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

“Alpha Reid,” Chase says smoothly, his stomach churning. After over a year, he had thought he’d gotten over how much he disliked Chelsea.

He was wrong.

“Alpha Reid, I’m calling to make you aware of a magical...incident...occurring in your territory.”

“Kid,” she huffs, “I don’t have a territory.”

“You would if you came back and were a real alpha,” Chase snaps, his anger making his formality drop.

She pauses, silence loud over the line, and then her voice comes through ice cold. “I don’t give a damn what happens in that town. It killed my family and it can burn for all I care. If Tyler had any sense, he’d get in his goddamn car and drive east until he hit water.”

“Tyler doesn’t run,” Chase says evenly, “Even when running is the easier option.”

“Tyler has been running his entire life, kid. Don’t fucking tell me about my own brother.”

“You’ve been gone for a long time, Chelsea, and while you were gone—what, did you think Tyler stayed the same? Still the angry, scared beta you didn’t care enough about to take care of? You don’t know shit about the man he grew up to be.”

She falls quiet for a long moment, then says, “Tyler always ran. I never could figure out what the hell he has in Harrisburg to keep him there. I think I’m beginning to see.”

“No,” Chase says, tired suddenly, “You don’t. You can’t. You aren’t here. Tyler doesn’t run because Pack takes care of Pack.”

And you didn’t goes unsaid, but he knows damn well that she hears it.

“The Standing Stones are awake,” he says, and hears Chelsea inhale sharply. “But it’s not stable—it needs to be anchored or it’s going to drag every supernatural in a five hundred mile radius to our doorstep.”

Her silence now is heavy, but when she finds her voice, it’s calm. “Like I said, kid, I don’t care. Let the supes fight over that shithole. Or hell, you’re the Shaman, you fix it. I don’t care.”

“As you wish, Alpha Reid,” he says, careful and formal, and Chelsea snarls on the other side of the country before she hangs up.

He sits there in the dark, holding his phone, his hands shaking, for a long time.

~*~

Tyler isn’t talking to him and when Lucas finds out Chase called Chelsea, he glares at him, white-faced and trembling, and follows suit with Tyler, shifting into a pale grey wolf and vanishing into the trees.

So Chase goes to Harper.

The Druid listens to him, then says, “I don’t know what you want me to say, Chase.”

“Is it true? If I don’t—will that happen? That apocalyptic future?”

Harper blinks. “It’s a possibility. But there are many possibilities and you binding yourself to the Standing Stones does not eliminate every threat that might come along.”

“But it would stabilize the ley lines, the magic that’s acting like a beacon.”

Harper inclines his head. “In theory.”

Theory, Chase thinks, is a helluva a thing to gamble his life on.

“What would it do to me, if I did this?” Chase asks.

Harper shrugs. He shakes his head and says gently, “I don’t know.”

~*~

His wolves are bound to the moon, and Chase figured out what that means a long time ago. He curls up on the couch, spicy Zuppa Toscana on the stove and homemade garlic knots on a plate in the microwave. Brownies are still warm in the oven.

Tyler huffs on the front steps, pausing there. He can hear Lucas’s voice, low and sardonic cursing, and Chase says, “You might as well come in and talk to me. We can’t avoid it forever.”

Tyler glares at him as he shoves into the house, and for a moment, it’s so similar to that first day, when Tyler was furious and young and scared with Lucas was a silent shell in his chair, that it makes him gasp. His gaze crunches into concern and Chase takes a deep breath, pushing through the sweet stinging pain in his chest.

“Sit down and I’ll get dinner.”

He slips past them to spoon up giant bowls of soup, not terribly surprised to find Tyler retrieving drinks—a bottle of wine and glasses, a Coke for Chase—and carrying it back to the living room while Lucas snags the garlic knots and his bowl. He rubs his scruff into Chase's hair and huffs when the boy presses back against him, before he follows Chase into the living room. Tyler is in the overstuffed chair that he usually shares with Chase and Lucas takes his glider beside the window. Both of them stare into their bowls.

Chase clears his throat. “I talked to Harper. You—you’ve seen my dreams. You know I have to do something.”

“Harper said you could stop the apocalyptic future?” Lucas says, tone sharp.

“He said I could create a different future,” Chase says carefully.

“But you would have to—”

“It’s a spell,” Chase says, “And I think... I know it wants me to bind myself to it fully, but I think I can twist the spell, make it so that it’s bound by a rune—I can help it without giving it all of me.”

Tyler is glaring still, and Chase puts his food aside to go to him. He takes Tyler’s bowl and hands it to Lucas, then crawls in the werewolf’s lap and presses into him. Tyler’s breath is shaky but familiar when he breathes out against his neck, and Chase feels tears burning in his eyes at the way Tyler holds him, the desperation in his embrace.

He wants this, always, and it’s not his, it’s not right—this is just Tyler’s fear.

“I need you to be safe,” Tyler whispers, “More than this godforsaken land, I need you to be safe.”

Chase presses a kiss into his hair like a benediction and makes a promise. “I will be.”

~*~

He spends months tweaking the spell and dreaming of a dying world.

“It might not work,” Harper tells him and Chase nods, staring at the careful calculations, at the spell he’s created. He stares at the rune he’ll need, etched into his skin. He can feel