Ben’s staring at him, and Chase sighs. This isn’t how he wanted Ben to find out. If he’s honest, he never wanted Ben to find out. The werewolves, the Reids, are his and he doesn’t want to share, not this, not even with his best friend.

He’s very aware how shitty that makes him, but after a lifetime of sharing everything with Ben, he feels justified in keeping this one thing his—except now it isn’t. It’s Ben’s secret too, and he feels a flash of jealousy that he’s immediately guilty over.

“Dude, what the hell?” Ben asks, bewildered. “They—what are they? What are you?”

Chase squints at his best friend, then at where Lucas is leaning against a tree, picking at his nails. “Uh. Well. They’re werewolves? And I’m....magic?”

“Is this why your dad hates them?”

Lucas chokes on a laugh and Chase glares at him, then Ben. “Dad doesn’t hate them, he’s just protective.”

“Yeah. But I always thought that was 'cause the Reids were some weird cult and you were their nubile sex slave.”

Chase gapes at his expression and Lucas smirks. “Nubile—very nice, Ben.”

Ben preens. “Thanks, man.”

Chase flails. “They’re not a cult, you idiot!”

Ben nods and grins. “I get that now.”

It’s only when they’re alone in Chase’s Jeep, and his breathing has steadied again, that Ben smirks and says, “But you don’t deny the sex slave thing.”

Along their pack bond, he feels a spike of amusement from Lucas and he slams his head against the steering wheel, groaning. “I hate you so much.”

~*~

The Standing Stones don’t stop calling him. November deepens, twists into December, and his dreams deepen along with it, a chill in his limbs, but now he doesn’t fight it. The magic of the ancient Stones sings through him when he sits on the ground, and he can feel the entire forest. Sometimes he thinks he can hear it whispering, a soft noise lost in the sound of his wolves crying for his attention.

You can protect us.

You can protect Harrisburg.

You can protect them.

Sometimes the Stones are benevolent and show him the strength of the forest with his magic rippling through it, the Stones tall and strong and sturdy.

Sometimes he runs between his wolves and he can feel it the power of the ley lines he can stabilize pounding under his feet, a siren song.

Sometimes he lies in a quiet meadow under a star-studded blanket and he can feel the thrum of every animal, every heartbeat in the preserve, in Harrisburg, and he can feel Lucas Tyler Dad pack.

But sometimes....

Sometimes he wakes screaming, terrified of the dreams spun by the Standing Stones, of a world on fire, of his Pack dead and Aurora screaming, of a demon wearing his face and killing Ben. He dreams of monsters with bloody claws and the sky turned thick with smoke from a fire.

You can stop this, the Standing Stones whisper in his dreams, and he feels black ice sliding through his veins, the low crackle of power as a witch digs her nails into his chest, into his heart, ripping it from him as he screams.

~*~

He makes a face, but this is overdue, long overdue, and he knows it.

The phone rings twice and then a sharp voice answers, “I thought I said to not call back.”

“Alpha Reid,” Chase says smoothly, his stomach churning. After over a year, he had thought he’d gotten over how much he disliked Chelsea.

He was wrong.

“Alpha Reid, I’m calling to make you aware of a magical...incident...occurring in your territory.”

“Kid,” she huffs, “I don’t have a territory.”

“You would if you came back and were a real alpha,” Chase snaps, his anger making his formality drop.

She pauses, silence loud over the line, and then her voice comes through ice cold. “I don’t give a damn what happens in that town. It killed my family and it can burn for all I care. If Tyler had any sense, he’d get in his goddamn car and drive east until he hit water.”

“Tyler doesn’t run,” Chase says evenly, “Even when running is the easier option.”

“Tyler has been running his entire life, kid. Don’t fucking tell me about my own brother.”

“You’ve been gone for a long time, Chelsea, and while you were gone—what, did you think Tyler stayed the same? Still the angry, scared beta you didn’t care enough about to take care of? You don’t know shit about the man he grew up to be.”

She falls quiet for a long moment, then says, “Tyler always ran. I never could figure out what the hell he has in Harrisburg to keep him there. I think I’m beginning to see.”

“No,” Chase says, tired suddenly, “You don’t. You can’t. You aren’t here. Tyler doesn’t run because Pack takes care of Pack.”

And you didn’t goes unsaid, but he knows damn well that she hears it.

“The Standing Stones are awake,” he says, and hears Chelsea inhale sharply. “But it’s not stable—it needs to be anchored or it’s going to drag every supernatural in a five hundred mile radius to our doorstep.”

Her silence now is heavy, but when she finds her voice, it’s calm. “Like I said, kid, I don’t care. Let the supes fight over that shithole. Or hell, you’re the Shaman, you fix it. I don’t care.”

“As you wish, Alpha Reid,” he says, careful and formal, and Chelsea snarls on the other side of the country before she hangs up.

He sits there in the dark, holding his phone, his hands shaking, for a long time.

~*~

Tyler isn’t talking to him and when Lucas finds out Chase called Chelsea, he glares at him, white-faced and trembling, and follows suit with Tyler, shifting into a pale grey wolf and vanishing into the trees.

So Chase goes to Harper.

The Druid listens to him, then says, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Chase.”

“Is it true? If I don’t—will that happen? That apocalyptic future?”

Harper blinks. “It’s a possibility. But there are many possibilities and you binding yourself to the Standing Stones does not eliminate every threat that might come along.”

“But it would stabilize the ley lines, the magic that’s acting like a beacon.”

Harper inclines his head. “In theory.”

Theory, Chase thinks, is a helluva a thing to gamble his life on.

“What would it do to me, if I did this?” Chase asks.

Harper shrugs. He shakes his head and says gently, “I don’t know.”

~*~

His wolves are bound to the moon, and Chase figured out what that means a long time ago. He curls up on the couch, spicy Zuppa Toscana on the stove and homemade garlic knots on a plate in the microwave. Brownies are still warm in the oven.

Tyler huffs on the front steps, pausing there. He can hear Lucas’s voice, low and sardonic cursing, and Chase says, “You might as well come in and talk to me. We can’t avoid it forever.”

Tyler glares at him as he shoves into the house, and for a moment, it’s so similar to that first day, when Tyler was furious and young and scared with Lucas was a silent shell in his chair, that it makes him gasp. His gaze crunches into concern and Chase takes a deep breath, pushing through the sweet stinging pain in his chest.

“Sit down and I’ll get dinner.”

He slips past them to spoon up giant bowls of soup, not terribly surprised to find Tyler retrieving drinks—a bottle of wine and glasses, a Coke for Chase—and carrying it back to the living room while Lucas snags the garlic knots and his bowl. He rubs his scruff into Chase's hair and huffs when the boy presses back against him, before he follows Chase into the living room. Tyler is in the overstuffed chair that he usually shares with Chase and Lucas takes his glider beside the window. Both of them stare into their bowls.

Chase clears his throat. “I talked to Harper. You—you’ve seen my dreams. You know I have to do something.”

“Harper said you could stop the apocalyptic future?” Lucas says, tone sharp.

“He said I could create a different future,” Chase says carefully.

“But you would have to—”

“It’s a spell,” Chase says, “And I think... I know it wants me to bind myself to it fully, but I think I can twist the spell, make it so that it’s bound by a rune—I can help it without giving it all of me.”

Tyler is glaring still, and Chase puts his food aside to go to him. He takes Tyler’s bowl and hands it to Lucas, then crawls in the werewolf’s lap and presses into him. Tyler’s breath is shaky but familiar when he breathes out against his neck, and Chase feels tears burning in his eyes at the way Tyler holds him, the desperation in his embrace.

He wants this, always, and it’s not his, it’s not right—this is just Tyler’s fear.

“I need you to be safe,” Tyler whispers, “More than this godforsaken land, I need you to be safe.”

Chase presses a kiss into his hair like a benediction and makes a promise. “I will be.”

~*~

He spends months tweaking the spell and dreaming of a dying world.

“It might not work,” Harper tells him and Chase nods, staring at the careful calculations, at the spell he’s created. He stares at the rune he’ll need, etched into his skin. He can feel ice in his veins and a demon in his mind. He blinks to clear them.

“It might not, but we need to try. I need to try.”

Harper inclines his head.

It’s as close to a blessing as the Druid is going to give.

~*~

On his birthday, Chase vanishes. Tyler calls twice and Ben calls for hours, but he ignores them as he sits in the passenger seat of his Dad’s cruiser on the drive to Mountainvale.

“Are you sure?” he asks, and Chase nods. He is. After all this time, he is.

There are very few things Chase is completely certain of—his mother loved him, his father would die for him, Ben is his brother, and the Reids are his.

His fingers shake as he nods again, and John sighs as they enter the little tattoo parlor.

~*~

It hurts more than he thought and less than it probably should. The tattoo artist, a pretty blonde with green eyes and a sly smile, asked if he wanted to break it up into sessions and looked vaguely impressed when Chase shook his head, nodding and going to work.

When it’s done, he stares at it, shaky and pale, and John watches him.

It sits wrong on his skin, an immense stone circle with lightning stretching up past his elbow and grasping lay lines that snake into his palm, concentric circles spinning out from it.

“Can you do one more thing for me?” Chase asks, and the artist pauses. “I want a Celtic knot,” he says, and John sucks in a breath, but where the stone circle—the Standing Stones—felt strange and unfamiliar being inked into his skin, this feels easy.

This feels like breathing.

“Here,” he says, and the artist nods, a tiny smile on his lips as Chase taps his fingers over his bare wrist where he knows a bite would be, if he were in a normal pack, if he were the Alpha’s advisor and friend, instead of the nagging voice she wants to shut up.

He thinks about another bite, low on his neck, where the tendon is sharp and visible and claiming, and wonders what Tyler would do if he marked himself there.

He shivers and shakes the thought, then extends his wrist for the needle. His father’s eyes are on him, something like pride, affection, and sorrow all warring for dominance behind his gaze. It makes Chase think that maybe he gets it, what this is and why he’s doing it.

And he’s letting him do it anyway.

~*~

When Tyler sees them a few days later, he goes very still, his eyes wide and hurt. He makes a low whine in his throat and then he’s breathing against Chase’s tattooed flesh, his hands gripping too hard on his wrist, his lips gentle and reverent on his skin where Chase has marked himself with his mark, as a Reid.

Chase pets his hair and for once he’s quiet, because there’s nothing to say.

Chase has told him, through words and deeds, for years, that he cares, that he’s Pack, that he won’t vanish one day, and he’s always known that Tyler’s still waiting.

Mia Drake took too much and Chelsea’s abandonment broke what little trust he had left, so even though it’s been five years of loyalty and care—Tyler is still waiting for him to leave.

Chase always knew that, tolerated it as part of the damage that comes with the other man, but he thinks this is it. With Tyler on his knees and the Reid emblem on his skin and magic thrumming through his veins—there is nothing more to say.

Tyler has finally heard him.

~*~

He doesn’t let himself hope it will change anything.

He isn’t disappointed when it doesn’t.

Lucas tells him he’s getting very good at lying to himself, and he almost sounds admiring about that.

~*~

In early May, he sits in an empty classroom with Aurora, dressed in a maroon robe, a cap twirling between his fingers.

“Do you think these are really the best days of our lives?” she asks, kicking her heels, and Chase shrugs. He’s watching the two blondes outside their classroom, the ones huddled close and a little skittish.

“I think we decide when that is,” he says, thinking about when he was fourteen, broken and lonely.

She hums and watches him for a few minutes longer. “Ezra Cox and Jessica Gunton. They’re good kids, Chase.” He looks at her, confused, and she smiles, sharp and sweet. “Don’t replace me before I leave, though.”

“I could never replace you,” he says honestly, and she preens at that.

“Do you remember that time, you asked us about dreams?” she asks after he fixes his cap on his head and they’re moving to the doors. They’re at the front of the processional, valedictorian and salutatorian.

“Yes?”

“I had another dream,” she says and his eyes snaps to her. She isn’t looking at him, her gaze distant and cloudy. “Chase, they were all dead. Everyone. You were—you were laughing and they were all dead.”

He takes her hand in his. “It was a dream, Aurora,” he promises.

She shakes her head. “What if it’s not?”

He squeezes her hand. “It is.”

“Were your dreams only dreams?” she asks, almost begging for reassurance, and Chase nods. She wilts a little, but he holds her up and hugs her.

“Come on. Let’s graduate, ok?”

~*~

John thinks it’s probably strange to be sitting sandwiched between Ben’s mother and Tyler Reid, waiting for his son to graduate. He thinks Nora should be here, that she’d be falling all over herself in her excitement.

“Do you think you and Chase would have become friends without my wife’s death?” he asks, and Tyler startles (because yeah, ok, where the hell did that question come from?).

“Um. Maybe. Chase was always going to explore and the house is close enough to your property that he would have found it eventually. But he might not have stayed. He might not have needed to stay.”

John nods, and the music starts playing. Chase is grinning as he walks in, pacing alongside Aurora, his expression happy but calm, and he fucking lights up when he sees them—sees Tyler, shifting awkwardly at his side.

“Where’s Lucas?” John hisses. Tyler glances over, unerringly finding his brother in a gaggle of mothers taking pictures, something like amused disdain on his face.

John snorts. “Only for Chase,” he mutters. Tyler agrees.

And isn’t that all the truth—the only reason any of them tolerate each other is for Chase. He wonders what will happen to these strange men who have been part of his life for so long after today, after graduation when Chase leaves for college.

He knows Tyler is hoping Chase will leave, almost as much as he is. It will hurt, but God he wants his boy to shake free of this town.

He sits back down and Marie leans into him, smiling and so damn proud she’s almost vibrating with it. Softly, she says, “We did ok, didn’t we?”

Lucas slips into the seat on the far side of Marie and arches an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, shooting Tyler a small smile as Aurora rises to give her speech. “We did a fucking awesome job with him.”

Tyler hides his grin behind his program.

~*~

A few weeks after graduation, Chase slips into the woods, flanked by his wolves, and stands before the Standing Stones. The spell is crinkled in his pocket and his anathema is clutched in his sweaty grip as he stares at the stones, at the flowers trying to grow from within the circle.

He can feel the magic rippling off of it.

It’s already begun, really, the siren song the Standing Stones put out. Andre Drake told him last week that a Wendigo was nesting in the warehouse district downtown. He can stop it though—muffle the song, hide the beacon, protect the land.

Tyler whines, still unhappy, but Lucas presses against his shins and watches him with bright shining blue eyes.

Chase takes a deep breath and cuts into the tattoo on his arm, murmuring the Latin spell as his blood drips in concentric circles, soaking through rowan ash he spread on the ground and seeping into the ancient Stones as he whispers.

He closes his eyes, but there isn’t any magical display—no rush of power or blinding light or anything but the almost relieved sigh the wood gives. Power doesn’t so much flood into him, but seeps, soaking in, twisting with his magic, strengthening it, and his tattoos burn, glowing briefly. He can feel the forest, feel the trees and the animals and the magic that touches the land, that runs along the telluric currents and ley lines.

He shivers and falls to his knees beside the ancient Stones, digging his fingers into the ground as magic pushes through him like an endless sea, gentle waves battering and battering and battering.

He gasps, “Tyler,” and then, finally, he surrenders to the tug of the magic, pulling him under the surface.

High above them, the solstice moon rises. The wolves press against him and he smiles, because here—between his wolves, in the woods with magic thumping through his veins—he’s home.