Kagome and Shin returned home. The first thing her eyes fell upon when she entered the hut was the laundry basket, which was heaped to overflowing. As usual, she’d pushed this loathsome chore to the limit. If she waited until tomorrow to do her laundry with Sango, Inuyasha would have something to say about it,

A few days later, as Kagome paced the length of the hut, her preoccupation with Shin’s transformations was temporarily placed on hold. She glanced to the window, noting the position of the sun through the shutters. Pushing himself up as best he could against the bars of his crib, Shin watched her inquisitively. His stormy

Though Kagome found herself waiting on pins and needles for Shin to transform again, he seldom did. It seemed totally random to her when he morphed into his beast form. Sometimes it was at night when he was sleeping deeply. Sometimes it was when he was wide awake in the broad light of day. He

The question of how Shin had killed the snake continued to preoccupy Kagome. Though he seemed exceptionally capable for his age, as far as she could tell, he possessed neither the coordination to remove himself from the crib nor the fangs necessary to perform the bloody task. Kagome wasn’t the only one preoccupied by this

Kagome cleaned up the spattered blood and bits of scale. But the dead snake she kept, removing it carefully from the house to the yard. Its fanged maw yawned, rigidly askew—frozen in what looked like a final scream of terror. Kagome’s stomach turned as she dropped it to the grass. Back inside, Shin was nestled

The next few weeks passed in a blur. Kagome threw herself into caring for Shin with renewed fervor. Since Inuyasha had started picking up more mercenary work, she stuck close to the house, which felt much less stifling to her now that he wasn’t constantly breathing down her neck. When she wasn’t attending to her

Kagome could feel Sesshoumaru’s heartbeat deep inside her, thumping in languid tandem with her own. He lowered them both to the root-riven ground—slowly, as though some invisible weight were bearing down on him. They were so tightly adhered, it was almost like pain when she started to peel herself from him. Her sordid high was

Sesshoumaru’s thumb brushed across her lower lip. When he fit his mouth to hers again, Kagome didn’t resist him. She felt powerless to resist him. He was like a vortex, pulling her in, drowning her in the heat of his desire for her. She was dazed, disoriented. Lost in a tempest of lust from which

Kagome had felt it too, the first time she’d held Shin in her arms—the surreal certainty that this was her child she was holding. No longer just an abstract concept in her mind, but a living, breathing being of her own flesh and blood—and spirit. To witness Sesshoumaru experiencing the same brought her back to