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

when he wears his black skinny jeans and black t-shirt, when he drapes himself in Tyler’s leather jacket and stands as the formal Shaman for a Pack that’s so fractured it’s almost laughable.

He always feels like a little kid playing dress up, like someone will call him on it, call him out for the fraud that he is.

He’s almost pathetically grateful that he’s not required to play this part often, but he does like the way Tyler can’t seem to look away from him when he does.

~*~

Lucas’s gift is Caitlyn, a young woman with a mischievous smile and power sparking in her fingertips. Tyler loathes her almost as much as Chase is enchanted with her. Lucas seems altogether too pleased with himself as he places a hand on her shoulder and says, “Caitlyn trained with a voodoo priestess in New Orleans and spent a summer with the Druids in Ireland. She’s agreed to stay and train you for as long as you need.”

Chase isn’t sure who to stare at in open-mouthed awe—Lucas who arranged so that he wouldn’t have to leave, or Caitlyn, who has no reason to do this, no reason to be here—but she is, and she’s watching him, avid eyed, beautiful and curious.

“Why?” he asks.

Caitlyn shrugs and grins. “Because I’m curious about the little mage who stands for an Alpha-less Pack.”

That ripples through Chase and Tyler both, but Chase nods and says brightly, “Where is she staying?”

~*~

Lucas puts her in his apartment downtown, the one that isn’t home, isn’t den, isn’t pack. Even he has the good sense to know Tyler will never let her in the place he built with Chase.

~*~

Caitlyn is nice. She’s almost painfully earnest in her desire to teach and help, and she’s good at it. She redirects Chase easily when he gets lost on a tangent, when his runes tip toward sloppy and dangerous, when he’s strung out on caffeine and his fingers shake while he grinds herbs and smears his blood on wards. She steadies him and teaches him how to channel the power the Standing Stones dumps into him, that he carries as his birthright.

Lucas thinks it’s fascinating, watches them in the Chief’s backyard, lounges on the porch in his wolfskin, eyes lit with curiosity.

Tyler hates her.

He hates the way every sentence out of Chase’s mouth begins with “Caitlyn said”, hates the way he seems happy to leave the house in the woods to go to Lucas’s cramped apartment because Caitlyn is there, hates the way he smells of the girl always, subtle but there, lingering like a kiss under the sharp electric scent of his magic.

He hates mostly that Caitlyn can—is—giving Chase something Tyler can’t.

She isn’t as strong as Chase, and sometimes she laughs because his boy will propose something ridiculously outlandish—what if the wards were defensive instead? If they triggered the forest to grow so threats can’t pass through?—and Tyler will see the stiffness in Chase’s shoulders, the tightness in his lips, but even that is forgiven because she doesn’t understand him, doesn’t understand the scope of his power, and Chase adores her for everything she does teach him.

To add insult to injury, John loves her.

Tyler sulks and takes to long, exhausting runs, hoping like hell she’ll leave soon.

~*~

Sometimes after his long runs, when he’s shaking with exhaustion, he curls up in Chase’s room in the small house, laying on his couch because he misses the boy so much it feels like a knife wound, perpetually bleeding.

Sometimes he ignores Chase for days.

The best nights, though, are the ones he goes to his room and finds Chase there, reading or sleeping, curled up in his bed with Lucas in his wolfskin nearby. Chase will draw him down, press against him sleepily, murmur, “Missed you,” against his throat, and Tyler will close his eyes and hold him through the night.

Caitlyn can have his magic and his laughter in the preserve and his tired, research filled mornings.

Tyler gets to have this.

~*~

“Chase,” John calls, and the tone brings Chase skidding to a halt. He stares at his Dad, his heart beating too hard. He only sounds like that when something is wrong.

“What happened?” he demands.

John glances up at him. “We found a body in the woods. Uh, two, actually. They were drinking, and got mauled.” Chase stares at him for a long moment and John sighs. “One was burned pretty bad, kid.”

“Dad,” Chase starts.

John nods, smile tight. “Just be careful out there, ok?”

~*~

Chase has been walking the woods since he was twelve, in his dreams and in the flesh. He knows the predators that live in those woods.

He calls them friend, holds them when he sleeps, cooks for them, protects them, but he’s never been under any delusions that they are tame.

~*~

“Lucas?”

“Chase.”

There’s a long pause and Chase looks away first, his heartbeat tripping hard and uneven in his chest.

“Be careful.”

A smile follows, sharp and triumphant. “I’m always careful, pup.”

~*~

Summer ends in a rush of magic, police investigations, and Tyler’s quiet distress over Caitlyn.

Chase spends a long weekend with Aurora at her beach house, and when she drops him off, Lucas watches with bright, curious eyes and Tyler skulks from the shadows to curl around Chase, scenting him and whining.

Another body falls in Harrisburg, an orderly from a local hospital killed in his home, and Chase watches the bags under his father’s eyes grow heavier.

Then classes start and Ryan walks back into his life.

~*~

Tyler remembers Ryan. It’s hard to forget anyone who made Chase so happy and so sad. It’s impossible to forget the soaked, shaking, shattered mess that Ryan had left in his wake.

When Chase comes home smelling of new books, crowded classrooms, and Ryan—Tyler snarls.

“He didn’t touch me,” Chase says, sounding hollowed out, broken.

Tyler hates that Chase can sound like that.

“It was a long time ago,” Chase says.

“Not long enough,” Tyler snaps.

Chase gives him a small, sad smile and shrugs. “He wanted to apologize.”

Tyler watches him and says softly, “He hurt you.”

“I know,” Chase says, and he aches to pull the