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

he knows. He does. He’s known since Halloween and Lucas’s collapse that he’s important to the Reids. But it’s different, seeing something so visual, so permanent.

He blinks back tears and says, his voice shaky, “Do I get to pick the paint?”

Tyler rolls his eyes and ruffles Chase's hair with a fond smile before he rolls up the plans and tucks them away.

~*~

Chase starts exercising Lucas.

He sits on the wooden patio that Tyler builds off the back of the house and works the quiet man’s fingers, his voice a low, coaxing babble, a constant stream of encouragement.

Tyler watches sometimes, but he seems content to let Chase have his way with Lucas’s care.

“He likes you,” is all Tyler offers when Chase asks about it.

“Of course he likes me. But that doesn’t explain you letting me force him through yoga three times a week.”

“He likes you,” Tyler repeats. “And we trust you. But—nothing you do is going to hurt him. There’s a good chance it’ll help him.”

Chase rotates Lucas’s foot, lifts his knee, bending his leg back so it presses against his chest.

“Do you think he’ll ever wake up?” Chase asks softly.

Lucas stares up at him, and Tyler blinks into the woods as the spring wind twists through the trees, ruffling his hair.

“Yes,” Tyler says eventually.

~*~

It’s a new moon, in the dead of summer.

John mentions that he enjoyed fishing and it spins into a conversation about the Reids’ fondness for camping, and before Chase can actually figure out how it happens, Tyler and John have arranged a camping trip.

Chase stares at both of them like they’re crazy. Tyler’s polite when the Reids come to the DeWitt house for monthly dinners, and John’s very careful to never be outright hostile, but they don’t like each other.

They just tolerate each other for Chase’s sake.

But here they are at a tiny campground, where Tyler has now spent hours sitting on the bank while John fished, both of them silent.

“That is so weird,” Chase mutters to Lucas, who, true to form, says absolutely nothing. “I mean, I like that they get along, but it’s weird.”

“Weird isn’t bad,” Tyler says mildly, and Chase jerks around to glare at him and his dad, standing behind him with matching smiles.

“Oh, god, don’t do that,” Chase says, appalled suddenly. John raises an eyebrow and Chase whines, “This is the worst thing ever.”

Chase isn’t terribly surprised when John mentions Chelsea. Tyler, never very forthcoming about his family, has been downright chatty while they hike and swim and Chase makes sticky s’mores.

“What happened to her?” John asks gently.

Chase stiffens and leans forward. “She left. She left and they don’t need her,” he says fiercely, glaring at Tyler when he gets that haunted look Chase hates seeing. “We don’t need her,” he repeats, and Tyler nods slowly.

Chase doesn’t think Tyler believes him, not yet—but he’s seen the blueprints and he knows damn well that Tyler hasn’t planned a room for their absent alpha.

So maybe—maybe he is starting to believe it.

~*~

The truth is, he knows they don’t need Chelsea, but there’s a part of Tyler that longs for his alpha. A part of him that aches for that ownership, that belonging.

It’s eased some since Chase joined them, since he became Pack. But he’s a werewolf without an alpha, in a pack made up of a human boy too old for his age and a catatonic werewolf who can’t shift. Even with this pack that he adores, there’s an aching emptiness that he wishes could be filled.

He dreams, almost always, after he thinks that.

It’s not perfect, but it’s good. What they have—it’s good.

It’s better than he dared dream he’d ever have, after the his parents died.

~*~

It’s September, almost a month after the school year begins and Chase is settled into his classes and extracurriculars. Tyler sits across from him in the kitchen of the house. He drags Chase’s algebra book away until the boy blinks up at him, a little dazed.

“I want to quit my job.”

That jerks Chase’s attention to him and he straightens up, elbows braced on the table and waiting.

“I just—I don’t like my boss,” Tyler says while Chase nods encouragingly, “and I want to go back to school. Get my degree.”

“What about the house and Lucas?”

“I can go to HCC. I have my trust fund. That didn’t change after the car accident, so I don’t even need to go through Chelsea to get it.”

Chase scowls, but nods. “Ok.”

“You don’t think it’s stupid?”

Chase stares at him. “The only stupid thing said was that question. Tyler, if you found something that will make you happy—don’t question it. Just go for it.”

Tyler’s face is pale and blank, his body stiff, and Chase huffs. “You are allowed to be happy, Ty.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“And that’s ok,” Chase says easily, “I’ll keep believing it for you until you do.”

~*~

Tyler quits his job in late November. Chase comes over on Thanksgiving and they have the quiet breakfast that has become their holiday tradition, then Chase stands and fixes his scarf. “We’re decorating the house. And Dad invited you both for Christmas.”

Tyler nods before Chase smiles and slips away.

~*~

He can run, in his dreams.

A small familiar body runs near him, and a great black wolf runs at his side, blue eyes gleaming. Here, he can run and wrestle with his pack, and he hunts, biting the soft underbellies of rabbits, ripping them open until blood floods his mouth and his senses, and he wants that, wants blood flooding his mouth and vengeance for his dead, wants to rip them all open.

A howl breaks through the night, a high yipping call echoing after it and it jerks him back, calls him to run, chasing his pack until his paws ache and the only thing he can taste is the clean night air, and all he can hear and want is his pack, their hearts beating in tandem as they run through the dark ahead of him.

~*~

That spring, three things happen, although one is not remarked on or acknowledged by anyone