They’re dim and heavy with sorrow, anxious and tense.
That, more than anything else, is what pulls him from his bed.
~*~
The Pack is in the living room when he steps into the den, and something tight and aching in his chest eases when he sees them.
He twists his fingers together and says, “Uh... So... I’m sorry—I just needed a second to get my head wrapped around everything.”
“Did you?” Aurora asks sharply.
Chase nods. “I know I’m new to this—the whole kitsune thing is, uh, a lot? And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I know that—”
“Don’t you dare,” Aurora snarls, pushing past the betas to stand in front of Chase.
He flinches, but doesn’t back away.
She glares at him. “Did you go there planning on killing Chelsea?”
Lucas makes a low noise and Chase’s eyes flick to Tyler, who’s watching with narrow eyes, but keeps quiet.
“Of course not,” Chase says stiffly.
“Then why did you?”
He stares at her, startled. “Because she was going to kill Lucas.”
“You did it to protect him. You did that. Don’t you dare apologize for that. You’re the perfect Alpha for this Pack, Chase. You always have been.”
He blinks at her. He looks around the den, at the betas watching him with hopeful eyes, at Lucas who’s got a small pleased smile on his lips while he watches Aurora and shrugs when he finally meets Chase’s gaze. He looks to Tyler last and the werewolf nods, still silent, tilting his head to bare his throat, just barely.
“Don’t leave again,” Joseph says quietly.
“I won’t,” Chase says, and he knows it’s a promise.
~*~
He wants to go to Tyler, crawl into bed and sleep in his arms for three days straight. The magic he used against the Cahils hasn’t drained him the way it has in the past, something he wants to investigate at some point, but he’s still exhausted, feels like he’s stretched thin.
But Lucas is waiting, and he’s the Alpha now. He’s responsible.
He nods toward his room, the one Tyler built for him that he never sleeps in but still feels like his. Lucas watches as Chase slumps on his couch and scrubs a hand through his hair, fighting the urge to yawn.
“It can wait, Alpha,” Lucas says.
Chase shakes his head. “No,” he says, voice raw. “Just tell me.”
“Tripp was an outlier. He acted without his Alpha’s knowledge or blessing.”
Chase cocks his head. “Do we believe that?”
“Yes. I might not have if it had come from Stephen’s Left, but the Alpha is an old man who led his Pack through peace bought with his father’s generation—he doesn’t have the sense or the skill to lie to me.”
“What do they want for killing their ‘wolves?”
Lucas shrugs. “Our silence. Cahil doesn’t want word of his Pack’s treachery to spread. And they want our assurance we won’t move against them.”
Chase frowns. “That seems a little too easy.”
“We killed ten of their Pack, and if we broadcast that, it will cause distrust and packs to rally against us. But if it gets out that Cahil couldn’t control his son, that they welcomed an Alpha and treated her like an omega? That they attacked a pack without provocation? They’ll lose any standing and allies they have. Neither of us stands to gain by airing our dirty laundry.”
“So what do we do now?”
Lucas shrugs. “We have allies and we have a secure territory. We don’t need to do anything. We can take this time to be Pack.”
Chase cocks his head, grinning. “Peace, big bad? Is that what you’re advocating?”
Lucas bares his fangs. “Behave, pup. We’ve earned our peace.”
He nods, sighing. “Yeah. We have.”
~*~
Tyler is sitting on the porch when Chase finds him. He hesitates in the doorway, the Pack noisy behind him and the beckoning night quiet in front, and Tyler balanced between.
“Come here,” Tyler murmurs, and he moves in a rush of flailing limbs and relief as Tyler catches him, drawing Chase down into his lap, and he curls there.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, pressing his face into Tyler’s chest, listening to the steady thump of his heartbeat, picking out the intricacies of his scent. He shudders and presses that tiny bit closer as his scent goes sad.
“You did what you had to do to protect us,” Tyler says.
Chase twitches. “You watched me kill your sister, Ty. You—you don’t have to be stoic.”
Tyler is quiet for a long time. “I always wanted her to come back. Even when I left. And I knew she wouldn’t because she hated it here, but I wanted her to come back. You built us into a Pack, into something strong, and I thought, ‘maybe now’. I was never going to stop hoping.” His grip tightens and he exhales, exhausted and shaking, into Chase's hair.
“Do you hate me?”
“No,” he says, so quickly Chase knows it’s not a lie. “I could never hate you. But,” he shuffles and looks at Chase, eyes wide and wet. “Is it wrong to love you and still grieve her?”
Chase makes a noise, a raw hurt sound, as he drags Tyler into him and holds the older man as he finally cries.
“No,” he says fiercely, “No. You’re never wrong to feel things, baby.”
He holds Tyler as the wolf sobs, silently shaking in his arms, as the night deepens and the house quiets, until Tyler finally sleeps.
~*~
“I want to tear down the old house,” Lucas announces a few days later. Chase is sitting at the table, half-asleep over his coffee. Joseph is making waffles while Ezra and Jessica argue over the proper way to cook eggs.
Tyler pauses in the middle of packing his bag for the day and gives his brother a wide-eyed look. Aurora, in one of Lucas’s v-necks, is perched primly on his lap nibbling on a strawberry, and the whole thing is so domestic the words don’t actually make sense.
“Why?” Chase mumbles into his coffee. Aurora huffs and drags it away from the half-asleep Alpha, who whines and makes grabby hands before he straightens reluctantly to listen to Lucas.
“We could use the land,” Lucas says, “Jessica and Joseph will want a place of their own eventually. And you and Tyler will, when you’re mated.”
“Even if you didn’t,” Aurora says delicately, “I have no desire to listen to your sex life.”
“Jealous?” Chase says, grinning wide.
Aurora sniffs, leaning back into Lucas, whose hand spans her belly possessively, pulling her back against him. She tilts her head and the v-neck slips lower, baring the brilliant bruise on her collarbone. “Hardly.”
Chase laughs, delighted. “We did good, huh?”
Aurora winks and gives him a wicked smirk.
“Are you two quite through?” Lucas asks, but he sounds as amused as Tyler is embarrassed. He studies his brother. “It’s yours. We don’t have to.”
Chase is watching them, but he’s quiet. It feels right, in a way that it never has before, like it’s turning the final page of the past and looking into the future of his life.
“Yeah,” he breathes, “Yeah, we can do that.”
Lucas nods, watching Tyler with bright, sharp eyes, and then Chase says, “Wait. Mated?”
~*~
The moon hangs fat and heavy in the sky as he sniffs at the underbrush, sneezing when pollen billows up and coats his nose. The wind ruffles his fur and he shudders, shaking himself out before a wolf bursts through the trees, snapping at him as he yips.
He runs, and the wolf runs alongside him, blue eyes bright and happy, snapping playfully at his heels when he flags. A howl fills the air, his eyes flare red, and he screams, high and vulpine. His wolf, black and beautiful and keeping pace at his side, howls with him.
He can feel the moon tugging at him as the magic of the Standing Stones sings through the forest and in his blood. He can feel his Pack, wrestling and running, the bright hot joy in Jes
sica when she brings down a rabbit. He can feel his father, patient and steady in the den, and Aurora, eerie and sharp, her screams a haunting counterpart to the wolves’ song.
He can feel Lucas, vicious and patient and his, tracking the Pack and waiting for him.
He can feel Tyler, the wolf that runs at his side, strong and patient, the unwavering strength he’s built his life around and with, radiating content happiness as they run.
He can feel every piece of him—alpha, human, kitsune, scion—twisting and turning, shaping him into something he never dared dream, and he’s spent so many years dreaming.
He’s awake now, wide awake and drinking in his world.
Chase screams again, calling his Pack, and he runs, free and happy and safe, under the bright light of the full moon.
Chapter 32
Chase walks through the forest alone. It's rare enough to be a novelty and familiar enough that the feeling, if new, is strange.
He tucks his hands in his pockets and picks his way along the familiar path. The house at the end of it doesn't look anything like the little house he found what feels like a lifetime ago, when he was furious and desperate and broken.
It sits, beckoning and warm, and he feels a rush of affection so hot and unexpected, he has to blink back tears.
Even now, this is home. The Pack has grown since Chase became Alpha, and they've built on the forest, small houses for Pack who outgrow the den.
But this—this is home, the heart of their territory.
Magic pulses irritably in his gut and he grins as he turns away from the den, following the scent trail and trickle of magic. He could do this blindfolded and on a new moon, but it feels new as he does now. Flowers bloom as he walks and he grins.
Aurora will be pissed.
His magic twists sulkily before settling in his chest, and the flowers slow to a stop.
He reaches their allies first, the Packs and omegas that have come to the Reids to strengthen themselves, sometimes one step away from death.
Chase refuses, always, to go looking for allies, but they have a reputation that Lucas takes glee in strengthening, and so the allies came to them.
He nods at them and the packs back away, giving him a wide berth to walk past. Liss blows him a kiss from Stephen's side and he winks. They will remain here—what comes after is for the Pack.
They've grown over the past five years. Not so much that his Pack is unrecognizable from what it was, but enough that it eased the wild itching in him to build and grow.
Megan joined them first, almost a year after he became Alpha, a wild kitsune with no control of her power. After her came Leo and Lily, one freshly bitten and wild with fury, one feral from years living as a coyote.
Jamison was last, joining them six months ago. He came broken and wrong, wearing scarred skin and carrying too much baggage. Chase wanted to turn him away, for everything he'd ever done to Aurora. It was surprisingly Lucas who changed his mind—possessive, protective Lucas who had mated Aurora the second she agreed to it, his teeth in her neck almost before the word was formed.
He understood sickness, and never lost faith that Chase could mend the broken creature.
Chase thinks half of Lucas's motivation was the ability to flaunt Aurora, neck marked and ring on her finger, to the man who broke her heart. Aurora rolled her eyes and kissed her husband with a kind of desperate hunger that three years of marriage couldn't quench and smirked at the yearning expression on Jamison’s face.
But eventually, after time and rubbing salt in the wound and Tyler constantly drawing the sharp-tongued, angry man close—he did become Pack.
He stands with the other betas now, watching his Alpha as Chase steps into the clearing. They're all here, the Pack they built, Aurora and his father, and beyond them, his wolves. Lucas stands near Tyler, a fond look on his face as he watches Chase approaching, and Tyler—
Tyler watches him like he hung the stars in the sky, like he’s the moon itself, filling up the night and pulling at his life. He watches Chase like he’s precious and treasured and loved. It's been a lifetime since he stumbled across that dilapidated house in the woods and forced his way into the lives of two wolves who needed him almost as much as Chase needed them, yet Tyler still looks at him like that—with awe, wonder, and a hint of confusion.
Later, they'll run together, fox and wolf under a bright sky as the Standing Stones sing through his veins.
Later, Tyler will press him into their bed, will kiss him breathless and work him open, will lace their fingers together and cover him, kiss the mating bite on his throat, hold him close as Chase whimpers and Tyler fucks him.
Later, they'll sit down with Liss and Stephen and discuss the pair of omegas looking for a pack. He'll meet with Lucas about the dragon spotted just beyond their territory. He'll go to work and Tyler will do the same, and every small thing that they have built their lives on will continue on, endless and boring and steady.
But for now—Chase breathes through the now familiar surge in his magic as he steps up to the Standing Stones and peers up at Tyler, waiting patiently in a fucking gorgeous suit that Chase will thank Aurora for later. He grins at the man who has been friend, savior, lover, and companion his entire life.
“Ready to marry me?”
Tyler smiles then, the quiet smile Chase loves best, and squeezes his hand. Chase looks up at the sentient Stones and nods, almost to itself, as their voices, ancient and sibilant and warm, whisper through the clearing.
He laughs when he sees Tyler's expression and tugs him forward to the waiting spirit. And like he has for so long now, Tyler follows.
About the Author:
Nazarea Andrews (N to almost everyone) is an avid reader and tends to write the stories she wants to read. Which means she writes everything from zombies and dystopia to contemporary love stories.
When not writing, she can most often be found driving her kids to practice and burning dinner while she reads, or binge watching TV shows on Netflix. N loves chocolate, wine, and coffee almost as much as she loves books, but not quite as much as she loves her kids.
N is a self-professed geek and enjoys spending her spare time lost in her favorite fandoms and can often be found babbling about them on social media.
She lives in south Georgia with her husband, daughters, spoiled cat and overgrown dog. She is the author of World Without End series, Neverland Found, Edge of the Falls, and The University of Branton Series. Stop by her twitter (@NazareaAndrews) and tell her what fantastic book she should read next.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Street Team | Tumblr | N + Arei
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