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

ignores the way his skin is crawling at even her phantom touch, and focuses on Drake.

“The peace between our pack and the witches does not extend to those you have invited into your home,” Chase says and Drake’s eyebrows go up. Mia laughs, a short incredulous noise.

“Our territory will be warded in forty-eight hours, against them as well.”

“That's a little aggressive and unusual,” Drake says slowly.

Chase smiles. “Not against a known threat. And,” his gaze skates over the cousins, over Mia, hot and angry, “we know her.”

“Who the fuck is this kid?” one of the cousins snaps, but Chase is already turning away.

“See that you uphold the peace, Drake. Or don't come knocking at my door when my wolves break it.”

He leaves with the feeling of Drake’s eyes on him and Mia's fury in his ears.

~*~

He isn’t surprised when Mia Drake corners him. He expected it, told Tyler it was going to happen. It was the hardest thing for Tyler to accept, knowing that by doing this, Chase was painting a target on his back and Tyler wouldn’t be able to shield him from Mia.

He’s with Aurora and Ben at the mall—Brielle is god knows where, and that surprises him even less. Mia is smart, too smart to come at a shaman when he’s alone. With humans, he can’t touch his magic. Aurora glances over from where she’s waiting with Ben in line when Mia slides into the seat across from him, but he shakes his head briefly and she stays where she is.

“You’re playing with kids your own age today,” she says, her voice a teasing purr that makes him want to scratch her eyes out.

He just lifts his eyebrows and says, “You should take a page out of my book and do the same. I hear you like them young though.”

She flushes and her smile goes sharp. “You know listening to predators is dangerous.”

He laughs because that’s some fucked up irony. “You’re calling Tyler a predator? You?”

“I think your dad would probably agree with me.”

He rolls his eyes and waves a good-natured hand as Aurora and Ben start back his way, ice cream in hand. “You get right on telling him. Lemme know how it goes.”

“You run with wolves, you’re going to get hurt, Chase,” she says, touching his hand.

“And if you poke a wolf pack, you’re gonna get bit,” he snaps, because he’s tired and wants her gone, wants her dead for what she did to them, to Tyler.

“You’re a funny kid,” she says, voice softly musing, “But you’re just a kid. Tyler isn’t ever going to want you. Not the way you so clearly want him.”

Chase stares at her, eyes cold and furious. “Get the hell away from me before I scream ‘bad touch’. I won’t even be lying.”

She smiles and saunters away, cooing at Ben as she goes, and he heaves out a breath. There still twenty-two hours before the wards go up, and it’s far too long, if you ask him.

~*~

He slips into the house three hours before the deadline, his palm throbbing from the cut he carved open over and over and over, spilling his blood to activate the wards.

They’ll be burning, a sharp insistent pain under the witches’ skin, but it won’t drive them out of Harrisburg until the deadline passes.

“Chase, why do you smell like Mia Drake?”

He curses. “She touched me. Yesterday. I thought I showered it off.”

And then the voice registers, sliding over him with a dreamlike familiarity, and he makes a startled noise as he looks up.

Lucas frowns back at him, his eyes bright and alert, furious.

“Holy fuck,” Chase blurts out.

Chapter 12

“Uh, hey—Tyler? You should, um—you should come home, if that’s a thing you can do. It needs to be a thing you can do.” He eyes the man sitting on the couch. “It needs to be a thing you can do right now, please.”

He hangs up and stares at Lucas, eyes wide and spooked.

“Honestly, it’s like you expected me to never wake up,” Lucas says, voice tart, and Chase lets out a tiny laugh.

“I mean, it’s been five years,” Chase says helplessly.

Lucas shrugs, and that’s when Chase sees it. He notices the way he’s trembling, a tiny thing almost hidden by the hands clenched in the blanket still on his lap, the thin sheen of sweat on his brow, the way he sways where he sits.

“Dude,” Chase sighs, “You’re gonna kill yourself.” He drops onto the couch, tugging and pushing until Lucas huffs and allows himself to be rearranged to Chase’s satisfaction, until the two of them are pressed close together, curled like puppies under Lucas’s blanket. “You can’t push yourself,” Chase scolds, “I don’t want you to have a setback.”

“You’re even bossier than I thought, now that you can give me orders,” Lucas says dryly.

Chase grins. “I’ve got years of catching up to do, big bad.”

Lucas laughs, a soundless shaking of his shoulders, and Chase stares, his gaze avid and bright.

“My god, Lucas,” he says and it makes the older man still, watching him intently. Chase smiles before curling close like he always has, and some tension he hadn’t seen runs out of Lucas like water.

“Tyler is coming,” Lucas says suddenly, mouth tucked down so it’s murmured softly in his ear, “and he’s worried.”

Chase’s smile goes wider, because for all the times he’s worried Tyler—he finally has something good to share.

Tyler bursts into the house, and Chase’s wards shimmer, warming against his skin.

“What’s wrong?” he shouts, even as he comes skidding into the living room.

He isn’t wolfed out, which kinda surprises Chase, but he’s glad, because he can see the surprise and hope cascade across Tyler’s face as he stares.

Lucas smiles. “Hello, brother.”

~*~

Chase watches them together, something warm and fond in his gut, something he doesn’t want to name as Tyler clings to Lucas and shudders, his eyes squeezed shut.

“We have to tell Chelsea,” he murmurs eventually.

Lucas meets his gaze over Tyler’s head. No, he reads there, and hate, too, so strong it startles him, taking him