When Sesshoumaru held out his hand to her, Kagome took it. As he helped her to her feet, he pulled her to him. His lips pressed to her brow. Into her tousled bangs he spoke.

“You must know that I love you.”

Kagome’s eyes flared wide as she gripped his arms. Her heart constricted, as if steely bands were squeezing into it, cutting into it. 

“Sesshoumaru.” She hid her face against his chest. Her voice was a pained whisper. “What do you expect me to say?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Sesshoumaru drew back from her, though her nails were still snagged in his sleeves. “Only you should know. Do as you will, but I will not relinquish you. Any chance of that has passed. We are bound together, you and I. If this son of ours is not proof of that, nothing will convince you. I would spare you from disaster, but if that is what it takes for you to come to your senses, then so be it.”

Kagome’s eyes burned. “And what would you have me do? Just up and run away with you to gods know where? Leave my husband, my friends, my home and the life that I’ve built there? Never see my family again? They’d be devastated. How could I live with myself if I did that to them? How?”

“They’ll be devastated anyway, when the truth comes to light.”

“If,” Kagome said, her voice tight. “If it comes to light.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

Kagome bristled. “Only you and I know the whole story. I don’t plan on spilling it, do you?” When he said nothing, she bit out, “Unless you’re trying to say that it was never possible, that you agreed to this knowing that it wasn’t. Did you? Did you entrap me, Sesshoumaru?”

His eyes glinted with cold light. “If I wished to ‘trap’ you, I wouldn’t have waited for you to approach me with some harebrained scheme disguised as wifely duty.”

“That’s not fair,” Kagome said, stricken. “I was honest with you about what I wanted. Did you think it was easy for me to do this? I felt like I’d failed him where it mattered most. So I did this for him, to give him the family he wanted. The family he never had.”

“Honest.” Sesshoumaru’s tone was almost pitying as he tilted up her chin, gazed into her eyes. “You still cannot see it, can you? This was never about giving him a child. You came to me because you wanted to escape.” Lowering his face, he brushed his lips to hers. “Let me help you, Kagome. Cease this doomed charade, and come away with me.”

Kagome flinched aside. His mouth met her cheek instead.

“I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?” he murmured, kissing her where her jaw met her throat. “Tell me.” His tongue scraped her pulse point as he drew her flush against him, urging her belly up and into him by his press to her lower back. “Tell me what I don’t know about you.”

Kagome sucked in a breath, shoving back from him. “This,” she said hotly, her eyes flashing up at him. “This is what I mean. This is why I’ve been trying to avoid you. You say you want to help me, but then you make these advances that’ll only make things that much worse if I give in to them. You used the pact as a foothold, just to seduce me.”

“I’ve been seducing you for years,” Sesshoumaru said, nonplussed. “Pact or no, this end was inevitable. Perhaps that can be of some consolation to you, as it is to me.”

He reached out to pull her to him again, but she shied away. “This isn’t what you make it out to be. This isn’t love. This is—” She gave a terse, frustrated wave. “I don’t know what this is. It’s powerful, it affects me. It’s a passion I’ve never felt before. But what I feel for Inuyasha runs deeper than that. You have to understand. He’s my partner, my best friend. I made a commitment to him, that I’d always be there for him. I won’t abandon him—not for you or anyone. I can’t do that to him, I can’t…”

She moved away, hiding her face in her hands. She’d never felt so wretched as she felt now. Her heart and mind were in total chaos. Over her stinging eyes her hands trembled. Catching hold of her, Sesshoumaru peeled her hands away.

“Worry not,” he said, half-smiling. “If what you feel for him is ‘love’, then I don’t love you.”

Kagome’s face crumpled. “I—I have to go.”

She thought he might try to stop her, but he didn’t. Hastening over to her pack, she zipped it up and tossed it over her shoulders, along with her bow and quiver. The mouth of the cave was piled high with snow, but it was loosely packed, and she pushed through it without much trouble.

Outside, the world was starkly white, almost blinding. The snow went up to her thighs in some places as she waded through it, picking her way across the rocky ground beneath. She looked around in all directions, straining her eyes with the effort. She hadn’t gone very far when she was forced to turn around and backtrack to the cave.

Sesshoumaru was still there, armored now and threading his swords through his long yellow sash. When she paused in the threshold, he didn’t even glance over.

“I’m lost,” she admitted, her shoulders sinking.

“Yes,” he replied. “I know.”

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 3/20/23