It was dark in the woods, far darker than she had expected when she had run from the sanctuary of her apartment an hour ago in an effort to escape the frightening person that she had found waiting for her to come home from school. The scary man in the white and blood red wolf mask, with the shocking gravity defying silver hair, the intense mis matched eyes, one dark blue and the other an eerie almost glowing red with little marks around the pupil.

She ran blindly through the bushes, desperately trying to to ditch him, her legs working much too hard to gain ground. Ground that his longer legs ate up too easily. She looked over her shoulder and saw the vaigue dark outline of his body as he tracked her through the bushes, and nearly paid for her mistake when she tripped over a large rotting tree branch and fell. She put her hands out to stop her fall and hit the ground with a tooth rattling thud. She yelped when she felt some jagged rocks cut into her palms and lay there on the ground shaking and whimpering for a moment before remembering that she was being chased.

She looked up and let out a frightened squeak when she saw the scary man standing over her. When had he caught up? She wondered in fear as she tracked his movements in the inky darkness and quickly rolled herself away from him when he bent down and reached out to grab her. She flipped herself and started running again and could swear that she heard a soft aggrieved sigh from the strange man before he started to follow her again while singing.

What big eyes you have.

The kind of eyes that drive wolves mad.

So just to see that you don't get chased,

I think I ought to walk with you a ways-

He paused in mid step at least fifty feet behind her and cocked his head to the left and stood there listening to the sounds of the woods. She stumbled and fell again, drawing his attention back to her, his eyes flickering towards the place where she had fallen, she could feel the weight of his stare boring into her skull and tried to suppress the whimper threatening to escape her throat. Gods why was she the only kid in the village that was ever chased by crazy people? What great sin had she committed to deserve being hunted down like a dog?

"Are you done running now?" He called out in a velvety soft tone of voice. She gritted her teeth and blinked back tears of frustration as he closed in on her again. She felt rather than seen him stop right in front of her and reach for her again, his gloved fingers grazing her sweaty face, making her twitch as his fingers shifted through her hair, loosening her braid as he bent down just a bit further and reached up with his free hand and pulled off his mask.

This girl-

She was utterly terrified of him, not surprising since the last time she had seen him had been when she had been an infant, and he had been on guard duty for the first five months of her life, before he had gone out of the village on an extended mission. That had been almost ten years ago to the day. And now that he was finally back he had been surprised to learn that the infant child that he had played parent too for several months, had grown up to be the fine, frightened looking child before him now.

"Did you hurt you're hands badly?" He asked gently as he took one of her small wrists in his free hand and examined it in the darkness as she looked up at him with a puzzled expression on her face. He ignored the painful feeling that he got from that look and brushed his thumb across a thin blood red scratch on the hell of her hand. She twitched and hissed as she tried to pull her hand free of his grasp, but he refused to let go for a moment, feeling the need to be totally sure that the wounds were superficial.

After all, this girl was the few females that would soon enter into his precious pack and become a member of his family. Though she was still too young to understand or realise what being a member of his pack would mean for her. Still, he had gone to see her tonight to make her an offer and he had no intentions of letting her refuse.

He examined her other hand then let her go, though he kept a light grip on her hair for obvious reasons. Because if he let her go completely she would run from him again and he needed to leave his mark on her with as little damage to her as possible. She sobbed and brought her knees to her chest and looked at him with those wide frightened eyes as he reached up and pulled down the black half mask that he always wore under his Anbu mask and then put one hand on one of her legs and pushed her leg out of the way and laid her onto her back on the ground. The girl trembled and bit her bottom lip and whimpered.

He wanted to assure her that he was'nt going to hurt her-but even he knew that it would technically be a lie, marking another person was painful, though the pain lasted only a short time before dying down into a dull ache, but once it was done he would'nt have to worry about anyone trying to hurt her any more because the others in his pack would help him watch and take care of her. But he knew that no matter what he said or did at this point, she would always expect the worse.

He leaned over her and ran his finger tips along her jugular, she twitched and let him tip her head back and bare her throat to him. He used the tip of his tongue to lick a trail along the small area of skin that he was planning to mark.

Naru's eyes got impossibly wider and she let out an ear splitting scream that took him by surprise since he yelped loudly and quickly had to choose between his hearing and letting the child escape. He chose to not let her escape and gritted his teeth until she ran out of air and then growled in irritation and slapped a hand over her mouth before she could get another breath and shook his head in an effort to stop the ringing. Dear god, it felt like his ears were bleeding! "You're definitely your father's daughter." He muttered darkly, there had only been one person in his life that he had ever had sneak up on him and scream in his ear like this just for fun, and that was Naru's father.

The late Fourth Hokage.

Naru tried to pry his hand off of her mouth and let out several soft pathetic sounding squeaky sobs and he sighed. Trying to reason with her wouldn't help him any in her current state of mind, she was simply too frightened of him to be very logical, yet he wished he could reason with her, and maybe calm her down a bit. He understood that he was frightening her; but couldn't she at least give him the benefit of the doubt?

She scratched at his arm and struggled in an effort to free herself and he pushed back the feelings of guilt that he felt for frightening her so much and struck quickly (he was starting to think that he was killing her since her struggles were getting weaker and weaker) His sharp fang like teeth piercing the skin of her throat as he forced some of his chakra into her small body then sat back and removed his hand from her mouth and let his chakra seep into her muscles and tissues.

Naru screamed as her body spasmed and an intense burning sensation rippled down her spine. What- What had he done to her? Had he used some sort of poison on her? She wondered in a panic as it suddenly became a bit difficult to breath and she turned over onto her side facing away from him and gripped the grass in her small hands and tried to drag herself away from him.

He reached out and absent mindedly grasped her ankle and dragged her back towards him, if he lost her now, he would have difficulty finding her again. At least until his chakra had completely circulated through her body and soaked in to her blood and established a bond that he could use to track her from now on. So that he could keep an eye on her and make sure that she was always safe.

It took the better part of an hour, but finally after sitting there for so long watching Naru writhe in pain and listening to her cry, he could finally feel the small slivers of heat that he was familiar with when establishing a bond with another person and Naru finally slipped into unconsciousness. Reaching out he rubbed his finger tips across her forehead, gently wiping away some of the sweat before he gently scooped the girl up in his arms and cuddled her against his chest.

"I'm sorry that I hurt you Naru. But someday you'll understand why it was necessary." He said gently as he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. The girl didn't respond, not that he expected her too after how much pain she had been in but he had still said the words because he felt he had too, even if she couldn't hear him.

He'd meant every single word. He was sorry for hurting her. But it was necessary.

Hopefully one day she would understand that and forgive him.

(*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************)

Well, there was the intro.

The next chapter starts after a time skip of six years.

Meaning that the stroy will actually pick up several months after the end of the great shinobi war. Tsunade has stepped down, and Kakashi was made Hokage again after rejoining the Anbu ranks.

Sakura is a med nin working at the hospital and Naru has taken Iruka's place at the mission desk.