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

locates his phone. He dials easily and hears a distracted hum in his ear as Tyler answers.

“Hey, big guy, Drake is here. Wants a meeting with the Alpha and Shaman.”

Tyler spits a curse and hangs up.

Chase sighs. “Come on in.”

They’re just sitting there, Chase finally having wiped his face, when Tyler bursts into the room, half shifted, eyes bright and claws out.

Andre is up and across the room before the door bangs shut behind Tyler, power sparking along his fingertips, but the werewolf doesn’t even notice, stalking to Chase and pulling him up, pressing into his throat for just a moment while Chase pets his shoulder uselessly.

“I’m ok,” he murmurs, low and easy.

Tyler huffs, a touch of a whine in the noise, before he lets go and falls back a step. His claws slide away as he places one hand on Chase’s shoulder and focuses on the hunter. “I told you to stay away from him.”

“I didn’t come here to do harm.”

“Why did you come here?” Chase cuts in, and tugs on Tyler’s shorts a little, urging him to sit.

“Because I wanted to meet with the Reid Alpha and his shaman. But you aren’t an alpha,” Andre says slowly.

“And I’m not a shaman,” Chase finishes. He grins. “We’re not exactly a normal pack.”

“I see that,” Andre says. His gaze cuts to Tyler. “Do you want him here for this?”

Chase bristles and Tyler shrugs. “I don’t keep secrets from my pack. Chase is fine.”

Andre nods and says softly, “My nieces are coming to Harrisburg.”

~*~

Tyler doesn’t tell him anything.

He calls the Chief and asks if Chase can stay with Lucas for a few days, then he vanishes. Chase is left with more questions than ever and a catatonic Lucas with no answers for company.

~*~

The dream is different.

“It wasn’t always like this.”

The voice startles him so badly he yelps and falls over, scrambling over charred bits of wood and twigs, leaves sticking against him.

“You would have liked the pack, before.”

Chase looks around but the voice comes from everywhere, echoing and strong, powerful and playful.

“What was it like?” he asks.

A laugh answers him. “Like our little pack, but bigger. Fuller.”

He thinks of that, and tears sting his eyes, because they lost that.

Tyler had clawed the pack and house together through sheer will and stubbornness, and once it had been his, a birthright he hadn’t thought to question or value because it’s the way things had always been.

“What happened?” he asks, and the air is cold against him. He shivers and nestles into the ground as his grey wolf lopes out of the trees, circling him and pressing close, his fur bristling familiar comfort against him. He feels the words as much as he hears them, and shudders, burrowing into his wolf.

She killed us. Mia Drake and her coven of witches—she killed us all.

~*~

Lucas sleeps for almost thirty hours, something that would bother him, except he’s used to Lucas, used to the long jags of sleep that seem to play to the cycle of the moon.

He situates Lucas in Tyler’s big bed. He curls against him and dozes there, comforted by the closeness of Pack.

~*~

Tyler comes back after three days and finds Chase and Lucas curled up like puppies in his bed. He doesn’t even bother to shower the sweat and dirt away, just crawls in with them and lets his eyes close.

“Better?” Chase asks, his voice a deep rasp, and Tyler nods, squeezes the hand that has landed on his hip.

“Thanks,” he murmurs. Chase hums sleepily.

~*~

It’s strange, waking up in bed with Lucas and Tyler.

They moved around in the night, and Lucas is a warm line against his back, his breath steady and comforting against his shoulder. He’s curled into Tyler, his hands fisted in Tyler’s shirt, their legs tangled together, one of Tyler’s big hands on his hip and the other at the nape of his neck. He pulls away just a little so that he can see Tyler, and Tyler’s grip on his neck tightens, just enough that Chase gasps. The soft noise makes Tyler move, a whole body roll against him, before he rolls away completely, yawning and stretching.

“You can get some more sleep,” he mumbles.

“Can I get some answers instead?” Chase asks, and Tyler goes still. “Why did he come to my house, Ty? What the hell am I in this pack? What’s a shaman?”

Tyler huffs and stands. “Get dressed, Chase. I’ll make breakfast and answer your questions. All of them.”

Chase catches his wrist and stares up at Tyler. “What about what just happened?” he asks, voice shaking a little, and Tyler’s gaze shifts, goes bright and shining for a split second.

He pulls away gently. “Get dressed, Chase.”

~*~

Over pancakes and scrambled eggs, Tyler says, “We aren’t a normal pack. We don’t have an alpha and we—Lucas isn’t a healthy werewolf, he can’t shift. You aren’t a shifter at all. And it’s—most packs have a place for humans within them, but ours isn’t a normal pack. It makes everything... complicated.”

“What’s a shaman?”

Tyler scrapes his eggs together and eyes Chase. “You read the lore and pack structure I gave you?” Chase nods. “So the Alpha is the head of a pack. But most packs have a support structure around the Alpha—the left hand, the second. A human fills the role of shaman. They’re...advisors, Mom used to say. We connect them to magic. And they keep us from becoming animals.”

Chase breathes out, slow and easy. “You were supposed to be the second.”

Tyler closes his eyes and nods, thinking about the life he was supposed to have as his sister’s closest confidant, the one who makes treaties and keeps the pack’s history and secrets. There is a part of him that still wants that, that wants Chelsea to come back and make them a real pack, instead of this bastardized version of it.

“Would I be the shaman?”

Tyler shrugs. “They’re—shamans are magic, Chase. They can do things we can’t, with blessed wood and wolfsbane and runes. I don’t know if that’s something you’re born to,