.

He scented salt in the air. She was crying in her sleep. He glanced down through the darkness and saw the tear tracks glistening on her cheek. Heard the sniffling catch in her breath. What she dreamed of was yet another mystery to him.

He put his arms around her, as if to shield her even from herself. Holding her so close to him like this was like holding kindling to the flame. But he composed himself, for all the heat for her he still felt. Steadier now, he skimmed his claws through her hair, brushed the tears from her face.

Whether by coincidence or not, she quieted, and calmed against him.

---

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 3/14/23