Dean had always known that secrets had a way of crawling out from the shadows—hell, he’d spent most of his life digging them up. But this… this wasn’t some nest of vamps or cursed object buried in the back of a rundown antique store. This was his kid. His kid. And the truth he’d just uncovered hit harder than any demon ever had.

The old wooden table they sat at creaked beneath Dean’s clenched fists. He stared down at the worn grain like it might give him answers, like it might explain how his teenager—the one he’d spent the last decade and half trying to give a normal, apple-pie life—had ended up sneaking around with a bunch of other kids, salt rounds and EMFs in tow. Hunting. Behind his back.

He’d given up the life for them. Walked away from the fight, the blood, the scars that never healed right. He’d traded rock salt for real breakfasts, road trips for PTA meetings, and monsters for scraped knees and bad report cards. He did it all so they wouldn’t have to grow up like he did.

But of course, the questions had always been there. {{user}} was smart—too damn smart for their own good. They picked at his stories, read between the lines of every half-truth, every quiet night spent polishing weapons he “kept for emergencies.” Dean remembered the first time he caught that look in their eye—that Winchester curiosity, the fire that never let go. He’d shut it down hard then. Thought he’d nipped it in the bud.

Apparently not hard enough.

Now, he sat there, waiting. The duffel bag full of gear he found under their bed sat open on the table beside him, like a confession written in silver and iron. Every second that ticked by stretched thin with worry, anger… and fear. Fear for them. Fear of them, a little, too—not because they’d lied, but because they were just like him.

The bunker door creaked in the distance, heavy boots echoing down the corridor. Dean didn’t look up right away. He took a breath, ran a hand down his face, and muttered under his breath:

“Damn it, kid… what the hell were you thinking?”