Chapter Text
She hadn't lied—about ten minutes later, Laia did come out, and Dean stood up from the bench, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
She was underdressed for a hunt, in his opinion—just a pair of black denim shorts, bare legs, sandals on her feet, a simple tank top.
"At least take a jacket," he muttered.
"I'm good. Let's go."
He reached for her, meaning to pull her in for a quick kiss on the forehead, but she dodged and walked faster, leaving him behind.
Dean sighed and followed, the weight settling back into his chest. Something told him this hunt wasn't going to go easy. A simple family outing, a sweet moment of bonding with his children, passing on his knowledge, his skill—it seemed he was the only one who still saw it that way. For the others, it was becoming a chore. An obligation.
Rowan still liked hunting together, he was fairly sure. Or, actually, he'd never really asked, and she was too nice to tell him a truth she knew would upset him.
When they reached the pavilion—the walk there had been silent—everyone was already waiting, seated at one of the long tables. Cas had his oldest, Johanna, in his lap. She was too mature-looking now, the only one of the girls with the shape of a grown woman, and seeing her cling to her dad like that always made Dean smile and shake his head in amusement. She was tall, too, almost taller than her aging father, with honey-blonde hair long and lush, nearly reaching the small of her back, framing soft curves and ivory skin. Not a girl anymore. A strong, fully developed, fertile woman. And a beautiful one.
She still acted childish sometimes—especially with her younger sister, an eighteen-year-old Shiloh, who was timid by contrast but just as sweet. Shiloh was sitting by their dad, too. The two of them were always in his orbit, like planets circling a star. Cut the pull, and they'd spin off into the dark.
Cas called them his angels. His blessings. And they were, in a way, with their big blue eyes and plain, but pretty faces, always wearing that expression of expectancy—like they were waiting to be praised for their goodness.
Rowan stood by the table, sharpening her knife.
"Hey!" Dean shouted and waved as they walked closer. Ro's focused look shifted to something sour at the sight of her sister—she'd clearly been hoping Laia wouldn't be joining them today—but Dean chose to ignore it. He had a birthday girl to greet before he had to deal with whatever bullshit he felt brewing.
He approached Jo and offered her his hand.
"Got something for you," he murmured, soft, as Cas guided her off his lap with an approving chuckle.
"Oh, you're going to be thrilled," Cas nodded when she glanced back at him, her expression caught between intrigue and apprehension. It was Dean giving the gift, after all. With him, it could just as easily be a new jacket as a grenade launcher.
Dean led her a little farther from the pavilion, over to the small woodshed attached to the lodge—its weathered planks half-hidden by the sprawling branches of an old apple tree.
"Close your eyes for a sec," he said, reaching inside the shed and lifting out her gift, smirking at her nervous giggles. "Okay. Open."
He watched her eyes widen, her mouth falling open as she took in the gift. It was a bow—yew wood, the upper limb etched with her initials in clean, burned strokes. Liam, the village tinker, had outdone himself. The grip was wrapped in dark leather, the string already taut, humming faintly when she ran her thumb across it.
"Dean," she breathed. "You didn't."
"I did." He shrugged, fighting a grin. "Happy birthday, honey."
"Oh my God." She took it from his hands with reverence. Her eyes welled when she saw her initials. With his last name.
J.W.
"You like it, baby?" Dean chuckled, reaching up to brush a tear gently from her cheek.
"You're the best." She grinned through watery eyes. "I almost forgot how this feels."
"Well, good thing we're hunting today." He reached out, moving the waterfall of her hair back from her face, his fingertips grazing her skin with unobtrusive care as she examined the gift, fully immersed—as if she were already picturing it in her hands, in the woods, in motion. Since the day her old bow broke, she'd felt out of place on their hunts. She'd had it since she was a girl—the first one Cas had ever commissioned for her, back when she'd confessed she feared gunshots. Losing it, to age and accident, had been like losing a beloved pet. "Oh, and there are new arrows, too," he added, stepping back to retrieve a leather tube. He pulled one free and held it out for her to see—dark fletching, tips honed to a vicious point. "How’s that?"
She reached out and pressed the pad of her index finger against the tip. Blood welled instantly. She beamed and licked the wound clean. "Perfect."
Slowly, Johanna lowered the gift to the grass at her feet. To do something she'd never dared to do before. She held her breath and leaned in, and the kiss she gave him was not the kind a girl gives the man who raised her. It was the kind she'd been saving for the man she planned to have tonight.
"Jo," Dean murmured, a little breathless. He cupped her face gently, but firmly—in case she was planning another. "You're still my daughter."
"Not for long," she breathed. She didn't know what to do with her hands. She tucked them behind her back before she got bold enough to embrace him the way she desperately wanted to—to press herself fully against those muscles, to feel him solid against her front.
"Are you still sure about this? No one's pressuring you, you know. Twenty-two is still so young."
"I want this." She'd told him a hundred times, ever since she'd first approached him with the subject. Johanna wanted to be a mother. She wanted to contribute to the expansion of the bloodline, as she herself often put it. So when she came of age and found no one in the village suitable, Dean and her father had come to an agreement: Dean would mate her. He hadn't been thrilled about it, of course, and he'd hoped—secretly—that she'd eventually find some boy attractive enough to get Dean out of her head. But for the past six months, she'd been nagging him about it almost every day. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not. Until Dean broke. He agreed to do it on her twenty-second birthday.
Tonight.
"You still have time to have a kid, Jo." Dean pulled her in for a chaste kiss on the forehead. "To have as many as you want. With someone else."
"It's not about that." The words came out too sharp, too bold. She bit her lip, not meaning to overstep. "It's just… You know it's not just about that, Dean."
Dean sighed. He did know. But he'd been taking her cute little crush on him as something she'd grow out of. Someday. Now it was getting too real, too fast.
"I want yours."
That—said aloud, the way she said it, her piercing blue eyes intense as her father's, locked on his green ones without flinching—made something in Dean's stomach drop. Maybe it was the last shreds of his decency.
"You want my…" He barely whispered it, his hand slipping from her cheek to the back of her neck. He realized, suddenly, that they were standing closer than they'd been a moment ago. Much closer. "My what?"
"Your children." She whispered back. "I want to bear your children inside me. Always wanted to."
Dean swallowed, thick and hard.
"There's one more thing…" she said quietly, and Dean braced himself for whatever she was about to say.
"Yeah?" He rasped.
"I've been thinking about…" She paused, choosing her words carefully. She knew what she was about to ask was a lot. "About how… how I wanted this to happen. How I wanted us to do it."
Dean cleared his throat. "And?"
"I think I want it the old way."
He froze.
"Do you mean…"
"Yes."
Was she serious? This was something they hadn't practiced in over a decade—a thing so distant now it seemed like a relic from another world. Some of the younger villagers were too young even to remember that their parents used to do it regularly, during one of the darkest stretches, just to feel they weren't alone in their fear. But today it would come across as almost… wild.
"Jo." Dean breathed her name, his hand tightening on the back of her neck. "Are you sure you know what you're asking for?"
"I know it's a lot," she murmured, lifting her hands from behind her back and laying them over his—over the hands still cradling her face. Her thumbs found his pulse points. "But I've always wanted to experience it. Especially for… you know. Conceiving. I think it's truly important."
Dean's throat tightened. He'd never thought he'd meet someone who shared this understanding. This feeling for tradition. Cas didn't always see things the way Dean did, especially when it came to their customs—the very rituals that had carried them all the way from dying to thriving.
But it wasn't Cas who kept Reina's grimoire under his pillow, just in case. It wasn't Cas who understood the cycles of the moon better than he understood his own fading body. It wasn't Cas who, every Dark Moon, went out to their mini farm and picked a pup—a newborn goat, a lamb, whatever had come that time—and carried it to the edge of the village, where the fields stretched out so far and so empty that it felt like living on some strange, deserted island. A place still attached to the continent but too remote for any living soul to stumble across. It wasn't Cas who cut the pup's throat just so it would die faster and buried it while it still breathed, so their blessed—or cursed—land could consume the offering and grant them another month of peace. Another month of being hidden from any eyes that weren't human.
Cas often dismissed it. Dean wasn't even sure Cas believed in Reina's magic, or whether he'd always thought of her as nothing more than a nutcase.
And now this beautiful woman was standing before him, telling him she wanted to conceive his child the old way.
"Okay…" he said finally, trying to sound calm, steady—the way he always tried to sound for his girls—despite the wave of emotion rising all the way up his throat. "But it still requires preparation. You can't expect me to have everything ready by tonight."
Jo nodded, a small smile tugging at her lips.
"But I'll try." The words came out faster than he'd intended. "I'll talk to Cas. Maybe he can handle things while we're out hunting."
When he and Jo rejoined the others on the path to the woods—still holding hands, Jo carrying her new bow and quiver, the other girls with their rifles—Dean caught Laia's heavy glance.
"You still decided to go like that, kid?" He gestured at her summer picnic outfit. "Didn't change into jeans and boots or something?"
Silence in response. Laia turned away from him and the girls and walked faster, leaving them all a few paces behind—something she often did to establish the line between herself and her family. No one said anything. They were used to it.
Dean caught Rowan making a face at Shiloh. The younger girl giggled, muffling it with her hand so the witch wouldn't hear.
When they were deep enough into the woods and Dean could smell it in the air—that potent promise, nature's gift ready to be harvested—he signaled them to get ready.
"This way," Rowan said, spotting a fresh trail of hoofprints leading north. She glanced at Laia. "Want to join me?"
Laia looked at her as if she'd been offered a cup of poison.
"Why? Planning to push me off a cliff somewhere?"
"Exactly, bitch." Rowan chuckled and pulled Laia in, wrapping a strong arm around her neck. The witch cursed quietly and freed herself from Rowan's grip—but she followed.
"Be careful!" Dean shouted at their backs. A small smile tugged at his mouth.
Maybe the hunt wasn't going to go as badly as he'd imagined. Maybe his girls had enough maturity to put their stupid bickering aside sometimes. He hoped so.
"You're with me, girls." He took Shiloh's arm as they trailed a few steps behind the sisters.
He couldn't help noticing the little glances from Jo and tried not to respond, even when his body wanted to.
"Want to take a shot today, Shiloh?" He glanced down at the youngest girl tucked under his arm. She looked pale, the way she always did when they were too deep into the woods—hunting or not. This wasn't her place of power. That much was clear.
She shrugged.
"Hey. You okay, kid?" Dean ruffled her blonde hair playfully. "It's just another hunt. And you're with me, remember?"
She nodded, but his words didn't seem to bring much comfort.
(to be continued)