Lucas is reading at the kitchen table, and Tyler feels a flush of shame suddenly, scalding hot as he remembers the possessive fury he’d felt when he saw Lucas.
“Luc—” he starts.
Lucas shakes his head. “You’re a wolf protecting his mate. It’s not surprising or worthy of an apology.” Lucas leans back and smiles at his brother. “I’m happy for you, Tyler.”
Tyler flushes.
Lucas turns back to his book. “Better get back to him before he wakes.”
He hesitates for a moment, but then he nods and retreats back to his room, warm washcloth clenched in his hand.
“You ok?” Chase murmurs when Tyler carefully cleans him, sighing and arching into the touch.
He presses a kiss to the boy’s shoulder and nods. “Yeah. I'm perfect.”
Chase smiles and settles deeper into his arms. Tyler falls asleep listening to the sound of him breathing.
~*~
Chase wakes to an empty bed, the smell of bacon and eggs in the air, and a deliciously sore body. He groans as he stretches, and two seconds later Tyler’s head pops into the room, his eyebrows pulled low. “Stay,” he growls.
Chase blinks.
Tyler darts back out and Chase licks his lips. “Don’t I even get coffee?” he mumbles, and there’s a rumbling growl from the kitchen. He grins, settling deeper into the messy blankets.
Tyler carrying a tray—so carefully it actually makes his chest ache—into the room shouldn’t be anything less than ridiculous, but it’s not. It’s sweet, sexy in a way he never expected domesticity to be. They cook for each other all the time, something that’s so common it doesn’t bear remarking on, something comforting and familiar.
This is not that. This is different, because Tyler is watching him with big, hopeful eyes, as he carefully arranges the food on the bed for him.
Chase gets it, understands the werewolf behavior, because even if he’s never seen Tyler or Lucas with someone they’re courting, he’s read libraries worth of lore and bestiaries, and he knows what this is.
It’s why he leans down and kisses Tyler soft and sweet, then reaches for the bacon and bites into it. Tyler sits quiet and still, watching him eat, and his breath catches when Chase lifts a bite of eggs, cheesy and warm, and offers it to Tyler.
He’s quiet as Tyler chews, doesn’t comment on it or the cooking for him, but he watches the way Tyler’s eyes get darker and hungrier with every bite he offers, the way Tyler licks his fingers when he takes bacon from them, the way he sucks strawberry juice from them—the avid way he watches Chase.
By the time he’s done, his belly is pleasantly full, and he feels like he’s a few strokes away from coming all over himself.
“Still hungry?” Tyler asks, and Chase whines.
The smile Tyler gives him is all wolf and promise.
~*~
Tyler fucks him hard and fast this time, panting dirty and hot in his ear while he pins Chase’s hands to the bed, holding his hips up as he fucks him so that Chase gets no friction, nothing at all to rut against.
“Want you to come on my dick,” Tyler groans, “Just that, sweetheart, you can do it, c’mon. Come for me.”
Chase wails when he does, shaking and trying to claw away, even while he’s pushing back into Tyler, grinding against him.
Tyler pins him and pulls out, stroking himself off with quick, brutal strokes, snarling when he spills messy and hot across Chase’s back.
Chase smiles, warm and content, when Tyler rubs it into his skin, then smears his own spunk onto Tyler’s throat.
Tyler’s eyes gleam and Chase giggles. “Fuckin’ werewolf courting.”
~*~
They emerge late that evening after the sun has gone down, when Aurora taps imperiously on their door and summons them for dinner. Chase is come-drunk and giggling with Tyler is pressed close to him, nosing into his hair.
Aurora perches in Lucas’s lap, picking at the roast on his plate. Her eyes are knowing and warm as Tyler settles into his seat and loops an arm around Chase's shoulders, stopping just shy of dragging the boy into his lap.
Chase smirks at her when she feeds Lucas a piece of carrot and sips his wine, and she smiles back serenely, content with the blue-eyed werewolf pressing kisses into her throat.
“Well,” she says, her sharp voice at odds with her fond smile, “It’s about fucking time.”
Chapter 23
It’s not that Tyler is afraid of John, exactly.
He’s not. John is Pack. Not quite the way Aurora is, and never the way Chase is—the burning center of them—but Pack. He likes John, and respects him. There’s always been a healthy respect for him.
He all-too-clearly remembers that endless summer with John’s burning fury, the gaping distance between him and Chase, when his wolf would run and run and run, never finding it’s packmate.
He isn’t afraid, but he is very aware of who John is and how important he is to Chase.
“Stop worrying,” Chase says, watching him as he drives, and Tyler scowls. “Dad loves you.”
Tyler isn’t sure that’s true, but he knows that they get along far better than he ever expected.
“I’m fucking his only son, who is also ten years younger than me,” Tyler says flatly.
Chase nods happily. “Yeah, maybe don’t put it that away, ok?” He squeezes Tyler’s fingers.
Tyler sighs and continues quietly worrying.
~*~
John arrives when Chase finishes the pan-seared chicken breasts. There’s baked potatoes instead of salad, because Tyler felt the man deserved that much.
Tyler wipes his hands on his pants and fidgets nervously as John enters the kitchen. The Chief freezes, watching Tyler for a moment, before his gaze flicks to his son.
He sighs, this long-suffering thing that makes Tyler cringe. “Chase,” he says, “If you’re going to tell me your dating Tyler, I definitely deserve red meat.”
Chase plates the chicken while Tyler stares at him, startled. “Good thing I didn’t tell you shit, huh, Dad?” He kisses Tyler on the cheek and says, “Get Dad a beer and come sit down, baby.”
Tyler flushes and does as he’s told. He eyes the Chief as he sits. “How’d you know?”
John shrugs. “I’ve been watching you with my son for years, Tyler. If something changes between you two, did you really think I’d miss it?”
“Oh my god, Dad. Lucas totally called you, didn’t he?” Chase snaps.
John smirks.
Tyler nods and says faintly, “I’m going to strangle him.”
~*~
John is quiet at his side as they wash dishes while Chase changes upstairs.
“I didn’t plan this,” Tyler says honestly. It’s not an apology, not quite—he doesn’t think he could apologize for loving Chase—but it’s...something.
“I know,” John says. He huffs, dipping his hands back into the soapy water. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been expecting this for years.”
“But—”
John looks at him. “Chase has never been a normal kid. If my son thought you and your Pack were worth protecting when he was sixteen, and worth magically binding himself to when he’s eighteen, he’s never going to change his mind about you. I’m just glad you both waited until he was old enough to be legal.”
John pulls the drain, turning to face him, and the look he gets reminds Tyler that this man faces down criminals every day.
“I’m not going to tell you I’ll shoot you if you break his heart. You already know he can do it, and I think Lucas would rip your throat out before I could get my gun. So that’s out. But I will remind you of this: he trusts you not to hurt him.” He studies the other man. “You’re one of the only people in the world who can. Me and Ben and the Pack—that’s it. No one else matters to my son. You sure as hell better be worth his love.”
~*~
Summer settles into Harrisburg like a lover, easing deep. Chase adores it. He loves having Aurora close again, loves waking in
Tyler’s bed with nowhere else to be.
He spends days with Ben playing video games, listening to him ramble about buying Brielle a ring, and wonders if he should be jealous. Tyler kisses him in the mornings and fucks him through the night, but there’s no talk of the future, no real talk of what the hell they’re doing—something he’s only vaguely concerned about.
Aurora snorts her opinion of that and turns back to her endless supply of summer research.
On the longest day of the year, as he has for the last two years, Chase stands before the Standing Stones and renews his bindings, magic rippling through the air and making his tattoos burn. Tyler and Lucas press into Aurora’s legs, giant wolves that almost dwarf her, and they watch, eyes glowing, as Chase drags all that power into himself.
The summer is quiet, made up of long nights together, full moons and lucid dreams, and endless days at the bookstore, Tyler arriving to pick him up with a shy pleased smile.
It’s sprinkled through with days with his dad, and one weekend in July that he and Tyler go to Washington with John to visit Grammy.
It’s perfect, Chase’s magic feeling quietly peaceful under his skin, and he wonders when the hell the other shoe is gonna drop.
~*~
“I don't want you to leave,” Chase mumbles, and Aurora nods. It's not the first time he's said it.
“It's just a few months,” she soothes.
“He's better when you're here,” Chase says.
They don't talk about Lucas’s tendency to violence and cruelty—it's like Tyler's anti-social isolation sometimes, and Chase’s insomnia. It’s there, and a problem, and they live around it.
“I know,” she sighs.
Chase huffs into her hair, hating everything that takes his Pack away.
“He'll stop killing after Mia,” she says, and Chase wonders if it's her power or simple hope that makes her voice ring with conviction.
Chase wishes he felt the same.
~*~
Lucas takes Aurora to the airport. Chase doesn’t complain, just kisses her cheek and watches as Tyler hugs her, then huddles in his embrace as Lucas drives them away. He’s quiet and Aurora is bent over her phone, ignoring him completely, until—
“You’ll visit me. When Chase lets you off the leash, you’ll visit me.”
When you have killed and your hands run red with blood. Come to me.
Lucas stares at her, unblinking. “Of course.”
She smiles and kisses him, a brief teasing thing, before she slips out of the car and is gone.
~*~
In September, they get hit with a heat wave so intense Chase whines for days and lays naked in Tyler’s bed, slurping popsicles and being generally useless. Tyler buys a fan and puts it on the bedside table, then blows him with a quiet intensity that makes Chase shiver and shudder and babble, his hands in Tyler’s hair and his eyes squeezed shut in bliss.
A water snake moves into the lake and drowns two swimmers before Lucas puts it down, Chase’s wards burning through him and the dragon until he thinks his blood will boil.
“Aren’t your wards supposed to discourage this kind of thing?” Lucas grumps, carrying the still-steaming mage through the forest.
Chase watches the trees and stars wheeling overhead. “It was so cold,” he mumbles.
Lucas snarls. “Tyler is going to kill me,” he bitches, hitching the boy higher in his arms as Chase giggles, high and drunk on his power.
~*~
He doesn’t move out of his father’s house, not really, but as he crawls out of Tyler’s bed for the fourth morning in a row, he realizes he isn’t living there, either. It shakes him more than he’d like, so he kisses Tyler goodbye absently and drives to the station to talk to his dad.
“I don’t want to move out,” he blurts as soon as he shoves open the office door. John blinks at him, owlish and guilty over the chocolate donut in his hand, and Chase glares, pointing at him.
John takes a defiant bite and chews as he says, “Kid, you’ve been splitting residence since you were in high school. Now that you and Reid are together, it’s not really surprising. He built the house for you.”
“He built it for his Pack,” Chase says absently, reaching over and stealing the donut.
“And you are his Pack,” John says patiently, like this should be obvious.
It probably should be.
Chase slumps into his seat. “But I miss you,” he says plaintively.
John’s face softens. “Oh, kid. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. Our house will always be your home, even when you do move out.”
Chase nods and swallows hard. “Can—can we do dinner though? Just us, sometime this week?”
John grins. “As long as you let me eat real food.”
Chase snorts and takes a bite of the donut still in his hand. “Not a chance in hell, old man.”
~*~
He sits against the Standing Stones and listens to the howls in the forest, the eerie scream that reaches for the treetops. He feels the press of the magic against his skin, the Stones thrumming against and in him, and it feels so much like his, like home.
It’s coming, they whisper, and he listens, one ear trained on the magic, the other listening as his wolves run closer. It’s coming.
He presses closer into the Stones. What? What’s coming?
The Stones in his dream stretch high above him, scraping a moon-dark sky, spreading impossibly tall, sturdy, alive, and powerful.
Danger, they whisper, with magic against his skin, rustles in the leaves, shouts on the wind.
He shivers and listens as the Stones scream in warning.
~*~
“I got offered a job,” Tyler says one night while Chase is glaring at a Stats test and Lucas is heating soup on the stove.
“You have a job,” Lucas says sassily.
Tyler rolls his eyes and takes Chase his dinner. “I got offered a project.”
Chase hums absently and kisses his cheek, then bites into his sandwich.
“It’s in Vancouver.”
Chase stills, eyes wide, the sandwich dangling from his hand and dripping tomato soup on his book.
Tyler built a reputation around himself for designing and building beautiful houses that work with the nature around them, blending seamlessly with the world, making them as green and environmentally friendly as possible, but he’s only ever worked around Harrisburg.
Vancouver is not Harrisburg.
“How long will you be gone?” Chase asks.
Tyler’s gaze flicks down, a frown on his lips. “I think two weeks? I can design it in two weeks.”
“And six months for building?” Chase says, trying hard to keep his voice from shaking.
Tyler blinks. “No? I mean, yes—but I can leave the crew. They’ve done it often enough I just need to be there a few days every couple weeks.” His expression turns hurt. “You think I’d leave for six months?”
“I think,” Chase says, moving to sit in Tyler’s lap, “that if you wanted this opportunity, it would suck, but I’d never tell you not to take it.”
Tyler snorts. “That’s because you're ridiculously self-sacrificing.”
“I’m not,” Lucas says, “and I’d say the same. It’s good for you, even if the separation would be horrible. That said, I think you have a workable plan. And you didn't even need our assistance.” He smiles at his brother. “Excellent work, Tyler.”
~*~
Chase notices the girl before she speaks to him. She keeps turning up—in his classes, at the bookstore he works in, at the coffee shop where he sits with the pretty barista, Jessica, to study, or with her roommate, Ezra, to read comics.
He can feel the way his magic hums around her, the quiet curious pulse against his wards, but she isn’t dangerous. She isn’t threatening, just...watchful.
It takes a week. He’s alone in the diner waiting for a grilled chicken salad for his father when she approaches him.
“Shaman Reid,” she says formal
ly, her voice at odds with the distressed jeans and ratty sweater she’s wearing. “I come on behalf of the Lewis Pack in hopes of alliance.”
Chase cocks his head. “I can’t negotiate an alliance that the Reid Alpha will endorse.”
She smiles. “You would be surprised, Shaman, how little that matters.”
~*~
The Lewis Pack doesn’t come in strength. The Alpha is a dark haired man with an easy smile who introduces himself as Stephen and travels with his Shaman—Liss waves at Chase, a smirk on her lips—and his Second, Vince, a quiet black man who watches everything with sharp but friendly eyes.
Lucas finds the whole thing immensely amusing. “We’re a Pack of four without an Alpha. Why on earth would you want an alliance with us?”
“Because you’re a Pack of four without an Alpha that every Pack in the country is whispering about,” Stephen says frankly. “Chase, you’re the strongest mage in the country and have bound a Pack together without an Alpha.”
His gaze flicks to Lucas, but he doesn’t say anything about the reputation Lucas has built, and the older ‘wolf smiles, sharp and dangerous.
“And if our Alpha returns?”
Liss gives a sphinx-like smile. “How likely is that, do you think?”
Chase shifts. “You have safe passage in our territory for the time we consider your proposal.”
Lucas stands before his Emissary does, and Stephen looks faintly surprised. “You need to consider it?”
Chase grins. “We’re a Pack of four without an Alpha. We need to consider.”
He steals the last scone on the table before he leaves, Lucas quiet at his back.
~*~
They Skype Tyler and Aurora.
The thing is, they have a good life, their tiny alpha-less pack, but it all hinges on Chelsea being too distracted to care about them. Chase has spent an hour with the woman and knows that if she ever came back to Harrisburg for good, everything would change.
“It’s not keeping our head down,” Chase says, sprawled on the couch. Tyler scowls from his hotel room in Vancouver, dark circles under his eyes. Aurora is in bed, but her eyes are bright. “She won’t like it.”
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