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

noise, as the sharp movement rips at the new wounds.

“You had to need him and now he won’t fucking leave. It’s your goddamn fault, and I just don’t get it. What the hell is so special about you, Chase?”

~*~

Andre Drake looks furious and wary, which might amuse Tyler if anything were remotely amusing.

It’s been almost three days, and they have no idea where Chase is. Lucas systematically slaughtered each and every Cahil ‘wolf in their borders, Jessica summoned their Lewis allies, and Aurora sat rocking on Chase’s bed for hours, but none of it did any damn good because he was still gone.

He wants to fucking scream, to rip something—anything would do at this point—to pieces, and he wants Chase so badly his teeth hurt.

“We haven’t seen any new witches since the Council’s judgment,” Drake says.

“Any new supernatural threats?” Tyler asks.

Andre gives him an unimpressed stare. “Your Left Hand usually handles that before I hear about it, doesn’t he?”

A tiny, vicious part of him is absurdly pleased that Lucas has a reputation that strong of protecting them.

“Chase has wards. Why don’t you know what it is?”

And isn’t that the question?

~*~

“This isn’t how you get them back,” Chase slurs out, while Chelsea paces and glares at her phone. She glances at him, her pretty face twisted into an ugly grimace.

“You’re the only thing standing in my way, Chase. I kill you, I get my brother back. Lucas is broken, always has been. He’s a step away from being feral, no better than an omega. Even Mother saw that, it’s why he was so separate from the Pack. Do you know that’s why he survived? Because he was stronger than he should be, from killing those around our Pack.”

“Lucas,” Chase grits, “was the Left Hand. He did everything the Alpha needed and couldn’t do. He loved your mother and she adored him.”

“Liar,” she snarls.

Chase shakes his head. “This won’t work. Even—even if Lucas lets you live, they’ll never forgive you. Tyler will never forgive you. You took me.”

She stares at him, furious and uncomprehending.

“You—Chelsea, I’m his mate. You took his mate. He’s never going to forgive you for that.”

Something nearing lucid surfaces in her gaze, then she shakes her head. “No. You’re—you’re lying. You’re just a stupid human boy that won’t let go. Once you do, he’ll come home.”

“I’m Pack,” Chase mumbles, “Even you can’t ignore that. You can’t—”

“You aren’t” she snarls, “You aren’t mine, you won’t—”

She freezes then, eyes going wide as a thought strikes her. Chase feels his stomach drop as a slow smile spreads across her face.

~*~

He’s screaming.

Again. It annoys her.

And Tripp has ignored her texts for the past twelve hours. She thinks that’s probably more annoying.

With a huff, she flicks off the electricity and stalks over to him. He smells rank, like piss and blood and pain, but still, under all that is a hint of defiance and something she can’t place, something that reminds her of the preserve and her childhood running through it.

She shakes that thought and dips down, placing her lips near his ear. “Submit,” she murmurs.

“G’ fuck you’self,” he slurs.

She snarls, jerking his head back, and claws at his throat. “Submit!” she roars.

His eyes roll back as he fights the grip and the power in her voice. There’s a bond, one of the weak Pack bonds she tries so hard to ignore, and she has one to this little shitstain, this pathetic excuse of a human who thinks he can run with wolves.

Tripp laughed himself silly when they heard the first rumors of the human shaman claiming Reid land and she had burned with shame, but kept her silence. And then the witches began dying, killed savagely and unmistakably, and then the rumors were no longer amusing and to be mocked—they were disturbing and something that had to be addressed.

Tripp’s attitude had shifted. She was an Alpha submitting to another, engaged to his heir, and less than a Cahil beta in many ways. But the way the affection in Tripp’s gaze had soured to disgust and distrust—

“Submit and this ends,” she demands, begs, and she hates herself for begging.

She’s hated herself for years. This is nothing new.

“Fuck you,” Chase snarls back.

She growls, releasing him, and reaches for the iron poker again.

~*~

Lucas finds him in the woods near the Standing Stones. The Chief ordered them home, to get some rest before they continued their search, and the Lewis Pack is still patrolling.

Still, the inactivity burns in him, makes him twitchy, and he itches to shift and run, howling for his mate.

“I don’t understand why none of the wards tripped,” Tyler says.

“Neither do I. He explained them to me, before he did them—they guarded against any with ill intent, supernatural or otherwise, not in our Pack.”

“Then where is he?” Tyler bursts out.

“Maybe he didn’t get taken from the bookstore.”

“The wards didn’t alert us that anyone crossed our borders and the Cahils are all dead,” Tyler snaps.

Lucas is quiet then, until he gasps. “Tyler.”

He sounds sick and sure, and Tyler looks at him.

“Who could cross every ward and never trip them?” Lucas asks. “Who would the wards and charms not recognize as a threat, because they’re Pack?” Tyler frowns, so Lucas adds, “And who has never considered Chase Pack? Who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him, to protect herself?”

Tyler feels sick. “No.”

Lucas stares at him, implacable, pale and sure.

“Lucas, no. She wouldn’t.”

“Tyler,” he says gently, “There’s no one else.”

~*~

He wishes he could sleep.

He thinks if only he could sleep, then he could dream, and he could tell them he’s still here. He could tell them that he’s—well, not alright, not even close to alright—but alive.

He thinks that would be enough.

But he doesn’t sleep, and when she punches him in the head, the blackness that claims him is empty and dreamless.

~*~

Tyler runs.

He doesn’t shift, just bolts away. He lets the forest wrap around and hold him like a secret, protecting and hiding him, and he runs until his muscles burn, his breathing heavy and loud in his ears.

He runs