Slow Shift

by Nazarea Andrews

  He knows Tyler is hoping Chase will leave, almost as much as he is. It will hurt, but God he wants his boy to shake free of this town.

  He sits back down and Marie leans into him, smiling and so damn proud she’s almost vibrating with it. Softly, she says, “We did ok, didn’t we?”

  Lucas slips into the seat on the far side of Marie and arches an eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” he murmurs, shooting Tyler a small smile as Aurora rises to give her speech. “We did a fucking awesome job with him.”

  Tyler hides his grin behind his program.

  ~*~

  A few weeks after graduation, Chase slips into the woods, flanked by his wolves, and stands before the Standing Stones. The spell is crinkled in his pocket and his anathema is clutched in his sweaty grip as he stares at the stones, at the flowers trying to grow from within the circle.

  He can feel the magic rippling off of it.

  It’s already begun, really, the siren song the Standing Stones put out. Andre Drake told him last week that a Wendigo was nesting in the warehouse district downtown. He can stop it though—muffle the song, hide the beacon, protect the land.

  Tyler whines, still unhappy, but Lucas presses against his shins and watches him with bright shining blue eyes.

  Chase takes a deep breath and cuts into the tattoo on his arm, murmuring the Latin spell as his blood drips in concentric circles, soaking through rowan ash he spread on the ground and seeping into the ancient Stones as he whispers.

  He closes his eyes, but there isn’t any magical display—no rush of power or blinding light or anything but the almost relieved sigh the wood gives. Power doesn’t so much flood into him, but seeps, soaking in, twisting with his magic, strengthening it, and his tattoos burn, glowing briefly. He can feel the forest, feel the trees and the animals and the magic that touches the land, that runs along the telluric currents and ley lines.

  He shivers and falls to his knees beside the ancient Stones, digging his fingers into the ground as magic pushes through him like an endless sea, gentle waves battering and battering and battering.

  He gasps, “Tyler,” and then, finally, he surrenders to the tug of the magic, pulling him under the surface.

  High above them, the solstice moon rises. The wolves press against him and he smiles, because here—between his wolves, in the woods with magic thumping through his veins—he’s home.

  Chapter 16

  He doesn’t think about before often, because it hurts. He doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t slip into the dark broody moods of his brother or the quiet touch-starved clinginess of Chase, but he thinks that’s more because he spent so many years trapped in his own head, unable to do anything but listen to Chase babble and Tyler’s guilt, and think about everything he lost.

  Before, he was a brother, a son, a husband.

  He was going to be a father, and that... That hurts more than anything, the memory of his pretty human wife and her softly swelling belly, the way he could listen for hours to the quiet rapid-fire heartbeat of his baby.

  But that was before. And now... Now, he’s a beta without an alpha, a wolf in a pack that feels incomplete and vulnerable, and it makes his hackles rise.

  Chase spins his magic and carves his runes, and Lucas knows the little shaman would die to protect them—but he shouldn’t have to. There should be an alpha keeping them safe, someone who holds Chase cherished and protected, who arranges her pack to guard him.

  Instead, there’s only him and Tyler.

  He thinks, maybe, it will be enough.

  ~*~

  Before the accident, his alpha was his best friend. He grew up knowing that he would be her beta, and more than that—he would be her left hand, the one who walked in darkness with bloody hands and a guilty conscious because she couldn’t be that person and the alpha.

  He didn’t mind it. He had always been comfortable in the shadows his mother couldn’t walk in.

  It was lonely. He saw the way his Pack watched him sometimes, wary and afraid, but his mother never looked at him like that and Tyler never flinched away from him, and his Pack was safe. He could stand the looks and fear—sometimes he even welcomed it—because the people who mattered loved him and never pulled away.

  After the accident, when he sat in his chair listening to the spastic child next to him and his brother’s broken confessions, he thought.

  Maybe he could be that person again.

  Not for Chelsea—never for Chelsea. She wasn’t his alpha. She left him, and he didn’t want that kind of abandonment, didn't want that kind of feckless leader. She’d always stared at him with something like revulsion in her pretty eyes, the way their father did, and pulled the little ones away, like Lucas would hurt them.

  No, he would never stand as Chelsea’s Left, because he didn’t give a fuck what might hurt her. Sometimes he thinks he might help someone hurt her, if only to rid Tyler of the cumbersome burden of a family who didn’t want him.

  But for Chase, for the brave boy who loved him when he had no reason to, for the boy who wrapped himself in magic and runes and a world that he didn’t belong to, who ran with Lucas in his dreams...

  And for Tyler, who smiles now—small, sad, and shy—who watches the world like he’s afraid it will hurt him, who glares and snaps because he would rather drive someone away than be left behind...

  For them, he would wash his hands in blood, stain them red until they were never clean, would murder the world to keep them safe.

  It makes it very easy, actually, when a siren slips into town, drawn by the lush magic of the Standing Stones and happily killing the single male population of their quiet town. Lucas slips away from his little Pack, away from the house that is their home, and moves, silent as a ghost, through the forest.

  It’s easy, he thinks as he stalks her, watches her approach her prey. It’s what he was always meant to do.

  He kills her and disposes of the body, hoping it won’t give John too much trouble when it’s found. Then he washes his hands and goes back to his Pack.

  ~*~

  “I want to put up new wards,” Chase says.

  Tyler pauses. “We just put up wards,” he says evenly.

  Chase grins, wide and pleased with himself, and Lucas hides his smile, because he knows Chase has won this argument. He wonders if either of them have realized that.

  “I learned new ones. Better. I think it’ll catch more.”

  “What the hell else do you want to catch?” Tyler grumbles, nudging the boy’s legs aside and plopping down on the couch.

  “Uh, I’d like to know what the hell drained those three men last month,” Chase snaps.

  “No one else was killed,” Lucas observes.

  Chase gives him an offended glare. “Don’t take his side,” he hisses.

  “Fine,” Tyler grouses, dragging Chase’s legs back into his lap and rubbing the calves with almost absent-minded attention. “I’ll go with you Saturday.”

  The smile Chase gives him is blinding.

  Lucas hides his sigh behind his book. He wishes they’d decide what they were doing. The pining is becoming unbearable.

  ~*~

  “What did you do, for Sarah?”

  The question isn’t surprising. Chase has been burying himself in Pack hierarchy since he was fifteen. The only surprising thing about the question was that it’s taken Chase this long to get to it.

  “Tyler was training to be the archivist and diplomat. Chelsea was the Alpha heir. Andrew was Sarah’s second. But I can’t figure out—what were you?”

  “Tyler told you I was training him to replace me.”

  Chase gives him a patently disbelieving stare. “You weren’t a librarian, dude, and I’m not stupid enough to think Sarah would ever use you as a diplomat.”

  Lucas grins, all teeth and threat. “I can be very diplomatic.”

  “What were you?” he asks again.

  Lucas looks away. “I was what Tyler should have been, and what I will be for you and him.”


  Chase stares at him for a long time, long enough that Lucas’s heartbeat trips, uneven and scared.

  “You don’t have to carry that alone,” Chase says, “I would never ask you to carry that alone.”

  Lucas nods. He knows. Chase would never ask for Lucas to kill someone, to act as the Left.

  It’s precisely why he’s so willing to it anyway.

  ~*~

  Tyler is careful.

  Lucas watches them. He sees what’s going on and it hurts to witness.

  He misses the wild boy who would race through the preserve with Chelsea, his eyes flashing and laughter ringing. He misses the fierceness and the possessiveness he saw in Tyler when he was with their baby sister. He misses the boy he knew, and sometimes, when he catches Tyler watching him, he thinks—maybe Tyler misses him as well.

  But there is something sweet, something soft and fragile and good about the way Tyler is with Chase.

  When Chase is there in the house, even when he’s busy reading, or sleeping on the couch, when he’s cooking or sparring with Tyler—when he’s there, filling up space and binding them together—that’s when Lucas can almost forget.

  It never lasts. He will always look for his mother, his wife, his baby sister, his pack, and he’ll remember. Tyler will flinch, inevitably, away from Chase.

  Chase will stumble, caught briefly on a memory of his mother.

  And the illusion will shatter.

  But when they’re together, and Tyler is quiet and soft and content, Lucas feels safe. He feels like he’s part of a pack, a feeling that’s been slowly building since Chase first tucked his blanket around him in the woods and warned him about catching a chill.

  Sometimes he’ll step into the room and he’ll catch Tyler watching Chase, fond and helpless and wondering.

  He never lets Chase see those looks—he’s careful. He never lets the touching—scent marking, platonic touches in the kitchen, a guiding hand during sparring, a teasing jostle while they jog, a comforting touch when Chase smells of sadness, a steadying hand when the boy sways with magic—dip into something more. He’s so fucking careful.

  There’s a part of him, the part that’s meddlesome and impatient and confident that this is right, that wants to push and pull and arrange them, move them both where he wants them, force them together the way they so desperately want to be.

  “Don’t,” Tyler tells him one night, when Lucas snarls at the tension, after Chase has driven away. “He’s—I can’t, Lucas. I can’t lose him, and I can’t ruin him. I would. I ruin everything. Chase has given us so much. Just—don’t.”

  And Lucas hasn’t. He’s left them to their own devices, because as annoying as it is, he loves them. He loves them and he thinks—he’ll kill to protect them.

  ~*~

  “I don’t understand,” a shrill, familiar voice says.

  Chase sighs. “You don’t have to.”

  Aurora’s heels clack up the steps to the house, Chase’s feet a heavier step behind. “I wish you’d just tell me.”

  “Tell you what, dear?” Lucas purrs, as she and Chase step inside. Her words dry up and he watches her, bright-eyed and curious.

  Aurora Black is special. Not only because Chase has deemed her so, brought her here where he brings no one but his father and Ben, on rare occasion—no, she’s special because she watches him, and he can see a predator staring at him from behind her pretty green eyes.

  He smiles, the bland smile that he uses to annoy Tyler, and her lips thin, before Chase is grinning and greeting him with a quick hug and a vague wave towards his room.

  More often than not, when Chase brings her here, there’s no reason. There’s only the urge to share his world, this small piece of it, with someone who matters to him. He knows it pleases Tyler that Chase is so comfortable in their home, that he wants his friends around the Pack.

  It pleases Lucas too, soothes the part of him that feels the loss of his family, his Alpha, his Pack, the part that he thinks will never truly recover from the shattering of his Pack bonds.

  But then, there’s the simple truth: having Aurora Black in his den makes every instinct in him itch.

  ~*~

  Chase bound himself to the Standing Stones, used his will and power to muffle the song of power that comes from them. He watched, entranced by his magic, by his sacrifice, and he knew.

  It wouldn’t be enough.

  And when danger and threat came to Harrisburg—he’d kill to keep his pack safe.

  ~*~

  The first time it happens is the siren. Then it happens again. He always knew it would.

  It’s three months after Solstice, after Chase’s ritual. Tyler and Chase went with John to Washington to visit the infamous Granny for the week, and Lucas trots through the forest in his wolfskin, content in his momentary solitude when he stumbles almost by accident over an omega.

  He’ll realize later that he was drawn to its scent, foreign and threatening so close to his home, but in the moment, as he blinks, eyes glowing, and the omega stares back in startled disbelief, he only registers one thing.

  Threat.

  ~*~

  The omega, Lucas thinks, when he rips into the body and leaves it deep in the woods far from their territory—he would have lived. He would’ve walked from the Reid lands without a hair on his head harmed. He hadn’t killed, and Lucas knew Chase would prefer it, letting him go.

  But that night, Lucas welcomed him into the tiny apartment Tyler and Chase don’t know about, the place where he can retreat even from his Pack, the place where he’s willing to take a stranger, a threat, because it means nothing, because it doesn’t smell of denpackminehome.

  Lucas took him there and fed him, offered him shelter, a haven in a city where witches live, and the omega stared at him, hungry and hopeful when he asked in a whisper, “The mage... There’s a mage that controls the Standing Stones. Do you know where it is?”

  Lucas stared at him, smiled as he lied and shook his head, turned the disappointed omega to other conversation and quietly, easily, snapped his neck.

  He waited until he was in the alleyway outside his apartment to rip the omega’s throat out.

  It wouldn’t do to have blood inside.

  ~*~

  Chase never fails to surprise him.

  “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  Lucas blinks. “I did.”

  “My wards would have repelled him,” Chase says, “Or done the job for you, if he didn't leave. You didn’t have to do it.”

  Lucas debates for a moment, but he knows his boy, bright and fierce and too damn smart. “He came here for you. I wasn't going to kill him, Chase, but he asked me if I knew the mage who controlled the Standing Stones. That sealed his fate. I was never going to let a threat to you walk out of our territory alive.”

  Chase stares at him, his expression unhappy. Lucas waits patiently, his heart pounding a too fast rhythm.

  “I’m not—Lucas, I’m not Chelsea or Sarah. I’m just a kid playing with magic and trying to keep up with you and Tyler. You don’t have to kill for me.”

  Lucas stares at him, because he still doesn’t get it. Chase is brilliant and powerful and sweet and theirs, and he still doesn’t fucking get it.

  Lucas leans over, presses into his neck briefly, scent marking him, and then leaves him there, his scent full of questions and regret.

  ~*~

  He likes his dreams. There’s a freedom and familiarity there that he can’t quite find in the waking world. He spent so many years in dreamscapes—he thinks it will always be comforting to return there.

  He slips through the trees and feels Chase moving alongside him. Lucas presses into his side and Chase huffs, puts on a burst of speed. They run under the bright moon with Tyler on their heels, until Chase is panting, collapsed into the grass, and Lucas snuffles at the back of his neck before he sprawls over him, pinning him in place with the weight of his body.

  Chase squeaks a protest and Tyler chuffs in amusement,
and they rest like that.

  Mine.

  Chase twitches but doesn’t answer, and Tyler presses close, close enough that Lucas can nip at his ear.

  I will gladly kill for you.

  Chase squirms, displeased, and Lucas presses his weight down until he goes limp.

  You are my pack, my Shaman, my protector. Let me be yours.

  Chase sighs, but it’s an acquiescence, and it’s enough.

  ~*~

  He doesn’t say the word that’s been living in the back of his mind since the first time Chase dragged his father into Lucas’s hospital room and demanded his help.

  He doesn’t make that claim, not even in the dark places in his heart, but sometimes he wonders how long this peace, this compromise, will last.

  ~*~

  December brings a kind of stress he’s never seen in Chase, and a worried overprotectiveness from Tyler that makes Lucas ache with the loss of his wife and child.

  Chase is a bundle of sleep-deprived stress and muttered facts, and Lucas spends a solid week quizzing him for finals and proofing papers that Chase snarls over and polishes until he’s finally pleased with the results.

  When his first semester of local college finally ends, Chase collapses into his bed and doesn’t reappear for three days, and even then, he stumbles in and curls immediately into Lucas, mumbling about being hungry.

  Aurora, following behind him, smiles. Shadows are under her pretty eyes, and Lucas wonders who cared for her during the madness of finals. “I think it gets better,” she says. Chase flips her off.

  Tyler kisses his head and stands. “Waffles?”

  Chase makes a sleepy, pleased noise. Tyler makes a pained face as he slips into the kitchen. Aurora sits next to Chase, and Lucas turns to look at her.

  And she’s staring at him, her eyes wide and sightless, all too knowing. It sends a chill down his spine and his Shift ripples like a wave, just below the surface.

  “You—you killed, for him,” she whispers, Chase stiffening against him. “And you will kill again.” Lucas stares at her, and she blinks. “You would wash the world in blood for him. For Tyler.”

  She’s breathless in awe, and Lucas—he doesn’t know what to do.