There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
- Joseph Conrad


"So, what's our next step?" Lola twisted her hair into a high bun and looked at Dean challengingly.

"Whoa, whoa, we're not taking one step further together, sweetheart."

Unfortunately for Dean, he'd found his stubborn match in Lola, of all people. "Listen, Mr. Strong Silence and 'It's better if you don't know': Zoe's my best friend, and I don't know what exactly she's tied up in, seeing as you won't tell me jack, but I know it's bad. So whether you like it or not, you are stuck with my sexy ass!"

They glared heatedly at each other.

"I don't think so, princess."

"Fine, then how about this: You try leave without me, I'll pull a gun on you. Believe me, I've got one, and I can handle it, and I can aim."

"You're a terrible, stubborn bitch, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Plenty of times. I just don't care."

"Well, maybe you should."

"For what purpose, exactly?"

Dean thought of how many times he and Sam had been called crazy, or worse; it hadn't changed anything as to what they did and how they did it.

"Exactly. Now, chop, chop."


"Sam, I was wondering… no, forget it."

"What is it, Zo?"

Zoe wondered if Sam counted as schizophrenic; he was the kindest and sweetest man she'd met when he wasn't transformed, but when he wolfed out, there wasn't much of humanity left in him. More importantly, Zoe wondered if she herself may be schizophrenic, as one of her many issues; she loved both. Wolf and man. Whether she was human or transformed herself didn't even matter.

Maybe there were four people involved in this relationship, and if so, then she could say for sure that she cared greatly for the two male personalities of those four.

"Look… I'm as happy as can be. I don't regret my decisions. But I ditched Lola without another word, and… Sam, I think I miss her. She was the only friend I really ever had, and she was also the only one who stuck by me the whole time, even after the social scandal and my shunning thereafter. I just want to let her know I'm okay."

"Zo," Sam held her face in-between his hands, "you're not imprisoned. We only have to be careful not to bring Dean or other hunters on our trail. Call Lola, as often as you like." He kissed her forehead. "We just need to be careful, not paranoid."

"Says the guy who drives 300 miles to call his brother just so that he doesn't track his cell phone down." Zoe smiled sweetly. "Nope, not paranoid at all."

"Don't get cheeky," Sam grinned and kissed her gently.


Zoe smiled contently as she felt Sam's arms wrap around her waist from behind. She was curious as to whether Sam and she would have been happy together – she wasn't yet comfortable with using the term 'love' – if they hadn't been supernaturally bound to each other. Sometimes she would have liked that freedom of choice, but then she reminded herself that faith was hardly any less deterministic than fate. Whether she let God guide her, or some other creature whose existence was, neutrally observed, as much to be doubted as His, were mere details in the end.

What mattered was that Sam and she were happy, and that, they were.

'Happy may be too strong a term,' it occurred to Zoe, 'but satisfied. Content.'

Either way, it was more than what could be said of her former life.

"Hey, baby," she kissed his cheek.

Sam breathed in her scent, burying his face in her warm neck. "You smell different."

"I've changed my body lotion, if that's what you mean?" Zoe broke free from his embrace and walked over to the fridge to pull out a bottle of wine. After years of using the cheap drugstore brand, Zoe had switched to Body Shop; now that there was someone she could share her well-taken-care-of body with, it made sense to invest in it.

"No," Sam eyed her intensely, stepped over to her to take the glass of wine from her hand. Zoe was about to protest when Sam kissed her jaw, then her neck, all the while breathing in her tempting scent and trying to figure out what was different about it.

Then he knew.

"Sam, please, you're worrying me," Zoe was used to the silent treatment, and was fine with it; most of the essential communication passed on wordless levels between them, anyways. However, the waves of worry Sam radiated, maybe even of suspicion and threat, unsettled her.

Her mate pulled back from her, but his hands remained on her arms as he looked deeply into her azure eyes. If it weren't for the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Zoe might have been scared.

"Zoe, baby, you're pregnant."


"So, this is the kind of place you grew up in?" Lola looked around the motel room; it was held in the typical Canadian lodge-style, and really on the nicer end of cheap motels.

Seeing no reason in telling her that tiny detail, Dean just shrugged, "Pretty much."

"A part of me envies you, you know."

Dean looked up from spreading his info – the ones he could openly display around a civilian, anyways - out on the table. Out of all reactions, that's the one he certainly did not expect. "Come again?"

"I would have given anything getting out of that sleepy town, to see something of the world. Hell, just a roadtrip cross country would have been fine with me. But… it never happened, and so you might say I'm as blue-eyed when it comes to worldliness as a newborn child," she chuckled uneasily.

"You certainly hide that fact well, Ms Know-It-All."

"I used to be able to pull the know-it-all number off with anyone, you know; not like just one person of Bemidji has actually seen more of the world than I have, so who were they to correct me? But you… you're different. You're annoying and stubborn and resistant. And maybe a little smart and hot, too."

"Right back at you."

Lola smiled, then looked at him with strange sincerity in her eyes. Dean could tell it was an expression she didn't portray often. "I want you to tell me the truth."


Zoe's first reaction pended somewhere between 'holy fucking shit' and 'thank heavens'. She'd finally have Sam's baby that she so yearned for, but on the other hand, she was still so young, and scared if she'd get the mother job done right.

"But, how did you…?"

Sam smiled, and Zoe realized how she really loved his smile. It was so human, so warm and kind. "Your blood carries a hint of my scent, coming from our baby."

Our baby.

Now was definitely time for the 'holy fucking shit' part of her reaction. "I'm pregnant? Like, for real?"

Sensing her panic, Sam took her face into his hands and kissed her gently, "Yes, Zoe. You have no idea how happy that makes me."

In comes 'thank heavens'. Zoe beamed and rested her hand over her belly, looking up to Sam. "And me. We're really having a baby! But, Sam, what if I -"

"You won't mess up, Zo. It's in your nature, in more than one way."

Zoe wasn't convinced.

"Did you ever see a she-wolf running around with an educational guidance book?"

That caused Zoe to chuckle, and she smiled at Sam, grateful for his calm and support. "No."

"Exactly."

To think that she one day would be pregnant, and not a ring on her finger… it didn't even shock Zoe anymore. What she and Sam had was stronger than any oath taken before God would ever be. "Any idea how long a werewolf pregnancy takes?"

"Sorry, no. It's a first for me."

"See, that's where a guidance book would actually come in handy."

"Then again, it's a lot more thrilling this way," Sam replied, swept her up in his arms and headed towards the bathroom.

"That would be the positive way of looking at it, which you would typically take, seeing as it's not your body that's growing round and inflexible," Zoe joked, but then a thought hit her; "How will I hunt?"

"You won't," he replied and gently set her down as he turned on the hot water in the tub, "I'll get you anything you need."

"But Sam-"

"I want you and our child as far away from harm as possible, and that means I won't let you roam the streets at night searching out the shadiest of characters. Hunters may be out there, too, and I won't let any of them get you. So you will stay here, at home, and I'll keep you fed and happy." As he talked, he slowly stripped her out of her clothes and helped her into the tub of hot water as he sat down beside it.

"What if anything happens to you?" Zoe asked worriedly. She wasn't just scared for their baby, but for Sam, too; forced companionship or not, she cared greatly about him.

"It won't," he soothed her and leaned forward to kiss her. His hand dived through the foam into the water and found her thighs. Slipping between them, his fingers moved upwards.

He sounded so sure that Zoe believed him, and decided that any remaining doubts she still had could be cleared some other time. "Oh, Sam…" She arched her back in anticipation, urging him to finally stop teasing her and satisfy the lust he'd sparked up in her.

"Yes, baby?" He asked innocently.

"… you know," Zoe wiggled impatiently, rubbing her thighs against his hand as means of explaining to him what she meant.

"No, I don't, actually," he replied and traced his fingertips all around her lap, but never to the spot Zoe needed him to touch. So she decided to take matters in her own hands, literally, and laid her hand on Sam's, guided them to her entrance and rubbed them over her clit. The erotic mixture of his mate pleasuring herself along with him pleasing her made the jeans fabric strain over Sam's hard-on; but he was determined to give Zoe her sole pleasure first before he'd find his own release one way or another.

As Sam slid two fingers inside her, Zoe took her own hand away and relaxed; as far as she could with the tension building up inside her at Sam's practiced movements.

"Touch yourself," he groaned in her ear, and though surprised at his request at first, Zoe complied without second thought. She cupped her breasts, felt how they already were heavier in her hands from her pregnancy and brushed her thumbs over her rock-hard nipples. Combined with Sam's fingers fucking her, it sent her over the edge. "Sam, oh, fuck, so good!" Water splashed as she arched her back and thrust her pelvis onto Sam's hand to hit that spot even harder.

Once she had her breath back, Zoe smirked and climbed out of the tub to sit in Sam's lap, naked and wet as she was. "Let me repay you."

"But not here," he growled and carried her wet body to their bedroom, where Zoe took over the reins as soon as the door closed behind them. She pushed Sam down onto the edge of the bed and got on her knees before him to tug his jeans down, springing free his rock-hard cock. "So big and hard…" She moaned longingly and slid her tongue over his tip. "Come in my mouth, baby," she got an all fours in front of him and began sucking him, "Want to taste you…" She closed her lips around his cock and took him into her mouth inch by inch, teasing him with her provocative tongue games.

Sam grabbed the back of head and pushed her onto him deeper, gripped by lust and desire. "Zoe, fuck, you're so good."

"Mhm," she mumbled, gliding her tongue along his length. "All for you, baby. Wanna make you happy."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny voice allowed itself to complain that what she was doing right now was a sin; Zoe squelched said voice fiercely and continued working her oral wonders. "Taste so good, Sam… Want to swallow you up."

Her deep-throating him was all it took for him to finally allow himself to release that fiery tension she'd built up within him, with her skillful tongue and that sexy naked body wiggling in front of him. Zoe swallowed the last drop of him and then got back on her knees, wide smirk on her face and her breasts brushing against his thighs. "You are aware that it's not full moon."

"Mhm… why?" Sam pulled her up onto the bed beside him.

"Well, it's just that what we just did didn't have the slightest thing to do with what we are…"

"I don't need to be a werewolf to desire you, Zo."


He had tried putting this call off for too long already; now the responsibility of having Zoe and their baby to care for weighed too heavy on him as that he could shoulder it as well as the guilt. Did it occur to him that by calling his brother, he'd put them in danger, too? Certainly. Did that make it easier for Sam to wordlessly ditch the one person he had always been able to rely on, who was willing to die for him any given day? Definitely not.

"Dude, what the hell." Dean greeted him. The lacking warmth wasn't what surprised Sam; rather that he'd picked up at all.

"Dean… I screwed up."

"Figured. I also figured you did not only screw up, but screwed a pretty blonde on the way, too. Tell me, is she a howler already, too?"

Sam wondered if it hadn't been arrogant to assume Dean didn't know. Of course he would know. Dean knew him better than he himself did; and despite a lack of academic acknowledgment, his older brother was most definitely smart (though he seemed to see it as a fault and often did his best to cleverly hide that attribute).

"Now would be a good time to tell me I'm crazy, Sam."

"Believe me, I wish I could."

He heard Dean sigh and cuss something NC-17-rated under his breath. The one time Sam would have preferred his brother to freak out and throw a fit, Dean decided to be calm and un-reproachful. It made matters about a thousand times worse.

"Since when?"

"Before I got my soul back."

"Great. And it didn't occur to you to maybe mention to me that you suddenly have a time of the month?" Alright, so maybe the 'un-reproachful' part had been hasty to assume.

"Of course it did, Dean, I just didn't know how, alright? Saying 'Oh, by the way, I'm a werewolf' over the daily cheeseburger didn't strike me as the suitable option."

"Fuck 'suitable', Sam! You should have told me the damn second you knew!"

Sam sighed, "I know, Dean. And I also know that sorry doesn't cut it. But it's all I can give you right now."

"Tell me where you are."

"You know I can't do that."

"What are you afraid I'm going to do, huh, Sam? We both know that I did some seriously stupid shit in my time, but shooting my brother never was and never will be among them."

Shoot him? Maybe not. Shoot Zoe? Probably not – but Sam couldn't be a hundred percent sure, and he wasn't willing to take the one percent chance Dean might pull the trigger on her. "I'm a werewolf, Dean," It was the first time he really said it out loud, and somehow, the words had lost their paralyzing terror that they had held in his mind until now, "We never thought twice about shooting the monsters in our path, and we can't make exceptions just because it's us. We're not better than anyone else. There is no cure. If you found me, you would have to kill me, I would want you to. And regardless of whether you pull the trigger or not, you will always blame yourself for choosing the way you did. I'm not going to do that to you, so please, Dean, just let it go."

When did a Winchester ever let something go that included family?


I know, I know, it's been forever and three days, and I am incredibly sorry! I got good reasons for going underground for so long, but I doubt you're truly interested in that, so I won't even start whining. =D
Thanks a billion to all those who have supported me this far, this chapter goes out to you =)

Love you all!
xoxo