Tyler isn’t really sure what happens. He’s staring in shock as Lucas convulses, but his attention is on the girl clinging to Ben, the girl he can smell is a Drake, can smell is an enemy and wrong. He wants to scream and he wants to run.

“Tyler,” Chase is shouting and it jerks him out of his shock, yanks his eyes away from the young girl who looks scared but still so dangerous it makes his wolf whine in distress to put his back to her.

He wants to shift into his wolfskin and he wants to run, force Chase to run with him until the scent of Drake isn’t in his nose anymore.

“Keep him on his side,” John says, crouching near Lucas. “I called the paramedics. No, don’t put anything in his mouth, just hold him still.” His voice is calm, soothing, and Tyler is vaguely aware that Chase’s pounding heartbeat slows as he speaks, steadies into something approaching normal for the boy.

He falls to his knees next to his brother and helps Chase keep him still as Lucas shakes and shudders.

~*~

“If you’re calling, you know what to do.”

His grip tightens on the phone. It’s the first time in over a year he’s heard his sister’s voice, the first time he’s called her. And it’s a fucking voicemail.

“Chelsea. It’s Tyler. I—I need you to call me back.” He licks his lips, clears his throat, and stares at the bed where Lucas is lying, hooked up to machines he doesn’t understand. “It’s Lucas. He... I need you to call me back, Chelsea.”

He hangs up before he can start begging. He’s done that far too much already.

Chase is pressed against the bed, slumped over, his head pillowed on Lucas's hand, sleeping. They’ve been here for hours already, and every time John made noises about leaving, Chase dug his heels in. So far John hasn’t made an issue of it, but Tyler isn’t stupid enough to think he won’t eventually.

But having Chase close is helping. He knows it is. Even if it doesn’t help Lucas, it’s helping Tyler.

“What happened?” he hears John asking the nurse, a pretty dark-haired woman Chase greeted by name with a familiar smile. Ben’s mother, if the name was any indication. It always rubs him strange when Tyler’s face to face with evidence that Chase has a life that doesn’t include him.

“I don’t know—his tests—John, he’s fine. He’s stable. There’s no reason for him to be like this.”

“For the seizures?” John clarifies.

“No,” Marie says gently, “to be catatonic.”

~*~

He waits until morning. When Chase stumbles into the room with coffee and donuts, trailed by his father, looking cautious and a little exasperated—Tyler knows he’s put it off as long as he can.

“I don’t have—I can take him with me,” John says, looking at Tyler, and Chase yelps a protest.

“He’s fine,” Tyler says hoarsely, “Lucas likes having him around.”

John gives him a doubtful look but he nods firmly. Chase squirms into the chair he’d claimed the night before, settling in and clearly not planning on moving, so John sighs in concession. “Give me a call if you need anything, Chase. Tyler, same goes for you.”

Tyler startles but Chase nods, waves his dad away. “We’re fine. Go catch some bad guys, Dad.”

John rolls his eyes and leaves them there.

Chase is quiet for a long time, long enough for Tyler to eat his breakfast and finish most of his coffee, before he looks away from Lucas and stares at Tyler. “Why did you two react to Brielle like that?”

~*~

Chase is smart. More than that, Chase is Pack. As dangerous as the Drakes are—maybe because the Drakes are dangerous—Tyler takes a deep breath and speaks the truth.

~*~

“I’m a werewolf.”

Chase blinks at him, still and patient as Tyler fidgets. The last person he told that secret to tried to kill him, had succeeded in killing most of his family.

“That doesn’t tell me why the hell Brielle freaked you and Lucas out.”

Tyler stares at him dumbly, taken aback by Chase’s lack of reaction. He flounders for a moment before saying, “Um.... She’s a Drake. They’re a coven of witches—witches who like to police our world of shifters and fae and other supernaturals—and our family has a history with the Drakes.”  

Chase hums thoughtfully. “That makes sense. She said some of her cousins lived here a few years ago.”  

Something tight and twisted in his gut squirms uncomfortably. “Is that really what you’re focused on right now?”

“I’m focused on anything that upsets you like that and causes Lucas to have fucking seizures, yeah.”

“Language,” Tyler chides automatically, and Chase gives him a dirty glare. “I’m—you heard what I said, right?”

“The grr thing?” Chase says, making a clawing gesture with his hand. “Yeah. We can talk about that when we aren’t surrounded by strangers. But you’ve never lied to me. I can’t imagine you’d start now. There’s easier ways to ditch the weird kid who won’t leave you alone.”

Tyler snarls at that and Chase gives him an unimpressed raised eyebrow.

“So what are we doing about Lucas?”

~*~

Tyler, Chase figures out quickly, has no clue how to deal with hospitals—or sick people, which given the werewolf reveal, makes a lot of sense.

Chase has too much experience with hospitals. He has Marie Lodge pulling every string in her pretty arsenal to get him answers about Lucas and get him discharged. The problem is no one knows what the hell is wrong with him. They don't know why he had a seizure or why he’s nonresponsive, and Tyler can't give them anything to work with because he's worse than useless when it comes to frail human things.

Chase bullies Tyler into going home for a shower and change of clothes by complaining that he's hungry until he folds, nodding and retreating while giving Lucas and Chase anxious eyes.

“Silly wolf,” Chase huffs under his breath, and he feels his phone vibrate a moment later.

>>I can hear you.

Chase flushes but shrugs. “Then remember to get curly fries.”

The room falls quiet. He stares at Lucas for a long time, then says softly, “Those dreams make a lot more sense now. Kinda creepy though.”

He shifts, wraping a hand around Lucas's wrist. Immediately he feels better, some of the itchy anxiety settling a little. “I know you don't like Brielle, but I think she's safe. And if she isn’t, I won't let her hurt you. I won't let her hurt either of you.”

~*~

“Dad?”

John looks up, startled to see Chase standing in the doorway of his office. Chase barely leaves the hospital unless John drags him away. It’s been four days since Lucas Reid collapsed in his police station and no one knows why, but there’s been something quietly determined about Chase since then, something that doesn’t make a lot of sense, even when it mixes with Chase’s low-grade panic and worry, the pinched set to his eyes that John had grown accustomed to when it was Nora in the hospital.

He thinks, not for the first time, that there’s nothing about this that’s good for his son.

The Reids haven’t hurt him, and sometimes he sees something helpless and fond in Tyler’s eyes that makes him think he won’t, but this could. Losing Lucas so soon after Nora, that could—would—devastate Chase.

“What’s up, son?”

“We need your help.”

John leans back in his chair and listens.

~*~

When it's all said and done, it takes less than three hours for DeWitt to pull the right strings and put pressure on the right places, three hours while Chase sleeps next to him in Lucas's room, tension finally draining away now that his father is helping.

The complete trust he has in his father means something. Even though Tyler can't bring himself to trust the man who so recently took Chase from him, Chase’s faith in John does something, settles the anxious pacing thing in Tyler’s gut. He stares at his phone, waiting for it to ring and for his brother to be discharged, and for the Drakes to come crashing back into their lives, destroying and taking the way they always have.

But only John comes to him, wearing a tired but triumphant smile.

“He's all yours.”

Tyler's quiet sigh of relief makes something indecipherable cross John's face, but he doesn't comment. It's only when Chase is tucked sleepily in John's car and Lucas is secured in the Mustang that he says softly, gently, “You're going to have to explain some things to me. Soon.”

Tyler nods, and John claps him on the shoulder. “Go home, kid. We'll see you tomorrow.”

~*~

He takes Lucas home.

He isn’t sure when the little house in the woods and the RV started feeling like home, but he thinks it has something to do with the scent of Pack that fills it—when the scent of Chase fills it.

He takes Lucas home and showers him with the familiar efficiency that comes after years of taking care of him. He’s quiet, and it feel strange. Chase always makes the house noisy and Tyler likes it. He misses it when Chase goes back to John.

There is a part of him, a selfish part that he rarely acknowledges and never voices, that hates when Chase leaves. It wants to keep him here in the den, near the Pack, forever.

“John is good for him, too. Better than we’ll ever be,” he murmurs. Lucas doesn’t respond, but the pack bond that reassures him his brother is still there brightens for just a moment.

Tyler huffs and finishes buttoning Lucas's pajama shirt.

When they’re sitting in the living room, the couch too empty without Chase, Tyler calls Chelsea again.

~*~

It’s the first time the dreams are different.

He isn’t in the woods running next to his great grey wolf. He’s on an empty road, skid marks at his feet, and the grey wolf is whining, pressed against him and shaking while the black wolf howls, sounding angry and lonely, a cry that rips at him, that makes him curl close to the grey wolf and whine into the soft earth, wondering why there’s something that feels empty and aching pressing in on him.

~*~

The phone wakes him, a buzz startling up his arm, and he answers without thinking. “Chase?”

There’s a heavy pause, a familiar buzz of white noise he’d recognize anywhere, and then, crisply, a voice asks, “Who the hell is Chase?”

“Chelsea,” he breathes, bolting upright. “Holy shit, Chelsea, I’ve been calling you for days.”

“I know. My voicemail is full,” she grumps, “What do you want?”

“I’m so sorry that our brother’s health is inconveniencing you.”

There’s a long tense moment and he shuffles, imagining Chelsea on the streets of New York in a neat suit and a pinched, sour expression. “Just tell me what you need,” she demands.

“The Drake coven. They came back to Harrisburg. Lucas scented them and went into seizures.”

“You should never have taken him out of long-term care, Tyler,” she huffs. “I don’t know what you expect—”

“For fuck’s sake, Chelsea. I told you they’re back. I need you.”

“No,” she says, implacable. “I told you, I’m done with Harrisburg.”

“Chelsea,” he starts.

“I have a pack, Tyler. A pack that wants me to join them. I don’t—I’m not going to stop you from staying there with Lucas even if I think it’s wasting your life, but that was the deal. You get your life, and I get mine.”

“You’re our Alpha,” he says, his throat tight and eyes burning.

She’s quiet for a long moment, and that—that’s answer enough.

Her voice is apologetic when she says his name, but he hangs up before he can listen to her excuses. In the quiet of his empty bed, he lets himself cry.

~*~

“Chase,” John says, and Chase blinks at him, bleary-eyed and tired. “I need you to talk to me about the Reids.”

It’s fascinating to watch, because he thinks things are getting better with Chase. It’s not the same distant secrets from this time last year, when Chase spent a lonely Thanksgiving on his own, or this summer, when everything was dragged into the open and they were both too furious and distrustful to speak. They talk now. Chase voluntarily spends time with him, and he’s got a life, football and a study group and a girl he talks about sometimes, when he’s bright-eyed and excited.

But looking at him, as the question clatters across the breakfast table like a grenade, he thinks that if he pushes just a little, he’d undo everything. He’d spook Chase back into that lonely isolated shell he’s starting to emerge from, spook him straight into the Reids’ arms, and he might drag the boy away from them, but he’d lose his son in the process.

He takes a deep breath and picks his words carefully. “You asked me to help and I did, because I trust you. But trust goes two ways, Chase. And I need to know why I just sent a man with no medical reason for being ill home with his brother who has no medical training or even the slightest idea how to deal with hospitals.”

Chase exhales slowly, defeat drooping his shoulders, and he gives in. “The car accident... Remember the car wreck the Reids were killed in?”

John frowns, but nods. “What do you remember about it?”

“Just you talking to mom. You didn’t think it was an accident.”

The scene of the wreck hadn’t added up—it was neat, almost clean, but the car burnt so hot it scorched the ground and tore through Andrew and Sarah Reid, killed their youngest daughter before she could be cut from the wreckage. It didn’t add up, even as it was ruled an accident, and Tyler Reid was a shattered thing after it, all fury and grief with a guilt that didn’t make sense. He remembered Chelsea, Tyler’s older sister, had dragged him out of town, and the investigation stopped when insurance investigators and crime scene investigators ruled it an accident.

But even while it was ruled an accident—it didn’t feel like one.

It never felt right.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Chase says now, firm and unwavering.

~*~

When Chase slips into the RV two days later, there are bags under his eyes and he’s swaying on his feet as he stumbles to the couch. Lucas is already tucked there and Chase slumps into him, pressing against him.

“Your dad?” Tyler asks.

Chase shakes his head. “I told him about the accident. Not the werewolf thing or the Drakes.” He yawns and slurs, “You gotta tell me about that, though, Ty.”

Tyler nods as he shakes a blanket out over the boy and curls up in the other corner of the couch, the warmth and comfort of Pack lulling him into sleep.

~*~

When Chase wakes, Lucas's arm has slipped around him, a heavy weight that grounds him in the moment, and Tyler’s head is tipped back, a small sliver of couch separating him from the older man. The sun is shining through the front of the RV, the way it does in the early evening now that the days have gotten shorter, and he realizes that somehow, they’ve slept the entire day away.

He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to wake either of them, doesn’t want to wake up himself.

He thinks waking Tyler up and asking the questions—what does it mean, what are we doing, what am I doing here?—it’s going to change everything they’ve built. The quiet seclusion, the safe little hideaway where no one asks anything, where there’s only homework and workouts and rebuilding. It’s going to go away.

He burrows into Lucas's side and for the first time in a long time, he wants to cry.

He doesn’t sleep, not really. He just slips into that quiet place between sleeping and waking. Tyler’s hand on his ankle rouses him, holding loosely while his thumb presses over the pulse beneath his thin skin and pulls him fully awake, even as he presses deeper into Lucas.

“I don’t want to know,” he says, and Tyler’s grip on him tightens. “I don’t want to break this.”

Tyler’s grip goes bruisingly tight for just a moment, ringing his ankle in finger-shaped bruises.

“You won’t,” Tyler promises, “You can’t.”

Chase stares at him, tucked in the safety of Lucas's embrace, and takes a breath.

“Tell me everything.”  

~*~

“Chelsea wouldn’t stay here after the accident—too many memories of our parents, too afraid of the witches. Harrisburg has always been Reid territory, and we never had a problem with other supernaturals, but the land... It draws other things. We used to see fae and kelpies, and one summer, when I was ten, we had a flock of griffon nest in the woods. Lucas was so pissed—we had feathers everywhere for months.”

Chase smiles, just a little.

“She wanted me to go with her, and I did for a while. I had to. She’s not just my sister. She’s my Alpha.”

“You came back,” Chase whispers.

“Chelsea... It wasn’t fair to expect her to be a good alpha. She wasn’t ready, and she was so scared—of the Drakes and the Council, of the power, of the memories. She ran and she never stopped. And I couldn't. Lucas—he’s Pack. I’d hurt enough—”

Tyler breaks off. Chase glances up, nudging his ankle a little to get Tyler’s attention.

“He was all alone and defenseless—and he’s Pack.”

Tyler stares at him, and he looks so lost, so confused, that it makes Chase wiggle out of Lucas's grip and crawl into Tyler’s lap.

“You did a good thing. Taking care of him—it’s a good thing.”

“I defied my Alpha, Chase,” Tyler says, voice low and hoarse. “Chelsea is still my Alpha—both of ours. But it’s only because if she wasn’t, she’d be an omega just like we are—lone wolves without a pack, slowly going crazy”

Chase shifts and glares at him, fierce and defensive. “You aren’t. You have a pack. We’re your Pack, Lucas and me. Chelsea—she’s not here. She doesn’t deserve to be your alpha and she sure as hell hasn’t earned your obedience.”

Tyler is staring at him, eyes wide with surprise, and Chase falters, wilting a little. “I mean... Lucas. Lucas is your Pack.”

Tyler’s hand comes up and closes over the nape of his neck, squeezing as he presses his nose to Chase’s temple. “No, you said you’re Pack. Don’t think for one second you can back out of that now.”

Chase smiles and tucks himself into Tyler, letting the drowsy tug of contentment settle the anger and confusion churning in his gut.

“Ok,” he says agreeably.

Lucas's hand, on the couch where it fell when Chase scrambled into Tyler’s lap, twitches.