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

soothe and care for them. He never wanted to know, because he’s never wanted the Bite, never wanted to understand a thing he’d never take, never want.

He thinks that was stupid, so fucking stupid, because now he wishes he knew if this creeping invasion is normal or if it’s just that the magic that’ll be his wolf is just wary of the magic that already lives in him.

He can feel it, the sharp curiosity that feels familiar and his, the burn of fury from the magic that’s as familiar as his own heartbeat, the way it rages even as it rolls back and lets the black drift through him.

He sobs when it slides through his torso and he realizes his mouth feels funny, too full, too sharp.

He wants, for the first time in his life, to howl.

~*~

He loses time, but his fingers shift, scratch at the chair with sharp black claws. Chelsea comes back, once, and watches him curiously.

He wonders what she sees—if he’s human or wolf, if he’s dying.

He thinks he’s probably dying.

The black drifting has slipped through all of him now, only the tightly curled ball of white-hot power untouched, and it’s circling, curious and teasing, edging close as his magic curls tighter, almost as if it’s hiding.

It feels almost playful. Chase would laugh if he didn’t feel so much like dying, because of course, of fucking course, his wolf would be goddamn playful in the face of ancient eldritch power.

He thinks Lucas would be amused and Tyler exasperated, and he really wants the chance to tell them.

He carefully touches the Pack bonds and the black waves surge forward, anxious and demanding and hopeful—

And his magic, the familiar burning spark and silver heat of the Standing Stones, rips through him, wraps around the shining heart of his Pack and attacks.

Chase screams.

~*~

“I don't understand, though,” Tyler says again, “Why attack him? Why take him? He’s her Pack.”

“Is he?” Lucas asks, and Tyler gives him a sharp look. “What does the bond to Chelsea feel like?”

Tyler frowns. “Like—like any bond. A gold thread that ties me to her.”

“And your bond to Chase?”

Tyler flushes. “A chain.”

Lucas smiles faintly. “Do you know the pups can’t feel her? They don’t have a Pack bond to Chelsea at all. And the one I have—it’s a sick and dying thing. Chelsea doesn’t want us to be her Pack.”

Tyler frowns. “But—she—” He goes pale, and Lucas wishes Chase were here to ease Tyler through this.

“What are you saying?” Tyler asks, voice harsh and angry.

“When you came back to Harrisburg for me, I was trapped in my own mind and I couldn’t feel my Pack. It was driving me insane, the emptiness where they should be, where my Alpha should be—I was packless, bondless, and I was going insane.” He looks at Tyler seriously. “I don’t want to think about what I would have become.”

Mad. Driven by his need for revenge and fury, how far would he have gone. Who would he have killed?

“But the Cahils,” Tyler says weakly.

“They allow her within the Pack, Tripp fucks her—maybe he’ll marry her—but she isn’t part of the Pack. She’s a pet Alpha with a powerful territory that they want. But Chelsea—Tyler, she’s a weak alpha with no pack and no bonds. She abducted her own Shaman.”

Tyler looks sick. “You think she’s gone feral.”

Lucas nods. “I think she’s probably been going feral since she ran away after the funerals.”

~*~

He screams and the black falters as the magic that he swore himself to, that’s his by birth and blood, roars to the surface, not content to hide and give ground as this new invader toys with the bonds that Chase would die to protect.

He can feel it when they collide, a flare of heat so strong he thinks he’ll explode from the sheer force of it, before the power shifts, rolls, twists. He vomits, black-silver vomit that paints his lips shimmering black. It tastes like metal and electricity, like his magic and something else, and it terrifies him.

He wants to scream but his voice is choked up in his throat, and his magic is raging, furious as it rips through him, feeling like it’s knitting him back together.

When he bound himself to the Standing Stones, it took his lifeblood and was reborn. He’s seen it, since that night, the massive tree that stands where the stump once was, ancient and strong, radiating power.

But it gave him something in return, gave him all the raw power it couldn’t harness. It feeds that into him now, silver sweet heat twisting with his spark and lighting up his tattoos, fighting.

Chelsea bit him and wants to claim him as her own. Chase wants to laugh. He’s been Tyler’s and Lucas’s since even before he was the Standing Stone’s scion. Their need drove him to bleed and bind himself to the ancient magic, and that magic is furious now, fighting anything that might take Chase from it, from them, from his Pack.

Chase laughs, closing his eyes as the wild creature born in her Bite fights the ancient magic singing in his blood.

It’s not much of a fight. The creature is weak and young, and the magic is familiar, lives in him, has for years. It could burn out the threat, the invader.

Or...

Chase stirs, reaching out to caress the living power, sentient and alive under his skin.

Or...

~*~

He drifts. It doesn’t hurt anymore, no more than it ever did. There’s a curious disconnect, like he’s an observer in his own body. The wild creature is skittish and shy but there, and he can feel it, feel the savagery, the curiosity and the yearning for pack mate family home.

This dirty warehouse isn’t his, smells foreign and strange, and he whines, high and animalistic. He feels too big for his own skin, like there’s not enough room—not for Chase and magic and a wild creature he doesn’t yet trust.

We’re all you, the magic whispers, and he wonders if that’s true.

We all will protect them.

~*~

When she slips into the room,