"Seriously, Castiel, this quite unbecoming of someone of our stature."
"Learn to stay quiet, why don't you. No one cares about what you have to say on that matter."
"Just stand there and be still. You want to make a good impression on these alphas, right?"
"Don't worry about that. We'll make sure he stays pure for you."
Castiel looked back in forth between his parents. He would believe they were staying these things to him. He didn't want an alpha. He wanted to go to school. He wanted to go outside and play in the garden. Of course, his parents didn't listen to him, no matter how much he begged and tried to run away. It just made them angrier.
"How much are you willing to part with him for?" the faceless alpha said. He had long learned to look them in the eye.
"We'll be fine with a couple hundred thousand. Have to make up for what I waste he ended up being to us."
"I can easily do that," the alpha said as he continued looking over.
Castiel felt tears running down his face as he whimpered. Why were his parents trying to sell him? Wasn't he good? Only when he felt someone touch his cheek did he scream out. "Don't touch me! Leave me alone!"
He expected to hear the harsh screaming of his parents and a slap across his face. Instead, he felt himself being shaken.
"Cas!" A voice called out. It sounded familiar. "Baby, I need you to wake up. It's just a dream. Just wake up for me."
Castiel slowly blinked his eyes open, recognizing the room he was in. It wasn't this parent's living room. It was the bedroom that he shared with Dean, in his house, with Sam down the hall probably still sleeping. He came back to himself, feeling a thumb softly stroking his cheek. Turning to the heat he felt on his side, he looked into the tired yet alert emerald eyes.
"It wasn't real," he muttered to Dean, hiding into the alpha's chest. "It was just a dream."
"What were you dreaming about?" Dean asked.
"My parents... They were displaying me to..."
Castiel didn't finish before he felt a growl rumbling through Dean's chest that he was trying to suppress. Instead of scaring him like it would have when he was younger, he felt comforted and safe. He let out a soft purr as he curled further into Dean's chest.
"They won't ever touch you again," Dean growled out. Cas only purred in response.
Both were settling back down when they heard a soft knocking on the door.
"Dean? Cas?" Sam's soft voice came through the door.
"Yeah, buddy?" Dean answered.
He didn't immediately get a response. Instead, the door slowly opened, and Sam's face was seen peeping through the door. "I heard yelling."
"Sorry for waking you, Sam," Castiel immediately apologizing.
"Why were you yelling?" the pup asked as he came further into the room.
"I had a nightmare," Cas answered honestly.
"Were you being attacked by monsters?"
"I was."
"Okay," Sam nodded as he walked further into the room and climbed his way onto the bed, squishing his way in between Dean and Cas and getting under the covers. "Now that I'm here, the monsters can't get you anymore."
"Thank you, Sam. I don't know what I would do without you."
"Night-night," Sam muttered as he quickly went back to sleep.
Dean chuckled at his little brother, instantly going back to sleep before letting out a yawn now that the atmosphere had calmed down. "I think he has the right idea. Think you can go back to sleep?"
Cas wrapped his arms around the pup as he went to lay back down. "Hold me," he said softly.
"Of course," Dean said as he wrapped his arms around both of them.
Castiel scooted further into his arms while his breathing slowly deepened. Dean stayed awake until he was sure that his omega had gone to sleep once again.
It was much later when Dean woke up to sunlight streaming directly into his eyes and a small hand resting directly in his face. He squinted and slowly pulled away from the other two occupants in the bed, trying not to make them up. He looked at the clock and noticed that the other two wouldn't be up for a couple of hours—plenty of time for him to do some research on his own with no one around.
He pulled on an old T-shirt before making his way downstairs. He looked out into the driveway, noticing that the permanent fixture of Lucifer's car was no longer parked close to the end of the driveway. Maybe Cas finally convinced him to go home and get some sleep.
Dean walked to the living room and pulled up his laptop that he left charging overnight. He pulled up a few tabs he saved for later and began reading them.
Naomi and Zachariah Novak seen at the gala along with their oldest son, Michael Novak. The two donated several million to an orphanage in Utah, a part of a long string of philanthropic donations across the state.
Naomi and Zachariah Novak were unable to have children. Instead, they decided to give homes to children who needed them. On top of donating money to increase housing of homeless pups, they adopted four of their own.
"We felt it was our duty to give homes to those we felt could use the leg up," Naomi told us. "These four children just spoke to us, and we had to house them with us."
"We couldn't have children of our own, so we decided that this was the best way to live our God-given purpose, the raise the next generation well," Zachariah added. "It was unfortunate we could not take them all."
Four children or just one?
As Naomi and Zachariah Novak donate more money to orphanage after orphanage, we really need to think about where that money is coming from. It is my belief, dear reader, that the money is not truly come from a place of wanting to help. I believe that it is a scam to cover up whatever shady dealings are happening under the table.
Case in point, I turn to their child, Micheal Novak, who has worked beside his parents in the last few years. He says that he wants to follow in his parents' footsteps saying that he wants to help every child he can. The Novaks have repeatedly said how much they appreciate their son being a part of the business and truly get the meaning of being family. He's everything they ever wanted in a son.
That's great, except for the fact that the Novaks have four sons, as mentioned in articles published years ago. (Here are a selection of just a few of those articles) According to older interviews, the couple adopted four children by the names of Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel, and Castiel. The latter three children barely get a mention on the family's biographic page past the fact they were, in fact, adopted. It was through our internet scouring that we believe we know what the other three children do.
We believe that Lucifer is a police detective with the Topeka city police, Gabriel owns a chain of candy stores, and Castiel is a school teacher in the city of Lawrence, Kansas. No mention of them anywhere. When we reached out to the Novaks' publicist, "no comment" was the only thing they had to say to us. When we talked to Micheal directly, he only said that they didn't want to have anything to do with the family.
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I find that quite suspicious. How do three children of people that we practically kiss the asses of not want "anything to do with the family." Seems to me that life is not as glitzy and glamorous as one couple would like it to appear. Before accepting their money, we should seriously question what is going on behind the scenes. And that is only one of the many concerns that I have concerning these two. I will describe my further concerns in future pieces.
Novaks donate $100,000 to Senator Worthington after mentioning his support for a bill that would limit the rights of unmated omegas.
Last week, as Senator Worthington is once again running for re-election in the state of Utah, local residents seem to support him. To well-known business people and philanthropists in the area, Naomi and Zachariah Novak supported the proposed bill by backing the re-election campaign with $100,000. As written now, the bill will decrease the rights of omegas in getting jobs, going to school, and getting in relationships to the will of the alpha-in-charge. This bill will also limit who is considered to qualify to be in charge, limiting to parents and guardians in most cases. Those from foster care will have freedoms assigned to them by the state when the child is not adopted.
This bill has upset many omegaist around the country. It has been the brunt of many campaigns to make Senator Worthington resign from office for his sexist views on omegas. Utah, a very conservative state, has many supporters of the bill across the state and from many socio-economic backgrounds. Time will tell if this bill goes through this time. The opposition has promised to go to the Supreme Court with their case if the bill goes through. This will be very telling in where the stance is on omega rights nationwide.
The list just kept going on and on the more Dean looked into it. The two were everywhere. Donating their money to whatever cause seemed to fit their fancy. Other than a few snuff pieces here and there that were critical of the Novak parents, everything seemed on the up-and-up. A few things could have looked better, but it seemed that was how squeaky clean they wanted it to be. Not too much bad or good that would have thrown up alarms of anyone really looking into them. Had he not already known some about them, he would have shrugged it off. Instead, it seemed too fishy to Dean.
Dean was going to open one more search result when he heard the shuffling of feet and mumbling voices coming down the hall. He looked toward the clock and saw that several hours had passed by while he was going down the rabbit hole of research.
"Where do you think your brother went?" he heard Cas softly ask Sam.
"I don't know."
"Well, he's not upstairs."
"So, he must be downstairs."
Dean watched as Sam's head ducked around the corner almost immediately and give Dean a wide grin, yelling "I found him" before sprinting into his brother's arms.
"You guys were looking for me?" Dean asked Sam as the pup pressed his face into his brother's shoulders. While the pup wasn't paying attention, Dean made sure to lower the screen so no one could see what was on it.
"It was cold," Cas simply said as he walked farther in with a confused look on his face, pointedly asking Dean what was going on.
Dean motioned toward Sam before going back to the conversation. "I wasn't expecting to be gone this long. I would have come back sooner."
"We tried to stay, but Sam got hungry.
"Didn't you just eat?" Dean jokingly asked his brother.
"That was last night. It is this morning now."
"If you say so..." Dean said with a disbelieving tone in his voice before picking the pup up and dragging him toward the kitchen.
"I want fruit."
"I think I can work with that," he responded, tickling Sam's tummy on the way and avoiding Sam's slaps to get him to stop.
Dean sat him down at the table and brought out a bowl of already cut-out fruit before displacing some into a new bowl and put it in front of Sam's usual spot.
"Wait!" he yelled. "I need to wash my hands," he said before scurrying out of the room.
A few seconds later, Cas walked in, looking intently at Dean's laptop.
"You were looking into my parents," Cas stated.
"Figure I should know what we're dealing with."
"Did you find out anything?"
"I would say people love and hate your parents. It's pretty equal on both sides."
"They do inspire strong emotions," Cas said blankly.
"We'll figure something out and get them out of our lives."
"The sooner, the better..."
Cas was going to say more, but Sam had returned and was sitting at the table. He opened his mouth to turn the conversation to a more child-friendly one when the doorbell rang, startling the trio.
"I swear she shows up right we start making plans," Dean muttered as he shook his head and walked to the door.
"Thank her for at least ringing the bell this time instead of walking in," Cas replied, amused.
"Looks like someone learned to ring a bell since she was last here," Dean called through the door before unlocking it and opening it wide, expecting Amara and company on the other side.
"Excuse me?" an unfamiliar female voice replied. "I do not know what you are talking about."
Dean felt his hackles rise as he looked toward the woman, no, people, standing in front of him. While the voice was unfamiliar, the faces sure weren't. He'd been looking at them all morning.
"You should leave," Dean demanded.
"Now, now, son," the man talked next. "We have much to discuss."
"I have nothing to say to you."
"But we have a lot to say to you. At the very least, just here the offer we have for you."
"I don't care about any offer. I want you off my property and to never show your faces here again."
"I'm sure we can come up with some kind of agreement," Naomi butted in.
"Sure. You leave and never return, and I don't hunt you down. Deal?"
"I'm sure we can come up with something better than that," Zachariah stated.
"Dean?" he heard coming from behind him. "What's going on?"
Before Dean could stop him, Cas walked around the corner and directly into his parent's line of sight.
"Hello, sweetheart," Naomi stated. "It's so nice to see you once again."
"W-w-what are you d-doing here?"
"We're here to see you, of course. We didn't really get to say much to each other the other day, so we decided to come here and talk."
Toward the end of the sentence, Naomi moved to walk in, but Dean blocked her entry. "I told you to leave."
"Oh, don't be like that. I'm sure we would be more comfortable speaking inside."
"You really don't know how to listen, do you, lady?"
Behind him, Dean could hear Cas scurry away and moved to push the two of them farther out of the door before walking through and closing the door behind him.
"Oh, I understand," Zachariah said with a swarmy voice. "This really is a conversation that should be between alphas—no need to let the little omega get uppity. I'm sure you know how they are when they get like that.
"What do you want?" Dean grounded.
"We would like to take our son home," Naomi slowly answered. "I think we have been quite lenient, letting him out and see the world and get an education. But now, it's time to stop the nonsense and actually come back to the real world."
"That must be some mighty good drugs you're smoking if you think that I'm letting him leave with you."
"Now, son," Zachariah said. "It's not as if you've completed your mating. I'm sure that you would like to continue looking around. You're young and have many years ahead of you. I know that you are taking care of a pup, but you can simply find someone else to look after it."
"There's no one else, and there is never going to be anyone else," Dean growled at the two. They seemed to be humoring him.
"I'm sure that you say that now," Naomi said, pulling a slip of paper out of her pocket and handing it to him. "Maybe this will change your mind?"
He grabbed the paper and realized that it was a check. Dean didn't count the number of zeros on it before tearing it into small pieces and stuffing the bits in his pocket. "Leave before I have you arrested for trespassing."
"I see you need more time to think about this," Zachariah with a mock understanding voice. "We'll leave for now. I'm sure that you will be able to..."
He was cut off by Naomi tightly grasping his arm while looking off to the side. She looked spooked by something. Dean glanced in the direction she was looking at and didn't see anything, so he shrugged it off.
"Leave," Dean growled with finality.
"We'll go for now," Naomi readily agreed before dragging her husband away from the door.
Before they were even halfway across the porch, Dean quickly went inside and locked the door behind him before leaning against it with a deep sigh. It wasn't until a few moments of breathing did he realize that he didn't fully catch their scent. There was something there, but he couldn't quite grasp what it was.
Finally, letting the rage go, Dean was immediately attacked by the scent of his omega in distress. He jogged into the kitchen and didn't immediately see Cas and Sam. Listening to some stifles, he found the two hiding behind the island with Sam's head hidden into the Cas's chest.
"It's okay," Dean softly told the two. "They're gone now."
He pulled them both into his arms and stayed there for a while. It was a while before he heard frantic knocking on the door. Dean carefully got up and went to the door, looking out of the window this time, seeing Lucifer scouting around.
Pulling the door open, Lucifer immediately answered.
"Cassie called me saying our parents were here. I looked around some trying to find a trace of them, but they're good, I'm sure you've noticed. I'm hoping that I can trace whatever they used on your lawn to trace something back to them."
"My lawn..." Dean started with confusion.
"Yeah, it looks like the grass suddenly died or something," Lucifer answered. "It's bizarre, and I've never seen something like it before. I took a sample, so maybe I can get something from the crime lab."
Dean walked back outside instead of the immaculate lawn he saw before seeing black dead spots littering the grounds.
"I don't know what's it's trying to say," Lucifer said, walking back toward him, "but they did leave a message."
Looking back over the dead spots, Dean realized that they weren't random, as if something was half-hazardly thrown around. The clear, distinct shape of a wolf's paw was etched into the ground.