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

excuse me if I don’t follow your shitty example.”

“Do you think the Council would be interested in a half-trained mage tied to a magical Stone?” Harper asks.

Chase stares at the druid for a long time. “I don’t fucking care what the Council  would be interested in.” He brushes dust from his hand and it sparks hot flicks of electricity as it falls to the table. “But I do know that if you threaten my Pack’s safety, it won’t be Lucas who comes for you. I’ll rip your magic from you and kill you myself.”

Harper is quiet and still. Chase gives him a sharp smile and saunters out.

~*~

“Do you live with the Pack?” Chase says as soon as Liss answers the phone.

“Why hello, Chase, it is good to hear from you. I’m great, how are you?”

Chase snarls softly.

She sighs. “Fine. Yes, I have a small suite of rooms in the Pack house. Why?”

“A druid here—he says I’m too involved.”

“Well, you are. Most of us, even the ones living with their Packs, aren’t as integral to the Pack as you are. We keep them human. We don’t forge Pack bonds. But you’re the Reid Pack—and you’re strange as fuck. So ignore him. You’re doing fine.”

Chase huffs. “We’d like you and your Alpha to meet with us. We can come to you. I know you wanted me to check your wards?”

She hums consideringly. “Yeah. That would be good. Let me talk to my Alpha and set it up.”

~*~

Things with Ben are strained.

He doesn’t know that Chase has something to do with the deaths of his girlfriend’s family, but he isn’t stupid either. He put together Lucas’s seizures and Brielle around the first time Mia wandered into town with her veiled threats and bad-touch.

Ben is oblivious and harmlessly self-centered, but he isn’t stupid, and he’s been friends with Chase for long enough that he knows Chase had a hand in Mia’s disappearance and Matthew's death.

Chase doesn’t press him—he knows his brother will talk only when he’s ready, and he knows he won’t lie. Not about this.

Not when he wants to bring Ben into their Pack.

It’s late March, when Ben returns for spring break and Brielle flies with Aurora to France, when he finally does. “Did you do it on purpose? Suggest I propose to get Mia and Matthew invited to Harrisburg?”

They’re playing Mario Kart, and Chase pauses the game to sit up and look at Ben.

“Yes,” he says simply, “But if I hadn’t wanted to kill Mia and Matthew, I still would have encouraged you to propose. Brielle is right for you in every way, man. Of course I want you to marry her.”

Ben licks his lips, then says quietly, “Harper says you’re dangerous.”

Bastard.

“Not to you. Or her. Not ever.”

“Can you promise the same for the Reids?” Ben demands fiercely.

Chase nods. “You could—You could bring her. To the house. She’d be welcome there.”

Ben lets out a slow breath. “No,” he says, and something in Chase’s chest cracks open. “I love you, man, and I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. But I like my ordinary life. It’s safe and good for me, and she’s safe. I don’t—” He shakes his head.

“You could be Pack,” Chase says dully.

Ben smiles gently. “Dude. I don’t want to be Pack.”

~*~

It hurts. He smiles, and they play video games for another hour or so before Chase gets a call from Tyler and Ben takes the distraction to duck away, and—

It’s not new.

They were inseparable once, and sometimes Chase aches with it, misses that closeness, but if he’s honest, most of the time he’s relieved that Ben is so far away at UCLA.

He loves Ben, of course he does—he wants Ben in their Pack, for fuck’s sake—but Ben has never understood the relationship he has with the Reids, has never tried to.

Still, hearing that Ben and Brielle are getting an apartment in LA, that he doesn’t want to be Pack—it hurts.

Ben has been part of his life for so long, he thought he always would be.

~*~

They meet the Lewis Pack at their borders, and Chase grins as he feels the quiet pulse of Liss’s wards brushing against him. Tyler and Lucas flank him, and Stephen watches with a curious smile.

“Welcome to our territory,” he says, “Liss says you have something you want to discuss.”

Chase feels that familiar burst of grief, the same feeling he’s had every time expanding the Pack has come up since Ben went back to UCLA, and Stephen’s gaze narrows on him.

“I thought,” he says brightly, “I’d help Liss with her wards, before we get to that.”

“That’s...very kind,” Stephen says slowly, and Chase nods, a bobblehead agreement. Liss snorts but leads Chase along.

~*~

Chase reeks of anxiety and nerves when they sit in a cafe that one of the Lewis betas owns. She pours coffee and drops a plate of scones and cookies in front of them before she tilts her head respectfully for her Alpha and skirts away.

“What can we do for you?” Stephen says, after he selects a scone and leans back. Liss curls one foot under her and fiddles with the bandage around her hand, where she cut her palm to strengthen the wards around their territory. Chase’s whole body aches from dripping magic into hers, strengthening her spells with his own power, but he straightens and watches Stephen.

“You knew, when you approached us for an alliance, that our Pack is unconventional,” Chase says and James, the beta they have never seen before, stirs and makes a dismissive noise in his throat.

“Is there a problem with your beta?” Lucas asks silkily.

“There’s a problem with your Pack,” James snaps, “if you’re allowing a human to speak for you.”

Tyler snarls and Lucas’s smile grows sharper and chillier, but Chase just laughs. “Fair enough. We’re all kinds of problems, Jamie, but your Alpha came to us.”

Stephen studies them, a faint sheen of red on the edges of his eyes, and finally, without looking away, he says, “James. Shut the hell up, or you will leave.” The wolf growls