The air inside H.H. Holmes’ underground tunnels was stale—thick with rot, old blood, and something else. Something wrong. The kind of wrong Dean could feel deep in his bones.

You moved quietly beside him, flashlight flickering across crumbling brick and rusted iron. Sam had gone off ahead to check inside the walls—narrow crawlspaces laced behind the main structure, where Holmes supposedly dragged victims one by one.

You and Dean had stayed back.

Not because you wanted to.

But because this thing—whatever it was—liked people like you. It hunted them. Chose them. Left the rest behind to watch.

Dean had barely said a word since Sam left. His jaw was tight, and his eyes kept scanning you like he expected you to vanish the second he blinked. The silence stretched until the tunnel forked into a long, narrowing passage—one barely wide enough to fit a child, let alone a grown man like Dean.

He stopped cold.

“It’s too narrow,” he muttered, shining the flashlight down the gap before glancing back at you. His voice was low, steady—but his eyes? They were all panic beneath the surface.

He didn’t want you here.

He never wanted you here.

And now the walls were closing in, the air getting thinner, and his heart thudding like he was the one being hunted.

“Sam can handle this part,” he added, but even he knew it was a lie. Sam was good, yeah—but this wasn’t about who could handle what. It was about keeping you from crawling into a death trap.

“This thing—this demon—it wants people like you. That’s the whole pattern. You go in there, and I’m not gonna be able to reach you fast enough if something happens.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but Dean stepped closer, blocking the entrance with his arm.

“I mean it.”

His voice cracked just slightly on the edge. You weren’t sure if it was anger, fear, or both. Probably both.

Dean Winchester had faced Hell. He’d faced death. But this—watching you walk into the dark alone?

This was worse.