Slow Shift

by Nazarea Andrews

  “Anything?”

  “There’s a faint scent at the 7-11,” Tyler says, “But nothing I can follow.”

  “Whoever has him knows that you can track him by scent.”

  Tyler growls.

  John puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get him back, Tyler.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know he’s alive, or you’d feel it. I know he’s still in your territory, or the wards would have fallen, and you’d feel that. I know that Lucas will kill anyone and everyone he has to in order to find him, and that I’ll use any measure, legal or not, to bring him home. I know that the Pack will kill itself looking for him before you give up. With all that—whoever the hell has him, they’ve got no chance in hell.”

  Tyler doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge him. Then abruptly, he spits, “We need to talk to Drake.”

  John opens his mouth, then closes it, and turns the cruiser toward the Drake’s home.

  ~*~

  She isn’t sane.

  That’s his main takeaway. That, and she has no clue what the hell she’s doing, but he doesn’t think that’s doing him any favors. She’s done this tree times now, tortured him and ranted the whole time. She likes electricity, and that worries him. She’s clueless, has no idea what a human can handle, and she could kill him pretty easily if she keeps treating him like a ‘wolf.

  He thinks he’s been here for two days. It feels like his magic is coming back, because she hasn’t bothered to bind that—a oversight he hopes she doesn’t decide to correct.

  He forces it down every time the tickling heat licks towards his wounds. He can’t afford that right now. The blinding pain in his ribs and his broken leg, the twitching of his muscles from the electric current—all of that keeps him in enough pain that he drifts sometimes, but he never really sleeps.

  He can feel his wards, can feel the threads that tie him to his Pack, and he traces each—avoids the sickly Alpha bond, the one his magic recoils from—and lets them glow, strengthening.

  “It’s your fault,” Chelsea mutters, and Chase blinks at her, bleary-eyed. There’s burns on his arms and thighs, his throat is sore from screaming, and he can smell the stench of his skin burning.

  She tosses the iron aside, frowning. “It's your fault,” she says again.

  “Wha’?”

  “Everything. All of it. Everything that happened after the car accident.” Her mouth tightens. “That was Tyler’s fault—couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.” She shakes her head. “But I was going to forgive him. I know I was hard on him. I know that’s why he left, but he wasn’t going to stay gone. He was going to come home, be my beta—he didn’t even like Lucas.”

  Chase stares at her, his stomach turning, because—she believes it, the shit she’s saying. She believes it.

  “Chelsea, Tyler loves Lucas. He always has.”

  “He hates him!” she screams, slapping him. Her claws rake across his face and he feels something in his eye give, a wet welling that makes his vision blur and go black. “He hates Lucas. We both hate him. And he was coming back to me, but you—you little fuck, you had to go and need him.”

  She catches his chin and jerks his head up. Chase screams, a long shrill 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.

&
nbsp; 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 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 soothe and care for them. He never wanted to know, because he’s never wanted the Bite, never wanted to understand a thing he’d never take, never want.

  He thinks that was stupid, so fucking stupid, because now he wishes he knew if this creeping invasion is normal or if it�
�s just that the magic that’ll be his wolf is just wary of the magic that already lives in him.

  He can feel it, the sharp curiosity that feels familiar and his, the burn of fury from the magic that’s as familiar as his own heartbeat, the way it rages even as it rolls back and lets the black drift through him.

  He sobs when it slides through his torso and he realizes his mouth feels funny, too full, too sharp.

  He wants, for the first time in his life, to howl.

  ~*~

  He loses time, but his fingers shift, scratch at the chair with sharp black claws. Chelsea comes back, once, and watches him curiously.

  He wonders what she sees—if he’s human or wolf, if he’s dying.

  He thinks he’s probably dying.

  The black drifting has slipped through all of him now, only the tightly curled ball of white-hot power untouched, and it’s circling, curious and teasing, edging close as his magic curls tighter, almost as if it’s hiding.

  It feels almost playful. Chase would laugh if he didn’t feel so much like dying, because of course, of fucking course, his wolf would be goddamn playful in the face of ancient eldritch power.

  He thinks Lucas would be amused and Tyler exasperated, and he really wants the chance to tell them.

  He carefully touches the Pack bonds and the black waves surge forward, anxious and demanding and hopeful—

  And his magic, the familiar burning spark and silver heat of the Standing Stones, rips through him, wraps around the shining heart of his Pack and attacks.

  Chase screams.

  ~*~

  “I don't understand, though,” Tyler says again, “Why attack him? Why take him? He’s her Pack.”

  “Is he?” Lucas asks, and Tyler gives him a sharp look. “What does the bond to Chelsea feel like?”

  Tyler frowns. “Like—like any bond. A gold thread that ties me to her.”

  “And your bond to Chase?”

  Tyler flushes. “A chain.”

  Lucas smiles faintly. “Do you know the pups can’t feel her? They don’t have a Pack bond to Chelsea at all. And the one I have—it’s a sick and dying thing. Chelsea doesn’t want us to be her Pack.”