UnBound Memories

A/N: Thank you to my reviewers. nette, this chapter will make it clear, and yeah, I thought Sango deserved to know. Mommy appears here. luvsjazz, this chapter should explain most of it. The assumption was made that miroku would carry them because as the non-lord it is supposed to be his role. No, the two inus just don't get a break, and now Sess. has to deal with the reprocussions of his pregnancy.

Chapter 24

I could lose everything

Miroku cradled his mate in his arms, carrying him bridal style through the woods, working his way back to Sango’s village, the tayoukai laying limp in his grasp. Pregnant? Did Sesshomaru mean that the new hanyou was pregnant? Or was it Sesshomaru himself?

Behind him, Miroku could hear the sound of and smell InuYasha approaching. He had to admit that even if he had sensed his friend’s power, it was nice to be able to use his heightened senses, something he might have considered to himself in better circumstances.

“Miroku! Oto-san!” InuYasha’s voice cried. When finally he came into view, he went to Miroku’s side, helping to lift the lolling white head of his father. “Miroku, what happened to him?”

“He tried to transform into his demon form and the backlash knocked him unconscious.” Miroku could feel the demon shifting in his arms. He looked down at the face of his mate, seeing more than the peaceful expression on it. He was rallying, and even half-asleep looked furious.

“Release me,” Sesshomaru said as he awoke with a growl. Miroku lowered the taller demon to the ground. No sooner had the demon lord’s boots hit the earth than Miroku found himself slammed against a tree, his mate’s claws at his throat. By the taiyoukai’s reaction, he assumed he wasn’t the one with child. “I was emotional, and you had to wish you could have a child of your own.”

“But… I had no intention of you…”

“What!?” InuYasha exclaimed.

“Do not be so loud, InuYasha. I have to deal with my mate.” Sesshomaru inched closer to Miroku’s face.

“I do not understand, as a demon lord, you cannot…” Miroku pulled at the claws around his neck.

“No, I should not.” Miroku saw as his mate’s eyes grew red.

“Let me explain, Master Miroku,” Myoga said from InuYasha’s shoulder. “Any demon with a title is to be alpha, regardless of the type of mating. They are never to get pregnant because they are never to submit themselves so fully to their mate in sexual acts, and even if they do, pregnancy would still be impossible, as they are never to be uke.”

“Aaa!” InuYasha said, grimacing and turning a shade of blood red. “Myoga, do we need details?”

“I am sorry, Master InuYasha, but you should know this as well as Miroku.”

“I’m mated to Kagome. What do I need to know about this kind of thing?”

“Be silent, InuYasha,” Sesshomaru said.

“Unfortunately, because you two are equals, Sesshomaru submitted to you, and with the trauma he endured in his past, he had to completely trust you, am I correct?”

“And tell me, Miroku,” the taiyoukai said, his nose practically touching Miroku’s, “do you remember what you thought when you saw the marks from my pregnancy with InuYasha? You wanted children of our own, but were upset because you would never bear them, as we thought you were still human.”

“Demon pregnancies, male and females depend on emotion,” Myoga said. “When the act is between mates, both mates have to want and be prepared to have the child at the moment it is to be conceived. When the two are not mates,” The flea looked up at InuYasha, who looked to the ground. “it is less predictable.”

“Then…” The vice-like grip tightened around Miroku’s throat. “Then how is this my fault?”

“We were connected,” Sesshomaru said, lifting his mate off of the ground by his neck. “We were sharing one another’s thoughts. After all, did we not each experience quite a bit of pleasure from the other?”

“Please, no details!” InuYasha said, flattening his ears to his head.

Sesshomaru dropped Miroku with a loud thud. "Your thoughts became my own, and if we are now caught…”

Miroku searched the demon lord’s face. “You are worried about losing your title.”

A loud growl escaped Miroku’s mate’s mouth. “Do you really think me that shallow?” He lunged at Miroku, who moved as quickly as he could on his backside with his hands and feet across the forest floor.

“Lord Sesshomaru,” Myoga protested, “I do not believe he understands. Master Miroku,” the flea hopped off of InuYasha and onto Miroku. “if a demon lord is not an absolute alpha in his relationship, meaning he allows his beta to be seme even just once, and is caught, it means certain punishment for both mates, followed by the two making a vow that their roles will be clear from that point on, with a vow that if they do not maintain their proper roles, they will be cursed as reprocussions for breaking that vow. And that does not take into account that the alpha may face challengers for his title because he will be viewed as weak.

“But this is only if an alpha is uke. If a demon lord has completely submitted their body and self to their mate enough to actually bear a child, not only is a title lost, any adult children that were born of a false alpha are stripped of their right to it and exiled.” Miroku looked up at InuYasha, who had just received his title as heir only to have it threatened because the former monk couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself. “If the children have not yet reached adulthood, they are to be killed.” The dark hanyou felt his breath hitching in his chest. “The mates’ claims are broken. In your case, the inuyoukai who would seek Lord Sesshomaru’s title would likely be his cousin, Lord Katsuro, who is still unmated and would have the option of taking Lord Sesshomaru as his beta to solidify his position as Lord of the West. If allowed to live, you will be lucky if you become a beta to a lesser demon.”

“I lose everything if I am found out,” Sesshomaru said, looking down at Miroku with anger in his eyes, behind it, hurt and worry. “It was simple enough to hole myself up in my family’s wing with InuYasha, but I cannot do that as a lord, not for six months.”

Miroku rose to his feet. “If you…If we need to stop the pregnancy, I understand.” Those words were the most difficult things the former monk had ever had to say. He didn’t want to lose this child. This was his child with Sesshomaru, and a child was something he had wanted for a very long time.

“Though I may be forced to bear a child against my will,” Sesshomaru turned his head upward as though directing his comment to Kami. “AGAIN, I have no intention of destroying this baby.” The demon folded his arms across his chest. “And as furious as I am that I did not get to voice my own opinion in this and have to face my entire clan just as my pregnancy scent will be noticeable, it would have likely played out the same whenever this happened. My body already believes itself to be a bearer, even if my mind tells me otherwise.”

“Because of me,” InuYasha said, sounding so dejected from the repetitive reminders of his own creation that it was painful to hear this tone in his voice.

“Because of many circumstances that led to you, InuYasha, but not you,” Sesshomaru said as he pulled his son to him. “It may very well have happened this way regardless of my previous pregnancy, since Miroku’s thoughts were quite forceful.” Sesshomaru grabbed InuYasha by the face, gold peering into gold. “And I am going to need you now more than ever to make certain that I am not found out. Just as I am going to need my baka mate’s.”

“Tell me what we can do,” Miroku said.

“We will need to visit my mother far sooner than I had dreaded."

********

Standing before a palace that was nearly as impressive as that of the Western Lands, InuYasha looked to his father and best friend, one on either side of him. The mates were working on resolving their responsibility in this pregnancy, but InuYasha had met with Sesshomaru’s stubbornness before, and even with the change in the taiyoukai’s personality, there was no way that it had changed enough that Miroku would get any positive recognition from the oldest inu for some time.

As they approached, Sesshomaru stopped.

“Oto-san, are you okay?” InuYasha said, looking at the pregnant taiyoukai in concern.

“Yes. I am not weak yet.” Sesshomaru crossed his arms. “I merely dislike the idea of visiting her. There is a reason that my mother is termed a bitch, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she is an inu.” InuYasha was shocked. Sesshomaru had not only used a derogatory term, but used it about his own mother. Letting his arms fall to the sides, Sesshomaru moved forward, passing the demons at the front gates with a courteous nod as they bowed before the lord and the new mixed-breed leaders of the inu clan. Walking into the foyer, they were greeted by a female servant who deeply bowed upon seeing the demon lord. “I wish to see my mother.”

“Hai, Lord Sesshomaru. She is in the throne room.”

“Throne room?” InuYasha asked.

“Yes, your grandmother is a bit… eccentric.” Sesshomaru stepped between InuYasha and Miroku, more a symbol that both held importance to him than a sign he was forgiving his mate, his son knew. Sesshomaru pushed open the screen to the room, where a white-haired woman sat on a large round-backed seat, a pillow at her side. She was pretty, with long, straight white hair pulled back at either side with seashells.

“So, which of these two half-breeds is one who stole my mark, my son?”

“I am not a half-breed. I’m mostly demon,” InuYasha protested.

“You are still a mutt.” She looked intently at InuYasha. “No, I see Touga in him. He is yours, Sesshomaru?”

“Yes.” He placed an arm around InuYasha’s shoulders. “Making him yours as well.”

“He was raised by that wench of your father’s was he not.” InuYasha was fighting back a growl, and though he had allowed it to escape, realizing it had actually been his father who had growled at the woman. “Why claim him now?”

“Because he is my son.”

“And this one, that is my mark on his forehead.”

“It stopped being your mark when you left father,” Sesshomaru said. “It would have been Izayoi’s had she not possessed spiritual powers. As does my mate. He was a monk, a mere human when I mated him.” InuYasha watched as Sesshomaru’s lips curled up while his mother grimaced. “Mother, I need to talk to you in private. Would you ask your servants to leave?”

Raising an eyebrow, the woman lifted a delicate hand and waved the servants away.

“What is it that really brings you here, musuko?”

“You are about to become a grandmother again.” Her cold eyes, somewhere between yellow and orange, looked over at Miroku. “I am not here to announce that to you. If that were all, I would allow you to come to the birth ceremony, but the simple fact is that I need your experience. I need to know how to hide a pregnancy, what herbs or spells can be cast to hide it.”

“Why would you… Ah.” The woman stood from her seat. “Do you know no better than to allow this to happen? Do you have any idea the pains and problems of pregnancy? You were raised to fight, not to bear a child. If you think the pain of battle is anything, the birth…”

Sesshomaru had pulled at his haori, revealing for the first time for InuYasha to see, his markings, magenta stripes that matched those elsewhere on his body but not one another. “Mother, I am already well aware of the pain of pregnancy. We can proceed beyond this lecture. I cannot hide as I did last time,” he said as he closed his haori.

“There are no herbs that can hide it, no combinations that we know of that work.” InuYasha felt the gaze of his grandmother falling on him. “What did you do with him?”

“I was recovering from an attack and was given the excuse to hide in the family wing for the duration of the pregnancy.”

“Attacked?” The woman, who looked no older than Sesshomaru allowed her cold exterior to crack, her hand reaching up for Sesshomaru’s face, though he pulled back. “I had no idea.”

“Thanks to father, neither did I.” Sesshomaru explained to his mother a bit of what had happened, as well as his mating with Miroku. When he was done, she looked at InuYasha.

“You claimed him as your heir. There was no obligation to do that,” she said, looking confused.

“I am proud of my son.” InuYasha felt Sesshomaru grab his arm and squeeze it tightly and reassuringly.

Then, InuYasha watched as his grandmother went to Miroku, grabbing his jaw between his thumb and fingers. “And you, I suppose I cannot blame you for being ignorant, but do not expect me to be pleased with you. I am going to tell you to do what you need to do and you aren’t going to argue with me.”

InuYasha watched as Miroku struggled to nod.

“Sesshomaru’s pregnancy scent is contained in his bodily fluids.”

“So I must drink his blood?” Miroku asked, his jaw moving awkwardly in the demoness's grasp

“You may occasionally,” she said releasing Miroku’s face, “but we can’t have three beings relying on my son’s blood supply.” She placed a hand on Sesshomaru’s abdomen. “There are other ways of exchanging fluids.” She looked over at InuYasha. “You may want to hold your ears.”