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 formally, 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.”

Aurora smirks. “Do we care about what she likes?”

Tyler frowns. “Tell me what the benefit is.”

“They’re close—they have territory in south Cali, so maybe next time we have a dragon in the preserve, we’ll have help killing it,” Lucas says.

“It lends us some credibility,” Chase adds, “And it could be helpful to have an ally in our back pocket after Lucas finishes his to-do list.”

Tyler’s quiet, watching him, and Chase stares back, wishing like hell his boyfriend was home and not in fucking Canada building a house.

“Ok,” Tyler says quietly.

Chase feels some of the tension run out of him. He nods. “Ok.”

~*~

Formalizing the alliance is surprisingly mundane, done over a plate of fries at the diner instead of a chalice of blood in the light of the full moon, and Chase is almost disappointed by it.

The Lewis Pack leaves after that, with a list of phone numbers and a promise to be in touch, the wards around their territory ringing a musical farewell when they pass through.

~*~

Ben proposes to Brielle on Thanksgiving, and Chase watches, lit up with happiness for his best friend and aching for what he knows is coming.

~*~

On the first day of December, Aurora calls Lucas at three in the morning and screams, voice loud enough it pulls Tyler from sleep and Lucas goes almost feral when Chase confines him behind wards and rowan. It’s only Aurora’s shaking voice saying she’s coming home early that calms the werewolf, and even that—it’s a tenuous calm, a glass sheet over a raging sea, and he thinks it would take very little for Lucas to break.

~*~

He’s sleep deprived, strung out with nerves, and not even a little surprised when Andre Drake stops him at the door to the police station.

“Chase.”

“I’m too tired for this shit, Drake. What do you want?” Chase demands, shoving his hands in his pockets and watching the older man impatiently.

Drake’s face does something complicated. “My nieces and father are coming to Harrisburg.”

Chase goes very still.

“Brielle wants them here to celebrate the holiday and her engagement. My father hasn’t even met Ben yet.”

“Your coven is not welcome in our territory,” Chase says.

Andre makes a frustrated noise. “It’s Christmas. Can’t you make an exception?”

His fingers tingle and the wind is screaming, cold and bitter and familiar. Chase smiles. “Yeah. Fuck, it’s Christmas.”

Relief flickers in Drake’s eyes and Chase turns away, dragging out his phone and texting.

>>She took the bait.

>>Bonus: the old man is coming with.

He exhales, his breath a frozen white cloud. He smiles when he sees the response.

<<Excellent. Good work, pup.

Chase pockets his phone and wonders if it’ll be done in time to celebrate the holiday with Tyler.