Naruto 1. The King

_**This is loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, so you get an evil King, a hunter, a wolf, an enchantress, a princess and a tower. Oh and Tenten having fun with explosives. A fantasy!AU in a nutshell. ;) Well, those of you who have read one of my stories before know I never go for the typical fairytale, so... this is going to be so much more fun (I hope)! *nice guy pose* Enjoy! ^_^ **_

_**Pairings: KibaHina (main), NejiTen (minor) and SaiIno (minor).**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.**_

-X-

The Wolf smirked.

The sky fell in curtains of blood on the statue. Yet, it glowed unmistakable as the workers gathered around it, wide-eyed.

It was his message to King Hiashi; the princess sitting on his throne.

The statue of the princess trapped the sunlight, shining brightly in the middle of the city. The bronze melt in the warmth of the light and the blank eyes didn't seem as empty. The Wolf stood for the first time in broad daylight, anonymous among the horde of the peasants. He searched their face expecting the same rise he felt inside him. '_We are going to war, are you following me? This statue is meant to be broken and stepped upon, are you with me?_'

"This isn't Princess Hanabi."

"It's the lost princess," they murmured and he pulled his hood farther on his face, clenching his jaw.

"The Wolf..." they hesitated, fear and excitement condensed in their tone,"it's the Wolf again."

He started walking away, his hands deep in his pocket. How ridiculous, how blind they were. He almost groaned when the guards halted in front the statue, barking sentences, contradicting one another. The princess was dead. The princess couldn't throne in the middle of the city, in a cascade of light. The Wolf snorted. He had thought they would bring it down. He had thought them had enough of the monarchs, lost princesses or not. He had thought, they were akin, brothers of bloody dust and despair.

He stopped, his boiling rage, making him lean back against a wall. He had smirked thinking they dreamt of freedom like him.

She wasn't hope. She was a princess, one of them. An empty soul with empty eyes.

In the darkness, the enchantress watched him sliding down the wall, his eyes glowing ferociously. He held his head and his ears picked on the cries of joy, the muted ascending surprise. Merchants and villagers ran past him to see the princess. Her blue eyes sparkled, her magic leaking out, as she twisted a lock of her blond hair between her fingers. No matter how much he fought with himself, no matter how many excuses he invented for giving the statue to the city, a part of him still hoped.

A part of him hadn't died in the famines of his childhood.

A part of him offered the princess back to the people.

She could read it buried in his mind.

"Once upon a time, a princess jumped down a tower and fell in the arms of a wolf," she lilted out, casting her own spell on the statue.

It grew taller and the peasants cried out, caught between admiration and fear. The ground trembled and a crown appeared on the head of bronze in a shimmering purple hue. Magic was to be feared, they had been told. Magic was hope, nobles had kept from them. The enchantress disappeared in blue sparkles, laughing lightly.

The rebellion started slow, timid, pushing against plate of armours that didn't resist, their eyes set on the glowing princess. Some of them fought. Some of them bowed.

Moments later, King Hiashi woke up to the howls of the Wolf, the prophecy of the Enchantress and the future betrayal of the Hunter.

-X-

**The King**

_**by Clementive**_

_**Dedication**: This is for YukiTenVianey Team who have joined me in my fangirling quests on numerous occasions. Thank you to Vianey who has generously drowned me in fabulous fanarts. Thank you to Glacia who made every discussion we had had rational and amazing with her legendary sarcasm and analytical sense . Thank you to Ten who has filled my head with images of a tattooed Gaara when she wasn't making me laugh to death. This was supposed to be an one-shot but I got carried away and it will have a total of five chapters. Enjoy, my dears! :D_

-X-

Hinata Hyuuga was the princess of a tower that pierced the thinnest layer of clouds. She was the princess of a sky that had never caressed her skin. Her confiding walls were too thick, the glass of her sole window, made unbreakable for the rebels her father feared.

She reigned alone, unreachable, from a tower bent by years of angry winds and crooked creepers.

She was the queen of the enchanted characters that lived in her books.

'_Once upon a time_,' Hinata kept reading, her excitement building as the princess was introduced in the story.

It was always about them, never about her or her tower. She liked it that way.

In her stories, the word 'princess' didn't seem as close to 'prisoner'. In her stories, there was never any tower or dungeon. Neji Hyuuga made sure of it when he chose her books. He would then slip them between the two loose slabs on the second floor.

Their secret game only lasted three years before the King noticed the uneven joint during one of his visits.

The floors were now smooth under her bare feet, the past crooks and roughness imprisoned in a thick layer of concrete. King Hiashi had told her of rebels that could kill her in her sleep as she had watched horrified, her only solace taken from her.

Neji hadn't visited her since. Her father also took him away from her.

Her father's cold voice ripping her enchanted world apart, Hinata had nodded, as she always had, her head full of princesses that were free in other worlds. Angrily, she had thought: 'Why not me?' Disgruntled, Hiashi had called her weak and innocent. Hinata had murmured that she was a princess, with the same dull fury, her blush masking it.

Hinata was always blushing, shuttering on an anger that sometimes transpired in her jerky movements only to die in the middle of her room, unseen. Unreachable. She was a princess of broken movements and unthinkable faults.

King Hiashi never seemed to hear her above her shutter. She wasn't a prisoner, he was protecting her, he often lectured, his hands firmly on the golden knob of his cane. She never saw the difference but she nodded, her blood hammering her skull.

Men worked on the tower regularly, reinforcing it as she grew up, alone and shunned from a world that her father described as chaotic. She was too weak for the real world, he often said looking around her prison for a hint of defiance. His cane would nudge the cushions spread on the floor. Nothing.

Her books lied underneath her mattress.

King Hiashi always came on Sundays, his escort snaking between the hills that surrounded her tower. They looked like ants, she would say to herself aloud, giggling. The echo of her laughter was always raw, sliding across the impenetrable walls. No one ever answered her.

Because that was what it meant to live in the tower.

Because that was it meant to be safe.

Hinata bit her below lip, her widened eyes running across the glassy page. She knew of princess that morphed into animals. She read them, sometimes even acted, their names falling uneasily in her mouth. Laughing, happy and free, but there was still the blush. She was still herself despite the pretence. One role after the other, she had aspired to be the princess who had a fairy godmother, the one who bathed in sun rays as she explored the world riding an elephant and the one who stayed frozen beneath snow only for the charming prince to wake her with a gentle kiss.

Straightening her lilac dress, Hinata glanced over at the thin elongated window that didn't allow her to see much of her world. Her long hair swayed across her shoulders, cascading freely around her body, but she yearned for more. What about her fingers feeling the texture of the trunks? What about the wind plastering her dress against her body? What about the taste of rain? She dug into her books for the feel of the wind in raising spring, the gentle rustle of shimmering lakes and the incoherent windy dance of red leaves in dying summer.

She offered her pale face to the light filtering through the window, her thoughts dulled and uncomfortable. The excitement was fading, she only felt loneliness.

The warm colours of the setting sun exploded on the sky and she rose from the cushions of silk. If she had the choice, she would paint the sky from beneath, vibrant blue and swallowing her whole, the feel of grass tickling her ankles.

Hinata sighed. Her father would come the next day and she knew there was no such thing as a choice.

Softly, she closed the book, running her hand one last time on the picture of happy princess opening the ball with the prince.

She wasn't that princess.

-X-

Her braided hair rested heavily against the nape of her neck. Hinata forced a straighter uncomfortable pose against the back of the chair even if her father's eyes remained on the plate in front of him. Whenever his pearl eyes fell on her face, her body seemed to break under the strength of his stare. Dry-mouthed, her words would quiver in the familiar silence of the tower. Instinctively, she would see the weight of the kingdom trapped in the crow's feet at the corner of his eyes without grasping its meaning. The King carried the whispers of secrets chambers under his cloak; political intrigues merging with famines. Eagles and wolves.

It suffocated him, sometimes. It scared him, always.

Hinata would have had to know of such things to hear the wails that echoed softly to his ear whenever he set his eyes on her. They reverberated, incessant and breathy. But she knew nothing of his world.

"There was some disturbances at the market place today," King Hiashi watched her closely, delicately pressing the napkin to his lips.

"I'm sorry to hear that, father," Hinata whispered, blushing brightly as he continued to scrutinize her.

When she looked up, her fingers stopped playing with the hem of the tablecloth. She blinked slowly, recognizing fear on his ashen face. It was foreign, curving his lips and narrowing his eyes. For once, she didn't find it on her own face when facing him. Stiffly, he nodded gesturing for a servant to step forward with the pitcher of wine and it was gone. She looked down, forcing her hands open so they would fall neatly on her laps.

"Neji sends you his best regards, as always."

"Why doesn't he come anymore?"

Hiashi glared at her and she bit her below lip, blushing and uncomfortable under the unflinching white colour. She knew she was overstepping; her father hated questions that reached beyond the limits of her tower. It was his way of chaining her, protecting her.

"You have no idea what it takes to rule a kingdom, Hinata. You are foolish," he snapped before taking a sip of wine. "Neji is captain of guards, now, and part of his duties is to stop the rebellions. He doesn't have time to entertain you."

"I don't understand wh-what the rebels want, father," she murmured and jolted when he slammed his glass on the table.

The wine dripped on the tablecloth, snaking its way towards her in an ugly pattern.

Hinata trembled, her hands quivering before her lips. She had never seen the savagery inside him snapped before. The silence crept underneath her skin and stilled the tension in the guards surrounding them.

"What do you know of the world, Hinata?" King Hiashi asked coldly, roughly pulling at the napkin on his laps.

He wiped his hands, his glare still unwavering, as servants hurried around them.

"Nothing, I apologize, father."

Her glance fell over the emptiness of the second floor. She could enter the dinning room only on Sundays. She never saw the cook or servants when her father wasn't present. She never saw anyone. Hinata wanted to repeat it again and again, her voice growing: she knew nothing of the world. She wondered if it were like a tower but with vaster limits, if there was such a thing as freedom.

"Men only fight for one thing, power."

Hinata glanced up, her exhales compressed in her chest, waiting for him to continue.

"And peasants die for freedom."

"Aren't peasants men, father?"

"No," he pushed away his plate, his lips twisted in disgust. "They are dogs, Hinata. Nothing more. Dogs trying to be wolves, do you understand?"

He left her alone with what was left of her meal. Quietly, she watched him climb down the stairs, the sun already a bright halo around him. She sighed standing up as servants hushed her deeper inside the tower.

They locked the door behind her.

-X-

King Hiashi put his gloves on, remembering the softness in Hinata's eyes. _'Aren't peasants men, father?'_ The muscle in his cheek twitched. Hanabi was stronger even if she were younger. She snarled like him, held nobles firmly in her grasp. They breathed when she told them to. They laughed when she allowed them to. Hanabi was his daughter, not Hinata with her quiet gestures and erased self.

"Sai!" He coldly called, spinning on his heels as his horse was brought to him.

Yet, there had been a growing impatience among peasants, quiet rebellions and unleashed anger. _The Wolf_, they called him. He shook his head, quivering with rage. The statue of his daughter was still burning in his memory; throning in the middle of the capital. What an abject gesture it was to show his weakling of a daughter to the world. The Wolf would pay, he vowed. He had had soldiers knocking it down, but there had been mutters falling into the ears of his spies. The princess was alive. The heiress. Their saviour.

Hope.

"Sai!" He shouted louder, his voice drenched in icy rage.

Hinata was a sheep, she was no wolf. He had cherished the thought that the tower wouldn't stop her, that one day she would grow to destroy it and oppose him. She hadn't. Hanabi would have.

Sai dropped to one knee, his hunting bow held firmly at his side. His cold velvet glance rested on the ground, his attire of a hunter fading in the high herbs. His bird chirped aggressively, flapping his wings, but Sai remained impassive. With disdain, King Hiashi turned away from the animal and its unsettling yellowish gaze.

"Did you find something?"

"There are no tracks around the tower except our own, Your Majesty."

King Hiashi mounted his horse, his escort falling suit around him. The only thing he enjoyed about Hinata was how easily he could control her. How easily he could lock her up in a tower and pretend she didn't exist.

"Hn. Whoever this Wolf is... hunt him down and kill him. Don't bother bringing me his whole body, just the head."

-X-

Neji Hyuuga's office bathed in the quiet shadows that the night and royal secrets eagerly drew on his features.

Tenten Hyuuga stretched on the cushions, her hands falling on her growing belly. She breathed deeply, glancing up at the chandelier hanging above her. The sound of the a quill running across papers filled the silence between her and her husband. Sometimes, she felt like the second woman, the one that wasn't the country, the title, the throne. She shared him with duty. She shared him with peasants crying out in protest, pain and hunger.

She was both jealous and proud; a dangerous feeling, she knew. An even more dangerous game in a palace frozen by an era in which magical beings were chained and weak princesses confined to towers.

"Tell me this is safe," Tenten whispered, turning her brown glance towards her husband.

Her hands stopped on her belly and she felt it pulsing. Life. Love. Neji and her. But court was all about pretence. She would feign disinterest when they were together in public, his hand discreet on her waist or ghosting over her neck.

It was all about finding the perfect mask and wearing it with the right jewelry.

The quill stilled above the papers and she heard him stand up, his nervousness compressed in his elegant gait. She didn't glance at him when he kneeled next to her. She left him her hand out of habit, her lips still set in a firm line.

"I promised to protect you, I meant it," Neji began slowly, his index tracing her high-cheek bone. Her face glowed, yellowish but warm, surrounded by chandeliers and trembling flames. "I didn't know he would put a statue in the middle of the city. I would have stopped him if I did. He's moving too fast."

They could be executed if guards were leaning against the door. _They could die_, the thought spun in his mind, his jaw clenching over sacrifices he wasn't certain he would make. Neji tightened his grip on her hand bringing it to his lips. Tenten craned her neck, her warm stare clouded as she pulled him forward.

"Isn't it freeing her moving to fast too?"

"No, freeing her is what is right."

He pressed his cheek against her belly, breathing in her floral scent. Underneath it, lay the faint smell of black powder and he almost smirked. Slowly, her fingers ran through his hair; a quiet apology. He closed his eyes, the heartbeat of their children beating between them.

"Tell me you won't take the fall if something goes amiss." She pressed her lips against his ear and her hair slipped out of her strict buns when he reached forward to caress her cheek.

With him holding her, she could pretend she didn't share him with a kingdom.

"I won't."

A snarl ripped the quiet shadows.

The flames protested, screeching, when a tall man opened the secret chamber behind the desk. He was a wolf made of steel with a skin the sun had scorched. His dark glance narrowed falling on their embracing form. Slowly, Neji raised his head gesturing towards the desk. Tenten froze, watching the broad shoulders stiffen, his nostril flare. 'He is an animal,' she thought amused and Neji's arms tightened around her.

The Wolf stepped in, his hand falling on the sword on his hip. A taunted savagery devoured his face and he growled lowly. His body couldn't blend in the elegance of the carpet or the gold of the clock behind his head. It quivered, uncomfortable.

"We were supposed to be alone." The vastness of the room swallowed his deep voice as he glanced around him, seemingly trapped.

Tenten threw back her head, startling him as her laughter filled the room. The corner of her eyes wrinkled, her glance sparkling with the blunt brutality the Wolf remembered seeing in the portrait of her father. She sat up, smirking, and the stilled laughter rung croaky and cold to his ears. His glance fell on the dagger she was twisting easily between her fingers.

Had she not been a woman, she would have been a hunter.

"My husband impregnated me with twins," she said and Neji kissed her cheek, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "He doesn't get to lie to me if I get to be this fat."

He stepped out of the darkness and his face fell into place, the chandeliers licking hungrily the shades between his canine teeth and red tattoos. She cocked her head on the side, recognizing him from the portraits on her father's desk. He was on the wanted list. He was already a prey in a golden world he didn't understand.

Tenten smiled cryptically, leaning back against the cushions. She threw the dagger up, catching it easily. She would enjoy watching the hunt.

"How do you plan on doing it?" Neji asked lowly pointing once more at the velvet purse on the desk.

"Like a dog digging for its bone," he grinned wolfishly, his fingers timidly feeling the soft texture of the purse.

He licked his lips and Neji wondered for the first time if he hadn't made a mistake trusting a peasant to take care of the line of succession. He watched him under the dimmed light, toying with the pieces of gold. Tenten's hand fell on his bicep and he relaxed slightly. Wolves were replaceable, after all.

"Now, show me on the map where the princess is." His eyes glowed and he fought to remain impassive.

He could smell their distrust, their presumption sickly emanating from them. Inwardly, he howled. The Wolf didn't want a new queen, he wanted the end of monarchy.

He wanted their end and had they been wolves, they would have smelled it on his skin, musky and dense. But they were eagles that believed in their own fairytales.

He didn't.

He stopped believing in anything long ago. He stopped being Kiba Inuzuka long ago.

-X-

_**Please take the time to let me know what you think. ^_^**_

_**1/5**_


	2. The Wolf

_**To Guest #1 (the one asking me about twins): Thank you for your review, dear! :D I'm glad you are liking the NejiTen. ^_^ I have honestly never heard of "Witcher" so you would have to be the judge of that. :P Are they girls? I don't know. Are they boys? I don't know. ;)**_

_**To Guest #2 (the one asking me about a possible NejiTen fairytale remix): Ohhh, I hope you will stick around because I might. *_* Like a NejiTen prequel with a poisoned apple, a forgotten boot, a man nicknamed the Hunchback and something_else_that_I_can't say_because_it's_ a_spoiler. So, a remix of Snow White, Cinderella and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. I think I like that... *_***_

_**A whole chapter of KibaHina interactions! Enjoy, my dears! ^_^ I replaced "God" by "Merlin", because it made me smile. Well, this is a fantasy and a fairytale so it's not that far off... ^_^'**_

-X-

The dust hung to his hair.

Between growls and pants, the Wolf threw another shovel of dirt on the side. He cursed under his breath, hitting the hard foundations of the tower. It was a prison embedded in the bowels of the earth. He nudged the rocks with his shovel. Throwing his head back, he quelled the howl that came naturally to his lips. The cold crept in his bones and he wiped the sweat of his brow. The Wolf heavily panted, the night plastering his tunic to his chest. His boots sank in the damp earth as he attempted to climb out of the hole. The silence was thick, humid, rolling down the hills close by.

His dog growled, circling the tower once more.

Grumpily, the Wolf rolled on his side, staring up at the veiled welkin. His lungs burnt, filled of the scent of fresh grass and blooming rampions. They clang softly under the hissing breeze and he rubbed his forehead.

"Merlin damn paranoiac king," he growled, glancing over at the other holes he had dug.

There was no way in, no way out.

The tower was a dungeon of howling winds and whispering branches, imprisoned in the night of time. He had spent several hours testing its limits, his dog silently scratching the ground at his side. Akamaru yapped, licking the side of his face titling before lying down next to him.

"No door, Akamaru? How the hell does he enter it? I think we will have to come back with a better plan than digging her up," he closed his eyes wondering how much time he had before King Hiashi's hunters came for him.

Because he knew they would.

The royal hunters tracked human blood the way he could track animals with his nose. They were linked to the kingdom, soulless beasts that were forbidden to smile. It was rumoured that the royal seal tattooed on their tongue toned their expressions, their spirits devoid of any feeling but the sense of duty. The Wolf shivered. Since Hiashi Hyuuga sat on the throne, the magical creatures had been persecuted, witches and enchanters burnt on the public place and fairies chained to their master. He became the Wolf after the Great Hunt, when magic became forbidden and revenge was all he knew. The world changed, deprived of the stillness he understood as fear when he grew up. People forgave, returned to their lands, paying the tax of the magic tribes. They forgot the Hunt and the stakes. He didn't.

The new royal decree condemned only the most powerful to enslavement. His fingers scratched his dog behind its ear.

Wolves did not forget the scent of rotten flesh and paralyzed corpse resting under snow and gore.

Traitors were different. Traitors were tortured to death, in front of nobles who paid to assist to the spectacle Ibiki Morino offered them. Kiba winced thinking of the brutality he saw in his daughter's eyes, Lady Tenten.

'No way in, no way out,' he laughed to himself, bitter of all the things he had to let go and forget because he was born a peasant with magic enhancing his senses.

"Excuse me, sir?" A timid voice asked and he snapped his eyes open. "Are you one of the carpenters? I thought you were to reinforce the tower on the morrow?"

He sprang to his feet, his eyes wide.

The moonlight shone, chasing the shades weighing down on the stars above. The Wolf snapped his mouth shut, her eyes part of the welkin. He thought he was dreaming. He thought he had gone mad and Morino was peeling away his limbs. There was no greater pain than to realize aristocrats belonged with the stars and he was below, his hair and hands full of the grease of the earth.

"Heavens," he breathed out.

Her hair danced in the wind, pouring out of the window in a cascade of black that could have been twisting shadows. Mouth agape, he glanced up at her silhouette unable to make up her face.

"I-"

She knocked the breath out of his lungs when she fell from the tower.

Elbows and legs hit him repeatedly.

When she fell, two moons fell alongside her and he had to relearn to breathe, his nose full of her. His ears full of the rustles of her skirts sliding up his legs and cascading through his fingers. There were muffled screams, perched on her red lips too soft to vibrate through him.

"Stop moving, Merlin damn it!" He shouted, gripped her waist to stabilize her above him.

She pinned him down on earth, her smalls palms making him sink deeper. She opened her mouth, blushing and stammering. Reaching forward, he caught the rampion out of her hair. It shone purple, its bells ringing to his ears with the magic pulsing inside of it.

He gulped, his other hand now on the small of her back.

Her cloak covered them, purple gleaming between their heaving chests. Until he couldn't take it anymore. Until he remembered why he couldn't be Kiba Inuzuka anymore.

Especially to her. Only to her, if he could help it.

The Wolf brutally shoved her off him, grunting while she yelped.

-X-

**The Wolf**

_**by Clementive**_

-X-

'Once upon a time,' Hinata Hyuuga began under her breath.

She often pretended there was someone to disturb in the bowels of the tower. When she read her fairytales, she wasn't alone. She liked pretending her happiness depended on her quietness, that her stories couldn't be shared with anyone in the night. Hinata was the princess of broken dreams that overflew a reality she denied every day.

The shadows moved around her, rocking her to the silent slumber of princesses that knew better ends than her. She let the story carry her beyond the tower in a land of deserts and magical water.

Her breath grew white and puffy around her mouth and she gasped, looking ahead of her. Fantasy words still vibrating on her lips, she searched the darkness. Purple sparkles slid under the thick door, teasing the stillness of the air.

Wide-eye, Hinata leaned forward watching the purple hue intensify until it solidified in the shape of a young woman. The enchantress gleamed, her blue eyes resting on her. A faint torch burnt between them, chasing the shades from the book Hinata was trying to pushed under her pillow.

"I thought you would be asleep," she frowned, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder. "You are making this a lot easier for me."

"Who are you?" Hinata hesitated but she didn't see hostility lurking in her beauty.

Her father had never told her of magic beings. He had locked it away from her like everything else. She felt like the child she never was, dressed in the silkiest fabric that did nothing to help her face the world.

Hinata sat down, stunned. Somehow, the shadows seemed taller, closing in on them. They whirled and she watched them with curiosity. The fear that had frozen her into place every time her father brought his world with him in the tower faded in the glimpse of magic and possibilities.

She could leave.

She could live and pretend she belonged with high herbs that reshaped her body. She could roll in the freedom of the hissing wind and bath in sun rays.

"I'm Ino Yamanaka," the enchantress bowed slightly her glance malicious as she didn't set it downwards.

"I'm-"

"I know who you are, Your Highness," she rolled her eyes, then she noticed the book the princess was trying to keep out of reach.

Ino sprung grasping the book out of Hinata's hands. Hinata yelped, blushing. Clumsily, her hand knocked off the torch. It rolled on the granite floor casting them in darkness.

"The Princess of Sand? _Really_?" Ino laughed snapped her fingers and the wind dove into the room. "That's more than 10 years old. That's dusty romance, Your Highness," she spoke above the sound of flapping pages.

The thickening air pushed against Hinata, growing violently until the cushions and the covers danced at her feet. Soundlessly, she screamed, the wind dulling the sparkles of magic cascading down her arms. While it wrecked her room, shredding the careful world Hinata had lived in, she gasped, now dressed in a red cloak and rough dress of a peasant.

Magic stung, but she was curious, lost in her idea of dreams coming true. Her hands searched the purple hue as Ino faded in the darkness. There was nothing to hang on to in the aggressive breath of the the night.

"There is someone waiting for you outside," the enchantress whispered to her ear and she couldn't resist the pull of the deepened voice echoing through her.

Her hand shook on the stones, the glass of the window gone. Hinata leaned out of the window, her hair sliding off her shoulders. Her heart hammered her rib cage, drawing shivers out of her. It was the first time she glanced down at the ground below. In the paling horizon, the height of the tower came into perspective. The texture of the wind carried a fruity smell she couldn't name. The stones grew colder under her palms, her blood rushing inside her.

Hinata squinted to see the man lying on the grass next to piles of dirt, white fur pressed against his side. She had never seen a dog before and it left her gasping for air, gasping for more. The tempest still raged around her.

"Hum?" She blushed, searching for Ino's shape behind her. "What do I say?"

"Anything," Ino's voice grew impatient and her magic weighed her down, the world swirling in hues of purple in front of her eyes.

"Excuse me, sir?" Hinata asked, blushing as she saw him stiffen. "Are you one of the carpenters? I thought you were to reinforce the tower on the morrow?"

"I forgot you were reading the Princess of Sand. This won't do. It's a shame you can't fly, Your Highness," she sighed, the snap of her fingers masked by the laughter that unleashed inside her head, "Don't worry we will see one another soon!"

She fell off the tower.

Hinata screamed when the ground grew nearer, the violent push still burning her back. Her hair whipped her face and neck, the cloak spread like wings in the void. She hit him, the impact dazzling her. She gasped rolling on the ground, with the man grunting in pain when her elbow hit his cheek.

"Stop moving, Merlin damn it!" He shouted, his hands roughly gripping her waist.

She stood above him down, her chest pressed against him. He looked shocked, his eyebrows pulled together above slitted eyes. He rose his hand and she stiffened, feeling cornered in a world too big for her. She almost reached back for the tower, but she couldn't move. She had never thought about gravity and hands of men over her. It filled her with pain and heat with his breath caressing the side of her face. His hand brushed her cheek and he held a purple rampion between them.

The weight of her red cloak fell onto her head, masking her features, but her eyes shone into the night, pure and light.

Letting the flower go, the Wolf stared up at her. Hinata gnawed at her lip, throwing a careful glimpse around her for a sign of the Ino. Silence had fallen once more over the tower, the creepers tighter around it. There was no one else, but the dog.

In a grunt, he pushed her off his body and her hand caught in her cloak. She yelped, clumsily trying to stand up. The flowers and their haunting bells shone around her. Kiba licked his lips, sitting on the hard ground.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. I believe I was pushed off the tower by an enchantress."

"Kiba," he choked on the name he hadn't used in years, too entranced by the whiteness of her eyes and the weight of her body to care. He had to remind himself that it hadn't been the weight of a woman but the one of a monarch. The weight of his parents' death. "I'm Kiba Inuzuka. Don't call me sir."

He watched her warily. This couldn't be a princess, her scent spread around her, lilac and innocent, too soft to face the wolf inside of him. He was Kiba to her now, and he would be the Wolf for everyone else.

Akamaru sniffed her, a low grunt bristling his fur.

Her mask would crumble now, the Wolf thought, and he didn't know what it meant.

"Sit down, Akamaru!"

Its white fur swallowed her whole, but she giggled, raising a timid hand to pet the dog. Kiba dusted his pants, his lips set in a firm line not focusing on the slight curve of her lips that didn't trouble her scent. She acted human, crushing his idea of soulless bestial monarchs. He almost shouted at her to tear her clothes from her body and act like the princess he had imagined her to be. Through the forest circling the property, he had needed her to be disdainful like her father, spoiled and demanding like her sister. He panted, kicking at the dirt.

He had made up his mind, he meant to shout. Wolves ate princesses, they dove the dagger of their claws into them. He meant to kill her. He shook his head, desperate, and his hand trembled at his waist He meant to finally bury his name where it really mattered.

Caring and oblivious to him, Hinata shyly ran her fingers through the white fur. Too childish. Her back was wide open, without a hint of mistrust in her posture. Hinata giggled again. He glanced up at the tower sucking in a breath that burnt his throat. She was like the statue, unfolding in sun rays quietly as if she didn't want to disturb the universe. She tossed herself on a frame of innocence that didn't raise bile to his mouth. He turned away from her, drenching himself in hatred, willing his hand to stop trembling.

"Does your dog speak?"

"What?" he snapped, shaking the dirt out of his hair instead.

"Does it speak like in fairytales?" Hinata repeated slowly with a small smile, her eyes wide.

"This isn't a fairytale," Kiba said harshly.

He would leave her behind, he decided. He would leave her to the innocence of her movements, to the quietness that tightened his guts. People were so rarely true to their scent, he thought remorsefully.

The wolf inside him howled to the tower cast in timid moonlight. It would go hungry tonight.

-X-

Kiba Inuzuka stiffened, her presence both too quiet and loud behind him. She would stop to stare around her, enthralled by the flowers or run enthusiastically a hand on the trunk of a tree. Hinata stepped carefully on the rocks that covered the pathway.

"What is-"

"Stop it with the questions already!" he shouted and Akamaru sat down at her feet, slightly barring his teeth at him. "Why are you still following me?"

The red of her cloak contrasted with the green of the leaves. She seemed unsure, tossed in a colour that didn't suit her and unaware of the fact that whenever she uttered his name she pulled every viscera out of him.

"You said you didn't care if I did," she muttered, a faint blush on her cheeks.

He pinched his lips, leaning back against a tree.

She made everything difficult. When he snarled, she would title her head on the side and ask him about the snarl. She asked him about the weather too, why small animals raced out of Akamaru's paws. Why. Why. Why was she such a child? Why was she the princess when she was supposed to be the dragon, the villain, the one he wouldn't mind killing? He could buy himself lands with the money he got out of Neji Hyuuga's deed. He could learn to live again once his thirst for revenge was satisfied. But his hand still trembled on the handle of the dagger at his belt.

"I mean it could be dangerous. Father says rebels..." she shivered, drawing closer to him.

His nostrils flared, his eyes falling on pearl hidden by her thick eyelashes. The truth rolled off her tongue, trapped in her innocent scent. He almost growled at her proximity and the way she blushed, delicately; undisturbed by his brisk manners.

"Rebels are lurking in the woods," she whispered, her hand in front of her mouth as if she was sharing a secret. "They could attack us. Father is convinced they hide in the mountains nearby."

"What are you talking about?" Kiba shouted exasperated, pushing her roughly away from him.

"About the war that has been raging for years now!"

"What are you talking about? There is no war!

"Yes, there is!" she frowned, shaking her head stubbornly. "Rebels try to overthrow father so they can have the lands for themselves. Every Sunday, he tells me so!"

"What?" he shouted startling her and the pout fell off her lips. "The first rebellion happened two weeks ago!"

Hinata stood, blinking, her mouth torn between words she couldn't bring herself to say. Lies, dreams, the tower. She had thought falling off the tower meant to meet the princesses of her books and the princes of her dreams. She had thought she could explain to her father that she didn't need the tower to keep herself safe.

Until then, she had thought of the king as her father not as her gaoler.

Hinata ran.

Undecided, Kiba watched her fade in on the pathway in a swirl of black and red, vibrant among the leaves jolting briskly where she passed. He rubbed his eyes. Akamaru nudged his leg with his insistence, growling faintly.

"Merlin damn it! I can't believe you are making me do this, Akamaru. Hey! HEY! WAIT!"

Cursing under his breath, he followed her, pushing the branches out of his way. He huffed, Akamaru on his heels. The branches whipped back at him and he yelled her name. He smelled smoked turkey and ripped apples. Then, her. Her scent stilled and he panted heavily. Kiba emerged on a hill next to her. She was petrified, facing a town of quiet workers and vigorous farmers.

"It should be burned down," she whispered as he bent down, watching her through the drenched bangs falling in his eyes. "There should be destroyed towns and suffering... Where is it? Where is pain?"

Violently, she turned towards him, her lips quivering. He gulped, seeing pain sliding down her face in shimmering trails.

"I'm sorry," Kiba rasped, unable to tear his glance away from her.

The princess killed the wolf when she fell, he realized. It was two human arms who caught her.

-X-

Kiba Inuzuka crossed his arms over his chest, watching the princess through the window of the kitchen.

Hinata Hyuuga seemed to disappear in her vast cloak, ashen and broken, her small hands holding a steaming cup of tea. She had sat on the porch without complaining, shiver still breaking her body. It was as if the tower had fallen and crushed her beneath. Kiba wanted to curse himself for bringing her here, at the stale Inuzuka compound. She awoke the ghosts of his family by standing there, her pearl eyes holding their souls and her suffering.

'She has no right,' he clenched his fists, expecting his sister to do the same. Hana Inuzuka looked at him strangely.

"You find a Hyuuga and you bring her here... Is she a dishonoured woman?"

"What? No!"

"Is she pregnant with your child?"

"Are you nuts?" He hissed trying to keep his voice down, but he could feel the heat of the blush running up his neck.

Hana chuckled passing in front of him in her dancing gait. He wrinkled his nose, catching the fragrance that circled her neck and wrists; pine and myrtle. Narrowing his eyes, he sniffed again and the excitement was tightening her stomach, her happiness pouncing against her rosy cheeks.

"Where are you going?" He growled. "To that blue blood again?" He pinched his lips, ready to pounce to drag her back into the house.

"Unlike you I find happiness wherever I can," she said evenly, pulling a brown cloak over her slender shoulders.

"He's using you!"

"I'm not a dishonoured woman," the iciness of her voice froze him into place.

She spun her heels, leaving him mortified behind. When had they fallen out? He hadn't noticed them growing apart, until then.

From the beginning, he had expected people to think and act like him. He had expected the same rage, the unique grip of revenge and gore on their stomach. Like him. They were meant to be brothers those you had witnessed the Great Hunt of the year 1611. Instead, everyone was carrying on, turning away from the memories that cast them as different. They wanted to build a new world, but he wanted the old one back.

"Bring her back home, little brother, if she doesn't belong here," Hana snapped over her shoulder before leaving the kitchen.

He didn't want to bring her back home, not until his hand stop trembling and the ache on his heart lift.

Wolves so rarely shared their meal, after all.

Kiba laughed bitterly, approaching her with his muscles taunted. Hinata didn't jolt, she raised a clouded glance at him. Quietly, she pushed her skirts away for him to sit down next to her, but he didn't. He watched her coldly, filled of his sister's retreating steps and their scents meddling.

When he listened to her quietness, he heard the echo of her tears in her words. He heard the tower bending over a world that should have crushed her. Yet, she smiled softly pointing at the things she didn't understand, her mind inhabiting only fairytales and happy endings.

He wanted to at least crush her smile. He couldn't have his childhood or his parents back, but he would have her happiness, he would tear away her lips and disfigured her in a world of pain the way the Great Hunt did to his kind.

"They call me the Wolf."

"You do have pointy teeth," she smiled through her tears, setting the tea cup on the side.

She cupped her hands like he had seen noble ladies do at the capital. Kiba narrowed his eyes, snarling.

"It should scare you."

He sat on the back of his heels, his intense glare trapping her. Wolves ate sheep he chanted in his head, but she was different. She was the princess none of them had dared imagine during the Great Hunt. When fear was etched on their faces, they found an excuse not to fall in love in the notion that she couldn't exist. There was no saviour. Not with blood sneaking under their door and their parents dying.

"Why?" Hinata stammered.

"Because I could eat you."

'_Because I'm hungry for justice and you're not giving it to me._'

"Princesses don't die in fairytales," she muttered, thoughtfully, a smile barely curving her lips.

Hinata had known all along she wasn't one of those princesses.

Her hands clenched in one another. He watched her, the snarl gone from his face. If she had survived the truth of the tower crushing her bones, she could survive anything.

"I won't be a bother, for long," Hinata added quietly after a moment, raising her glance towards the sky. "I need to speak with father. I know nothing of the world but I believe I need to speak with him."

"I'll take you," he said in the same voice he had told her his name.

Even ten steps away from him, she was still crushing him beneath her weight.

-X-

_**So... I have a small problem with outlining. I always think scenes are going to take less space. It seems I will need to make a sixth chapter. I will be able to tell for sure by next chapter. ^_^'**_

_**Next chapter, there will be SaiIno and NejiTen, if everything goes according to plan. **_

_**Let me know what you think! ^_^**_

_**2/5**_


	3. The Hunter

_**To Guest (revealed to be Anjo-san): Thank you, dear! :D I will make it happen once this is finished. ^_^**_

_**Introduction to SaiIno 101.**_

-X-

**The Hunter**

_**by Clementive**_

-X-

The secret passage shuddered with the activity of the castle, rats nibbling at the stones. Nausea rose inside her, hanging, sticking to her lips as Ino Yamanaka made her way to the second floor. Her skirts danced around her legs, gathering the dust, her pants whistling to her ears.

The walls spoke of death sentences and nobles holding their breath. They spoke of war, a king killing his own kin.

Each spider drew the air out of her lungs, moisture sliding down the walls, slowing her gait. She caught hushed words of the Lost Princess making her way back to the palace and her heart hammered her ribcage. The legend was handed like a piece of gossip in the dimmed parlours of gushing ladies'. The whispers were rushed, piercing through the stillness of a castle that was the prison of nobles. They lived with the king and answered only to him.

She wished they would shake in fear at the mention of magical creatures still escaping King Hiashi's wrath in the way she had during the Great Hunt. She wished they knew enough of freedom for it to matter. It should have been their fight, not theirs. They shouldn't sigh, hope, their chest heaving and their shoulders relaxed. The more she yearned for revenge, the farther it flickered, unreachable, twisted disgustingly in the blood of her parents, striding along the burned Yamanaka domain.

When Ino reached the end of the staircase, she leaned towards the concealed door, probing the unguarded minds inside the room. There was no one but the rooms buzzed with lingering hissing magic.

The door didn't squeal in protest and Ino tumbled in the vast apartment, her steps echoing on the marble. Grimacing, she shook the hem of her dress, insects hissing on the fabric before falling onto the carpet. The gold and mahogany of the furniture reflected her shadow, each object gleaming in the descending darkness.

She didn't belong in the vastness of it, crushed by the enlarged portrait of her childhood friend and her husband on their wedding day.

Envy pounded her skull, her lips pursed in a sharp line. She wished for her own prince. It should have been hers. She should have been the one with the lacy dresses, the burgundy curtains dancing in the wind, the high chandelier and the rich elaborated painted walls that joined in the middle of the ceiling in an arch.

The enchantress' fingertips lingered on the elaborate fabric of the dress on the bed. She straightened her back, feeling Tenten Hyuuga's narrowed eyes on her. Her hand felt back at her side and she turned fully towards her. She wished she could grasp every parcel of rich embroidery and carried it back with her. She shook her head, her glamour hissing in bright rays around her torso. There was too little time.

"Ino?" Tenten furrowed her eyebrows, leaning on the door of her bedroom.

Her eyes drifted to the opened hidden door interrupting the hunt scene on the tapestry. Slowly, she closed the door, watching the enchantress warily. Ino stilled faintly smelling the black powder off her. Their eyes met hesitantly, the room wobbling with magic in a louder hiss.

"What are you doing here?" Tenten asked finally, her hands caressing her enlarged stomach.

"He's sending all the hunters after her. I can hold off one, two at the most," she rushed the words, her mind racing. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm an enchantress, not a warrior queen with an army. What is going on, Ten? There are _rumours._"

She didn't dare hope. Instead, she tapped her foot frantically, her hands falling onto her waist. She sniffed the air one more time, smelling the powder and fire meddling with a flowery perfume. She barely remembered the silk of her mother's skirts, the forest of their domain, the pride of bearing her name. Tenten Hyuuga had none of her regrets.

Hands firmly clasped in front of her stomach, Tenten inclined her head, licking her lips as she shrugged feebly.

"You shouldn't be here. We spoke about this."

Ino rolled her eyes, her cheeks flaming with the protests that found its way easily on her lips. She envied her easy unguarded gait amidst a richness that should have damned her like it did her. Ino glanced away form her enlarged stomach, laughing darkly to herself. Her magic leaked, angry and cold. She thought the same of Tenten Hyuuga, she shouldn't be here, in Hiashi's palace, protected and fed. She should be with them, struggling, hunted and dying.

"It seems the meaning of danger is completely lost on you. I'm sorry I can't order two cup of tea. Can't you just make two cups appear?"

Her crooked smile matched her nonchalant wave of the hand, cryptic and terrible. Ino remembered her father complaining about the same behaviour in Ibiki Morino; a man who thought pain only revealed the truth. There was never hint of it when they moved, father and daughter, smirking and too uncaring to take death seriously.

Her father had warned her; witch blood was bad blood.

"The hunters, Tenten," Ino snapped, cutting her off, her hands clenched at her side. "What am I going to do about them? Are you so drunk on your husband's wealth that you have forgotten what you really are?"

"Sit down, you are making me nauseous," she yawned, her voice drawling in the empty parlour. "Those kids have kicked me all night long and to make matters worse, they despise my favourite food. What kind of children turn down sweets?"

Ino froze, clenching her hands, jealousy gnawing at her patience. She hesitated, narrowing her eyes when Tenten patted the chair on her left. Felinely, she craned her neck, her eyes turning to cold silver, her smirk deepened the pimple at the corner of her mouth. Her magic built, boiling circling her hands that played with a weapon. In reflex, Ino threw her hands up, gasping. Her shield hung uselessly in the air as her brown stare remained flat and calm.

"You don't worry about the hunters, I will take care of them," Tenten seemed to muse aloud, the heat of her hand sharpening the weapon in her hand. She hummed to her herself, eyebrows furrowed as she began twisting it in the air. "Are you sure you don't want to sit down, Ino?"

'She's playing me,' Ino gritted her teeth. Slowly, she lowered her hands, fighting the turmoil of emotions assailing her mind. Tenten rolled her head back, sighing, watching her through thick eyelashes.

"So it is true." She said slowly, backing away from her.

The high windows barely contained the hush of nobles' dress, their hands flayed the air, hungry as hers had been of the games of seduction and gossip. It swallowed the silence and her surprise that sat between them, thickening. She remembered thinking of Tenten as mundane when they played at the Yamanaka domain as children until her father explained to her she was no longer welcomed there. She thought her hair was too thick, too dark, her eyes too sharp. She remembered the deadly aim and her small hands cupping weapons, melting them and sharpening them. She was made of fire, even then, unwavering and controlled, but dangerous nonetheless.

"Sai," her mouth twisted as Tenten stirred, still ignoring her. "Search for Sai. He's the one with the mandate to kill Princess Hinata."

The illusion she built on her appearance threatened to break. Blinking, she turned towards her and her even smile warmed her features. Flames licked the side of her hand, shaping a new dagger in her hand. The other one had fallen at her feet, embedded in the floor. She was still scared after all those years of what it meant to have survived the Great Hunt, what it meant to have been saved by someone who could torch her alive.

"I'm not saving Princess Hinata for you, witch."

The dagger whizzed at her left ear. Her blood drained from her face and Tenten's glance found hers, serious and cold, in the darkening room.

"And I'm not saving her for you, _enchantress,_" she spat, her voice devoid of her previous uncaring drawl. She raised to her feet, approaching her in a aerial gait. She stopped mere inches from her face, the heat irradiating from her, drying her mouth. "Just as I'm not doing what I'm doing for you or her. I'm doing this for me. For my family. Do you understand, Ino? We're all lost princesses here, but don't play the hero. You owe me your life, remember that. Now, Sai is definitely the one you need to protect Princess Hinata from. Neji and I will take care of the others."

They stared at one another, unsure of their friendship, their anger pulsating around them. There was no greatest pain to them then staring at one another across a battlefield while belonging to the same side.

King Hiashi made sure of it when he slaughtered the witches first and then, the enchanters.

"I'll find this Sai." She spun on her heels, dread clutching her guts.

"Ino," Tenten's voice stopped her before she could disappear in the dancing shadows of the hidden passage. "Even Neji never called me a 'what'. We used to be friends before I manifested and even when you refused to look at me, I saved you. Sakura and Sasuke died because I protected you," her voice hardened, amplifying, "so don't ever call me a 'what' again if you want to get out of here with a head on your shoulders."

Ino nodded sharply, not bothering to shut the hidden door her as she plunged back in the darkness of the hidden tunnels.

-X-

His feet moved on his own, used to the routine of the chase. Sai raised his head towards the sun, frowning. He had feel the hours pass by. Every instant hurried by and he couldn't grasp it.

He shook his head concentrating on the sounds of his prey. He didn't remember picking up his scent, but his body bent forward, avoiding branches.

Sai walked silently in the forest, ghostly, shadowing the steps ahead of him. His preys always died in a pool of colours soaking their bones, weighing them down. Sketching them revived them for the brief moment. He could catch their fall on paper, stretched their last breath until his brush was ready to let them go. Painting soothed him after the chase; the presence of colours and the absence of names. He only accepted Death in hues and saturation he could render. He dressed in black as not to disturb the vivid red, the tainted green, the falling blue. His brush would mix them on the thick paper he carried with him, but black was oblivion. Nothing. No one. Him.

Under his feet, a branch snapped. He blinked focusing on the nearby sound. Wobbly, he couldn't think how everything seemed to elope. Every thought strained to remain behind.

He let them go.

"_Say, child, would you kill your own brother, boy_?"

He became _Sai_ in the silence of his hunts, in the prowls he remembered from his brother's first bloody coughs. He had no other words, no other beginnings than the one he had drawn for himself. They meant for him to speak and hunt, he meant for himself to be named and survive.

He shook his head, a coldness brushing the image of his brother.

The birds chirped, echoing his raging breathing, the crushed leaves. He tensed, hearing the hint of laughter in the rising wind. He smelled the mud, freedom. Brown. Leaves clung to his cloak, screeching, breaking. Thoughts spun, the coldness invading his mind, resting on his tongue. The voice pressed closer as sweat dripped down his brows. He stopped, the top of the trees whirling as they did the day his brother died. The sky turned red, dying in the faintest sparks of the sun.

His heart clutched in his chest. He felt younger, weaker, as if he were chasing his brother in one of nightmares.

Sai clenched his teeth, the birds fading in strident cries when they sensed him approaching. Grey branches and blooming flowers swayed in the sunlight. The curves of the shades followed him. Alone. He blinked. His brother wasn't here, the soft sounds of his breathing had ceased, the coldness gone. He shivered. The inhabited greenery quivered and he snapped back to reality, pushing away his emotions. He slowly passed his bow up his head holding it in front of him. All weapons were the best shields against emotions, he had been taught to believe it, recite it whenever he was lost. Red. He crouched down behind a tree, frowning. He blinked, the shadow shrouded, stilled and died.

Pearl.

He had seen pearl orbs. Sai jumped up, breaking branches on his path, his fingers closing around an arrow. His mind raced, his feet thudding the ground. Her cloak unfolded around her lithe body, his heart beat hammering against his rib cage. When she looked over her shoulder, her eyes widened in terror. The seal on his tongue seared and his arrow rest against his bow. Then, she ran as his preys always did. The rhythm of the hunt came naturally to him, releasing the tension that had built up within him. The wind whipped his face, the surrounding trees grazing him. She erupted in a clearing, stumbling on branches lying around. She whelped, looking at him.

"Please..."

The chase was over.

Her gasps came quickly to her red lips, her cloak tangled around her body. Sai approached her slowly. His finger caressing the arrow. His mind was silent now. He watched her shiver through the sunlight falling in a pool around her fallen body. Cornered, she tossed herself against the trunk of a rotten tree, her eyes widening. He didn't flinch.

"I'm sorry, Your Highness. Your father wouldn't want you alive outside of your tower." Sai aimed, impassively letting the arrow go.

The arrow lodged itself in her throat, cutting her screams off. The second one slivered her heart.

Thickening silence compressed his chest. The forest shone with a body that wouldn't fall. His hand never reached for his sketch book. He coughed his mouth filing with the taste of metal and death. Her curls turned blond and he wanted to paint her, immortalizing her. Cold blue eyes pierced through him underneath the red cloak and he felt his own arrows embedded in his body. Pearls of blood rolled down the corner of his mouth.

Pain seared through his abdomen, his hands clumsily closing around the arrow.

"I guess that's why King Hiashi chose you," Ino said her lips curled upward, leaning back against the tree. "I thought the whole hunters' souls being sealed was a myth. Oh well, you're a fool all the same."

Her waist slimmed, her body detaching itself from the rotten trees and she seemed taller, fairer. The air around her quivered, the illusion breaking in sparks of purple. The voice finally echoed outside of his mind.

"If you can kill your own brother then you would have no problem killing a princess and I will have no problem killing you, hunter."

Sai fell to his knees, his brother emerging from behind her. He smiled, blood gushed in his mouth and his sight swirled.

"Purple," he whispered, his body sinking in a bed of dead branches and dry leaves.

Ino's cheeks flamed with frustration, her foot tentatively nudging his limp body. Unfocused, his onyx eyes followed her.

"Just great," she growled under her breath. "He couldn't even wait for the end of my speech. Disrespectful prick."

Impatiently, she pushed her locks back, the magic she had built up fading in jolts of blue light.

She joined her hands, slowing her breath. She gripped his soul so tightly he passed out his fake smile still intact on his lips. She touched his consciousness. She tamed the coldness spurting around his heart and she dove in. Descending slowly, Ino skittered his faintest thought while coughing, choking. She saw the years of the Great Hunt through his eyes, jolting every time she glanced at a familiar face. Her heart froze with his by the end of those years. His first human hunt began then.

When Ino opened her eyes, the night had fallen and she saw the world in new shades. She smelled his guilt and reached for his sketchbook. The images he drew still followed him.

"He didn't kill him," she whispered, her fingers massaging her aching scalp. "He didn't kill his brother."

She glanced at the pale skin, a crust of blood forming on his chest. She didn't know why it mattered. Why her heart faltered at the thought of sharing a similar burden as him, the enemy. She only knew she wouldn't kill him, now.

Had she known the feel of silk against her skin, she would have found him attractive painted in the same sadness that inhabited her. They were both survivors of the Great Hunt, left behind by those who mattered the most.

She sighed again, holding her legs against her chest as the air buzzed around him, green and sewing back his gaping adomen. Lightheaded, Ino leaned in the caress of the wind, watching the stars.

She thought of Tenten and Neji, while biting her lip; the hunchback and the witch.

Ino just wanted her own prince charming.

-X-

Hinata Hyuuga smelled of insecurity wrapped tightly her movements and soothing calmness.

He smelled and watched only her, the loneliness of the woods binding them to one another. He struggled, gasping at her steps and proximity.

It annoyed him because it refused to remain about her scent, it spread across her movements, her words, the way she ate, slept and smiled. Kiba Inuzuka cringed at the faintest whip of the wind, his nose was full of her and his ears, of her shuttering.

Her questions never ceased; she had to know about the creatures that watched them warily, hurrying back into the forest, the horses he bought, the coins, the sound of the birds, the rise of the sun and its setting. All the colours and shapes of the world she had seen from her tower didn't make sense on the ground. There were more than birds, clouds and stars hovering the world. The sky was full of restraints of her tower unlike the forest. Hinata sensed it on Kiba when he helped her on her saddle, on the dress of her horse lulled by its pants. Freedom. Hope.

Every one of his motion was hesitant when it came to approaching her, brushing past her. Yet, her innocence drained him; the way she pushed her locks with majesty and still childishly blushed and whelped at everything she didn't understand.

"I don't understand why there are villages and the capital. Why doesn't everyone live in one big city?"

Kiba straightened his back on his saddle, his hands gripping violently the bridles of his horse. The dying sun cast unsteady shadows across her features, her pearl orbs reflecting his uneasiness. 'Because they don't want us at the capital.' He had to hold back against everything she saw and heard. He didn't want her among nobles at the capital. He thought they would stain her with their vile ongoing wars, the gossips that would widen her eyes and crease her brows in concentration. She was a princess, he had to remind himself as she slowed her horse's pace to match its mount. Everything about her was unblemished, innocent in ways he couldn't understand. He looked up at the stars faintly shining in a welkin of darkening orange and exploding red. The muscles of his jaw worked tirelessly as he bit down that he knew nothing of harmony, no one did. Not anymore.

"Are you sure you want to go to the castle?" He hesitated, his own eyes darkening with the nocturnal instincts of the wolf inside him.

Distractedly, Kiba ran a tongue over his sharp canines. He didn't want to lose hope. He didn't want to be the one crushing it between his claws by leading her there.

"You don't like my father," Hinata said softly stopping her mount just as he had done.

The rustles of the leaves washed over them and they breathed in the strong scent of the mud. From the corner of her eyes, Kiba looked at her hungrily, searching for a hint of deception that would explain her calm expression, the small smile curving her lips. She didn't mind behind at his side and he was suddenly afraid of watching only her retreating back, her red cloak floating around her, marking her as unattainable.

"What if he is not the one you think he is." He avoided looking at her, focusing on what the wolf inside him saw in the flickers of the darkness. The animal was the only part of himself he could still hold for certain with her being this close to him.

"How do you mean?" She blinked rapidly, her hands toying nervously with her bridles.

He hated how he needed to choose his words carefully as to lull her into an illusion. She had a way to hold herself that made him want to lock her up in a tower, away from barbarian acts he had done and seen. He would build it in anyone's blood if it meant she wouldn't shed her own. He almost told her as much; he understood her father's impulse, but not the means.

"He put you in a tower and now..." He gestured towards the wilderness of the forest and how she contrasted with it all.

"Now, I'm free," she finished for him, her chin quivering as she thrusted it forward. "He will have no choice but to hear me."

Hinata had read of resolved conflicts, she had seen disgraced princesses claimed back what were theirs. She didn't believe in herself but she believed in her title, in the fairytales that couldn't let it down the way her father had done. She thought it was enough.

Kiba chuckled darkly, throwing his head back. The dark welkin didn't gleam, thick clouds masking it. He was mistaken, there was no hope. Hope was naïve, faked in a voice that wished to echo with strength and authority.

"There's no such thing as freedom," he sneered, sharply pushing his mount forward.

Yelping, Hinata caught his bridles, tumbling slight on the side. He stilled, her hair cascading across his left side, tickling his skin. Jasmine raised off her skin and they stared at one another, as surprised by her impulse.

"What are-"

"He locked me in a tower and refused to answer any of my questions for years," she stammered, her words fleeting in her mouth and he blinked unsettled by the strength of her small hands holding his horse back and her unflinching gaze. "You freed me, Kiba, so you..." she licked her lips, her blush spreading across her porcelain cheeks, "so you should answer me. He never did and that means you should. What do you think is waiting for me at the capital?"

"Let it go, Princess, you're acting like a child!" He shouted and again, he wished she were.

It would make it easier for him if she threw tantrums like her sister, if she asked for lies instead of truths. Kiba pursued his lips, his canines pressing onto them. He quelled a shrilling howl as she held on, her eyes widened in fear. Her horse whined, stamping the ground and breaking the uneasy silence between them.

"Please," she breathed out, nibbling at her below lip.

"You are going to take one step in the capital and your father is going to kill you if he hadn't done so before," he replied flatly his gaze boring into hers. "It's as simple as that."

Hinata let go of the bridles, her breath caught at the back of her throat. She shivered despite the warmth of the wind. She opened her mouth again but he straightened his back abruptly making her jolt. His nostrils flared, his thick shoulders tensed.

"We're surrounded," he hissed, slapping her horse forward before she could react.

Her horse stumped, its speed blurring her vision. Her blood raced through her veins, her mouth first arrow flew between them and she let go a piercing scream, her mount neighing. The bridles slipped out of her hands, the trees still racing around her. She couldn't tell left from right, Kiba gone from her sight. Her horse's muscles worked beneath her and she heard the panic in its pants, the wilderness of the chase in the darkness of the forest. For each of her pant, there was a howl slicing the air.

She screamed his name.

The bridles whipped the air at her horse's hooves and she risked a glance back. She saw him in the pallid moonlight straightening his back, fur covering his body, his canine enlarged in his mouth gleaming ominously with saliva and blood.

Her cloak snapped in the wind, veiling him. She heard the arrows, her shrills pounding violently her chest. Unbalanced on her saddle, she tried to reach for the bridles, some control, a halt. Anything that didn't echo as animalistic hisses and shot arrows.

Pain shot on her side, a branch snapping beneath her weight.

The branches lashed and she screamed, closing her eyes when blurry broken leaves and creeping roots circled her. Her cloak caught on the nearby trees. Hinata choked on her tears, the pain clawing at her neck. It pushed her down, the mud beating the breath out of her, lashing at her sides until she coughed, two hands righting her.

"Seize him," a familiar deep voice ordered ringing. "What are you waiting for?"

Kiba's animalistic howls deepened, the sound of metal spitting blood drawing shivers out of her. She panted, disoriented as she looked up in the eyes of her cousin and soldiers. Her protests turned to whines, her blood cold as she was helped up the ground. Her torn cloak unfurled around her shoulders, bright rags at her feet.

"Don't worry, Princess Hinata. You're safe now. Your kidnapper will be judged before the king for treason."

Her ears buzzed and she gasped the howls ceasing, the leaves still spinning around her, the mud clinging to her knees.

"What? But he didn't-" She tried softly, but she was pushed away from the scene behind her.

Hinata kept being carried out of reach, protected from the sound of gore and death. Her pleading small hands found Neji's arms but he glared down at her. She heard the chains clasped shut around him, the howls still resonating inside her.

"There must be sacrifices, Princess Hinata." he whispered in her ear, his iron grip closing on her elbow, shaking her. "He needs to die if you want to live."

She panted, stilled, her nervous hands covering her face when the silence rolled heavy around them. Hot tears stung. She couldn't even bear to look back or forward. She thought of her tower amidst the clouds, reaching higher than the limits of the ground and sky.

"Was that what I was, cousin? A sacrifice?" Hinata muttered, choking on her tears. Her question rolled, furred, on her tongue, lacking the conviction of the princess she aspired to be.

Her question rolled furred on her tongue, lacking the conviction of a princess. All along, she had known she wasn't one the princess painted in harmony, the one resolving conflicts. Even Kiba hadn't believed in her. Even Neji didn't let her scream and cry her heart out.

The tower still followed her, the moonlight deepening the paleness of her face, the sky swallowing her whole.

'_This isn't a fairytale.'_

He had warned her.

'_There is no such thing as freedom.'_

He had been right.

-X-

_**There will be 6 chapters instead of 5, my dears. :) Please take the time to review: It does motivate me to update faster.**_

_**3/6**_


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