“Uh, hey—Tyler? You should, um—you should come home, if that’s a thing you can do. It needs to be a thing you can do.” He eyes the man sitting on the couch. “It needs to be a thing you can do right now, please.”

He hangs up and stares at Lucas, eyes wide and spooked.

“Honestly, it’s like you expected me to never wake up,” Lucas says, voice tart, and Chase lets out a tiny laugh.

“I mean, it’s been five years,” Chase says helplessly.

Lucas shrugs, and that’s when Chase sees it. He notices the way he’s trembling, a tiny thing almost hidden by the hands clenched in the blanket still on his lap, the thin sheen of sweat on his brow, the way he sways where he sits.

“Dude,” Chase sighs, “You’re gonna kill yourself.” He drops onto the couch, tugging and pushing until Lucas huffs and allows himself to be rearranged to Chase’s satisfaction, until the two of them are pressed close together, curled like puppies under Lucas’s blanket. “You can’t push yourself,” Chase scolds, “I don’t want you to have a setback.”

“You’re even bossier than I thought, now that you can give me orders,” Lucas says dryly.

Chase grins. “I’ve got years of catching up to do, big bad.”

Lucas laughs, a soundless shaking of his shoulders, and Chase stares, his gaze avid and bright.

“My god, Lucas,” he says and it makes the older man still, watching him intently. Chase smiles before curling close like he always has, and some tension he hadn’t seen runs out of Lucas like water.

“Tyler is coming,” Lucas says suddenly, mouth tucked down so it’s murmured softly in his ear, “and he’s worried.”

Chase’s smile goes wider, because for all the times he’s worried Tyler—he finally has something good to share.

Tyler bursts into the house, and Chase’s wards shimmer, warming against his skin.

“What’s wrong?” he shouts, even as he comes skidding into the living room.

He isn’t wolfed out, which kinda surprises Chase, but he’s glad, because he can see the surprise and hope cascade across Tyler’s face as he stares.

Lucas smiles. “Hello, brother.”

~*~

Chase watches them together, something warm and fond in his gut, something he doesn’t want to name as Tyler clings to Lucas and shudders, his eyes squeezed shut.

“We have to tell Chelsea,” he murmurs eventually.

Lucas meets his gaze over Tyler’s head. No, he reads there, and hate, too, so strong it startles him, taking him momentarily by surprise.

“I’ll handle it,” is all Chase says, and Tyler nods, melting into Lucas’s side.

“How,” he asks, repeats, over and over, grateful and shocked and demanding and wonderous.

They don’t know.

“I think, when you bound yourself to us as a shaman,” Lucas says slowly, “it made me stronger.”

Chase narrows his eyes and nods. “Wolves are stronger as a pack—it’s why Chelsea hasn’t cut you off.”

In hindsight, he realizes, it’s probably why Chelsea didn’t stop him when he called her and demanded he be a shaman. He wonders, idly, just how much stronger she is now, with his bond to back her. If she has a bond to him. He thinks sometimes he can feel where it should be, but there’s nothing there, a gaping hole that begs to be filled.

He dismisses it, the way he always does when Chelsea comes up, and focuses on his pack, finally awake and whole and together.

~*~

He leaves early and under protest while his wards tingle and burn across his skin. He hasn’t forgotten the witches who should be leaving his territory, but he thinks Tyler might have in the commotion of Lucas.

Just for now-—he’ll remember by morning. Chase can’t even blame the older man. So he rubs his cheek into Tyler’s shoulder and ruffles Lucas’s hair, grinning when that earns him a snarl and snap of human teeth before he retreats.

He sits on the steps in front of the high school and waits, because he can feel his wards tightening, feel the pain it’s burning into the intruders—Mia’s—skin, and it makes him a little bit lightheaded, dizzy with it.

He hasn’t told Tyler that the wards will make him feel the pain he inflicts. Tyler would never tolerate it.  

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“It’s a neat trick, your little wards,” she says, strutting up to him. She’s alone and Chase wonders where her sisters are. “You can’t sustain it, though,” she grits out, “You’re just a kid, playing games you don’t understand.”

Chase tilts his head. “You have no problem using kids, though, do you?”

She smirks. “Did he tell you that? About how he gave up everything I needed after a quick fuck in the back of my car? That he told me he loved me? God, can you even believe that? Seventeen year old mutt and he thought a girl like me would actually want to be with him, that I’d stay.”

Chase doesn’t flinch, even though he wants to.

“He told me enough. And so did you,” he says, pulling his phone from his pocket.

Mia freezes, then a slow smile spreads over her lips, almost like respect. “What are you gonna do, kid? Call the cops?”

“I might. Or I might leave this with your brother and let the Council handle their own rogues.” He shrugs. “Or I might let my ‘wolves handle the issue because Tyler isn’t a kid anymore, Mia. And I’m not someone you should underestimate.”

She stares at him, still and assessing, and he snarls, “Get the hell outta my territory. Or I will kill you.”

He stands up and brushes past her, his wards crackling to life when she comes too close. And then he leaves her there.

~*~

John watches as Chase stumbles into the house. He’s shaking, and something in John lurches as he scrambles up and catches him before he collapses. Chase makes a low noise, an almost silent whine, as John hauls him to the couch, snagging a blanket and wrapping it around him, and holds him close.

Chase lets him.

He doesn’t do this often. Chase doesn’t let him do this.

Even as good as things have gotten, since he relented about Reid, there’s always a...distance, a wary caution in the way Chase holds himself, just slightly apart and away. But right now—right now he presses close, almost desperately, and shivers.

It takes almost two hours before he relaxes, so fast and complete it makes John’s gut clench in terror. Chase sighs and nuzzles into him, slurring, “Thanks, Dad.”

He doesn’t know what he’s being thanked for, or even what happened, but he huffs and presses a kiss to the kid’s sweaty hair before he leans back and holds his sleeping son.

~*~

He doesn’t tell Tyler or Lucas about his meeting with Mia at the school.

He just tells them she’s gone and for now, it’s enough.

~*~

Chase turns seventeen a few weeks later. He lies in his bed, rubbing at the fading ink on his wrists, the rune Tyler drew on him the last time he was training with Harper.

He wants to get them tattooed, ink them there with Reid family’s Celtic knot, something permanent and indelible that marks him as theirs—as Tyler’s.

His phone buzzes and he reaches for it, reading through the messages lazily—an imperious demand for his presence from Aurora, a enthusiastic happy birthday from Ben, a promise to see him for dinner from his Dad.

And a simple text from Tyler.

<<If you need anything, I’m here.

That’s the thing about Tyler. He’s always been there.

Even before Chase realized he needed someone to be there, Tyler was, giving him space and holding him close, letting him grieve with everything he destroyed and rebuilt, every fading bruise he left when they practiced together.

He’s always been there.

He takes a deep breath and types quickly.

>>Just you.

The response is almost instant, and it makes him smile, almost dizzy with pleasure.

<<I’ll be there in ten. Get dressed.

He takes a quick shower but not so quick he doesn’t stroke himself off, Tyler’s face floating behind his closed eyes as comes.

~*~

They spend the day at a comic book store Tyler found a few weeks earlier, that he was saving for Chase.

Chase grins at him as they pull up, a giant iced coffee clutched in his hands. He trails the boy as they enter, and Chase bounces off the walls, cooing at the colorful posters and chattering excitedly at Tyler as he reverently runs his fingers over the plastic slipcovers. Eventually he curls in a chair near the back with a stack of comics and Tyler sits on the floor, leaning against his knees as he reads. They stay that way for hours, Chase’s fingers drifting through his hair, and he never smells sad.

He smells content, like pack and home and happiness.

~*~

“You’re taking me to prom,” Aurora says abruptly, a week after his birthday, and Chase blinks at her.

He’s faced werewolves and magic and fucking witches, and nothing had the ability to knock him off kilter quite as quickly as Aurora fucking Black.

“You have a boyfriend,” Chase says dumbly.

Aurora’s eyes narrow. “I have your tie. We’ll go shopping this Saturday.”

“But I spend Saturday with Tyler and Lucas!”

Aurora makes a noise that can only be described as a growl, and Chase sits back. “I’ll explain it. Go Friday or something. No worries.”

She nods once and collapses next to him on the couch.

“Jamison broke up with me,” she says softly. “He’s going with Douglas.”

“Shit,” he says and she laughs, a wet, sad thing. He nudges her gently and asks, “Wanna get drunk and complain about boys?”

She nods and he smiles into her hair as she cuddles close to him, small and angry. “Boys are the worst.”

~*~

“You’re going to prom,” Lucas says flatly. “With Aurora.”

Chase gives him a nervous look. “Um, that was a lot of judgment, Lucas.”

“There would be,” Lucas says tartly, making a face as Chase steadies him, going over a log. “What about Tyler?”

Chase flushes. “What about Tyler?”

The look Lucas gives him is so unimpressed it makes him wilt.

“I was non-responsive,” Lucas says mildly, “not dead. And not deaf.”

“How much do you remember?” Chase asks, the question he hasn’t asked until now, the question he isn’t sure he wants an answer to.

Lucas draws him to a stop, his face gentle. “Everything, sweetheart. I remember everything. So I’m going to ask you again. What about Tyler?”

“Tyler doesn’t want me like that,” Chase says, looking away. He feels sick, exposed. Every secret he never expected to be heard was and it makes him want to run. He shakes it off and focuses on Lucas, on the conversation. “Besides, he won’t care. It’s not like that with Aurora, you know it’s not.”

Lucas watches him and sighs. “Chase, you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

~*~

Tyler is watching him as he talks, and each word hurts a little more.

“We’re going to go with Ben and Brielle.”

“She’s already got her dress, I’ve just got to get a tux.”

“It’ll be fun.”

His boy is grinning and bright, almost luminescent in the moonlight as he walks Chase home, and his hands won’t stop moving. It makes something in him ache with familiar fondness—this clumsy boy with his easy grace so quickly forgotten when something excites him.

And he’s excited now.

He’s excited in a way that Tyler can’t make him, an excitement that’s from being normal, and Tyler can’t give him that, even though there’s a piece of him that aches too.

Chase bumps into him, their shoulders brushing and he doesn’t know when that happened, when the little sad-eyed boy he walked through the forest grew up into the broad-shouldered grinning young man at his side. “You ok?”

Tyler nods and smiles, tight and not quite real. “I’m glad you’re going. I know—you’ve been in love with Aurora for a long time.” He shifts and clears his throat. “She’s lucky to have someone like you.”

To have you.

Chase stares at him for a long time, some of that bright shiny excitement dimmer now. He reaches for Tyler, catching him by the nape of his neck, squeezing gently, before he says softly, “G’night, big guy.”

~*~

It sits in his gut, a sharp hook of knowledge, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.

He’s known Tyler since he was fourteen, and he thinks that there is no one, not even Lucas or his dad, who knows him the way Tyler does, with a perceptive familiarity that makes his blood thrum, his heart flip, and his pulse steady.

But if Tyler knows him that well, then the opposite is true.

Chase knows Tyler. Even with his guilt-soaked secrets, he knows the older man, and he knows that possessive, jealous gleam in Tyler’s eyes.

He just doesn’t know what the hell to do with it.

~*~

Prom is...lackluster.

Even being here on Aurora’s arm, it’s strange. Neither of them are having fun, but he thinks at least they’re not having fun together.

“You miss him, don’t you?” she asks while they’re dancing to something ridiculously romantic that is almost ironic at this point, and he nods.

There is no way Tyler could have been here, no way he even wanted to be here, but it still makes him lonely and sad to not see him lurking near the tables, eyebrows drawn into a scowl and lips tipped into a small smile.

“Same as you miss Jamison.”

“You have a chance with yours,” she says.

He laughs. “Mine is ten years older and has been acting like my older brother since I stumbled into his falling down house and never left.”

She shrugs. “Yours looks at you like you hung the moon, Chase.” She glances at where Jamison and Douglas are pressed close, and Douglas is smiling at something Jamison is whispering in his ear, his eyes soft, and she clears her throat. “He smiles at you like that.”

“Aurora,” Chase says, but there’s no real argument he can make because he knows. Maybe he’s known since before Lucas’s cryptic conversation in the woods, maybe he’s known since the morning he woke up in bed with them, when Tyler held him close, like he was precious and treasured.

“Just—don’t be too scared to take a chance on him,” she says and pulls away. “Come on, I want to get milkshakes and watch Adult Swim wearing fancy clothes.”

He smiles at her. “You kinda complete me,” he says fondly.

She snorts. “Of course I do. We’re obviously better together.” She wrinkles her nose., “But not as—”

“No,” he agrees, and she grins at him. “Not as.”   

~*~

The thing is, he isn’t scared.

He’s terrified.

But as the school year ends and the days lengthen and grow warm, he thinks maybe it’s ok.

~*~

He’s cooking when Tyler walks in. Without really thinking, he listens for Lucas and Chase, checking on where his brother is and how Chase is. He’s pleased to find Lucas on an ambling walk about a mile away and Chase relaxed and content as he chops chicken for their dinner.

“How was training?” he asks, pulling out a bottle of water, and Chase hums a little, a thoughtful noise that’s not quite an answer but isn’t one either.

He pushes the chicken aside and says, “Harper thinks he’ll be done training me by the end of the summer. Said there’s some druids I could train with if I wanted.”

Tyler freezes. “You’re leaving?”

Chase glances at him, a sly smile on his lips as he pauses in chopping tomatoes. “Why? Would you miss me, big bad?”

Tyler flushes and something drifts across Chase's face, and then—

The kiss is light, soft and slow.

It’s a sure, confident press of lips that are a little bit wet and so plush he almost groans, a barely open mouth that’s tantalizing as Chase kisses him, pressing close like a promise. His hands grip Chase’s hips, and he does groan when Chase nips at his lower lips with blunt teeth, then licks over the sting.

And he’s pulling away, pulling out of Tyler’s arms, and it’s—he whines and Chase smiles at him, a small thing that’s honest and sweet and his. He darts in for one more quick kiss, lighting fast and a brush of tongue that makes Tyler’s claws dig into his hips.

Then he twists away and finishes slicing the tomatoes, saying, “Grab the sauce for me, would you? Lucas! Dinner!”

And Tyler is left holding a homemade cilantro-lime dressing, his lips tingling, listening to his brother sweep into the house, not sure what the hell just happened or what he’s supposed to do next.