It feels like his magic and the Standing Stones washing through him, except different. Those were white hot and curious, twisted into one shining flame of power that filled him, that was his, was him. This seeps through him like a silver tipped black wave, and it’s...different.

It’s other. It’s hot and hungry and aware, but so alien it makes him want to crawl out of his skin. He hates it.

That makes it pause, retreat a little, and he can breathe again.

He blinks and the room is empty, deserted. Chelsea has left him here to Shift or die, and with the way his magic is fighting—he thinks he might die.

The black in him twists, anxious at that thought, and Chase snorts.

“I don’t want to die either,” he mutters to it, and the black seems to huff, sinking deeper into him, and with everything it touches, he can feel change.

~*~

Tyler shoves into the house and Lucas looks up, exhausted and hopeful, and Tyler licks his lips. Stephen and Liss are leaning over a map with his brother and barely look at him.

That’s fair. Tyler’s been just the right side of useless for most of this, too desperate to be helpful.

He lets his awareness brush against the Pack bond that’s woven around his wolf, a golden chain that he willingly wraps himself in.

“I know Chelsea.”

Lucas frowns, and Stephen is already turning away, but he holds his brother’s gaze and leans in, says again, earnest and demanding, “Lucas, I know Chelsea.”

~*~

He drifts. The electricity is gone, but he’s still chained to this damn chair, and he thinks it’s good, it’s better, because if he were to move, that cracked rib would puncture a lung and that would be bad.

The black is still invading, crawling through him. He goes from hot and aching to cold and numb, and back again. He screams until his voice goes out, and he keeps screaming, but it’s silent now.

He never asked what it was like, and when Stephen gave the Bite to the puppies, he didn’t stay for the change, just showed up in the immediate aftermath to soothe and care for them. He never wanted to know, because he’s never wanted the Bite, never wanted to understand a thing he’d never take, never want.

He thinks that was stupid, so fucking stupid, because now he wishes he knew if this creeping invasion is normal or if it’s just that the magic that’ll be his wolf is just wary of the magic that already lives in him.

He can feel it, the sharp curiosity that feels familiar and his, the burn of fury from the magic that’s as familiar as his own heartbeat, the way it rages even as it rolls back and lets the black drift through him.

He sobs when it slides through his torso and he realizes his mouth feels funny, too full, too sharp.

He wants, for the first time in his life, to howl.

~*~

He loses time, but his fingers shift, scratch at the chair with sharp black claws. Chelsea comes back, once, and watches him curiously.

He wonders what she sees—if he’s human or wolf, if he’s dying.

He thinks he’s probably dying.

The black drifting has slipped through all of him now, only the tightly curled ball of white-hot power untouched, and it’s circling, curious and teasing, edging close as his magic curls tighter, almost as if it’s hiding.

It feels almost playful. Chase would laugh if he didn’t feel so much like dying, because of course, of fucking course, his wolf would be goddamn playful in the face of ancient eldritch power.

He thinks Lucas would be amused and Tyler exasperated, and he really wants the chance to tell them.

He carefully touches the Pack bonds and the black waves surge forward, anxious and demanding and hopeful—

And his magic, the familiar burning spark and silver heat of the Standing Stones, rips through him, wraps around the shining heart of his Pack and attacks.

Chase screams.  

~*~

“I don't understand, though,” Tyler says again, “Why attack him? Why take him? He’s her Pack.”

“Is he?” Lucas asks, and Tyler gives him a sharp look. “What does the bond to Chelsea feel like?”

Tyler frowns. “Like—like any bond. A gold thread that ties me to her.”

“And your bond to Chase?”

Tyler flushes. “A chain.”

Lucas smiles faintly. “Do you know the pups can’t feel her? They don’t have a Pack bond to Chelsea at all. And the one I have—it’s a sick and dying thing. Chelsea doesn’t want us to be her Pack.”

Tyler frowns. “But—she—” He goes pale, and Lucas wishes Chase were here to ease Tyler through this.

“What are you saying?” Tyler asks, voice harsh and angry.

“When you came back to Harrisburg for me, I was trapped in my own mind and I couldn’t feel my Pack. It was driving me insane, the emptiness where they should be, where my Alpha should be—I was packless, bondless, and I was going insane.” He looks at Tyler seriously. “I don’t want to think about what I would have become.”

Mad. Driven by his need for revenge and fury, how far would he have gone. Who would he have killed?

“But the Cahils,” Tyler says weakly.

“They allow her within the Pack, Tripp fucks her—maybe he’ll marry her—but she isn’t part of the Pack. She’s a pet Alpha with a powerful territory that they want. But Chelsea—Tyler, she’s a weak alpha with no pack and no bonds. She abducted her own Shaman.”

Tyler looks sick. “You think she’s gone feral.”

Lucas nods. “I think she’s probably been going feral since she ran away after the funerals.”

~*~

He screams and the black falters as the magic that he swore himself to, that’s his by birth and blood, roars to the surface, not content to hide and give ground as this new invader toys with the bonds that Chase would die to protect.

He can feel it when they collide, a flare of heat so strong he thinks he’ll explode from the sheer force of it, before the power shifts, rolls, twists. He vomits, black-silver vomit that paints his lips shimmering black. It tastes like metal and electricity, like his magic and something else, and it terrifies him.

He wants to scream but his voice is choked up in his throat, and his magic is raging, furious as it rips through him, feeling like it’s knitting him back together.

When he bound himself to the Standing Stones, it took his lifeblood and was reborn. He’s seen it, since that night, the massive tree that stands where the stump once was, ancient and strong, radiating power.

But it gave him something in return, gave him all the raw power it couldn’t harness. It feeds that into him now, silver sweet heat twisting with his spark and lighting up his tattoos, fighting.

Chelsea bit him and wants to claim him as her own. Chase wants to laugh. He’s been Tyler’s and Lucas’s since even before he was the Standing Stone’s scion. Their need drove him to bleed and bind himself to the ancient magic, and that magic is furious now, fighting anything that might take Chase from it, from them, from his Pack.

Chase laughs, closing his eyes as the wild creature born in her Bite fights the ancient magic singing in his blood.

It’s not much of a fight. The creature is weak and young, and the magic is familiar, lives in him, has for years. It could burn out the threat, the invader.

Or...

Chase stirs, reaching out to caress the living power, sentient and alive under his skin.

Or...

~*~

He drifts. It doesn’t hurt anymore, no more than it ever did. There’s a curious disconnect, like he’s an observer in his own body. The wild creature is skittish and shy but there, and he can feel it, feel the savagery, the curiosity and the yearning for pack mate family home.

This dirty warehouse isn’t his, smells foreign and strange, and he whines, high and animalistic. He feels too big for his own skin, like there’s not enough room—not for Chase and magic and a wild creature he doesn’t yet trust.

We’re all you, the magic whispers, and he wonders if that’s true.

We all will protect them.

~*~

When she slips into the room, she finds him as she expects, but he’s...different. Not whole. He hasn’t healed, and she wonders distantly if he won’t.

Chase is strange and she doesn’t like him, but she knows that Tyler does, and she does want to keep her brother happy. Still, his scent has changed.

She nudges him with one foot and he rolls his head back, bares his throat and stares up at her with shining white eyes that make her jerk away.

White.

Chase closes his eyes, and her heart pounds in her chest, her fingers shaking as she pets a hand through her hair.

“You’re mine now, puppy,” she whispers.

Chase flares to life, and she can feel something in her rip as he reacts.

He doesn’t howl—he screams, high and animal and furious. She wants to snarl in answer, wants to howl defiance, but there’s a shocking emptiness in her that makes her stumble.

“What did you do?” she breathes.

Chase looks back at her, half shifted with sharp teeth and a feral smile, eyes shining. His tattoos gleam silver and black, and his fur—his fur looks different. Strange.

She whispers again, desperate, “What did you do?”

“I told you when I was seventeen,” Chase says, “You may be the Reid Alpha, but you aren’t mine.” She snarls and he grins, delighted. “They’re coming. Can you feel them? They’re coming. Lucas is going to kill you.”

Chelsea blinks. “Who?”

He stares, startled, then he laughs, a high barking thing that makes her skin crawl. She understands then that yawning emptiness, sudden and sick, and she does the last thing she can think to do—

She runs.

~*~

They’re turning on 8th Street, heading toward the Iron Works, when Tyler doubles over suddenly, then straighten as Lucas slams on the breaks. They spill out of the car, half shifted and eyes gleaming, and Tyler turns.

The noise—not a howl, but a call—comes again from the east, and Tyler blurts, “The train!”

Lucas blinks, but Tyler is already running, chasing that eerie call and the bond that is yanking him onwards.

~*~

The magic settles with Chelsea’s absence, licks of heat moving along his broken bones and the worst of his injuries, putting him back together. It feels almost maternal, a low humming displeasure that he was hurt. The wild creature circles that place in his chest it’s claimed as its own and curls up to sleep, and the magic huffs.

If a power source could be grumpy, Chase thinks his is.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, flexing his human fingers and stretching as much as he can. The change didn’t come with werewolf strength or healing—even his magic is faltering, and he thinks he’ll be bruised and healing for a few weeks.

He wonders if that’s because of the magic that claimed him first, or because he isn’t a werewolf. He has no idea what’s living under his skin, but he knows what it isn’t.

The runes on his arm—Tyler’s and Lucas’s—flare briefly as the magic slips away, settling over the sleeping creature with a quiet glow.

Then they burst into the warehouse, half-shifted and frantic, and Chase bursts into tears.

~*~

Tyler skids to a halt as he catches sight of Chase. He’s wrapped in chains and duct tape and wires, burns covering his naked body and half healing scratches on his face, messy tears sliding down his face. His torso is one continuous bruise and his eye won’t focus, something that’s worrisome.

There are long flat burns on his legs that make Tyler’s hands shake and his claws extend and—

There is a bite, on his side, fresh, bleeding, and terrifying.

His sister’s scent is thick and heavy in the room, touching everything, a sinister layer under the raw magic, blood, and pain.

“Chase,” he chokes out, and Lucas is shaking in fear and fury.

Chase shivers and twitches toward him, and something else shivers with him. It feels like something very young and impossibly ancient is peering at him through those familiar honeyed whiskey eyes.

“Oh, pup,” Lucas breathes.

Chase grins through split bloody lips and tear-stained cheeks. “What—I’m not a ‘wolf,” he says.

Lucas shakes his head.

“Sometimes the shift—-doesn’t take like it should,” Tyler murmurs, “And you’ve never been a wolf.”

“I’d make a fucking awesome wolf,” Chase says, indignant—how can he be this bloody and beaten and still be indignant? Tyler huffs and rips the arms of the chair off, freeing Chase and scooping the boy up before he can crumple, although he doesn’t quite manage to bite back the cry of pain.

“You’ve never been a wolf,” Lucas says, “In our dreams, you’ve never been a wolf.”

Chase blinks. “I thought I was human.”

“No.” Tyler shakes his head, walking out of the warehouse. “You—you’re a fox, in the dreams. A corsac fox.”

Chase jerks. “I’m a fucking werefox?”

“Don’t be silly,” Lucas says dismissively, despite the relief and worry rolling off of him. He opens the truck door to let Tyler lay Chase in the backseat. “You’re a kitsune.”