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

“You did what you had to do to protect us,” Tyler says.

Chase twitches. “You watched me kill your sister, Ty. You—you don’t have to be stoic.”

Tyler is quiet for a long time. “I always wanted her to come back. Even when I left. And I knew she wouldn’t because she hated it here, but I wanted her to come back. You built us into a Pack, into something strong, and I thought, ‘maybe now’. I was never going to stop hoping.” His grip tightens and he exhales, exhausted and shaking, into Chase's hair.

“Do you hate me?”

“No,” he says, so quickly Chase knows it’s not a lie. “I could never hate you. But,” he shuffles and looks at Chase, eyes wide and wet. “Is it wrong to love you and still grieve her?”

Chase makes a noise, a raw hurt sound, as he drags Tyler into him and holds the older man as he finally cries.

“No,” he says fiercely, “No. You’re never wrong to feel things, baby.”

He holds Tyler as the wolf sobs, silently shaking in his arms, as the night deepens and the house quiets, until Tyler finally sleeps.

~*~

“I want to tear down the old house,” Lucas announces a few days later. Chase is sitting at the table, half-asleep over his coffee. Joseph is making waffles while Ezra and Jessica argue over the proper way to cook eggs.

Tyler pauses in the middle of packing his bag for the day and gives his brother a wide-eyed look. Aurora, in one of Lucas’s v-necks, is perched primly on his lap nibbling on a strawberry, and the whole thing is so domestic the words don’t actually make sense.

“Why?” Chase mumbles into his coffee. Aurora huffs and drags it away from the half-asleep Alpha, who whines and makes grabby hands before he straightens reluctantly to listen to Lucas.

“We could use the land,” Lucas says, “Jessica and Joseph will want a place of their own eventually. And you and Tyler will, when you’re mated.”

“Even if you didn’t,” Aurora says delicately, “I have no desire to listen to your sex life.”

“Jealous?” Chase says, grinning wide.

Aurora sniffs, leaning back into Lucas, whose hand spans her belly possessively, pulling her back against him. She tilts her head and the v-neck slips lower, baring the brilliant bruise on her collarbone. “Hardly.”

Chase laughs, delighted. “We did good, huh?”

Aurora winks and gives him a wicked smirk.

“Are you two quite through?” Lucas asks, but he sounds as amused as Tyler is embarrassed. He studies his brother. “It’s yours. We don’t have to.”

Chase is watching them, but he’s quiet. It feels right, in a way that it never has before, like it’s turning the final page of the past and looking into the future of his life.

“Yeah,” he breathes, “Yeah, we can do that.”

Lucas nods, watching Tyler with bright, sharp eyes, and then Chase says, “Wait. Mated?”

~*~

The moon hangs fat and heavy in the sky as he sniffs at the underbrush, sneezing when pollen billows up and coats his nose. The wind ruffles his fur and he shudders, shaking himself out before a wolf bursts through the trees, snapping at him as he yips.

He runs, and the wolf runs alongside him, blue eyes bright and happy, snapping playfully at his heels when he flags. A howl fills the air, his eyes flare red, and he screams, high and vulpine. His wolf, black and beautiful and keeping pace at his side, howls with him.

He can feel the moon tugging at him as the magic of the Standing Stones sings through the forest and in his blood. He can feel his Pack, wrestling and running, the bright hot joy in Jessica when she brings down a rabbit. He can feel his father, patient and steady in the den, and Aurora, eerie and sharp, her screams a haunting counterpart to the wolves’ song.

He can feel Lucas, vicious and patient and his, tracking the Pack and waiting for him.

He can feel Tyler, the wolf that runs at his side, strong and patient, the unwavering strength he’s built his life around and with, radiating content happiness as they run.

He can feel every piece of him—alpha, human, kitsune, scion—twisting and turning, shaping him into something he never dared dream, and he’s spent so many years dreaming.

He’s awake now, wide awake and drinking in his world.

Chase screams again, calling his Pack, and he runs, free and happy and safe, under the bright light of the full moon.

Chapter 32

Chase walks through the forest alone. It's rare enough to be a novelty and familiar enough that the feeling, if new, is strange.

He tucks his hands in his pockets and picks his way along the familiar path. The house at the end of it doesn't look anything like the little house he found what feels like a lifetime ago, when he was furious and desperate and broken.

It sits, beckoning and warm, and he feels a rush of affection so hot and unexpected, he has to blink back tears.

Even now, this is home. The Pack has grown since Chase became Alpha, and they've built on the forest, small houses for Pack who outgrow the den.

But this—this is home, the heart of their territory.

Magic pulses irritably in his gut and he grins as he turns away from the den, following the scent trail and trickle of magic. He could do this blindfolded and on a new moon, but it feels new as he does now. Flowers bloom as he walks and he grins.

Aurora will be pissed.

His magic twists sulkily before settling in his chest, and the flowers slow to a stop.

He reaches their allies first, the Packs and omegas that have come to the Reids to strengthen themselves, sometimes one step away from death.

Chase refuses, always, to go looking for allies, but they have a reputation that Lucas takes glee in strengthening, and so the allies came to them.

He nods at them and the packs back away, giving him a wide berth to walk past. Liss blows him a kiss from Stephen's side and he