AN: One more short chapter tonight instead of the two more I promised because my dad came over and I hadn't seen him in forever. And he's my bestest buddy. (No, seriously, he's the best girl dad in the history of ever.)

I'll get the next one out tomorrow for sure. So much angst! And Lena, the jerk/bitch moment is for you because I didn't have one in Hanging On!

Through a combination of luck and judicious ducking, Dean was the last person grabbed and "swum" up to the surface. There, he was grateful that everyone had been brought to the same place. He twisted free of his hairy elevator and quickly evaluated the situation. Ten, no eleven gwyllgi surrounded them in a loose circle. Dean didn't see any that could be the alpha, which Bobby said would be noticeably larger and possibly lighter in color.

"Now!" he yelled, tossing the next grenade at the largest concentration of gwyllgis and covering his ears. The noise was even worse despite the open air, but the gwyllgis with their sensitive hearing had it much worse than the humans. Dean, Leslie, and the sheriff – Greg – ran at the worst affected, trying to create both a distraction and a hole through which the others could begin to escape. One good arm or not, Dean slashed a throat and stabbed another in the abdomen before they'd regained their feet.

Then it was chaos. The grenade raised smoke and dirt, and in the dark, you couldn't see anyone until they were almost on top of you. Dean hoped it was helping the people escape. An absurdly long, furry arm suddenly appeared in front of him, and twisted out of the way, but took shallow cuts across the same injured arm. Pissed, hurt, and wishing he had a better weapon, buried his knife in its chest, and when it fell onto all fours, kicked it in the jaw hard enough to jar his whole body and knock the gwyllgi to the ground.

Matt ran past, Kelly in his arms and a few splatters of blood on his face. A gwyllgi gave chase, so Dean jumped in the way. Its weight bore him to the ground, but he recovered first and stabbed it twice before having to dodge claws that scraped his side, but barely hard enough to draw blood.

The air was beginning to clear, and there were still way too many humans in the area, and way too many gwyllgi still on their feet. Dean yelled a warning and threw his last grenade at four monsters that stood in close proximity to each other.

Dean was knocked to his knees by an impact he didn't hear coming because damn those grenades were loud. But the attacker didn't follow up, and Dean sensed the change in atmosphere. He didn't need to see or hear to know what had changed. Sam was there and had his back.

Sam shoved a machete – his machete – into Dean's hand and pulled him to his feet. Through the hazy air, they looked at each other for a mere second, but they communicated more than most people could have imagined. Neither was satisfied with the other's well-being, but the fight was still very much ongoing, and nobody could afford to be sidelined. So they turned back.

Unlike the gwyllgis, the Winchesters knew how to fight as a team. Dean tripped one, and Sam hamstrung it, giving Dean the opening he needed to behead it. Then Sam pushed Dean out of the way of a leaping gwyllgi, cutting its flank as it went by. When it spun on Sam, Dean stabbed it in the side, sending it running for safety, bleeding heavily. And on it went.

Finally there was a pause as the gwyllgi seemed to regroup. "I think I know how to trap them again, but I have to go back to the edge of the forest," Sam announced right in Dean's ear, knowing the latter's hearing wasn't back to normal yet.

"Go! We got this."

Sam hesitated, but the only ones left in sight that were moving were half a dozen gwyllgis – that weren't attacking, just watching – Greg, Leslie, a cop whose name Dean couldn't remember, and the Winchesters.

Sam didn't want to leave them. He really, really didn't. But he knew they had to close the trap again, or the gwyllgis would find a way out. Hating it, he grabbed Dean's jacket. "I'll be back as soon as I can. No dying on me, huh, jerk?"

"You either, bitch."

Shaking off his worry and the injuries that were vying for his attention, Sam ran back the way he'd come. He only stopped to drop off the shotgun. There were human bodies among the monsters, and it was time for this to end. It wouldn't be pleasant; lack of time hadn't been the only reason he didn't tell Dean what he planned to do. But it had to be done, and that's all there was to it. He didn't look back.

So Sam wasn't there when the ground exploded hard enough to send nearly everyone to their knees and 12 feet of pissed off alpha burst into view.