A knock woke me up, I meant to say yeah but I barked instead. I'd forgotten I was wearing fur, not skin. Awkward.

Sam's more than mildly confused voice came through the door, "Dean? Coyote?"

Shit.

The door opened and Sam peeked in. His mouth moved once or twice before he actually got any words out. "Um, okay. Not asking."

"We didn't.."

He closed his eyes and put his hand out to stop me, "Really, really don't want to know. Really."

Coyote was laughing inside my head, probably Sam's too.

"What's up? What time is it?"

His eyes opened back up, "It's six in the morning, Cas found a decent looking hunt for them to go on. It's in Iowa. Oliver's been up for a few hours, since you're not going he's tracking down a flight. They can get what they need there since it's just a ghost hunt or if Oliver gets a charter they can take gear and save some time."

"All right, we'll get dressed and join the party."

Now that he was over the shock of seeing wolves on a bed instead of people he gave us a more inquisitive look, "You guys all right?"

"Yes," Coyote answered, "I had to see the change, see this form. That's why the mirror is leaning against the wall. Dean changed to prove a point. We just didn't feel like changing back before we went to bed."

"So, you're not going to four legs full time or anything?"

"No." We both said.

"Thumbs are too useful to do that," I added. "Don't feel like lapping up my beer."

Sam decided to give up at that point, "All right, sure, great. I'm going back now." He muttered something else to himself as he turned away and shut the door behind him.

"What? It's true."

Coyote just gave me a wolfy smile, jumped off the bed and went into the bathroom. I heard her panting and whimpering as she shifted back, then the shower turned on. I decided to join her so I hopped out of bed, got back on two legs, stepped into the shower and gave her a long hug. She was going to be gone for a few days, which was going to suck but it had to happen. Oddly enough everything that had happened the day before had made me feel more confident that I wouldn't snap or go dark somehow again. I'd hunted, been killed, again, been brought back and got stuck with another jacked up situation but I wasn't losing it, wasn't falling back into old habits and patterns. I was actually okay, which was something I hadn't been in more years than I cared to count.

"Huh," I said as we toweled off after cleaning up.

"What?"

"It just hit me that I made it through all of that without losing it. Not sure if it's the pack bond or just me, either way, I'll take it."

She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. "It's you."

"You sure?" I'd be more than a little shocked if I'd come that far.

"Yes, you've been keeping everyone else calm, not the other way around. We've all been pulling on you and Sam. Shit hit the fan, you took charge, just like you always do. I'm proud of you Babe."

Now that was weird to hear, it felt damn good though. I hadn't heard it all that much in my life.

She pulled me in for another, much longer kiss. Turns out when your psychically bonded with someone you love, it doubles, or maybe even triples how things feel. We were feeling the physical kiss and all the love behind it from both sides, mine and hers. Both our knees buckled and I barely managed to catch her before my ass hit the counter top. Guess this is what they mean by swooning. The room started spinning but I got focused enough to pull back from her. "Wow..."

We were both breathing pretty damn fast. Her hands slid down my sides and I pulled her into me for a second when a really disconcerting thought hit me. "Um, you think they can feel all this?"

Her hands stopped moving and she went from a second away from jumping me to taking a quick step back. "Shit."

"How about we get dressed, go out there and if we get any weird looks we take that as a yes."

"Fuck! If so, this is going to suck ass, big time." She was more than ready to go, so was I but I didn't really want to get any more awkward stares this morning if I could help it.

I slid past her, which was really the last thing I wanted to do, and started to walk into the room to get dressed, "Let's just hope they can't, or maybe distance will make it harder to pick up on things."

"If not, they're going to have to decide. Do they want to deal with feeling us getting it on now and again or me being pissed off and cranky as hell because I can't get any."

"Oliver and Roy both have girlfriends too you know, this won't just be a one way thing."

She joined me in the room and got this really kinky look on her face, "Psychic foursome? Wouldn't be six since Felicity and Thea aren't part of the pack."

"We'd have to find someone for Sam or he'd probably kill all of us."

"I can see that," she said.

We finished getting ready and joined the rest of them.

Sam, Oliver and Cas were sitting around the table, all of them but Cas had coffee. Sam and Oliver looked up as we got closer but there wasn't any hint that they had picked up on Coyote and I barely not having sex. Good.

"Morning all," I said as I went into the kitchen to get coffee for Coyote and I. "Fill us in on this hunt."

"Standard seeming haunting," Sam said, "Old house, people dying in weird ways since a remodel, no forced entry, you know. The usual."

"Do you have a list of deaths in the house?" Coyote asked.

Sam took another drink of coffee and nodded, "Yup, emailed all the important stuff to you and Roy already. Oliver's seen it all too. We're just waiting for Oliver to confirm a flight, if that's the route you all want to take to get there. It'd be faster."

"I'm fine with that."

"I found a small charter outfit close to here," Oliver said, "We can probably take gear with us if need be."

"Even better. Not in the mood for long drives anymore, road trips have sort of lost their appeal over the years."

I'd never say it out loud, because then they'd insist on drugging me to get my ass on a plane, but I wasn't all that keen on driving for hours much these days either. Having a home made me a lot less interested in travel.

Roy and Dig showed up about an hour later, they got all their plans sorted out and Oliver got a flight booked for early afternoon. Dig dumped the trashed rental, we reported it stolen, checked in with Rick and Gerald. Tom and the rest had made it to Rick's place and were settling in. I apologized, kind of, for jumping down their throats. Now that I'd had some time to make a bit more sense of what was going on I made a revised version of the deal. If they wanted to hunt, they hunted with Rick and all together. Anyone started losing it, the whole group would stop and figure something out. They agreed to that, I really had no place to tell people who had been dealing with Fenris' gift for a year or more how to do things.

Gerald and his crew had managed to wipe out the remaining monsters with minimal casualties. He said that he'd managed to get Sean and the other anti-Rick people to cool down once he told them how Rick had saved his life and fought with us, not against us. They'd taken a vote and decided that they were more than happy to not know how jacked up our lives had been and trust us since everything we'd said had been right, plus we'd given them new ways to kill vamps. Hunters are simple people, give them new toys and they'll forgive just about anything.

Sam and I started prepping for summoning Crowley and Death. Sam had run low on some of the stuff we needed and I needed to go buy shit to cook for Death with so we had to make a run into town. I wanted to get the summoning done fairly quick after the rest of them left. Seeing Crowley's face again wasn't all that high on my list of things I ever wanted to do again so the sooner it was over with, the happier I'd be.

We took Sam's car since he hadn't had much chance to drive it yet plus Baby still had some holes in her and headed to the stores, grocery and otherwise.

"You up for this?" Sam asked, "I can do this alone if you want to stay clear of Crowley. You know he'll just try to get at you and try to find out what you've been up to the last year."

It was tempting, but, "You two didn't exact part on friendly terms from what it sounds like."

"So?"

"So? C'mon, you know he won't give us anything if it's just you. Unless you're planning a repeat on the threatening but I'm thinking if you keep pushing at him he'll find some way to "accidentally" break the deal, or just not give a shit anymore. As much as I hate to admit it, Crowley's usually a lot more apt to help me out than you. Even if he's just doing it for his own purposes. Let's play nice, if that doesn't work we can switch it up. To be honest, he may not have a clue about what's happening. Monsters aren't really his thing after all."

"Uh huh, the day Crowley's not aware about something like this is the day I quit hunting. He may not have planned it but you know damn well he's at least heard about it."

"Not even going to let me have a little bit of optimism here are you?"

"No," he replied as he took a turn way going way too fast. He was getting pissed, which was not good.

"How about not making me rebuild your birthday present less than a week after I gave it to you. Thinking I'm not the one that has issues with this."

"I just hate him. He's got to be in on this somehow, he knows Purgatory, he knows how it works and if we happened to get taken out by monsters not him, it wouldn't break our deal."

"Well I'm not a fan of him either. If that is the case, being pissed off won't help."

A light turned red and he ended up having to stop fast. Good thing I'd installed new seat belts. He whipped his head around to look at me, I could feel him fighting the wolf. "How can you be so damn calm?"

"Light goes green, pull over." I ordered. I wasn't letting him drive until he calmed down.

His knuckles went white on the steering wheel but he did what I said and pulled into an empty parking lot.

"Look," I said, "I appreciate the fact that you pushed him into a corner to protect me and everyone else and I know we lost some hunters because of this shit. I know you hate what he did to me, but Crowley will never change who he is. Getting pissed off that he tried to kill us really doesn't help the situation. Especially now. Maybe it's because I've been out of the life for awhile now, I don't know, but this really isn't something that should surprise us, or really piss us off. You told Crowley hands off, threatened him, made him feel powerless. You really think he'd just let that go? The guy can't stand being wrong, not being in control, or finding out someone got the drop on him. We don't know he's part of this, the wolves said they'd been out for over a year, but if he is, doubling down on insulting him won't work. As soon as he pops up and sees you he's going to get extra aggressive, so just calm down, think and look for an opening to use against him. All right?"

He took a few deep breaths, grumbled a few cuss words and gave in. "Yeah, okay. I'll keep it under control."

"Good. Let's get it over with."

We got what we needed and got back just in time to say bye to the rest of them. Oliver and Roy weren't really in talkative moods. Coyote and I had said all that we needed too, so we hugged each other and I walked her out to the car. "Be careful, follow Roy and Coyote's lead. Call if you need anything."

"We will." Coyote said, "Try not to get sucked into another realm or start the end of the world while we're gone," she had a huge smirk on her face, "you two have been doing so well staying out of trouble this last year."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." I gave her a quick kiss and let her get in the car. "Keep in touch."

Oliver nodded as he got in the driver's seat. I watched the car disappear down the road and headed back down into the Bunker. Time to cook for Death. My life, I swear.