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

“It was safer for you to not know,” Chase says, “I wanted—Dad, I wanted to tell you. Of course I wanted to tell you, but you hated them and then it’d been so long—and it was safe, I was safe.”

“‘Was’,” John repeats.

Chase blinks.

“Was,” Lucas agrees. John watches the werewolves slip back into the room. They circle his son the way they’ve always been prone to do, and it makes sense when he adds werewolves to the goddamn problem.

Jesus Christ.

“I’m still safe,” Chase says.

Tyler snorts his opinion of that.

“I am,” Chase insists, “It doesn’t want to hurt me!”

“We don’t know what it wants,” Tyler snaps.

John lifts his hands. “Alright, children. Maybe you can both shut up and Lucas can explain.”

Chase settles into the couch, sulking, but Lucas’s eyes are bright and amused as he begins to tell John everything.

~*~

It’s when Lucas explains what a shaman is, what Chase did, that John begins drinking again.

~*~

“When you leave for college,” John starts, and Chase looks at him. The Reids are gone and it’s just them, just the son who he doesn’t know and the house that his wife filled up and hollowed out, and he aches for her, misses her with a fierceness that steals his breath, because she’d know what to do here—she’d know how to help Chase. “Will it stop then?”

Chase shakes his head. There’s no hesitation there, none at all. “Dad, the ritual I did—I’m bound to the Pack. The Reids had a shaman before me, before the accident. And he was still bound, even though Sarah died and Chelsea left. His bond broke only because I’m here now.”

“But you could leave. You could go to college, get away from the Standing Stones and the Reids and this....shit.”

Chase shrugs. “I could.”

John looks at him, at the stubborn gleam in his eyes that he knows, the one that he gets whenever the Reids come up and he’s going to dig his heels in, and he sighs. “But you won’t.”

Chase smiles, small and a little bit wistful, like maybe he gets it. Maybe he understands everything he’s giving up. “I won’t.”

~*~

Tyler slips out of his Mustang and approaches the station. The Chief is standing by his cruiser and looks up as Tyler approaches. He eyes him for a long moment.

He wants to say something and doesn’t know what, doesn’t know how.

“Will you keep him safe?” John asks finally.

Tyler nods. “I would die for him.”

John’s eyes widen just a little and Tyler wonders if maybe he hears what Tyler isn’t saying. Maybe he hears the he is everything, the I need him, the I love him that Tyler can’t say.

“Just—keep him safe, Tyler. Keep my boy safe,” John says.

~*~

It’s better, now that his dad knows. When John shakes him awake as he sleepwalks, there’s worry but not lost helpless panic that he’s been seeing. When a Reid shows up at his door, anxious and pacing, John rolls his eyes and finds a beer, but generally doesn’t complain when Chase explains it away with a mumbled, “Wolf stuff.”

“I didn’t realize how much I hated lying to him,” Chase tells Lucas one day as they jog through the preserve.

“You’re a pack animal, Chase. It’s why you fit with us so well. And it’s why you will always hate lying to the ones you love.”

Chase hums.

Lucas tilts his head. “Do you ever think about it? About being one of us?”

“Sometimes. Mostly on the full moon—I wish I could run with you and Tyler, but I wouldn’t want Chelsea’s Bite. And I like being me. I like being a shaman and human and still being important.” He looks at Lucas like he wants the other man to understand.

Lucas nods and smiles. “Whatever you are, pup, you are always important.”

~*~

“Where are you applying for college?”

It’s late October, the day cool, and Aurora is sitting on his couch. He can hear Tyler bickering with someone on the phone as he watches rain slide down the window pane, and she’s watching him, green eyes big and beautiful.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Aurora’s face does something complicated, knowing and sad.

“Chase,” she says patiently, and he shakes his head. “You can’t—”

“I’m not,” Chase snaps, cutting her off. “But I don’t want to leave my dad. I don’t want to leave.”

“Everyone wants to leave,” she says, exasperated.

He shakes his head, feeling the quiet hum of his Pack bonds, the thrum of magic in his fingers, the wind moving quietly through the preserve. “I don't. I’ve never wanted to leave.”

“I don’t understand you,” she says. He nods. She doesn’t. She’s his friend, maybe his best friend aside from Tyler and Lucas. He loves her, but she doesn’t understand him. She can’t.

There’s too much she doesn’t know.

~*~

On a quiet morning at the end of November, Tyler shows up in Chase’s kitchen.

He enters wordlessly and Chase pushes him into a seat, gives him water and a bowl of oatmeal. He picks an apple he peels and cuts slices off, passing to Tyler in silence. Tyler makes a face but eats until Chase is pleased, then they rise. The wolf crowds him as they go upstairs to his bedroom. Tyler tugs off his Henley, slips into a pair of sweatpants, and crawls into the center of his bed, immediately curling into Chase when the younger boy joins him, a whine in his throat. Chase makes soothing little noises, shushing him as they arrange themselves in bed, and he pets Tyler’s hair.

“Where’s Lucas?” he asks, the first thing he’s said since Tyler arrived, the first thing he always asks.

“Was gone when I woke up. I can feel him. He’s fine,” Tyler says.

Chase can hear the thread of worry in his voice, even as he dismisses his missing brother. He doesn’t push. He just holds Tyler as the sun rises, holds him as he falls asleep and when he jerks awake, and when he goes so tense it makes Chase ache in sympathy.

He holds him as Tyler whines and tears fall, and when he whispers, “Chase... Chase,