Lupo Mutaret (9/?)
The night was, predictably, long.
Despite Dean’s big brother instincts telling him to leave his brother to his sleep, he knew that doing so would probably just piss the teenager off - there was no easier way to annoy Sam than to imply (intentionally or not) that he wasn’t as good a hunter as his father or brother. Moreover, the hunter in him was too well trained to think that staying up on watch all night with a potentially dangerous shifter in the basement was even remotely safe.
Instead, he and his brother took three-hour shifts; enough time for them to have a decent rest and be rejuvenated enough to take watch once more when they woke up. Predictably, Sam was pretty nervous about having another shifter in the house, but it wasn’t until the first rays of morning light shone through the window that Dean got him to admit why.
“I can sense him,” The younger boy admitted, keeping his head angled away from Dean’s as if ashamed. The scratches on his face looked black in the dim light, and Dean felt anger stir deep in his gut at the sight of them. “Like, the wolf in my brain feels the need to remind me every two seconds that there’s a strange wolf in the basement. Not just that, but an alpha wolf. It’s like… even him just being there is a threat.”
"Come on, Sammy,” Dean nudged gently, settling onto the sofa next to his brother. “You’ve got to know by now that I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
If anything, Sam seemed more embarrassed at the statement, a dark blush rising in his cheeks.
“That’s not what I meant,” He explained haltingly, rubbing his hands together nervously. “It’s not that him being here is threatening me, it’s… you know how wolf packs work, right? They have alphas, and betas, and then pack wolves. Omegas. Like a hierarchy. Well, my wolf knows that dad’s the alpha and you’re the beta, but he also knows that you’re not a wolf - I guess it’s like a pet dog seeing its owner as its alpha.”
Dean nodded, not entirely sure where his brother was taking this, but willing to let him continue nonetheless. If it was making him uncomfortable to admit it, than it was better that Dean didn’t say anything until he was done - the last thing Dean wanted was to interrupt him half-way and have him get too embarrassed to continue.
“Okay, so logically the wolf - me, I guess - knows that the two of you can take care of yourselves without my interference, but…”
“He wants to protect us.” Dean muttered, finally understanding what his little brother was trying to protect us. “So your wolf thinks the shifter downstairs is a threat to me and dad?”
Sam nodded gratefully. “In order to take over a pack, wolves either kill off the old alpha or run them out of the pack. My wolf just doesn’t want that to happen, that’s all.”
“Alright,” Dean asked curiously. “So if the shifter got out? Tried to take over from dad… or me?”
“Then my wolf - I - would stop it.” Sam answered seriously. “At all costs. I’d protect my alphas... my pack.”
It was strange, trying to reconcile the wolf and human parts of his brother, but Dean found that this new revelation, at least, he could make a little sense of. It made him more than a little uncomfortable to know that at least part of Sam thought he needed to be protected, but he understood that it wasn’t because any part of him thought that Dean was helpless - just that he was worth protecting. Like Sam had said, both parts of his brother knew that Dean and his father were more than capable of taking care of themselves, but instinct still dictated that he not let anything bad happen to them.
Weirdly, Dean could relate to that. He’d always felt that it was his job to look after his brother and, to some extent, his father - it was nice to hear that there was at least one other member of his family that felt the same. Dean had never been sure of his father’s priorities (even though he claimed that both of his boys were more important than the hunt), and he’d had more than a few moments where he’d doubted Sam’s.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s weird.”
Sam’s voice sounded miserable, holding a vulnerable edge to it that made Dean think of a two-year old Sammy who’d scraped his knee, and Dean belatedly realised that he’d remained silent for far too long.
“Hey, hey, no. It’s alright. ” He reassured, nudging the younger boy’s knee with his own. “It’s just… I get it, alright? You think I don’t feel the same about you and dad? Sammy, the things I’d do for the two of you… that scares me sometimes.”
Sam blinked.
“Really?” He asked quietly.
Dean nodded resolutely, and Sam offered him a small smile.
“So you just… tied him up in the basement and left him there?” Bobby asked, clearly incredulous. “Without even using silver?”
“Yes.” Dean agreed, keeping his shoulders high despite the fact that, honestly, he hadn’t much liked the plan himself. “Sam said that leaving him down there in silver cuffs would be like torture. I figured that I’m not in much of a position to disagree with that, am I? It’s not like I have first-hand knowledge on the subject.”
Across the room, leaning against one of Bobby’s kitchen counters, Sam rubbed his fingers subconsciously, and Dean saw at least a little of the tension slip a little from the older hunter’s shoulders at the sight.
“He’s a shifter.” John said stiffly. “What does it matter? He’s a monster.”
Sam made an aborted little choking-like noise, and when Dean turned it was to see his back straightening, head held high as he turned to his father.
“I’m a shifter, too. Does that make me a monster?” His eyes met John’s squarely, refusing to budge. John looked startled, quickly attempting to backtrack.
“Of course not, Sam. But these shifters are obviously a lot less… civilised than you are. I mean, they broke into Bobby’s home and attacked you. Look at you.”
Sam shrugged. “I kind of understand it. It’s the same as a normal wolf moving in on another pack’s territory - they have to defend it. I mean, Bobby - have you found anything that might even suggest that they’ve been killing humans?”
“Of course not.” Bobby snapped. “I’d have hunted them if I’d found anything.”
“Exactly,” Sam nodded. “So maybe they’re not monsters. Maybe they’re just trying to ward off another animal - maybe they thought that I was here to hunt humans. I don’t think we need to kill him… and we certainly don’t need to truss him up in silver and torture him whilst we decide what to do. You can’t even being to how much that stuff hurts… It’s like being stabbed with a red-hot knife, over and over in the same place. All I was doing was putting bullets in the guns - I can’t imagine having that wrapped around your wrists for any length of time.”
“You can’t be serious.” John snapped. “He attacked you! He tried to kill you.”
“And we killed two of his pack mates!” Sam snapped right back. “That’s more than enough punishment, believe me!”
“And if he comes after you?” John said sharply. “Or one of us, as revenge? How about Dean?”
“Then I’ll take care of it.” Sam’s tone was even, steady, but his eyes were dark with anger and determination. It was times like these that Dean wished that his father and brother could see just how alike they were. “Then I’ll kill him knowing that he deserved it.”
“You can’t protect him out of a misplaced sense of loyalty,” John sighed. “He’s not like you, Sam. He’s dangerous. He’s a killer.”
“So are you!” Sam shouted, fists in tight balls by his side. “We all are - even me! Killing things is what we do, dad - it’s our lives, so don’t you stand there and tell me that he deserves to die for it. This isn’t loyalty, it’s being humane, and it’s refusing to be cruel. There’s a difference, and if you can’t see it then I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
Shocked silence followed, heavy and still. Dean felt like he was trying to breathe underwater, like all of the air had been sucked out of the room in the wake of his family’s anger. He hated watching them fight like this; knowing, distantly, that one day one of them was going to push too hard and everything he’d worked for would come crashing down around his ears.
“Let the shifter go, John.” Bobby cut in quietly, observing the two of them cautiously. “The kid’s right. If he’d been killing humans, I’d have noticed - we have no proof that he’s done anything worse than what we do everyday.”
John didn’t answer, his gaze still locked on his youngest son, and Sam’s shoulders began to slump inwards. The fire leeched from his eyes, leaving behind an earnest expression.
“Please. Believe me, dad. He suffered enough when we killed the other two… pack is everything to a shifter. It’s more than being family, or being friends. Watching them die? To him, we couldn’t have done anything worse.”
There was something in the way he said it, something about his defeated posture that struck Dean - he looked like a little kid again, lost and afraid. Clearly, the kid knew what he was talking about. He might only have been a shifter for a matter of weeks, but in their line of work that was long enough to worry about someone you loved dying… if pack really meant that much to a shifter, Sam would know.
Clearly, John recognised that, too.
“If he comes after you again,” He said softly. “If he goes after any human, there’ll be no more second chances. Just a silver bullet to the heart and another dead body under the junkers out back. You understand?”
Sam smiled, relief evident in the very line of his shoulders. “Yes, sir.”
Sam wanted to be the one to let the shifter go, to talk to him before releasing him. The very idea had every big brother instinct in Dean screaming protests, barely reassured by the knowledge that himself, Bobby and John would be no further than a few steps away - guns trained on the shifter the entire time. Sam insisted, and in light of that look on his face in the kitchen, Dean begrudgingly relented.
By the time that they made their way down to the panic room, the shifter had (predictably, because there was a reason that they were usually restrained in silver) found his way free of the ropes. Surprisingly, however, he didn’t make to attack when they headed inside - his eyes remained focused on Sam, but they seemed less vicious than the night before.
“How are you feeling?” Sam asked softly, empathy in his voice, and Dean could see his father shift uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye.
“You tell me, pup.” The stranger snapped. “How do you think I’m feeling?”
“Beyond crappy.” Sam snorted, a wry almost bitter sound. “Probably a little murderous.”
“That about sums it up.”The shifter acknowledged. “Now why don’t you do us both a favour? Stop playing nice, spilling all of this emotional shit like you care, and just kill me already.”
Sam sighed. “I’m not going to kill you. We’re going to let you go.”
“Why would you do that?”
Dean had expected surprise, perhaps gratitude. If anything the shifter seemed amused by this news.
“I know what you’re thinking - that you’ll come back and kill us. Get your revenge.” Sam shrugged casually, even as Dean’s eyes widened. “But see, from what little I saw inside your head, you seem like a pretty smart guy. Do the maths here - we’re hunters, and there’s four of us. On the off chance that you kill all four of us, do you really think that more aren’t gonna come and check out what happened? Hunt you down? Because they will, and when they do, it won’t be pretty.”
Dean winced a little at the mention of Sam being inside the shifter’s head, watching his father’s head snap to his youngest son and recalling - moments too late - that they might have glossed over that little part of their earlier rehashing of the night’s events.
“So here’s my suggestion,” Sam said calmly, slowly pulling his knife out of his jeans pocket. “Either I use this knife to cut the ropes and let you go, and you head on home and don’t bother us again, or you come back in a few days and my dad over there digs you a nice spacious grave under one of the old junkers out back.”
There was silence in the panic room for a few moments, and then the shifter grinned.
“What’s your name, pup?”
“Sam.”
“You know, Sam. You’ve got balls.” The shifter’s voice was almost approving Sam, as cool as ever, raised an eyebrow and tilted his head towards the knife in his hand, spinning it effortlessly over his fingers to catch in his hands again. Dean couldn’t resist a smirk at the slightly panicked look on the shifter’s face at the ease of the movement. “I think if you cut the ropes, we’ll have ourselves a deal.”
Sam grinned, studiously ignoring it when John sighed, and slipped into place to slice the ropes. John’s finger tightened on his trigger, and Dean couldn’t resist the urge to shift closer, but the shifter raised his hands slowly in the air.
“Look, I never thought I’d say this to someone who’d killed two members of my pack, but I can understand why you did what you did, and you showed me a mercy where most others wouldn’t have… especially hunters.” The shifter said carefully, eyes locked on Sam. “Shifters repay their debts, so if you’re ever in need… you can call on me.”
Sam’s eyes widened, and John’s scowl deepened.
“We can take care of ourselves, just get gone already.”
The shifter nodded, edging past the three elder hunters and heading straight for the door.
“Wait!” Sam’s voice stopped the shifter in his tracks and he turned slowly, cocking his head in a strangely animalistic gesture of curiosity. “What’s your name?”
The shifter grinned, darting for the door, his voice drifting down the steps behind him in a faint echo of his reply.
“Donovan,” Sam mused. “He seemed almost… nice.”
John rolled his eyes, nodding towards the stairs. “Bobby, make sure that the son of a bitch has really left. I don’t much fancy being murdered in my sleep tonight.”
I must have re-written this chapter at least six times and could not get it right, so here you have the best of six crappy attempts to introduce Donovan. He'll be fairly important later ;) More action (and better writing) coming soon! Chapter art to be added at a later date since my laptop is currently out of commission and it's all saved on there >.<