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

wash his hands in blood, stain them red until they were never clean, would murder the world to keep them safe.

It makes it very easy, actually, when a siren slips into town, drawn by the lush magic of the Standing Stones and happily killing the single male population of their quiet town. Lucas slips away from his little Pack, away from the house that is their home, and moves, silent as a ghost, through the forest.

It’s easy, he thinks as he stalks her, watches her approach her prey. It’s what he was always meant to do.

He kills her and disposes of the body, hoping it won’t give John too much trouble when it’s found. Then he washes his hands and goes back to his Pack.

~*~

“I want to put up new wards,” Chase says.

Tyler pauses. “We just put up wards,” he says evenly.

Chase grins, wide and pleased with himself, and Lucas hides his smile, because he knows Chase has won this argument. He wonders if either of them have realized that.

“I learned new ones. Better. I think it’ll catch more.”

“What the hell else do you want to catch?” Tyler grumbles, nudging the boy’s legs aside and plopping down on the couch.

“Uh, I’d like to know what the hell drained those three men last month,” Chase snaps.

“No one else was killed,” Lucas observes.

Chase gives him an offended glare. “Don’t take his side,” he hisses.

“Fine,” Tyler grouses, dragging Chase’s legs back into his lap and rubbing the calves with almost absent-minded attention. “I’ll go with you Saturday.”

The smile Chase gives him is blinding.

Lucas hides his sigh behind his book. He wishes they’d decide what they were doing. The pining is becoming unbearable.

~*~

“What did you do, for Sarah?”

The question isn’t surprising. Chase has been burying himself in Pack hierarchy since he was fifteen. The only surprising thing about the question was that it’s taken Chase this long to get to it.

“Tyler was training to be the archivist and diplomat. Chelsea was the Alpha heir. Andrew was Sarah’s second. But I can’t figure out—what were you?”

“Tyler told you I was training him to replace me.”

Chase gives him a patently disbelieving stare. “You weren’t a librarian, dude, and I’m not stupid enough to think Sarah would ever use you as a diplomat.”

Lucas grins, all teeth and threat. “I can be very diplomatic.”

“What were you?” he asks again.

Lucas looks away. “I was what Tyler should have been, and what I will be for you and him.”

Chase stares at him for a long time, long enough that Lucas’s heartbeat trips, uneven and scared.

“You don’t have to carry that alone,” Chase says, “I would never ask you to carry that alone.”

Lucas nods. He knows. Chase would never ask for Lucas to kill someone, to act as the Left.

It’s precisely why he’s so willing to it anyway.

~*~

Tyler is careful.

Lucas watches them. He sees what’s going on and it hurts to witness.

He misses the wild boy who would race through the preserve with Chelsea, his eyes flashing and laughter ringing. He misses the fierceness and the possessiveness he saw in Tyler when he was with their baby sister. He misses the boy he knew, and sometimes, when he catches Tyler watching him, he thinks—maybe Tyler misses him as well.

But there is something sweet, something soft and fragile and good about the way Tyler is with Chase.

When Chase is there in the house, even when he’s busy reading, or sleeping on the couch, when he’s cooking or sparring with Tyler—when he’s there, filling up space and binding them together—that’s when Lucas can almost forget.

It never lasts. He will always look for his mother, his wife, his baby sister, his pack, and he’ll remember. Tyler will flinch, inevitably, away from Chase.

Chase will stumble, caught briefly on a memory of his mother.

And the illusion will shatter.

But when they’re together, and Tyler is quiet and soft and content, Lucas feels safe. He feels like he’s part of a pack, a feeling that’s been slowly building since Chase first tucked his blanket around him in the woods and warned him about catching a chill.

Sometimes he’ll step into the room and he’ll catch Tyler watching Chase, fond and helpless and wondering.

He never lets Chase see those looks—he’s careful. He never lets the touching—scent marking, platonic touches in the kitchen, a guiding hand during sparring, a teasing jostle while they jog, a comforting touch when Chase smells of sadness, a steadying hand when the boy sways with magic—dip into something more. He’s so fucking careful.

There’s a part of him, the part that’s meddlesome and impatient and confident that this is right, that wants to push and pull and arrange them, move them both where he wants them, force them together the way they so desperately want to be.

“Don’t,” Tyler tells him one night, when Lucas snarls at the tension, after Chase has driven away. “He’s—I can’t, Lucas. I can’t lose him, and I can’t ruin him. I would. I ruin everything. Chase has given us so much. Just—don’t.”

And Lucas hasn’t. He’s left them to their own devices, because as annoying as it is, he loves them. He loves them and he thinks—he’ll kill to protect them.

~*~

“I don’t understand,” a shrill, familiar voice says.

Chase sighs. “You don’t have to.”

Aurora’s heels clack up the steps to the house, Chase’s feet a heavier step behind. “I wish you’d just tell me.”

“Tell you what, dear?” Lucas purrs, as she and Chase step inside. Her words dry up and he watches her, bright-eyed and curious.

Aurora Black is special. Not only because Chase has deemed her so, brought her here where he brings no one but his father and Ben, on rare occasion—no, she’s special because she watches him, and he can see a predator staring at him from behind her pretty green eyes.

He smiles, the bland smile that he uses to annoy Tyler, and her lips thin, before Chase is grinning and greeting him with a quick hug and a vague wave towards his room.

More often than not, when Chase brings her here,