A/N: Hey Everyone! Sorry it has taken me so long to get this up, exams and huge summative projects have been wreaking havoc with my writing time. I just want to say thanks for reading and please tell me what you're thinking,
Thanks,
RooftopsAndInvitations

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I caught a cab back to the motel, the entire ride I just stared out the window, watching the streetlights fly by in a blur of light, with a mix of emotions battling for my attention. I was mad, madder than I had expected myself to me. Where did Dean get off being pissed at me? I was only trying to protect him, and the first thing he does is kick me out.

I focused entirely on the anger churning in my stomach instead of the regret and sadness that I had been doing my very best to shove into the back of my mind.

The cab pulled up to the motel, I passed the cab driver the hefty fee that had been blinking at me from the meter in the front seat, and walked towards the room.

I unlocked the door and slid into the dark room, it seemed like it had been weeks since I had been there, not mere hours. I was packing up my things when I pulled out a pair of Dean's boxers and one of his T-shirts from my duffle bag. I was suddenly hit with the fact that Dean had essentially broken up with me, he didn't care what I did or where I went; it was over between us.

I gave myself a mental shake, now was not the time for me to have an emotional break, there were more things than I could count that needed to be done. I routed around the room for a phone book. After finding one I flipped through it until I found the section listing all the motels and hotels in the area. I picked one, finished packing up my bag and pulled out my cell phone and dialed Fay's number,

"Hello?" Came her groggy voice, I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was only 7p.m, not late enough for her to have been in bed,

"Sorry, did I wake you?"
She recognized my voice immediately,

"Of course not Kaiden, well, yes, but I was just grabbing a nap while the baby was sleeping. So what's up?"

"Nothing's changed since I talked to you last. I just need to get a hold of George and I don't have his cell number."

She rattled off his number and we talked only for another minute or two before saying our goodbyes.

I punched in the number that Fay had given me and listened to the phone ring until George's voicemail picked up,

"Hey George, its Kaiden, I was just calling to tell you that I'm not going to be at the motel I told you about earlier I'm going to be at the Pine Ridge motel, it's 243 Webber Road. Call me when you're close and I'll give you the room number. Ok, thanks, bye."

I flipped my phone shut and slid it back into my pocket. After grabbing my duffle bag I headed out the door of the room. I locked the door and slid my key under the tiny gap between the wood and the ground.

The Pine Ridge was only a few miles away from where I was standing so I decided to walk instead of calling another cab, besides I was really low on cash and I didn't liked using fake credit cards all that much. They left too much chance for someone to figure out what was going on and call me on it, and jail time was not something I was interested in.

It took me just over an hour to get to my destination, I probably could have made it there faster, but I was carrying my duffle bag and that wasn't exactly the lightest thing in the world. I checked in at the front desk and took the key that the bored lady in her mid forties handed to me.

It was strange being in a room with only one bed, I was so used to there being in a room with two queen beds and the constant conversation between the two brothers that the silence was deafening.

I flopped down on the king sized bed that was in the middle of the wall furthest from the door. I lay there just staring up at the ceiling for many moments before my cell phone started playing an annoyingly perky jingle from my pocket.

I pulled out it of my jeans and flipped it open,

"Hello?"

"Hey Kaiden, it's me, George."

"Oh, hey George, how far out are you?" I asked

"I've been making pretty good time I think I'll be there in about four or five hours. If that will be too late I can always get a room and we can talk in the morning."

"No." I said quickly, I took a deep breath, "I mean I just want to get to work on fixing this as fast as possible. If you need to get some sleep then by all means get a room. But I'm fine with staying up. I'm in room 13."

"Okay, I'll see you in a couple hours."

"Bye."

I tossed my phone on the bed beside me and rolled over to lay on my stomach. I hadn't even turned on the lamp in the room yet so I just closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep
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I woke what seemed to be only minutes later to knocking on my door, I groggily made my way to the door and opened it a crack.

George was standing in front of me looking exhausted but he still smiled when I opened the door all the way,

"Kaiden, how have you been?" His black hair was slightly longer than it had been the last time I saw him, and he looked like laundry day was coming up fast, his jeans were ripped and his T-shirt and sweater looking a little worse for wear. He was taller than I remembered, probably 6'3, and looked like he could bench-press me with ease.

I shrugged, "I've been better, yourself?"

"I'm doing okay. Exhausted, the baby is keeping us up all night ever night. I'm hoping this is a phase she'll come out of quickly."
I laughed,

"Yea, I've heard they tend to do that."

"Oh," he said as he walked into the room and put his duffle bag down on the floor, "I'm supposed to give you subtle hints that you should get married and have kids. So this is me being sneaky, okay?"

"Oh yea," I said with a snort, "you're every-day espionage sneaky. Can you explain to her that just because I'm not married and raising a herd of children doesn't mean I'm going to be a maiden for the rest of my days?"

"Fay knows that. Besides, she's got hope for you and Dean."

At the mention of Dean's name my stomach clenched and my knees wobbled just the slightest bit. I had been doing my very best not to think about him, so when George brought him up so casually I had a strong urge to tell him everything that had happened. I realized how ridiculous this would be because I barely knew the man and we had MUCH more important things to worry about over my love life.

He gave me a questioning look and I realized I had been standing there, staring at him with my mouth open.

I quickly snapped it shut and attempted to compose myself,

"So, first things first, we need to find out what this ugly son of a bitch is."

George continued to look at me in the same manner for a few more seconds before speaking,
"You're right. Do you have any ideas? Were there any markings or obvious features?"

I shrugged, "Nothing that really stood out to me, other than its massive claws that is."

He chuckled,

"Yea, I would've noticed it's claws when they were inches deep in my shoulder."

"No kidding."

We talked for a few more minutes before he pulled out his laptop and a stack of ancient looking books that weighed a ton,

"What?" I asked, "Were they all out of the travel size?" He laughed and then began leafing through the pages.

We got into serious work around 12:30am and there was no sign of anything that might even resemble what had been causing the trouble in Bozeman until five hours later,
"This is it!" I exclaimed, jabbing my finger at a weathered picture in one of George's books.

He came from the chair tucked beside the small table to where I was sitting on the bed and looked at the book over my shoulder,

"A Donacaigh? Those things are vicious sons of bitches."

"I know George. Hence the stitches."

He didn't reply to my comment, he had taken the book from where it had been sitting on my lap and began reading it,

"The only way to kill it is to decapitate it with a silver sword."

I made a disgusted face,
"Why can it never be something like 'ask it nicely to leave'? Why does everything have to be so damned difficult?"

"If it wasn't hard then there would be millions of hunters and then all the bad guys would be dead. We'd be out of a job."

"Sometimes I wish that I was out of a job." I mumbled to myself,

"What was that?" he had really good hearing,

"Nothing. Where can we get this sword? It's not like they're sold in every shop around town."

He finished reading the page with all the information on the Donacaigh and shut the book with a heavy thud,

"I saw a medieval times accessory store on my way into town, there might be one there."

"Who would want to go to a medieval times store?" I asked in complete confusion,

He shrugged,

"Everyone has a hobby."

"Let's go then." I was walking to the door when he spoke again,
"Kaiden, do you know what time it is?"

I glanced over at the clock and saw it wasn't yet six in the morning. No shops would be open at this time,

"It's Sunday so the shops won't be open 'till later, we can head over there around eleven. Now, when was the last time you had a good night's sleep?"

This man was completely and totally Fay's match. He had the ability to notice other people's subtle, and not so subtle, emotions and matched them to a reason. It was a little unnerving.

"Uh," I said, racking my brain for a time when I had slept soundly and for a reasonable amount of time, "I have no clue. But you can relate to that, right?"

"Yea, I can. But the difference is that I have a baby who cries all night. What's your excuse?"

"How about gut-wrenching, terrifying visions and nightmares?"

He nodded his head,
"Sounds like a good excuse to me."

George managed to convince me that nothing world altering would happen if I grabbed a couple hours of sleep. And he promised that if anything did happen that he would absolutely wake me.

I laid down on the bed and my eyes were sliding shut when he spoke again,

"Kaiden?" he asked,

"Hmm?"

"I was wondering, why hasn't Dean called or something? I figured him to be a pretty protective kind of guy."

"I – uh. I told him not to call, I said I would talk to him if we found something. I can talk to him later. He's busy with Sam."

George didn't say anything else, he just turned back to the book and I closed my eyes and drifted into what I hoped would be a dreamless sleep.
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I woke later on to strong hands shaking me,
"Cut it out Dean." I mumbled into my pillow. I didn't feel well rested, my body was screaming at me for more sleep.

The hands kept shaking me no matter how many times I told them to stop it out,

"Kaiden, it's me, George. You need to wake up."

My eyes flew open and realization dawned, it wasn't Dean who was shaking me, it was George. Dean wasn't even talking to me anymore.

I put a strained smile on my face and sat up on the bed, rubbing my eyes and brushing my hair away from my face,

"Time to go get that sword?" I asked

He shook his head,

"Nah, I got it myself. You were sound asleep and you looked so exhausted, I figured it was best to just let you sleep. I was right though, you slept all day, it's nine p.m."

"Oh," I said uncomfortably, "uh, thanks."

There was something about his being so considerate that weirded me out. I managed to open up to Dean but we were dating. WERE dating, past tense, I had to remind myself of that. Anyways, I figured that opening up to Dean was easier because I knew him, having George notice my weaknesses struck me as being dangerous, I didn't really know him.

"No problem, so I was thinking we should head out. I mean, if you're feeling up to it."

I stood up from the bed and grabbed my coat from where it had been tossed on the carpet beside the bed, I didn't need to put on my shoes because I had slept in them, I was ready to go.

George lead me out to his truck, it was a big black Dodge that stood so far off the ground I was doubting that I would be able to get in,

"What's with the monster truck?" I asked, referring to its height

"What?" he asked in confusion before he figured it out, "Oh, I do a lot of back country driving and stuff, it's better for rough terrain. I can give you a boost if you want."

There was no way I was going to let him give me a leg up into the truck so I struggled on my own, climbing and clawing my way into the cab of the vehicle. I buckled my seatbelt and laid my head back on the seat, winded from the effort of getting in; being short definitely hindered my ability to do some things in the world of hunting,

"So, how far are we from where the Donacaigh attacked you guys?" George asked.

I shrugged,
"Not far, less than thirty minutes I think."

He nodded and we drove most of the way in silence, I was off in my own little world and his gaze was locked on the pavement in front of the car. When I was done thinking my own random thoughts, I mentally came back into the truck and realized I hadn't asked anything about this creature,
"So what's the deal with this Donacaigh thing?" I inquired

"They're pretty nasty, they attack people and then there is some kind of way that they attach themselves to the person. There are many different theories, the most popular is that there is some kind of poison on the end of their claws. Anyways, they put the person into some kind of coma where they are seeing their worst fears. Or at least that's the rumor. And so these people are in really high stress, the Donacaigh feeds off their terror and that's how it gets stronger. It beat your asses probably because it's strong right now since it's been feeding off so many people."

I nodded as I took all the information in, that was horrible, Sam was seeing his worst nightmares and I was pretty much sitting in the throne of blame, fabulous.
"So why now? Why haven't there been more attacks in the past?"

"There have been some. But that particular trail just re-opened, it was closed for a long time because there were so many deaths, from the Donacaigh, but no one knew that, so they figured it would be safe for them to re-open it."

"Wonderful." I said

He laughed, and I realized that I didn't really know anything about him,
"So tell me about yourself, you're my best friend's husband, yet I know nothing about you."

He shrugged,
"There's not much to tell. I was a Navy SEAL for five years. I was planning on staying with that career until my father was killed. I went back to see my mom and I looked into the investigation a bit, even though I wasn't really supposed to. There was something weird about it, he was completely torn apart, and, well, it turned out to be a Werewolf. After that I was so angry I got all the information I needed and killed every supernatural thing I could get my hands on. I was really angry for a long time, then I met Fay." His mouth which had been set in a straight line turned up slightly at the edges just talking about his wife, "She really helped me through my rage, and you know the rest."

"Wow." Was all I could say for a few minutes before another question popped into my head, "How old are you?"

"Thirty-five in three weeks."

I laughed,
"You're twelve years older than me, but it doesn't feel like there's that big of an age gap."

"Really?" he said with a slight chuckle, "It feels like I'm babysitting."

"Hey!" I said indignantly

We talked about ourselves for the rest of the drive, swapping stories until we pulled into the parking lot at the head of the trails and got out of his truck.

We went around to the back of the vehicle and he pulled a long sword out of the bed,

"Would it really know the difference if it wasn't silver? Honestly, is that what's going to make or break killing this thing?"

He laughed,

"Apparently the information in that book was a little off, the sword needed to be pure silver and blessed with this special charm. It was complicated and time consuming. I wanted to just shoot the damned thing, instead of using this stupid sword."

We walked in silence down the trail, the beams of our flashlights cutting through the darkness that was so complete in the forest. Without the lights, the dark would have come down on us like a black curtain.

Eventually we reached the cave and I marveled that I had managed to drag both Dean and Sam such a distance even with an injured shoulder.

We stepped inside the cave and I immediately felt apprehensive, both of the small space and in the fear of what happened the last time I had been there.

George motioned for me to stand back, he recognized that my shoulder still wasn't up to par and was trying to keep me safe, or as safe as was possible. I was standing in silence for many moments, with my flashlight off, waiting for something to happen, when a massive creature jumped out of the shadows towards him. It knocked him backwards into the hard stone wall of the cave, sending his flashlight rolling,

"Kaiden!" he yelled, "I need light!"

I quickly flipped on the flashlight and pointed it in his direction. I shined the beam into the creature's eyes, it stumbled backwards away from George, clearly it was sensitive to light. George lunged towards the Donacaigh, and they both went sprawling, the creature slashed its claws across George's face.

I pulled my pistol from where it was tucked into the wait band of my jeans, nestled safely against my lower back, and I fired two shots into the creature, being careful not to kill my best friend's husband in the process. With the creature distracted, George immediately swung the sword and sliced cleanly through the Donacaigh's head, sending it rolling across the cave floor.

The two of us stood staring at each other for many moments before he spoke,

"I could really go for some bacon and eggs." He said out of the blue

I laughed. I was really beginning to like George.

Dragging the sword behind us, we walked back out of the cave, first we would check on Sam, and then we would get food
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