Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best summer reads of all time txt) 📕

his brother and you made a pack. There is, I think, very little you can’t do with determination and belief.”

Chase stares at him, open-mouthed and startled, and Harper gives him a gentle nudge.

“Try again,” he says.

~*~

He comes to the house smelling of ozone and blood, of magic and ash.

Tyler hates it.

“You’re pushing too hard,” he growls while Chase glares at his homework.

“We need me to push. If Mia—”

“Mia isn’t your responsibility,” Tyler snarls and Chase finally gives him his attention. “You keep trying to fix this, fix me, and no one asked you to do that. You’re hurting yourself for something I don’t want.”

He can feel it, the blinding hurt flooding through the pack bond, and then it’s gone, cut off cleanly, so repressed he actually whines, reaching for the bond he can’t feel.

“You don’t want me to protect us, but you won’t and Lucas can’t. So who the fuck do you expect to do the job?”

The job of defending the pack doesn’t belong to a shaman, he wants to scream. It doesn’t belong to a human. It belongs—

It’s the Alpha’s job and she left, ran away because she couldn’t fucking do it or maybe they just weren’t worth the effort.

He swallows and looks away.

“Maybe no one,” he mutters. “Maybe it’s time to let the Drakes finish what they started.”

Chase hits him, and it’s not the krav maga Tyler taught him, it’s not something physical that he can snarl at and fight. The blow is invisible, a hard shove of magic that lays him on his ass and presses him down, head stretched back and neck exposed, and Chase is there, pressing his foot to Tyler’s vulnerable throat, his eyes flashing with a fury Tyler’s never seen in the younger boy.

“Don’t you dare,” Chase snaps, “They don’t get to touch you. You’re mine and I won’t let them fucking touch you and I won’t let you throw yourself in their path because you feel guilty.”

“Chase,” he tries and Chase presses harder, choking off his air and his words, and Tyler—Tyler melts, stops fighting, sags into the floor even as he presses against Chase's foot just to feel the pressure of being held down.

“You’re mine,” Chase snarls, and it’s a vicious threat and a solemn promise, “and you don’t get to hurt what’s mine.”

~*~

They don’t talk about it.

The one time Chase tries, Tyler gives him a long searching stare and then leaves the room. He doesn’t talk to him for three days after.

It keeps Chase from trying again, but he thinks about it.

He thinks about it a lot. When he’s alone, in the quiet of his room, with his dad safe and asleep a few rooms over, when the pack bonds are quiet and still, and the dark wraps around him like a secret keeper—he thinks about it, about the way Tyler had looked, splayed out and pinned by his magic, by his will, about the way his eyes went cloudy and hot, pupils blown to hell and the edge of blue creeping in when Chase held him down by the throat.

In that moment, Chase is sure that Tyler wanted something, wanted more.

And he’s equally sure he could have done anything to Tyler and Tyler wouldn’t have stopped him.

One thought makes him hard, and he gasps, fucking his fist, chasing his orgasm as he remembers it, the hot want there, the way Tyler had looked, the way he would look, spread out in Chase’s bed. He moans and comes in thick white stripes across his belly.

The other thought—the other thought makes him sick.

He’s always known Tyler Reid was broken. It’s why they worked—they were broken together, with Lucas their shattered hollowed out shell. But he never realized until that day in the forest just how broken Tyler truly is.

He wants Mia Drake’s head on a fucking pike.

And he thinks Chelsea might look good next to her.

~*~

“You really think Mia Drake arranged the accident that killed half of the Tyler’s family,” Aurora says, and Chase stares at her. He’s asking for a lot, expecting her to believe this without explaining why the actual fuck Mia Drake would want to kill the Reid family.

“Yes,” he says simply.

Aurora nods. “Ok. Have you talked to Brielle yet?”

“No,” Chase shakes his head. “I don’t think she knows.”

“But her father will?” Aurora asks skeptically.

“Tyler thinks so.” Chase shrugs.

Aurora looks worried and he nudges her companionably.

“If—you say she killed the Reids, right? So she’s dangerous. I just... I know you aren’t telling me something, and I won’t push, but isn’t this something your dad should take care of?”

Chase bites his lip and looks away. “I can do this. I need to do it.”

She sighs and rests her head on his shoulder. “If you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.”

~*~

When he sees Andre Drake next, he’s the one ringing the doorbell, and if his hands shake, he makes damn sure the witch doesn’t see.

“I’m here as the Reid Pack Shaman to discuss the presence of witches in our territory,” he says when Andre opens the door.

That earns him an eyebrow raise, but Andre nods and pushes the door wide.

Chase touches the runes painted on his wrists, takes a deep breath, then he steps into the Drake home.

~*~

The cousins are beautiful

He wasn’t expecting that, but he thinks maybe he should have.

Mia stands in the middle of them and she’s gorgeous, with wavy honey blonde hair, a tight body, and a wide shark-like smile. He’s spent most of his teen years with werewolves, yet he’s never felt like prey the way he does when he stands in the Drake foyer, the Reid’s celtic knot on his throat, a symbol of his Pack, and plaid a very weak sort of armor while four witches stare at him like he’s meat.

“Ooh, this one is pretty,” she purrs, slinking close, and she rubs up against his protective wards. They flare with an electric snap and she curses as she falls back a step.

“Mia,” Drake snaps, tugging her back away from him.

Chase ignores her,