The bow slipped from Kagome’s fingers, her strung arrow clattering to the floor.

She should have known her spell wouldn’t be strong enough to throw Sesshoumaru off her trail. Maybe he hadn’t been in close enough range until now, or hadn’t been paying close enough attention. Maybe she’d let the enchantment slip during her sleep, and he’d detected her. Maybe her concealment spell had held after all, and he’d simply visited Edo in the meantime and learned that she was here.

Whatever the reason, here he was—and judging by the flare of his aura, he wasn’t in a calm state of mind. In a few seconds he’d no doubt be breaking down her door, dragging her back to the village, and it would be a month of Sundays before she stepped one foot outside of Edo again. Kagome sighed in resignation, preparing to end her concealment altogether now that he’d found her out—until those few seconds passed, and she realized he hadn’t moved a single inch toward her.

Kagome’s brow creased, her fingertips drumming on the wooden floor. It wasn’t like Sesshoumaru to tarry—he was all action, swift and purposeful and to the point in everything that he did. So what was the holdup, now?

Something nagged at her instincts, drawing the corners of her lips down into a troubled frown. It was certainly Sesshoumaru’s youki signature she was sensing—but there was something about it that disquieted her. Something about it that was distinctly…off.

Rising from her bed, Kagome slung her bow and quiver over her shoulder without a second thought—not even pausing to change out of her sleeping yukata as she slipped on her sandals and stepped out into the night. Although Sesshoumaru’s location still hadn’t changed—he was perhaps a mile away—his aura was flaring even more intensely than before.

Kagome’s heart thudded in anxiety. Was he injured or sick? Was he being threatened by another youkai whose presence was masked to her? As his youki rippled and spiked in the distance, she hastened across the moonlit yard, circling around behind the palace kitchens and lifting away the darkly gleaming vines that hid the secret path into the woods.

Stumbling at first down the leafy slope, Kagome clung to the trees for support as she found her footing, picking her way carefully forward through the dark. Moonlight filtered through the canopy of limbs overhead, painting the ground in brushstrokes of broken silver and lending a ghostly, enchanted quality to the quiet shadowed woods. Holding the skirt of her yukata aloft from the dark grasping fingers of fallen twigs and branches, Kagome tread lightly over the dappled underbrush, her spiritual senses leading her steadily onward, toward the source of Sesshoumaru’s simmering youki.

As she ventured deeper into the wilderness, a low fog blanketed the forest floor. The mist chilled her bare toes, but it was the increasingly strong scintillation of demonic energy that raised the fine hairs at her nape. Kagome’s pulse pounded, her bow slipping in her clammy grip as she crept along through the haze—the sudden fluttering of a owl past her right shoulder making her gasp in fright.

Thankful she’d keep her concealment spell in place after all, she swallowed and continued on. Sesshoumaru’s youki crashed against her in heated waves, emanating from just up ahead. As the trees thinned around the edge of a clearing, the sight that met Kagome’s eyes had her rooted stock-still in shock.

Before her in the clearing was Sesshoumaru—stark naked on his knees, with another pale, bare body bent before his. Clawed hands gripped soft feminine hips, wrenching them back against his half-buried length as he sank forward to the hilt. Watching them move in profile, Kagome clung to the rough trunk of a tree for support.

A woman, she realized dimly, her nails digging into the bark. Sesshoumaru was having sex with a human woman.

Slowly, dazedly, her eyes traveled down from where his muscled torso met the spread, mounded flesh of his partner—following the deep supplicating curve of her spine, the inky spill of her hair over the moon-bleached backs of her neck and shoulders. Pressed close to the ground, her face was turned away, but Kagome could still hear her muffled moans of rapture as Sesshoumaru thrust into her, her breasts swaying and ass rippling from the force of his impact. Transfixed, the miko sagged against the tree, unable to tear her attention away from the sights and sounds of what her brother-in-law was doing to this woman.

As he increased his pace, the woman’s folded arms shifted, her slim fingers curling into the mist-filmed earth for purchase. A choked, guttural cry escaped her as she climaxed in a series of whole-body spasms, Sesshoumaru’s youki spiking once again in response. Kagome swallowed dryly at the sensation—so close to her now that she could feel the sear of his aura against her own skin. As the overwrought woman turned toward her at last, the miko could see that she sensed it, too.

Kagome’s jaw clenched as caramel eyes looked past her, glazed and shimmering with lust. Dark silky hair puffed away from her friend’s full pink lips, her panting breath hitching as Sesshoumaru angled her sharply up toward him. Mayuri’s back bowed to the breaking point, her knees skirting the ground. Her mouth fell open in senseless bliss, her eyes squeezing shut as he rammed into her dangling lower half.

“Yes!” Mayuri sobbed, her teeth clashing and voice cracking from the helpless pounding she was receiving at Sesshoumaru’s hands. “Yes, my lord! Please, don’t stop, please—”

Sesshoumaru silenced her with a vicious snarl, one set of claws forcing her down by the nape. Whimpering, Mayuri bit into the side of her wrist as Kagome’s gaze dragged back to him, lingering for a moment at the heart-shaped birthmark on Mayuri’s thigh before climbing slowly up his chiseled abs and chest.

His silver hair hung around him, stringy and askew, sticking in some places where beads of perspiration had trickled down the planes of his muscles. Veins bulged from his pectorals and biceps and throat, his pulse throbbing visibly beneath the marble casing of his skin. But as Kagome’s eyes trailed upward still, it was the expression on his face that arrested her most. There was no trace of his usual cool detachment—his facial markings were wide and frayed, his fangs bared and features twisted in pure carnal pleasure. As she continued to stare at him in morbid fascination, his eyes slid open before her—shining with a molten, coppery hue.

Panicked, Kagome fled.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi