Shift - Part One: Willow Cove Shifters - The Pack, #1

By Margeaux Nix

Fated mates & forever are the stuff of fairytales for me. Can the Alpha of Willow Cove convince me I'm wrong?

 

Violet - Raised as a human in the unforgiving foster care system, I'm a wolf shifter used to having only myself to depend on. I've escaped my latest home and have finally cobbled together my life in a new town far from the dangers of the foster care system.

Ryker - I am the Alpha of the Willow Cove wolf pack. With three siblings, my loving parents still happily mated, and a large pack, I have more extended family than someone like Violet could ever imagine. But I still crave the one thing every shifter wants – my fated mate.

When the goddess brings us together, I instantly fall for the raven-haired beauty and vow to protect her and provide for every want and need she may ever have.

Everything in me wants to believe him, but my experience has taught me that it's too good to be true. Have I finally found my forever home or will the knowledge of my real identity as a wolf shifter drive me from my fated mate's arms?

Intended for mature audiences 18+ for language, sex.

Willow Cove Shifters is a serial following the four Burke siblings in the quest to find and claim their fated mates, with a new part released each month of 2022.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margeaux Nix
• Release date: Jan 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201338770

Margeaux Nix

Margeaux Nix is a pen name for my paranormal books. I also write contemporary/erotic romance under the pen name J. Silence.  I never thought I'd like 'shifter' books and then I read one and quickly devoured the entire 10 book series. I was hooked! It didn't take long for me to fall in love with fated mates, alpha heroes and the women that love them.  When I started writing shifters, my intention was 'just one' while another series marinated. A dozen books later, and I can't seem to stop myself! I am a Navy son mom, a teenage girl mom, and a doggo mom to my two rescued writing companions - a lab mix and a border collie mix. I'm also a soon-to-be GG (gorgeous grandma)!

Book preview

Prologue

Five Years ago

N o! Please! I like it here. I'll be good, I promise. Please don't make me leave.

If we could keep you here with us, you know we would, sweetie, Mrs. Taylor soothes.

The words of my foster mom do nothing to ease the pain in my chest. I know better. It doesn't matter how good I am, how much I beg, or what I promise. Nothing will change what is about to happen. I should know that by now. I should know that tears only give me a headache and that my pleas will always go unanswered. I've been through this routine enough times to know how things are.

Violet, please go pack your things. We have a schedule to keep. You don't want to keep your new family waiting, do you?

If it keeps me out of the reach of the next sleazy foster dad, then yes. I would do anything to delay that.

With one last sullen look over my shoulder, I head up the stairs to the only bedroom I've never had to share with others. It even has a lock on the door...the good kind that locks from inside. The Taylors spoke to me just last week about either a permanent foster placement or adoption. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. It never works out.

The system is designed to help biological parents get their shit together so that they can be reunited with their children. But when that parent can't seem to stay away from their dealer long enough to get clean, all it does is keep the child's life in a state of constant flux. There is no connection to family because we are constantly being shuffled around from home to home. At first, I used to mourn the lack of a real family. But then I realized that no connection means no pain when you're yanked out of one foster placement and dropped into another in the next town or next county. The furthest I've ever moved is from one side of the state to the other.

I will age out of the system in less than a year and a half. The day I turn 18, I'll be on my own. No home. No food. No family. I've been working hard to get enough credits to graduate early, but as often as I've been moved, it's difficult. Mr. Taylor had hired a tutor to help me get caught up. I could take my high school equivalency now and I'd be sure to pass, but silly me, I'd been hoping for an actual graduation ceremony – complete with a cap and gown, pictures with friends, and proud parents cheering me on from the front row.

As I enter my room for the last time, I look around and memorize what it was like to have my own space that I could decorate any way I wanted. It is a soft green with a mural of the forest professionally painted on two walls and posters of wolves (my spirit animal) on the others. To have a bed with blankets and pillows that were all for me, and only me. My room even has a desk for me to do my homework and a closet to hang my clothes. Mrs. Taylor had taken me shopping just last week for new fall clothes – actually spending the stipend the state gives her on me, rather than on her own needs like most foster parents do. Then again, Mr. Taylor is a doctor. They don't need the meager stipend. They'd become foster parents because they genuinely wanted to help children because they couldn't have any of their own. I was the only one they'd tried to keep.

I pull open the drawers to my very own dresser and start stuffing my clothing into the trash bag that the caseworker had handed me before she even bothered to introduce herself. That's another thing. Every time I'm yanked from a foster home, it's someone new. I never have the same caseworker twice. I've been with the Taylors long enough that I was beginning to think that I might get to stay. As it turns out, CPS was just having trouble keeping someone in the position long enough to make changes. Figures!

I used to take the time to fold my clothes so that they weren't a wrinkled mess when I finally got to unpack at the next place. But after once losing half of my meager wardrobe to an inpatient caseworker, I've taken to dealing with wrinkles because it's better than not having enough clothes.

As much as I wish I could take the pillow and blanket with me, I know that Mrs. Taylor will need them for their next placement. I step into the bathroom and gather my toiletries before heading back down the stairs. When I reach the bottom, I sit and wait for the adults to realize that I'm there. In the meantime, I listen to the hushed conversation between the caseworker and Mrs. Taylor. I don't know if they think I can't hear them, or if they just don't care. Mrs. Taylor, for her part, is upset. She's begging her husband to do something, to stop them from taking me away from her. The caseworker is less than sympathetic. She's downright rude to Mrs. Taylor. Her temper is short and her words harsh.

But we've applied for permanent guardianship of Violet, Mrs. Taylor explains. Why would they pull her out now?

Listen, Mrs. Taylor, the caseworker huffs. I'm just doing what I was told. If you have a problem with this, then call my boss. But until I'm told otherwise, Violet is to be moved to Major Winthrop's home. He'll keep her in line.

Keep her in line? She's been a perfect angel every second she's been with us.

Not from what her school says. Did you know she's failing three subjects? And that she has skipped school at least three days every week for the last four months? And let's not even talk about the days of detention for fighting.

That's not true! I gasp, finally making my presence known. "I have straight A's and the only time