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

until the only thing he can hear is the quiet snores of the sleeping forest animals and a fox digging in its den.

Chelsea did this.

Chelsea took Chase, is hurting Chase.

Chelsea is hurting their Pack.

Once upon a time, they were best friends. Before the car accident, they were raised side by side, training to be the Alpha and the Right Hand.

Brittney was going to be the Left, vicious and cold even as a little girl. Lucas adored her.

Chelsea, though—she was his best friend, and he was her closest confidant. The only thing he never told her was about Mia, not until they were in New York and it was far too late. He told her then, and everything changed. It was one of their last fights before he left, and he thinks Mia is why Chelsea never tried to keep him in New York.

The accident changed them all, but he thinks it broke something in Chelsea, something he can’t fix. Maybe not even if he had the years it took to coax Lucas back to life with Chase’s help.

He drops to his knees and sobs. Somewhere in Harrisburg, in one of the boltholes she loved, Chelsea, his sister and best friend and Alpha, is torturing the man he loves.

And that’s when he snaps straight and whispers to the empty forest, “Oh, fuck.”

~*~

Chelsea is pacing in front of him again, her eyes bright red and furious, so far from sane that Chase can’t stop the fear shaking through him.

“Just end it,” he says tiredly, “I’m not going to submit. You aren’t going to let me walk out alive. Just end it.”

His magic crackles along his fingertips, furious at the suggestion, and he tamps down on it, a stranglehold leash. Chelsea stares into nothing for a long time, her expression blank. It looks eerie in the shattered lights of the deserted warehouse, the broken train car a demented background.

It occurs to him that this is a shitty place to die, and the worst place he could be to access his magic, in this box of stone and steel and concrete. There isn’t even moonlight down here.

Then she turns, a delighted noise in her throat. “Chase,” she says, sounding excited, like she’s about to tell him a secret, and Chase stiffens. “There’s a way.”

He blinks. He knows he has a concussion, and he’s lost track of how many burns she’s left on him. From the stabbing pain in his side, he’s pretty sure a few of his ribs are cracked and threatening his lungs, and here she is, she’s staring at him with genuine excitement in her gaze.

If he dies here, it’ll kill his Dad.

And Tyler.

It’ll just enrage Lucas.

He isn’t sure any of that is enough to make him keep fighting.

“A way fo’ wha?” he slurs. His jaw aches, and he wonders if it’s just the claw marks being stretched, reopening, or if its a broken jaw. He still can’t see out of his right eye.

“I know how to make you submit,” she says, and her voice changes, snaps his gaze up as she grins around a mouthful of fangs.

“Chelsea,” he shouts, panicked, the pain and defeat washed away by sheer terror.

“Easy, Chase. So easy. And then I get Tyler back!” She slinks closer, pinning him down with one arm, making pain flare in him as he fights and screams. “He gets you. And I get him. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.”

“Chelsea, no,” he screams, but it’s too late.

She bites him.

It’s hard and deep, blood welling as he screams again, magic flooding up in a confused wash, jerking away from the bite mark. From the shining golden Pack bonds, he feels an enraged roar, impossibly close and far away all at once.

His blood drips down her chin when she sits up. He can’t breathe, there’s no air, and he has a second to panic, and then—

He stops.

He lets it all go and just stops.

Chapter 28

It feels like his magic and the Standing Stones washing through him, except different. Those were white hot and curious, twisted into one shining flame of power that filled him, that was his, was him. This seeps through him like a silver tipped black wave, and it’s...different.

It’s other. It’s hot and hungry and aware, but so alien it makes him want to crawl out of his skin. He hates it.

That makes it pause, retreat a little, and he can breathe again.

He blinks and the room is empty, deserted. Chelsea has left him here to Shift or die, and with the way his magic is fighting—he thinks he might die.

The black in him twists, anxious at that thought, and Chase snorts.

“I don’t want to die either,” he mutters to it, and the black seems to huff, sinking deeper into him, and with everything it touches, he can feel change.

~*~

Tyler shoves into the house and Lucas looks up, exhausted and hopeful, and Tyler licks his lips. Stephen and Liss are leaning over a map with his brother and barely look at him.

That’s fair. Tyler’s been just the right side of useless for most of this, too desperate to be helpful.

He lets his awareness brush against the Pack bond that’s woven around his wolf, a golden chain that he willingly wraps himself in.

“I know Chelsea.”

Lucas frowns, and Stephen is already turning away, but he holds his brother’s gaze and leans in, says again, earnest and demanding, “Lucas, I know Chelsea.”

~*~

He drifts. The electricity is gone, but he’s still chained to this damn chair, and he thinks it’s good, it’s better, because if he were to move, that cracked rib would puncture a lung and that would be bad.

The black is still invading, crawling through him. He goes from hot and aching to cold and numb, and back again. He screams until his voice goes out, and he keeps screaming, but it’s silent now.

He never asked what it was like, and when Stephen gave the Bite to the puppies, he didn’t stay for the change, just showed up in the immediate aftermath to