He hates Chelsea and doesn’t do a very good job of covering it up.

“The Reid Pack is dead, kid. Dead packs don’t need shamans.”

“The Reid Pack is doing just fine,” Chase snaps, “It’s their alpha that seems to have a problem.”

She pauses, then says, “You should remember I’m your Alpha, too.”

“No,” Chase says, defiant and sure. “You aren’t. You’re barely their Alpha and you know it. You don’t have a pack bond with me, because you’ve never been around to form one. And you don’t share our dreams.”

She makes a wordless noise, something that sounds furious even to him, and he wants to laugh.

“Watch yourself, little wolf. I might not be your Alpha but they’re mine and one day you might well be.”

Chase snorts. “I really won’t. Now, will you let me train? Or are you scared?”

“What the hell do I care what some idiotic kid wants to do in Harrisburg? Do whatever the hell you want,” Chelsea snarls.

He smiles, tight and vicious. “I will, Alpha.”

He hangs up before she can and wavers there on his feet for a few minutes, fear and nerves twisting in his gut. Then he bolts to the bathroom and is thoroughly and messily sick.

~*~

Chase finds Leon Harper on a Sunday, shadowed by Tyler as he steps onto the Druid’s lands. It’s strange being here instead of seeing the older man at one of his father’s crime scenes, processing the evidence. For a moment, he considers turning around and going home.

His hands shake and he thinks of the terror in Tyler’s eyes when he told the older man about calling Chelsea, about the violent dreams he’s had since then, something pressing on them.

They never talk about the dreams, but Chase knows they’re part of running with wolves, part of being Pack.

He knows they’re a kind of magic a human like himself shouldn’t be able to touch.

“Chase DeWitt,” Harper says as they slip into his backyard, carefully skirting the garden lined with holly and aconite, “and Tyler Reid.”

He eyes Chase for a long moment and then stands. “We can talk inside,” he says mildly, leading the way.

~*~

“You can’t rush this, Chase. We’re fine.”

“We were fine,” Chase says tightly, “But now Mia is coming to Harrisburg.”

“We have a peace treaty with the Drake coven,” Tyler says, like standing in the frozen food aisle with Andre Drake can make a binding treaty.

It’s lasted for three years though, so hell, maybe it can.

“Andre isn’t Mia,” Chase says.

Tyler’s stomach turns. “You know,” he whispers.

Chase stares at him, still and unmoving, waiting, and he’s never wanted to run as much as he wants to in this moment.

“How?”

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Chase asks, and Tyler gives him a disbelieving sort of glare. “The dreams.”

Tyler closes his eyes, because of course. Chase would trot out Mia and the fucking dreams at the same time.

“I trusted her and she killed my family,” he says dully. “And the ones she didn’t kill—Lucas and Chelsea—they’re broken. I trusted her and she destroyed everything I’ve ever loved. And she’ll do it again if she has the chance.”

Chase crowds him, stepping into his space with the quiet sureness that he’s welcome here, that he will always be welcome here, that he belongs here. Tyler doesn’t push him away, doesn’t do anything but settle his hands on Chase’s shoulders, thumb brushing against his neck, scent marking him.

Chase says softly, firmly, “She won’t. She won’t touch me, Tyler.”

“You do this, you can’t undo it. You know that, right? You’ll be tied to the Pack and I can’t take it back.”

Chase smiles then, young and sure and bright, “Who the hell said I wanted you to?”

Tyler whines, a broken little noise, and hauls him into a hug, burying his face in Chase's throat. The boy makes quiet shushing noises as he lets himself be held.

“Will you tell me? One day?”

Tyler shudders, but he nods against Chase.

One day.

But not today.

~*~

Do you know what you’re asking for?

Chase breathes and closes his eyes.

It isn’t a game, Chase.

He can feel his senses stretch, can feel the warm pulse of Tyler and Lucas.

You are opening yourself up to a world that isn’t yours.

He can feel the preserve, the house they built, his father’s heartbeat, steady and familiar.

You won’t be able to go back if you do this.

He smiles.

You will belong to them. To their world.

He slices into his palm. He can hear a thousand wolves howling as he chants and the wind rustles through the trees, the runes he carved flaring to life with a flash of white-hot heat as the ritual completes and the bonds of Pack and Shaman snap into place. He screams as Tyler howls.

You’re wrong, he’d told Harper calmly, They’ll belong to me.

~*~

“You should have trained,” Tyler grumbles, fussing over his bandages, and Chase nudges him aside. Tyler huffs but relaxes into the porch swing as Chase leans against him.

He feels different, electric and alive, something powerful crackling across his scent.

“You know why I couldn’t.”

Because of Mia. Because there was a threat to the pack and without the ritual, Chase had no real standing in their sham of a pack. Now he does.

Now, he’s an untrained human boy without anything to hide behind and they’ll target him.

Fear clenches in Tyler’s chest and he squeezes Chase close, a whine in his throat.

Chase pets his hair softly and says, “Shh. It’s ok. Nothing will hurt us. Not ever.”

Tyler thinks it’s very stupid, but he believes Chase.

~*~

The ritual that Harper taught him to bind himself to the pack was hard and draining, and Chase glares at the runes he’s carving—for the fifth fucking time today—and thinks maybe he should go back to that.

“You don’t believe in what you’re doing,” Harper says serenely.

“I believe you’re an ass,” Chase mutters. Harper slaps him lightly against the back of the head.

“I just—the ritual wasn’t this difficult,” Chase bitches.

“The ritual you believed you could do. The one you believed you had to do, to keep Tyler and Lucas safe. That ritual.” Harper’s voice is dry and empty, devoid even of the placid amusement that so often colors it, and Chase flushes.

“It can’t be that easy. Believing in shit doesn’t make it happen. I believe I can fly, doesn’t mean I can.”

“Chase, you believed you could help a broken man and his brother and you made a pack. There is, I think, very little you can’t do with determination and belief.”

Chase stares at him, open-mouthed and startled, and Harper gives him a gentle nudge.

“Try again,” he says.

~*~

He comes to the house smelling of ozone and blood, of magic and ash.

Tyler hates it.

“You’re pushing too hard,” he growls while Chase glares at his homework.

“We need me to push. If Mia—”

“Mia isn’t your responsibility,” Tyler snarls and Chase finally gives him his attention. “You keep trying to fix this, fix me, and no one asked you to do that. You’re hurting yourself for something I don’t want.”

He can feel it, the blinding hurt flooding through the pack bond, and then it’s gone, cut off cleanly, so repressed he actually whines, reaching for the bond he can’t feel.

“You don’t want me to protect us, but you won’t and Lucas can’t. So who the fuck do you expect to do the job?”

The job of defending the pack doesn’t belong to a shaman, he wants to scream. It doesn’t belong to a human. It belongs—

It’s the Alpha’s job and she left, ran away because she couldn’t fucking do it or maybe they just weren’t worth the effort.

He swallows and looks away.

“Maybe no one,” he mutters. “Maybe it’s time to let the Drakes finish what they started.”

Chase hits him, and it’s not the krav maga Tyler taught him, it’s not something physical that he can snarl at and fight. The blow is invisible, a hard shove of magic that lays him on his ass and presses him down, head stretched back and neck exposed, and Chase is there, pressing his foot to Tyler’s vulnerable throat, his eyes flashing with a fury Tyler’s never seen in the younger boy.

“Don’t you dare,” Chase snaps, “They don’t get to touch you. You’re mine and I won’t let them fucking touch you and I won’t let you throw yourself in their path because you feel guilty.”

“Chase,” he tries and Chase presses harder, choking off his air and his words, and Tyler—Tyler melts, stops fighting, sags into the floor even as he presses against Chase's foot just to feel the pressure of being held down.

“You’re mine,” Chase snarls, and it’s a vicious threat and a solemn promise, “and you don’t get to hurt what’s mine.”

~*~

They don’t talk about it.

The one time Chase tries, Tyler gives him a long searching stare and then leaves the room. He doesn’t talk to him for three days after.

It keeps Chase from trying again, but he thinks about it.

He thinks about it a lot. When he’s alone, in the quiet of his room, with his dad safe and asleep a few rooms over, when the pack bonds are quiet and still, and the dark wraps around him like a secret keeper—he thinks about it, about the way Tyler had looked, splayed out and pinned by his magic, by his will, about the way his eyes went cloudy and hot, pupils blown to hell and the edge of blue creeping in when Chase held him down by the throat.

In that moment, Chase is sure that Tyler wanted something, wanted more.

And he’s equally sure he could have done anything to Tyler and Tyler wouldn’t have stopped him.

One thought makes him hard, and he gasps, fucking his fist, chasing his orgasm as he remembers it, the hot want there, the way Tyler had looked, the way he would look, spread out in Chase’s bed. He moans and comes in thick white stripes across his belly.

The other thought—the other thought makes him sick.

He’s always known Tyler Reid was broken. It’s why they worked—they were broken together, with Lucas their shattered hollowed out shell. But he never realized until that day in the forest just how broken Tyler truly is.

He wants Mia Drake’s head on a fucking pike.

And he thinks Chelsea might look good next to her.

~*~

“You really think Mia Drake arranged the accident that killed half of the Tyler’s family,” Aurora says, and Chase stares at her. He’s asking for a lot, expecting her to believe this without explaining why the actual fuck Mia Drake would want to kill the Reid family.

“Yes,” he says simply.

Aurora nods. “Ok. Have you talked to Brielle yet?”

“No,” Chase shakes his head. “I don’t think she knows.”

“But her father will?” Aurora asks skeptically.

“Tyler thinks so.” Chase shrugs.

Aurora looks worried and he nudges her companionably.

“If—you say she killed the Reids, right? So she’s dangerous. I just... I know you aren’t telling me something, and I won’t push, but isn’t this something your dad should take care of?”

Chase bites his lip and looks away. “I can do this. I need to do it.”

She sighs and rests her head on his shoulder. “If you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.”

~*~

When he sees Andre Drake next, he’s the one ringing the doorbell, and if his hands shake, he makes damn sure the witch doesn’t see.

“I’m here as the Reid Pack Shaman to discuss the presence of witches in our territory,” he says when Andre opens the door.

That earns him an eyebrow raise, but Andre nods and pushes the door wide.

Chase touches the runes painted on his wrists, takes a deep breath, then he steps into the Drake home.

~*~

The cousins are beautiful

He wasn’t expecting that, but he thinks maybe he should have.

Mia stands in the middle of them and she’s gorgeous, with wavy honey blonde hair, a tight body, and a wide shark-like smile. He’s spent most of his teen years with werewolves, yet he’s never felt like prey the way he does when he stands in the Drake foyer, the Reid’s celtic knot on his throat, a symbol of his Pack, and plaid a very weak sort of armor while four witches stare at him like he’s meat.

“Ooh, this one is pretty,” she purrs, slinking close, and she rubs up against his protective wards. They flare with an electric snap and she curses as she falls back a step.

“Mia,” Drake snaps, tugging her back away from him.  

Chase ignores her, ignores the way his skin is crawling at even her phantom touch, and focuses on Drake.

“The peace between our pack and the witches does not extend to those you have invited into your home,” Chase says and Drake’s eyebrows go up. Mia laughs, a short incredulous noise.

“Our territory will be warded in forty-eight hours, against them as well.”

“That's a little aggressive and unusual,” Drake says slowly.

Chase smiles. “Not against a known threat. And,” his gaze skates over the cousins, over Mia, hot and angry, “we know her.”

“Who the fuck is this kid?” one of the cousins snaps, but Chase is already turning away.

“See that you uphold the peace, Drake. Or don't come knocking at my door when my wolves break it.”

He leaves with the feeling of Drake’s eyes on him and Mia's fury in his ears.

~*~

He isn’t surprised when Mia Drake corners him. He expected it, told Tyler it was going to happen. It was the hardest thing for Tyler to accept, knowing that by doing this, Chase was painting a target on his back and Tyler wouldn’t be able to shield him from Mia.

He’s with Aurora and Ben at the mall—Brielle is god knows where, and that surprises him even less. Mia is smart, too smart to come at a shaman when he’s alone. With humans, he can’t touch his magic. Aurora glances over from where she’s waiting with Ben in line when Mia slides into the seat across from him, but he shakes his head briefly and she stays where she is.

“You’re playing with kids your own age today,” she says, her voice a teasing purr that makes him want to scratch her eyes out.

He just lifts his eyebrows and says, “You should take a page out of my book and do the same. I hear you like them young though.”

She flushes and her smile goes sharp. “You know listening to predators is dangerous.”

He laughs because that’s some fucked up irony. “You’re calling Tyler a predator? You?”

“I think your dad would probably agree with me.”

He rolls his eyes and waves a good-natured hand as Aurora and Ben start back his way, ice cream in hand. “You get right on telling him. Lemme know how it goes.”

“You run with wolves, you’re going to get hurt, Chase,” she says, touching his hand.

“And if you poke a wolf pack, you’re gonna get bit,” he snaps, because he’s tired and wants her gone, wants her dead for what she did to them, to Tyler.

“You’re a funny kid,” she says, voice softly musing, “But you’re just a kid. Tyler isn’t ever going to want you. Not the way you so clearly want him.”

Chase stares at her, eyes cold and furious. “Get the hell away from me before I scream ‘bad touch’. I won’t even be lying.”

She smiles and saunters away, cooing at Ben as she goes, and he heaves out a breath. There still twenty-two hours before the wards go up, and it’s far too long, if you ask him.

~*~

He slips into the house three hours before the deadline, his palm throbbing from the cut he carved open over and over and over, spilling his blood to activate the wards.

They’ll be burning, a sharp insistent pain under the witches’ skin, but it won’t drive them out of Harrisburg until the deadline passes.

“Chase, why do you smell like Mia Drake?”

He curses. “She touched me. Yesterday. I thought I showered it off.”

And then the voice registers, sliding over him with a dreamlike familiarity, and he makes a startled noise as he looks up.

Lucas frowns back at him, his eyes bright and alert, furious.

“Holy fuck,” Chase blurts out.