Slow Shift by Nazarea Andrews (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📗

isn’t sure why Brielle cares about his approval, except that Ben matters to him.

He isn’t sure what he’s looking for. He only knows that this girl’s presence had shaken Tyler enough to call Chelsea and that it’d caused Lucas to go into seizures that still give Chase nightmares.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just knows he should be looking for something.

~*~

He meets Andre Drake that day, a pale-eyed man with a military bearing and something guilty and drawn about the way he carries himself.

“Daddy, this is Chase. I told you about him—he was there that day when Mr. Reid had his seizure.”

And because he’s looking for it, he sees the guilty flare in Andre Drake’s eyes, the way his gaze goes hot and heavy and intrusive on Chase for a moment before it skates away and he smiles at Brielle, bright and fond, then says, “I hope your friend is ok, Chase.”

“He is,” Chase says, “I’ll make sure he is.”

It isn’t quite a threat, but it’s damn close.

~*~

Tyler is furious. It’s the first time he’s ever actually been angry with Chase.

“You can’t do that,” he snarls, pushing Chase hard into the wall. Chase shrugs, unrepentant. “They’re dangerous, Chase.”

“And we needed to know how dangerous. You couldn’t find that out—and now we know.”

“What if—they could have—you—”

Chase pauses in the middle of wiggling away from him. “Ty? What?” That rage is covering something. He thinks, suddenly, that maybe he was wrong. “Hey,” he says, tugging at Tyler’s arm insistently until Tyler looks at him, wide-eyed and...afraid?

“They’re dangerous, Chase,” he whispers, “You—I already lost so many of my pack to them. I can’t do that again. Not with you.”

Chase stares at him for a long time. “Ok. I’m sorry.”

He pushes into Tyler’s arms and Tyler huffs, stiff and still angry, as Chase scritches at his back until he finally pushes the boy away with a sigh. “You’ll stay away from the Drakes?”

Chase nods, solemn. “Yeah. I’ll stay away.”

~*~

Drake finds Tyler two days later, while he’s picking up groceries, alone. When he rounds the corner and steps into the soup aisle, Drake is there, glaring at chicken broth like it killed his daughter.

He stiffens at the sight of Tyler and for a moment, Tyler almost retreats.

“We aren’t here for you, Reid,” Drake offers, and some of the tension in his gut eases.

“They why are you here?”

Andre Drake turns to look at him then, a box of broth in his hands and something like honesty in his eyes. “My daughter deserves some stability during high school, and Harrisburg is a good place to raise a family.”

Tyler smiles and says viciously, “Drakes didn’t think my sister deserved the same consideration.”

Drake glares at him briefly, then he schools his expression into something still and watchful. “That was not me. Or the family I claim. I’m no longer aligned with the coven.”

Tyler snorts and starts to walk away, before Andre says coldly, “But Tyler, if I hear the Chief’s son is bitten—I’ll have to rethink my stance on the Reids in Harrisburg.”

Tyler snarls and shoves Drake into the racks of soup. “Stay the hell away from Chase. Do you understand me? He’s innocent and human—you stay the fuck away from him or I will break the peace, witch.”

He snatches up the soup Chase needs to make dinner and stalks away without waiting for Drake to respond, without giving himself a chance to consider how much he just revealed to Andre fucking Drake.

~*~

Tyler doesn’t like letting him jog by himself. He says that with Drakes in Harrisburg, they have to be careful—that he has to be careful.

“I’m not a werewolf,” Chase protests, “The witches would never come for a human—and you have a peace treaty with them.”

“They don’t.” Tyler is patient, as always, even when Chase is glaring at him over a piece of drywall, white dust in his hair. “But they don’t always stick to that. And you’re Pack—human or not, if they decide to make a move for us, they’ll come for you, too.”

So Tyler runs with him, now.

John raises an eyebrow until Chase points out that Tyler doesn’t mind, and that he’s safer this way. Tyler, standing nearby, watches Chase with a familiar, fond exasperation, and John grudgingly agrees.

He likes it, running with Tyler. It’s familiar in ways that don’t make sense. Most of the time he follows Tyler’s steps for miles, before Chase presses against him briefly, then he puts on a burst of speed and darts ahead. Tyler growls and chases him, and it becomes a new way of training.

Sometimes Tyler will shift into his other form and chase him through the trees, teaching Chase how to hide and run, how to hunt with a werewolf, and how to be hunted by a werewolf.

It almost always ends with him pinned—to a tree, to the ground, to Tyler’s chest— as Tyler huffs a laugh and tells him what he did wrong.

Sometimes, though, as the months slip past and he gets smarter, he’ll reach the wide clearing where they train without ever being caught and Tyler will smile at him, pleased and proud, before he takes Chase back to the little house in the woods.

~*~

The months melt away and Tyler works on the house. Sometimes when he’s standing in the middle of the gutted bedroom, he thinks it’ll never be finished. Then he hears Chase, laughing as he talks to Lucas and makes dinner, and he thinks it’s ok that it’s taking time.

Some things do.

In April, Chase gets an especially good report card, so John gives him permission to spend three nights a week with the Reids. Tyler shows him a set of blueprints and waits anxiously as Chase stares at the addition he’s building onto the small cabin.

He blinks up at Tyler, his eyes wide and cautious. “You’re—you’re building me a room?”

“We’re building you a room,” Tyler says gruffly and Chase makes a quiet noise in his throat, low and helpless, and Tyler sighs. “You’re Pack, Chase. You need space in the den.”

And