Chapter 4: Aftermath Hunger
The neon sign buzzed like a dying insect, flashing VAC NCY in a sickly green. The motel was a stucco box, the color of old teeth, squatting on a stretch of highway that felt a thousand miles from anywhere. Dust coated the windowsills. Ronan stood by the Camaro’s passenger door, a gray hoodie pulled up over his head, fresh jeans and sneakers from a Walmart twenty miles back feeling like a cheap costume.
Aria emerged from the office, a key dangling from a chipped plastic fob. “Got it. Room at the back.” She didn’t meet his eyes. The story was set. She’d called Dean from a payphone outside the supercenter, her voice convincingly shaky. Told him about the attack at the old motel, about the stray dog that had intervened and run off wounded. She’d said she was shaken up, getting a room to collect herself, that she’d call again in the morning. Dean’s voice had been tight, concerned, demanding a location. She’d given him the town name, but not this motel. It bought them hours, maybe a day.
They walked to the room in silence, the gravel crunching under their feet. Aria unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room was exactly as expected: two lumpy double beds with floral spreads, a dark wood veneer dresser, a TV from another decade, and the pervasive smell of mildew and industrial cleaner. It was a tomb.
Aria locked the door behind them, threw the deadbolt, and slid the chain into place. The finality of the sound echoed. She leaned back against the door, her shoulders slumping for the first time since the rooftop. Exhaustion poured off her.
Ronan stood in the center of the worn carpet, feeling like an intruder. The fluorescent light in the bathroom hummed, casting a cold, unforgiving glow. His back itched as the wounds knitted themselves shut beneath the bandages. The hunger was there, too, a low gnawing in his gut. He’d eaten three raw steaks from the Walmart cooler in the parking lot, shoving them into his mouth behind a dumpster while Aria shopped for his clothes. The shame of it burned, but the gnawing had quieted to a whisper.
“You should shower,” Aria said, her voice hollow. “Get the… get the rest of it off.”
He nodded, a stiff movement. He knew what ‘it’ was. Dirt. Blood. The scent of the other skinwalker. The scent of the kill. He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and looked at himself in the smudged mirror.
A stranger with his face stared back. His blue eyes were dark, haunted. There were new scars, pink and raised, joining the old bite on his side. He looked older than eighteen. He looked feral. He turned on the shower, the pipes groaning in protest, and stepped under a spray that was more lukewarm trickle than rain. He scrubbed at his skin with the tiny, rough motel soap until it felt raw, trying to scour away not just the grime but the memory of his own teeth breaking through flesh, the feel of a spine snapping between his jaws.
When he emerged, steam curling around him, a towel around his waist, he found Aria sitting on the edge of the far bed. She had changed into a simple t-shirt and soft cotton shorts. She was staring at her hands, clenching and unclenching them in her lap.
“Your turn,” he said softly.
She stood without a word, gathered her things, and disappeared into the bathroom. The lock clicked.
He listened to the water run, imagining it sluicing over her skin, washing away the terror, the adrenaline, the blood splatter he knew was on her jacket. He dressed in the clean clothes and sat on the other bed, his head in his hands. The hum of the bathroom fan was the only sound. The space between the two beds felt like a canyon.
After a long time, the water shut off. She came out, her hair damp and dark, her face pink from the heat. She looked young. Vulnerable. She walked over to her bed, pulled back the covers, and climbed in, lying on her side facing away from him.
“Goodnight, Ro,” she whispered to the wall.
He lay down on his own bed, on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. The silence was a physical weight. The events of the day played on a loop behind his eyes: the fight, the shift, the kill, the burial. Her hand on his forehead. You have to be River.
Hours ticked by. The motel settled into the deep quiet of the night. He heard every sigh of the springs in her mattress, every shift of her body. He could smell her scent—soap, clean skin, underlying fear—and it was a torment. A beautiful, painful torment.
“Ro?” Her voice was small in the dark.
“Yeah?”
“Are you awake?”
“Yeah.”
She was silent for another minute. Then the covers rustled. He heard her feet hit the floor. He turned his head and saw her silhouette moving in the dim light from the window. She didn’t go to the bathroom. She crossed the two steps of stained carpet and stood beside his bed.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“Me neither.”
“The room feels too big.”
He understood. The emptiness was a void that threatened to swallow them. The loneliness was worse than any monster.
“Do you want me to…” he began, but she was already pulling back the covers on his bed. She slid in beside him, her back pressing against his side. He stiffened for a second, then relaxed as her warmth seeped into him. They lay like that for a while, two survivors on a life raft, listening to each other breathe.
Her hand found his under the covers, threading her fingers through his. The contact was electric. It wasn’t just comfort. It was a memory of every touch they’d ever shared before the world ended. It was a claim.
He turned onto his side to face her. In the faint light, her eyes were wide open, glistening. He reached up and traced the line of her jaw with his thumb.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, the words tearing from a place deep inside him.
“Shut up,” she breathed, and then she kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was desperate, a collision of lips and tongue and two years of grief and longing. He kissed her back with equal hunger, his hands coming up to cradle her face, feeling the hot wetness of tears on her cheeks. He didn’t know if they were hers or his.
The kiss deepened, turned molten. Her hands pushed his shirt up, her nails scraping lightly over the ridges of new scars on his stomach. He broke the kiss long enough to pull the shirt over his head and toss it to the floor. Her own shirt followed.
They’d seen each other before. In the soft, exploratory dark of her bedroom years ago, they’d learned each other’s bodies with hands and mouths, stopping at the final threshold. He knew the taste of her, the soft sounds she made. She knew the shape of him, the way his breath hitched.
But this was different. This was hunger stripped of innocence. It was a need to feel alive, to confirm they were both still here, flesh and blood and beating hearts. His mouth found her breast, his tongue circling her nipple, sucking it into a hard peak. She gasped, her back arching, her fingers tangling in his dark hair.
“Ro,” she moaned, a pleading note in her voice he’d never heard before.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against her skin, his voice low and rough. “I’ve got you, Aria. Let me taste you.”
He kissed his way down her body, over the smooth plane of her stomach, her hips, pushing her cotton shorts and panties down her legs. He settled between her thighs, the intimate, musky scent of her filling his senses, drowning out the last vestiges of the monster. He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her thigh, feeling her tremble.
“Please,” she whimpered, spreading her legs wider in invitation.
He didn’t make her wait. He lowered his mouth to her, licking a slow, firm stripe through her slick heat. She cried out, a sharp, shattered sound. He did it again, learning her anew, finding the sensitive bundle of nerves and circling it with a focused, relentless pressure. He used his tongue, his lips, worshiping her with a filthy, devoted intensity.
“Oh god, Ro… just like that… yes…” Her words dissolved into incoherent moans. She was panting, her hips lifting off the bed to meet his mouth. He slid a finger inside her, feeling her clench tight around him, hot and wet and perfect. He added another, curling them, finding a rhythm that made her thighs shake. His tongue kept its steady, devastating work on her clit.
“I’m gonna… Ro, I’m gonna come…” Her voice was a high, broken thread.
“Come for me,” he growled against her, his words muffled by her flesh. “Come all over my mouth, baby. Let me feel it.”
The command, the raw filth of his praise, undid her. Her orgasm crashed through her, a wave that made her body seize and buck. A raw, ragged cry tore from her throat as she pulsed around his fingers, her release wetting his chin. He drank her in, licking her through it until her spasms subsided into weak tremors.
He moved up her body, kissing her stomach, her ribs, capturing her mouth again so she could taste herself on his lips. She kissed him hungrily, her hands fumbling with the button of his jeans.
“My turn,” she breathed, pushing him onto his back. She yanked his jeans and boxers down in one urgent move, freeing his erection. He was thick, hard, the tip glistening. She looked at him for a moment, a mix of reverence and desire, before she bent and took him into her mouth.
He hissed, his hands flying to her hair. She remembered what he liked, the slow, tight slide of her lips, the flick of her tongue against the most sensitive spot underneath. He watched her, her lips stretched around him, her eyes closed in concentration, and the sight was almost enough to end him right there.
“Fuck, Aria… your mouth is so good,” he groaned, his hips giving an involuntary thrust. She took him deeper, humming in approval. He was close, too close. He pulled her off gently, his cock sliding from her lips with a soft pop.
She looked up at him, her lips swollen, confusion in her eyes.
“I want to be inside you,” he said, the words raw and honest. “I need to be inside you. I need to feel you.”
Her eyes searched his. This was the line they’d never crossed. The final intimacy. She nodded, a slow, certain movement. “Yes.”
He positioned himself over her, bracing on his elbows. He rubbed the head of his cock through her wetness, coating himself. She was slick, open for him. He met her gaze, holding it.
“It’s you,” he whispered, a vow. “It’s only ever been you.”
He pushed in.
The resistance was tight, a brief, sharp barrier that gave way with a soft, choked cry from her lips. He stopped, buried to the hilt, feeling her body stretch to accommodate him. He was sheathed in her heat, a sensation so profoundly human it brought a sting to his eyes. She was shaking beneath him, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“Okay?” he breathed, fighting every instinct to move.
“Don’t stop,” she begged, her voice thick with tears and need. “Don’t you dare stop, Ronan.”
He began to move, slow, deep strokes that made her gasp with each retreat and return. The world narrowed to this: the smell of her skin, the sound of her breathing, the slick, wet friction of their joining. It was grounding. It was a tether to the boy he’d been.
He shifted his angle slightly, and her eyes flew open. “Oh… there… right there,” she sobbed, her back arching.
He hit that spot again, and again, setting a rhythm that was both tender and relentless. His praise was a constant, filthy stream in her ear. “You feel so fucking perfect… taking me so deep… you’re so wet for me, baby… you’re mine.”
She was unraveling beneath him, her whimpers and pleas music to his ears. “More… please, Ro, harder…”
He obeyed, his thrusts becoming more powerful, each one driving her higher. The headboard began to tap a soft, steady rhythm against the wall. He felt his own climax building, a tight coil in his gut. He reached between them, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing quick, firm circles.
“Come with me,” he demanded, his voice ragged. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
The dual sensation was too much. She shattered, a broken, keening cry tearing from her throat as her inner muscles clamped down on him in frantic pulses. The sheer, crushing tightness of her sent him over the edge. With a guttural groan that was part man, part beast, he buried himself deep and let go, pouring into her in hot, endless waves.
He collapsed on top of her, spent, his face buried in the crook of her neck. They lay like that for a long time, a sticky, panting, tangled mess. The only sound was their slowing breaths and the distant whine of a semi-truck on the highway.
Eventually, he softened and slipped out of her. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him, keeping her close. She curled into his chest, her leg thrown over his. She traced a finger over the scar on his side.
“I felt you,” she whispered into the dark. “The whole time. I felt you, Ronan. Not… the other part. Just you.”
He tightened his arms around her, a knot in his throat too thick to speak through. He just kissed the top of her head.
In the silence, a new tension began to coil. It wasn’t the threat of discovery, or the lingering hunger. It was the simple, terrifying truth hanging in the motel air. The condom wrapper lay unopened on the nightstand.
She hadn’t asked. He hadn’t thought.
The consequences, monstrous in their own way, were now inside them both.
The unopened condom wrapper gleamed in the slatted light from the window, a small silver rectangle of negligence. Aria’s breathing had slowed against his chest, but Ronan’s mind raced, a frantic calculation of dates and risks. His own biology was a variable he didn’t understand. Could his condition even transmit that way? Could it alter… anything? The questions were poison-tipped, burrowing deep.
“My period was two weeks ago,” she whispered into his skin, as if reading the frantic pulse of his thoughts.
It wasn’t a guarantee. It was a fragile, shared hope. He held her tighter, his hand splayed across the small of her back, feeling the delicate knobs of her spine. The animal in him, sated and drowsy from the sex, stretched and yawned contentedly. The boy was terrified.
“We weren’t thinking,” he said, his voice rough.
“We were feeling,” she corrected softly. She tilted her head up to look at him. Her green eyes were clear now, resolved. “I don’t regret it.”
He searched her face for any flicker of doubt. He found only a weary, fierce certainty. It undid him. He kissed her forehead, her temple, the corner of her mouth. She turned her head and caught his lips with hers, a slow, lingering kiss that tasted of salt and sleep.
The kiss deepened, lazy and exploratory now, devoid of the earlier desperation. Her hand drifted down his stomach, her fingers tracing the line of hair below his navel. He was soft, spent. Her touch was mere affection. Then her fingers brushed lower, curling gently around him, and he stirred under her palm.
“Again?” she murmured, a sly, tired smile touching her lips.
“You’re unbelievable,” he breathed, but his body was already responding, thickening in her hand.
“I feel… alive,” she said, her smile fading into something more profound. “I need to feel it. With you. All of it.”
She pushed him onto his back and swung a leg over his hips, straddling him. The thin motel sheet fell away. In the gray dawn light, she was a pale goddess, her skin marked by the faint shadows of his hands, her hair a dark cascade. She looked down at him, her expression a mix of tenderness and possession.
She reached between her own legs, her fingers gliding through her slickness, watching his face as she did it. Then she guided him to her entrance, notching the head of his cock against her. She sank down slowly, a low, shaky sigh escaping her lips as she took him all the way inside, until he was buried to the root. She was exquisitely tight, still swollen from her last climax.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his hands flying to her hips.
She began to move, a slow, undulating roll of her hips that made his eyes roll back. He watched her, enthralled by the sight of her body taking him, by the concentrated pleasure on her face. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, her breasts swaying. Her rhythm became more urgent, a hard, driving piston motion that slapped their skin together in a wet, rhythmic beat.
“You like that?” she breathed, her voice husky. “You like watching me ride your cock?”
He could only grunt, his fingers digging into her flesh. The filthy talk, so unlike her usual self, sent a jolt straight through him. She leaned back, changing the angle, taking him even deeper. A sharp gasp punched out of her. “There… god, right there, Ro.”
He found a rhythm with her, thrusting up to meet her downward strokes. The room filled with the sound of their union, the lewd, wet squelch of her taking him, their ragged breathing, the creak of the cheap bedsprings. She was dripping onto him, her arousal making the slide effortless.
One of his hands left her hip and found the soaked junction of her thighs. His thumb sought her clit, already hard and pebbled. He pressed down, circling it firmly.
Her control shattered. Her movements became erratic, wild. “I’m gonna come… I’m gonna come all over you…” she chanted, her head falling back.
“Do it,” he snarled, bucking his hips up into her, his thumb a relentless point of pressure. “Soak my fucking cock, Aria. Let go.”
She screamed, a raw, unchecked sound that was probably heard in the next room. Her body clamped around him in violent, rhythmic pulses, milking him. The intense suction tipped him over the edge. He held her hips down, driving up into her as he came, his release hot and deep, a possessiveness roaring through him that had nothing to do with the alpha and everything to do with the boy.
She collapsed forward onto his chest, a sweaty, boneless weight. They were both slick with sweat and come, the smell of sex thick in the air. For a long time, they just breathed.
“Dean’s going to know,” she finally said, her words muffled against his skin.
“Know what?”
“That something’s different. That I’m lying.” She lifted her head. “He knows me. He’ll look at me and he’ll see it.”
Ronan’s blood went cold. She was right. The hunter’s intuition, the brother’s eye. Their lie was paper-thin. He thought of Sam’s research, Dean’s suspicion, the lore. They’d piece it together. They’d see Aria’s protectiveness, her evasions. They’d see the way she looked at the stray dog they were supposedly hunting. They’d see him.
“We run,” he said, the words tasting like ashes. “Now. Before they get close.”
“And go where?” She pushed herself up, sitting back on his thighs, still intimately joined. “They’re the best there are, Ro. They’ll find us. Or something else will.” Her gaze was steady, frighteningly clear. “The plan is the only plan. I face them. You stay hidden as River. We convince them the skinwalker is dead and gone.”
“It’s a suicide mission,” he argued, sitting up, his hands framing her face. “If they so much as suspect—”
“Then they can’t suspect.” Her voice was iron. “You have to be perfect. The dog has to be perfect. No hints. No slips.” Her eyes searched his, a desperate plea. “Can you do that? Can you hold it together? Even around them?”
The question hung in the air. The animal was calm now, satiated by the hunt, the kill, the sex. But it was a capricious thing, fueled by hunger and fear and threat. The Winchesters were a threat incarnate. Staying near them was like dancing in a room full of silver blades.
Before he could answer, a phone buzzed violently on the nightstand. Aria’s phone. The screen lit up with a single word: DEAN.
The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room. They froze, a still-life of tangled limbs and impending doom. The buzzing persisted, insistent.
“They’re early,” Ronan whispered, a cold dread seizing his guts.
Aria stared at the phone as if it were a live serpent. It stopped buzzing. A second later, it began again. Dean was calling back immediately. He wasn’t just checking in. He was pushing.
“I have to answer,” she said, her voice hollow. She climbed off him, the physical separation feeling like a rupture. She grabbed the phone, her hand shaking. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and swiped to answer.
“Dean?” she said, forcing lightness into her tone. “Hey.”
Ronan watched, every muscle taut. He could hear the deep, muffled rumble of Dean’s voice through the speaker, but not the words. Aria’s face went carefully neutral, a mask she was clearly struggling to hold.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just… shaken up.” She listened, her eyes darting to Ronan. “A motel outside of Red Creek. The Starlight. Room 11.” She was giving him the location. The plan was in motion.
Dean’s voice barked something sharper.
“I’m fine, Dean. Really. The dog… it took off into the woods. It was bleeding pretty bad.” She was lying, and doing a convincing job of it. Her voice hitched just right. “I don’t know if it’ll make it.”
More rumbling from Dean. Aria closed her eyes. “Yeah. Okay. See you soon.” She ended the call and let the phone drop to the bed as if it had burned her. She looked at Ronan, her mask crumbling into sheer panic.
“They’re forty minutes out,” she said. “He knew I was lying about something. I could hear it. He said to sit tight and ‘not do anything stupid.’” She hugged herself. “Sam’s researching. They’ve already identified the… the thing you killed. They know it was a skinwalker.”
Ronan was already moving. He swung his legs out of bed, the adrenaline scorching through any lingering fatigue. Forty minutes. “Get dressed,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Pack everything. Leave no trace we were here.”
He pulled on his jeans, his mind working at a feral speed. He had to shift. He had to become River, and he had to do it now. He had to bury Ronan Vale so deep that not even a brother’s intuition could dig him out. He looked at Aria, at the love and terror warring on her face.
“When they get here,” he said, pulling his hoodie over his head, “you look them in the eye. You sell it. And whatever you do…” He stepped closer, cupping her face. “Don’t look at me. Don’t talk to me. I’m not here. Only River is.”
He saw the understanding, and the grief, click into place behind her eyes. She nodded once, a sharp, military gesture. Then she turned and began stuffing her clothes into her bag with violent efficiency.
Ronan walked to the center of the room. He closed his eyes. He reached for the change, not as a last resort, but as a tool. He called the beast forward, not in rage, but in deliberate, focused submission. He needed its form, but not its mind.
The shift was quieter this time, a controlled agony. Bones realigned with muffled crunches. Fur, black and thick, sprouted from his skin. He dropped to all fours, his perspective shifting, the world blooming with a million new scents—mildew, sex, fear, Aria’s shampoo, the faint chemical tang of the shower soap. The husky, River, shook out his coat and looked at the woman he loved with his kind, animal eyes.
Aria zipped her bag, her movements frantic. She sprayed a cheap air freshener around the room, trying to mask the scent of sex and blood. She straightened the beds, her hands trembling. Finally, she looked at him. At River. A single tear tracked through the motel dust on her cheek.
“Okay,” she whispered, to herself or to him, he didn’t know. “Okay.”
She opened the motel door, letting in a slash of morning sun and the smell of asphalt. She tossed her bag into the passenger seat of the Camaro. Then she turned back, her silhouette framed in the doorway.
“Come on, boy,” she said, her voice forcefully bright, a performance already begun.
Ronan trotted out, his claws clicking on the concrete walkway. He jumped into the open backseat of the car, curling into a familiar, non-threatening ball. Aria closed the motel door, leaving the key inside. She got behind the wheel, started the engine, and let it idle.
They waited in the vibrating car, hunter and monster, girlfriend and beast, listening for the rumble of an approaching Impala. The unopened condom wrapper remained on the nightstand inside, a tiny, forgotten grenade. The real one was sitting in the backseat, praying his own nature didn’t betray them both.