Chase goes to see Brielle.

He doesn’t tell Tyler, or even his dad, who doesn’t trust the Drakes after what Chase told him about the Reid accident. He just goes, one night when he’s alone and knows that Ben is busy with work and his mom.

She looks startled to see him and he smiles as she talks, the nervous babble of a girl who desperately wants approval. He isn’t sure why Brielle cares about his approval, except that Ben matters to him.

He isn’t sure what he’s looking for. He only knows that this girl’s presence had shaken Tyler enough to call Chelsea and that it’d caused Lucas to go into seizures that still give Chase nightmares.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just knows he should be looking for something.

~*~

He meets Andre Drake that day, a pale-eyed man with a military bearing and something guilty and drawn about the way he carries himself.

“Daddy, this is Chase. I told you about him—he was there that day when Mr. Reid had his seizure.”

And because he’s looking for it, he sees the guilty flare in Andre Drake’s eyes, the way his gaze goes hot and heavy and intrusive on Chase for a moment before it skates away and he smiles at Brielle, bright and fond, then says, “I hope your friend is ok, Chase.”

“He is,” Chase says, “I’ll make sure he is.”

It isn’t quite a threat, but it’s damn close.

~*~

Tyler is furious. It’s the first time he’s ever actually been angry with Chase.

“You can’t do that,” he snarls, pushing Chase hard into the wall. Chase shrugs, unrepentant. “They’re dangerous, Chase.”

“And we needed to know how dangerous. You couldn’t find that out—and now we know.”

“What if—they could have—you—”

Chase pauses in the middle of wiggling away from him. “Ty? What?” That rage is covering something. He thinks, suddenly, that maybe he was wrong. “Hey,” he says, tugging at Tyler’s arm insistently until Tyler looks at him, wide-eyed and...afraid?

“They’re dangerous, Chase,” he whispers, “You—I already lost so many of my pack to them. I can’t do that again. Not with you.”

Chase stares at him for a long time. “Ok. I’m sorry.”

He pushes into Tyler’s arms and Tyler huffs, stiff and still angry, as Chase scritches at his back until he finally pushes the boy away with a sigh. “You’ll stay away from the Drakes?”

Chase nods, solemn. “Yeah. I’ll stay away.”

~*~

Drake finds Tyler two days later, while he’s picking up groceries, alone. When he rounds the corner and steps into the soup aisle, Drake is there, glaring at chicken broth like it killed his daughter.

He stiffens at the sight of Tyler and for a moment, Tyler almost retreats.

“We aren’t here for you, Reid,” Drake offers, and some of the tension in his gut eases.

“They why are you here?”

Andre Drake turns to look at him then, a box of broth in his hands and something like honesty in his eyes. “My daughter deserves some stability during high school, and Harrisburg is a good place to raise a family.”

Tyler smiles and says viciously, “Drakes didn’t think my sister deserved the same consideration.”

Drake glares at him briefly, then he schools his expression into something still and watchful. “That was not me. Or the family I claim. I’m no longer aligned with the coven.”

Tyler snorts and starts to walk away, before Andre says coldly, “But Tyler, if I hear the Chief’s son is bitten—I’ll have to rethink my stance on the Reids in Harrisburg.”

Tyler snarls and shoves Drake into the racks of soup. “Stay the hell away from Chase. Do you understand me? He’s innocent and human—you stay the fuck away from him or I will break the peace, witch.”

He snatches up the soup Chase needs to make dinner and stalks away without waiting for Drake to respond, without giving himself a chance to consider how much he just revealed to Andre fucking Drake.

~*~

Tyler doesn’t like letting him jog by himself. He says that with Drakes in Harrisburg, they have to be careful—that he has to be careful.

“I’m not a werewolf,” Chase protests, “The witches would never come for a human—and you have a peace treaty with them.”

“They don’t.” Tyler is patient, as always, even when Chase is glaring at him over a piece of drywall, white dust in his hair. “But they don’t always stick to that. And you’re Pack—human or not, if they decide to make a move for us, they’ll come for you, too.”

So Tyler runs with him, now.

John raises an eyebrow until Chase points out that Tyler doesn’t mind, and that he’s safer this way. Tyler, standing nearby, watches Chase with a familiar, fond exasperation, and John grudgingly agrees.

He likes it, running with Tyler. It’s familiar in ways that don’t make sense. Most of the time he follows Tyler’s steps for miles, before Chase presses against him briefly, then he puts on a burst of speed and darts ahead. Tyler growls and chases him, and it becomes a new way of training.

Sometimes Tyler will shift into his other form and chase him through the trees, teaching Chase how to hide and run, how to hunt with a werewolf, and how to be hunted by a werewolf.

It almost always ends with him pinned—to a tree, to the ground, to Tyler’s chest— as Tyler huffs a laugh and tells him what he did wrong.

Sometimes, though, as the months slip past and he gets smarter, he’ll reach the wide clearing where they train without ever being caught and Tyler will smile at him, pleased and proud, before he takes Chase back to the little house in the woods.

~*~

The months melt away and Tyler works on the house. Sometimes when he’s standing in the middle of the gutted bedroom, he thinks it’ll never be finished. Then he hears Chase, laughing as he talks to Lucas and makes dinner, and he thinks it’s ok that it’s taking time.

Some things do.

In April, Chase gets an especially good report card, so John gives him permission to spend three nights a week with the Reids. Tyler shows him a set of blueprints and waits anxiously as Chase stares at the addition he’s building onto the small cabin.

He blinks up at Tyler, his eyes wide and cautious. “You’re—you’re building me a room?”

“We’re building you a room,” Tyler says gruffly and Chase makes a quiet noise in his throat, low and helpless, and Tyler sighs. “You’re Pack, Chase. You need space in the den.”

And he knows. He does. He’s known since Halloween and Lucas’s collapse that he’s important to the Reids. But it’s different, seeing something so visual, so permanent.

He blinks back tears and says, his voice shaky, “Do I get to pick the paint?”

Tyler rolls his eyes and ruffles Chase's hair with a fond smile before he rolls up the plans and tucks them away.

~*~

Chase starts exercising Lucas.

He sits on the wooden patio that Tyler builds off the back of the house and works the quiet man’s fingers, his voice a low, coaxing babble, a constant stream of encouragement.

Tyler watches sometimes, but he seems content to let Chase have his way with Lucas’s care.

“He likes you,” is all Tyler offers when Chase asks about it.

“Of course he likes me. But that doesn’t explain you letting me force him through yoga three times a week.”

“He likes you,” Tyler repeats. “And we trust you. But—nothing you do is going to hurt him. There’s a good chance it’ll help him.”

Chase rotates Lucas’s foot, lifts his knee, bending his leg back so it presses against his chest.

“Do you think he’ll ever wake up?” Chase asks softly.

Lucas stares up at him, and Tyler blinks into the woods as the spring wind twists through the trees, ruffling his hair.

“Yes,” Tyler says eventually.

~*~

It’s a new moon, in the dead of summer.

John mentions that he enjoyed fishing and it spins into a conversation about the Reids’ fondness for camping, and before Chase can actually figure out how it happens, Tyler and John have arranged a camping trip.

Chase stares at both of them like they’re crazy. Tyler’s polite when the Reids come to the DeWitt house for monthly dinners, and John’s very careful to never be outright hostile, but they don’t like each other.

They just tolerate each other for Chase’s sake.

But here they are at a tiny campground, where Tyler has now spent hours sitting on the bank while John fished, both of them silent.

“That is so weird,” Chase mutters to Lucas, who, true to form, says absolutely nothing. “I mean, I like that they get along, but it’s weird.”

“Weird isn’t bad,” Tyler says mildly, and Chase jerks around to glare at him and his dad, standing behind him with matching smiles.

“Oh, god, don’t do that,” Chase says, appalled suddenly. John raises an eyebrow and Chase whines, “This is the worst thing ever.”

Chase isn’t terribly surprised when John mentions Chelsea. Tyler, never very forthcoming about his family, has been downright chatty while they hike and swim and Chase makes sticky s’mores.

“What happened to her?” John asks gently.

Chase stiffens and leans forward. “She left. She left and they don’t need her,” he says fiercely, glaring at Tyler when he gets that haunted look Chase hates seeing. “We don’t need her,” he repeats, and Tyler nods slowly.

Chase doesn’t think Tyler believes him, not yet—but he’s seen the blueprints and he knows damn well that Tyler hasn’t planned a room for their absent alpha.

So maybe—maybe he is starting to believe it.

~*~

The truth is, he knows they don’t need Chelsea, but there’s a part of Tyler that longs for his alpha. A part of him that aches for that ownership, that belonging.

It’s eased some since Chase joined them, since he became Pack. But he’s a werewolf without an alpha, in a pack made up of a human boy too old for his age and a catatonic werewolf who can’t shift. Even with this pack that he adores, there’s an aching emptiness that he wishes could be filled.

He dreams, almost always, after he thinks that.

It’s not perfect, but it’s good. What they have—it’s good.

It’s better than he dared dream he’d ever have, after the his parents died.

~*~

It’s September, almost a month after the school year begins and Chase is settled into his classes and extracurriculars. Tyler sits across from him in the kitchen of the house. He drags Chase’s algebra book away until the boy blinks up at him, a little dazed.

“I want to quit my job.”

That jerks Chase’s attention to him and he straightens up, elbows braced on the table and waiting.

“I just—I don’t like my boss,” Tyler says while Chase nods encouragingly, “and I want to go back to school. Get my degree.”

“What about the house and Lucas?”

“I can go to HCC. I have my trust fund. That didn’t change after the car accident, so I don’t even need to go through Chelsea to get it.”

Chase scowls, but nods. “Ok.”

“You don’t think it’s stupid?”

Chase stares at him. “The only stupid thing said was that question. Tyler, if you found something that will make you happy—don’t question it. Just go for it.”

Tyler’s face is pale and blank, his body stiff, and Chase huffs. “You are allowed to be happy, Ty.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“And that’s ok,” Chase says easily, “I’ll keep believing it for you until you do.”

~*~

Tyler quits his job in late November. Chase comes over on Thanksgiving and they have the quiet breakfast that has become their holiday tradition, then Chase stands and fixes his scarf. “We’re decorating the house. And Dad invited you both for Christmas.”

Tyler nods before Chase smiles and slips away.

~*~

He can run, in his dreams.

A small familiar body runs near him, and a great black wolf runs at his side, blue eyes gleaming. Here, he can run and wrestle with his pack, and he hunts, biting the soft underbellies of rabbits, ripping them open until blood floods his mouth and his senses, and he wants that, wants blood flooding his mouth and vengeance for his dead, wants to rip them all open.

A howl breaks through the night, a high yipping call echoing after it and it jerks him back, calls him to run, chasing his pack until his paws ache and the only thing he can taste is the clean night air, and all he can hear and want is his pack, their hearts beating in tandem as they run through the dark ahead of him.

~*~

That spring, three things happen, although one is not remarked on or acknowledged by anyone but Chase.

~*~

Chase turns sixteen on a Sunday, a quiet day marked with a big breakfast he glares at his dad for and a small present from the police department because they like Chase and always have.

He spends a few hours with Ben and Brielle at the arcade before he retreats to the woods, to the quiet house that feels like home.

There’s a slow ache in his chest, because birthdays are always hard. He misses his mom more on his birthday than he does any day of the year, and even knowing the pain is coming, he’s never quite braced for it.

Tyler is there with Lucas, waiting for him, and he draws Chase onto the new sectional, tucking Chase into the corner, pressed between Lucas’s solid weight and Tyler’s warm heat. Chase lets out a shaky breath and Tyler doesn’t mention the tear that falls slowly as he turns on the TV.

He doesn’t say anything at all until he’s dropping Chase off at home and then, it’s only to say, “We’re going to celebrate tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Chase says, as much for the promise as for this quiet day of mourning. Tyler nods at him and Chase trips inside under the werewolf’s watchful gaze, then crawls into bed and lets the horrible birthday end.

~*~

Tyler finishes the house on a Tuesday, while Chase is on the porch, practicing his krav maga. He nails the last piece of baseboard down in Chase’s room and straightens.

It takes him a moment to realize.

“Chase!” he shouts. He can hear Chase cursing as he flails and falls over before he’s scrambling inside, shouting Tyler’s name.

Tyler turns as he crashes into the room—a small room, painted a deep blue with red accents, with a small comfortable couch and overabundance of bookshelves, a little desk for him to do his homework—but no bed.

John would lose his shit if Tyler tried to give Chase a bed in his house. (John was still ridiculous sometimes.)

“Dude, you’re freaking me out,” Chase says.

Tyler grins at him, wide and manic. “It’s done,” he says. And looking around, he realizes—he did this. Him, Chase, and Lucas. They built a place that’s comfortable and warm and safe, a place that he’s pleased to call home, that isn’t muddled with the scents of anyone who isn’t Pack.

Their little house in the woods, the one that was falling down, that Chelsea had laughed and told him couldn’t be salvaged—it’s the cozy little home they built together.

~*~

The third thing happens on a Wednesday in May, a few days after Tyler grinned at him wide and bright and so damn honest it hurt something in his chest.

And maybe that’s why.

But on that Wednesday in May, alone in his dark bedroom, Chase wakes up, flush and hot and aching, his chest splattered with come and gasping Tyler’s name.

Oh, he thinks. Oh, no.