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Chapter Text

Sesshomaru groans quietly as he shifts against the tree.

The cuts that extend along his torso are deep.  Beneath him, the ground darkens ominously with the blood that trickles down his front.  

His armor has been shattered, and his clothing shredded into rags.  Through the hot, pooling blood and tatters of his skin, he glimpses glistening intestines and lacerated organs.  The pain is extraordinary, and the way he is lying subjects him to fiery agony that races along every nerve until he sees white flashing behind his eyelids.  His attempts to reposition his body to alleviate his suffering are both miserable and futile.  

The Kaze no Kizu knows no mercy.  

Finally, Sesshomaru gives up and curls his pelt around himself, burying his face into the soft fur, which, despite the dirt and dried blood staining the white strands, continues to remain a source of comfort after hundreds of years.  

He’s acting like a dying animal, and a cynical part of him laughs.  Tenseiga pulses worriedly beside him.  

Never has he been so careless nor impulsive.  After bringing the western lands under his rule with sheer willpower and ruthless violence, seeing his half-brother–untrained, reckless, half-human, alpha–fumbling their father’s legacy incites something mindless and vicious in him.

And his arrogance has cost him.  Sesshomaru possesses no weapon, no armor.  His left arm was taken in another act of uncharacteristic sloppiness, and now it lies abandoned and useless in his father’s tomb.  His Dokkasu will be able to protect him against weaker enemies, but he would prefer to rely on intimidation and fear than risk further injury through fighting.

Even more disturbing is the loss of his suppressant medicine, vaporized by the blast.

Sesshomaru growls, ignoring the sharp twinges this elicits.  

He has avoided heats for hundreds of years, ever since he left his mother’s sky palace.  The few who remember his secondary gender have either long passed or are too cowed by him to discuss it.  To most in the youkai world, he is assumed to be an unusually scentless alpha or an extraordinary beta.  Sesshomaru prefers it that way.

The next dose is in two days.  His grisly wounds will have stitched themselves together by then, allowing him scant time to travel to that small cottage, hidden deep in mountainous forests many leagues to the east.

The afternoon sun is warm upon his face and chest.  He nuzzles into his pelt, eyelids growing heavy with sleep.  

The danger of leaving himself so exposed irks him, but the more he fights, the more exhaustion creeps on him, overshadowing even the terrible pain of his wounds and the unease of vulnerability.

Eventually his body’s demands for rest are too great, and Sesshomaru succumbs to a restless slumber.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He wakes to a dirty toe jabbing itself into his calf.

Sesshomaru startles at the figure standing above him.  His heart hammers furiously in his chest, and the hairs on his neck stand on end.  Immediately, his claws glow green, and he strikes, hitting air.  

His wounds reopen and spill blood down his side.  Sesshomaru barely contains the scream that threatens to claw its way from his throat.

Inuyasha sucks on his teeth and kneels down.

“Caught you off guard, didn’t I?”  The large golden eyes peer calmly at his half-transformed face.

Trapped between excruciating agony and the desire to slowly rip his brother’s self-satisfied expression from his skin, Sesshomaru only snarls in reply.

There is the rustle of fabric as Inuyasha stands and makes his way to Sesshomaru’s left side. The weakened side.

Instinct drives him to twist violently and lash out again.  His claws catch on the red haori but miss any meaningful contact with the thin, wiry body underneath.  

This time, Inuyasha delivers a blow to his left temple that sends stars circling behind his eyes.  Sesshomaru roars even as he feels his organs threaten to pulse out from the ghastly wound in his belly.  Yoki pools in his palm, preparing to form into the deadly whip which has annihilated scores of enemies.

Suddenly, his hand is pinned to the tree behind him by the narrow tip of a rusty, old katana.  Tessaiga’s barrier burns through his flesh, dissipating what little power has accumulated.  

Sesshomaru screams as Inuyasha drives his katana further through his palm.  Claws grip his throat.

“Look, you stupid son of a bitch,” Inuyasha says, “as much as it would make my life easier, I don’t want to kill you.”  

Sesshomaru pants from the pain even as he seethes internally.  “Why?” is all he is able to gasp.

A small, sardonic smile crawls onto Inuyasha’s face, and Sesshomaru wants nothing more than to peel it off layer by layer.  “Maybe you should stop insulting my human blood, brother.”

Your human blood enfeebles your body as well as your mind, Sesshomaru thinks but does not voice his thoughts.  Instead he glares steadily at the hanyou.

Inuyasha looks back into the furious golden eyes.  

“Promise me,” he says and tightens his claws on Sesshomaru’s throat.  Sesshomaru feels his windpipe narrow under the grip.  “Promise me you’ll leave us alone.  No more attacks on my life or my friends.  I think it’s clear that Tessaiga has already chosen its master.”

Father lost his wits after your mother seduced him with her whorish charms.  To think that he willed the Tessaiga to a hanyou with neither training nor experience, while I defended the title and the western lands without aid or suitable weapon.  As our vassals quarreled and rebelled and enemies encroached upon our borders–I subdued them!  

The sharp edge of Inuyasha’s scent grows stronger as he unconsciously employs his body’s natural methods of dominance.

Alpha.  Old wounds reopen, but no blood flows from these.

Father never intended for an omega to inherit the western lands, did he?  He wished to bestow it upon his bastard son, so that his legacy would pass on to an alpha.  The hanyou was given the Tessaiga to overcome my strength so he could wrest the title from me.

Something aches in Sesshomaru’s chest, and he recognizes it as the pain of betrayal.

Hateful defiance fills him.  “No,” he whispers and then, faster than the eye can see, elongates his neck to inhuman proportions with the little yoki he can hardly spare and twists down to bite on to Inuyasha’s forearm.

“Fuck!”  Inuyasha releases his hold as the fangs sink deep into his tissues.  He scrabbles on to Sesshomaru’s body and his knobby knees and feet pump into the mess of Sesshomaru’s horrendous gashes.  

Sesshomaru is temporarily blinded by the pain right as Tessaiga sends a wave of yoki into his hand in sharp rebuke for attacking its master.  His right arm feels like it’s about to burn right off in the white glow with which he is becoming uncomfortably acquainted.  

Inuyasha’s fist sails through the air towards his right temple, and he twists too slowly in time.  His head knocks heavily against the tree, and Sesshomaru has a temporary out of body experience as he lies dazed and immobilized by Tessaiga’s wrath and his own injuries.

He feels Inuyasha fiddling with something at his side, and he immediately seeks to put the hanyou in his place but his body refuses to obey him.  What is intended as a roar leaves a sigh.  What is meant to be a kick turns into a twitch of his thigh.  

His brother stands.  The Tessaiga is extracted from his hand, and Sesshomaru spasms at the yoki barrier that abruptly crackles from the sword.

“I need some insurance,” Inuyasha speaks, darkness edging into his voice.  His hakama is stained dark with Sesshomaru’s blood.  Tessaiga rests at his hip, now joined by a familiar black sheath with a red-and-gold cross-hatched hilt.  

“If you continue to insist on …” he pauses and swallows.  “I’ll kill you the next time, because you won’t have Tenseiga to save you anymore.  Got it, you fucking prick?”

Sesshomaru stares at him with half-lidded eyes shining with impotent rage.  

“I will see to it your death is a protracted and harrowing affair.  Your companions shall be eviscerated before your eyes and their entrails fed into your gullet before I tear your own flesh to ribbons.  You will know no greater suffering than at my hands,” Sesshomaru whispers.

“Hand,” Inuyasha corrects.  His expression is stony, but he makes no move to punish Sesshomaru for his insolence.

Sesshomaru does not reply.  He feels exhaustion creeping on him again, but he continues to glare at Inuyasha, even as the hanyou turns on his heel and begins walking away.  Not until the red of his firerat robes have been obscured by the distant foliage and his scent dissipated to faint, lingering traces–only then does Sesshomaru allow himself to close his eyes.  

The fresh blood on his pelt smears on his cheek.  Normally Sesshomaru is fastidious with cleanliness but now he curls himself up and lets unconsciousness take him yet again.

The sky grows dark, and the wind rustles the leaves above him.

Rain falls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sesshomaru dreams of his father standing before the moon, blood running freely from his wounds.  

“Why did you give the Tessaiga to Inuyasha?” Sesshomaru demands.

His father remains silent.  His hair flies wildly behind him, tossed by the strong gusts of the mountainpeak.

“Have you found someone to protect yet?” he finally replies, skirting the question.

“What does that matter?” Sesshomaru spits angrily.  “Have I not protected our hard-won lands?  Defended against invaders?  Slain our enemies and quashed rebellions?  Do I not deserve the Tessaiga?  Have I not proven myself enough?”

He searches his father’s eyes, but they remain dark and inscrutable against the brightness of the large moon.

“You think you are deserving even as you defy my wishes and strive to eliminate the child of my greatest love?”

A shock ripples through him, and Sesshomaru looks down at his missing left arm.

“You rule the western lands through brute force and intimidation alone.  You have no allies, no resources to call upon when a true foe appears.  It is only a matter of time before the fall of an unloved omega daiyoukai.”

“I am–”

“You are unworthy!” his father thunders.  “And your very nature shall be your own death.”

Sesshomaru sees red, but an unknown force lifts him up and slams him down onto his back.  His limbs are held down, and something heavy sits on his chest.  

In the face of such overwhelming power, Sesshomaru’s long-suppressed omega instincts surface, and he bares his neck in supplication.

“Father,” Sesshomaru gasps.  “Why–”

“It was all a mistake,” blood-splattered boots step into his vision.  “Your mother was right in the end.  I raised you in the way of the warrior and have left you confused.”

“Confused?”  All of a sudden there is another powerful alpha scent, intermingling with his father’s smell.

“He means to have me rule,” Inuyasha’s higher voice sounds nearby, but Sesshomaru cannot see him, only hears the thin whine of Tessaiga being unsheathed.

He struggles wildly against his bonds, but the invisible force that holds him down is unmovable and steadfast.

“Father,” Sesshomaru cries desperately, “why have you forsaken me?!  Father!”

There is no reply.  Instead, he only senses yoki dripping from the blade above him.

As Tessaiga swings down to slice through the bone and cords of his neck, Sesshomaru screams under the cold and silent glow of the moon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He snaps his eyes open and sees Inuyasha crouched over him (why did he return?), eyes red and the beginnings of a single pair of stripes appearing on his cheeks.  

His own skin is wet and hot, and Sesshomaru suppresses a shiver.  He has a fever.  

Sesshomaru notices with alarm that he’s been moved out of the rain into a cave while the storm rages outside.  Strands of his soaking hair stick to his face.

The stench of an alpha in rut fills the cave.  

Its sharp pungence is nauseating, so unlike the sweet, subtle tones of the omegas he’s lain with, and Sesshomaru retches.  When his mind isn’t woozy from heat, he’s always found alphas unattractive, repulsed by their hard, muscled bulk and aggressive movements.  Ironic since he looks so much like one himself.

Inuyasha lunges forward, and Sesshomaru’s slash is intercepted by a bony shoulder.  A hand clamps down on his wrist, while a nose forces its way under his jaw, snuffling against his scent glands before biting down.

Pain blooms in his neck, and Sesshomaru claws at Inuyasha’s back and tries to rip him off.  

He’s trying to trigger my heat, he thinks and then realizes it’s working when his groin is suddenly awash with slick.  

“Inuyasha,” he hisses.  “Release me!  Filthy, disgusting beast–we are of blood relation!”  His brother’s fangs only sink further into his glands, and Sesshomaru gives an involuntary whine.

No, he begins to panic at his impending loss of control.  No, such a thing is unthinkable.  He’s lost his mind.

His fur is pushed off, revealing half-healed wounds under dried, caked-on blood.  Sesshomaru squirms and kicks until sharp teeth dig themselves deeper, and his omega side forces him still.  Alpha pheromones permeate his nose, muddying his thinking.

“Stop,” Sesshomaru gasps as his legs are spread wide and an engorged cock lays hot and heavy on his thigh.  He tugs weakly at the hand that imprisons his wrist, while a puddle of his own slick accumulates beneath his bottom. 

“Stop, Inuyasha, in the name of all that is sacrosanct, stop.”

The tip of the huge cock leaves a trail of sticky mucus as it makes its way to the wet hole between his legs, behind the lump of his own soft cock and testes.  Sesshomaru clenches his eyes closed and twists his neck away but Inuyasha growls and follows doggedly with those damnable teeth.  Black blood accumulates at the corners of his mouth.

He is breeched, and Sesshomaru half-cries, half-moans from the pain and pleasure.  His virginity, which he has guarded so carefully for centuries, is taken forcibly from him, raped by his own younger brother in a dirty cave in the middle of a thunderstorm.  

He feels Inuyasha’s member slide into that special canal inside of him, which has seen no use as long as he has existed.  It stretches and stretches, and he cries again at the feeling of being filled so thoroughly, his useless omega body limp under the domination of an alpha.

“Inuyasha,” Sesshomaru begs again, desperate.  Tears leak openly from his eyes.  “Withdraw now, I speak sincerely.  Leave me be and keep the Tenseiga and Tessaiga both.  Do not take advantage of the weakness of my omega nature.  Stop this vile act you are engaging.”

Inuyasha grunts gutturally and the scrawny body only shoves itself deeper.  His feeble hanyou mind is made stupid with the base instincts of rut, and Sesshomaru is reminded again of why he despises half-breeds.

Pleasure and heat spill from inside that place inside of Sesshomaru, and he feels his own grasp of reality rapidly diminishing.  

Alpha, alpha, alpha, that wretched part of him chants eagerly in time to Inuyasha’s thrusts.  Alpha, oh sweet, powerful alpha, how long I’ve waited for you.

Something glints in the corner of his vision.  Sesshomaru glances over and beholds the rusty Tessaiga lying discarded on the cave floor adjacent to the sheathed Tenseiga.

Idiot, he thinks hazily at the careless treatment of their father’s legacy.  Your fumbling heir will leave us both corpses in little time, father.

Inuyasha pounds into him more violently, and his body slowly slides towards the swords with each movement.  His right arm trapped, Sesshomaru reaches out to the Tessaiga with his left stump and barely grazes the tip.

The yoki barrier crackles to life, shrouding the cave in a blinding white light.  The flesh at his stump burns until he smells cooking meat and crisped hair.  A shock courses through him like lightning, and his world blinks momentarily with pain.

More importantly, Inuyasha jerks above him and releases his teeth from Sesshomaru’s throat.

His wrist is free, and his hole empty of the massive cock that had been raping him just seconds before.  Sesshomaru rolls to his side and carefully pushes himself up.  His head swims with confusion from his omega side and a building urgency in his gut.

“Go,” Inuyasha rasps, voice quiet and strangled.  He’s hunched over the swords, clutching himself, as though he were the one who has just been brutally violated.  “I can’t hold it off much longer.”

Sesshomaru needs no further prompting, his own omega instincts threatening to take control in the wake of his burgeoning heat.  Inuyasha says something else, but Sesshomaru has already stumbled his way into the storm.  

He will return for the swords, but not now, not when his body rebels against him and demands that he spread himself like a wanton whore for his own blood-related kin.

Sesshomaru sways as he walks.  The water soaks through his pelt and whatever little remains of his clothing.  His mind is numb, and he no longer feels the pain of his wounds.  The place between his legs freely leaks fluid which mixes with the heavy rain on his skin.  

He sniffs and is relieved when he finds that the omega pheromones are well-cloaked by the precipitation.  

Sesshomaru tries to think of where he can go to ride out his heat.  His damned brain can’t seem to make sense of anything, and it continues to whine and bemoan that he has just abandoned a perfectly good rutting alpha.  His cunt aches deeply for something to fill it up and for a nice, fat knot to press on that spot inside to induce orgasm after orgasm and that would just feel so wonderful, wouldn’t it?  Think about Inuyasha and his big, satisfying cock filling you up and pumping your womb full of his cum and how you’ll grow fat with–

He slams into a tree and falls on his ass.

Clarity strikes Sesshomaru, and he pushes his palm against the twitching hole between his mud-caked legs as he curls up at the knot of roots at the base.  His muscles quiver, but not from cold.

Frail-minded half-breed, he rages.  He let his instincts overcome his rational brain; he would fuck a goat if one smeared its tail with an omega’s secretions.  

In his mind’s eye, he sees Inuyasha dead on the ground, golden eyes glassy and unfocused.  He imagines the miko sobbing over the remains of his corpse while the Tessaiga mourns at his own hip.  A blink, and Sesshomaru hears Inuyasha’s high-pitched screams as his intestines are dragged out slowly, a finger’s breadth at a time, through a hole in his abdomen.  He sweetly recalls how his brother’s form went limp when he stabbed his hand through Inuyasha’s chest, and how divine the hanyou blood tasted on his tongue.  

His belly cramps, and fluid gushes between his fingers.

Sesshomaru’s soul bleeds, and he is forced to face the new wound that has been violently torn open.

Inuyasha took something from him, something that Sesshomaru never wanted taken, something he had secretly, fervently wished to remain untouched until his death in the glory of battle or from assassination or, God forbid, old age.  Once, he even dared to dream of his secondary gender forgotten forever in the pits of his early past, centuries of vicious brutality piled on top so that there would be no question of his power.  With Tessaiga, no one would ever dare to oppose him, his right to rule, or the legacy he would leave.

No one, that is, except Inuyasha, whose greedy hands have stolen all Sesshomaru once held.  Including Tenseiga.

He presses his head against the wet wood and feels it splinter under his strength.  

A feral instinct rises within him, and Sesshomaru discovers that he does not care to suppress it.  He turns over onto his hand and knees and digs into the mud.  The intervening buried roots and rocks are ripped out with ease, and he quickly scoops handfuls of mud that turn into damp soil the deeper he bores into the earth.  

The entrance of a burrow forms before him.  

Sesshomaru crawls inside, dragging his heavy, muddy pelt.  Behind him, the rain trickles in.  

He digs and digs, driven by a canine instinct and the fact that this–nesting–behavior satisfies his omega side enough to grant him some agency over his mind during his heat.  

Eventually, the den is so deep he can no longer smell the rain and grass of the surface world.  The sounds of the storm have long faded, leaving him in absolute silence.

Darkness envelops Sesshomaru in its quiet embrace, as he lies and waits for his body to become his once more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Someone has entered the den.

Sesshomaru, half-witted with heat, whines needily when he smells the alpha.  There’s something familiar about the scent, but he doesn’t know why and can’t remember much now anyways.

Large hands grab his ankles and pull him from his den.  Sesshomaru lets himself be dragged through the winding tunnels until the fresh air of the above world graces his nose.  His legs refuse to stand, and he topples into a pile of dirty fur and mud-and-slick stained skin.

“What happened to you?” a voice asks, amusement in its tones.  An antlered skull stands above him.

Sesshomaru squints, his eyes unused to sunlight after so many days underground.  Strange, he should have been out of heat already.  Why was he still…

“Do you know who I am, Sesshomaru?” The skull is lifted to reveal green eyes that peer at him.  

Red hair that falls in waves, a scaled and striped face, purple armor.  The name is on the tip of his tongue, and Sesshomaru recalls a distant memory of a warrior that once battled his father, a friendly truce, and a warm chest.

“Kirinmaru,” he breathes.  

His stomach cramps, and Sesshomaru doubles over as fluids sluice down his thighs.  What little lucidity he managed is in danger of becoming buried by the rush of his omega hormones.

“Kirinmaru,” Sesshomaru cries again.  “You who were once like a brother to my father!  Take me to that healer who lives within your domain and I will repay you in kind when you have need.”

A long finger tilts his chin up until his glassy, golden eyes are looking into green irises.  A whimper emerges unbidden from his throat.

“Have you any clue how lewd you appear, naked but for your pelt and drenched thoroughly in your slick?” the smooth, masculine voice asks.  “I could leave you right here, and you would happily present yourself to the next alpha that happens by.”

“What is your–” Sesshomaru begins, but is pushed on to his back.  Without thinking, he spreads his legs and exposes his desperate, twitching hole.  

“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting,” Kirinmaru rumbles.  “How beautiful you were in my arms all those centuries ago, shaking like a hatchling newly emerged from the shell.”

Sesshomaru’s eyes widen in disbelief.  I am a fool, he thinks.

The blunt tip of a cock presses against his anus, and Sesshomaru squirms away, striking with his claws that are easily caught in Kirinmaru’s fist.

“Like a frightened kitten," the dragon daiyoukai says.  “Where was it again?” 

He leans down and noses at the place beneath Sesshomaru’s jaw.  “I often forget that the inuyoukai possess this useful bit for taming the feistier omegas.  A shame that Duiran had to lose an eye for not studying his young bride more carefully.”

Teeth prick into Sesshomaru’s glands for the second time, and he screams.  Alpha pheromones wash over him, and within seconds, he is immobilized at the mercy of one whom he had once considered an ally.

The cock shoves into him and the lips of his inner vaginal canal part softly to accept it. Sesshomaru spasms in pleasure at the intrusion, even while another part of him roars in fury.

Kirinmaru sighs when he is fully seated.  The alpha stench saturates the air now, and every breath stinks of pheromones.  

All of a sudden, Kirinmaru thrusts so forcefully that Sesshomaru immediately orgasms.  He squeezes his legs together and cries out in surprise.  His muscles clench and release around Kirinmaru’s penis while fluid gushes from his hole.  Even his own soft cock gives a twitch and releases a tiny drop of transparent cum.

Powerful hands grip his hips and commence a punishing pace.

“No,” Sesshomaru moans.  “No, no, no…”  He orgasms again and again, it seems before the first is even finished.  His entire lower body is alight with unimaginable bliss.  Fluid dribbles in a continuous stream from his cunt and a separate pool forms on his belly from his cock curled at his pubis.  The ground beneath him grows damp with his secretions.

Kirinmaru ignores him and fucks impossibly deeper.  Sesshomaru pushes weakly at his shoulder to no avail.

“Are you not enjoying yourself?” Kirinmaru asks.

Sesshomaru does not reply, his words swallowed by maddening ecstasy.

Abruptly, Kirinmaru groans loudly, and jabs his cock into Sesshomaru’s body.  Sesshomaru feels the knot swelling bigger and bigger, catching on his rim until he thinks it will tear.  

Then with a last push, the knot slips inside and locks their bodies together.  His hole twitches around the stretch.

The relentless pressure transforms from pain into something so sweet and unrecognizable, and Sesshomaru thrashes as he again orgasms.  His pelvic muscles are tensed and hard as rock, unable to fully release from the onslaught of pleasure.

Kirinmaru’s cock twitches as it empties its seed into him.  They stay locked together in endless bliss for what seems like an eternity.

Finally, the knot deflates and it’s over.

Kirinmaru pants as he collapses onto Sesshomaru’s chest and pushes his face into the dirty hair at the crook of Sesshomaru’s neck.  Sesshomaru is too exhausted to protest, even while his smoldering heat threatens to reignite.

“I will have you,” Kirinmaru mutters quietly.  “As we have joined our bodies, so will our lands.  Your body will grow fat and soft bearing my brood.  I shall move you into my castle, where a life of ease awaits.  You will have nothing to concern yourself except for the raising of our children.”

A kept thing, Sesshomaru shudders internally through the haze.  He wants to cut off Kirinmaru’s head while he is distracted, but his hand refuses to obey him.

Instead, his fever returns, and Sesshomaru twists in discomfort as his heat once again waxes into existence.

Kirinmaru smiles against his neck, and Sesshomaru smells the beginnings of an induced alpha rut.

He looks down to see red eyes gazing up at him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They couple so many times that Sesshomaru loses count.  The sun and stars cycle opposite one another, day turning into night and back again.  He thinks maybe a week passes–or perhaps two?  

Mercifully, his heat finally breaks, and with it, Kirinmaru’s rut ends as well.

The first thing Sesshomaru does is vomit.  He’s not sure what his body is trying to expel, since he hasn’t eaten or drank anything for so long, but the contractions ripple up his torso regardless.  Bile drips from mouth, burning his parched lips.  

When he’s done, his arms buckle and he narrowly escapes dropping into his own excretions.

The rays of the morning sun peek through the branches and settle upon his face, while the forest rustles quietly with awakening life.  The soil and air stink of the sour contents of his empty stomach and sex.

I played a fool, and now I pay for my stupidity, Sesshomaru thinks.  First Inuyasha, and now Kirinmaru.  A mere stroke of luck that I still live.

A muscled arm wraps around him and pulls him against the owner’s naked chest.  Sesshomaru is about to turn and punish the audacity, until fangs sink into his bloodied glands.  A too-familiar stupor settles over him.

Kirinmaru licks at the fresh blood that wells up while Sesshomaru moans dazedly.  

“I can feel it,” he murmurs, trailing his hand down to rest at the small of Sesshomaru’s belly.  “Our child, growing already in your womb.  Soon, you shall shed this alpha-like skin as your body prepares to nourish its young.”

Sesshomaru breathes evenly in and out, not giving away the creeping terror those words bring him.

“Your mother was so fearful of losing your beauty without the procedure, but I find your current form just as pleasing as those of castrated omegas,” Kirinmaru comments idly.  

His mouth is worked open, and Sesshomaru has been so severely subdued, he does not resist as Kirinmaru slides his fingers inside and along his tongue, feeling around.

“You still retain a few milk teeth.  Your strength in the battlefield is so renowned that I often overlook your youth,” Kirinmaru says.  “Had you been born an alpha, you would have been a great daiyoukai.”

The fingers are withdrawn, and Sesshomaru is hauled to his feet.  

He retches again and Kirinmaru catches him as bile leaks from the corner of his bleeding lips.  

“Water,” Sesshomaru begs, desperation winning over pride.

His legs are weak and unstable, and he leans heavily against Kirinmaru as they make their way toward the smell of running water.  Nearby, Sesshomaru smells blood and death, characteristic of a human village under attack.

They pass by the corpse of a small human girl.  Her eyes are cloudy with death, and the imprints of teeth on her body suggest the crushing bites of wolves.  She had been killed for sport, not a single ounce of flesh consumed.

Something about her gives Sesshomaru pause.

Someone to protect.

Suddenly he longs for Tenseiga, more than he has ever wanted.  He imagines bringing the girl to life and seeing those dark eyes sharpen and focus on his face.  He wonders what her smile would look like and how his name would sound when spoken by her voice.

His claws twitch at his empty hip.

~~~~~~~~end part ii~~~~~~~~~