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

there’s no reason. There’s only the urge to share his world, this small piece of it, with someone who matters to him. He knows it pleases Tyler that Chase is so comfortable in their home, that he wants his friends around the Pack.

It pleases Lucas too, soothes the part of him that feels the loss of his family, his Alpha, his Pack, the part that he thinks will never truly recover from the shattering of his Pack bonds.

But then, there’s the simple truth: having Aurora Black in his den makes every instinct in him itch.

~*~

Chase bound himself to the Standing Stones, used his will and power to muffle the song of power that comes from them. He watched, entranced by his magic, by his sacrifice, and he knew.

It wouldn’t be enough.

And when danger and threat came to Harrisburg—he’d kill to keep his pack safe.

~*~

The first time it happens is the siren. Then it happens again. He always knew it would.

It’s three months after Solstice, after Chase’s ritual. Tyler and Chase went with John to Washington to visit the infamous Granny for the week, and Lucas trots through the forest in his wolfskin, content in his momentary solitude when he stumbles almost by accident over an omega.

He’ll realize later that he was drawn to its scent, foreign and threatening so close to his home, but in the moment, as he blinks, eyes glowing, and the omega stares back in startled disbelief, he only registers one thing.

Threat.

~*~

The omega, Lucas thinks, when he rips into the body and leaves it deep in the woods far from their territory—he would have lived. He would’ve walked from the Reid lands without a hair on his head harmed. He hadn’t killed, and Lucas knew Chase would prefer it, letting him go.

But that night, Lucas welcomed him into the tiny apartment Tyler and Chase don’t know about, the place where he can retreat even from his Pack, the place where he’s willing to take a stranger, a threat, because it means nothing, because it doesn’t smell of denpackminehome.

Lucas took him there and fed him, offered him shelter, a haven in a city where witches live, and the omega stared at him, hungry and hopeful when he asked in a whisper, “The mage... There’s a mage that controls the Standing Stones. Do you know where it is?”

Lucas stared at him, smiled as he lied and shook his head, turned the disappointed omega to other conversation and quietly, easily, snapped his neck.

He waited until he was in the alleyway outside his apartment to rip the omega’s throat out.

It wouldn’t do to have blood inside.

~*~

Chase never fails to surprise him.

“You didn’t have to kill him.”

Lucas blinks. “I did.”

“My wards would have repelled him,” Chase says, “Or done the job for you, if he didn't leave. You didn’t have to do it.”

Lucas debates for a moment, but he knows his boy, bright and fierce and too damn smart. “He came here for you. I wasn't going to kill him, Chase, but he asked me if I knew the mage who controlled the Standing Stones. That sealed his fate. I was never going to let a threat to you walk out of our territory alive.”

Chase stares at him, his expression unhappy. Lucas waits patiently, his heart pounding a too fast rhythm.

“I’m not—Lucas, I’m not Chelsea or Sarah. I’m just a kid playing with magic and trying to keep up with you and Tyler. You don’t have to kill for me.”

Lucas stares at him, because he still doesn’t get it. Chase is brilliant and powerful and sweet and theirs, and he still doesn’t fucking get it.

Lucas leans over, presses into his neck briefly, scent marking him, and then leaves him there, his scent full of questions and regret.

~*~

He likes his dreams. There’s a freedom and familiarity there that he can’t quite find in the waking world. He spent so many years in dreamscapes—he thinks it will always be comforting to return there.

He slips through the trees and feels Chase moving alongside him. Lucas presses into his side and Chase huffs, puts on a burst of speed. They run under the bright moon with Tyler on their heels, until Chase is panting, collapsed into the grass, and Lucas snuffles at the back of his neck before he sprawls over him, pinning him in place with the weight of his body.

Chase squeaks a protest and Tyler chuffs in amusement, and they rest like that.

Mine.

Chase twitches but doesn’t answer, and Tyler presses close, close enough that Lucas can nip at his ear.

I will gladly kill for you.

Chase squirms, displeased, and Lucas presses his weight down until he goes limp.

You are my pack, my Shaman, my protector. Let me be yours.

Chase sighs, but it’s an acquiescence, and it’s enough.

~*~

He doesn’t say the word that’s been living in the back of his mind since the first time Chase dragged his father into Lucas’s hospital room and demanded his help.

He doesn’t make that claim, not even in the dark places in his heart, but sometimes he wonders how long this peace, this compromise, will last.

~*~

December brings a kind of stress he’s never seen in Chase, and a worried overprotectiveness from Tyler that makes Lucas ache with the loss of his wife and child.

Chase is a bundle of sleep-deprived stress and muttered facts, and Lucas spends a solid week quizzing him for finals and proofing papers that Chase snarls over and polishes until he’s finally pleased with the results.

When his first semester of local college finally ends, Chase collapses into his bed and doesn’t reappear for three days, and even then, he stumbles in and curls immediately into Lucas, mumbling about being hungry.

Aurora, following behind him, smiles. Shadows are under her pretty eyes, and Lucas wonders who cared for her during the madness of finals. “I think it gets better,” she says. Chase flips her off.

Tyler kisses his head and stands. “Waffles?”

Chase makes a sleepy, pleased noise. Tyler makes a pained face as he slips into the kitchen. Aurora sits