Prologue
On a stormy January night in 1979 there was born a little pup in the local healing facility in Lawrence, Kansas. This pup was special. Not only was he the first born of his parents, Mary and John, but he should grow up to be a marvellous, change inspiring man. However, there was one tiny flaw in him, which earned him social slander, but also made him fight against societal prejudice all his life and incidentally helped him find the love of his life. This is his story. The story of Dean Winchester, an alpha who smelled like an omega, who was put on this earth to change it forever, with a little help from his friends and family.
Four years later
Mary
Mary felt exasperated. Today had been a really stressful day, Sammy had been fretful and bad-tempered, at six months old he was getting his upper front teeth and the teething gel had run out the night before. She had instructed John to bring some home when he finished his work at Bobby’s garage, or during his lunch break. It turned 8 in the evening now and still her husband was nowhere to be seen.
Because her, at the moment, youngest child had been crying the whole day, his big brother Dean had gotten a tantrum as soon as she collected him from kindergarten because he wanted to help his mommy and wanted Sammy to feel better, but couldn’t help either.
With one crying pup in the stroller and the other disgruntled at her side, Mary went home, praying for John to have brought the teething gel in the mean time.
When they arrived, there was no note anywhere and Mary searched the whole house up and down, but in the end she was fairly certain that John hadn’t made the trip to the chemist yet.
She prepared dinner for the three of them and gave Dean the task to cool Sammy’s hurting dental damn with a spoon which gave her at least some time to prepare dinner in silence. All that, while her eldest laughed with his baby brother, playing peek-a-poo whilst Sam happily drooled on the cold piece of metal in his oral cavity.
But when she fed Sam, he started snivelling again, because however careful she was, she sometimes came against the hurting parts in the little pup’s mouth. By the time both her boys were cleaned and ready for bed, Sammy had found a constant rhythm of wailing, which would break any mother’s heart.
“Mom?” asked Dean.
“Yes, sweetheart?” said Mary, when her eldest stood in the door of the nursery although she had already put him to bed.
“Why won’t Sammy stop crying?”
“Because he’s hurting, love. He’s getting new teeth and before they come out they have to push through. That hurts.”
“Why isn’t Daddy home yet, mommy? Can’t he do something to make Sam feel better?”
“He will, love. He will. You should go to bed now. Daddy will be home soon.”
Dean didn’t need to know that Sammy had to suffer this long because John couldn’t be bothered to do this quickly. At the very latest, he should have been here two hours ago.
“ ‘k ” Dean turned around on his heel and Mary watched as the little boy in the fluffy bunny pajamas went down the corridor into his own room.
She then sat down with the baby in the rocking chair which was close to the crib, so when she had sung Sammy to sleep she would only have to reach out a short distance and place him in it.
Exhausted from all the crying, Sam fell asleep after a couple of minutes rocking in his mothers arms and while Mary carefully placed him in the baby bed, she noticed that John also hadn’t fixed the power socket in Sammy’s room which she had told him about days ago. Which was also the reason why she couldn’t leave her babies alone in this room, because the wires hung out and posed a life threatening danger to everyone who touched them.
She went out of the nursery and checked on Dean who had forgotten to switch off his nightstand lamp. Mary looked at the clock on Dean’s desk. Half past 8 already.
Perhaps John had been kept late at work, although Bobby was usually careful to send him home on time because he was very considerate and knew that John had two little pups at home.
Mary went down into the living room to wait for John to come home and to heat something from the freezer in case he hadn’t eaten yet. John sometimes came home late and had already eaten, so the habit of only making dinner for the ones that were in the house at the time of it’s preparation was a carefully built habit.
She zapped through all the channels and stuck with some romantic hospital series she sometimes watched, but since she had already missed the first half of the episode she didn’t understand why all the healing betas rushed to the emergency room while the alpha senior physician disappeared with a handsome omega nurse into the on-call room.
Then Mary completely tuned out when it became too apparent why the alpha had felt the need to escape from the hectic hospital everyday life and thought about what had passed while she waited with her screaming half-year old for Dean to finish kindergarten.
Another mother, who Mary vaguely remembered was called Ruby, had waited with her and they had chatted a little.
“Your boy has got some lungs on him, I bet he‘s gonna present as an alpha,” said the woman as an introduction, when Sammy gave a particularly loud wail.
“I’m sorry,” replied Mary. “He’s teething. But I told my husband to bring home something to make it better when he comes home from the garage.”
There was only one autoshop in Lawrence at this time and the woman immediately knew who Mary meant.
“Ah, yes. I know your husband. He fixed my car once. But at the time he was living in the small apartment over the garage. You can’t be mated for very long…”
“We’ve been mated for over 5 years now. I’m collecting our eldest here. He is 4.”
The woman suddenly looked consternated. “So, you’re saying your husband moved out?”
“Well, yes. We had some problems and we took a bit of time apart, but we are working on it.”
The woman grew more indignant with every word that Mary said.
“You couldn’t keep your husband happy and your pack together? What kind of omega are you even?”
Mary blushed deep red and Sammy must have sensed his mother’s disquiet because he gave another loud wail just this second.
The woman inflated even more. “No wonder you can’t keep your pup in order. I bet your litter is completely rotten in it’s core with such a mother.”
Mary didn’t know what to say to that. She always knew that this part of the country was a little more backwards than the bigger cities where omega woman who were without a pack, were still a valiant part of society because they went to work to feed their young and the stigmatism wasn’t as imminent, even though an unmated omega was free game everywhere.
Her own mother had been a single omega parent after her father had died from a heart attack. She grew up with different values, because it was so normal for her that her mother worked for the both of them that she hadn’t even realized the social faux pas she had just committed in telling an unknown woman about her problems with her mate.
Still, despite all her mother had done on her own, she still instilled moral code into her daughter that an alpha was higher in value then her and she should secure a connection to one as soon as she could and honour him in everything he did. That’s why she hadn’t objected to moving into the inner parts of the country when it became apparent that she and John had exchanged mating bites while he was stationed with his corps in the eastern coast port in which Mary grew up.
After that she didn’t continue talking to the woman whose face turned an ugly sort of red because of her anger at Mary and she fussed about Sam for a while, whilst praying for little Dean to hurry up so she could leave from her scene of humiliation. When Dean had finally come out she just wanted to get home and forget about the wretched incident.
Mary shook off the thought and moved over to the window to look onto the driveway to see if John’s car was finally there. It wasn’t.
“Irresponsible-” started Mary, but checked herself.
This was no way to talk about her alpha. But a little inner voice reminded her of the circumstances that had led to John’s moving out a few months ago, only shortly after she had pupped Sam.
John had always had a temper but Mary didn’t let him have his way with everything. The habit of not having dinner for him when he came home was something that annoyed John to no end and they had a heavy argument that led to some angry words with John leaving through the front door which he banged so loudly that both boys woke up with a start. Dean, who usually never cried, shed bitter tears of abandonment when he heard from his mom that John would be gone for some time.
Mary was fully intent on fixing things with John however and that resolve only increased when she came to the realization that she was, only two months after the birth of Sam, with pup again. She had told John about it and in the wake of this announcement, he had moved back home, but he continued to come back late, sometimes drunk and mostly in a bad mood.
It couldn’t be helped. Mary knew she would have another rough day tomorrow, her pups would be quarrelsome and it would only grow worse as the new pregnancy went further along. She would be exhausted even more quickly, so she decided not to lose any sleep.
Before she lay down she checked on the pups again. Dean had rosy cheeks because he was so warm and sleeping soundly and Sammy just kicked his favourite teddy bear from his crib with his tiny feet when she looked in. Mary chuckled a little. Quite a kick it was because it sent the bear through the room so it landed on the opposite wall. He was a strong pup and would get really big, she just knew it.
A tad later, she had gotten ready for bed but could not fall asleep yet. Between the teething, the awkward social moment at kindergarten and John’s continued absence, she could still not shake the feeling that she was forgetting something. She tossed and turned and couldn’t make out what it was she was missing, but over her pensive thoughts at long last fell asleep.
She woke up after what felt like seconds because she knew that something was very, very wrong. The pups!
She snapped out of sleep so fully as if ice had been poured into her veins and ran to Sammy first and saw the whole room ablaze with fire. She screamed at the top of her lungs.
“SAMMY!” and dodged into the room as fast as she could to get the pup. The second she had the baby securely in her arms she realized what had been gnawing at her. The teddy bear! It landed exactly on the exposed wire and from what she could see, it was where the fire had started. Suddenly she heard a loud cry.
“MOMMY!” Dean was again standing in the nursery door but not with the same sleepily concerned expression he wore an hour ago but with sheer panic in his eyes.
“DEAN!” She ran over to her little boy and tried to get him to move.
“Baby, we gotta go, we can’t be here,” but Dean stood as if he was rooted to the spot because of his panic.
“DEAN!” Mary screamed again.
The small boy focused on her.
“We gotta get out as soon as we can. I’m gonna take your brother. Can you walk?”
Dean shook his head. Mary sighed and pressed Sammy to her bosom with one hand.
“It’s ok, baby. I’ll watch over you,” and she picked up the terrified 4-year-old in her other arm and with her arms cradling the boys and inside her belly protecting their unborn sibling, Mary stumbled out of the door and brought all four of them out to safety.
Hours later, in the comfort of the small apartment over Bobby’s garage which now housed three live Winchesters and one unborn, Bobby had wrapped Mary in a thick blanket. But when John barged through the door, smelling faintly of whiskey, Bobby insisted on getting Mary something to eat from his house went out, so he wouldn‘t see what followed between her and John.
Mary looked up at John who started to stutter.
“I was at the house… What happened? Are you ok?”
Mary responded calmly. “No, not really. We all made it out, but Sammy’s bear landed on the live wire from the socket and it must have caused a spark that lit the whole house ablaze.”
“Oh god,” mumbled John. “At least you’re all ok.”
“Yes, we are.”
“I should have been there.”
Mary shrugged. “It’s ok, nothing happened to us. I got us all out just in time.”
“We were so, so lucky.”
Mary didn’t respond.
Then Bobby returned, he fixed something to eat and a cup of tea for Mary that warmed her ice-cold hands.
He looked down at her fondly. “Try to get some rest now, I have to get back to Crowley. He‘s probably gonna get cranky if I keep him up all night, and I guess the idjit will want me to rub his feet again because they‘re swollen so bad. I swear, this pregnancy will be the death of me,” and with that he left the apartment to return to his own house a few yards away from the garage. He hadn’t even once looked at John.
Mary knew she was in shock but her thoughts were remarkably clear. She sipped her tea slowly and felt the warmth creeping into her every limb. When she had finished, she asked: “Did you get the teething gel?”
“What?” John asked, startled out of his brooding. “Oh… um… no. I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok. I’ll just get it myself in the morning.”
Before this conversation, she hadn’t even thought about doing this herself, because she had entrusted this matter to her husband, her pack alpha, but now…yes, she would just get it herself.
She stood up from the table and went into the bedroom where Dean and Sam were napping peacefully on the king sized bed and closed the door firmly behind her, shutting out John who was still in the kitchen.
Three days later, John left on a trip and didn’t come home.
