Dean was having more fun than he'd had since Sam died—and he hated to admit it to himself.

He'd been living the quiet life for so long that he was starting to finally—finally—believe that he could make it work. That he was actually capable of being a good father. A good man. But the second he was thrown into a good fight, the second he was back into the hunt . . . it felt right. Like that was what he'd been born to do.

Except Sam wasn't there with him. And this wasn't his life anymore. It couldn't be his life anymore—or he'd just get more people he cared about killed.

But it really was thrilling as the Androgums pulled out weapons that looked like nothing he'd seen on Earth and immediately settled into stances that he had seen a million times before. Alien or not, he knew what it looked like when a humanoid was hunting another humanoid.

They really weren't that different from vampires or anything else he'd hunted.

Mrs. Thurnston shot at him, and Dean dove underneath the table, kicking one of the chairs out so that it hit Mr. Thurnston and made him stumble back a step, losing his footing enough that Dean could reach out and grab his ankle to upend him.

Before Dean could pounce toward Mr. Thurnston to try to wrestle that fancy gun away from him, though, Mrs. Thurnston peeked underneath the table and fired at him. Dean tried to roll out of the way, but she must have anticipated that and had aimed low to the ground, catching him in the foot before he could quite get out of her range.

As Dean let out a cry, Mrs. Thurnston let out a cackle of delight. "Oh, this one is a lot harder to catch than the last ones," she told her husband, who was also clearly enjoying himself.

"He moves like a predator himself," Mr. Thurnston said. "Look at that crouch."

Dean narrowed his eyes and tried to resist the urge to look down at himself, though he didn't quite manage it. It was hard not to; the way these people were talking about him, as if he was an interesting animal… well, it wasn't the first time it had happened, but it was disconcerting all the same.

And being described as a predator…

Yeah, he wasn't sure he liked that.

His foot was throbbing, but he could still put weight on it, so he sprang out of his crouch and dived at Mrs. Thurnston. She looked like she had been ready for the move and had her gun pointed right at him, but he knew the best way to distract them both and had, in the process of pouncing toward her, kicked out with his bad foot. He didn't need to have finesse to knock over the entire dining room table.

The whole thing went crashing over, and the Thurnstons both immediately let out cries of dismay and anger as they tried to catch the table—as well as the expensive-looking things that they had set out for dinner.

And that was exactly the opening Dean had hoped to create.

He took a running start and tackled Mr. Thurnston to the floor, wrestling his fancy alien gun away from him. He kneed him in the side just for good measure—and to create an opening so he could safely put distance between himself and Mr. Thurnston. He wasn't sure if the guy had any hidden weapons on him, and when he was outnumbered two-to-one, he wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

He rolled to his feet and fired at Mrs. Thurnston, taking advantage of her distraction over the table being knocked over as well as the fact that she was worried for her husband when she heard him cry out. He fired three times, hitting her in the chest, and she went down, gasping and hurt and unconscious almost immediately—but she was still breathing.

Of course, when Mr. Thurnston saw that his wife was down, he let out a sound like a growl and lunged for Dean, forgetting the weapon in his hand in favor of his baser instincts—which Dean had been hoping for. The weapon Dean was holding was scalding hot in his hand after being fired so many times in rapid succession; Dean was honestly worried about overloading it.

Mr. Thurnston had the advantage of rage as he knocked Dean to the ground and hit him hard enough that Dean was seeing stars, but Dean was already moving to strike back with the gun—slamming the hot metal into Mr. Thurnston's face until he could hear flesh burning.

(Dean's hand was also burning, but, hey, he was used to it.)

Mr. Thurnston screamed and stumbled away from Dean, who kicked out with his legs, reversing their positions so that Dean was on top of him. The stuff that had been on the table was all over the floor beside them, so Dean grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on, using the heavy bowl to add weight to his blows, since the Thurnstons seemed to be a little hardier than normal people were.

Dean pounded Mr. Thurnston's head and shoulders, a smile of grim satisfaction playing with his mouth the entire time. And just as the guy started to still, something exploded across Dean's chest.

He fell back, gasping, holding his chest and what was left of his shirt where the gun Mr. Thurnston had finally remembered to use had hit him. He felt like he was on fire where the gun had hit him, though thankfully, there wasn't a bullet hole. Just heat.

Still hurt, though.

Dean was breathing heavily, and so was Mr. Thurnston, as they both gathered themselves to renew the fight. He was struggling to get upright, but Mr. Thurnston was moving slower than he was, badly staggered by the beating that Dean had given him.

Dean managed to stand by grabbing onto a nearby chair, but as soon as he did that, his eyesight went bright white, and he nearly lost his footing again. He couldn't see anything, and he was half braced for a hit—especially when he heard a loud, metallic clang.

"Well, that had a bit more heft than I thought it did," said a familiar, British-sounding voice, even as Mr. Thurnston collapsed to the ground.

"Good timing," Dean said, though he was still wincing through his movements. He looked past the Doctor to see a scared-looking woman standing behind him, though her fear turned to anger when she saw the Thurnstons.

It took Dean a second, but at long last, he recognized who he was looking at: the neighbor the Thurnstons had supposedly replaced.

So, yeah, Dean wasn't going to argue it when she went for the gun Mr. Thurnston had dropped, her gaze and her anger turned toward the monsters who had invaded her home and kept her captive.