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

“Don't,” he murmurs, “I'll crush his throat before you can get close to me.”

The black charm is still warm against his skin, and he doesn't want to think of Chase’s panic if it flares while he's being held captive.

“Where is he?” Lucas asks

“Where is who, asswipe?”

Lucas tuts disapprovingly and reaches down, breaking the werewolf’s leg again. “Where is he?”

“I don't know who you're talking about,” the other man shouts, and Lucas listens to his heart, to the frantic beat that even despite the fear, doesn’t falter.

He’s telling the truth.

“Why the hell are you in Reid territory?” Lucas growls, changing tactics, and the ‘wolf on his feet glowers. Lucas slams his boot on the ‘wolf’s ankle, grinding down as he howls in agony. “Now,” he snarls.

“Following orders,” the Cahil beta snaps, “It’s alphaless territory. Your shit of a pack can’t claim it.”

Lucas smiles. “Is that what Tripp told you when he sent you here? You’re an idiot. This territory has been Reid land for over a century and the Reid Shaman holds it still. I thought the last message I sent would have been enough to convince Tripp to stay the fuck out of our lands.” His eyes narrow and he shrugs. “Well, I’ll have to make the next message a bit more...colorful.”

The Cahil beta barely begins to scream before Lucas rips out his throat.

~*~

Lucas keeps one alive, his leg too mangled to heal, and Skypes the Alpha Heir. While Tripp shouts and rages on the other side of the continent, the Left Hand rips his ‘wolf apart.

“Get your dogs on a leash,” Lucas says. Cahil screams threats and fury while Lucas wipes his hands clean. There’s blood on his shoes. Annoying. “And keep them out of our territory.”

He hangs up while Tripp is still raging, and stares at the bloody room blankly. He still has no fucking clue where Chase is.

~*~

He’s known since Chase was fifteen and Tyler Reid glared him down in front of his own police station, that Tyler would move mountains to protect his son. He knows that he loves Chase, in a way that terrifies John, when he thinks about it, and makes him sleep better at night.

Tyler’s searching now, and watching the other man falling to pieces over Chase’s continued absence—that’s tearing John up. Somewhere along the way, this prickly bastard who’s fiercely protective and absurdly possessive of his son had become his. Lucas and Tyler both, and even the rest of them, to a lesser degree. They were the family that Chase chose. John knows that he’ll never be replaced, but Chase with his giant heart needed more than one person to love, and these are the ones he chose, the ones who are worth all of him.

“Anything?”

“There’s a faint scent at the 7-11,” Tyler says, “But nothing I can follow.”

“Whoever has him knows that you can track him by scent.”

Tyler growls.

John puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get him back, Tyler.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know he’s alive, or you’d feel it. I know he’s still in your territory, or the wards would have fallen, and you’d feel that. I know that Lucas will kill anyone and everyone he has to in order to find him, and that I’ll use any measure, legal or not, to bring him home. I know that the Pack will kill itself looking for him before you give up. With all that—whoever the hell has him, they’ve got no chance in hell.”

Tyler doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge him. Then abruptly, he spits, “We need to talk to Drake.”

John opens his mouth, then closes it, and turns the cruiser toward the Drake’s home.

~*~

She isn’t sane.

That’s his main takeaway. That, and she has no clue what the hell she’s doing, but he doesn’t think that’s doing him any favors. She’s done this tree times now, tortured him and ranted the whole time. She likes electricity, and that worries him. She’s clueless, has no idea what a human can handle, and she could kill him pretty easily if she keeps treating him like a ‘wolf.

He thinks he’s been here for two days. It feels like his magic is coming back, because she hasn’t bothered to bind that—a oversight he hopes she doesn’t decide to correct.

He forces it down every time the tickling heat licks towards his wounds. He can’t afford that right now. The blinding pain in his ribs and his broken leg, the twitching of his muscles from the electric current—all of that keeps him in enough pain that he drifts sometimes, but he never really sleeps.

He can feel his wards, can feel the threads that tie him to his Pack, and he traces each—avoids the sickly Alpha bond, the one his magic recoils from—and lets them glow, strengthening.

“It’s your fault,” Chelsea mutters, and Chase blinks at her, bleary-eyed. There’s burns on his arms and thighs, his throat is sore from screaming, and he can smell the stench of his skin burning.

She tosses the iron aside, frowning. “It's your fault,” she says again.

“Wha’?”

“Everything. All of it. Everything that happened after the car accident.” Her mouth tightens. “That was Tyler’s fault—couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.” She shakes her head. “But I was going to forgive him. I know I was hard on him. I know that’s why he left, but he wasn’t going to stay gone. He was going to come home, be my beta—he didn’t even like Lucas.”

Chase stares at her, his stomach turning, because—she believes it, the shit she’s saying. She believes it.

“Chelsea, Tyler loves Lucas. He always has.”

“He hates him!” she screams, slapping him. Her claws rake across his face and he feels something in his eye give, a wet welling that makes his vision blur and go black. “He hates Lucas. We both hate him. And he was coming back to me, but you—you little fuck, you had to go and need him.”

She catches his chin and jerks his head up. Chase screams, a long shrill