“For fuck’s sake, Chelsea. I told you they’re back. I need you.”
“No,” she says, implacable. “I told you, I’m done with Harrisburg.”
“Chelsea,” he starts.
“I have a pack, Tyler. A pack that wants me to join them. I don’t—I’m not going to stop you from staying there with Lucas even if I think it’s wasting your life, but that was the deal. You get your life, and I get mine.”
“You’re our Alpha,” he says, his throat tight and eyes burning.
She’s quiet for a long moment, and that—that’s answer enough.
Her voice is apologetic when she says his name, but he hangs up before he can listen to her excuses. In the quiet of his empty bed, he lets himself cry.
~*~
“Chase,” John says, and Chase blinks at him, bleary-eyed and tired. “I need you to talk to me about the Reids.”
It’s fascinating to watch, because he thinks things are getting better with Chase. It’s not the same distant secrets from this time last year, when Chase spent a lonely Thanksgiving on his own, or this summer, when everything was dragged into the open and they were both too furious and distrustful to speak. They talk now. Chase voluntarily spends time with him, and he’s got a life, football and a study group and a girl he talks about sometimes, when he’s bright-eyed and excited.
But looking at him, as the question clatters across the breakfast table like a grenade, he thinks that if he pushes just a little, he’d undo everything. He’d spook Chase back into that lonely isolated shell he’s starting to emerge from, spook him straight into the Reids’ arms, and he might drag the boy away from them, but he’d lose his son in the process.
He takes a deep breath and picks his words carefully. “You asked me to help and I did, because I trust you. But trust goes two ways, Chase. And I need to know why I just sent a man with no medical reason for being ill home with his brother who has no medical training or even the slightest idea how to deal with hospitals.”
Chase exhales slowly, defeat drooping his shoulders, and he gives in. “The car accident... Remember the car wreck the Reids were killed in?”
John frowns, but nods. “What do you remember about it?”
“Just you talking to mom. You didn’t think it was an accident.”
The scene of the wreck hadn’t added up—it was neat, almost clean, but the car burnt so hot it scorched the ground and tore through Andrew and Sarah Reid, killed their youngest daughter before she could be cut from the wreckage. It didn’t add up, even as it was ruled an accident, and Tyler Reid was a shattered thing after it, all fury and grief with a guilt that didn’t make sense. He remembered Chelsea, Tyler’s older sister, had dragged him out of town, and the investigation stopped when insurance investigators and crime scene investigators ruled it an accident.
But even while it was ruled an accident—it didn’t feel like one.
It never felt right.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Chase says now, firm and unwavering.
~*~
When Chase slips into the RV two days later, there are bags under his eyes and he’s swaying on his feet as he stumbles to the couch. Lucas is already tucked there and Chase slumps into him, pressing against him.
“Your dad?” Tyler asks.
Chase shakes his head. “I told him about the accident. Not the werewolf thing or the Drakes.” He yawns and slurs, “You gotta tell me about that, though, Ty.”
Tyler nods as he shakes a blanket out over the boy and curls up in the other corner of the couch, the warmth and comfort of Pack lulling him into sleep.
~*~
When Chase wakes, Lucas's arm has slipped around him, a heavy weight that grounds him in the moment, and Tyler’s head is tipped back, a small sliver of couch separating him from the older man. The sun is shining through the front of the RV, the way it does in the early evening now that the days have gotten shorter, and he realizes that somehow, they’ve slept the entire day away.
He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to wake either of them, doesn’t want to wake up himself.
He thinks waking Tyler up and asking the questions—what does it mean, what are we doing, what am I doing here?—it’s going to change everything they’ve built. The quiet seclusion, the safe little hideaway where no one asks anything, where there’s only homework and workouts and rebuilding. It’s going to go away.
He burrows into Lucas's side and for the first time in a long time, he wants to cry.
He doesn’t sleep, not really. He just slips into that quiet place between sleeping and waking. Tyler’s hand on his ankle rouses him, holding loosely while his thumb presses over the pulse beneath his thin skin and pulls him fully awake, even as he presses deeper into Lucas.
“I don’t want to know,” he says, and Tyler’s grip on him tightens. “I don’t want to break this.”
Tyler’s grip goes bruisingly tight for just a moment, ringing his ankle in finger-shaped bruises.
“You won’t,” Tyler promises, “You can’t.”
Chase stares at him, tucked in the safety of Lucas's embrace, and takes a breath.
“Tell me everything.”
~*~
“Chelsea wouldn’t stay here after the accident—too many memories of our parents, too afraid of the witches. Harrisburg has always been Reid territory, and we never had a problem with other supernaturals, but the land... It draws other things. We used to see fae and kelpies, and one summer, when I was ten, we had a flock of griffon nest in the woods. Lucas was so pissed—we had feathers everywhere for months.”
Chase smiles, just a little.
“She wanted me to go with her, and I did for a while. I had to. She’s not just my sister. She’s my Alpha.”
“You came back,” Chase whispers.
“Chelsea... It wasn’t fair to expect her to be a good alpha. She wasn’t ready, and she was so scared—of the Drakes and the Council, of the power, of the memories. She ran and she never stopped. And I couldn't. Lucas—he’s Pack. I’d hurt enough—”
Tyler breaks off. Chase glances up, nudging his ankle a little to get Tyler’s attention.
“He was all alone and defenseless—and he’s Pack.”
Tyler stares at him, and he looks so lost, so confused, that it makes Chase wiggle out of Lucas's grip and crawl into Tyler’s lap.
“You did a good thing. Taking care of him—it’s a good thing.”
“I defied my Alpha, Chase,” Tyler says, voice low and hoarse. “Chelsea is still my Alpha—both of ours. But it’s only because if she wasn’t, she’d be an omega just like we are—lone wolves without a pack, slowly going crazy”
Chase shifts and glares at him, fierce and defensive. “You aren’t. You have a pack. We’re your Pack, Lucas and me. Chelsea—she’s not here. She doesn’t deserve to be your alpha and she sure as hell hasn’t earned your obedience.”
Tyler is staring at him, eyes wide with surprise, and Chase falters, wilting a little. “I mean... Lucas. Lucas is your Pack.”
Tyler’s hand comes up and closes over the nape of his neck, squeezing as he presses his nose to Chase’s temple. “No, you said you’re Pack. Don’t think for one second you can back out of that now.”
Chase smiles and tucks himself into Tyler, letting the drowsy tug of contentment settle the anger and confusion churning in his gut.
“Ok,” he says agreeably.
Lucas's hand, on the couch where it fell when Chase scrambled into Tyler’s lap, twitches.
Chapter 7
Chase goes to see Brielle.
He doesn’t tell Tyler, or even his dad, who doesn’t trust the Drakes after what Chase told him about the Reid accident. He just goes, one night when he’s alone and knows that Ben is busy with work and his mom.
She looks startled to see him and he smiles as she talks, the nervous babble of a girl who desperately wants approval. He isn’t sure why Brielle cares about his approval, except that Ben matters to him.
He isn’t sur
e what he’s looking for. He only knows that this girl’s presence had shaken Tyler enough to call Chelsea and that it’d caused Lucas to go into seizures that still give Chase nightmares.
He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just knows he should be looking for something.
~*~
He meets Andre Drake that day, a pale-eyed man with a military bearing and something guilty and drawn about the way he carries himself.
“Daddy, this is Chase. I told you about him—he was there that day when Mr. Reid had his seizure.”
And because he’s looking for it, he sees the guilty flare in Andre Drake’s eyes, the way his gaze goes hot and heavy and intrusive on Chase for a moment before it skates away and he smiles at Brielle, bright and fond, then says, “I hope your friend is ok, Chase.”
“He is,” Chase says, “I’ll make sure he is.”
It isn’t quite a threat, but it’s damn close.
~*~
Tyler is furious. It’s the first time he’s ever actually been angry with Chase.
“You can’t do that,” he snarls, pushing Chase hard into the wall. Chase shrugs, unrepentant. “They’re dangerous, Chase.”
“And we needed to know how dangerous. You couldn’t find that out—and now we know.”
“What if—they could have—you—”
Chase pauses in the middle of wiggling away from him. “Ty? What?” That rage is covering something. He thinks, suddenly, that maybe he was wrong. “Hey,” he says, tugging at Tyler’s arm insistently until Tyler looks at him, wide-eyed and...afraid?
“They’re dangerous, Chase,” he whispers, “You—I already lost so many of my pack to them. I can’t do that again. Not with you.”
Chase stares at him for a long time. “Ok. I’m sorry.”
He pushes into Tyler’s arms and Tyler huffs, stiff and still angry, as Chase scritches at his back until he finally pushes the boy away with a sigh. “You’ll stay away from the Drakes?”
Chase nods, solemn. “Yeah. I’ll stay away.”
~*~
Drake finds Tyler two days later, while he’s picking up groceries, alone. When he rounds the corner and steps into the soup aisle, Drake is there, glaring at chicken broth like it killed his daughter.
He stiffens at the sight of Tyler and for a moment, Tyler almost retreats.
“We aren’t here for you, Reid,” Drake offers, and some of the tension in his gut eases.
“They why are you here?”
Andre Drake turns to look at him then, a box of broth in his hands and something like honesty in his eyes. “My daughter deserves some stability during high school, and Harrisburg is a good place to raise a family.”
Tyler smiles and says viciously, “Drakes didn’t think my sister deserved the same consideration.”
Drake glares at him briefly, then he schools his expression into something still and watchful. “That was not me. Or the family I claim. I’m no longer aligned with the coven.”
Tyler snorts and starts to walk away, before Andre says coldly, “But Tyler, if I hear the Chief’s son is bitten—I’ll have to rethink my stance on the Reids in Harrisburg.”
Tyler snarls and shoves Drake into the racks of soup. “Stay the hell away from Chase. Do you understand me? He’s innocent and human—you stay the fuck away from him or I will break the peace, witch.”
He snatches up the soup Chase needs to make dinner and stalks away without waiting for Drake to respond, without giving himself a chance to consider how much he just revealed to Andre fucking Drake.
~*~
Tyler doesn’t like letting him jog by himself. He says that with Drakes in Harrisburg, they have to be careful—that he has to be careful.
“I’m not a werewolf,” Chase protests, “The witches would never come for a human—and you have a peace treaty with them.”
“They don’t.” Tyler is patient, as always, even when Chase is glaring at him over a piece of drywall, white dust in his hair. “But they don’t always stick to that. And you’re Pack—human or not, if they decide to make a move for us, they’ll come for you, too.”
So Tyler runs with him, now.
John raises an eyebrow until Chase points out that Tyler doesn’t mind, and that he’s safer this way. Tyler, standing nearby, watches Chase with a familiar, fond exasperation, and John grudgingly agrees.
He likes it, running with Tyler. It’s familiar in ways that don’t make sense. Most of the time he follows Tyler’s steps for miles, before Chase presses against him briefly, then he puts on a burst of speed and darts ahead. Tyler growls and chases him, and it becomes a new way of training.
Sometimes Tyler will shift into his other form and chase him through the trees, teaching Chase how to hide and run, how to hunt with a werewolf, and how to be hunted by a werewolf.
It almost always ends with him pinned—to a tree, to the ground, to Tyler’s chest— as Tyler huffs a laugh and tells him what he did wrong.
Sometimes, though, as the months slip past and he gets smarter, he’ll reach the wide clearing where they train without ever being caught and Tyler will smile at him, pleased and proud, before he takes Chase back to the little house in the woods.
~*~
The months melt away and Tyler works on the house. Sometimes when he’s standing in the middle of the gutted bedroom, he thinks it’ll never be finished. Then he hears Chase, laughing as he talks to Lucas and makes dinner, and he thinks it’s ok that it’s taking time.
Some things do.
In April, Chase gets an especially good report card, so John gives him permission to spend three nights a week with the Reids. Tyler shows him a set of blueprints and waits anxiously as Chase stares at the addition he’s building onto the small cabin.
He blinks up at Tyler, his eyes wide and cautious. “You’re—you’re building me a room?”
“We’re building you a room,” Tyler says gruffly and Chase makes a quiet noise in his throat, low and helpless, and Tyler sighs. “You’re Pack, Chase. You need space in the den.”
And he knows. He does. He’s known since Halloween and Lucas’s collapse that he’s important to the Reids. But it’s different, seeing something so visual, so permanent.
He blinks back tears and says, his voice shaky, “Do I get to pick the paint?”
Tyler rolls his eyes and ruffles Chase's hair with a fond smile before he rolls up the plans and tucks them away.
~*~
Chase starts exercising Lucas.
He sits on the wooden patio that Tyler builds off the back of the house and works the quiet man’s fingers, his voice a low, coaxing babble, a constant stream of encouragement.
Tyler watches sometimes, but he seems content to let Chase have his way with Lucas’s care.
“He likes you,” is all Tyler offers when Chase asks about it.
“Of course he likes me. But that doesn’t explain you letting me force him through yoga three times a week.”
“He likes you,” Tyler repeats. “And we trust you. But—nothing you do is going to hurt him. There’s a good chance it’ll help him.”
Chase rotates Lucas’s foot, lifts his knee, bending his leg back so it presses against his chest.
“Do you think he’ll ever wake up?” Chase asks softly.
Lucas stares up at him, and Tyler blinks into the woods as the spring wind twists through the trees, ruffling his hair.
“Yes,” Tyler says eventually.
~*~
It’s a new moon, in the dead of summer.
John mentions that he enjoyed fishing and it spins into a conversation about the Reids’ fondness for camping, and before Chase can actually figure out how it happens, Tyler and John have arranged a camping trip.
Chase stares at both of them like they’re crazy. Tyler’s polite when the Reids come to the DeWitt house for monthly dinners, and John’s very careful to never be outright hostile, but they don’t like each other.
They just tolerate each other for Chase’s sake.
/> But here they are at a tiny campground, where Tyler has now spent hours sitting on the bank while John fished, both of them silent.
“That is so weird,” Chase mutters to Lucas, who, true to form, says absolutely nothing. “I mean, I like that they get along, but it’s weird.”
“Weird isn’t bad,” Tyler says mildly, and Chase jerks around to glare at him and his dad, standing behind him with matching smiles.
“Oh, god, don’t do that,” Chase says, appalled suddenly. John raises an eyebrow and Chase whines, “This is the worst thing ever.”
Chase isn’t terribly surprised when John mentions Chelsea. Tyler, never very forthcoming about his family, has been downright chatty while they hike and swim and Chase makes sticky s’mores.
“What happened to her?” John asks gently.
Chase stiffens and leans forward. “She left. She left and they don’t need her,” he says fiercely, glaring at Tyler when he gets that haunted look Chase hates seeing. “We don’t need her,” he repeats, and Tyler nods slowly.
Chase doesn’t think Tyler believes him, not yet—but he’s seen the blueprints and he knows damn well that Tyler hasn’t planned a room for their absent alpha.
So maybe—maybe he is starting to believe it.
~*~
The truth is, he knows they don’t need Chelsea, but there’s a part of Tyler that longs for his alpha. A part of him that aches for that ownership, that belonging.
It’s eased some since Chase joined them, since he became Pack. But he’s a werewolf without an alpha, in a pack made up of a human boy too old for his age and a catatonic werewolf who can’t shift. Even with this pack that he adores, there’s an aching emptiness that he wishes could be filled.
He dreams, almost always, after he thinks that.
It’s not perfect, but it’s good. What they have—it’s good.
It’s better than he dared dream he’d ever have, after the his parents died.
~*~
It’s September, almost a month after the school year begins and Chase is settled into his classes and extracurriculars. Tyler sits across from him in the kitchen of the house. He drags Chase’s algebra book away until the boy blinks up at him, a little dazed.
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