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

And she’s staring at him, her eyes wide and sightless, all too knowing. It sends a chill down his spine and his Shift ripples like a wave, just below the surface.

“You—you killed, for him,” she whispers, Chase stiffening against him. “And you will kill again.” Lucas stares at her, and she blinks. “You would wash the world in blood for him. For Tyler.”

She’s breathless in awe, and Lucas—he doesn’t know what to do.

He always knows what to do, but staring at this tiny girl with shadows under her eyes and wonder in her gaze—he’s completely lost.

Chase twists and murmurs, “Aurora, tell him about your dreams.”

Color blooms in her cheeks, but she tightens her grip on her purse and nods.

~*~

Chase, this impossible, brilliant boy—the boy who cared for him, inexplicable and unlooked for but fierce in his devotion, the boy neither of them had ever expected or thought to want but who slipped into their lives and refused to leave.

His brilliant, impossible boy.

Only Chase would befriend a goddamn Medusa, a daughter of death and vengeance, so rare that Lucas is a little surprised to find one sitting in his fucking living room.

~*~

Once, when Chase has resumed classes and Tyler is distracted drafting blueprints for a new building downtown—when he knows his absence will be noticed but not worried over—Lucas quietly flies to New York.

It’s a large city. There’s an anonymity about it that appeals to him—it would be easy to lose himself, to step away from his alpha-less pack and his pack-less alpha, to leave and become an omega.

Standing in the throngs of humanity that brush past him, unaware of who and what he is, he wants to, for a heartbeat.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he glances at it.

>>I’m making pierogies at Dad’s on Saturday.

>>Be home by then.

Of course. Chase would notice his absence, even when it was carefully planned so that he didn’t.

Smart, infuriating pup.

<< I will be.

It’s a promise, and he means it. He turns his attention to the task at hand.

It isn’t hard to find Chelsea. He knows that she was asked to join a pack. Rumor spreads through their packs faster than scandal through LA, so it wasn’t hard to find the truth—Chelsea was invited to be the Alpha-mate to the Cahil’s Alpha heir. She’s a pretty, powerless figurehead. She chose that insult over a Pack that wanted her, over a rich territory that belonged to her family.

Lucas hates her.

His lips curl into a snarl as he scents them, the rich, dirty, rotten scent of Cahil on his sister as she leaves her apartment, as she falters just for a moment, her eyes—Sarah’s eyes—searching, like she can feel something, scent something, but can’t figure out what.

His claws itch and his fangs lengthen. He wants, so goddamn badly, to shred her to pieces—for abandoning him, for hurting Tyler, for refusing to be the Alpha they need, for her dismissal of Chase.

He wants to howl, scream his rage and bury his claws in her soft belly, rip her throat out.

He doesn’t.

He watches her leave, watches the Cahil wolves slip behind her as she steps into a silver town car, watches her be whisked away without thought or concern for the scent teasing the air and her senses with packhomemine.

He waits for the hate to be overcome by longing, but it never does.

Lucas only feels very tired, and very angry.

<< i’m coming home.

He doesn’t know why he tells Chase—except that Chase has told him every secret, has cared for him when there was no reason for him to, has proven that he can be trusted.

>> good. See you soon, big bad.

~*~

Sometimes, when he watches Chase standing before the Standing Stones in nothing but a pair of leather pants low on his waist, he thinks—this boy is fae, the dark Unseelie, the court of nightmares and beauty and unimaginable power.

Sometimes, when he watches Chase, and he’s crowing with laughter, wrestling with Tyler and throwing harmless balls of witchlight, he thinks—this boy is fae, the bright Seelie, the court of dreams and splendor and power that could make a man weep.

But mostly, when he watches Chase, cursing in the kitchen, giggling on the couch, drooling in Tyler’s bed, bickering with his father, he thinks—this boy is magic, because magic is the only thing that could heal him, bring him from the wrecked shell of what he was, what the accident left him, and Chase did that. Chase brought him back.

He thinks, for all of Chase’s power and tricks and charms, that is the strongest magic Chase works. He creates family and worth from charred remains and shattered devastation.

Lucas would die to protect him, and he will kill, to keep him safe.

~*~

Aurora sits on his bed, and Lucas gives her a curious look. The little Medusa avoids him as much as she can, something that amuses and infuriates him.

To see her now, here, while his reports and research is spread out—

She studies it for a moment, then she blinks at him and says, “You’re going to kill them.”

“Kill who?” he asks, curious what conclusions she’s drawn.

She smiles, tight and vicious, and he wonders what a smile like that tastes like. “Everyone who helped Mia Drake kill your family.”

He smiles too then, pleased, sharp, and predatory.

She nods. “I want to add a name to your list.”

Lucas laughs and thinks this girl, this beautiful monster, is the perfect companion for his brilliant, magical boy.

Chapter 17

Sometimes Chase wonders what life would have been like if he hadn’t wandered, lost and lonely, into the woods after his mother’s death. It’s not often, but when Aurora leaves for her second semester at Berkeley, he wonders. When Ben and Brielle move to UCLA, he wonders. When he sits in a college classroom full of his high school peers, people he always knew would be stuck in this town, he wonders.

When he stands in Harper’s basement and manipulates rowan ash, when he traps Lucas behind an ash circle and