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

blood, the mistletoe ash, and aconite is keeping him from healing.

It’ll scar. The ink will hold. She won’t be able to touch his dreams anymore. Already he can feel the fog of her spell burning away, the sigil on his side claiming and protecting.

He hates her for invading his dreams. Those are Chase’s, and Lucas’s, and not hers.

“‘M not sorry,” he grits out, “I’m glad.”

Chase laughs and says, voice still weak, “Yeah, well, I haven’t burnt it in yet.”

Oh. Right.

Shit.

~*~

Chase sits awake while Tyler sleeps, his head on Chase’s thigh. He’s still and peaceful, the tattoo on his ribs curling beautifully and protectively.

He can feel it, the magic she’s throwing. Chase pets his hand through Tyler’s hair and closes his eyes.

“I told you. He’s mine,” he whispers furiously, and the spell falters. “You can’t have him, you bitch.”

~*~

Chase sighs and shakes his head, juggling his takeout and keys as he brushes past Andre Drake.

“Should I be concerned?”

“I dunno, Andre, should you?” Chase snarks.

Andre’s lips thin. “Four werewolves just swept into Harrisburg—”

“Five,” Chase corrects, “There were five. I killed one, trying to protect my dad.”

Andre’s mouth opens, then closes, and he squeezes the bridge of his nose. “Chase, we’re allies. You have to tell me when rogue supernaturals wander into Harrisburg.”

“We aren’t allies,” Chase snorts, “You just can’t figure out how to kill me and get away with it, so we play nice at family dinners and no one talks about how much they want to kill the other. I’m not stupid, Drake.” Chase pauses. “And I don’t have to do shit. Harrisburg belongs to the Reids, not the Drakes.”

He dumps his dinner in the passenger seat.

“The Pack—”

“I’m dealing with it,” Chase interrupts.

Andre stares for a long time before he nods. “Tell me if you need any assistance.”

Chase snorts and drives away.

~*~

Lucas calls Aurora three weeks after the Alpha Pack arrives.

“He’s keeping us safe—he even warded Tyler against their Shaman’s dreamspell,” he tells her.

“But?”

Lucas smiles. Beautiful brilliant girl. “But he’s exhausted. He’s burning himself out—he’s using too much magic.” Since they arrived Chase has lost weight he never had to lose, going from lean to almost skeletal, his bright eyes shadowed and bruised, dimmed.

She hums thoughtfully. “And he won’t attack, or allow you to?” He’s silent, letting her think, and then she says softly, “Fine. We’ll do this, then.”

~*~

The fragile peace—if it can be called a peace—shatters on the new moon.

It’s unsurprising to any involved that June is the one to break, to lunge across the carefully maintained distance between the Reids and their Shaman to attack Chase while Luther presents his demands and the twins rumble threats.

It’s vaguely surprising when Lacey Masters, the lovely dark-haired witch who’d tried so hard to get into Tyler’s head, screams in loss and rage as June falls.

Lucas watches it in slow motion—the molotov cocktail laced with belladonna that brings the raging she-wolf to her knees, the way Chase stands panting as the woods whisper around him, he bolt of electricity Lacey throws, the one that none of them are looking for, the one that slams into him and throws him spinning through the air, slamming into a tree and crumpling there, unmoving.

None of them—none of them—expect the power that screams to life, bursting from the ground, alive and furious.

It tastes like ozone and lightning and tiny new growth, like the magic that’s clung to Chase since that damn Solstice.

~*~

Chase told them—

But Tyler didn’t understand. Not really.

He watches as the Standing Stones rip apart the twins, watches vines burrowing into June’s body, twisting and ripping until she’s an unrecognizable lump of meat. He watches as Luther stumbles back and trips, as the Standing Stones pin him there—

“Wait!” Tyler shouts.

There’s a sharp edge of fury, but the vines and the trees, the writhing roots—they all go still. They wait.

The Stones are sentient. It protects us if we protect it, little wolf.

His mother’s words, a lifetime ago.

I bound myself to it, Tyler.

He’s always thought of Chase as his, his to love and protect and care for, but he just watched a Stone circle kill for him, for Chase, and he thinks maybe he had no fucking clue what he was talking about.

Maybe he never did, or ever will.

“Don’t—don’t kill him.”

The leaves rustle and he can feel the fury in it, as Lucas rolls over, groaning.

“Let him leave. Let him tell the rest of the world what will happen if our Shaman is crossed.”

The vines rattle a little, furious and threatening, but they retreat.

When he looks around, there are only the dead betas and June’s remains, and Luther, sitting in a patch of mistletoe, ashen and shaking.

Lacey is gone.

Tyler doesn’t want to think about what the Standing Stones will exact in recompense for hurting its scion.

“Chase told you to get out of our territory,” Tyler growls, “Now I suggest you listen.”

~*~

“Take him home, brother,” Lucas says, watching the Alpha limping away from them. “I’ll make sure that he leaves.”

“Don’t—Chase would kill you, Lucas.”

“I won’t,” Lucas says, “I have no desire to be Alpha. But I will ensure he’s gone, and no longer our problem.”

He vanishes into the trees, following Luther, and Tyler turns to where Chase is still crumpled and still. He’s a barely-there weight in Tyler’s arms, smelling of burnt flesh and hair, and it makes the wolf in him whine in fear.

He was so fucking close to losing Chase.

He remembers the first time he held this brilliant boy in his arms, when he ran away and collapsed into him, sobbing and afraid.

“I’m gonna take care of you, Chase,” he whispers, and hitches him higher in his arms.

He doesn’t look back, but he can smell morning glory blooming behind him, all the way home.

~*~

They call John after Chase wakes up and blinks at them, gives them an almost drunken smile and says, “Did we win?”

“Idiot,” Tyler says fondly.

Lucas smirks. He’s making soup, listening to the quiet, steady rhythm of Chase’s breathing and Tyler’s heartbeat, when the cruiser rattles down their drive and John bursts in, wide-eyed and