Shift - Part Two: Willow Cove Shifters - The Pack, #2

By Margeaux Nix

So I'm a shifter...now what?

 

Violet : Twenty-four hours ago my biggest dilema was how to not spend my birthday alone, or worse, alone and at the library doing homework. Now, not only do I have lots of new people to spend my birthday with, but they aren't really people at all. They are shifters. Wolf shifters to be precise. And I'm one of them. With the full moon and my first shift just a few short days away, it's all hands on deck to get me through it.

 

Ryker : Twenty-four hours ago, finding my mate - the one the goddess created just for me - was just a dream. Now, she's here and facing down her first shift. As the pack alpha, I've helped many of our pack through their first shift. Helping my mate through hers will be it's own special brand of torture, though. I will do everything in my power to get her through it, but will my everything be enough when she fights her wolf and her shift?

 

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 releasing each month of 2022.

 

Intended for mature audiences 18+ for language and sex.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margeaux Nix
• Release date: Feb 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201465803

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

Chapter 1

Ryker

When Violet ran out of my house, I wanted to run after her. I wanted to follow her scent and force her to talk to me so that I could explain...explain what exactly? How I knew she was a shifter and didn’t tell her, even after I realized she had no idea? How she's my mate that the goddess and fate have chosen us to be together for the rest of our days? Yeah, because that doesn't sound creepy at all. Let’s not even get into the fact that we live much longer than humans – well into our third and sometimes fourth century if our mates live that long, too.

Instead, I straightened up my living room before heading outside and doing exactly what I told myself I wasn’t going to do. I shifted into my wolf and started tracking her movements. I told myself I wouldn’t talk to her. I was only making sure that she got home safely. After all, she did have a bunch of frat boys following her home from work last night. I would be a terrible alpha, and mate, if I let something happen to one of his wolves.

I can’t believe my life has changed so much, and it’s not even been twenty-four hours. This time yesterday, I was fighting with the foreman of one of my job sites over his complete inability to keep his crew to a timetable. It was his final warning. One more screw-up, one more avoidable delay, and he'll be out, and I'll have to step in to oversee the rest of the work until a new foreman can be hired and brought up to speed mid-project. He'd better hope that doesn't happen. I hate running job sites. The crews hate when I run job sites. Though, they hate it considerably less than when Xander runs one. His hard-as-nails attitude and by the book nature lends itself well to being our pack enforcer and the CFO of our family’s construction business. Not so much as the man in charge of a crew consisting of both shifters and humans.

A twig snaps behind me and I whirl around to see all three of my siblings following me sheepishly. Kat’s head is hung in submission, guilt written across her face. They had to have heard everything said after they left. Wolf hearing is exceptional – even through walls.

She didn’t know? Kat asks through our pack link.

"No. Not about any of it."

Explains why she freaked when I stepped into the room, Axel adds. I’m sorry I scared her, alpha.

She’s not a mutt, Xander says. She couldn’t be an alpha if she were mixed. But how does she not know?

I don’t have time for this right now, I huff to my nosey, albeit concerned, siblings. I have to make sure she gets home safely. Either help me find her or go home.

With that, I return my attention to tracking which way my mate has traveled. It gets harder to follow her scent the closer we get to the bustling town center. All the scents mingle together, and we have no choice but to follow from the periphery. Humans may know and accept our presence in their picturesque little town, but they balk at a blatant reminder that there is more living in Willow Cove than just humans. Four large wolves walking down the street in the middle of the afternoon would be too much for them.

Alpha? Axel nudges my side.

She was in trouble last night. It’s how we met. I have to make sure she’s safe. Axel nods as if reading between the lines and turns his attention to our siblings, issuing orders.

X, you and Kat run home as fast as you can. Bring a vehicle, and clothes for everyone, in case we need to go into buildings or interact with humans.

The pair nod and take off in the direction that we just came from at a sprint. I know that they’ll be back to us in no more than twenty minutes. I just hope it’s soon enough. Axel nudges me again to focus me back on the task of following her scent.

For a minute, I think I've lost her scent. Then a bus whooshes by our place in the woods on the side of the road, bringing with it her sweet scent. She's been through here, and recently, too. I look around and realize we’re not far from the diner where she works. She’d said her friend wanted to buy her a drink for her birthday. The bar should be open now but would she have come here before going home?

"My only friend is back at the diner..." her words from last night float back to my memory. Her only friend. I cannot imagine something like that coming out of a wolf’s mouth – especially in my pack. We are so tightly bound that I know without a doubt any one of them would rush to my aid any time of day or night without question. And no, that has nothing to do with me being the alpha. It’s just how we are. But she wasn’t raised in a pack. Hell, she didn’t even have a family. That’s going to change, I just have to help her through accepting what she is, if she’ll let me. Then I can give her the world.

Axe and I move through the shadows and trees in town, following Violet’s sweet scent as far as we can without exposing ourselves to the humans. As I expected, it led right to the diner. I keep searching, hoping that she didn’t jump into a car or bus. I’d lose her scent for sure then.

I’m pacing like a caged animal in the woods directly behind the diner while we wait for Xander and Kat to return with clothes. My skin is itching with the need to shift and go inside to look for my mate. I’m just about to shift and go in search of her sans clothing (humans be damned) when Kat and Xander pull into the parking lot. Kat scrambles out of the cab with two piles of clothes and shoes clutched in her hands. I’m shifting back before she even gets halfway to the edge of the woods where we are waiting.

Impatient much? she laughs. I growl and pull on my clothes as quickly as possible. Once my pants and shoes are on, I take off in the direction of the door, pulling my shirt on and fastening my jeans as I go. I run my hand through my hair, hoping that there aren’t any residual twigs or leaves there from my time in